don’t know how you make it glisten, the brown and the gold
in it; I saw many a face close up and I saw many a man close up
and I’d lift my skirt and it was dirty, my legs, and there was
dried blood. I was pretty dirty. I didn’t w orry too much. Then
I got money because my friend thought I should go inside. I
had this friend. I knew her when I was young. She was a
pacifist. She hated war and she held signs against the Vietnam
War and I did too. She let me sleep in her apartment but
enough’s enough; there’s places you don’t go back to. So now
I was too dirty and she gave me money to go inside
definitively; which I had wanted, except it was hard to
express. I thought about walls all the time. I thought about
how easy they should be, really, to have; how you could fit
them almost anywhere, on a street corner, in an alley, on a
patch o f dirt, you must make walls and a person can go inside
with a bed, a small cot, just to lie down and it’s a house, as
much o f a house as any other house. I thought about walls
pretty much all the time. Y ou should be able to just put up
walls, it should be possible. There’s literally no end to the
places walls could go without inconveniencing anyone, except
they would have to walk around. They say a ro of over your
head but it’s walls really that are the issue; you can just think
about them, all their corners touching or all lined up thin like
pancakes, painted a pretty color, a light color because you
don’t want it to look too small, or you can make it more than
one color but you run the risk o f looking busy, somewhat
vulgar, and you don’t want it to look gray or brown like
outside or you could get sad. There’s got to be some place in
heaven where God stores walls, there’s just walls, stacked or
standing up straight like the pages o f a book, miles high and
miles wide running in pale colors above the clouds, a storage
place, and God sees someone lost and He just sends them
down four at a time. Guess He don’t. There’s people take them
for granted and people who dream about them— literally,
dream how nice they would be, pretty and painted, serene. I
w ouldn’t mind living outside all the time if it didn’t get cold or
wet and there wasn’t men. A ro o f over your head is more
conceptual in a sense; it’s sort o f an advanced idea. In life you
can cover your head with a piece o f w ood or with cardboard or
newspapers or a side o f a crate you pull apart, but walls aren’t
really spontaneous in any sense; they need to be built, with
purpose, with intention. Someone has to plan it if you want
them to come together the right w ay, the whole four o f them
with edges so delicate, it has to be balanced and solid and
upright and it’s very delicate because if it’s not right it falls,
you can’t take it for granted; and there’s wind that can knock it
