natural, and the typing doesn’t get done but I don’t have some
money either. Other times she gives me a cash advance and I
have it burning in m y hand and if I’m feeling slow and
stringent with m yself I get it to the bank and i f I'm feeling
restless, all speeded up, wanting to spit in the eye o f God, out
drink Him, out fuck Him, I keep it on me. I type, I walk long
walks across town, ballets on cement, jum ping and hopping
and then a slow, melancholy step, solemn or arms sw inging,
in the face o f the wind or in drizzle or rain or in sun, in calm,
cool sun. I walk m y sweet and jubilant dog in the neighborhood protecting the pads o f her feet from the stupid glass the winos leave all broken all over and the fucking junkie shit
that’s all over, and then there’s the time each day I sit down in
purposeful concentration to write in a notebook, some
sentences on a buried truth, an unnamed reality, things that
happened but are denied. It is hard to describe the stillness it
takes, the difficulty o f this act. It requires an almost perfect
concentration which I am trying to learn and there is no w ay to
learn it that is spelled out anywhere or so I can understand it
but I have a sense that it’s completely simple, on the order o f
being able to sit still and keep your mind dead center in you
without apology or fear. I squirm after some time but it ain’t
boredom, it’s fear o f w hat’s possible, how much you can
know if you can be quiet enough and simple enough. I m ove
around, m y mind wanders, I lose the ability to take words and
roll them through m y brain, m ove with them into their
interiors, feel their colors, touch w hat’s under them, where
they come from long ago and w ay back. I get frightened
seeing what’s in m y own mind if words get put to it. T here’s a
light there, it’s bright, it’s wide, it could make you blind if you
look direct into it and so I turn away, afraid; I get frightened
and I run and the only w ay to run is to abandon the process
altogether or com prom ise it beyond recognition. I think about
Celine sitting with his shit, for instance; I don’t know w hy he
didn’t run, he should’ve. It’s a quality you have to have o f
being near mad and at the same time so quiet in your heart that
you could pass for a spiritual warrior; you could probably
break things with the power in your mind. You got to be able
to stand it, because it’s a powerful and disturbing light, not
something easy and kind, it comes through your head to make
its w ay onto the page and you get fucking scared so your mind
runs away, it wanders, it gets distracted, it buckles, it deserts,
it takes a Goddamn freight train if it can find one, it wants
calming agents and soporifics, and you mask that you are
betraying the brightest and best light you will ever see, you are
betraying the mind that can be host to it; Blake’s light, which
he was not afraid o f and did not betray; Whitman’s light which
