2. Include a search for the great unknown.
It may or may not have happened as you had liked, but there was always something like a chase in it. Over the cliff, you may or may not have spotted a jewel in the ravine. The boy with the trembling umbrella may or may not have called your name. You see, there will be a heavenly castle; there is a holy grail; there did fall golden apples. The page will always remain allusive. Give everything then: upon dying, you may or may not know if he loved you, really loved you—you can go on, with all of your eye-closing, your convulsing, your brutal burial, the rites, and the rest of the shrouding and transporting. You will know then if you were or were not his woman in white.
3. Dream.
It will happen when you least expect it—the mystery explained in terms of what you were feeling. The anony-mous letter is not so anonymous, and so you go on addressing, not knowing that all the while there is something in dreams so desperately addressing you. The dove, the wedding gown, the orchid and iris, the precious pillow—you will dream, but you will not have. The monk in white is shaving her hair and eyebrows; the songbird is calling; the fog is not lifting; the traveler will hear voices. Among the rows and rows of cabbages and turnips, only the drifter in sleep will find the one with a heartbeat.
4. (Keep things in.)
(It takes great training to divorce oneself from always-thinking-of-eminent-endings.)
Each morning, you will feel as if you have just done something wrong, as if an apology is in order; however, you will never know to whom your apology should be addressed. It is best, therefore, to keep things in—this way, there will be no exposed skin. He will not know what it was you most wanted; anyhow, he would never have given in.
5. Pay particular attention to detail.
Because they will leave you. Every moment, therefore, will be significant. You may not know it in the doing of it, but when he holds you, this is very important. Take note of that sunset. Don’t close, do close your eyes. You will wish; it will never happen again. The aforesaid moment already acting as artifact—the teacup so lonely, so empty.
6. Cry about it.
But only afterwards. If you lose a child, calm yourself: it was only imaginary. She will rise again in her white nightgown; she will ask after her father. Morning sickness will give way to. Always a dull moment; chandeliers shivering. It might be best to be. Incomplete. That is when it might start: the choppy sentences, the fragments, the memory oblique. Beware of the man with a few words. If you lose a child, calm yourself: it was only virginity.
7. Name your enemies.
You must give up thinking that you will ever be at your best. Blame it on the big capitalistic machine, blame it on the weather, blame it on whatever, but blame you must. Blame it on her, because she was there and she was willing. It was the Sirens’ song; it was another strange cacophony of hearts and breaths. You must attribute fault to the fishnet stockings, the Brazilian bikini, the manicured nails, the bottle blonde. The devil is real, and she is sleeping with.
Don’t allow your readers to know what you are thinking: they are waiting to find faults in your logic, discrepancies in your tone, falters in your dress; they will point out whether you are too young or too old; they will say that your whole wardrobe is nothing more than a gimmick, because they all feel a bit deflated after the harlot’s show of skill, her cheap tricks, her sleight of hand.
Hate the pinwheel and glitter. Say his proper name: first name last.
8. Edit lightly.
More often than not, if you are approaching the act of writing due to some internal circumstance, then likely you will not be too attached to whatever it is you are writing. Immediately, you will think that your tone is too self-pitying, too inclusive of the privacy of whatever disaster transpired to you and you alone. No one saw you in the taxi crying. All along, you were giving yourself away too freely; here now is your chance to keep and hold whatever it is you own, to say it and then retract it and say it again and to mean it, to really mean what you say, to use everything.
9. Obsess.
Remember: It is not my job, he said. It is not my job to take care of you. Remember: I’ll tell you right now, I’ll make a terrible. Remember:
10. Invoke the supernatural, especially ghosts.
It will happen, and you will say chance or coincidence—fate is never something that comes, at least not until much later. (Just when you are thinking that someone may be dying, that person does die.) How else to explain the inner workings? (So fully I believed my sister when she said that inside little perfectly round stones lived the coiled souls of angels.) If you haven’t any ghosts now, then invoke them or make them up if you know who may or may not be lurking. Say: the mysterious envelope (always too late) is falling from a sublime grace; say: the code matches exactly his license plate; say: the handwriting reminds me of someone I once knew; say: really, I was here before; say: you loved me briefly, but in a lifetime past; say: maybe it was just not meant to be, maybe today I will start calling on fate; say: how did I come to be here in bed with you, and then here again without you?
11. Learn dictation; snap pictures; take good notes.
Never assume that you will remember what is being said when you most need to repeat it to the outside source who may or may not need it more than you do. What is
