Sometimes I think the language understands me. But sometimes, I think there's something else in addition to that. Something I haven’t encountered yet. Even at my age. Which is an odd thing to say. Everything is new when you’re this old. It’s another childhood. But one in reverse. You don’t get older. You get younger. And then you disappear altogether. If the character of the phenomenon is chaotic, it’s no good giving a rational explanation for a man trapped in a dilemma of his own making. The sequence of any action will, inevitably, fall into a pattern. But this does not mean you should remove your clothes and do a dive in La Quebrada. I find myself in a difficult situation among all these possibilities, at least on paper. Call it option fatigue. And give me a drink of downgrade. It’s like lemonade. But with the tang of disgrace.
Nothing means anything. And by that I mean, anything.
Nothing is anything that isn’t tied down. But since nothing cannot be tied
down, nothing is tied down. The words must be choreographed, otherwise their
dance will be like a needle, a thick stick of knowledge in a can of intuition.
You can paint the wall whatever color you like, but if there’s a forest in the
window and a finger under the soap, I would go with banana mania. If sweating
becomes a recurring phenomenon, as it often does during periods of exertion, it
clearly indicates a romantic temperament, while if this sample takes the form
of a strip of glued paper, it will transmit a flow of music through the piano
strings for as long as necessary. Here's how we do it. We begin with a handful
of words arranged to mimic the dazzling sidewalks of a fabled port of call and
become strollers, amblers, flaneurs, some seeking tea rooms for the peacock set,
some seeking redemption in a stained-glass window.
It must be clear that I’m not in control here. I’ve
never really been in control of anything. Who is? Even kings need the caressing
words of sycophants and courtiers. Or powerful queens with elegant tastes and
persuasive charms. All of this becomes evident, sooner or later, as to what
someone has to offer when resources become scarce. While I'm next to you, let
me dream, I want to know what it's like to be a sentence. Nothing is thicker
than the watermark on a kettle. The meaning of this is inscribed on a grain of
sand. Am I the only one to not know what it is I’m doing? There’s no point to
describing Anyang, China, if I’m stuck in Seattle. Unless, of course, the
underlying opportunity here comes with a mooring rope and an interesting irritation.
And by opportunity, I mean river. Rivers move. They seem to know what they’re
doing. They bend when it’s necessary to bend. They meander with a wizardly
circumlocution, come crashing down in a thunderous volume of jubilation, deepen
into silence, widen into cypress, and empty into heaven.
It's bitter cold in the car, but the relief it
provides from the noise coming from the upstairs renovation project is worth
it. Only my hands and my head can feel the cold. My coat keeps the rest of my
body warm. The cold is unpleasant, but I can never quite understand what,
precisely, makes it unpleasant. It's just a sensation. What makes one sensation
feel good and another feel bad? If I decide, mentally, that there's nothing
inherently wrong with the cold, but it actually feels good, then why doesn't it
feel good? “O, who can hold a fire in his hand,”
Bolingbroke argues in Richard III, “by thinking on the frosty Caucasus?
Or cloy the hungry edge of appetite
by bare imagination of a feast? Or wallow naked in December snow
by thinking on fantastic summer’s heat? Oh no, the apprehension of the good
gives but the greater feeling to the worse.”
The same might be said of the noise that drove me to sit in the car on a cold
December morning. If I think the noise is music, it won’t sound like music.
John Cage was able to find music like that. Nothing was noise to him. I lack
the power to do that. But I’m working on it. Some responses to the rigors of
this world are not malleable, nor negotiable. Death, for example. What larger
sense of this I can make also eludes me. But strangely, it does feel a little
warmer.
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