may perform
opposed  actions  together,  in  a  single fresh respiration,  I am  against
action; for continual contradiction, for affirmation also, I  am neither for
nor  against and I do not explain  for I  hate good sense  ..  . There is  a
literature which does not reach the voracious mass.  The  work  of creators,
sprung  from a real necessity on  the part of the author, and  for  himself.
Consciousness  of  a supreme  egotism where the stars  waste away . . . Each
page  must explode,  either  with  the  profoundly  serious  and heavy,  the
whirlwind, dizziness, the new, the eternal, with the overwhelming hoax, with
an enthusiasm for principles or with the mode of typography. On the one hand
a staggering  fleeing world,  affianced to the jingle-bells of  the infernal
gamut, on  the other hand:  <i>new beings</i>..." Thirty-two years later  and  I am
still saying  Yes!  Yes, Monsieur Antipyrine! Yes,Monsieur Tristan Bustanoby
Tzara! Yes, Monsieur  Max Ernst Geburt! Yes! Monsieur Rene Crevel, now  that
you are dead  by  suicide,  yes,  the  world  is crazy, you were right. Yes,
Monsieur Blaise  Cendrars, you were  right  to kill. Was it  the day  of the
Armistice that you brought out your  little book <i>-J'ai tue?</i> Yes, "keep on my
lads,  humanity..."  Yes,  Jacques Vache,  quite right -  "Art  ought to  be
something funny and a trifle boring." Yes, my dear dead Vache, how right you
were and how funny  and  how boring the touching and tender and true: "It is
of the  essence of  symbols  to be  symbolic." Say it again,  from the other
world!  Have you a megaphone up there?  Have you found all the arms and legs
that were blown off during the  melee? Can you put  them  together again? Do
you remember the meeting at Nantes  in  1916  with  Andre  Breton?  Did  you
celebrate  the  birth  of hysteria together? Had  he told  you, Breton, that
there was only the  marvellous  and nothing but the marvellous and that  the
marvellous is always  marvellous - and isn't it marvellous to hear it again,
even  though your ears  are stopped? I want  to include here, before passing
on, a little portrait of you by Emile Bouvier for the benefit of my Brooklyn
friends who may not have recognized me then but who will now, I am sure...
     ".  .  .  he was  not  all  crazy, and could  explain his conduct  when
occasion required. His  actions, none  the less,  were  as disconcerting  as
Jarry's worst  eccentricities. For  example, he  was  barely out of hospital
when  he  hired himself  out as a stevedore, and  he  thereafter passed  his
afternoons in unloading coal on the quays along the  Loire. In  the evening,
on the other hand he would make the rounds of the cafes and cinemas, dressed
in the height of fashion and with many variations of costume. What was more,
in  time  of war,  he  would  strut forth  sometimes  in the  uniform  of  a
lieutenant  of Hussars,  sometimes  in that of  an  English officer,  of  an
aviator or  of a  surgeon.  In civil life,  he was  quite as free  and easy,
thinking nothing of introducing Breton under the name of Andre Salmon, while
he took  unto himself,  but  quite without vanity, the most wonderful titles
and adventures.  He never said good morning nor good  evening nor  good-bye,
and  never took any notice of letters, except those from his mother, when he
had to ask for money. He  did not recognize his best friends from one day to
another..."
     Do you recognize me,  lads? Just a Brooklyn  boy communicating with the
red-haired albinos of the Zuni region. Making ready, with feet on the  desk,
to write "strong works, works forever incomprehensible", as my dead comrades
were promising.  These "strong works" - would  you recognize them if you saw
them? Do  you know that  of the millions  who were killed not one death  was
necessary to produce "the strong work"? <i>New beings,</i> yes! We have need of new
beings  still.  We can do without the  telephone,  without  the  automobile,
without  the high-class bombers -  but we  can't  do without new beings.  If
Atlantis was  submerged  beneath  the sea,  if the Sphinx  and  the Pyramids
remain an eternal riddle, it  is because there were no more new beings being
born.  Stop the machine a moment! Plash back!  Flash  back  to 1914, to  the
Kaiser  sitting on  his horse. Keep  him sitting  there a  moment  with  his
withered arm clutching the bridle rein. Look at  his moustache! Look at  his
haughty  air of  pride and arrogance! Look  at his cannon-fodder lined up in
strictest  discipline,  all  ready to  obey  the word, to  get shot, to  get
disembowelled, to be burned in quicklime. Hold it a moment, now, and look at
the other side: the  defenders of our great and  glorious civilization,  the
men who will war  to end war. Change their clothes, change uniforms,  change
horses,  change  flags, change terrain. My,  is that  the Kaiser I  see on a
white horse? Are those the terrible Huns? And where is Big Bertha? Oh, I see
-1 thought it was pointing towards  Notre Dame? Humanity, me lads,  humanity
always marching  in the van . . . And the strong works we were speaking  of?
Where  are  the strong  works?  Call  up  the Western  Union and  dispatch a
messenger fleet of foot - not a cripple or an octogenarian, but a young one!
Ask him  to find the  great work and bring it back.  We need  it. We  have a
brand new museum  ready waiting to house  it - and cellophane and  the Dewey
Decimal system to file it. All we need is the name of the author. Even if he
has no name, even if it is anonymous work, we  won't kick. Even if  it has a
little mustard  gas in it we  won't  mind. Bring  it back  dead or  alive  -
there's a $25,000 reward for the man who fetches it.
     And if they tell you that these things had to be, that things could not
have happened otherwise, that France did her best and  Germany her best  and
that little  Liberia and  little Ecuador and all  the other allies also  did
their  best, and that since the war everybody has  been  doing his  best  to
patch  things up or to forget, tell them that their best is not good enough,
that we  don't want to hear any more this logic of "doing the best one can",
tell them we don't  want the  best  of a  bad  bargain, we don't believe  in
bargains  good or bad, nor in war memorials. We don't want to hear about the
logic of events  - or  any kind  of logic. <i>"Je ne parle pas  logique,"</i>  said
Montherlant, <i>"je parle  generosite."</i> I  don't think you heard  it very well,
since it was in French. I'll repeat it for you, in the Queen's own language;
"I'm not talking logic, I'm talking generosity." That's bad English, as  the
Queen herself might speak it, but it's  clear. <i>Generosity -</i> do you hear? You
never practise it, any of you, either in peace or in war. You don't know the
meaning of  the word. You think to supply guns and ammunition to the winning
side is generosity; you think sending Red Cross nurses  to the front, or the
Salvation Army, is generosity.  You  think a bonus twenty years too late  is
generosity;  you think a little pension and a wheel chair is generosity; you
think  if you give a  man  his old job back it's generosity. You  don't know
what the  fucking war  means,  you  bastards! To  be generous is to  say Yes
before  the man even  opens his mouth. To  say Yes you  have to first  be  a
Surrealist or a  Dadaist, because you have  understood what it means to  say
No. You can even say Yes and  No at the same time, provided you do more than
is expected of you. Be a stevedore in the day time and a Beau Brummel in the
night-time. Wear any  uniform so long as it's not yours. When you write your
mother ask her to cough up a little  dough so that you may have  a clean rag
to wipe your  ass with. Don't be  disturbed if you see  your neighbour going
after his  wife with a knife: he  probably  has good reason to go after her,
and if he  kills her you may be sure he has the satisfaction of knowing  why</i>
he  did  it. If  you're trying  to  improve your mind,  stop it I There's no
improving the mind. Look at your heart and gizzard  -  the  brain  is in the
heart.
     Ah yes, if I had known then that these birds existed  -Cendrars, Vache,
Grosz, Ernst, Apollinaire - if I had known that then, if I had known that in
their  own way they were  thinking exactly the same things as I was, I think
I'd have blown  up.  Yes, I  think I'd have gone off like a bomb. But I  was
ignorant. Ignorant  of the fact that almost  fifty years previously a  crazy
Jew in South America had given birth to such  startlingly marvellous phrases
as "doubt's  duck with  the  vermouth  lips" or  "I have seen a fig  eat  an
onager" -  that about the same time a Frenchman, who was  only  a  boy,  was
saying: "Find flowers that are chairs" . . .  "my hunger is the  black air's
bits"  .  . . "his heart,  amber  and spunk".  Maybe  at  the same time,  or
thereabouts, while Jarry  was  saying "in  eating the  sound of moths",  and
Apollinaire  repeating after him "near a  gentleman swallowing himself", and
Breton murmuring softly  "night's  pedals move uninterruptedly", perhaps "in
the air beautiful and black" which the lone Jew had found under the Southern
Cross another man,  also  lonely  and  exiled  and  of  Spanish origin,  was
preparing to put  down on  paper these memorable words: "I seek, all in all,
to  console  myself  for  my  exile, for  my exile from  eternity, for  that
<i>unearthing</i> (destierro) which I am fond of referring to as my unheavening ...
At present, I think that the best  way of writing this  novel is to tell how
it  should  be  written.  It  is the  novel  of the novel,  the creation  of
creation. Or God of God, <i>Deus de Deo."</i> Had I known he was going to add this,
this which follows,  I would  surely have gone off like  a bomb... "By being
crazy  is  understood losing one's reason.  Reason, but  not the truth,  for
there are madmen who speak truths while others keep silent. . ." Speaking of
these  things, speaking of the war and the war dead, I cannot  refrain  from
mentioning that  some twenty years later  I ran across this in French  by  a
Frenchman. 0 miracles of miracles! "Il <i>faut le dire, il y a des cadavres que
je ne respecte qu'a moitie"</i> Yes, yes, and again yes! O, let us do  some rash
things  - for the  sheer  pleasure  of  it! Let  us  do  something live  and
magnificent, even if  destructive!  Said  the  mad  cobbler: "All things are
generated oat of the  grand mystery,  and proceed  out of  one  degree  into
another.  Whatever  goes  forward  in  its  degree,  the  same  receives  no
abominate."
     Everywhere  in all times the same ovarian world  announcing itself. Yet
also, parallel with these announcements, these prophecies, the gynecological
manifestoes,  parallel  and  contemporaneous  with them new totem poles, new
taboos, new war  dances.  While  into  the  air so  black and  beautiful the
brothers of man, the poets,  the  diggers of the future, were spitting their
magic lines, in this  same time, 0 profound and perplexing riddle, other men
were  saying:  "Won't you  please come  and  take a job  in  our  ammunition
factory. We promise you  the highest wages,  the most  sanitary and hygienic
conditions.  The work is so easy  that even a child could do it" And if  you
had a sister, a wife, a mother, an aunt, as long as she could manipulate her
hands, as  long as  she  could  prove  that she had no bad habits,  you were
invited to bring her or them  along to the ammunition works. If you were shy
of  soiling  your  hands  they  would   explain  to   you  very  gently  and
intelligently just how  these delicate mechanisms  operated,  what  they did
when they exploded, and why you must not  waste even your garbage because...
et ipso facto e pluribus unum. The thing that impressed me, going the rounds
in  search  of work,  was not  so much  that  they made  me  vomit every day
(assuming I had been lucky enough to  put  something into my guts), but that
they always demanded to know if you were of good habits, if you were steady,
if  you  were sober, if you  were industrious, if you had ever worked before
and  if  not why  not.  Even the garbage,  which I  had  gotten the  job  of
collecting for the municipality, was precious to them, the killers. Standing
knee-deep in the muck, the lowest of the low, a  coolie, an outcast, still I
was part of the death racket.  I tried reading  the <i>Inferno</i> at night, but it
was  in English and English is no  language  for a catholic work.  "Whatever
enters in itself into its selfhood, viz. into its own lubet.. ." <i>Lubet!</i> If I
had had a  word like that to conjure with then,  how peacefully I might have
gone about my garbage collecting! How sweet, in the night, when Dante is out
of reach  and the hands smell of muck  and slime, to  take unto oneself this
word  which in the Dutch means "lust" and in Latin  'lubitum" or  the divine
<i>beneplacitum.</i> Standing knee-deep in the garbage I  said one day what Meister
Eckhart is reported  to have  said long ago:  "I truly have need of God, but
God  has  need  of  me  too."  There  was  a  job  waiting  for  me  in  the
slaughterhouse, a nice little job  of sorting entrails, but I couldn't raise
the fare to  get to Chicago. I remained in  Brooklyn, in  my own  palace  of
entrails,  and  turned round  and round  on the plinth of  the labyrinth.  I
remained  at home seeking the "germinal vesicle",  "the dragon castle on the
floor of the sea", "the Heavenly Harp", "the field of the square inch", "the
house of the square foot", "the  dark pass", "the space of former Heaven". I
remained locked in, a prisoner of Forculus, god of the door,  of Cardea, god
of  the  hinge,  and  of Limentius, god of the threshold.  I spoke only with
their sisters, the three goddesses called Fear, Pallor  and Fever. I saw  no
"Asian luxury",  as had St. Augustine, or  as he  imagined he had. Nor did I
see "the two twins born, so near together, that the second held the first by
the heel". But I saw a street called Myrtle Avenue,  which runs from Borough
Hall to Fresh Pond Road, and down  this street no saint ever walked (else it
would have crumbled), down this street no miracle ever passed, nor any poet,
nor any species of human genius, nor did any flower ever grow there, nor did
the sun strike  it squarely, nor did the rain ever  wash it. For the genuine
Inferno which I had to postpone for twenty  years I give you Myrtle  Avenue,
one of the innumerable bridlepaths ridden by iron monsters which lead to the
heart of America's emptiness. If you have  only seen Essen or  Manchester or
Chicago or Levallois-Perret or Glasgow or Hoboken or Canarsie or Bayonne you
have  seen  nothing  of   the   magnificent   emptiness   of   progress  and
enlightenment. Dear reader, you must see  Myrtle Avenue  before you  die, if
only to realize how far into the future Dante saw. You must  believe me that
on  this street, neither in the  houses which line it, nor the  cobblestones
which  pave it, nor the  elevated structure which cuts it atwain, neither in
any  creature  that bears a name and lives thereon, neither  in  any animal,
bird  or insect  passing through it to slaughter  or already slaughtered, is
there  hope  of "lubet", "sublimate" or "abominate". It is a  street not  of
sorrow, for sorrow would be human  and recognizable, but of sheer emptiness:
it is emptier than the most extinct volcano,  emptier than a vacuum, emptier
than the word God in the mouth of an unbeliever.
     I said I did  not know a word of French then, and it is true, but I was
just  on the brink  of  making  a great  discovery, a discovery  which would
compensate  for  the  emptiness  of  Myrtle Avenue and  the  whole  American
continent. I had almost reached the shore  of that great  French ocean which
goes  by the name of Elie Faure, an ocean  which the  French  themselves had
hardly navigated and  which they  had mistaken, it seems, for an inland sea.
Reading him even in such a withered language as  English has become, I could
see that this man who had described the glory of the human  race on his cuff
was Father Zeus  of  Atlantis, whom  I had  been  searching  for. An ocean I
called him, but he  was also a world symphony. He was the first musician the
French have  produced; he was exalted  and controlled, an anomaly, a  Gallic
Beethoven, a great physician of the soul, a giant lightning-rod. He was also
a sunflower  turning with  the  sun,  always  drinking in the light,  always
radiant  and blazing with  vitality.  He  was  neither  an  optimist  nor  a
pessimist,  any more than  one can say  that  the  ocean  is beneficient  or
malevolent. He was  a believer  in the human race.  He added a cubit to  the
race,  by giving it back its dignity, its strength, its need of creation. He
saw everything  as creation, as solar joy. He didn't record  it  in  orderly
fashion, he recorded it musically. He was indifferent  to the fact  that the
French  have  a  tin  ear  -  he  was  orchestrating  for  the  whole  world
simultaneously. What was my  amazement then, when some years later I arrived
in France, to find that there were no monuments  erected to him, no  streets
named after  him. Worse, during  eight  whole years  I  never  once  beard a
Frenchman mention his name. He had to die in order to be put in the pantheon
of   French   deities  -  and  how   sickly  must   they  look,  his  deific
contemporaries,  in the presence of this radiant sun!  If he had  not been a
physician, and  thus  permitted to  earn a livelihood,  what might  not have
happened  to him! Perhaps another  able hand for the garbage trucks! The man
who made the Egyptian frescoes come alive in all their flaming colours, this
man could just as well have starved to death for all  the public cared.  But
he was an ocean  and the critics drowned in this ocean, and  the editors and
the publishers and the public too. It will take aeons for him  to dry up, to
evaporate. It will take about as long as for the French to acquire a musical
ear.
     If there  had  been no  music I would  have gone  to the madhouse  like
Nijinsky. (It was just about  this time that  they discovered  that Nijinsky
was mad.) He had been found giving his money away to the poor - always a bad
sign! My mind  was filled  with wonderful treasures, my taste  was sharp and
exigent, my muscles were in excellent condition,  my appetite was strong, my
wind sound. I had  nothing  to do except to improve  myself, and I was going
crazy  with  the improvements I made every day. Even if there were a job for
me to fill I  couldn't accept it, because  what I needed was not  work but a
life  more abundant.  I couldn't waste time  being a  teacher, a  lawyer,  a
physician, a politician or anything else  that society had  to offer. It was
easier to accept menial jobs because it left my mind free. After I was fired
from the garbage trucks I remember taking  up  with an Evangelist who seemed
to have great confidence in me. I was a sort of usher, collector and private
secretary. He brought to my attention the whole world of  Indian philosophy.
Evenings  when I was free  I would meet with  my  friends at the home  of Ed
Bauries who lived in an aristocratic  section of Brooklyn. Ed Bauries was an
eccentric pianist who couldn't read a note. He had a bosom pal called George
Neumiller  with  whom  he  often  played  duets.  Of  the  dozen or  so  who
congregated at Ed Bauries' home nearly every one of us could play the piano.
We were all between twenty-one and twenty-five at the time; we never brought
any women  along  and  we  hardly ever mentioned the subject of women during
these sessions. We had plenty of beer to  drink and a whole big house at our
disposal, for it was in the  Summer time, when his folks were away,  that we
held our gatherings. Though there were a dozen other homes like this which I
could  speak  of, I mention Ed  Bauries'  place  because it was  typical  of
something I  have never  encountered  elsewhere  in the  world.  Neither  Ed
Bauries himself  nor any of  his  friends suspected  the sort of books I was
reading nor the things which were occupying my  mind.  When I  blew in I was
greeted enthusiastically -  as a  clown.  It  was  expected, of  me to start
things  going.  There were  about four pianos  scattered  throughout the big
house to say nothing  of the celesta, the organ, guitars, mandolins, fiddles
and what not. Ed Bauries was a nut, a very affable, sympathetic and generous
one too. The sandwiches were always of the best, the beer  plentiful, and if
you wanted  to stay the night he could fix you up on a divan  just as pretty
as  you  liked. Coming  down  the street  -  a big, wide  street, somnolent,
luxurious, a street altogether out of the world - I could hear the tinkle of
the piano in the big  parlour on the first floor. The windows were wide open
and as  I got into range I could see Al Burger or  Connie Grimm sprawling in
their big easy chairs, their feet on the window sill, and  big beer mugs  in
their hands. Probably  George Neumiller  was at the  piano, improvising, his
shirt  peeled  off and  a big  cigar in his  mouth.  They  were talking  and
laughing  while George fooled around, searching for  an  opening. Soon as he
hit a theme he would  call  for  Ed and Ed would sit beside him, studying it
out in his unprofessional way, then suddenly pouncing on the keys and giving
tit for tat. Maybe when I'd walk in somebody would be trying to stand on his
hands in the next room - there were three big rooms on the first floor which
opened one on to  the  other and back  of  them was a  garden,  an  enormous
garden, with flowers,  fruit  trees, grape vines, statues, fountains an&lt;f
everything. Sometimes when it was too hot  they brought  the celesta  or the
little organ into the garden (and  a  keg  of  beer, naturally) and we'd sit
around in the dark laughing and singing - until  the neighbours forced us to
stop.  Sometimes the music  was going on all through the  house  at once, on
every  floor. It was really crazy then, intoxicating, and if  there had been
women around  it would have spoiled it. Sometimes  it  was like  watching an
endurance contest - Ed Bauries and George Neumiller at the grand piano, each
trying to  wear the other out, changing places  without  stopping,  crossing
hands, sometimes  felling away to  plain chopsticks, sometimes going like  a
Wurlitzer. And always something  to laugh  about all the time. Nobody  asked
what you did,  what you  thought about, and so forth. When you arrived at Ed
Bauries'  place you checked your identification marks.  Nobody  gave  a fuck
what size hat you  wore or how much you paid  for  it.  It was entertainment
from the word  go - and the sandwiches and the drinks were on the house. And
when things got going, three or four pianos at once, the celesta, the organ,
the mandolins, the guitars, beer running through the halls, the mantelpieces
full of sandwiches  and  cigars, a breeze  coming through  from the  garden,
George Neumiller stripped to the waist and modulating  like a fiend,  it was
better than  any show  I've ever  seen put on and it didn't  cost a cent. In
fact, with the dressing and undressing that went on, I always came away with
a  little  extra change and a pocketful of good cigars. I never  saw  any of
them between time  - only Monday nights throughout the Summer, when Ed  held
open house.
     Standing  in the  garden listening to the din I could scarcely  believe
that it was the same city. And if I had ever opened my  trap  and exposed my
guts  it  would have  been all  over.  Not  one  of these bozos  amounted to
anything, as the world reckons. They were just good  eggs, children, fellows
who liked music and  who  liked a good  time. They  liked  it so  much  that
sometimes we had to call the ambulance. Like the night Al Burger twisted his
knee while showing us  one of  his stunts.  Everybody so happy, so  full  of
music, so  lit  up, that  it took him an hour to persuade us  he was  really
hurt.  We try  to carry him to a hospital but it's too far away and besides,
it's such a good joke, that we drop him now and then and that makes him yell
like a  maniac.  So finally we telephone for help from a police box, and the
ambulance comes and the patrol wagon  too. They take Al to  the hospital and
the rest of  us to the hoose-gow. And on the way we sing at the  top of  our
lungs. And after we're bailed out  we're still feeling good and the cops are
feeling  good too, and  so  we all adjourn to the basement  where there's  a
cracked piano and we go on singing and playing. All this is like some period
B.C. in history which ends  not  because  there's a  war  but because even a
joint  like  Ed  Bauries' is not immune to  the  poison seeping  in from the
periphery. Because every street is becoming Myrtle Avenue, because emptiness
is filling the whole continent  from the Atlantic to the  Pacific.  Because,
after a certain time, you  can't enter  a single house throughout the length
and breadth  of the land  and find a man standing on his hands  singing.  It
just ain't done any more. And there ain't two pianos going at once anywhere,
nor are there two men anywhere willing to play all night just for the fun of
it. Two men who can play like  Ed Bauries and George Neumiller are  hired by
the radio  or the movies and  only a thimbleful of their talent is  used and
the rest is thrown into  the garbage can. Nobody knows, judging from  public
spectacles, what talent is disposable in the great American continent. Later
on,  and that's why I used to sit  around on  doorsteps  in Tin Pan Alley, I
would  while  away  the afternoons listening to the professionals mugging it
out. That was good too, but it was different. There was no fun in it, it was
a perpetual rehearsal to bring in dollars and cents. Any man in  America who
had an ounce of humour in him was saving it up to put himself across.  There
were some wonderful nuts among them too, men I'll never forget, men who left
no name behind them,  and  they  were  the  best we produced. I remember  an
anonymous performer on  the Keith circuit who was  probably the craziest man
in  America, and perhaps he  got fifty dollars a week for it. Three  times a
day, every day  in the week, he came out and held the  audience spell-bound.
He didn't have an act - he just improvised. He never repeated  his jokes  or
his stunts. He gave himself prodigally, and I don't think he was a hot fiend
either. He was  one  of those guys who  are born  in  the corncrakes and the
energy and the joy  in him was so fierce that nothing  could contain  it. He
could play any instrument and dance any step  and he could invent a story on
the  spot and string it out till the bell rang. He was not only satisfied to
do his own act but he would help the others out. He would stand in the wings
and wait for  the right moment to break into the other guy's act. He was the
whole show and it  was a  show that  contained  more therapy than the  whole
arsenal of modem science. They ought to have paid a  man like this the wages
which  the President of the United States receives. They  ought  to sack the
President of  the United States and the whole Supreme Court and set up a man
like this as ruler.  This man could cure any disease on the calendar. He was
the kind of  guy, moreover, as would do it for nothing, if you asked him to.
This is the type of man which empties the insane asylums. He doesn't propose
a  cure - he  makes everybody crazy. Between  this solution and a  perpetual
state of war, which is  civilization,  there is only one other way out - and
that  is the road  we  will  all  take eventually because everything else is
doomed  to  failure. The type that represents  this one and only way bears a
head with  six faces and eight eyes, the head is a revolving lighthouse, and
instead of a  triple  crown at the top, as there might  well be, there  is a
hole which ventilates what few brains there are. There is very little brain,
as  I say, because there is  very  little  baggage to carry  about,  because
living in full consciousness, the grey matter passes off into light. This is
the only type of man one can place above the comedian; he neither laughs nor
weeps,  he is beyond suffering. We don't recognize <u>him</u> yet because he
is too dose  to  us,  right under the  skin,  as a matter of  fact. When the
comedian catches  us  in  the  guts  this  man, whose  name might  be God, I
suppose, if he had  to use a  name, speaks up. When the whole  human race is
rocking with  laughter,  laughing  so hard that  it hurts, I mean, everybody
then has his foot on the path. In that moment everybody  can just as well be
God  as anything  else. In that moment you have  the annihilation  of  dual,
triple,  quadruple and  multiple consciousness, which is what makes the grey
matter coil up in dead folds at the top of the skull. At that moment you can
really  feel the hole in the top of the head; you  know that you once had an
eye there and that this eye was capable of taking in everything at once. The
eye  is  gone now, but when  you  laugh until  the tears flow and your belly
aches, you are really opening the skylight andventilating the brains. Nobody
can persuade you at  that moment to  take a gun and kill your enemy; neither
can  anybody persuade you  to open a fat  tome  containing  the metaphysical
truths  of the world and read it.  If you know what  freedom means, absolute
freedom and not a relative freedom, then you must recognize that this is the
nearest to it you will ever get. If I am against the  condition of the world
it is not because I am a moralist -  it  is because I want  to laugh more. I
don't say that God is one grand  laugh:  I say that you've got to laugh hard
before you can get anywhere near God. My whole aim in life is to get near to
God,  that is, to get nearer to myself. That's why it  doesn't matter  to me
what road I  take. But music  is very  important. Music is  a tonic  for the
pineal gland. Music isn't Bach or Beethoven; music is the can-opener of  the
soul.  It makes you  terribly quiet inside,  makes you aware  that there's a
roof to your being.
     The  stabbing  horror  of  life  is not  contained  in  calamities  and
disasters, because these things wake one up and one  gets  very familiar and
intimate with them and finally  they become  tame  again ... no,  it is more
like being in a  hotel room in Hoboken let us  say, and just enough money in
one's pocket for another meal. You are in a city that you never expect to be
in again  and you have  only to pass the  night in your hotel  room, but  it
takes all the courage and pluck you possess to stay in that room. There must
be a good  reason why certain  cities, certain places, inspire such loathing
and dread. There  must be some  kind of  perpetual  murder going on in these
places. The people are of the same race as you, they go about their business
as  people do  anywhere,  they build the same sort  of  house, no better, no
worse,  they have the same system of education, the  same currency, the same
newspapers - and yet they are absolutely different from the other people you
know, and the whole atmosphere is different, and the rhythm is different and
the tension is different. It's  almost like  looking at  yourself in another
incarnation. You know, with  a most  disturbing certitude, that what governs
life is not  money, not  politics, not religion, not training, not race, not
language,  not  customs,  but  something else,  something  you're  trying to
throtde all the  time and which is really throttling you,  because otherwise
you  wouldn't be terrified all of a sudden and wonder how you were  going to
escape. Some cities you don't even have to pass a night in - just an hour or
two is enough to unnerve you. I think of Bayonne that way.  I came on it  in
the night with a  few addresses that had  been  given  me. I had a briefcase
under  my  arm  with  a  prospectus  of  the Encyclopaedia Britannica. I was
supposed to go under cover of dark and sell the bloody encyclopaedia to some
poor devils who wanted  to  improve themselves. If I had been dropped off at
Helsingfors  I couldn't have felt more ill  at ease than walking the streets
of Bayonne. It wasn't an American city to me. It wasn't a city at all, but a
huge  octopus  wriggling  in the dark. The first door  I  came to looked  so
forbidding  I  didn't even bother to  knock;  I  went  like that to  several
addresses before I could summon the courage  to knock. The first face I took
a  look  at  frightened  the  shit out  of  me.  I  don't  mean  timidity or
embarrassment - I mean fear. It was the face  of  a hod-carrier, an ignorant
mick who would as lief fell you with an axe as spit in your eye. I pretended
I had the wrong name and hurried on to  the next address. Each time the door
opened  I saw  another monster. And then I came  at last to  a poor simp who
really wanted  to  improve himself  and that  broke  me down.  I  felt truly
ashamed of myself, of my country, my race, my epoch. I had a devil of a time
persuading  him not  to buy the damned encyclopaedia. He asked me innocently
what then had brought me to his  home - and without a minute's hesitation  I
told him an astounding lie, a lie which was later to prove a great truth.  I
told him I was only pretending  to  sell the encyclopaedia in order to  meet
people and write about them. That interested  him enormously, even more than
the encyclopaedia. He wanted  to  know what  I would  write about him,  if I
could say. It's taken me twenty years to answer that question,  but here  it
is. If you  would still like to know, John Doe of  the City of Bayonne, this
is it... I owe  you  a  great deal because after that lie I told  you I left
your house and  I tore up  the prospectus furnished me by the  Encyclopaedia
Britannica and I threw it in the gutter. I said to myself I will never again
go to  people under  false pretences even if it  is  to  give them the  Holy
Bible. I will  never  again sell anything, even if I  have to starve.  I  am
going home now and I will sit  down and really  write about  people.  And if
anybody knocks at my door to sell me something
     I will  invite him in and say "why are  you doing this?" And if he says
it is because  he has to make a living I will oner him what money I have and
beg him once again to think what he is doing. I want to prevent as many  men
as possible from pretending that they  have to do this  or that because they
must earn a living. <i>It  is not  true.</i> One can  starve to death - it  is much
better. Every man who voluntarily starves to  death throws another  cog into
the  automatic  process. I  would rather see a man take  a  gun and kill his
neighbour, in  order to get the food  he needs, than keep  up  the automatic
process  by pretending that he has  to cam a living. That's what  I want  to
say, Mr. John Doe.
     I pass on. Not the stabbing horror of disaster and calamity, I say, but
the  automatic  throwback,  the  stark  panorama  of  the  soul's  atavistic
struggle. A  bridge in North Carolina, near the Tennessee border. Coming out
of  lush tobacco fields, low cabins everywhere and  the smell of  fresh wood
burning.  The day passed in a thick lake of waving green. Hardly  a soul  in
sight.  Then  suddenly a clearing  and  I'm  over a big  gulch  spanned by a
rickety wooden bridge. This is the end of the world! How in God's name I got
here and why  I'm here I don't know. <i>How am I going to eat?</i> And if I ate the
biggest meal imaginable I would still  be sad, frightfully sad. I don't know
where to go from here. This bridge  is the end, the end of me, the end of my
known world. This bridge is insanity; there is no reason why it should stand
there and  no  reason why people should  cross it. I refuse to budge another
step, I balk at crossing that crazy bridge. Nearby is a low wall which I lie
against trying to think what to do and where to go. I realize quietly what a
terribly civilized person I am  - the need I have for  people, conversation,
books,  theatre,  music, cafes, drinks,  and so forth.  It's terrible to  be
civilized, because when you come to the end of the world you have nothing to
support the terror  of loneliness. To  be civilized  is  to have complicated
needs. And a man, when  he is full blown, shouldn't need a thing. All day  I
had  been moving through tobacco fields,  and growing  more and more uneasy.
What have  I  to do  with all this tobacco? What am  I heading  into? People
everywhere are producing crops and goods for other people - and I am like  a
ghost sliding between all  this unintelligible activity. I want to find some
kind of work, but I don't want to  be a  part of  this thing, this  infernal
automatic process. I pass through a town and I look at the newspaper telling
what is happening in that town and its environs. It seems to me that <i>nothing</i>
is  happening,  that the  dock  has stopped but that  these poor devils  are
unaware of it. I have a strong intuition, moreover, that there  is murder in
the air. I  can smell it. A  few days back I passed the imaginary line which
divides the North from the  South. I wasn't aware of it  until a darkie came
along  driving a team; when he gets alongside of me he stands up in his seat
and doffs his hat  most respectfully. He  had snow-white hair  and a face of
great dignity. That made me feel horrible: it made me realize that there are
still  slaves. This man had to tip his hat to me -because I was of the white
race. Whereas I should have ripped my hat to him! I should have saluted  him
as a survivor of all the vile tortures the white men  have inflicted  on the
black. I  should have tipped my hat first, to let  him know that I  am not a
part of this system, that I am begging forgiveness for all my white brethren
who  are too  ignorant and cruel  to make an honest overt gesture. To-day  I
feel  their  eyes on me all the time; they  watch  from  behind  doors, from
behind trees. All  very quiet, very  peaceful,  seemingly. Nigger never  say
nuthin'. Nigger he hum all time- White  man  think nigger  learn his  place.
Nigger leam  nuthin'.  Nigger wait.  Nigger  watch everything  white man do.
Nigger  no say nuthin',  no  sir, no siree. But JUST THE  SAME THE nigger IS
KILLING THE WHITE MAN OFF!
     Every time  the nigger  looks  at a  white man  he's  putting  a dagger
through him.  It's not  the heat,  ifs not  the hook worm, it's not the  bad
crops that's killing the South off - it's the nigger  1 The nigger is giving
off a poison, whether he means to or not. The South is  coked and doped with
nigger poison.
     Pass on... Sitting outside  a barber shop  by  the James River. I'll be
here just ten minutes, while I take a load off my feet. There's a hotel  and
a few stores opposite me; it all tails off quickly, ends like it began - for
no reason. From the bottom  of my soul  I  pity the poor devils who are born
and die here. There is  no earthly reason why this place should exist. There
is no reason why anybody should cross the street and get himself a shave and
haircut,  or  even a sirloin steak. Men, buy yourselves a  gun and kill each
other off! Wipe this street out of my mind for ever -  it hasn't an ounce of
meaning in it.
     The same  day, after nightfall.  Still plugging on, digging deeper  and
deeper into the South. I'm coming away from a little  town by  a  short road
leading to the highway. Suddenly I hear footsteps behind me and soon a young
man passes me on the trot, breathing heavily and cursing with all his might.
I  stand  there a moment, wondering what it's all  about. I hear another man
coming on the  trot; he's an  older man and he's carrying a gun. He breathes
fairly easy, and  not a word out of  his trap. Just as he comes in view  the
moon  breaks through the clouds and I catch a good look at his  face. He's a
man hunter.  I stand back  as the others  come up behind  him. I'm trembling
with fear. It's the sheriff, I  hear a man say, and  he's  going to get him.
Horrible.  I move on towards the highway waiting to hear the  shot that will
end it all. I hear nothing  - just this heavy breathing of the young man and
the quick eager steps of the mob following behind the sheriff. Just as I get
near the main road a man steps out of the darkness and comes over to me very
quietly. "Where yer goin', son," he says, quiet like  and almost tenderly. I
stammer out something about the next town. "Better stay right here, son," he
says. I didn't say another word. I  let him take me back into town  and hand
me over like  a thief. I lay on the floor  with  about fifty other blokes. I
had a marvellous sexual dream which ended with the guillotine.
     I  plug on ... It's just as hard to go back as to go  forward.  I don't
have the feeling of being an  American citizen any more. The part of America
I came from, where I had some rights, where I felt free, <i>is</i> so far behind me
that it's beginning to get fuzzy in my memory. I feel  as  though some one's
got a gun against my back  all the time. Keep moving, is all I seem to hear.
If a man talks  to me  I try not to seem too intelligent. I  try  to pretend
that I am vitally interested in the crops, in the weather, in the elections.
If I  stand  and stop  they look at me,  whites  and  blacks -  they look me
through  and through  as though  I were juicy  and edible. I've got to  walk
another thousand miles or so  as though I  had  a deep purpose, as  though I
were really going somewhere.  I've got to  look sort of grateful, too,  that
nobody has yet taken a fancy to plug me. It's depressing and exhilarating at
the same time. You're a marked man - and nobody pulls the  trigger. They let
you  walk  unmolested  right into  the Gulf of Mexico where  you  can  drown
yourself.
     Yes  sir, I reached the Gulf of  Mexico and I  walked right into it and
drowned myself.  I did it gratis. When they fished the corpse out they found
it was marked F.O.B. Myrtle Avenue,  Brooklyn; it was returned C.O.D. When I
was asked later why I had killed  myself I could only think to say - <i>because
I wanted to electrify the  cosmos!</i> I meant by that a very simple thing  -The
Delaware, Lackawanna and Western had been electrified, the Seaboard Air Line
had been  electrified, but  the soul of man was still in the  covered  wagon
stage. I was  born  in the midst of  civilization and  I  accepted  it  very
naturally - what else was there to do? But the joke was that nobody else was
taking it seriously.  I was  the only man  in the  community who  was  truly
civilized. There was no place for me - as yet. And yet the books I read, the
music I  heard  assured  me, that there  were other  men  in the world  like
myself.  I had to go and drown myself in the Gulf of Mexico in order to have
an excuse for continuing this pseudo-civilized  existence. I had  to delouse
myself of my spiritual body, as it were.
     When I woke up  to  the fact that as far as the scheme of things goes I
was less than dirt I really became  quite happy. I quickly lost all sense of
responsibility. And if it weren't  for the fact that my friends got tired of
lending me money I might have gone  on  indefinitely  pissing the time away.
The world was like a  museum to me: I saw nothing to do  but  eat  into this
marvellous  chocolate layer cake which the men of the past had dumped on our
hands. It annoyed everybody to see the way I enjoyed myself. Their logic was
that art was very beautiful, oh yes, indeed, but you must work for a  living
and then you will find that you are too tired to think about art. But it was
when I threatened to add a layer or two on my own account to this marvellous
chocolate layer cake that they blew up on me. That was the  finishing touch.
That meant I was definitely crazy. First I was  considered to  be a  useless
member of  society;  then  for  a  time  I  was  found  to  be  a  reckless,
happy-go-lucky  corpse with a tremendous appetite; now I  had become  crazy.
<i>(Listen, you bastard, you find yourself a job.</i>.. <i>we're through with you</i>!) In
a way it was refreshing this change of  front. I could feel the wind blowing
through  the corridors. At least "we" were no  longer  becalmed. It was war,
and as a  corpse I was just fresh enough to have a little  fight left in me.
War is revivifying. War stirs the blood. It  was in the midst  of the  world
war, which I had forgotten about, that  this change of heart  took place.  I
got myself married overnight, to demonstrate to all and sundry that I didn't
give a fuck one way or the other. Getting married was O.K. in their minds. I
remember that,  on the  strength  of the  announcement,  I raised five bucks
immediately. My friend MacGregor paid for the  licence and even paid for the
shave  and  haircut which  he insisted  I  go through with in  order  to get
married. They said you couldn't go  without  being shaved; I didn't see  any
reason why you couldn't get  hitched  up  without a  shave and  haircut, but
since it didn't cost me anything I submitted to  it.  It  was interesting to
see how  everybody was eager to contribute something to our maintenance. All
of  a  sudden, just because I had shown  a  bit of sense, they came flocking
around us - and couldn't  they do this and couldn't they do  that for us? Of
course the  assumption was that now I would  surely be going to work, now  I
would see that life is serious business. It  never  occurred to them that  I
might let my  wife  work  for  me. I was really very  decent  to her in  the
beginning. I wasn't a slave driver. All I asked for was carfare -to hunt for
the mythical job - and a little pin money for cigarettes, movies, et cetera.
The important things, such as books, music albums, gramophones,  porterhouse
steaks  and such like  I found  we  could  get on credit, now  that  we were
married. The instalment  plan  had been invented expressly for guys like me.
The down payment was easy - the rest I left to Providence.  One has to live,
they were always saying. Now, by God, that's what I said to myself - <i>One has
to  live I Live first andpay afterwards.</i> If <i>I</i> saw an overcoat I liked I went
in and bought it. I would buy it a  little in advance of the season too,  to
show that I was a serious-minded chap. Shit, I was a  married man and soon I
would probably  be a father - I was entitled  to a winter overcoat at least,
no? And when I had the overcoat I thought of stout  shoes  to go with it - a
pair of thick cordevans  such  as I had wanted  all my life but  never could
afford. And when it grew  bitter cold  and  I was out looking  for the job I
used to get terribly hungry sometimes - it's really  healthy going  out like
that  day after  day prowling about the city in rain and snow  and  wind and
hail - and so now and then  I'd drop in to a cosy  tavern and order myself a
juicy porterhouse steak with onions and French  fried  potatoes. I  took out
life  insurance and  accident insurance too  -  it's important, when  you're
married,  to  do things like that, so they told me. Supposing  I should drop
dead one day  - what then? I remember the guy  telling me that, in  order to
clinch his argument. I had already  told  him  I would  sign up, but he must
have forgotten it. I had said, yes, immediately, out of force of  habit, but
as I say, he had evidently  overlooked it - or else it  was against the code
to  sign a man up until you had delivered the full sales talk. Anyway, I was
just getting ready to ask him how long it would take before you could make a
loan on the  policy when he popped the hypothetical  question: <i>Supposing you
should drop dead one day - what then?</i> I guess he thought I was a  little off
my nut the  way I  laughed at that. I laughed until the tears rolled down my
face. Finally he said - "I don't see that I said anything so funny." "Well,"
I said, getting serious for a moment, "take a good look at me. Now  tell me,
do you  think I'm the sort of fellow who gives a fuck what happens once he's
dead?"  He was quite taken aback by this, apparently, because the next thing
he said was: "I don't think that's a very ethical  attitude. Mr. Miller. I'm
sure you wouldn't want your wife to ..." "Listen," I said, "supposing I told
you I don't give a fuck what happens to my wife when I die - what then?" And
since this  seemed to injure his ethical susceptibilities still more I added
for good measure  - "As  far  as I'm  concerned  you  don't  have to pay the
insurance when  I croak  - I'm only doing  this  to make you feel good.  I'm
trying to help the world along, don't you see? You've got to  live,  haven't
you? Well, I'm just putting a little  food in your mouth, that's all. If you
have anything else to sell, trot  it out. I buy anything  that  sounds good.
I'm a buyer not a seller. I like to see people looking happy -  that's why I
buy  things.  Now listen, how much  did you say that would come to per week?
Fifty-seven cents? Fine. What's fifty-seven cents? You see that piano - that
comes to about 39 cents a week,  I think. Look around you ... everything you
see costs so much a  week.  You say, <i>if I should  die,  what then ?</i>  Do  you
suppose I'm going  to die on all these people?  That  would be a  hell of  a
joke.  No,  I'd rather have them come and take the things away - if I  can't
pay  for them, I  mean..." He  was fidgeting about  and  there was  a rather
glassy stare  in  his  eye,  I thought.  "Excuse me,"  I said,  interrupting
myself, "but wouldn't you like to have a little drink - to wet the  policy?"
He  said he thought  not,  but I  insisted, and besides, I hadn't signed the
papers  yet and my urine would have  to be examined and approved of and  all
sorts of stamps and seals would  have to be affixed -1 knew all that crap by
heart - so I thought  we might have a little  snifter first and in that  way
protract the serious business, because honestly, buying  insurance or buying
anything was a real pleasure to me  and gave me the feeling that  I was just
like every other  citizen, <i>a  man, what!</i>  and not  a monkey. So I got  out a
bottle of  sherry (which  is all that was allowed  me), and I poured  out  a
generous glassful for him,  thinking to  myself that it was  fine to see the
sherry going because maybe the next time they'd buy something better for me.
"I used  to sell insurance  too once upon a time," I said, raising the glass
to my lips. "Sure, I can sell anything. The only thing is - I'm lazy. Take a
day like to-day - isn't it  nicer to be indoors, reading a book or listening
to the phonograph? Why should  I go out and hustle for an insurance company?
If I had been working to-day you wouldn't have caught me in -isn't that  so?
No,  I think it's better to take it easy  and help people out when they come
along... like with you, for instance. It's  much nicer to buy things than to
sell them, don't you think?  <i>If you have the money,</i> of course! In this house
we don't need much money. As I was saying, the piano comes to about 39 cents
a week, or forty-two maybe, and the ..."
     "Excuse  me, Mr Miller," he interrupted, "but don't you think  we ought
to get down to signing these papers?"
     "Why, of course,"  I said cheerfully. "Did you bring them all with you?
Which one do you think we ought to sign first? By the way, you haven't got a
fountain pen you'd like to sell me, have you?"
     "Just sign right  here," he said, pretending to ignore my remarks. "And
here, that's  it. Now then,  Mr.  Miller,  I think  I'll say good day -  and
you'll be hearing from the company in a few days."
     "Better make it sooner," I remarked, leading him to  the door, "because
I might change my mind and commit suicide."
     "Why, of course, why yes,  Mr. Miller, certainly we will. Good day now,
good day!"
     Of course the instalment plan breaks down eventually, even if you're an
assiduous  buyer  such  as  I  was.  I  certainly did my  best  to  keep the
manufacturers  and  the advertising  men  of America  busy,  but  they  were
disappointed in  me it seems. Everybody was disappointed in  me.  .But there
was  one man in particular who was more  disappointed in me than any one and
that was a man  who  had really made an effort to befriend me and whom I had
let  down. I think of  him and the way he took me  on as  his assistant - so
readily and graciously -  because later, when I was hiring and firing like a
42 horse calibre revolver, I was betrayed right and left myself, but by that
time I had  become so inoculated that it didn't matter a damn.  But this man
had gone out of his way to show me that he believed in me. He was the editor
of a catalogue for a great mail order house.  It was  an enormous compendium
of horse-shit which was put out once a year and which took the whole year to
make  ready. I hadn't the  slightest  idea what  it was  all about and why I
dropped  into his  office  that day  I don't  know, unless it was because  I
wanted to get warm, as I had been knocking about the docks all day trying to
get a job as a checker or some damned thing. It was cosy in his office and I
made him a long speech so as to get thawed out.  I didn't know  what job  to
ask for - just a job, I said. He was a sensitive man and very kind- hearted.
He seemed  to  guess that I was a writer, or wanted to  be a writer, because
soon he was asking me what I liked  to read and what  was my opinion of this
writer and that writer.  It  just happened that I had a list of books  in my
pocket - books I was searching  for at the public library - and so I brought
it out  and  showed it  to him. "Great Scott!" he  exclaimed, "do you really
read these books?" I modestly shook my head in the affirmative,  and then as
often happened to me  when I was touched off by some silly remark like that,
I began to talk about Hamsun's <i>Mysteries</i> which I had just been reading. From
then on the man was like putty in my hands. When he asked me if I would like
to be his assistant he apologized for offering me such a lowly position;  he
said I could take my time learning the ins-and-outs of  the job, he was sure
it  would be  a  <u>cach(?)</u>  for me. And then he asked me if he couldn't
lend  me some money, out of his own pocket until I got paid.  Before I could
say yes  or no he had fished out a  twenty  dollar bill and thrust  it in my
hand. Naturally I was touched. I was ready to work like a son of a bitch for
him. Assistant editor -  it sounded  quite good, especially to the creditors
in the neighbourhood. And for a while I was so happy to be eating roast beef
and chicken  and  tenderloins of pork  that I  pretended I  liked  the  job.
Actually it was difficult for me  to keep awake. What I had to  learn  I had
learned  in  a week's time. And  after  that? After  that I saw myself doing
penal servitude for life. In order to make the best of  it I whiled away the
time writing stories and essays and long letters to my friends. Perhaps they
thought  I was  writing  up new  ideas for the company, because for quite  a
while nobody paid any attention to  me. I thought it was a wonderful  job. I
had almost  the  whole  day to myself,  for my  writing, having  learned  to
dispose of the company's work in about an hour's time. I was so enthusiastic
about my own private work that I gave orders to my underlings not to disturb
me except at stipulated moments.  I  was  sailing  along like  a breeze, the
company  paying  me  regularly  and the slave-drivers  doing the work  I had
mapped out  for  them, when  one  day, just  when  I am in the  midst  of an
important essay on <i>The Anti-Christ,</i> a man whom I had never seen before walks
up  to my desk, bends over my shoulder,  and in  a  sarcastic tone  of voice
begins  to  read aloud what I had just written. I didn't need to inquire who
he  was or what he was up to - the only thought  in  my head was, and that I
repeated to  myself frantically - <i>Will I get  an  extra week's pay ?</i> When it
came  time to  bid  good-bye to my benefactor  I  felt a little  ashamed  of
myself, particularly when he said, right off the bat like -  "I tried to get
you an extra week's  pay  but they  wouldn't hear of it.  I wish  there  was
something I could  do for  you -  you're only standing in  your own way, you
know.  To tell the truth, I still have  the greatest faith  in you - but I'm
afraid you're going to have a hard time of it, for a while. You don't fit in
anywhere.  Some  day  you'll make  a great  writer, I feel sure of it. Well,
excuse  me," he  added, shaking  hands with me warmly, "I've got  to see the
boss. Good luck to you!"
     I felt a bit cut up about the  incident. I.wished it had been  possible
to prove to him  then and there  that  his  faith was justified. I  wished I
could have justified myself before the whole  world at that  moment: I would
have jumped off the Brooklyn Bridge if it would have convinced people that I
wasn't a heartless son of a bitch. I had a heart as big as a whale, as I was
soon to prove, but  nobody was examining into my heart.  Everybody was being
let down hard  - not only  the instalment  companies, but  the landlord, the
butcher, the baker, the  gas, water and  electricity  devils, <i>everybody.</i>  If
only  I could get to  believe in this business of work!  To save  my  life I
couldn't  see it. I could only see that people were  working their balls off
because they didn't  know  any better.  I  thought of the  speech I had made
which  won me the job.  In some ways I was very much like Herr Nagel myself.
No telling from minute to minute what I would do. No knowing whether I was a
monster or a saint Like so many wonderful men  of our time. Herr Nagel was a
desperate  man -  and it was  this  very desperation  which made him such  a
likeable chap. Hamsun didn't know what to make of this character himself: he
knew he  existed, and he  knew that there was something more to him  than  a
mere buffoon and  a mysrifier. I  think he loved  Herr Nagel  more  than any
other   character  he  created.  And  why?   Because  Herr  Nagel  was   the
unacknowledged  saint which  every artist  is  -  the man  who  is ridiculed
because his solutions,  which  are truly profound, seem  too simple for  the
world. No man <i>wants</i> to be an artist -  he is driven to it because the  world
refuses  to  recognize  his proper  leadership.  Work meant  nothing  to me,
because the  real  work  to be done was being evaded. People  regarded me as
lazy  and  shiftless,  but  on  the  contrary  I was  an  exceedingly active
individual. Even  if  it was just  hunting  for a piece  of tail,  that  was
something, and  well worth while, especially if compared  to other forms  of
activity  -such as  making  buttons  or  turning  screws, or  even  removing
appendixes. And why did people listen to me so readily when  I applied for a
job? Why did they find me entertaining? For the reason, no doubt, that I had
always spent my time profitably. I brought them gifts - from my hours at the
public library, from my idle ramblings through the streets, from my intimate
experiences  with women, from my afternoons at the burlesque, from my visits
to the museum and the art  galleries. Had I been a dud,  just a  poor honest
bugger who wanted to work his  balls off  for so much a week,  they wouldn't
have  offered me the jobs they did, nor would they have handed me cigars  or
taken me to lunch or loaned me money as they frequently did. I must have had
something to offer  which perhaps unknowingly they prized beyond  horsepower
or  technical  ability. I  didn't  know  myself what it was,  because  I had
neither pride, nor vanity, nor  envy. About the big  issues I  was dear, but
confronted by the petty details of life I  was  bewildered. I had to witness
this same bewilderment on a colossal scale before I could grasp what  it was
all  about Ordinary men  are  often  quicker  in  sizing  up  the  practical
situation:  their ego is commensurate  with the demands made  upon  it:  the
world is  not  very different from what they imagine it to be. But a man who
is completely out  of step with the rest of  the  world  is either suffering
from a colossal inflation  of his  ego or else the ego is so submerged as to
be practically non-existent. Herr  Nagel  had to dive  off the  deep end  in
search of his true ego; his existence was a mystery, to himself and to every
one else. I couldn't afford to leave things hanging  in  suspense that way -
the  mystery  was too intriguing.  Even  if I  had to  rub myself like a cat
against every human being I encountered, I was going to get to the bottom of
it. Rub long enough and hard enough and the spark will come!
     The hibernation of animals, the suspension of life practised by certain
low forms  of life, the marvellous vitality of the bedbug which lies in wait
endlessly behind the wallpaper, the trance of the Yogi, the catalepsy of the
pathologic  individual, the mystic's  union with the cosmos, the immortality
of cellular life, all these things the  artist learns in order to awaken the
world at  the propitious moment.  The  artist belongs to the  X root race of
man;  he is the spiritual microbe, as it were, which carries  over from  one
root race to another. He is not  crushed by  misfortune, because he is not a
part  of the physical, racial  scheme of  things.  His appearance is  always
synchronous with catastrophe and dissolution; he is the cyclical being which
lives in the epicycle. The  experience which he  acquires is never  used for
personal ends;  it serves  the larger purpose to which he is geared. Nothing
is lost on him, however trifling. If he is interrupted for twenty-five years
in the reading of  a  book he can go on  from the page where he left off  as
though nothing had  happened in between. Everything that happens in between,
which  is "life" to  most people, is  merely an interruption in  his forward
round. The  eternality of his work, when he expresses himself, is merely the
reflection of the automatism  of life in which he is obliged to lie dormant,
a sleeper on the back of sleep,  waiting for the  signal which will announce
the  moment of birth. This is the big issue, and this was always dear to me,
even when I denied it. The dissatisfaction which drives one on from one word
to  another,  one  creation to  another,  is  simply  a protest against  the
futility of postponement. The  more  awake one becomes, an artistic microbe,
the less desire  one has to do anything. Fully awake, everything is just and
there is no need to come out of the trance. Action, as expressed in creating
a work of art, is a concession to the automatic principle of death. Drowning
myself in the Gulf of Mexico I  was  able to partake of an active life which
would permit  the real self to hibernate  a  until I was  ripe to be born. I
understood it perfectly, though I  acted blindly and confusedly. I swam back
to the stream of human activity until I got to the source of all  action and
there muscled in, calling myself personnel  director of a telegraph company,
and allowed  the tide  of humanity to  wash over  me like great white-capped
breakers. All  this active life, preceding the final act of desperation, led
me from doubt  to doubt, blinding me more and more to the  real  self which,
like  a  continent  choked  with  the  evidences of  a  great  and  thriving
civilization, had already sunk  beneath the surface of the sea. The colossal
ego  was  submerged, and what  people observed moving frantically  above the
surface was the  periscope of  the soul searching for its target. Everything
that came within range had to be destroyed, if I were ever to rise again and
ride the waves. This monster which rose now and then to fix  its target with
deadly aim, which dove again and roved and plundered ceaselessly would, when
the  time  came, rise for the  last time to reveal  itself  as an ark, would
gather unto itself a pair  of each kind and at last, when the floods abated,
would settle down on the summit of a lofty mountain peak thence to open wide
its  doors and  return  to  the  world what  had  been  preserved  from  the
catastrophe.
     If  I shudder  now and then, when I think of my active life,  if I have
nightmares,  possibly it is  because I  think of all  the  men I robbed  and
murdered in  my day sleep. I  did everything which my nature  bade me to do.
Nature is eternally whispering in one's ear - "if you would survive you must
kill!" Being human,  you kill not like the animal but automatically, and the
killing  is disguised  and its ramifications  are endless,  so that you kill
without even thinking about it, you kill  without need. The  men who are the
most honoured are the greatest killers. They believe that  they are  serving
their  fellowmen,  and  they  are  sincere  in believing  so, but  they  are
heartless murderers and at moments, when they come awake, they realize their
crimes  and perform frantic, quixotic acts of goodness  in order to  expiate
their guilt. The goodness of man stinks more than the  evil which is in him,
for  the  goodness  is  not yet  acknowledged,  not  an  affirmation  of the
conscious  self.  Being  pushed over the  precipice,  it is easy at the last
moment to surrender all one's possessions, to turn and extend a last embrace
to all who are left behind. How are we to stop the blind rush? How are we to
stop the automatic process, each one pushing the other over the precipice?
     As I sat at my desk, over which  I had put up a sign  reading  "Do  not
abandon  all hope  ye who enter here!" - as I sat there saying Yes, No, Yes,
No, I realized, with a  despair that was turning to white frenzy, that I was
a puppet in whose hands society  had placed  a gatling gun. If I performed a
good  deed it was  no different, ultimately, than if  I had  performed a bad
deed.  I was  like an  equals  sign  through  which  the algebraic swarm  of
humanity was passing. I was a  rather important,  active equals sign, like a
general in time of war, but no matter how competent I were to become I could
never change into a plus or a minus sign. Nor could any one  else, as far as
I could  determine.  Our  whole  life  was  built up on  this  principle  of
equation. The integers  had become symbols which were shuffled about in  the
interests of death. Pity, despair, passion, hope,  courage  - these were the
temporal refractions caused by looking  at equations from varying angles. To
stop the  endless juggling by  turning  one's  back on it,  or by facing  it
squarely and writing about it, would be no help either. In a hall of mirrors
there is no way to turn your back  on yourself. <i>I will not do this</i>... <i>I will
do some other thing I</i> Very good. But can you do nothing at all? Can you stop
thinking about not doing anything? Can  you stop dead, and without thinking,
radiate the truth which you know? That was the idea which lodged in the back
of my  head  and  which  burned  and burned,  and perhaps  when  I  was most
expansive most radiant with energy, most sympathetic, most willing, helpful,
sincere,  good,  it  was  this  fixed idea  which  was shining  through, and
automatically  I  was saying - "why, don't mention it ... nothing at  all, I
assure  you ... no, please don't  thank me.  it's  nothing," etc. etc.  From
firing the gun so many hundreds of times  a day perhaps I didn't even notice
the detonations any  more; perhaps I thought I  was opening pigeon traps and
filling the sky with milky white  fowl. Did you ever see a synthetic monster
on the screen, a  Frankenstein realized in  flesh and blood? Can you imagine
how he might be trained to pull a trigger and see pigeons flying at the same
time? Frankenstein is not a myth: Frankenstein is  a very real creation born
of the personal experience of a sensitive human being. The monster is always
more  real when it does not  assume the proportions of  flesh and blood. The
monster of the screen is nothing compared to the monster of the imagination;
even the existent  pathologic monsters  who find their  way into  the police
station are  but  feeble demonstrations  of the monstrous reality  which the
pathologist  lives with. But  to be  the monster and the pathologist  at the
same time - that  is  reserved for certain species of men  who, disguised as
artists,  are  supremely aware that  sleep  is an even  greater danger  than
insomnia.  In order not to  fall asleep, in order not to  become victims  of
that insomnia which is  called "living", they resort to  the drug of putting
words  together endlessly.  This  is  <i>not</i>  an automatic  process,  they say,
because there is always present the illusion that they can stop it  at will.
But they cannot  stop; they  have  only  succeeded in creating an  illusion,
which is perhaps a feeble something, but it is far from being wide awake and
neither  active nor inactive. <i>I  wanted to be wide awake  without talking or
writing  about it,  in order  to accept  life absolutely.</i>  I  mentioned  the
archaic men in the remote places of the world with who, I  was communicating
frequently. Why did I think these "savages" more capable of understanding me
than the men  and women  who surrounded  me? Was I crazy to  believe  such a
thing?  I don't think so in the least.  These  "savages" are  the degenerate
remnants  of earlier races of man who,  I believe, must have had  a  greater
hold on reality. The immortality  of the  race is constantly before oar eyes
in these specimens  of the past who linger on in withered splendour. Whether
the human race is immortal or not is not my concern, but the vitality of the
race  does  mean  something to me,  and  that it should be active or dormant
means even  more. As the vitality of the new race banks down the vitality of
the old  races manifests itself to the waking mind with  greater and greater
significance. The  vitality of  the old races lingers on even in death,  but
the vitality of  the  new  race  which is  about  to die  seems already non-
existent. <i>If a man were taking a swarming hive of bees to the river to drown
them</i>... That was the image I carried about in me.  If  only I were  the man,
and not  the bee! In some vague, inexplicable way I knew that I <i>was</i> the man,
that I would  not be drowned  in the  hive, like the others. Always, when we
came forwards in a group  I was  signalled to stand  apart; from birth I was
favoured that way, and,  no matter  what tribulations I went through, I knew
they were not fatal or lasting. Also, another strange thing took place in me
whenever I was called to stand forth. I  knew that I was superior to the man
who was  summoning  me!  The tremendous humility which  I practised  was not
hypocritical  but a  condition provoked by  the realization  of  the fateful
character of the  situation. The  intelligence which  I possessed, even as a
stripling, frightened me; it was the  intelligence  of  a "savage", which is
always superior to that of civilized men in that it is more  adequate to the
exigencies  of circumstance. It is a <i>life</i> intelligence, even though life has
seemingly passed them by. I felt almost as if I had been shot forward into a
round of existence which for  the rest  of mankind had  not yet attained its
full  rhythm. I was  obliged to mark time if I were to remain  with them and
not be shunted  off to another sphere of existence. On the other hand, I was
in  many ways  lower than the human beings about me. It was as  though I had
come out of the fires of hell not entirely purged. I had still  a tail and a
pair of  horns, and when my  passions were  aroused  I breathed a sulphurous
poison which was annihilating. I was always called a "lucky devil". The good
that happened to me was called "luck", and the evil was always regarded as a
result of my  shortcomings. Rather, as the fruit of my blindness. Rarely did
any one ever spot the evil in me! I was as adroit, in  this  respect, as the
devil himself. But that I was  frequently blind, everybody  could  see that.
And at  such times I was left alone, shunned, like the devil himself. Then I
left the  world, returned to the  fires of hell - voluntarily. These comings
and  goings  are  as  real  to  me,  more real, in  fact, than anything that
happened in  between. The friends who think  they know me know nothing about
me  for the reason that the real me  changed hands countless times.  Neither
the  men who thanked me, nor the men who cursed me, knew with whom they were
dealing.  Nobody ever got on to  a  solid footing  with  me,  because  I was
constantly liquidating  my  personality. I  was  keeping what  is called the
"personality" in abeyance for the moment  when, leaving  it to coagulate, it
would  adopt a proper human rhythm. I  was hiding my  face  until the moment
when I would find myself in step with the  world. All this was, of course, a
mistake. Even  the  role of artist  is worth  adopting,  while marking time.
Action is important, even if it entails futile activity. One should not  say
Yes, No,  Yes,  No,  even seated in  the  highest place.  One  should not be
drowned in the human tidal wave, even for the sake of becoming a Master. One
must  beat with  his own rhythm - at  any price. I accumulated  thousands of
years  of  experience in a few  short years, but the experience  was  wasted
because I had no need of it. I had already been crucified and  marked by the
cross; I had  been born free of the need to suffer - and yet I knew no other
way  to struggle forward than  to  repeat the drama. All my intelligence was
against  it. Suffering is futile, my intelligence told me over and over, but
I went on suffering <i>voluntarily.</i> Suffering has  never taught me a thing; for
others it may  still  be necessary, but for  me  it is nothing more than  an
algebraic demonstration of spiritual inadaptability. The  whole  drama which
the  man of today  is acting out through suffering does not exist for me: it
never  did,   actually.   All   my   Calvaries   were   rosy   crucifixions,
pseudo-tragedies to  keep the  fires of hell burning  brightly  for the real
sinners who are in danger of being forgotten.
     Another thing ... the mystery which enveloped  my behaviour grew deeper
the nearer I came to the circle of uterine relatives.  The mother from whose
loins  I sprang was a  complete stranger to me. To begin  with, after giving
birth  to me  she gave  birth to  my sister, whom I  usually refer to  as my
brother. My sister  was a sort  of harmless monster,  an angel who had  been
given the body of an  idiot. It gave me a strange feeling,  as a  boy, to be
growing  up and developing side by  side with this  being  who was doomed to
remain all her life a mental dwarf. It was impossible to be a brother to her
because  it  was  impossible  to regard this atavistic hulk of a body  as  a
"sister".  She  would  have  functioned  perfectly,  I  imagine,  among  the
Australian primitives. She might even have been raised to power and eminence
among them,  for, as I said, she  was the essence of  goodness, she  knew no
evil. But so far as living the civilized life goes she was helpless; she not
only had no desire to kill but she had no desire to thrive at the expense of
others. She  was incapacitated for work, because even if they  had been able
to  train her  to  make caps  for  high explosives,  for  example, she might
absent-mindedly  throw her wages  in the river  on the way home or she might
give them  to  a beggar in the street. Often in my presence  she was whipped
like  a  dog  for  having  performed some  beautiful act  of  grace  in  her
absent-mindedness, as  they called  it. Nothing  was worse, I learned  as  a
child,  than  to  do  a  good deed  without reason.  I had received the same
punishment  as  my sister,  in the beginning,  because  I too had a habit of
giving things away,  especially new things which had  just been  given me. I
had even received a bearing once, at the age of five, for having  advised my
mother to cut a wart off  her finger.  She had asked  me what to do about it
one day and, with my limited knowledge of medicine, I told her to cut it off
with  scissors, which she did, like an idiot. A few days later she got blood
poisoning and then she got hold of me and she said -  "you told me to cut it
off, didn't you?" and she gave me a sound thrashing. From that day on I knew
that I was born in the  wrong  household. From that  day  on I learned  like
lightning. Talk about adaptation!  By the time I was ten I had lived out the
whole theory of evolution. And there I  was, evolving through all the phases
of  animal life and yet chained  to this creature called my "sister" who was
evidently a primitive being and who would  never, even at the age of ninety,
arrive  at  a  comprehension  of  the alphabet Instead of  growing up like a
stalwart tree I began to lean to  one side,  in complete defiance of the law
of  gravity. Instead of shooting  out  limbs and  leaves I  grew windows and
turrets. The whole being, as it grew, was turning into stone, and the higher
I  shot up the more I defied the  law of gravity. I was  a phenomenon in the
midst of the landscape, but one which attracted  people and elicited praise.
If the mother who  bore us had only made another effort perhaps a marvellous
white buffalo  might have been  born  and the  three of  us  might have been
permanently installed in a  museum and protected for life. The conversations
which took place between the  leaning tower of Pisa,  the whipping post, the
snorting machine and the pterodactyl in human flesh were, to  say the least,
a bit queer. Anything might be the subject  of conversation - a  bread crumb
which  the  "sister" had overlooked in brushing  the tablecloth or  Joseph's
coat  of many colours which,  in the  old man's tailoring brain, might  have
been  either double-breasted  or  cutaway or  frock. If I  came from the ice
pond, where  I  had been skating  all afternoon, the important thing was not
the  ozone  which  I  had  breathed   free  of  charge,  nor  the  geometric
convolutions which  were strengthening my  muscles, but  the little  spot of
rust  under  the  clamps  which,  if  not  rubbed  off   immediately,  might
deteriorate the  whole  skate  and  bring  about  the  dissolution  of  some
pragmatic value which  was incomprehensible  to my prodigal turn of thought.
This  little  rust spot, to take a  trifling example, might entrain the most
hallucinating results. Perhaps the "sister", in searching  for  the kerosene
can,  might  overturn the jar  of prunes  which  were being  stewed and thus
endanger  all our  lives  by  robbing  us  of the required  calories  in the
morrow's  meal.  A severe  beating  would  have to be  given,  not in anger,
because  that  would  disturb the  digestive  apparatus,  but  silently  and
efficiently,  as a chemist would beat up the white  of an egg in preparation
for a minor analysis. But the  "sister", not understanding  the prophylactic
nature of the  punishment, would give vent to the most bloodcurdling screams
and this  would  so affect the old man that he would .go out for a walk  and
return two or  three hours later blind drunk and, what was worse, scratching
a little paint off the rolling doors in his blind staggers. The little piece
of  paint that had been chipped off would bring on a battle  royal which was
very  bad for my  dream life, because  in my dream life I frequently changed
places  with  my  sister,  accepting  the tortures inflicted  upon  her  and
nourishing them with my supersensitive brain. It was in these dreams, always
accompanied by the sound of glass breaking, of  shrieks,  curses, groans and
sobs, that I gathered an unformulated knowledge of the ancient mysteries, of
the rites of initiation, of the transmigration of souls and so on. It  might
begin with a scene from real life - the sister standing by the blackboard in
the kitchen, the mother towering over her with  a ruler, saying  two and two
makes how much? and the sister screaming <i>five</i>. Bang!  <i>no,  seven.</i> Bang!  <i>no,
thirteen, eighteen</i> as <i>twenty!</i>  I  would be  sitting at  the table,  doing my
lessons, just in real life during  these scenes, when by a  slight twist  or
squirm, perhaps as  I saw the ruler come down on the sister's face, suddenly
I would be in another realm where glass  was  unknown, as it was unknown  to
the Kickapoos or the Lenni-Lenapi. The faces of those about me were familiar
- they were my uterine relatives who, for some mysterious reason, failed  to
recognize me in this  new ambiance. They were garbed in black and the colour
of their skin was ash  grey, like that of the Tibetan devils.  They were all
fitted  out with knives and other  instruments of  torture; they belonged to
the caste of sacrificial butchers. I seemed to have absolute liberty and the
authority of  a god, and yet by some capricious turn of events the end would
be that I'd be lying on the sacrificial block and one of my charming uterine
relatives would  be bending  over  me with a  gleaming  knife to cut  out my
heart. In sweat and  terror I would  begin to recite "my lessons" in a high,
screaming voice, faster and faster, as  I felt the  knife  searching  for my
heart. Two and two is four,  five and  five is ten, earth, air, fire, water,
Monday,  Tuesday,  Wednesday, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, Meocene, Pleocene,
Eocene,  the  Father,  the  Son,  the  Holy  Ghost,  Asia,  Africa,  Europe,
Australia, red, blue, yellow, the sorrel,  the  persimmon,  the  pawpaw, the
catalpa  ..  <i>.faster  and faster.</i>..  Odin,  Wotan,  Parsifal,  King  Alfred,
Frederick  the   Great,  the  Hanseatic  League,  the  Battle  of  Hastings,
Thermopylae, 1492,1786,  18l2, Admiral Farragut, Pickett's charge. The Light
Brigade, we are  gathered here today, the Lord is my shepherd,  I shall not,
one and  indivisible,  no, 16, no, 27, help! murder!  police! - and  yelling
louder and louder and going faster and faster I go completely off my nut and
there  is  no more  pain, no more terror,  even though they  are piercing me
everywhere with knives. Suddenly I am absolutely  calm and the body which is
lying  on the block,  which they are  still  gouging with glee  and ecstasy,
feels nothing  because  I, the owner of  it,  have  escaped. I have become a
tower  of  stone  which  leans over the scene and  watches  with  scientific
interest. I have only  to succumb to the law  of gravity and  I will fall on
them and obliterate them. But I do not succumb to the law of gravity because
I am too fascinated  by  the horror of it all. I am so fascinated,  in fact,
that I grow more and more windows.  And as  the  light penetrates the  stone
interior of my being I can  feel that  my roots, which are in the earth, are
alive  and that I shall one day be able to remove myself at will  from  this
trance in which I am fixed.
     So  much for  the dream,  in  which  I  am helplessly  rooted.  But  in
actuality, when the dear uterine relatives come, I am as free  as a bird and
darting to and  fro like a magnetic needle. If they ask me a question I give
them five answers, each of which is better than the other; if they ask me to
play a waltz I play a double-breasted sonata for  the left hand; if they ask
me to help  myself to another leg of chicken I dean  up the plate,  dressing
and all; if they urge me to go out and play in the street I go out and in my
enthusiasm I cut  my cousin's head  open with a tin can: if they threaten to
give me a thrashing I say go to it, I don't mind! If they pat me on the head
for my good progress at school I spit on the floor to show that I have still
something to learn. I do everything they wish me to do <i>plus.</i> If they wish me
to be quiet and say nothing I become as quiet as  a rock: I  don't hear when
they speak to  me, I don't  move when I'm  touched,  I  don't cry  when  I'm
pinched, I don't budge when I'm pushed. If they complain that I'm stubborn I
become as pliant and yielding as rubber. If they wish me to get  fatigued so
that I will not display too much energy I let them give me all kinds of work
to  do and I do the jobs so  thoroughly that I collapse on the floor finally
like  a  sack  of  wheat.  If  they  wish  me  to  be  reasonable  I  become
ultra-reasonable, which drives them crazy. If they wish me to obey I obey to
the  letter,  which  causes  endless confusion.  And all  this  because  the
molecular life of brother-and-sister is incompatible with the atomic weights
which have been allotted us. Because she doesn't grow at all I  grow  like a
mushroom; because she has no personality I become a colossus; because she is
free of evil I become  a thirty-two branched candelabra of evil; because she
demands  nothing  of  any  one  I  demand  everything; because  she inspires
ridicule everywhere  I inspire fear and respect;  because she  is humiliated
and tortured I wreak vengeance upon every one, friend and foe alike; because
she  is  helpless  I  make myself all-powerful.  The gigantism  from which I
suffered was simply the result of an effort to wipe out the  little stain of
rust which had attached itself to the family skate, so to speak. That little
stain of rust under the clamps  made me a champion skater. It made me  skate
so fast and furiously that even when the ice had melted I was still skating,
skating  through  the mud, through asphalt,  through  brooks  and rivers and
melon patches and theories of economics  and so forth. I could skate through
hell, I was that fast and nimble.
     But  all  this  fancy  skating  was of  no  use  - Father  Coxcox,  the
pan-American Noah,  was always  calling me  back to  the  Ark.  Every time I
stopped skating there was a cataclysm  - the earth  opened up  and swallowed
me. I was a brother to every man and at the same time a traitor to myself. I
made the most astounding  sacrifices, only to  find  that  they  were  of no
value. Of what use was it to  prove that  I could be what was expected of me
when  I  did not want to be any of these  things? Every time you come to the
limit of what is demanded of  you, you are faced with  the same problem - to
be yourself! And  with the first step you make in this direction you realize
that there  is neither plus nor minus; you throw  the skates  away and swim.
There  is no suffering any more because there is  nothing which can threaten
your security. And there is no desire to be of help  to others even, because
why rob them of a  privilege which must be  earned? Life stretches out  from
moment  to moment  in stupendous  infinitude. Nothing can be more  real than
what you suppose it to be. Whatever you think the cosmos to be  it is and it
could not possibly  be anything else as long as you are you and I  am I. You
live in the fruits of your action  and  your action is  the harvest of  your
thought. Thought and action are one, because swimming you  are in it and  of
it, and <i>it</i> is everything you desire it to be, no more, no less. Every stroke
counts for  eternity.  The heating  and  cooling  system is one  system, and
Cancer is  separated  from Capricorn only by  an  imaginary  line. You don't
become ecstatic and you are not plunged into violent  grief; you  don't pray
for  rain, neither do you  dance  a jig. You live like a  happy rock  in the
midst of the ocean: you are fixed while everything about you is in turbulent
motion. You are fixed in a reality which permits the thought that nothing is
fixed,  that  even the happiest and  mightiest rock  will one day be utterly
dissolved and fluid as the ocean from which it was born.
     This is the musical life  which I was approaching by first skating like
a maniac  through all the vestibules and corridors which lead from the outer
to  the inner.  My  struggles never brought me near it, nor did  my  furious
activity,  nor  my rubbing elbows  with  humanity.  All  that  was simply  a
movement from vector  to  vector  in  a circle  which  however the perimeter
expanded, remained withal  parallel to the  realm I speak of.  The  wheel of
destiny  can  be transcended  at any moment  because  at every point of  its
surface it  touches the  real  world  and only a  spark  of illumination  is
necessary  to  bring  about the  miraculous, to  transform the  skater  to a
swimmer  and the swimmer to a rock. The rock is merely an image of  the  act
which stops the futile rotation of the wheel and plunges the being into full
consciousness.  And full consciousness is indeed like an inexhaustible ocean
which  gives itself  to  sun and  moon and also <i>includes</i> the sun  and  moon.
Everything which  is is  born out of the limitless ocean of light - even the
night.
     Sometimes,  in  the ceaseless  revolutions  of the  wheel,  I caught  a
glimpse of the nature  of  the jump which it was  necessary to make. To jump
dear of the clockwork - that was  the  liberating  thought. To be  something
more, something <i>different,</i> than the most brilliant maniac of the earth 1 The
story  of man on earth bored me.  Conquest, even the conquest of evil, bored
me. To radiate goodness is marvellous,  because it is  tonic,  invigorating,
vitalizing.  But just <i>to be is</i> still more  marvellous, because it is endless
and requires  no demonstration. To  be is music,  which is  a profanation of
silence  in the interests of silence, and  therefore beyond  good and  evil.
Music is the manifestation of action without activity. It is the pure act of
creation swimming on its own bosom. Music neither goads nor defends, neither
seeks  nor explains. Music is  the noisdess sound made by the swimmer in the
ocean of consdousness. It is a reward which can only be given by oneself. It
is the gift of the  god  which  one is because he has ceased  thinking about
god. It is an augur of the God which every one will become in due time, when
all that <i>is</i> will <i>be</i> beyond imagination.

     <hr>
     <b>CODA</b>

     Not long ago I was walking the  streets of New York. Dear old Broadway.
It was  night and the  sky was an Oriental blue, as blue as the  gold in the
ceiling of the <i>Pagode,</i> rue de Babylone, when the  machine starts clicking. I
was passing  exactly below the  place  where we first  met. I  stood there a
moment looking up at the red lights in the windows. The music  sounded as it
always  sounded -  light, peppery,  enchanting.  I was  alone and there were
millions of people around me.  It came  over me, as  I  stood there,  that I
wasn't  thinking of her any more; I was thinking  of this book  which  I  am
writing, and the book had  become  more important to me  than  her, than all
that  had happened to us. Will this book be the truth, the  whole truth, and
nothing  but the  truth,  so  help me God?  Plunging  into the crowd again I
wrestled with this question of "truth". For years I have been trying to tell
this  story and always the  question of  truth has weighed upon  me  like  a
nightmare. Time and again I have related to others  the circumstances of our
life, and I have always told the truth. But the truth can also be a lie. The
truth  is  not  enough. Truth  is only the  core  of  a  totality  which  is
inexhaustible.
     I remember the first time we were ever  separated this idea of totality
seized  me  by the  hair.  She  pretended, when  she left  me,  or maybe she
believed it herself,  that  it was necessary  for  our welfare. I knew in my
heart that she was trying to be free of me, but I was  too cowardly to admit
it to myself. But when  I  realized that she could do without me, even for a
limited time, the truth which I had  tried  to shut out began  to grow  with
alarming rapidity. It was more painful than anything I had ever  experienced
before,  but  it was  also healing.  When I was completely emptied, when the
loneliness  had  reached such  a point that it  could  not be  sharpened any
further, I suddenly felt that, to go on  living, this intolerable truth  had
to be  incorporated  into  something  greater  than the  frame  of  personal
misfortune. I felt  that  I had  made an imperceptible  switch into  another
realm, a realm of tougher, more elastic fibre, which the most horrible truth
was powerless to destroy. I sat  down to write her a letter telling her that
I was  so  miserable over the thought of  losing her  that I had decided  to
begin a book  about her, a  book which would immortalize her. It  would be a
book,  I  said,  such  as  no  one  had  ever  seen  before.  I  rambled  on
ecstatically, and in the midst of it I suddenly broke  off to ask myself why
I was so happy.
     Passing beneath the dance hall, thinking again of this book, I realized
suddenly that our life  had come to an end: I realized  that the  book I was
planning was  nothing more than a tomb in which to  bury her -  and  the  me
which had belonged  to her. That was some time  ago, and  ever since I  have
been trying to write it. Why is it so difficult? Why? Because the idea of an
"end" is intolerable to me.
     Truth  lies  in  this  knowledge  of  the  end  which  is ruthless  and
remorseless.  We can  know  the truth and  accept it, or  we  can refuse the
knowledge  of it and neither  die nor be  born  again. In  this manner it is
possible to  live forever,  a negative  life  as solid and complete,  or  as
dispersed and  fragmentary, as  the  atom. And if we  pursue  this road  far
enough, even this atomic eternity  can yield to nothingness and the universe
itself fall apart.
     For years  now I have been  trying to tell this story; each time I have
started  out I have chosen  a different route. I  am  like an explorer  who,
wishing to circumnavigate  the globe, deems it unnecessary  to  carry even a
compass. Moreover, from  dreaming over it so long, the story itself has come
to  resemble a vast, fortified  city, and I who dream  it  over and over, am
outside the  city, a wanderer, arriving before  one gate  after  another too
exhausted to enter. And as with the wanderer, this city in which my story is
situated eludes me  perpetually. Always  in sight  it  nevertheless  remains
unattainable, a  sort of  ghostly citadel floating  in the clouds. From  the
soaring, crenellated battlements  flocks of huge white geese  swoop down  in
steady, wedge-shaped formation. With the tips of their blue-white wings they
brush the  dreams that dazzle my vision. My feet move confusedly;  no sooner
do I gain a foothold than  I am lost again.  I wander  aimlessly, trying  to
gain a solid, unshakeable foothold  whence I can  command a view of my life,
but  behind  me there lies only a welter of crisscrossed  tracks, a groping,
confused encircling, the spasmodic gambit of the chicken whose head has just
been lopped off.
     Whenever  I try to explain to myself the peculiar pattern which my life
has taken, when I  reach  back to the  first  cause,  as  it  were,  I think
inevitably of the girl I first loved. It seems to  me  that everything dates
from that aborted affair.  A strange,  masochistic affair it was, ridiculous
and tragic at the same time. Perhaps  I had the  pleasure of kissing her two
or three  times, the sort of kiss one reserves  for a goddess. Perhaps I saw
her alone  several times. Certainly  she could  never  have dreamed that for
over a year I walked  past her home every night hoping to catch a glimpse of
her at the window. Every  night after dinner I would  get up from the  table
and take the long route which led to her home. She was  never at  the window
when I passed and I never had the courage to stand in front of the house and
wait. Back  and forth  I passed, back and  forth, but never hide nor hair of
her. Why  didn't  I  write her?  Why didn't I  call  her up? Once I remember
summoning enough  pluck to invite her  to the theatre. I arrived at her home
with a bunch of violets, the first and only time I ever bought flowers for a
woman. As we were leaving the theatre the violets dropped from  her corsage,
and in my confusion I stepped on them. I begged her to leave them there, but
she insisted on gathering them up. I was thinking how awkward I was - it was
only long afterwards  that  I recalled the smile she had  given  me  as  she
stooped down to pick up the violets.
     It was a complete fiasco. In the end I ran away. Actually I was running
away from another  woman, but the day before  leaving town  I decided to see
her  once again. It was  midaftemoon and she came out to  talk to me  in the
street, in the little areaway which  was fenced on". She was already engaged
to another man; she pretended to be happy about it but I could see, blind as
I was, that she wasn't as happy as  she pretended  to be. If I had only said
the  word I  am  sure  she would have dropped the other  fellow; perhaps she
would even have  gone  away with  me.  I preferred to punish myslef. I  said
goodbye nonchalantly and  I went down the street  like a dead man. The  next
morning I was bound for the Coast, determined to start a new life.
     The new life  was also  a fiasco. I ended up on a ranch in Chula Vista,
the  most  miserable man  that ever  walked the earth. There was this girl I
loved and there was the other woman, for whom I felt only a profound pity. I
had been living with her for two years, this other woman, but it seemed like
a lifetime. I was twenty-one and she admitted to be thirty-six. Every time I
looked at her I said to myself  - when I  am thirty she will  be forty-five,
when  I  am  forty she  will be  fifty-five, when  I am  fifty she  will  be
sixty-five. She  had  fine  wrinkles under the eyes,  laughing wrinkles, but
wrinkles just the same. When I kissed her they  magnified a dozen times. She
laughed  easily, but  her  eyes were  sad,  terribly sad. They were Armenian
eyes.  Her  hair, which had  been  red  once,  was  now a  peroxide  blonde.
Otherwise  she  was adorable  -  a  Venusian  body,  a  Venusian soul, loyal
lovable, grateful, everything a woman should be, <i>except that she was fifteen
years older.</i>  The fifteen years difference  drove me crazy. When I  went out
with her I thought only - how will it be ten years hence?  Or else, what age
does she seem to have now? Do I look old enough for her? Once we got back to
the house it  was all  right. Climbing the stairs I would run  my fingers up
her crotch, which used to make her whinny like  a horse. If her son, who was
almost my age, were in bed we would dose the doors and lock ourselves in the
kitchen. She'd  lie on the narrow kitchen table and I'd slough it into  her.
It  was  marvellous. And what made  it more  marvellous was that  with  each
performance I would say  to myself  - <i>This is the last  time</i> ... <i>tomorrow  I
will beat it!</i>  And then, since she was the janitress, I would go down to the
cellar and roll the ash barrels  out for her.  In  the morning, when the son
had left  for work, I would  climb up to the  roof and air the bedding. Both
she and the  son had T.B.... Sometimes there were no table  bouts. Sometimes
the hopelessness of it all got me by the throat and I would put on my things
and  go for a walk. Now and then I forgot to return.  And  when I did that I
was more miserable than ever, because I knew that she would  be  waiting for
me with those large sorrowful eyes. I'd go back to her like a man who  had a
sacred duty to  perform.  I'd lie down on the bed and let her caress me; I'd
study the  wrinkles under  her eyes and  the roots of  her  hair  which were
turning red. Lying there like that, I would often think about the other one,
the one I loved, would wonder if she were lying down for it too, or... Those
long walks  I took 365 days of  the  year! -1 would go over them  in my mind
lying  beside the other woman.  How many  times since have I  relived  these
walks! The dreariest, bleakest, ugliest streets man ever created. In anguish
I  relive these walks, these streets,  these first smashed hopes. The window
is there, but no Melisande; the garden too is  there,  but no sheen of gold.
Pass and repass,  the window always  vacant.  The  evening  star  hangs low;
Tristan appears,  then Fidelio, and  then Oberon. The hydra-headed dog barks
with all his mouths and though there are no swamps I hear the frogs croaking
everywhere.  Same houses, same  car-lines,  same everything.  She  is hiding
behind the  curtain, she is waiting  for  me  to pass, she is doing  this or
doing that... <i>but she is not there, never, never, never.</i> Is it a grand opera
or  is it a hurdygurdy playing? It is Amato bursting his golden lung;  it is
the Rubaiyat, it  is Mount Everest,  it is a moonless night,  it is a sob at
dawn, it  is a boy making believe, it is Puss in  the Boot, it is Mauna Loa,
it is fox or  astrakhan, it is of no stuff and no time, it is endless and it
begins over and over, under the heart,  in  the back  of the throat,  in the
soles of the feet, and why not just once, just once, for the love of Christ,
just a shadow or  a rustle  of the curtain, or a breath  on the window-pane,
something once, if  only  a  lie, something  to stop the  pain, to stop this
walking up and down ... Walking homeward. Same houses, same lamp posts, same
everything. I walk past my own home, past the cemetery, past  the gas tanks,
past  the  car barns,  past the reservoir,  out into the open country. I sit
beside the  road with my head in my hands and  sob. Poor bugger that I am, I
can't contract my heart enough to burst the veins. I would like to suffocate
with grief but instead I give birth to a rock.
     Meanwhile the other one is waiting. I can see  her again  as she sat on
the  low stoop  waiting for. me, her eyes large and  dolorous, her face pale
and trembling with eagerness. <i>Pity</i> I always thought  it was  that brought me
back, but now as I  walk towards  her and see the  look  in her eyes I don't
know any more what it is, only that we  will go  inside and lie together and
she will get up half weeping, half  laughing, and  she will grow very silent
and watch  me, study me as I move about, and never ask