When I was young, I knew William Burroughs really well. And William’s secret desire, which he never quite did, was to write a straightforward detective novel.
Lisbon is a good city to get lost in. Mornings in cafes scribbling in yet another notebook, each blank page offering escape, the pen serving, fluid and constant. I sleep well, dream little, simply exists within an uninterrupted interlude.
That’s the one with the magic, he would say.
I felt like Alice with the Mad Hatter, negotiating jokes without punch lines, and having to retrace my steps on the chessboard floor back to the logic of my own peculiar universe.
What is the heart but a small hand of agonies?
I seldom visit people’s homes, for despite the hospitality offered I often suffer a feeling of confinement or imagined pressure.
It occurred to me looking around at all of your things and your work and going through years of work in my mind, that of all your work, you are still your most beautiful. The most beautiful work of all.
Despite all efforts, February just slips away, though being a leap year there is one extra day to observe.
A stretch of time when I was rewarded with so many mystic moments, a chunk of red chalk, a chestnut, a rusted piece of scrap metal, a nail, a flat stone shaped like an ancient tablet. Although suggesting little of the magnificent work I had seen, these objects helped inspire my newfound contentedness. I placed them with the same care as a police detective into a clean plastic bag. Evidence of an awareness of the relative value of insignificant things.
The act of writing in real time in order to deflect, escape, or slow it down is obviously futile yet not entirely fruitless.
The Chelsea was like a doll’s house in the Twilight Zone, with a hundred rooms, each a small universe. I wandered the halls seeking its spirits, dead or alive.
But then everything eventually changes. It’s the way of the world. Cycles of death and resurrection, but not always in the way we imagine. For instance, we might all resurrect looking way different, wearing outfits we’d never be caught dead in.
I have always hated loose ends... If I read a book or see a film and some seemingly insignificant thing is left unresolved, I can get remarkably unsettled, going back and forth and looking for clues or wishing I had a number to call or that I could write someone a letter. Not to complain, but just to request clarification or to answer a few questions, so I can concentrate on other things.
I have a lock of his hair, a handful of his ashes, a box of his letters, a goatskin tambourine. And in the folds of faded violet tissue a necklace, two violet plaques etched in Arabic, strung with black and silver threads, given to me by the boy who loved Michelangelo.
The other afternoon, when you fell asleep on my shoulder, I drifted off, too. But before I did, it occurred to me looking around at all of your things and your work and going through years of work in my mind, that of all your work, you are still your most beautiful. The most beautiful work of all.
I dreamed I was somewhere that was also nowhere.
Certain books I loved and lived within yet cannot remember.
I didn’t mind the misery of a vocation but I dreaded not being called.
He had ignored nature and now turned to her for his salvation, and set about to make peace with her, bowing to her mysteries.
In his heartlessness he had ignored nature, and how heartless nature was in return.
Nothing really matches the atmosphere of the old Polaroid film. Except perhaps a poem, a musical phrase, or a forest hung with mist.