Let's Browse With Topical Focus

I dreamt of a small gelatinous cube, similar to what is found during the winter simmering beside the register in a Japanese convenience store. I recognized that cube at once. "That's my heart," I said.

Now's as good a time as any to share a few helpful hints about the management of despair:

Don't try to save your life. Aren't you the one who fails at everything? The hopeless one? Therefore, this attempt, too, is doomed. Aiming to save your life, you scratch for reasons. Not finding them, self-loathing grows. Therefore.

Do not try to save your life, but merely to postpone fatal acts. Keep it in the attic. No need to act like it's some great gushing treasure, like it'd really turn out to be worth something, if you could just get it onto Antique Road Show. By all means, let the dog sleep on it. Just don't puncture or burn it. Leave it in the rain. Don't toss it out.

Save your life by accident. That old thing you just happen to have around. Kept out of basic respect for its materials and, even more, from simple thrift. Some use may yet be found. And then there will be your life, which, it just so happens, you never quite got around to destroying. Saved, as lives so often are, by simply being overlooked.

No brightness, no optimism. It just so happens you never get as far as whiskey in the morning, or the sling at the baths. With zero enthusiasm and no fatal acts.

Thus life is saved silently. By means of neglect.

What comforts me? The image of meat cleaver. With a red handle. Falling through space. Nothing to impede it. Nothing to interfere with it. No tears and no complaints. The cleaver is simply falling. And I am letting it fall.

Tameikesanno station, which is so immense that even once you arrive underground, your train may still be a kilometer away, down a vast white corridor with neither benches nor signs, nothing but a single green public phone, which you could use to call someone and announce, “I seem to have arrived in some peculiar alternate world. So far all I can say for certain is that everything is tiled.”

In New Hampshire, in the early Eighties, my pet mouse was resurrected. Please keep this is mind. It was much too cold for the mouse, in a cage on the porch during the winter, but my Dad wouldn’t let the mouse live inside. It was a male mouse and it stank. Also I admit I wasn’t so interested in my mouse, prior to my mouse’s resurrection.

In preparation for burial, I wrapped my mouse in a Woody Woodpecker washcloth. Then I went upstairs and read the entire book of Genesis. I must have been 10. My mother was dead. I suffered from horrendous nightmares. I believed reading the Bible protected me from monsters. After Genesis, I returned for the burial and found my mouse resurrected, gnawing through his Woody Woodpecker burial shroud.

Please keep this in mind. I think it explains a lot.

QB House. 10 minutes, just cut. One of those places where there is a rule on every flat surface. Family and friends may need to wait outside. Danger, please don’t lean. The four digit number on your ticket has no relevance. Seeking to ward off or control the sociable, the lazy and those obsessed with numerology.

1000 yen. No coins or bills of higher denomination accepted. Hair is cut and that is all. Beard trimming and conversation are both verboten.

They did, however, take time to remove the hair from my ears. Proving that human sympathy is not yet extinct.

Looking across the river at Laos, I am accosted by and old American with long gray hair turned yellow by the sun. He is drunk and charming and resembles a cancer-stricken walnut.

“I’m Mister Blue!” he says. “I’ve fought in all the wars! Vietnam! Grenada! Afghanistan! I killed plenty of people in Vietnam. Bangbangbangbangbang please pleasesir baby my baby bangbangbang. I can’t go back to Vietnam but I can come here this is my home my heart is here. You ask anybody in Udon, Where is Mister Blue? Everybody knows me. My brother’s dying but he won’t come. I ain’t got no passports he says. I got two sons they never come. If you’re here to do business maybe I can give you advice. I’m Mister Blue. I’ve fought in all the wars but now I’m home I’m home I’m home.”

Roppongi at half-past noon: the sidewalks packed with businessmen on lunch break. Arriving at the crossing, I see a man, sprawled out on the shoulder of the street, his hat nearly in traffic. My first thought was that I was hallucinating. No one else saw him. His long gray hair spilled across his face. He clutched a plastic bag. His eyes were open: he was muttering at the sky.

I was very sorry that I am not one of those people who always know what to do. The man’s hands jerked open and closed. His face was angry. I’ll stand beside his head, I thought. The cars will see and hopefully not run either of us over.

I’m standing in the street almost, looking back at the crowds on the sidewalk. Is this the afterlife? I‘m thinking. The man looks enraged and totally out of his head. Cars honk at me. We’re real, evidently.

Eventually a policewoman arrives, stands there her head tilted down, arguing with the man. I continue on to the gym. I wonder if the man ever comes around, is lucid for awhile. I would like to leave a note in his pocket. A note which reads: I am going to get the hell out of here. I suggest you do the same.

In order to sleep I imagine a man’s arm around me. Not my husband’s arm, I am ashamed to say. This man has been around since long before my husband. Although I must also admit that I’ve never met him. Still, I’ve learned a few things about him, sleeping with him all these years.

He is lithe and has brown skin. A little shorter than I am. South American, I think. His arms are quite smooth. He works everyday outside. I don’t think he would say he is gay if you asked him.

How is it that I’ve slept with this man all my life and never investigated him? I never thought about him. He is just there, with his arm around me, as I fall asleep. He is naked and sleeps tucked against me, his arm over mine. His cock is big, just regular big, and often gets hard during the night. He sleeps like a log.

I have slept with this man as long as I can remember. I am sorry to say I don’t think of him much, aside from the moment I must think of him, in order to fall asleep. Only now does it seem strange that I have always slept with this man and never thought anything about it. Perhaps everyone has such a person. An invisible sleeping companion. Perhaps we are always accompanied. And perhaps not.

The Tokyo Subcommittee for Hopeless Causes (TSHC)

Allow me to remind you, again, that I am a comprehensively wholesome and unremittingly respectable person. If you met me elsewhere you would not hesitate to nominate me even for the post of children's librarian. Departing from my dignified presence, you might very well unbutton your top button and breathe a little easier. You might be tempted to use the word stodgy. You wouldn't do so, of course -- I am so obviously well-meaning. Anywhere else in the world I am wholesome to the point of near total indigestibility. Only in Tokyo am I forced, due to the merciless vicissitudes of circumstance, to become hyper-zealous in the practice of vice.

How else to meet people?

How many times have I, upon greeting someone with painstaking courtesy, been viewed with the utmost suspicion, even fear?

Whereas if I lurch toward that same person while reeking of alcohol and sweaty mammalian essences, making known my intention, by means of grunts and gestures, to sodomize them in a manner not generally considered considerate -- oh how cordially I am then received!

I fear that prospective visitors and residents of Tokyo will be put off by the previous description. Therefore I hasten to assure you that, fear not, there is another social option.

You can join a club.

Flower arranging is popular, as is the painting of miniatures on porcelain. You can learn how to participate in the chorus of a noh drama -- though it seems to me the hula people are having a much better time. Group lessons in countless foreign languages are available and interested parties may sign up without fear. Even if you participate in such a group for forty years, there will be no alteration of your language skill whatsoever.

Nostalgic for virtue, I myself joined a club. I am a member of the Tokyo Subcommittee for Hopeless Causes, or TSHC. We at the TSHC are exuberantly in favor of anything which is obviously doomed.

Literature and ecology feature prominently, of course. Though we also have a soft spot for avant-garde music, third party candidates, and old-fashioned courtesy.

Just as the wise allow that every phenomenon must also contain its opposite and make allowance for it, the great city of Tokyo has, in its infinite magnanimity, reserved for us at the TSHC, the most ideal meeting space imaginable.

Our bright and airy room faces directly upon a roller coaster so that, during the warmer months, we are constantly serenaded by the terrified screams of youth as they plunge.

Naturally the competition to become a member of the TSHC is gruelingly intense. Eminent personalities, garlanded with worldly honors, plead for admission -- and are swiftly disqualified.

Because, if you want to become a member of the TSHC, it is not enough to be an ardent proponent of hopeless causes. One must be, oneself, a hopeless cause.

Few are so dedicated or so daring. One's near-total unprofitability must be documented. Success of any kind is prohibited. Even optimism is frowned upon. Romances are permitted, but they must end within 120 days in scenes of sprawling humiliation.

Books may be written, even published, but they may have no more than 6 readers for each year of effort. For example: if you would like to have 1000 readers, you must have worked 166 years, eight months and a week. At minimum.

Talent is allowable, even charm, but it has to be squelched in interdepartmental meetings of epic length. Those with excess talent are given the task of creating entrance exams.

Only one unmitigated satisfaction is permitted to members of the TSHC -- as it cannot be avoided. We are the hopeless causes, and we the subcommittee for hopeless causes, and cannot be blamed, therefore, for how tenderly we care for each other.

Guttersnipe In Print: New and Forthcoming

Stories and essays have appeared or are forthcoming in the following:

"The Extinction of Stories" will be in next year's edition of Gargoyle.

"Louis and His Porn Compassion" will be in the Winter edition of Mary: A Literary Quarterly.

"Big Help" will be in issue number 3 of Fractured West.

"Life in Tokyo" is in the latest edition of Flash.

"Radiance" appeared in Collective Fallout. An excerpt is available here.

My essay "Metta Meditation for Hot Male Action: How to Practice Love in Sleazy Bars" was published in RFD and has been very kindly been made available here at the website of Don Shewey.

I am deeply grateful to anyone who takes the time to read my work or contact me about it.

Bear.

Most of all I love those people who come up to me totally earnestly to ask, Are you a bear?

Ideally I would let out a deafening roar. Tear off one of their arms. But evidently I am insufficiently bear.

If honesty was really my first policy I'd say, "Hell, no. I'm trying to be convincingly human -- but it doesn't seem to be working, does it?"

Of course I am honored to be associated with the bears, and it seems to me far more illustrious to be mistaken for a bear than, say, a senator.

It's true that I like my fish best raw. And that I try to keep as much of my face covered in hair as possible. However it is utter presumption and self-inflation to presume to call myself a bear.

Though certainly I accept that it would be easier to love me, if one first imagined that magnificent animal.

David W. Orr, Down to the Wire: Confronting Climate Collapse

Oxford University Press, 2009

In 'Down to the Wire' David Orr asks, "Can we overcome the tendency to settle for half-truths?" This book is a distillation of information you (literally) cannot survive without and is an excellent introduction to what Orr calls "the many disciplines of applied hope."

I've read a number of the popular books on climate change (McKibben, Friedman, Brown) and this seems to me the most useful -- perhaps best read in conjunction with McKibben's EAARTH: Making A Life on a Tough New Planet.

David Orr is remarkably skillful at presenting information about vastly disparate topics in a readable, memorable way. This allows him to discuss the many fundamental ways that the government, the media, the constitution, the military, the economy and all of our lifestyles are going to have to change if we want a snowball's chance of surviving on an already greatly altered planet.

Like the great Joanna Macy, Orr explores our urgent need to learn how to think and perceive differently. As humans, we are engineered to see what's large and fast. We must change the ways we perceive, as well as what we value, if we are going to survive. After dismissing geoengineering quick fixes, he writes, "The job of building a decent world will come down to how well we understand ourselves and how much we can improve the 'still unlovely human mind'."

Orr insists that, contrary to popular belief, people can handle hearing the truth about our situation. We have no other option. Like a late-stage alcoholic, we must change the way we live or doom ourselves and our children. Many of the changes we feared have already occurred. "We are rapidly creating a different Earth, and one we are not going to like." Despite the nonsense that fills our government and airwaves, we have not a moment to waste.

Orr writes, "I know a great many smart people and many very good people but I know far fewer people who can handle hard truth gracefully without despairing." This book is a good first step toward becoming one of those strong and graceful people.

Hopelessly Devoted to You

Hopelessly Devoted to You

My essay, "Metta Meditation for Hot Male Action: how to practice love in sleazy bars", originally published in RFD, is now available here, on the blog of Don Shewey, writer and critic. I thought people who enjoyed that essay might also enjoying this one, about returning to Dharamsala after many years away. (And, yes, it is best if you read it while listening to Olivia Newton John.)

Hopelessly Devoted to You

for JYC

(Dharamsala, August 2009)

I used to be a spiritual person, but I’m not anymore. Years ago I joined all the religions, lived in India, bowed to everything. I suspect it was a kind of hysteria, frankly. Madness runs in my family – or, rather, it gallops, and it doesn’t miss anybody.

I used to be religious and India was all that mattered to me, especially Dharamsala, where the Dalai Lama lives. All I ever talked about was freakin’ Dharamsala. I would have driven you out of your mind, I swear.

But I got over that. I don’t believe in any of it anymore. It just melted away. I live in Tokyo. I study ecology and literature. I’m as spiritual as an old carpet in an adult movie theater. And that suits me fine. I’m not the sort of person you’d want your son around, if he was cute and impressionable and below the age of 70.

Yes, I’ve come back to India a few times, but I don’t join cults and I don’t go to Dharamsala. In fourteen years, I’ve never once been back, not until the day before yesterday.

Now that I am here, I understand why I avoided it for so long. Trying to maintain one’s atheism here is like trying to stay sober in a shot bar.

It’s beautiful, this spiritual stuff, especially the Tibetan variety. It’s a valuable cultural artifact and we ought to help them maintain it. It’s lovely, but it’s not true. I don’t just want consolations, you understand, I want something that’s factual and proven, like penicillin, or global warming.

For a really spectacular and lively take on Indian spirituality, you must read Wendy Doniger’s new book The Hindus: An Alternative History. She shows, for example, how the idea of karma arose parallel to the idea of money. Doesn’t that make sense? There are clear societal and practical reasons behind various religious beliefs – and they’re often about keeping folks in line. It’s not magic in other words. It didn’t just bloom in mid-air when Guru Rinpoche snapped his fingers.

I have explained this to myself, repeatedly, but in Dharamsala that has absolutely no effect. I am suffering profound lapses in non-belief. It appears that I am wired for bowing down. I am obviously severely devotion-prone.

Of course I assure myself I don’t believe any of this stuff. I’m just circumambulating for my health. Prostrating for upper body strength. Nonetheless, I fear my atheism could not be detected by even the most sensitive instruments. Last night, in an unguarded moment, I nearly bought offering bowls.

The fact is, despite considering myself fully cured, I am obviously suffering from an outbreak of Buddhism. All over my body, even inside my mouth. And don’t reassure yourself that it will stop there. Because in 48 hours I could be in Vrindaban chanting Hare Krishna. It has happened before. Far gone on a bhakti bender. Basically, if devotion were herpes, I would be in the hospital now.

What can I do? Would it help to visualize Christopher Hitchens (author, God Is Not Great) or pray five times a day in the direction of Richard Dawkins (author, The God Delusion)?

It’s not that I’ve suddenly become fond of theology, or find the idea of rebirth any more convincing. It’s just that – how can I say it? – the sacredness of the world becomes forcibly apparent and I want some way to participate in that, to respond to that. Just walking around with my ordinary mind I can see that the trees, the mountains and the faces around me are (oh damn) holy. It’s obvious, I mean, this sacredness. It’s downright pushy. Things glow.

Yes. You are right. I did stop taking my medication. But my drugs are all for anxiety and I haven’t felt afraid since I left Tokyo.

This morning I was sitting in the main temple in front of the image of Tara. I wasn’t praying. I was just tired after all the circumambulating and prostrating and needed to sit down. I may have been accidentally reciting the Tara mantra. I was given this mantra long ago when I was just eighteen. It’s not my fault if I still recite it sometimes, in spite of myself. Think of how hard it is to stop smoking. Modern medicine has not yet developed a patch for the goddess Tara.

When I was a religious person, I was smitten or, rather, afflicted, with both Buddhism and Hinduism. Tara is a goddess in both faiths. I visited her fierce Hindu aspect in West Bengal once, in Tarapith. A poor and ragged place. And nonetheless radiant. (This is precisely the kind of fuzzy thinking I abhor.)

I'm a Tara devotee. I mean, I was. But I wasn't a devotee in the sensible Western Buddhist way, wherein they remind themselves every minute that she's just a symbol of their own inner wisdom. No, I was a swooning, bhakti-ridden "Oh Mother of the Universe" type. It smacked of Hinduism. I got in trouble with the Buddhists for my Hindu sympathies. The Hindus didn't care. I mean, I was white and gay. I was already literally beyond the pale.

Anyway, a group of Indian tourists traipsed into the temple where I was sitting. Dharamsala is unmistakably on the middle-class Indian tourist circuit now. They all troop in chatting, stare at the monks, take pictures with their cell phones, their kids run all over the place, and then they troop out again. Buddhism, remember, is not an Indian thing anymore, it was wiped out here around the 12th century. I guess a lot of the Dalits became Buddhists in the Fifties but I’ve never actually seen Indian Buddhists myself.

Well, this group comes in -- the women are in gorgeous saris, really high class. They sashay past Shakyamuni Buddha and the wrathful deities, walk up to Tara and suddenly their hands are over their heads, the little boy too, and they’re hitting the floor, prostrating over and over. An old Tibetan woman is standing there too, beaming, saying “Tara Devi! Tara Devi!”

I’m sitting there in back and in my mind the words appear: this is how the Buddha returns to India. And I bawl. Dumb screwed-up foreigner in his torn gay bar camo pants and Moosehill Reunion t-shirt, tears rolling down his face.

It’s a shame I don’t cry fresh water. They could send me to Yemen to solve the problems caused by global warming. Lately I cry so much, I’d reverse desertification. Those Yemenites could all have green lawns. Big leafy trees with ferns growing on them.

If worse comes to worse, I’ll start hanging out with devotees. Western Buddhists. Have you met these people? Watch out for them. Yipes. I was one for years. I went to America’s only Buddhist college, Naropa, where I was permanently cured of usefulness. Of course, I’m sure some Western Buddhists are fine people. I’ve heard those Insight Vipassana people are actually quite sane, but in my experience, most of the time, you could hardly meet a nuttier, more uptight, disapproving crew. Dick Cheney does not take himself more seriously than the Western Buddhists I knew.

In the early nineties I lived above McLeod Ganj at Tushita Meditation Center. The Era of Angry Nuns, I call it. Anytime I saw a foreign nun, I took off in the other direction. Because those nuns were always in a rage and you did not want to get in their way.

As for the rest of us, we boasted about how early we got up and how many prostrations we did. There were people in long-term silent retreat whose entire spiritual practice consisted of stomping around and scowling at people.

People had umpteen high higher highest beyond high tantric initiations. And everyone appeared to be obsessed with some kind of special cheese that could only be bought in Delhi. Or a very special rice paper lampshade that was just perfect for their meditation hut.

In those days, all I talked about was wanting to become a monk. You see, I wanted more than anything to be one of them. I wanted to be good.

I see now how brave they were, those Western Buddhist monks and nuns. They didn’t have much in the way of role models or support. The minute anyone donned robes, the rest of us basically expected them to levitate and never fart.

We all tried so hard. And it didn’t seem we wound up any more loving or enlightened, just uptight. I remember how we disapproved of those who’d given up their vows, stopped being monks. “He DISROBED!” people would say in a voice hushed and aghast, as if the guy had been waggling his private parts in a schoolyard.

And I remember how those ‘fallen’ monks and nuns seemed to have a special grace about them, when they came around in regular clothes with their new boyfriend or girlfriend. It seemed they’d learned something very special – to pursue truth as themselves, and not as holy people.

Anyway, I’m ashamed to admit that, whenever I was pissed off while living in a religious community, I used to take a very quiet passive-aggressive form of revenge. You see, I got angry and self-important, when I saw the very most pucker-faced, disapproving devotees -- the ones who never ever spoke except to tell me what I was doing wrong – those same prickly devotees often turned into warm gushing piles of goo whenever a rinpoche was around.

When this happened I’d go off by myself and, in a low and evil voice, I’d sing Olivia Newton-John, “Hopelessly Devoted To You”. Remember that syrupy insipid song? I adore it.

But, now, there's nowhere to hide,
Since you pushed my love aside. . .
I'm not in my head,
Hopelessly devoted to you

I used to sing that song and take quiet revenge. And it serves me right now, if people sing it about me. Because me atheism has been severely compromised. Actually, I guess it was basically found Dead-On-Arrival in Dharamsala. It’s possible it was never particularly hardy.

I chant, I circumambulate, I bow down. I write. (Writing is the worst of all.) Because there is this radiance, this very pushy sacredness, and I want to participate in it. I want to respond to it.

I opened my door at the Green Hotel this morning and thought, “I get to be here all day.” (Presuming that I continue to successfully dodge the homicidal Maruti tourist vans.)

How wildly grateful I am to return to Dharamsala, to see it again with my own eyes while I am still alive.

What a pity I can’t cry fresh water.

My head is saying "Fool, forget him",
My heart is saying "Don't let go"
Hold on to the end, that's what I intend to do
I'm hopelessly devoted to yoo-oo-oo-ooo
Hopelessly devoted to you.

Holy Books of Guttersnipe Das: Robert Walser

Robert Walser, Speaking to the Rose: Writings 1912-1932

University of Nebraska, 2005

Readers new to Robert Walser should start with 'Selected Stories' or 'Masquerade' but by Walser's devotees -- and it appears that, even in English, our numbers are finally growing -- this book will be joyfully devoured.

'Speaking to the Rose' contains dozens of uncollected Walser stories, some hermetic, others as deceptively plain as children's stories. All are lovely -- and unsettling.

In his brief introduction, Christopher Middleton writes, "As author and individual, Walser articulates a large and general cast of mind, such as strictly 'personal' writings seldom do. He can be considered a voice of the unvanquished downtrodden (in early work, of the employee) of people never quite small enough to slip through power's mesh, of the powerless who do not squirm but resist."

There are stories here that seem to me absolutely essential Walser. These include "The Story of the Prodigal Son" ("One of the two sons was distinctly easygoing, whereas the other's conduct was egregiously sound.") or "The Cave Man" ("Card games and bowling were virtually unknown to him." "It is no exaggeration to say that he read little.")

Everywhere there are sentences to copy out and swoon over.

"Frequently life seemed to me like a cramped little house on the edge of everything, because it was so insignificant; yet I loved it and tried to be warm with everyone." (27)

"She had a cage full of lions and tigers and tubs full of snakes. What had he got? Countless sins on his conscience. But at least he wasn't dull. That decided it." (32)

"The monotony to which the lions are doomed serves the tamer just as an active and capable assistant might." (43) (This piece alone, "An Essay on Lion Taming", will make the reader glad to have the book.)

"Fool that I am, I supposed the countess to be so tall that her feather hat, which she might have borrowed from the thirteenth century, touched the edge of heaven, I mean its infinitely inviting breath, which is indefinable for us and will probably remain so." (45)

There are also clues toward the mystery of Robert Walser. The piece "My Endeavors seems as strangely straight-forward as anything he ever wrote. "With books as with people I consider complete understanding to be somewhat uninteresting, rather than productive." And: "I crossed over in the past from book-composition to prose-piece writing because epic connections had begun, as it were, to get on my nerves. My hand became a sort of refusenik."

Speaking to the Rose includes 14 translations from 'The Pencil Region' the hundreds of pieces Walser wrote in a minuscule code. (Anyone fascinated by these will want to treat themselves to Bernofsky's newly translated "Microscripts", which includes images of the actual manuscripts, written on scraps, book covers and envelopes.)

These are sly and marvellous stories -- I hope that Bernofsky or Middleton will not make us wait too long before they hand over another volume. I'd camp out on their doorstep if I thought it'd help. ("I'll leave when you've translated another story! Short is fine! It's cold out here!")

prayer

prayer: (n.) the means by which we ask God to touch what we ourselves would rather not.

Holy Books of Guttersnipe Das: William Dalrymple

William Dalrymple

Nine Lives: In Search of the Sacred in Modern India

Knopf: 2010

I never come home from India with less than 25 kilos of luggage. I throw away clothes to make room for books. Therefore, let me save you the backache: this is the book you must read.

Presenting itself as nine "non-fiction short stories", 9 Lives portrays expressions of faith that are often romanticized or sensationalized, such as that of a tantric priestess, or ritual prostitute, or Tibetan soldier monk. As an obsessive reader of books about India, I can assure you that much of what is found here cannot be found anywhere else -- the alternatives are often sensationalist nonsense, or else dry as dust.

For example, the first chapter, about a Jain nun: I dare you to find elsewhere a readable brief narrative of Jainism that explains the basic beliefs and shows how they can continue to compel those that believe.

I've spent time in three of the places Dalrymple explores here -- Sravanabelagola, Dharamsala and Tarapith -- and still I learned so much about each.

(I admit I have an awful fear that the chapter about Tarapith -- the very most beautiful in the book -- will provoke a tourist boom in dusty Tarapith. In which case, let me warn you, the road is one of the most treacherous in India. Potential devotees are strongly advised to take the train.)

Dalrymple writes in spirited opposition to the forces that threaten to homogenize spirituality in India. Almost all of what he profiles here is in danger of being blotted out.

Particularly praise-worthy is Dalrymple's ability to get entirely out of the way of his subject. We learn nothing whatsoever about Dalrymple's personal spiritual journey -- and I mean that as very high praise.

If you love this book, the obvious next step would be to read Wendy Doniger's spectacular "The Hindus: An Alternative History": a beautiful service to Hinduism and human civilization, for which she has been, of course, thunderously condemned by fundamentalist panjandrums.

May the spirituality of India always bloom as richly and strangely and powerfully as Dalrymple finds it blooming here.

Clay

One of those women who do everything. 50 hours a week, at the absolute minimum, all the way from light secretarial to heavy industrial. As well, of course, as every bit of the housekeeping, bookkeeping, menu planning.

She did all this, in accordance with the wishes of her husband, their agreed-upon goals and plans for the future. Maybe she may had her misgivings, but she just the same she worked and her sacrifices were matter-of-fact and without complaint. An independent self-reliant spirit did not preclude in her a deep belief in the centrality of love and marriage.

Imagine her surprise when, on a bright Sunday morning, after tugging back a curtain and thrusting open a window to air the bedroom, she turned to beg the pardon of her husband -- for disturbing him while still in bed -- and happened to notice that her husband of seventeen and a half years was now a large and crudely-shaped clay doll.

There was, she admitted later, a moment when she considered going right on cleaning, as if she hadn't noticed anything.

That morning however, something must have gotten into her, because she tore the comforter right off, and the sheet with it, and had herself a good look at him.

Sure enough. Her husband was a large clay doll. The size of a man and that was all. Certainly the shape wasn't meant to deceive anyone. He was the sort of man rude children might build beside the sea out of mud. (He was inexactly but extravagantly anatomically correct.)

This very capable woman, who could do and endure so much, at once became loudly hysterical. Who could have done such a thing? Who had kidnapped or enchanted him? Call the police! Call the media! She'd spare herself nothing. (She never had before; why start now?) She'd talk to the tabloids. She'd cry for morning television.

She would not rest, she promised herself, until her husband had been restored to her, the man just as she'd known him, for seventeen and a half years.

A few days later, resting between interviews and sympathetic crumble cakes, an atrocious thought occurred to her.

What if her husband had done this himself? Got tired of her and couldn't face her, and -- ashamed at what he'd done, after so many years of uninterrupted and strenuous devotion -- left a clay doll in his place and wandered off? It was the sort of thing she expected men to do, other men, why not her own?

She became enraged. That cowardly bastard! She'd track him down, sue him for all he was worth, destroy his name in public, beat him with her own fists.

Into grief she sank. When she met her husband she'd been young, pretty and optimistic. Years of work and endurance had aged her -- prepared the ground for bitterness that now came rushing in. Youth, good looks and optimism were long since passed. She had a few months of salary saved -- and a husband who was a crudely shaped clay doll.

It seemed to her that her whole life had been wasted. Now there was no way it might be salvaged or set right.

She drank, took pills, considered suicide. Her mind was saturated with vengeance, then self-pity, then utter hopelessness.

When word first got out that her husband was a crude clay doll, there'd been a wave of sympathy and horror. However, it was not long before she became something of a pariah. It was just too horrible for anyone to think about too long, like that couple who'd run over their two children in the driveway.

She imagined she would go on living, as that tragic couple had, only technically alive, hollowed out, a simulacrum, not so different from her husband, still in bed propped up on pillows, with his few yellow sprigs of yarn hair, a button nose and coins for eyes.

Months and months passed. She drank, stopped drinking, embraced bulimia, renounced it, smoked cigars.

On this particular evening she'd had three cigars, as well as a cheesecake and several beers. She cried and raged for hours, counted out a likely lethal quantity of pills, and placed them in little multicolored rows before her.

As she sobbed there on the floor, the very worst possible thought came toward her through the dark. Circled her twice. Landed on her shoulder and whispered.

Was it possible he'd been a clay doll all along?

She brushed the thought away.

It circled the room and came back.

She had to admit it explained a few things.

A lot of things actually.

She laughed. A short sharp laugh. It would have sounded like an evil laugh, actually, to folks that didn't understand.

She understood.

Quietly she began to pack a few things. She didn't need much. Almost everything in the house belonged to her husband. She'd arranged it all for him. So many comforts. So many costume changes.

On her way out the door, she paused. Returned to the bedroom.

She kissed him where his ear had been. So many cracks and holes in him now: it was a wonder his head didn't fall off. She patted his shoulder affectionately. Wiped the dirt off on her skirt.

Pulling back the bed sheet, she contemplated his large crude penis. She'd always liked it.

She reached out to it. Shrugged. Why not?

She broke it off and put it in her pack.

Then, like a mischievous cameraman, she instructed herself, "One more time, girl. From the top. Once more, with feeling."

She was ready to go.

Lull

It was four in the afternoon when he got out of bed. On a day the pain had won, but at least had been allowed to win so that now, when he finally got out of bed, everything was exceptionally quiet. No thoughts worth risking.

I won't try, he assured himself. Brushing his teeth was just brushing his teeth and not the first part of some big doomed revolution.

It was deliciously quiet. So mercifully quiet. He could just barely hear the demons scraping.

No thoughts please!

He was grateful to be hungry. He stood at the counter drinking milk from the carton and forking in a few sardines.

He decided to go out. Even though he knew that going out was almost certainly ill-advised.

But there was no reason not to go out, he assured himself. He would be very careful. He wouldn't think. Or he would think as little have possible. There would be no gratuitous thinking. He would have only the most essential thoughts. Those that were absolutely required.

Also, he would also be very careful to only see and hear only entirely neutral things, so as not to excite himself.

Nothing was a problem so long as he paid careful attention. Exactly enough attention. Not too little. And certainly not too much.

Out he went.

The hottest summer in history was over. More than 100 people had died, even here in privileged Tokyo. Now it was over. Next summer would be worse. Presumably.

He was the sort of person who was careful to always keep one eye on doom. So that, when it did finally show up, no one would be able to say that he was surprised.

Today, however, was cool. And it was astonishing to see how quickly life had recovered in the little pots the lined the edge of the street, which had looked entirely dead just a few days before. Already the herbs and the impatiens had straightened up and turned green, pushed out a new set of leaves. Without so much as a nod toward the smashed burned season, which had so nearly killed them.

In five minutes he arrived at the station where the train was just about to arrive, as it was always about to arrive, here in Tokyo, the absolute convenience, efficiency and anonymity of which combined to create an absolute gentleness, like choosing to die by starving oneself to death, as Jain monks do, ceasing to eat rice, then fruit, then milk. Finally even cutting out the water.

No thoughts please!

As the train entered the station he watched carefully. Whenever possible he avoided areas where people seemed likely to disturb him, whether by being homeless, or young, or mentally unstable, or attractive. Men who smelled bad were almost as much of a problem as men smelled good.

Tokyo was an ideal city -- 97% of people acted as though their participation in life was purely obligatory. Public displays of enthusiasm were positively frowned-upon. Even vital signs were expected to be kept to a minimum.

This train car, the third, seemed all right: a few schoolchildren, a grandmother, and businessmen. All of whom were either asleep or transfixed by handheld hypnotic device. If he'd been bare ass naked it would only have been noticed later, by whomever was paid to watch the security cameras.

He stood by the door, fully clothed, selecting his thoughts with care.

Hopelessness carries with it an element of cool. Wasn't it so? A little breeze. The mania had gone, with its accompanying binge.

So quiet.

Self-lacerating regret, a sense of waste -- what could be more familiar? How else could he ever feel so entirely at home?

And it was a relief to see the world, where people could be counted upon to wear pants and ignore him. There's no way to thank these people. It simply isn't done. People wouldn't understand. They might even be alarmed.

For example: the little girl with pigtails who stood opposite him, accompanied so delicately by her nervous father, off to work the late shift in his suit and tie.

The little boys with square backpacks and safari hats who, as far as he knew, had never once asked their elders, "Why does it make you feel so much better, if I spend my childhood commuting to school dressed like a World War One soldier?"

Or this this old woman, her hair the color of plums -- she could have made space for him to sit down -- and she wouldn't, not in a hundred million years. "Thinking of attacking me, dubious foreigner? Well, I'll have you know that I am carrying no more than 2000 yen, these pearls are fake and I am not above using brute force and a hair pin to defend myself."

He decided he'd go to gentlest part of town. Just to have a walk, a coffee. He would need to transfer trains. But he was doing fine. Better than usual.

Anyone who saw me now, he told himself proudly, would assume I am more or less functional.

He felt so good he even bounded up the stairs to catch the next train, darting in the doors just as they closed. Usually this train was packed; often he was pressed against the only person in the Metro area eating something cheese-flavored out of crinkly bag. Of course. Because demons were out to get him.

This time however, the train was quiet. Evidently the universe was experiencing one of its rare cooperative moods. As soon as the doors open he dashed for the one open seat. Success.

Only when he paused to catch his breath -- and looked across the aisle -- did he realize his horrible mistake.

He ducked his head down. Why hadn't he checked first, as he always checked before sitting down? Why had he put himself recklessly in the path of danger?

His number one fear was now upon him. And he couldn't jump up now. That would look odd -- if he decided now to stand beside the door, change cars. That would look peculiar, or maybe even slightly crazy.

Now he must sit and try to act normal. Try to act normal was the motto of his life. He tried to live up to it, but he was always failing.

He tried to remember his mantra -- but, in the middle, was it hrim or was it hring? Counting to ten in a foreign language was also out of the question. Terror was upon him.

Across the aisle from him sat a well-dressed European man, remarkably handsome, the sort that exudes success. With features so prominent you can't help but notice how excellent they all are: his eyes ears nose mouth all special order from wherever it is first-rate people are manufactured.

And his clothes. His clothes were stunning. What were these things called? Did rich people still call it a trench coat or was that now a vulgar term?

Looking down he could see the man's dark pants, which were ordinary enough. Except they were not ordinary at all. They were the kind of tip-top luxury pants made to look ordinary, but obviously not ordinary, handmade in Italy probably, for hundreds or even thousands of dollars.

As for the shoes -- the shoes did not bear thinking about. If he stepped on the toe of one those shoes he's had to make payments for the rest of his life. Like student loans.

You could tell the man was high-class European because he looked as though the world was his personal possession, but also he disdained it somewhat. Clearly it was not quite up to snuff. At any moment he might make up his mind and send it back. Get me another world, please. A fresh one. And another chardonnay.

In this world, meanwhile, Hell was well underway. Because he knew he shouldn't look. And could not help looking. He just wanted to know -- what was it exactly that made the man so powerful, so luminous, so at home in the world?

He thought, if I look one more time I will understand. But then he looked. And cowered. And craved to look again.

This man looked like every moment of his life he was about to give a short dismissive laugh and shake his head.

He tried to remind himself that he was also male and white and neither young nor old. Why did he always feel like saying technically white? Because obviously he was not the same tip-top high gloss ruling class white of this powerful and beautiful stranger.

He looked again. Actually the man was going bald. But it wasn't like aging or decaying bald. As though he'd decided to go bald, so as to better display his perfect head.

The man shifted in his seat. (He worried: Is it my fault? Am I looking too much? Am I already wildly out of control, or am I still passing for subtle?)

Doubtless the man needed to shift in his seat because of his large penis. One more reason why his pants had to be tailor-made. ("Giovanni, a little extra space down there." "Yes, sir, I remember.")

Actually the man did not think his penis was large. In his hometown this was just a normal penis. In the pharmacy of his hometown they sold eight varieties of magnum condoms with just one "small" size option. For tourists.

He wanted to stare. He wanted not to stare. He wanted to learn how not to stare. He wanted to stare, to understand. He wanted to know how it was done.

He knew there was nothing he could offer this man that would not be disdained. Even adoration. Especially that.

A short dismissive laugh and a shake of the head. Imagine being able to do that. To answer the world that way. What glory! What success!

He didn't want to be dismissed. He didn't want to be humiliated. Again, again. He didn't want anyone to see how hungry he was, how desperately hungry, in this city as gentle as starving to death.

He screwed his eyes shut and ducked down his head. Listened to the recorded voice call out the stops.

When he opened his eyes the man was gone.

Saved!

Today at least he hadn't been dismissed or ridiculed. Of course, he had been dismissed and ridiculed. He was sure of it. But at least -- he hadn't needed to actually see it. He was already multiply rejected: it was no longer necessary to attend each rejection personally.

How grateful he was for the smoothness of the train, for the ordinary faces which surrounded him on every side. They were all dull and, it seemed to him, that they were all dull as a favor to him, so that he could simply admire them, without feeling too self-conscious. So that his sanity might continue just a little tiny bit longer.

That day he made it all the way to the cafe. And it was not such a great sin that he stammered repeatedly while attempting to order his coffee. Coffee shop attendants were accustomed to nervous people. Dispensing nervousness was their profession.

The next time he was granted an opportunity, he could be counted upon to pulverize it. Today, again, there was significant pain. Much of it self-generated, some causeless.

He felt so tender toward the world. Even though he did not feel at home. So excruciatingly tender.

Even at this cheap cafe, the woman was polishing the brass handle of the door.

33 Memories of My Mother

My mother died when I was seven.

All the years since I have repeated that sentence, again and again, whenever mothers were mentioned, until I began to fear that my mother had been reduced to those words alone—summarized, literally, to death.

I have very few memories of my mother. Fragments only, a few images, a few words. I am envious of my brothers, who are older and remember much more. Still, I cling to these fragments, my only connection to my mother as I knew her. Here may be found, I hope, a trace of her, a means of entry to a woman reduced too often to her exit, death from diabetes-related complications at age 45.

I have so few memories of my mother that I can actually count them. There are thirty-three, and that includes the smallest, most hesitant wisp of memory. I have no clue as to their accuracy.

Here is every single memory I have of my mother. I will not present them in order of time, which would give too much emphasis to her sickness and decline. Of that there has been enough already.

1. I remember I thought all the silverware must have fallen on the floor at once. That was the sound. When my mother came to tuck me into bed I asked her and she said, Yes, that’s what it was, the silverware falling. When I got up the next morning I saw that all the glass in the door had been smashed and I knew that my father must have been angry again.

2. I remember her lifting me out of the crib into her arms.

3. I remember the family on a road trip in the big green car. I decided to count each segment of dotted line as it passed beneath us. My mother said, “Just what we need, a navigator!” This is her only sentence that I believe I have remembered in her own exact words. I studied the sentence because I didn’t know if she was happy or angry or making fun of me. “Just what we need, a navigator!”

4. I remember her arm across my chest as our green car swerved from the road and smashed into a fence.

5. I remember looking at her in the driver’s seat as we drove past the mall. She wouldn’t look at me. I’d been promised that if I was good at the doctor I’d get a present. I hadn’t been good. I wasn’t getting anything.

6. I remember the second time I woke her up she was angry.

7. I remember she came to pick me up from kindergarten and we walked home together through the woods. For Mother’s Day all the kids had made wishing wells out of jars and popsicle sticks and planted them with Swedish ivy. When I got home I saw that the Ivy had fallen out. I was about to get upset but she cut a sprig from the Swedish Ivy in the laundry room window and placed it in the pot.

8. I remember sitting at the table with my father and mother. I asked my father why two men couldn’t get married. My mother said it was time for dinner.

9. I remember her breaking a plain donut and dipping it in sugar.

10. I remember her, when she was ill, beneath the green velveteen comforter. She told me I shouldn’t be so fearful, that I ought to learn to ride a bicycle and swim. She said she was sorry she had never been a better swimmer.

11. I remember I wanted my mother to be waiting for me, sitting on the stoop outside, when the bus brought me home in the afternoon. Other mothers waited, but my mother was always busy in the house. I asked her to do this. She looked at me like I was insane.

12. I remember how angry she was when I left crayons in my pockets and ruined her best denim skirt. I remember sitting on the floor in the laundry room, utterly repentant, picking at the wax in the skirt until she told me to give it up.

13. I remember her telling me what a good kid I was for never terrifying her. Unlike my brother who drank shellac thinking it was chocolate milk. I loved that story.

14. I remember her insisting that she loved dandelions when I picked them.

15. I remember her telling me that eating snot was like eating out of the toilet.

16. I remember bringing her a spider in a green Tupperware bowl. She screamed, Get it out of here! In the commotion the spider landed on my leg and I squashed it.

17. I remember the first day I knew she was ill. She was sitting at the kitchen table wearing a bathrobe in the middle of the afternoon eating Ritz crackers in a bowl with milk and black pepper.

18. I remember her washing my hair with yellow baby shampoo in the steel sink.

19. I remember her standing beside the Christmas tree but only faintly, as if faded beside all those little lights.

20. I remember the way her breast felt, pressed against me, as she held me in the green vinyl recliner.

21. I remember that when she was sick she lay in bed and drank grape soda. She said she liked the taste even though the smell was awful. (Or was it the other way around?)

22. I remember her telling me to pick up my feet.

23. I remember her handing me a glass of milk in a white ceramic cup.

24. I remember the only time I was allowed to see her in the hospital. My father wheeled her out. She was very pale. Bottles filled with colored liquid hung from her chair. She told me she would be home soon. The floor had blue and white tiles. (In my mind, I’m shouting at this seven-year-old, ‘Look at her! Look at her!’. But all I can remember is that she was very pale.)

25. I remember coming home from school with my yellow raincoat draped over my arm, trying to hide the fact that I’d forgotten my lunch box. As soon as my Mother saw me she said, “Where’s your lunch box?”

26. I remember her telling me that the garbage bag under the Christmas tree was for me. I thought I’d been bad and now I was getting trash for Christmas. Inside the bag was an enormous stuffed bear. Not a teddy bear but a fierce-looking bear with coarse hair. She said something like, “There. Now you’ve got your real bear.”

27. I remember driving past the place where the mall was being built. I called it The Big Mess. She laughed, and whenever she mentioned the mall after that, she called it The Big Mess.

28. I remember getting a shot into my big toe when one of my toenails got ingrown. After it was over she told me that she thought I’d handled it better that she had. Then she bought me a Snoopy book.

29. I remember her sitting at the kitchen table in her bathrobe. It was her last birthday. I gave her a timer.

30. I remember I learned to sing ‘Figaro’ from watching Sesame Street. I barreled into the kitchen shouting, ‘Figaro, Figaro, Fi-ga-RO!’ She laughed and told me I was wonderful and that I should go practice some more—out on the porch. When my father came home she told me to show him what I’d learned that day.

31. I remember watching her through the glass door. My father was standing over her, and she was sitting in the green chair crying. I’d gotten in trouble at school that day and I thought she was crying because of me.

32. I remember coming home from school on the last day of first grade. I was eating an orange popsicle as I stepped off the bus. The door to the house opened and my relatives, who had arrived that day, poured out to greet me, a parade of family, my aunts and cousins, walking across the yard to me with my mother, smiling, in the lead.

This is the happiest memory of my life.

33. I remember my mother bent to kiss me good night and I bit her. She pulled away and walked out of my bedroom without a word. I got out of bed and pushed open the bathroom door. She was sitting on the toilet. Aren’t you going to kiss me goodnight, I asked. Not if you bite me, she said. I said, Dad bit me first. That’s no excuse, she said. I said I was sorry. She told me to go back to bed; she’d be there in a minute. (I don’t remember the kiss.)

The Evangeranium and the Ultimate Meaning of the Universe

WARNING: This story contains missionaries, geraniums and a butt plug. All of which are things that offend some people. In fact, there may be no one who approves of all three of these things. I myself have serious misgivings about all three. Therefore I have written a story with no audience whatsoever. Even those who accept butt plugs and tolerate missionaries (despite some understandable squeamishness) draw the line at geraniums. However it cannot be helped. It cannot be helped that this story contains missionaries, geraniums and a butt plug, just as it cannot be helped that this story isn’t very good, and isn’t even really a proper story at all. However there is simply no point in criticizing these stories until an alternate means of sustaining this person’s life can be devised and implemented. To criticize too harshly is thus inhumane, like coming upon a poor man with nothing to eat but a can of beans and saying to that man, “Your beans suck.” It is inhumane -- and also it is tacky.

Having thus warned the unsuspecting, and prepared ourselves, our defenses fully mobilized, let us continue to the story which, again, is titled:

The Evangeranium and the Ultimate Meaning of the Universe

The day can be decoded. Like a puzzle with tiles. As if objects were consonants and moments were vowels. The meaning is about to be revealed. (That's the delusion to which I subscribe.) The waves on the shore are about to form letters, along with the plumes of monoxide from buses and blackened gum on the sidewalks.

It's not accidental that the poinsettia has lasted this long, even if it has lost most of its leaves. (The poinsettia does not appear again. It is replaced by a geranium. Almost never does something stay around long enough to figure out what it means.)

The real miracle is about to occur (beside which resurrection is such small bananas) and we will discover we haven't been wasting out time, after all.

For once, instead of the usual bumbling hapless life, we discover that we have arrived at exactly the right moment, wearing the perfect outfit, and holding splendid tools.

I was doing it right all along, announces the miracle. Even when I was doing it entirely wrong.

I suspect that this is a psychological mirage created by coffee. Overwhelming quantities of coffee.

Nonetheless I've chosen to devote my life to it.

I stood in the entryway with my beloved, thanking him effusively for his gift: a butt plug. A translucent fluorescent green latex butt plug. Now: we just needed to figure out where to store it. Between applications, I mean.

Admittedly I am not so enthusiastic about butt plugs. About butt plugs I am decidedly lukewarm. Assholes are something I admire in other people.

Still, it was a gift. And it's the thought that plugs. And I admired this man so much -- even a butt plug from him had a certain luminosity. Added to its already brilliant fluorescent green.

We were noisily and hilariously discussing storage options (why not wear it on a chain around my neck?) when there was a knock on the door, right next to my head.

We hadn't heard anyone come up the stairs. My beloved shoved the butt plug in his pocket. Which meant he now had two truly promising-looking bulges. I opened the door.

It was the missionaries from downstairs. Eight of them at least. They were in two neat rows, as if about to sing.

They were holding a purple geranium.

"We wanted to say we're sorry."

"Gosh, that's a pretty flower."

We'd put our futon out to air and one of the missionary new recruits had accidentally taken it, slept on it. For this sin they were now atoning. With a purple geranium.

I thanked them as much as I could. I tried not to grin or to breathe.

We closed the door and waited for the sound of Christian footsteps in retreat. I held the geranium. He took the butt plug out of his pocket.

We gave way to hysteria.

Had the missionaries heard everything about the butt plug? Butt plugs, about which the Apostle Paul is mercifully silent.

Did this mean they would no longer come to my door with cookies in a plastic bag or a CD of praise music, smiling so tightly I always thought that if I touched them even slightly, applied even just a single queer fingertip to an evangelical missionary shoulder, they would scream and not stop screaming for an extremely long time.

I tried to get along with the evangelical missionaries. (No, really, I did.) I was a very quiet and respectable neighbor, except for the howling hysterical orgasms.

Already I was at work. Looking from the green fluorescent butt plug to the purple geranium and back to the butt plug again. Trying to comprehend the meaning. The two gifts which had arrived so nearly simultaneously. Fluorescent green butt plug. Purple geranium. I puzzled. And failed. As ever. And yet: it was so obviously a language.

Unfortunately it didn't occur to me at the time, but now it seems obvious that the best place to hide the butt plug, carefully wrapped, would have been deep, deep in the potted soil of the evangelical purple geranium. Or, as it came henceforth to be known, the evangeranium.

The universe continues to toss me these clues. And I continue to miss them. I never know what's going on until it's much too late. Actually, usually I never figure out what's going on at all. But, just you wait. Sooner or later: I am going to catch a clue.

I failed. I always failed. And I was always optimistic. Always more of a failure. Always more optimistic. Because I now possessed a purple geranium. And a fluorescent green butt plug. And was one step closer to deciphering the ultimate meaning of the universe.

The Bed

The bed was too narrow. They knew it was too narrow the first night they slept in it, or tried to sleep, and woke up cramped, in a bad mood from the very first moment of the day, like tourists stumbling off a bad bus into a bright city, pretty well pissed-off already.

The bed had come with the apartment. The bed had belonged to the previous tenant, who'd been an acquaintance of theirs, a rich man who believed he was righteous, who filled notebooks with personal messages from Jesus. The rich man fell deeply and passionately in love with younger poorer men on the other side of the planet, whom he courted with bank transfers.

When the younger poorer men failed to return his love -- or, rather, when they realized his love had nothing to do with them whatsoever -- the rich man wanted his money back. Meticulously, he destroyed their lives. He had a staff of lawyers for this, suing one ex-boyfriend after another.

This was his bed. It was already a gay bed, which was good. And cursed, which was unfortunate.

They knew from the beginning that the bed was never going to work. As well as being narrow it was somehow warped: one side sloped down, there was a lump in the middle. Still, they continued to sleep in the bed, or try to sleep. Despite the fact that one of them was always uncomfortable, and sometimes both.

They had little arguments in the middle of the night. Could you just move a little? I'm already off the edge! Yeah, and I'm smashed against the wall! The bed was so cramped it seemed a third man must be in bed with them. A fourth, even.

Sometimes in the morning they gazed at the bed in wonderment, wondering how an ordinary bed could be so remarkably uncomfortable. Still, they went on sleeping in the bed. They hated the bed. The bed stayed.

Why did the bed stay if they hated the bed? The bed had no doubt been expensive -- the rich man had had expensive tastes. A bigger bed would make the room look cramped and the closets hard to get to -- though presumably it would have been more pleasant to be cramped for a moment while choosing a shirt, rather than cramped all night.

Would a few inches of bed really make so much difference? Both men suspected the other would never be satisfied. Each man was convinced that he himself was naturally easygoing and would be more so, if only he could get a halfway decent night of sleep.

The number one reason they did not get a new bed was because they were sure that they would not be staying long. Because what they really wanted was to get a better apartment. One that wasn't garlanded on all sides by electrical wires and girded by evangelical missionaries.

Not just another apartment, but another city, a city with color. With people who had not entirely forgotten how to smile. With music coming out of windows and places to eat outside.

They knew that they would not be staying long. So there was no reason to spend money and go to a lot of trouble just for a bed in a cramped apartment in a gray city they planned soon to be leaving.

They went on sleeping in the bed. They admitted now they wished they'd tossed out the bed the first night, when it was obvious the bed was narrow, cursed and cramped. They wished they'd gone to the trouble.

In this city it cost a lot of money even to have your bed taken away, even this bed, which had been expensive and could probably be sold to someone who'd never suspect why he'd become so enduringly unhappy. Of course they had no idea, then, they that they would stay so long in this city, in this apartment, in this bed. If only they had known! But now of course, there was no point -- because they knew that they would not be staying long.

One or the other might sometimes wonder if it might have made a difference, somehow, if they'd gone ahead and gotten a better, wider bed. Certainly a bed like theirs did nothing to inspire tenderness or lust, not anymore than a pair or pants that don't fit. The bed may have significantly contributed to the crankiness they very often felt, toward this city, and toward each other.

But maybe it would not have mattered. Another bed probably would not have been much more comfortable. As mentioned previously, they both suspected the other would never be satisfied. It might have been, actually, that things were not working out so well between them. And then one or the other would think: there is no reason to change the bed. He may not be staying long.

The bed would be fine for one person -- wouldn't it? The rich man had nearly always slept in it alone. He only fell in love with men who were faraway so that he might, without interruption, superimpose his own romantic vision upon them. The rich man slept alone, lullabied by dreams of romantic love, romantic lawsuits.

Yet -- hadn't the man complained frequently of not sleeping well? In fact he'd been a perpetual insomniac. And the two men had always assumed it was because he was mad with love or vengeance, busy filling notebooks with personal messages from Jesus.

But maybe he only did these mad things because he could not sleep? Perhaps he was not -- essentially demonic, as they had always assumed. Or at least -- not possessed by any other demon than insomnia. One of the most ordinary of demons, one of the greatest. No one on Earth was ever further from madness than not sleeping two nights in a row.

It now seemed to them both that the bed was really the problem. They agreed about this. And nowadays there were not so many things about which they agreed. The bed was a problem, it was a really a problem and a problem they ought to do something about. Or ought to have done. But then they said, "We are not staying long" and they went on sleeping in the bed. Trying to sleep in the bed.

Not Knowing

Every day she can get away with it, she practices not knowing. For ninety minutes, before the mind is too cluttered, she attempts to unknow. She tries to tolerate un-ameliorated cluelessness. To sit not knowing, without alcohol or sweets, without fantasies or reassurances. To sit, not knowing, in a chair beside the laundry drying area, garlanded on both sides by electrical wire. To sit enumerating things to be done -- and not do them. Not only letters to write but bills unpaid, vegetables rotting in the kitchen, mushrooms growing behind the toilet and nonetheless she's not doing anything, nothing but not knowing, attempting to tolerate not knowing. Sitting, doing knowing nothing as visitors rush through toward her through the air, most of them suggesting that, by the age she is now, she ought to know. Frequently it's quite remarkably horrible. To not know, to admit she does not know. Without even a glass a wine. Still, she sits each day and practices not knowing. Nothing but blank cards. At most a candle. Prayer beads. Pen. A lukewarm cup of coffee, half-strength.

David Shields, Reality Hunger: A Manifesto

Knopf, 2010.

A lot of artists and writers are going to be very grateful for this book. Not because they need to be told what they are doing. They know what they are doing. Nonetheless, David Shields has done an excellent service in writing this book, and writers may wish to buy a small stack to keep beside the door so that, instead of having to explain themselves and their work for the umpteenth time, they can simply say, "David Shields will explain it all to you. Go buy yourself a coffee. Have a lovely read. I have work to do."

Meanwhile it is reassuring -- for all of us working with collage, with fragments, with memoir, all of us making mincemeat of genre -- it is good to know that we are part of a wave, a trend -- and that this is where a lot of the most interesting work is being done. I predict several hundred people are going to be saved from going out of their minds by this book.

I am grateful for the attention Shields gives to some of my favorite writers -- Eduardo Galeano, Richard Brautigan, David Markson, Lydia Davis -- but the greatest benefit I got was a whole new reading list, writers I'd never heard of before, despite a life of fairly obsessive reading -- Richard Stern, Renata Adler, Sven Lindqvist, Cyril Connolly.

Artists and writers will want to read this. And they'll want other people to read it. So they can get some work done.

First We Read, Then We Write: Emerson on the Creative Process

Robert D. Richardson

University of Iowa Press, 2009.

Instructions: Buy this book -- but don't read it. Not immediately. Keep it on hand. Buy a nice bottle of wine. Nothing exorbitant, but better than you'd ordinarily buy for yourself. Save both book and wine for a solitary despairing evening with bad weather. An evening on which you are pretty much certain that you are a lost cause. Read book with wine, enough to induce hope or facilitate grieving, but not so much that you are unable to take notes. As this is a slightly expensive book, and only long enough for one sitting -- and because it is excellent and powerful medicine -- you should save it for when you most need it. Then, if you like, you can give the book as a gift when visiting a particularly important friend -- in lieu of the wine, which you drank.

Everything Robert D. Richardson writes is remarkable -- elegant and life-giving. He has a unique ability to turn gigantic feats of research into pure inspiration. On the way to learning about Emerson, as if by accident, I learn also how to live. Richardson's biographies of Thoreau, Emerson and James are all extraordinary -- and I hope very much that there is more to come.

THE MISSING CHAMBER.

New Fables

I once heard a story about a traveler who, because of a difference of only one inch in the gait of his left and right legs, was condemned to trace endless circles in the desert.

-- Edogawa Rampo

Ghost.

I am a naked ghost who lives in the bathtub. The good news is men climb in with me. Still, I worry I’ll be crushed. (Can ghosts be squashed?)

Certain men can see or kiss me. Never both.

For this particular party I want out of the bathtub. Obviously I need to get dressed.

At first only my clothes are visible. By concentrating I obtain the pointy head of a hysterical woman.

Still, I have no visible hands. Digging for gloves, I try to imagine my way to the head of a man.

As for my penis, it’s a work-in-progress. Don’t inspect it yet, it isn’t ready.

All my training is in being a ghost.

I can never get all my parts straight at once.

Something is always invisible.

Inconvenienced.

Frida Kahlo did not accept her crippled leg and kept it hidden beneath her flowery exotic skirts. “Every year I hate it more,” she said, matter-of-fact and without complaint. I love her for that.

In public I keep peace with my withered leg, its mangled hoof. To inquiries I’ve learned to say, “It’s a birth defect,” in the sunniest possible tone, as if I’d just spotted, in the distance, a bluebird or a cardinal.

Dutifully I strap the foot into its plastic brace, like an aged relative who merits attention even though he can do almost nothing. When I’m alone it’s different—I throw a blanket over it.

Still, it seems shameful to be bothered with it, here on the beach at Sihanoukville, where the mine victims crawl, tourist to tourist, across the beach and the rule seems to be that you can't be a beggar unless you’re missing at least two limbs.

I had a lover once who was paraplegic. A Vietnam vet paralyzed below (not at) the waist. He always insisted he was not crippled. Not disabled either, or handicapped. “Some of my friends are quads. That is crippled,” he insisted. “I am only inconvenienced.”

His arms were extraordinarily strong, especially at night, when, returned in dreams to Vietnam, he grappled in combat and, howling in his sleep, hurled me from the bed.

Self-Love

Ear surgery is a simple process, accomplished in several stages. First, the seduction: that you look good already and soon will look even better. Self-satisfaction loads the body with numbness. Meanwhile the surgeon circles the chair, massaging the scalp, murmuring endearments.

The ear is bitten off all at once.

I, too, wished to be better looking. The surgeon encircles me – but I’m not numb enough and, anyway, I’ve changed my mind. I’m going to love myself just as I am.

Too late. She either doesn’t hear my protests or ignores me. One swipe of her razorish teeth. She holds my severed ear up to the mirror.

Now it’s a simple process to glue the ear flat to the side of the head. Easy! No more protruding ear!

Young Men with Beards

I like to watch young men with beards. Really I ought to control myself. OK, at least try. I don’t want to make anyone uncomfortable. I already make myself uncomfortable enough.

I am also a man with a beard. Somehow it seems to me, that if I watch men with beards, I could understand myself better. Not that it has worked thus far. (How many years have I been staring now?)

A full beard does serve to animalize the face. It echoes back to our life in the trees. Also there is something pompous about beards. I myself am not required to conform. The rules do not apply to me. Especially young men with beards, with skinny bodies and fuzzy heads, like dandelions, a little bit silly and entirely charming.

I was once a young man with a beard. Never once did I allot myself a moment of approval or tenderness.

I would like to make up for it now, by lapping at the bearded young men, by assuring them that they are ridiculous, but also entirely captivating.

Oh to stroke the beards of young men until self-love wells up in them! Until I, too, begin to weep.

Mad Turk

Actually I’m not exactly related to my family. For example, my brothers. We have the same mother, of course. Also the father is the same. However, in my case, a third person is implicated. A mad Turk, by the looks of it.

I am not sure of the mechanics when three people decide to make a baby. But you can be sure that sodomy was involved.

As such, it is to be expected that I occupy a somewhat lower position within the family. My father is a ruler. My brothers are rulers, too.

All right, so it’s only a pumpkin patch, a series of pumpkin patches – but you wouldn’t believe what suburban commuters will pay for a squash nowadays!

All this mad Turk business is a little embarrassing for my family. But mostly it is overwhelmingly convenient. It is only inconvenient for me.

Admittedly I have no idea what I’d do with myself, if I suddenly turned out to matter.

One brother is sensible and allies himself to power. The other brother is famous for being tender-hearted and gentle.

It’s true that he only threatens to kill people on approximately half of the evenings. Arabs, Democrats, my father.

As I am of Turkish descent, this bothers me somewhat, but I try not to take it personally.

What I think is that three people really ought to be careful, when they decide to make a baby!

It is to be expected that my father should have mixed feelings about me. After all, that mad Turk sodomized my mother. (Or did the mad Turk sodomize my father?)

Nonetheless, my father sometimes calls me. He has certain favorite subjects. His number one favorite subject is why respect is more important to him than love.

(It is many years now since my mother escaped, screaming obscenities and waving a gun. Because it was the sensible thing to do.)

It is the rarity of a thing which makes it desirable. Love is available -- respect nearly impossible. As is well known, love is often unrequited. Respect, however, must be mutual.

From time to time I appear at the family table, doing my best to appear subservient, amenable and correct. Or so I think. Then I overhear one brother say to the other, “Look at him, acting like he’s so special – just because of some mad Turk!”

The Missing Chamber

As the guidebooks say, the guesthouse is a destination in itself.

There are rooms with fan or aircon, with hammocks, with river views. There is a spectacular garden where everything flourishes. There’s a first-rate restaurant, an elegant bar afloat on the river. Wifi is available but there’s little chance to use it, as one is constantly making friends. The guesthouse is family-run. The mother is resplendent, teaches college, carries plates and raises sons. The handsome father is a first-rate storyteller. One sturdy son demands his allowance before collapsing into laughter.

Then there is a more a delicate son. He sometimes turns blue. His heart has only three chambers. His prognosis is uncertain; his medicine comes smuggled in a diplomatic bag. His father isn’t sure if he should go to college or not. It’s strenuous -- the father thinks the boy should do exactly as he likes, be a painter or a poet. No one knows how much time he’s got. It could be anytime, might be today or might not.

It is a destination in itself. Most remarkable of all is how the entire place is run and maintained, not only with order but also with such extravagant generosity and sweetness, and all by one little boy, using only just the missing chamber of his heart.