Lesson SIX : Marlin

from AN ADVANCED COURSE IN BEING LOST

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-- this bag of Doritos

I dreamt I was instructing: here are rituals around the world, these are the necessary tools.  Most required extensive supplies: salt and eagle feathers, turmeric and candles, chalk dust and sage, marigolds and sandalwood, blood and mushrooms, liquor and skulls.  Then I explained that, for the rituals of my people, you needed only one thing: sugar.  Granulated crystallized plain white sugar.  That’s all you ever needed, just pile after pile of white sugar.  Table sugar.  It’s so convenient! I told the class, even as I thought to myself, It’s really kind of sad.
     The angel ordered an entire marlin, with fries, rice, salad, salsa mexicana, tortillas -- and while waiting we went for a swim, still holding our beers.  When the angel’s bottle was empty he dunked it, let it fill with seawater, and explained that, perdon, por favor, if I was going to meet his family then I had to be at least slightly Catholic.  Inside myself I looked around and was astonished to discover I’d never been Catholic.  I’d been so many things!  I revered Teresa, Julian, Hildegard -- did that count?  No, I had to be baptized.  He taught me to cross myself.  (The short version; the long was beyond me.)  The angel held his Corona above my head and slowly poured it over me, blessed me in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, filled out all the necessary invisible paperwork in triplicate and mailed it in, and announced that I was now Catholic, very slightly.  The angel’s furry mouth met mine.  The marlin had arrived.  Baptism lunch! said the angel and led me from the waves to the table.

Lesson TEN : Broken

from AN ADVANCED COURSE IN BEING LOST

I’m so nervous about my life the little of it I can get ahold of

-- Frank O’Hara

Johnny, saying, I wish I had more to go on is not a legitimate complaint.  Rather, it is an expression of the human condition, akin to saying, the body is 60% water.
      I went out, several night ago, to a celebration party.  It was not enjoyable.  The party was not a success.  Turns out America does not want to be America any more.  It doesn’t even want to pretend to be America.  (Will a name change be forthcoming?)  Everything that matters to me is due now to be cancelled -- and I am only told, again and again, that the key to survival is to resume fixation upon one’s own petty concerns as soon as possible.  Personal responsibility is what this is called.
      I trust everyone will keep in mind non-stop that comfortable white people urge you to just stay positive.
      The first time I felt safe, after my father announced his intention to slit my throat, and stab me with a knife, and my brother explained to me that Dad wasn’t crazy, “just very frustrated”, was weeks later, in ancient Egypt, at the Met, where I arrived and at once began to weep.
      Ostracon is the singular.  The plural is ostraca.  The note on the glass explains: Egyptian artists and scribes made practice sketches and drafts on broken pieces of pottery, or flakes of limestone.  I admire how they make use of the brokenness, collaborate with it, find in it an ally.  The lion crouches in the narrow edge, a stag rears in the broad, a line is drawn, then redrawn.

Lesson SEVEN : Darshan

from AN ADVANCED CASE IN BEING LOST

In regard to the “Great Mask” of the Dogon peoples: 

Although a mask in name and form, 

the Great Mask is rarely worn.  

Instead its very presence 
transforms its surroundings 

into a place of mystical exchanges.

”10 more minutes,” said the guard and I thought I’d go say goodbye to Miro, Dutch Interior, but first I peeked into the next room thinking, Anything else to see?  And there she was, as I have for so long yearned to see her: Gertrude Stein, as Picasso painted her at 27 rue de Fleurus.  Acting normal is something that seldom holds much appeal for me.  On this occasion I forswore it entirely.  I received the darshan of Gertrude Stein.  I bowed.  I namaskared.  I totally would have done a full-length prostration, right across the floor of the Met, but the guard was already on full-scale freak alert.
      Last thing before bed, while brushing our teeth and stripping down, the angel and I, wandering by one bulb around the angel’s room, two dark blue walls, two orange ones, after the goldfish had succeeded at last in getting our attention and been fed, the angel tripped over my dropfoot brace.  Before I could stop him, he picked it up, and tried to put it on.  He got nowhere.  The angel’s calves are thick and strong.  He held it against his leg to compare.  The length is similar but the width of my leg is just that of the bone.  Thumb touched to forefinger neatly encircle it.  The angel nodded.  I always wanted someone to understand me, but now that someone does it’s unnerving.  
     For those 10 minutes I stared at Gertrude Stein as much as I possibly, humanly could.  I must record here that the famous portrait, about which so much has been written, is vastly more beautiful than the false, hollowed-out, and misleading reproductions you see in books.  The portrait is rich and sensuous, yes, with a resemblance to African masks, but the face is NOT mask-like.  Gertrude Stein radiates life, warmth, sensuality.  She is hugely seductive, which, as you likely recall, is invariably how people spoke of her, men and women alike.  “I want to fuck her,” said Hemingway, because, as a man, that was how he knew to understand things.

Lesson TWO : Satellite

from AN ADVANCED COURSE IN BEING LOST

I value only those artists, who really are artists, that is, who consciously, in an entirely original form, embody the expression of their inner life; who work only for this end and cannot work otherwise.

 -- Wassily Kandinsky, 

Concerning the Spiritual in Art

According to current financial estimates, starting next month I will pretty much be subsisting on oatmeal and semen.  Although such a diet may leave me prone to light-headedness, surely my skin will be luminous?
      Imagine how much time and energy I would have saved, if only I could have admitted, aged 16 or sooner, that my family simply disliked me.  I was a screw loose in their litany, a flat note in their recitation of what they needed and deserved: everything.  I had to be eliminated and I was.  My family used to throw me “Go Away” parties.  I used to think they meant it in a funny way.
      This is an advanced course in being lost.  Attempts to order or figure out, to fix or solve, would risk injury to the already precarious mechanism.  Be warned: nothing sensible can help.  Resort only to Divine Providence, the Big DP, also Deep Penetration, by no means coincidentally.
     Almost certainly an obstacle: he is a person who likes to write.  I mean that in the dumbest way.  He is a person who likes to sit, silent, in the corner, and practice his penmanship.  Little wonder that there is neither success nor audience.  Those were not among the considerations.  He probably would have thrived as a medieval copyist.  As it is, there are no openings.  This small man actually believes he is receiving dictation.  He is as useful as a forgotten satellite dish, turned toward a distant galaxy, waiting on an alien frequency.

Lesson FIVE : Sing

from AN ADVANCED COURSE IN BEING LOST

One thing I have never figured out is if I am just very dumb or if my head simply has no patience.  (Either way, I fear the results are rather similar.)

-- Joe Brainard, from a letter to Ron Padgett

Toothbrushes nowadays don’t fit in the toothbrush holder.  Only just the very tip.  So there is my stumpy and precarious toothbrush, its soft head flaring, leaning back like it’s about to sing something. 
     I appreciate afresh the steel grating on my windows.  Because it’s not just about keeping out thieves.  It’s also there so I can’t throw myself out of the window on a whim.  Statistically speaking, below the 4th floor you are likely to survive and above the 4th floor you are likely to die.  And how could I ever possibly live anywhere on Earth but where I live now: on the 4th floor.  I suppose this could mean “narrowly managing to die, after some time” or “the worst thing short of”.
     Waheen the hustler has joined me at my table.  I didn’t invite him, he didn’t ask.  I sit always at the same small high table.  I think he is using it to remain standing up.  Waheen is immensely tall and lanky, painfully gaunt and prematurely gray.  His eyes are mad and gentle.  He’s very sexy.  He looks like he might die tonight.  A fresh Pacifico arrives for each of us.  “Waheen’s got a cock like a horse.  Absolute monster cock,” says the bartender, who wants to be helpful.  Waheen adjusts himself strenuously, by way of demonstration.  Do you understand?  It’s not that I want to be good.  It’s just that I must stay simple.  I shrug, Waheen grins, downs his beer and drifts very gently away, like an abandoned boat.  Quickly, before anyone sees, I grab his beer and, as devotees yearn to drink the water with which their saint has washed his holy feet, I drink the precious last half-sip.

Books for These Dark Times: ROBERT WALSER

Robert Walser, 
Girlfriends, Ghosts and Other Stories
translated from the German by Tom Whalen
New York Review Books, 2016




As an passionate devotee of Robert Walser, nothing is bigger or more welcome news than a new collection of stories.  As far as I can tell, I’ve read everything by Robert Walser available in English umpteen times and I am delighted to report that this new book is a very worthy addition to the canon.  At first I was put off by the extreme brevity of the pieces -- only the first is 5 pages, the rest are 1 or 2 -- but I soon found it effortless and delightful to fall into the rhythm of these stories and the highly agreeable trance they evoke as they evaporate, one after another.  


To read Walser is to discover that the word “flimsy” can be extremely high praise.  How can it be that he returns to the same subject matter again and again and yet nearly every sentence contains a small surprise?  What is this peculiar awkwardness that comes across as perfect charm?  For all my rereading I can’t explain it to you, yet I revel in it again and again.


The joy of Walser is the pleasure of sentences like, “Every sensible person sincerely praises a bowl of soup.”  He writes most often about the niceness of nice things, the loveliness of the lovely, the lightness of the light -- and yet it is nearly always apparent that he could collapse at any time, that he is only just barely and temporarily staving off despair.  His mind is capable of the most astonishing leaps.  It’s hardly surprising that a mind like his turned out to be a very awkward tool with which to navigate the world.  These pieces follow him right until he was admitted to the asylum in Herisau, after which he was silent until his death 23 years later. 


The pieces I found most revelatory, as well as most fun, were from 1921, a series: “Latest News” as well “News” 2,3 and 4.  Each piece consists of about 6 to a dozen paragraphs which dart jauntily from one subject to the next, without caring much about connectivity or development, succeeding by force of charm and forward motion, announcing what’s up and what’s on his agile, edgy, dancing mind.  


For example, one piece begins by discussing how he’s dressing, then lists current lectures including “one about the value of psychiatry to the human community”, proceeds to his clerical duties, and then announces, “The nice thing is I have a clear conscience.  Indeed, to my knowledge I’ve never lacked one.  I regret to say that a short while ago a healthy magnificent tooth fell out, which fortunately however is no great misfortune.  Of course now I have to walk around with a gap in my mouth, but I still do this gladly, especially in the evenings at the close of a workday and on Saturday afternoons.”  For me, a paragraph like that is the essence of pure irresistibility.  


Another ‘News’ piece begins: “Without question I’m filled with self-confidence.  Perhaps sometimes I might even be a little bit conceited.  I may only live on the outskirts, but at least my room has a parquet floor.  Well, I’m told Hesse leads a more genteel life.  Often I walk past his former residence.”


How can I respond, except to bow in the gratitude, in this, the presence of pure delight?         


(Please note: if there are other Walserians who seek, as I do, to create work inspired by the work of Walser, I would love to share writing and enthusiasm -- or to be useful to you in any way.  Please feel free to contact me.)  

Lesson ONE : Nobody

from AN ADVANCED COURSE IN BEING LOST



In the upper corner you can see that Kandinsky has painted the 4 Horsemen of the Apocalypse.  Keep in mind that Kandinsky did not see the end of the world as a bad thing.  Destruction was meant to lead to the way to a renewed spiritual life.  To utopia.  Remember that, back when Kandinsky was painting, it was still possible to believe that something might be left of the world.
     My elderly father took a chainsaw to the cemetery and cut down 2 trees planted in the honor of a local man, husband, father, lawyer.  2 purple beech trees, good-sized, complete with marker stones, in loving memory.  Dad felt the trees spoiled his view of his favorite oak as he drove down the dirt road.  I’ve always struggled to explain exactly what is wrong with my father.  He either doesn’t understand other people’s feelings or he doesn’t care.  Also, he cannot count to 1.  Can you think of anyone else who habitually speaks of himself in the 1st person plural?  OK, Nixon.  A grieving widow, plus 3 sons -- but that is exactly the math Dad can’t do.  He’s harassed that grieving widow for years.  I always thought the day Dad axed those trees would be his day of reckoning.  Guess not.  Allow me to employ here my father’s favorite phrase: Jesus Fucking Christ.  What magic it is to be a rich old bully!
     A persistent and abiding wish: to write something without somebody there.  To hand it to you later and be able to honestly say,  Here.  This is from nobody.

Lesson THREE : Pleasure

from: AN ADVANCED COURSE IN BEING LOST

WE BUY REMNANTS BY THE TRUCKLOAD!

-- a window in Manhattan

Most things provide drastically less joy than advertised.  Others provide, without notice or warning, far more happiness than seems possible, or even sensible.  For example, here in my short-term room, why is it such a great pleasure to have a plant that requires frequent watering?
      An actual gaw-dang garret, it appears that this is now.  The tragic poet routine is well in place.  Now all I need do is write things of which almost no one can see the point.  (To-do: buy vino tinto, F. Chauvenet, 1.5L, 84 pesos.  Or 2?)  In other news, it’s gorgeous up here, up countless stairs, with a view of rooftops, assorted domes, cathedral spire, the ocean even, if you lean out far enough over the railing…
     Alcohol ought to be a MUCH better drug, don’t you think?  Alcohol is like a girl who is popular, in a logging camp, because she is the only girl within 75 miles.  (OK, so maybe I am just jealous.)
     The pleasure of a spotlessly clean tile floor on a blazing afternoon, after I’ve swept and mopped it three times in a row.  But why is it that I cannot imagine that any hair I find is anything other than a pubic hair?  Why is that?  That hair could be from anywhere.  It could be forehead hair, or ear hair, or the hair that grows around my eyes.  But, no, I just can’t miss a chance to be prurient, to be embarrassing, a fact of which I am more than just slightly proud.
      I need to come clean about something.  The plant I mentioned, which I water often and enjoy so much, consists, in actuality, of 2 large round planters containing, along with a selection of succulents and ferns, a herbaceous perennial known as a pineapple plant, 1 in each planter and each with its own small pineapple.  Actual pineapples.  I think it is dishonest for me to write that I am overjoyed by watering and not admit that I am watering pineapples.  This may well be a decisive piece of information.  I suspect that my pineapples are, in fact, over-ripe, but I cannot bear to harvest them.  I want them to go on doing their pineapple things for as long as pineappley possible.

Lesson FIFTEEN : Lemurs

from AN ADVANCED COURSE IN BEING LOST


The foundational error, the trick: you think you can make do without the lemurs.  You think there are only a few lemurs, and they are all the way over there, wherever lemurs live, or at the zoo, and so you think you can get by.  Without the lemurs.  You can’t.
     The methhead chef at the sunset bar asks, Did you get those JVC mini-speakers I asked you about? and I say, No, that wasn’t me, I was the one you wanted to marry for a visa but, weirdly enough, I am still married and also you skipped the step of being nice to me first, which, call me old-fashioned, still matters to me and for once this is enough to get the meth chef to retreat back to the kitchen and do whatever it is he does to the poor blameless ceviche.
     Tourists.  Seated beside the ocean, facing away from it, asking, But do you have DIET syrup?
     I dreamt tiny flags started popping up all over the house, on the floors and walls and ceiling, on the legs of chairs and people, tiny sticky flags, like zits or ants, like the stickers on bananas, and I had to go around rubbing them out, removing and erasing, balling them up between my fingers, trying to keep them from spreading, multiplying, doing any more harm.  I woke up and thought, Well, yes, I agree with myself, but that’s not a lot of consolation. 
     I thought it was a good idea to drink these little bottles, one every morning -- but do I really want Dannon in charge of my intestinal flora?  Didn’t I read something about the intestines and the functioning of the brain?  Specifically, the feelings?  Would I be better off investing in other bacteria?  Do I really want Dannon so close to my mind?
     Damn.  The hot bartender must have followed the chef into meth.  His big brown eyes now are painted brown, hard little balls in his head, and, man, but he is looking angular.  Sweetheart, anything but meth.  I know, I know, you would have stuck with coke -- who can afford it?
     This is also why you must be gentle with yourself when you do (again, again, again) exactly the wrong thing, fuck up, act out, start drinking before noon.  Accidents, meannesses, porn.  Truth is, you are now having to make do without so much of the world, as well as with so much that is poison.