Reasons #203 through #207 Life Works.

I should have never have left Paris. The sawed-off vinegar fuck at the Dijon trainstation was right: I have too much little in me. Not enough enough. Wandering someplace happens only once, and once there I should never have left. The gunmetal bomber’s jacket that I stole from a veteran still feels like the thorny net of some Hun invader, and with meatcleaver cleverness was it fashioned into something that I would be willingly snared by. Will of want. Not choice. Were I asked to return it, I may tell a lie and say it was lost or I may tell the truth and say it was ruined. There is a rip in the neck that hemorrhages cotton, after all. I was spidering up a park fence after hours and it snagged and tore open. The fence was iron lattice, and gunmetal.

Marseille was cruel to me but I loved it. Loved it. The autobiography that I vomited onto the sidewalk in front of the burlesque theater was brief but well understood by passersby. They moved so goddamn fast. It was like watching machineguns walk. A boy who was too young for his face was pawing around in the gutter and throwing stones at cars, and when he inevitably groped a cracked bottle he offered his bleeding hand to his mother. She grabbed it, and clucked when he howled. “Eh, vois-tu? Une aide-memoire!” is what she said, which as far as I can tell means “Quit throwing fucking rocks.” Simple lessons are the ones that stick with us the longest, I think. Like bayonets.

In gorgeous Bordeaux I fucked a young black man with greasefire scars sunk into his midsection like quartz leaked in marble, and I was fucked by a Latina woman with no calluses and an Italian-sounding name. There was music, each time. Beethoven said that princes were princes by the accident of birth, and he was Beethoven by the miracle of Beethoven, but the cello spoke more clearly for him. Little else is as divine as the sugary growl of a cello. The greatest of orators and poets and tyrants would fall mute, and upon closer inspection, it becomes clear that the miracle of Beethoven had very little to do with Beethoven.

And I loved it all but nothing compared to Paris. Oh Christ, Paris. It rolls my catacomb heart like a die, sets it tantrumming off its ribs like an inmate, has it whining like some mutt shut in a kennel. That sour opium carnival. It was a lover that cradled me like a python, and I was happy prey. Gunpowder was the soup de jour, and I licked my bowl clean. – HOLY BEEJEZUS Kylie

A movie still from “Norweigan Wood” based on the book of the same name by Haruki Murakami.

Found this on K‘s blog:

“The most solid materials perish, as do the mightiest thoughts. And the greatest book ever writen can convey only a tiny fragment of the artist’s real emotion. No, we are only building tombs for posterity to admire with our words. We are trying to record the changing ego, but the Self will not be revealed thus. We are only throwing off sparks.” -Henry Miller, to Anais Nin

Everyone who isn’t already needs to go read K. K is magic.

(I dedicate this male narwhal or unicorn to darling Hertzey and her rickety, adorable love life. Also to Kylie, mentioned at the beginning, who is like Thomas Pynchon if Thomas Pynchon were Huckleberry Finn if Huckleberry Finn were a mythical beast)

My life hasn’t been the greatest thing ever lately, but that is okay with me.