Selections from Journal 5.1

~ 1993 ~

This is something that happened in June, 1987, so it's six years later now, and I'm not sure I can recapture the experience, the trail is a bit cold, but...how can I forget the seagulls? We were camping in Montauk. We couldn't see the ocean from our tent, but we could hear the surf, a soft, distant hiss, and the seagulls came swooping down and brazenly stole the chicken legs I was grilling on the coals, I had never seen anything like it before, seagulls picking meat out of the fire, I had turned my back for only a moment when I heard wings flapping, a huge seagull was picking a chicken leg off the grill. I watched him fly away with his prize.

After dinner, I made a fire. There was a chill in the air, and a fog was coming in from the ocean. The fire is only a hazy memory, but I can still see sparks flying in the ocean wind. Karen and Jennifer were cold, and went to sleep in the tent, it was early June, and the nights by the ocean...still had a bit of winter in them, but I didn't want to go to sleep, not yet, I wanted to see the ocean first, and I went down the path to the beach, my feet were digging into the sand, the sound of the surf filled me with anticipation, the anticipation of that first magic moment, when suddenly, there, in the night, you catch your first full glimpse of the ocean, not the ocean you see by day, but the night ocean, the ocean is another kind of beast at night, but I wasn't ready for what I saw then, there was a dense fog over the ocean, and when I saw the waves coming at me out of the fog, out of the night, the top of my head came off, I was gone, I was a pair of eyes that could only see, a pair of eyes that couldn't tear themselves away from the surf, nothing existed for me at that moment but my eyes and the surf, the foaming waves slowly emerged from the whiteness, as if they were coming out of nowhere, out of nothing, I knew the dark savagery of the night ocean, of the white surf coming at you out of blackness, but this was something else, here the effect was softened somehow, here was whiteness coming out of whiteness, slowly detaching itself from the background of white fog, slowly taking shape, like a mystery only dimly...perceived, the surf was coming out of the fog in a smooth, a perfect fade in, and yet there was that almost frightening quality, that other worldly quality, the sense of seeing something...from altogether somewhere else, seeing something that wasn't surf, that wasn't the night ocean, that wasn't the fog in Montauk, on a June night, in 1987. Whether I took my shoes off, or had walked barefoot to the beach, I don't remember, but I know I waded out into the surf, and the water was tugging at me, the waves, as they rolled back into the ocean, pulled the sand out from under my feet, my heels were sinking into the sand, the receding waters were pulling at me like an undertow, as if the ocean wanted to swallow me up, there was something frightening about it, something exhilarating, I was beside myself, I was no longer the man who had walked to the beach to see the ocean, that man was gone, I couldn't remember, at that moment, ever having been that man, I had stepped outside of myself, and whatever I was looking at—I couldn't for the life of me say what it was—had ceased to be surf, it had ceased to be fog on the ocean, it had gone beyond conception, and had become quite literally...inconceivable, the ocean was no longer the ocean, and I was no longer the man who had come to see it, I wasn't seeing it any more, I was...

~ 1997 ~

I was walking home, with a bag of groceries in one hand, and my briefcase in the other. A man was walking ahead of me. He was heading for the river. He turned around, hesitated for a moment, and started walking toward me. There was something odd about his behavior. He seemed to have something in his hand. I was worried about him. He passed me, and kept on going. I turned to climb the stairs into the Westbeth courtyard, and as I turned, I looked back at him, and saw that he had turned to look at me. I was walking past the entrance to the gallery when suddenly, I heard footsteps behind me. I knew it was him. I have a gun! I heard him say, as he walked quickly toward me. His hand was in his pocket. I have a gun! he said again. There was a bulge in his pocket. Give me your money, he said, or I'll blow your head off! I didn't do anything at first. I looked at the bulge in his pocket, wondering if he really had a gun. Just try me! he said, just try me! I took out my wallet, and gave him my money. I started to walk away. Then I turned to look at him. Turn around, asshole! he said, and keep walking! I could see he was thinking of killing me, because I had turned around to look at him. He knew I could identify him. He was thinking about it.

Since coming home from the hospital, I've been seeing strange things inside my head, as I try—unsuccessfully—to go to sleep, or maybe I'm more aware of them than usual, as a result of receiving an anesthetic, what are they like? Karen asked, when I told her about my visions, I can't describe them, I said, and I've forgotten most of them already, I see table legs that move like spiders, shoes that turn to stone, a huge pair of feet, with barnacles growing out of them, tools that turn into bird beaks, and strange, indescribable sex organs rubbing against each other, in a kind of dusty, dry fucking, the dust is a kind of lubricant, and the shoes are carbonized, with grey vines curling over them, vines made of solid rock.

~ 1998 ~

I don't have much time. But I had to write a few words, to experience the words as I write them, to see them appearing on the screen, I just like to sit here, in a mental fog, drunk with words, ...I'm treating myself to a few lines of Shelley, and he's like a cold beer on a hot summer day, —the English language, in his hands, is like a symphony by Bruckner—I'm staring at the keyboard, trying to think of something to say, the dust between the keys has coagulated into layers of dirt, if I could see the world...with the freshness of my young eyes, the darkened skyline across the river, if I could stand in front of that window, on a winter evening in 1956, and see the red glow behind the buildings, —will I ever see anything as beautiful as a sunset in Winnipeg? Seeing is having, holding—possession through sight. Tonight, I'm on the 7th floor of the Saint-Boniface Hospital, and smoke is rising in the stillness of the night air, smoke from the locomotives across the river, turning purple like the western sky,

I'm sitting in front of my fan, trying to keep cool, there was a tiny red spider on my keyboard, just under the space bar, he was running for cover, realizing that the bright light...exposed him to my wrath, and I gently, very gently brushed him off the keyboard, he was so small, and could easily have been hurt, I don't know where he is now, somewhere around my feet, I'm still carrying them inside me, the poems I've never written, they're like fading embers, smoldering in the dark, it's been a long time since I felt them stirring inside me, are they still alive? I was so sure, when I was 17, that I was going to write those poems, they were all around me, in the lights of the city, I was on fire with them, but what I didn't know was...that they were beyond my powers of expression, they were either beyond the reach of language altogether, or I was creatively impotent, and unable to do...what another poet would finally, after a lifetime of effort, ...I can't find the words to end this sentence, I can't even write prose, can't even finish a sentence, I'll never be able to say...what I saw in the trees, on Rue Jeanne d'Arc, it was a winter night, I was walking home in the snow, and what I saw between the trees...they were pine trees, evergreens, the snow had taken the color of the pine needles, filling the air with a tinge of green, and the shadows between the trees...were trying to tell me something, they were the color of poetry, a deep, rich green, and there was a stillness about them, a stillness that words would only disturb, with their brash, noisy entrance, the shadows were cut out of time, as if they had always been there, between the pine trees, they seemed to contain every poem in the English language, every poem written, and even those that were never written, had condensed into those green shadows, like a mist that wets the morning grass, —what were they trying to tell me? Did it have something to do with the futility of trying to capture them? That they would lead me on a merry chase, but would never let themselves be caught in language? The sensations of that winter night...can never be found in words, because language gives only the sensation of language, the snow on the branches would become...verbal snow, and the shadows only a text, they're still with me, those shadows, I'm still walking towards them, walking in snow almost as blue as the sky, but I have no words for them, —I have this fatal attraction for the inexpressible, as if I wanted to fail, as if I wanted to savor my creative impotence, to wolf it down like a rich dessert, —what I'm basically doing here...is having fun typing, it's the physical act of typing, that's what keeps me going, the sound of my fingers hitting the keys, but Jennifer says I should walk the dog, he's making whimpering sounds by the door,

I'm staring at the screen, unable to concentrate, sometimes it's hard to get myself going, Karen is sitting beside me, playing solitaire, one hand on the mouse, and the other behind her back, —why does she love me? it's a strange thing, I don't feel lovable, and she's the same way, when I tell her how much I love her, she can't quite believe it, she says, you're crazy! I was planning to write about...about what? A moment ago, I knew what I was planning to write about, but after starting the sentence...my mind was a blank, the words wouldn't come, maybe the best thing, at this point, would be to read a book, I wasn't able to write them then, the poems I had in me, and I'm not able to write them now, —I can't stop playing! she says, I don't know what's the matter with me! Karen thinks she spends too much time playing solitaire. I'm obsessed, she says, scolding herself, but I'm glad she's there, with one hand on the mouse, and the other behind her back—no, now it's resting on her thigh—I need for her to be there, it's the physical presence of her, there's a woman sitting beside me, a living, breathing woman, a mystery on two legs, why does she love me? And her hair...her hair is the unfolding of a sexual fantasy, the way it curls over her shoulders, the little wisps of black hair, with a hint of red,

I never thought I'd miss those winters, I never thought I'd miss that biting wind, the night wind that burns your cheeks, but I can't get Manitoba out of my system, it won't let go of me, I can still see the white vapor of the car exhausts, and the snow turning red behind the brake lights. Now, in the heat of July, the thought of those winters is strangely refreshing, like a mug of cold beer, with foam pouring down the sides. Now, at a distance of twenty years, the snow seems warm and inviting, a kind of summer in disguise, Bachelard says something about the warmth of snow, the snowdrifts that look like sand dunes in the Sahara, when I go, I want to take my winters with me, the ice floes on the river, the white vapor of my breath, the blinding snow in the noon sun, I'm taking it all with me, the winter evenings, when chimney smoke is the color of sunset, every single image, I need them to light my way, I need these fading images of white fields, and trees glazed with ice, to ease me over into darkness,

Sex in the 21st century: a young man is coming home from work, briefcase in hand, he's coming home from the accounting office, with a smile on his face. And why is this man smiling? Because he knows that, in a few minutes, he'll be out there, surfing the web, riding the killer waves. He opens the door to his apartment, and turns on the air conditioning system. He lights a Nature's Own, the best tobacco free cigarette, with a nicotine substitute that tastes like the real thing. Then he turns on his home entertainment center. Screens flash, and music fills the room. He puts on his headpiece, attaches the sensors to various key points on his body, and...he's gone, he's out there, in a virtual world, which is an exact replica of the one he's left behind, except that there's no garbage, no bad smells, and he climbs into his jazzy sports car, it's the Lighter Than Air model, the kind that uses a vertical jet to get into the air, and navigates through a grid of laser beams, and he knows every part, every nut and bolt of that car, because he designed it himself, and it took him hours at the computer, he started with the Standard Model, and then modified the design, and added new features, until he had the car of his dreams. After a brief flight, he works his way down to the lower levels of the grid, down to the Strip, a row of night spots, and parks his car outside his favorite club. Inside, colored lights are blending into each other, and flickering like a fire. It's like a real nightclub. The air is scented with cigarette smoke, which nobody minds, because it comes from Nature's Own virtual tobacco, and every woman in the club is a bombshell, it's worth the price of admission just to look at them, and the men are muscular and athletic, and smartly dressed, and our young man blends in perfectly with this crowd, because he has carefully designed his body, just like he designed his car, he started with the Standard Model, and then—it was a labor of love—he made a few cosmetic changes, he worked on the face for days, until finally, there he was, a movie star, a health club poster, and he makes his way to the dance floor with the assurance of a man who knows he's attractive to women, it took him days to learn to walk, to make his cyber image move in a natural way, so that it really looks like a man walking, and he was persistent, our young man is what is commonly called a Cyber Nerd, or virtual reality genius. He has learned to make his Cyber Body move just right, because the trick is to look like a real man walking, it has to look natural, that's what the women want, the natural look, that's what gets their juices flowing, and the same is true of the men, as they look out on the dance floor, they look for a woman who can really dance, a woman who knows how to make her Image dance, not someone fumbling with the controls, making a complete fool of herself, but a woman with really great moves, —and he sees her, and he can't believe his eyes, she's the most natural thing he's seen in years, she's nature on two legs, and the way she moves, how does she do it? and before he knows it—he was never quite sure how it happened, what he said to her—he's dancing with her! they're in each others arms, this is the real thing, never has he seen a woman that looked more real, man, she was good! Here at last was a woman who really knew what she was doing, a real pro, not one of these rank amateurs, because in virtual reality, the only unforgivable thing is not to look natural, not to look real, you can always tell a beginner, and for the poor beginner, it's like being on the beach without a tan, it's like being surrounded with gloriously tanned bodies, and you standing there with your skin lily white! The dancers, the whirling dervishes have only contempt for a raw beginner! Oh, look at that poor sap! they think, he doesn't have a clue! He doesn't even know how to walk. And just wait till he gets on the dance floor. What a laugh that's going to be! The dance is over, and he's standing on the edge of the dance floor, looking at her, he can't take his eyes off her, and...oh no! some real Muscle Beach type is walking towards her, he's asking her to dance, the creep! And then something happens, something so wonderful he can't quite believe his luck. She turns him down! She doesn't want to dance with him. And that can only mean one thing. Their eyes meet across the dance floor. They start making their way, both of them, making their way across the dance floor, walking toward each other in an almost dream-like trance, and for the young accountant, for the man who spends his days dictating figures into a computer, this is simply too powerful a drug, to feel her in his arms, and to know that she has chosen him, among all the others, because she likes his moves, his rhythm on the dance floor, and they dance for what seems like hours, and she makes the first move, I'd like to take you into a private room, she says, before somebody else grabs you. And then, with a click of the mouse, they find themselves in the penthouse suite, luxuriously furnished, and soft music that seems to say, do it, do it now! She lowers the amber lights, and adds a touch of red, and they kiss, and it's the ultimate virtual kiss, he can taste her lipstick—oh those clever web designers!—and her hair has bounce, it has sheen, oh man, this woman really knows what she's doing, and...she starts to take her clothes off, and her movements...are almost those of a dancer, it's almost a striptease, but not quite, it never ceases to be entirely natural, that's the magic of this woman, she's a virtual reality genius, never has he seen a woman take it all off...with such style, such sophisticated poise, and she's standing virtually naked before him, she's making a gift of herself, and he lets her undress him, she takes off his shirt, and when she sees the hair on his chest, she has an appreciative smile, the smile of one expert admiring the work of another, that smile is a compliment, only a real pro would be able to put hair like that on his chest, and she runs her fingers through it, and it feels like real hair, she's very impressed, he not only got the look, but the feel of hair, the gentle prickling of chest hair on your roving fingers, and then, on a bed softer than any in the real world, a bed whose softness can be regulated, and modulated to suit your taste, they blend like the colored lights, they engage in real chemical bonding, and the most exciting thing, for him, is the thought that behind this magnificent female form...lies a real woman, a woman who, when she got home from the office, turned on her home entertainment center, put on her headpiece, and drove to her favorite night spot, that's what gets him, it's the thought that behind her virtual hands, which are wandering over his body, touching, sampling every part of it, behind those exploring hands...is a real woman, a woman who makes her cyber Image dance, and invites her chosen partner into a private room, and in her real life, she may be a timid, cautious woman, a woman who would never strip in front of a man, a plain jane wearing horn-rimmed glasses, but he can feel her hidden presence, she's the one who's making those cyber hands move over his body, and it's her, this unseen, unknown woman who excites him, who gives him a real cyber hard on, because he doesn't care if she's plain, he wouldn't even care if she was ugly, all he knows is that she's a fucking cyber genius, she's like him, she really knows how to make her Image move, and that's all that counts for him, and she feels the same way, in the privacy of her own apartment; for both of them, it's love at first sight, she's finally found a man who knows what he's doing, not one of those amateurs waddling like a duck, and that's why she singled him out, she could tell by the way he moved, because in a place like that, you don't want to have jerky movements, like a robot, you have to look natural, that's what a woman wants, a totally natural man, and they're in love with each other's skill, with each other's dexterity, because however appealing the cyber woman, she can't compare with the hidden presence, the lure of the woman who is manipulating her movements, the woman behind the roving hands, Cyber World is like a masquerade ball, you are Harlequin, and you dance with Colomba, and wonder who she is, who is the goddess behind the sequin mask, and now, as they navigate through the levels of chemical bonding, the virtual orchestra quickens the pace, now the music has a hard, driving rhythm, with the treble and bass at your command, everything suited to taste, and what drives him wild...is the sensations she's giving him, she knows just when, and where to activate the sensors on his body, she's like a dream, who is she? and where did she learn to work a man's body like that, and it's coming now, the ultimate Cyber Orgasm, and...the night club is gone, virtual reality is no more, now they are in an entirely different space, now he's going, in the immortal words of Mr. Spock, "where no man has gone before." And after you've had one of these absolute cyber blowouts, one of these Mega-Orgasms, the real world is like a desert, and you wander through the hot streets, thirsting for something you can never find!—who is she? Will I ever meet her? But that's the cardinal rule, on the web, never make a date with your cyber partner! That would spoil everything. He's probably some icky little nerd, a twelve year old masquerading as Mr. America. But you can't help wondering. Dreaming. If he's anything like his Cyber Image, if he even remotely resembles...the man on the dance floor, wow, I'll settle for that, it's not his looks I'm interested in, it's the fact that he could design such an incredibly real image, I mean, he's like me, he's really good, and that should be enough to build a relationship on, when two people are really good at something, well, you never know, stranger things have been known to happen

Well, I've finally got the air conditioner going, which gives me a whole new lease on life, I haven't been this cool in weeks,—as I was washing the dishes, it suddenly occurred to me that my inability to write poetry...might be something I inherited from my father, he had been a rebel in his youth, but even in those days, he had no use for poetry, he was studying engineering at McGill, and like most engineering students, he'd rather have a tooth pulled than read a poem,—for six years, he told me, he didn't go to church at all, and for my father, who was an intensely religious man, not to go to church on Sunday, well, it could only come from a real upheaval, a real turning over of the soil—suddenly I can see this from the reader's point of view, I can see it's just self-indulgent crap—he ran a hotel in St. Norbert, but he wasn't a good bartender (according to Uncle Paul), because he was always reading a book, when someone called for a beer, he would say, yeah, yeah, I'll be there in a minute, and keep reading his book, he was studying languages, and argued in favor of Communism, and maybe it was then that he wrote in his journal, "I want to do something great for humanity," the journal I found in the cellar, in an old box of books, some of the books were French, and some were English, the pages were musty and limp, the paper was rotting in the dampness of the cellar, and that's all that was left of the young rebel my father had been, a few books in the cellar, and a journal he hadn't written in for twenty years. Now he lived and breathed for the Catholic Church, he was more Catholic than the Pope himself. He read the lives of the saints, and would tell me stories of miracles, one was the story of a saint—I don't remember his name—who was proud of his miracles, but when he realized that he was guilty of the sin of pride, he promised God he wouldn't perform any more miracles, because he was too proud of his miracles. Then, one day, as he came out of the cathedral, one of the men who was working on the church steeple...suddenly fell off the scaffolding, and the saint, realizing he had promised not to perform any miracles, stopped the man in mid air, and said, wait there, I have to run into the church and ask God permission to save you, and he ran into the church. The man stayed suspended in the air, until the saint got permission to save him, then he came out of the cathedral, and let the man come gently down to the ground. And that incident, my father said, was witnessed by several people. That was important to him. He had to believe it was literally true, he had a very special kind of mind, it was essentially dialectical, armed for battle with the Protestants, and the atheists, his mind collected facts that supported his beliefs, like a magnet attracts iron filings, he made use of science when it suited him, but angrily dismissed the theory of evolution, he divided scientific facts into two categories, those that supported his beliefs, and those that were wrong. You couldn't talk about religion with him, he would bury you in an avalanche of proofs and arguments, until you wished you hadn't gotten him going, once he started talking about religion, he couldn't stop, it was his passion, his whole life,—is that why I became an atheist? is that why at the age of 16, one Sunday, when he came into my room and said, come on, it's time to go to church, I said to him, I won't be going to church any more, I don't believe in it, and he looked at me with disgust, and said, you know, I'm getting really fed up with you! I had instinctively found the one thing that was sure to disturb him, as if I was honing in on a beacon, the one thing he couldn't stand was atheism, there's no such thing as an atheist, he would say, and though he had never been in a war, he liked to repeat the old saying, there are no atheists in a foxhole,—I can't do this, because in fighting him, I'm fighting against myself, my father is part of me, I can't get him out of my system,—and then, a few months later, when he asked me what I wanted to be in life, a lawyer or a doctor, I said, I'm going to be a poet, and for him, this was the crowning touch, it was the last straw, it was as if the idea of my being a poet annoyed him even more than my atheism, he mocked me in front of his guests, and his friends were amazed at the intensity of his opposition, why are you so hard on him, one of them said, it's not the worst thing that could happen, I don't remember the things he said, but I know they hardened me in my determination to become a poet, once he said to me, I know a lot of people who like poetry, but I've never seen anyone go ga-ga over it like you, and once, when talking about Paul Claudel, who had recently died, he said to me, Claudel was a great poet, you'll never be as great as him, and I was offended, I was miffed that he didn't believe in me, I didn't see any reason why I shouldn't, in time, become as great as Claudel, and I said, why do you say that? in a calm voice that didn't reveal my anger, that's how I greeted his sarcasm, his ridicule, with an imperturbable calm, which probably annoyed him more than anything else, and I guess I should be grateful to him, because if my father hadn't been opposed to the idea, I wouldn't be sitting here today, still writing, I would have given up a long time ago—but tonight, as I was washing the dishes, it suddenly occured to me that...I hadn't become a poet, my father had finally prevailed, as if he had given me some kind of writer's block, I mean, I have conscious reasons for not wanting to write poetry, I don't see the need for writing in verse, for using a language different from that of prose, I don't like boundaries, whether it's the one between poetry and prose, or the one between God and the universe,

I particularly dislike French poetry, from Baudelaire to the present day, when I read poets like Yves Bonnefoy,—I don't know how to put this—I was perishing for want of reality, I was sinking in a morass of metaphors, and the most frustrating thing, for me, was that they weren't really metaphors, metaphors can only exist in a literal context, they are isolated pockets of figurative language, rooted in a literal mode of expression, and there is the sense, as we encounter them, that language is shifting gears,—but with Bonnefoy, the poem is no longer grounded in a situation that can be taken literally, like that, say, of Wordsworth revisiting the banks of the Wye, a few miles above Tintern Abbey. With Bonnefoy, nothing can be taken literally, and so nothing has the status of a metaphor, or a figure of speech, fire is always the essence of fire, and wind the essence of wind, Bonnefoy was aware of this, he's a very conscious and deliberate poet, he's almost as cerebral as Valéry, and that's about as cerebral as you can get, there are no parking meters in Bonnefoy's poetry, no fire hydrants and manhole covers, and people don't brush their teeth in a Bonnefoy poem, they don't shine their shoes, that would be too prosaic, and the worst possible thing, to a French poet, is to be prosaic, it's like eating with your mouth open, and spitting out crumbs of cake as you talk, it's the ultimate poetic gaffe, or, in the words of Talleyrand, the blunder that's worse than a crime. French poetry excludes large areas of human experience, aspects of daily life, like washing your car, or putting wet clothes in the dryer,—you don't wash clothes in a French poem!—French poetry is exclusive of most of everyday life, as opposed to American poetry, which is inclusive, French poetry is like an exclusive club, which admits only certain words, words like fire, wind, and rain, words like mountain and river, French poetry is, in a word, poetic, it is the very essence of poetry, fire is never a particular fire, on a particular evening, it's the essence of fire, and French poetry, says Bonnefoy, is a poetry of essences, because, well, mere accidents aren't worthy of poetry, they lack depth, significance—there's something really French about this, because it goes back almost four hundred years, to the time of Les Précieuses Ridicules, those elegant ladies with their exclusive salons, who tried to improve the boorish manners of the French aristocracy, those refined ladies who banished certain words from polite conversation, and from poetry as well, words like handkerchief, because, well, you can't have someone blowing his nose in a poem! French culture is a process of refinement, and refinement is the excluding of grosser elements, extracting the metal from its ore, French culture is an attempt to improve on nature, if we have to eat, then let's have haute cuisine, and if we have to wear clothes, let's have haute couture. The words "French chef" are synonymous with good cooking. American menus love to use French words, like chicken cordon bleu, and duck à l'orange, and at the Century Club, we don't serve string beans, we serve haricots verts, it's more classy, more sophisticated, and you can charge more for haricots verts than for string beans. The French are the arbiters of good taste, and have been for centuries. Some nations have an inferiority complex, but the French are different: they have a superiority complex, they feel superior, not only to Americans, and Germans, but to nature itself. Mere water isn't worthy of the French: they drink sparkling, mineral water, and the best wine money can buy. The wines are chosen by a sommelier, and the sauces are made by a saucier, you have to have a specialist, you can't leave these things in the hands of an amateur!

Summer camp memory: I'm picking blueberries in the woods. I've been given a can to drop them into. I'm following a patch of blueberries. It goes past a boulder, and around the pine trees. There are pine cones on the ground, and a carpet of pine needles, and so many blueberries, you have to choose, you have to pick a path to follow. I love the sound of the berries dropping into the can. The tips of my fingers are blue. I suck them to get the taste. We're not supposed to eat the berries, but I can't help myself, they're so juicy, so sweet and tart, I sometimes pop a handful of them into my mouth. I mustn't eat too many. It's a contest, with the prize going to the one who picks the most blueberries. I'm supposed to be part of a team. At first, we were all picking berries together, with our team leader. But I wandered off by myself, following a winding stream of berries, and now I'm deep in the woods, far downstream. The pickings are better here, because near the gravel road, the grass and berries are covered with dust. But here, they're really tasty, and those in the shade are wet with morning dew. Here, far from the road, the ferns are bright green, and there are so many berries, it doesn't matter how many of them I eat, my can will still be full.

I don't know what's the matter with me today, I can't get started, my mind is in a fog, I was going to write about something that happened at Camp Notre Dame, sometime around 1950, but my coffee's getting lukewarm, and I'd better make myself a fresh cup,—I went to the kitchen, and Jennifer and Melanie were sitting at the table, and I said to Jennifer, putting my hand on her shoulder, how you doing? and seeing that she had cut holes in a paper napkin, I said, are you making a mask? It's like...the Mask of Zorro, and I put the kettle on the stove, and right away, I realized I was going to write this down, when I got back to the computer, and Melanie said, can you eat this? She was holding out a limp, white shred...of what looked like a paper napkin soaked in water, and I said, what is that, a paper napkin? And she said no, it's the skin of an eggshell. I could see the cracked eggshells in the white bowl (they'd just had boiled eggs), yeah, you can eat it, I said, just don't eat the shells, they would be a bit hard to digest, you'd have to crunch them really good, you'd have to chew them into a powder, and even then, it would be hard on your stomach, but...if you were really starving, you would get some nutrition from them, they would keep you alive, yeah, if I was starving! Melanie said, pushing the shells away with a laugh, and I was listening to myself talk, I was drunk with myself, I've just had my first gulp of coffee, and it's just the way I like it, really hot, I felt like I could do anything, I felt that...no matter what I said, no matter what happened, I'd be able to write it down, exactly the way it happened, it's the freedom of it I like, the feeling that, at any moment, I can take off in any direction, and I should be able to get back to my summer camp memories, that's the order of the day, the campfire on the beach, but I'm not interested in the order of the day, I'm playing hookey today, I'm going to see Jane Russell in The French Line, because we were told, at school, that we were absolutely not to see this film, which was indecent, immoral, etc, and...as I take my seat in the balcony, I can see other boys from my school, and a couple of classmates are sitting behind me, we're waiting for the scene where Jane Russell takes a bath, and we're almost bored with the film, as if we were skipping pages in a novel, looking for the juicy parts, and we're impatient with anything that doesn't take place in a bathroom, we want to see the hot water pouring in the tub, we want to see the steam rising,—they were on an ocean liner, and I think there was some singing, I don't remember anything about the film, except that when the bathing scene finally came, Jane Russell was already in the tub, you didn't get to see her undress, and the tub was full of bubble soap, and you could hardly see her body through the bubbles,—except once, when she moved, you could see a soapy breast, it was really exciting, we were actually looking at Jane Russell's tits, but we also felt a bit cheated, we had skipped a day of school, and wouldn't be able to get a signed note from our parents, we were sure to get caught! and for what? we didn't even get to see her undress!

it's impossible, really, I can't keep the chronology of every sentence I write, I can't keep them in the order in which they were written, though it certainly isn't for lack of trying, I don't seem able to put my principles into practice, to put my money where my mouth is,—everything, for me, points in the direction of a first draft, it's the only way to be true to my idea, to dash off a first draft, and leave it like that, without changing a single word, it would be the perfect application of my principle, the words would be in the exact sequence in which they were written, with all the typos, and the spelling mistakes carefully preserved, but I'm hesitating, because I know...it would be a really bad piece of writing, and that's what puzzles me, I don't understand why the products of inspiration...would be inferior to those of revision, I mean, why can't we get it right the first time, I've been puzzling over this for years, what is it about the brain...that it produces such shapeless mush...the first time around, this seems awfully wordy, perhaps because it's dangerously close to being a first draft, but I can't help it, one sentence leads to another, I can't stop writing, it's too much fun, they had built a fire on the beach, and they had quite a blaze going, it was dark, and sparks were flying in the air, you could see them twisting in the wind, and our guide was telling a story, and the only thing I remember about the story is that it was engrossing, he really had us, we were hanging on his every word, except for a couple of boys who had wandered away from the fire, they were trying to catch frogs at the edge of the water, it was low tide, and frogs were jumping on the wet sand, I could feel the heat of the fire on my face, and under the crumbling logs, there was a bed of glowing embers, they were pulsating, and I was listening to the story, I can almost hear the guide's voice, I remember his voice more clearly than the story he was telling, he was enjoying his own story, just as I enjoy my words, when I hear myself say them, and suddenly, from behind me, a boy's hand dropped something on the red embers, and the thing tried to jump, it was a frog, wet and glistening in the light of the fire, and the frog tried to jump to safety, but only succeeded in landing on more hot coals, it was over in a second, the frog, after that first feeble jump, collapsed on the blazing embers, and its life ended there, sometime around 1950. It didn't seem important at the time, I didn't even turn around to see who had done it, or why. Was it done deliberately, or did the frog, slippery and hard to grasp, jump out of the boy's hand and into the fire? It seemed to me, at the time, that it had been done deliberately, but that didn't seem unusual, I had often treated insects with cruelty, it was the sort of thing I would have done myself, if I had caught a frog at the water's edge. I didn't know then...that I would be writing this now, I didn't know the sight of a frog on a bed of coals would stay with me for life. Why does it still bother me, after almost 50 years? I know there are more important things than a frog squirming on hot coals, we've seen massacres, or at least have heard of them, we've been through two World Wars, through the Christmas bombing of Hanoi, the obliteration of entire neighborhoods, so...why should a single frog matter? it's getting hard to concentrate, Karen's on the phone, talking to the doctor, and I'm very sensitive to distractions lately, sometimes I wish I was in a soundproof room, like Proust, who had the walls of his room lined with cork, and...I can't stop writing, though I know I'm only spoiling the piece by going on, let's see, do I have anything left to say about the frog, I've got verbal diarrhea today, I can see its green skin on the red embers, the pulsating coals, I can see its hind legs burning, its webbed feet on fire, it's that moment, I think, that taught me the value of life, because if the life of a frog has no value, and only a human being's does,—I'm reminded of Ghandi's reply to a western journalist who asked him why Indians refuse to kill a cow, when there's so much hunger and starvation in their country, and Ghandi said, there has to be an area of life which is sacred, a point at which you will express your respect for life, and we in India have chosen the cow. You Westerners, he said, show no respect for animal life, and so, inevitably, you have no respect for human life. Oh no! I said to Karen, I forgot to move the car! and I went out with Frisky, I was pulling on his leash, and he was dragging his heels, he wanted to linger over every smell, every dark stain on the sidewalk, because those dark stains, more often than not, are made by other dogs, but I was rushing for nothing, there was plenty of parking spaces left, and it was hot inside the car, Frisky was in the back seat, panting in the heat, and I was backing the car into its new home,

Dream: Karen had bought a property near downtown Montreal, it was a dilapidated beach-house, a charming old house, with a screened porch, a porch almost as long as the beach, children were playing in the sand, and seagulls, or rather, pigeons playing the part of seagulls, were circling away as I walked through them, I love you, Boopy! I said to her, how did you manage it? A beachfront property only ten minutes from Centre Ville, it's incredible! I've got the feeling I'm going to wake up, and find out it was all a dream, and at that moment, I knew it was, the dream had given itself away, it was that moment of doubt, when you begin to suspect that you're dreaming, but you don't want it to stop, and the illusion, the willing suspension of disbelief calms your fears like a sedative, the dream snatches you up, and sets you gently down on the other side, where seagulls—"the blinding gulls", as Larry Eigner once called them, blinding because they fly into the sun, and because their sea-drenched cries blind us to the world—where seagulls bob up and down like boats at anchor, and sandpipers rush after the receding wave, hoping to catch an unwary sand crab, rush towards the bubbles in the wet sand, a night world of blinding sun, and sand that burns your feet,

Poetry was my first love. I could never say, with Marianne Moore, "I too dislike it." But I read more critics than poets, as if I needed a buffer to protect me from the poetry. The wise burglar, said T. S. Eliot, brings meat for the dog, and critical prose is meaty enough...to keep my intellect quiet, —and I love to read those few examples the critic gives, those sound bites of poetry, since the dry, abstract prose makes them sound, by contrast, even more poetic,

Suddenly, there was a fierce gust of wind, I could hear things hitting the window—branches, it sounded like—and I ran to the window, and the trees in the courtyard...were being almost lifted out of the ground, to see the branches twisting, the leaves in a frenzy, oh, this is incredible, I said to Karen, it's like a hurricane, but I couldn't tear her away from her game of solitaire, you should see this, I said, the wind is blowing garbage bags through the courtyard! The air was full of bits of paper and twigs, they looked like dragon flies at dusk, and people were running for shelter, one woman was running in the wind, until finally, she could hardly move, and was in danger of being blown back, like the sheets of newspaper swirling around her, and a Westbeth tenant, a Chinaman with long white hair, was going for a bicycle ride, and his bicycle was wobbling, he stopped, took off his cap, to make sure it wouldn't blow away, and walked his bicycle around the corner, a woman started to walk her dog, but quickly turned back, and the man on the bicycle had changed his mind, he was riding back to the safety of Westbeth. And then the rain came: white sheets of rain were being blown off the rooftops like snow, sheets of rain savaging the trees, and I was seeing all this through a rain-soaked window, this is really beautiful, I said to Karen, and she gave a little laugh, and went on with her solitaire game. Two girls, one in a yellow raincoat, ran out into the rain, laughing. I could see flashes of lightning, but heard no thunder. Leafy twigs hit the window, rattled against the glass, and were quickly blown away.

I don't give a damn about anything any more. I want to be free, free of any concern as to what an editor might think, free from any rule or common practice, free above all from myself, and my ambition. Free. I want to breathe the rarified atmosphere of absolute anarchy. Writing is a moment of freedom, a moment stolen, shoplifted from time's crowded shelf, it's almost like cheating on the rules of the game, except that there are no rules at that moment, the only rule is to be free, and that's a harsh enough discipline in itself.

Prostitutes sell their bodies, we sell our minds. I hate the society which looks down on hookers, and can't see its own forms of prostitution. We sell our talents, our skills. This prostitution of the mind, to me, is more degrading than the prostitution of the body. It's a more dehumanizing process. A more abject surrender...to inauthenticity.

What impresses me about Heidegger...is his need to philosophize about being. To expose oneself to his language...is to experience this need, this hunger for resolution. Abstraction is a sharper blade than experience. It cuts more easily through the matter at hand. The love of abstraction is a sign of impatience. Or maybe just...eagerness for resolution. For closure. I'm writing these words...to better enjoy the moment, writing these words, for me, is like eating a chocolate mousse, the kind that has little bubbles of air inside it.

Yesterday, at work, I had a momentary glimpse of "Heideggerian" being. Being was dangling in the void, flaunting its inexplicable presence, and all the more present...for having no reason to be there,—it was, in the words of Ian Michael Dawson, a great big cosmic pudding, rich beyond belief,

Life has no meaning, no purpose, life is remarkably free of such baggage, and you travel light...on your way to inexistence, you are, in the words of Anouilh, le voyageur sans bagages. The words "life has no meaning, no purpose" fill me with religious awe. They are my mantra, my koan. God's existence has no meaning, and serves no purpose. God is altogether beyond meaning. He simply exists. Je suis celui qui est.

~ 1999 ~

"The only thing unbearable is the degradation, the prostitution of the living mysteries in us," said Lawrence. But there are many ways to prostitute yourself. We live in a culture that permits, and even encourages the prostitution of the spoken word. People will say anything for money. Pornography, the feminists tell us, is degrading to women. But why is it degrading for a woman to appear in a porno film, and not the least bit degrading for her to appear in a commercial? Why is it degrading to perform sexual acts for money, and not degrading to look into a camera and mouth words you don't believe, simply because you're being paid to do it? Why is there no shame in it? Why is it honorable, or at least forgivable, to say things you don't believe? Everywhere, on television, and in magazines, I find people saying things they are being paid to say. Politicians, press agents, foreign diplomats on Nightline, doesn't anyone care about the truth any more? This is the prostitution of the mind. Selling your brain to the highest bidder.

God, I wish I'd brought my notebook! I'm writing this on the back of a pay stub, I can smell the rain, I can see it falling through the open window. Across the street, people are huddling under a construction platform, waiting for the rain to let up. The streets are glistening, showing the world upside down, oh, now it's really coming down, raindrops like pellets of hail, a man is standing in the street waving for a taxi, ah, this is better, now I have a view of the trees in front of the old library building, the one with the stone pillars, and the lions on a pedestal, trees gently swaying in the rain-soaked breeze, he's still waving for a taxi, a woman steps gingerly around a water puddle, I'm writing on the windowsill, on the back of a library book, and my pen is digging grooves into the glossy cover, (sometimes I push so hard on the pen, it tears right through the page), 3:15, the rain has stopped, I was reading Zukofsky's "A", there's no doubt about it, he's a forerunner of the language poets, not necessarily a direct influence, but a precedent acknowledged in retrospect by poets eager to find a predecessor. Man on the corner, talking into his cell phone. Now he's crossing the street. I see yellow cabs moving inside the glass building across the street. The street looks like it's inside the building. They don't know I'm here, looking at them. They don't feel my eyes on their bodies. The present moment is the strangest thing. The only inexplicable thing. The sidewalks are already starting to dry. It's been a privilege standing here, at the library window, writing these words on my pay stub. I really enjoyed it.

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