Section 0004

     Extraordinary, when one takes up the pursuit of such chimeras, to discover what amazing trivia, what sheer insanity, infests some of the great masterpieces of art. Unreality becomes actual and solid. Boredom is no longer my beloved. One wishes one could read a little more accurately into the monuments and their ancient functions.

     Everywhere he found grains of tobacco, trodden cigarette ashes, pencil sharpenings, pen points eaten with rust:

     And his desire for survival,
     Faint in the most strenuous moods,
     Became an Olympian apathein
     In the presence of selected perceptions.

     I put two and two together.

     At nine in the morning the stranger called for the sack and took it to the hotel in a cab. Evolution had cheated Terrestrials. At the same time, certain Italian and Russian artists and writers were experimenting along the same lines: there would be the sky and the mountains, the flowers and the girl and the feeling that all this was a nightmare, the faint consoling hope that I might wake up.

     My desert is just beginning. Only the endlessly repeated flood of morning light.


     The word “love” here stands for an identity of feeling. To be courted and won and courted anew, again and again. All the sons and daughters of Eve are condemned to dress themselves in metaphors to name their relations to one another.


     The women who lived in the building were dressed in bright flower-print housedresses. There was a full moon that night. As you approach the building from the east, you see a sculpted figure retrieved from some demolition keeping company with a pop dispenser; if that seems undignified, consider that the figure’s sisters guard a garage over by the Sheraton.
     Here I had an inspiration. All was now ready for the continuance of the journey.

     Sabina felt as though Franz had pried open the door of their privacy. Luckily, I don’t think he even noticed how rude she was. Every eye sees differently.