This morning I am interested in vanillin. Or vanilla — it occurs to me I don’t know the difference exactly. I am interested in that essence of bean that makes candy candy. That is all I am interested in. I am not interested, today, in Mrs. M. or straitjackets or Mexican lamming or improbable dogs, or in women or food or drink, or in newspapers or civil ways and means, or in jackshit. I am hot for a little brown bottle and a whiff of vanilla. Life as we know it in this late day of sophistication is predicated on the spectrum of ones interests; it is judged, to be more precise, by one’s interests. If these are too narrow or too broad, or too shallow or too intense, we do not have a normal person. A man is supposed to be a kind of balanced diversified portfolio of modest interest in things, none of which is to get out of hand. A small percentage of his interest can be in high-risk matters provided the bulk of his interest is rock-solid conservative. Thus you see a man in a cammo suit on a computer-driven moving-target shooting range, shooting pop-up silhouettes of men with the aid of an infrared scope mounted on his very head, and bragging that he is thirty out of thirty, “About,” he says, “what you’d have to be in a riot situation,” and we have a goner — a white supremacist most likely — until it is revealed this is an assistant prosecutor with the Los Angeles District Attorney’s office. This is a fully legal hobby, and my God, look at it, it looks like exercise to boot.
The sane have a balanced portfolio of interests, the insane have given themselves to imprudent investments — to high-risk, low-yield ventures. You do not look in windows. You buy lots of dinners for women if they are your interest. Take the newspaper; I sometimes think the newspaper was invented to serve as a benchmark for the sanity of man. You must take the paper and read it; you may even, if commerce is in any way involved, subscribe to and read several papers. But you must discard them promptly. The hoarding of newspaper leads to suspicion quickly. Fire marshals have a nose for them and a scorn for the hoarder nearly equal to that for the arsonist (whom they secretly admire, anyway). On the other hand, you may not not read the paper — this is uncivil.
Every venue in modern life is marked with a propriety of option similar to that attending the newspaper. The investor is expected to diversify, to be liquid, to mix one-tenth risk with nine-tenths conservatism. He deviates…well, he’s deviant. Be interested in nothing you cannot sell — that is, be interested in nothing you cannot not be interested in. Here we get to the wicket. After dinner with her, take her home if she says to. A certain party will then go home himself; another will look in her window. QED.
QED my ass. Nothing has ever been proved. Perhaps in the old days — perhaps Columbus proved the earth round. Beyond a few rare instances of likesuch, what has been proved? What is probative today? As far as I am concerned the jury is still out — and a laughable concept that — on the entire modern world and all its doggerel affairs. My point. I like it when a person is moved to say to another, “Your point is well taken.” This usually actually means “You are full of shit and I ought to kill you to get you out of my face but I do not see a way of doing that and getting away with it so I will say ‘Your point is well taken’ until such time as I can get an unwitnessed fatal blow in.”
And things are heating up in my perception of the modern world: folk are stepping around each other in a more and more ritualized and more and more impatient dance, looking for the moment they can stop saying forever, Your point is well taken. In heaven it will never be uttered. In heaven you can say, Your point should be put where the moon don’t shine. Right now I am smelling smoke and it is possible my house is on fire. It is possible this is my house I am in. Since Chattahoochee there has been uncertainty. I miss my dog, if I had a dog — I can’t tell how far back this episode might go. I miss my dog whether I had one or not — there, a little assertiveness training to the rescue. But no one on the white-coated side of the fence would encourage you to lament the loss of an imaginary dog. My position on this, best kept to oneself, is that all dogs are imaginary. Is this Platonic? Can you pet an Idea? Can an Idea have fleas? Can an Idea kill the neighbor’s chickens and get run over with feathers still in its mouth?
Stroke
A WOMAN COMES AT me armed with a weapon, her mouth, her clothes. The weapon is indistinct, mouth open, clothes off. Something is coming out of her mouth. It will hurt. The weapon is vague and bright — not nickel-plated, more accurate to say just nickel plating. It is bright essence of weapon, and not the true weapon. The true dark harm is in the mouth, the clothes removed. The oglalasioux jumble of syllables to slur on me, the jungle of hot flesh to be withdrawn once I’m listening, the platter of blind regret waltzing away with her victory. O dogs of solitude, lizards of horniness, we must prepare ourselves for Armageddon. If we only knew what that word meant. Islets of Langerhans is more like it. Prepare for that, boys. Call your mother and tell her flowers are on the way but she’s seen the last of you and your practiced civility, you are going to the island. No man is an island is disputable. No woman is on it is not. I bid you adieu, Mr. Donne.
Then these dudes attack, with their women balled up at their sides. Then some more then. Now what?
This: Duwop Nura Buddy, a dog, was awalkin down the street singin duwah diddie diddie dum diddie day. I ignored him. I do not need a dog, let alone another dog.
I want to write a book sinful tradeout minnow (stroke) (related) (-) (stroke-related). A young man can have one. (Stroke.) Even so, he can still cross his t’s and dot his i’s, and cross his eyes (smile) unless they (antecedent: eyes, so you don’t have to guess) are permanently crossed by the stroke. I cannot read my bank statements. Fortunately there is no money in the accounts or I would be in trouble. All life is trouble, degrees thereof. All flesh is sloughing, degrees thereof. All metal is rusting. All cheese going bad, or hard. All dogs leaving you, or refusing to. All women balling up into fists. All islands being washed by neaps and ebbs of loneliness. Not solitude, that is $100/hour loneliness, and islands do not pay $100/hour. Neap and ebb and spring, low and lower and lowest — who, my pretty, is the lowest tide of all? Out there run aground on the ebb, you can click together your red goody two-shoes until the cows come compounding interest.
I am silly. I am a quitter, also. These are the twin tines of the actual devil’s fork. These days you cannot find well-made toys unless you are prepared to spend a fortune, a fact or surmise or opining that I tender in irrelevant position to my argument about silliness and quitting. On silliness and quitting: you can induce any roomful of folk you collect to volunteer by show of raised hands who among them has beat his child, gone queer, voted Republican, voted Democrat, voted Communist, slept with his daughter, laughed at Jerry Lewis, gambled away the trailer payment, flushed the puppies down the toilet, financed many abortions, coveted whatever, humped whatever, killed whomever, and denied it all, but not one of them will confess to being silly and not one of them will admit to being a quitter. I slept with my daughter and I did not stop! This reminds me of a joke I cannot remember.
I understand that songbirds are doing well in the nozoney modern world. In the vast expanse of survivors’ electronic vigor and bitchamp, it will be prettily sung tunes and Hallmark cards and no one quitting, no one silly. The world will want a blacksmith. Mark me on this. Red wagon.