THE PRACTICE OF EVERYDAY LIFE
WHAT IS IT? YOU THINK IT'S ME? If it's me, then, okay, then I'm not arguing, then it's me. But what I mean is am I just being too stippy-minded all of the time? Because some of the time I think I am all of the time being just too stippy-minded for my own good. Like take this word come which they use. How come it's come? Didn't you ever stop to think I don't get it how come it's come? How come people don't say go? You know, I'm going, I'm going, I'm going! I just for once in my life would like to hear somebody screaming my God, my God, I'm going! Oh, but they can't, can they? They say they're going and you think they're making a peepee. You say to somebody I'm going, the first thing they're going to think about you is what are you doing, are you making a peepee? Remember when your mother said to you will you please for godsakes go already? Remember when your mother would stand outside the door and say to you I don't have all day, so for godsakes will you please go already? My mother used to do that. My mother used to say make and go. Make was to, you know, make was for you to make a number two, whereas go, go meant do the other one. It was like make was like this productive thing, wasn't it? You make and, presto, if you did it, you made something. There was like this poiesis involved. It was like taking a dump was like having this poiesis which was involved. Okay, I am just thinking my thoughts out loud. Or how about this — how about aloud? You don't hear people saying aloud anymore. Who says aloud anymore? But so who's in charge of these things like this — humanity saying out loud instead of saying aloud? Remember when everybody used to call it a Coney Island Red Hot? There were these places that sold you these frankfurters and they called them Coney Island Red Hots. Forget it. You're not interested. I was just over at my friend Krupp's. I was just over at my friend Krupp's place, and I am trying to make this point to Krupp about something, I am sitting there trying to make this important point to Krupp about something, but all Krupp is doing is saying show Gordie how you can sneeze, Lulu, show him. Do I want to hear a dog sneeze? Is this like what the thing of my life has finally come to? I have to sit like a gentleman somewhere listening to a dog sneeze? I had a point to make. But does anybody want to hear the point you have to make? What they want for you to do is for them to get a dog to sneeze and make me have to be the audience for it. I used to be a serious person. I used to read things and have things to say about them. Now all I do is go around being an audience for everything, not excluding canines. There's this bum coming along wheeling along on the sidewalk with these five shopping carts rigged up like with these boards and things to make this one big crazy like outboard thing out of it with all of this wire and with a radio going down in it somewhere and all this shit of his in it and like outriggers. I spent days and days thinking to myself Gordon, what is the word for what that looks like to me? Look, it's too complicated for you. I'm not going into it with you because it's looks to me like it's far too complicated for you. Like I see this father in the park having a catch with his kid in the park and the father keeps tossing the ball over the kid's head and the kid keeps having to go hustling after the ball and then has to keep coming all of the way back with it to where he was so that when he throws the ball the kid won't be too far away from the father for the ball to get to the father when the kid tries to throw the ball back. You know how long I stand there and watch what I just told you? You would not believe how long I stand there and watch it, this sad sorry sight like that like just what I just told you. But like it's necessary for me to do it is the sum and substance of my thinking. I'm witnessing, I'm witnessing. It is an act of sociable conscience as far as I go as far as, you know, as the grief of the kid in this context goes. Who else is willing to do this? Do I see anybody else who is willing to do this? I'm in this video store asking for these great old movies from the great old days and there's this kid there with his mother there and I am listening and I am hearing and can anybody believe what I as an involved bystander am hearing? Because check me out on this — it's the same little kid screaming no, I am not getting any fucking movie with any fucking sword-fighting in it, it's either people shooting or I'm telling! Actually, I have to tell you something, the kid's theory of thinking, you have to go along with it, shooting's better. But here is the other thing — who's he think he's telling, the father? I mean, it's the same father, right? But honestly, how come people stand there and say that, I'm telling? So who are they telling? Oh, excuse me, excuse me, whom — I'm fucking sorry, whom. So did I tell you about there's this lady I see pick up this mitten I see her see on the sidewalk and goes and sticks it up on top of this fire hydrant like it is going to be up there for it to say hello to all of the passing parade and asking them hey, hey, did any of you losers lose me? Go tell her. She is probably somebody who you can tell. Man oh man, I should have gone up over to her and told her about all of this stuff which I am telling you about, exclusive of the thing about her herself. A concerned citizen. A responsible member of the socialist framework. I bet anything that lady is a serious individual just like I used to be. Boy, do I miss it, being the conscience of the people. Now all I do is go around stealing toilet paper from places and being everybody's public person so they can look at somebody and say him. Oh, schooner! It just came to me, schooner. Lucky thing for you I am the kind of a human being who keeps going after things even when they go way over my head. I'm sorry. That was uncalled for. I guess I just wanted to get in another go again by way of making this look like I am trying to make this look like I maybe really made something. And another thing — right, right, I should have said his. Which is the whole point of the thing, isn't it?