Can you, in your vision, be careful so that he cannot get a bite in above the tumbler on your wrist?
Yes. I will present him the bottom of the tumbler, slowly, right to his chin, and stroke him under the chin if he assents.
The caterwauling bug song will abate as you do this.
I will momentarily not hear it. The sound will be there but I will have pushed the “attenuate” button. I have seen one of these on a fancy car radio. My mind will be with the mind of the moccasin.
You will forget the bad tangy water and the stupid metal cup and the bug song.
I will be somewhere else.
&
Will we be able to cross the river and rest in the shade of the trees, is what I am wondering.
You mean as opposed to wondering if we should, or if it will occur to us to want to do that, or—
No, I mean, precisely, Will we be able to cross a river and rest in the shade of the trees. I grant that we are too daft to have it occur to us. Perhaps you have not noticed, but the river is a concrete ditch now, usually, if it is not altogether underground beneath roads, and the trees are an automobile dealership. A man would need say today, after his arm is blown off, Let us cross that water-control canal there and repel the salesmen and crawl under the F-150s, where I wish to die.
We are living when before we would not have lived, and now we are dying where we would not have died.
That is almost epitaphic. When he should have not, he lived. Where he should have not, he died.
It will perplex the cemetery goer.
The cemetery goer, in my experience, is already perplexed. I see no harm in keeping him that way. I need some coffee, my friend.
I am in want of recreational drugs, untattered clothes, psychological counsel, carnal affection, a dog, and a child upon which to lavish trinkets and advice.
I fear for this child.
Not more than I.
&
What is Life like once it fully collapses around you, sir?
Has it fully collapsed around me?
You were averring this last night after your thimble of wine.
My thimble of wine has made my head hurt.
I refilled it for you several times, imprudently. At your insistence.
I insist on nothing anymore. I don’t have it in me to insist.
That’s what you say, sir. But after a thimble you will insist on another.
I dispute it, and it is not in me anymore to dispute, either.
You said, “My trumpet of vino is exhausted, Charles, fill it quick because Life has collapsed around me. Julia Child is dead. Fill it before I join her.” I felt unable not to comply with this request, sir, as you had phrased it and supported it.
The ghost of Julia Child is a powerful force.
Yes. You once used the ghost of Crazy Horse to similar effect.
I think of them together. Julia cooks prodigiously, drinks, accepts photographers. Crazy Horse sups succinctly, plans military campaigns, eschews photographers. They both die. Life has collapsed.
I can’t continue to pretend to be your manservant. Or catamite.
It challenges me too.
You addressed me as “Charles.”
I was thinking of Ray Charles, who has also died and contributed directly to the collapse of Life as we thought we knew it.
You pour a little wine for me tonight.
Will do.
&
Have you noticed…
Have I noticed… what?
I am certain that you have noticed. I was pausing because of that certainty. I was relocating the emphasis to my question. Have you noticed, any time lately, the phenomenon by which when you meet someone whose personality you object to that your own personality is shifted to a counterpersonality, as it were, to which you also object, arguably more than you object to the offending personality of the other?
Is the classic instance of this when you visit your parents and are thrown into the ghosts and contours of yourself when you were, say, a teenager and in full combat against their lunatic officialdom?
That might be the classic instance of this phenomenon, yes. But I think there are more frightening instances of it. I met a man recently who came on like a car salesman when there was no commerce between us and it put me into a guard, an almost Royalist snootiness that I very much did not like. What I did not like about it, beyond being made into a false personality, a boor, was that I could see he was oblivious to it, to my being a snob, because he was continuing on his program of taking advantage of me, or of the world in general, of which I just at that moment must have appeared to be a part of in front of him.
What put you off about this fellow?
He was smiling effusively and kept repeating my name. He was positioning me to like him by affecting to regard me as special. It put me into the role of a loan officer, or a hawk sitting a branch watching a mouse on the ground, or an off-duty prison warden.
Nothing wrong with the off-duty prison warden.
Come to think of it, you are right.
You should thank the man.
I’ve been ungenerous.
As usual.
Yes. You’re no Christian, Senator. I knew Christian.
&
Rosy turtles. With green eyes and yellow hair.
Yes?
I see them.
Hair?
Yellow hair.
Does it seem strange, hair on turtles?
No. Some of them are cropped short, like tennis balls, some spiked-out and gelled-looking, some just look like boys with yellow hair. Or girls.
So it’s unnatural-looking hair?
Well, it does look bleachy, but I think that is a conclusion we draw faced with yellow hair, on turtles or no, and in this case, for some reason, I am inclined to think this bright yellow hair is natural.
Custer was said to have—
Famously. Custer was a boorish happy ass. These turtles, my friend, are serious and somber, responsible… citizens. I nearly said dudes.
Where are these turtles?
In my mind. In the province of my mind.
Is there any kind of natural surround for them or are they—
They are just there, turtles, without props or context; nor do they weirdly float about or appear deliberately isolated. When you see turtles with hair, with agreeable expressions, rather friendly-looking dudes, you don’t examine the area around them overmuch, I find.
A reasonable position, with hairy turtles in view. No prob from me here. I need to get out, get a little air, purchase a small quantity of sugar from a vendor, snack on it as I idly perambulate, whiling away what little remains of my little and inconsequential life, of my dear dearth of time on this hallowed planet.
I am sorry I have set you off. With my turtles.
Not at all. I feel just excellent. I am fond of your turtles and live vicariously through them and have a sunny disposition for your having seen them. These visions sustain us. They are all we have.
Amen.
They make us religious, almost.
&
What is the big picture?
Please. Don’t.
Don’t what?
Start. I can’t. Today. No more big-picture mauning. Your yellow-haired turtles is a big-picture maun at an acceptably veiled, small-picture scale. That I can take.
You have invented this word, maun.
Maybe I have.
What does it mean?
I can’t take that either. You’re asking me things you know. You know what it means.
I suppose. Studio Becalmed mauned, then he met Jayne, she died, and he mauned some more, differently from before, and when your dog dies you maun a little. And so forth.