It’s a rather warm-soup and somewhat philosophical kind of longing. Studio was not free of mauning even when he knew Jayne, of course.
Of course. I was speaking hastily and sloppily, of course.
There is no pressure upon us not to be sloppy.
But there is pressure that we not be too sloppy, lest we not strike the happy-accident monkey keys and say something that pleases us.
Do you think often, or ever, of Miles Davis doing all that dope and blowing into his horn until something flies out that pleases him and everyone around for miles and miles?
That is why they called him Miles.
If we are not too sloppy they will call us Inches.
&
Why do we talk?
Why would we not?
I suspect that is why we talk: what would we do if we did not talk?
Precious little else, darlin’.
My point.
Your point is that we do nothing but talk…
And that if we cease, we do nothing, are nothing.
Well, given how little we talk about, we are next to nothing already.
I dispute you not.
You brought this up, suggesting you might dispute it — I’m sorry, here I am talking inaccurately, doing the next-to-nothing thing we do sloppily. I mean to say: your bringing this up might suggest you are concerned with how little or nothing we are.
No, I am content to be nothing. It might be argued, for example, that a secretary of defense talks about matters that are far from the nothing end of the gravity-in-talk spectrum. I would rather we talk as we do than as secretaries of defense.
We are not con men, whatever else we are or are not.
And if we are, we con but our own self, and we have occasion to think of things to say that we don’t say, and think even of, say — I do this, I don’t know about you — I think once in a while, say, of the stray dog Jesus, wending His handsome way, turning down girls.
I see Jesus in his mind alone take the T-shirt off a nubile with his teeth and shake that shirt as a dog does a rag.
Shake the life out of it!
Shake it, Jesus buddyro!
Does the girl stand there admiring Him?
She stands there with her arms crossed modestly over her desert-chilled chest, smiling enigmatically, patient with the Savior in His paroxysm, saying to herself, I’ll never tell, I’ll never tell…
Oh! Don’t you long for the days when discretion reigned?
I long for the days when it existed at all.
Do you prefer to fish from the bank or from a boat?
I prefer to fish from wherever fish are less likely to be taken. I am fond of the fishing show on television.
Is this too a quiet vision of Jesus?
It is probably something of the sort, yes.
Could you dig a Flood?
You mean another big one?
Yes.
Yes. I’m in. Two of everything on the boat, the rest of us die. I am in.
&
There are some people who should die before the Flood.
Who?
Well, all these regimes that make refugees of millions of their own people, these regimes that bomb other countries to set them free, these gangs in Toyota trucks gunning down barefoot people, of course they all need to drop off right now. Just crumple over into the mass graves they have prepared for someone else. Then there are some others I want to see gone.
Are you talking about the phone virus?
I am. A person talking on a cell phone in his car, when he switches off the car, crumples over on the seat right there, just like a regime war criminal. Anyone dumping trash not at a dump gets the virus and crumples over on top of the crap he dumped; he will be found there by the sheriff if not by buzzards first.
People that throw shit out of a moving car chap my ass as much.
And mine. When so much as a plastic wrapper goes out of that car the perp will vomit prodigiously into his own car, and when he pulls over to address the issue and switches the car off, phitt! For that matter a person walking who tosses a paper cup to the ground will go down on his knees and have about five seconds to contemplate the cup before he too joins the unrighteous dead and improves the world that awaits the Flood.
&
What if we called the Salvation Army and had them come over here and clean us out?
Like, strip the joint?
Take everything here except us and what we’re sitting on.
What would be the point of this?
I am not sure.
Do you have any relatives living?
I must. Somewhere.
Me too.
Are you essentially alone?
Yes. It’s you and me. You and I.
God.
Tell me. Does this relate to having the Salvation Army come over and take our shit?
I think so. I have a vision of our sitting here, rather nattily somehow, in a clean place unbothered by biographical detritus and other riprap.
I love that word. After the Salvation Army comes and rescues us, though, we cannot make a cup of tea, or sleep well.
This is true. Maybe there is something wrong with my vision, technically. But… holistically — is that really a word? — I think I am onto something. If we could sit in these chairs unperturbed while everything was taken and have nothing then around us but the air we breathe and a thought or two, and our monkey chitchat, we would somehow be very superior.
I think you are having a monastery vision.
Maybe I am. I am a monast, or want to be. May one say that? Or is it monk?
Totally out of my ken, monking and all its affairs.
I heard a child once counting to one hundred to prove that she could, and when she said “forty-four” she stopped herself and said, “I love forty-four!” and then resumed counting. It was funny, and only a child could have done it, and only once. It was a unique moment in that child’s life, and in mine.
Are you going to cry?
I might.
Go ahead. Don’t call the Salvation Army while you are blubbering. And don’t be blubbering after they come and take our shit.
Of course not. We’ll need a stiff upper lip after that.
Mr. and Mr. Stiff Upper Lip sat in their chairs stoically as the Army of Salvation invaded their home and made natty and uncomplaining monks of them. The bums who toted their belongings past them could smell the fine cognac in their snifters.
That is a fine vision — you’ve put a Degas touch on my original pedestrian idea. I’d call the Army right now if it did not require my finding the phone book. Do you think if I called 911 they would refer me to the Salvation Army?
You could tell them you need emergency salvation and see.
Is it possible that we do have some cognac?
Not.
That’s the funniest thing kids have come up with in forty years. Before that it was the Jim Thorpe thing, I guess. It was similar, syntactically.
Man, there was a horse.
Apparently.
Cowboy up. Let’s go to the liquor bunker and get cognac and evade the angry brothers and get back here and be damned glad we have chairs to sit in and beds to lie on and toothbrushes to perfect our smiles with, and like that. I am not ready to sit for Degas yet.
&
A dark thing.
A dark thing what?
I had a vision of a dark thing—
A dream?
No, not a dream, just a sense of something dark, a dark place or effect, an ominousness…
And?
And I can’t develop it. The nearest equivalent I can think of is that alleged cold space said to obtain in haunted houses. It had that, but it wasn’t overtly paranormal or threatening or weird; it was just a sense of some muted thunder under a place or a time, a set of emotions that was like a dark curtain, ever so slightly foreboding. I thought I was going to be able to get up and seize it and make literal sense out of it, you know, a set of objects terminating in sensory experience, but I can’t.