What?
I was just having an idea: A man and all his effects… is a sad business, you get right down to it. Grave to him, silly to the universe. He can’t get rid of the crap that weighs him down. He cherishes his ditty bag. He needs a house fire, of course, but he also needs a mind fire.
&
I want to go to the yard sale up the way.
Do you want more shit?
No.
Then—
I know. But what if there is good shit?
You don’t want more shit.
The last thing I want is more shit, but what if there’s good shit there, and it goes ungotten?
It won’t go ungotten, someone else will get—
Get the good shit, simple as that. Hat up. I am having a vision of old monofilament. That is what I most need today.
I hope they have kittens in a box and you get one.
What if they have, like, possums in a box? Free kittens in one box and “Possum’s $10” in another? That’s what I’m talking about! I am talking about acquiring shit no one in his right mind acquires and paying for it and being troubled by it the rest of your life, moving it from house to house, in this case being put in the hospital by it, and so forth. I am talking about living, my friend.
I wonder if what you are talking about is the kind of lunacy that inspires a man to run for president, when it’s at the other end of the spectrum of affluence.
The man who can’t stand for other people to get the good shit that he doesn’t need but must have lest they have, when he already has money?
Yes. The poor kleptos go to yard sales, the rich run for president, out of the same impulse.
Just hat up, de Tocqueville. That fishing line calls me.
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Was that a… what was that?
What?
That flew by.
What flew by?
That is what I am asking.
You are asking what flew by.
Yes.
I saw nothing fly by.
Come on — it was like a condor, blew right through here about six feet high.
Didn’t see it.
Dude, you should have felt it.
Didn’t feel it.
I have a headache.
Take a nap.
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In the broadest sense of the word: helmet.
What are you talking about?
I have no idea.
Are you insane?
I think so. Isn’t that our goal?
I suppose it is.
So: helmet. In the broadest sense. I want to get the pols and the voters together and say, “In the broadest sense of the word, helmet, people. What I am doing here, on the ground, I am a commander on the ground, listen to me, I am thinking outside the helmet here,” and so forth, until someone objects—
And you know that no one will object.
Of course no one will object, unless they are told to object. Helmet.
Iyuh hayev ayuh mayarble.
What?
It’s my new language: two-cylinder instead of one. Two-stroke.
Liyuk, cayool?
Roieet.
We are insane.
We are inSAYane.
&
Dude.
What?
Nothing.
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Are we going to have fun today?
No.
Are we going to live today as if it is the last day of our lives?
No.
But we know from the testimonials of Close Callers that we should.
Yes.
But we don’t do it.
No.
Why not?
We can’t conceive of how you actually do it.
We can’t?
No. Go ahead. Propose that we live right now as if this is our last day. What do we do? Where do we go?
I want to sit right here and think about The End.
See? Why don’t you ACTUALIZE yourself? Have you been to Tahiti? No? Then you must go. Now. Be gone.
Jesus.
See? You see?
God wasted two whole spaces on us as human integers. We’re nils in terms of becoming all that we can become.
Actually, we are negativos, like junkies, except we don’t even have the desire or the drive for self-satisfaction like a good junkie. He has at least his want and he seeks to claim it.
We just don’t want. And don’t satisfy.
I don’t even really get hungry anymore in a good way.
&
We’re out there.
We’re out where?
There.
We are here. Cornbread are round.
I know. I just feel like saying, We’re out there.
The mood is upon ye for nonsense again?
It always is. You know that.
Yes. The stove is the only sane party here.
But, really, doesn’t “We’re out there” feel just about right, and finally true, and agreeably unpresumptuous—
The smart retarded we go for?
Yes.
I admit that it does. We are out there.
I can barely see it, the there out there. It’s deserty but not in a rich, real way — no cacti or lizards or mesa or Santa Fe shit, not even the vast ocean sand roll of the African shtick. Just kind of sand-seeming blah. Like the, well — I just saw one of these — like a Polaroid picture that doesn’t develop into anything except some toxic-looking edges and a grayish center you keep hoping will look like something soon but it never does and you put it in a drawer and keep it anyway until your house is so full of crap like it that you pray for a house fire to rid you of it all, and your life in a sense resembles the drawer and the house full of likewise crap around it and you want a fire to clean it up too, and in lieu of that you start longing to be in a gray undeveloped place that is represented by “out there” in your tired brain, and you go around saying, “We are out there”—
When in fact you are not, but you badly want to be, out there—
Exactly. Make us a drink if you will.
I will, my brother. I will go to the porch and make them on the washing machine, which I like to do, and from there I will call into the house and say, “I am out here making drinks,” and even this little echo of “out there” will gratify us a bit and keep us from being depressed and terrified.
We are geniuses.
We are not taking the pills that give you the Tantric ejaculation.
Grossoroni. I want clean gin with juniper berries in it. I can see a juniper berry rolling on the Sahara like a BB on a sixteen-lane highway. You remember when that joke was “four-lane” highway?
You remember when we thought the idea of Chernobyl was bad?
I have no idea what a juniper berry actually looks like. I picture a blueberry crossed with a caper. Rolling across a dune as tall as Fate.
As what?
Nothing. I’ve lost it.
When I make the drinks on the washing machine, there is always a tiny bit of sand on the lid under the glasses and I swirl the liquor and hear a faint gritty noise and it makes my day. At this moment “out there” is precisely under the glass in my hand.
You have lost it too.
No contest.
We must have our desires, even if they are not desires.
Perfect smart retard! We should coin something so objections will abate if we go public — like “smard.”
If I had access to a child I would buy it some marbles today. I would please the little bastard with something lovely and love the little bastard for being pleased and being lovely itself, the little bastard I would by that point not be calling a little bastard but would in fact by that point be in love with. My brain has become like unto a dog’s, I think.