Abstract Souls
'a novella'

for Philip Roth

IN recapitulation, I prefer that all has been due to either sheer satiety at some end or to a sort of pre-world blankness from having nothing much to think about.
    I say this, for instantly I consider coffee breaks at tables, or tea breaks as they may be, as, apart from being ignominiously revealing and nasty---consider them as extremely rarely mirthful significant events worthy of anyone's unusual lingering down intricate paths in (and anyone's machinating creatures of curious memory upon) them in one surreal mossy carnivaling. Almost always, they (and as he must, the reader will choose here) are either of fatigue (from tiredness here rather than satisfaction) or sheer hesitations at oft lamentable decisions and choosings at some hieroglyphics hour of dead finality; 'tis often an end in itself, this coffee-breaking, in an advancing time future. In short, during such hours---decisions, decisions, . . . they usually wait.
    Yet, . . . Karrissa, presently mounting one of these canteen plastic seats manufactured in Bulacan as product of technology, may be perfectly knowledgeable right now of that which she had morosely figured about one coffee break in the duration of one other real coffee break. Right now! Yes. These two most simple of rituals, delicately placed, that previous one, upon a point, just like this latter, in supposedly irreversible time, . . . both---in their respective turn---encloses a single setting (which setting, by the way, continuouslys stimulates here also a post-coital destructive impression upon me, but we'll talk about that later). Perfectly knowledgeable within those caffeine-pushed musings, I said, for if she claims to know eidetically only (if she'd remember that situation which she now remembers in that way only I'd certainly applaud without reserve) or know, broadly in remembering, only how it was---the previous situation per se---to be soaked in maxims, at this coffee break in a late afternoon, is certainly most doubtful. 'Tis not a past coffee break that Karrissa must remember, no, something must be remembered by her to color the here and now---her kind of musings being far from mere metaphorical bourgeois ingredients of the recipe there but, instead, entirely interventions upon present aroma (quickly creating there their own aroma in parallel).
    Now, in preceding eras it certainly was thought curious, even suspect, and consequently not so wonderful and pleasant---first by Prometheus, then by Platonius and equally then by Karl Popper and by the Walt Disney heroes in later generations, ah! indeed: held just as much by the university administration here as by most in yuppie culture---, and had been thought incredibly unfortunate for a planet recognizing righteous celebratory intellection, and was thought stupid, that objects (freely maudlin though they may already seem) should still not proceed fixated, as necessary, in the usual sweet manner of measurable abstraction, this through classicist silhouettes. Preferably devoid of any religious sanctity, be this religiosity one unremoved from the mundane concrete (as with pantheist-materialist and related leanings), . . . and so grooving here then even against Spinoza. Baruch Spinoza, did I say? Oh, he of the geometric didactics upon the concept God may have proven too the strength of the mathematical ethic, yet the math should have been enough, wouldn't you think? You for whom all religiosities amount to defeatism?
    Anyway, . . . everything mucked here, in my following tale, shall eternally picture still---I hope---the laxity of our present science, literatures, and, uh, cultures, and present the suppleness of our overflowing lust for life that is so thrown in legerdemain. Thrown so by everyone! except the less sublime whose beastly "sleights of hand" go unchecked in an already more obvious carelessness (they pick flowers with haste, lacking in respect, things like). This now after relying excessively on a sort of Cezzanist modulation through a perfect confessing gracefulness of reason. I write this all, horizons of uttered and unuttered disbelief being sometimes terribly wanted too (oh! and how) in special moments and more, especially in this my personal paradox of a 'novella' cum recapitulation. Reader, help me, to choose: whether to shut up now or swing it. No, no. Measure's no option, mind you, for it's the curse, see---an intervention upon the aroma of living, instantly creating thereafter its own life, its own vigor. It becomes flesh itself, and may even be what shall be soul. It is therefore not the truth, but yet its own.
    But is the valid choice of retreat, on the one hand, and literary violence, on the other, be one and the same thing, as each perhaps leads to the other? Could we be striped thus in the way of our actions? Well, . . . let's induce from the following. And watch. For this is a movie. . . .

DINA---my love: when you came that night, late to dinner, overdressed ( fortunately you were faithfully quick off them), and began to tell me nothing less than truths there withheld from a necessary presence, I thought that you just might as well have swung an ax at my heart. A necessary presence---the necessary presence of an emotion as delicate as Karrissa's, that beholden, breast---white, softly plump, tiny---wife (widowed now, but not then). I thought that you might as well have swung an ax at my heart---in the recurring level of your sparkling, flowing chest, Dina (us being of the same height). So heedless were you then of any sauntering reality of a nervousness in me over this, one that would threaten me forthwith along with the concrete manifestations of my long-standing celebrity, those there my trophies, medals, plaques, my diplomas, ribbons, invitations to speak. A previous lack of fame was now uninvited, see. Fame = kisses. You brought, also, as witty satiric present, a plateful of one boxed pudding, a foreign peach on top, no less. You made me nervous. Oh certainly I had previously told Karrissa everything concerning the fragile though angelic culdesacs of our reputation, and, consequently, the tension of our increasing love, ---do you remember now---murky (which neither readily comes out eerie nor lonesomely passionate to me: I was a happy satyr in moments like, uh, what we'd often call to mind. Yeah, so happy to be alive. Murky, rather, in the special context of lights turned off for camera safety). But now tell me: why'd you come to my apartment grinning black New York City lipstick the two of us purchased in a Thessaloniki department store a week down from the Shannon where we could've gotten married (could we have?) beside the Dubliner Joyce's grave, came on, telling me there over and over, increasing in insistence, lips, black, hurting mine, told me thrice of Karrissa's fine pale tiny youthful front having been just great on the cover, glossy shining almost wet-looking on this pancake issue. These 'issues' stringing together all tastes and religion for a magazining uptown, Antipolo? (sold downtown), published bimonthly by what's his name---he wrote terribly something about lipstick missiles as possible deterrent for "now-rich nations' increasing obsessions with cliche-prone nuclei"---, de la Cruz? I felt obliged, serious and (oh god) certain, insisting and then failing, to tell and force a view of an unconscious and completely knocked-out appearance. Yes, where soul becomes free of body, in a manner of speaking. Asleep---"fragrantly, innocently, faultlessly asleep, is she not? is she not!"---, I said, to no one. Drugged! Oh yes, so that she may serve a public mission promoting awareness, though of what and for what remain somehow ineffable to me; it was all ineffable to my post-Marxist then, it still is to my post-isms now. I mean, I could never prostitute "awareness," for instance, and demanded an explanation for that breast. I do not deny even a contemporary erection but . . . ah! she was but only seventeen! going on eighteen of course yet still, still!---the camera's a pillory, nay, not that, a liar, a degenerate charlatan's art tool!

About one of those epicene, diaphanous canteen settings, must I tell you now? No. Let's settle on the apartment brouhaha.
    You now sat there euphoric, with teasing entomological eyes, vehement kissing ceased, peach-smelling fingers, a female beast were you likewise an erotic fiction; and though Karrissa too was a euphoric type, she was really to a full degree more embarrassing, really more embarrassing, for when Karrissa the untamed woman (in acqua-green sacques often enough, on white complexion), when in good tone she calls for either coffee with sugar, or sometimes avocado to go along with toasts for me, this everytime she treats me (Jesus) and insists on serving, or, when, still at the booth, jokingly damning the little prune piece on a topping melting (note topping melting, reader, nature's own motion she often fails to heed as potential significate), she would not then be in communion with the ordinariness of customers as to refractorily pay the girl at the counter quickly---as though she's further thinking what else to add to the culinary magic in, say, baked spaghettis, or pot roasts, or to sundaes and all that; no, invariably lastly asking (after delivering my order) for nothing more than coffee for herself, she'd then afterwards parade quite extravagantly in electro-devolutionary high-heeled pair of shoes, cup in hand, smoothly down to "her" table (good choice, too, being the corner); from a european or balinese purse, she takes coins, bills, and lo! again marches about (I think usually after J.P. Souza) through an amorphous aisle, the busboys squeezing themselves at the passages to let her pass, marching over there again to pay for her purchase (instant coffee), and my order (when it's on her), eventually almost always heard too (seen from my point) extending proletarian sympathies to every counter girl or waiting bored customer, mostly stuff concerning life being what it most recently has gotten to be, "an empty shell," she's wont to say. And, her fingers as chinese-white as the female's human leather on the haunch, she'd insatiably time them to each other's company to turn out suggestive in the composition of gestures some legendary Philippine residue of a contrasting Malay royal aristocracy, or maybe actually a residue of a primitive carefree heritage. After Erik Satie, I believe, the rhythm/beat of her steps and turns would seldom fail to aggravate, as per my suspicions, the nervousness that everyone had, stocked in them, for all the asserting front and bottom (no bras, and latently faux silk emerald-green panties, I'm afraid) (deep though the cleavage may appear---how does she do it?---the bosoms are small, but the shape! one must see the shape). Yet, despite all this, the guile in her theatrics may have been hell-bent at maintaining a character of rage and wildness that was there to invite additional images, which, in turn, might convince me to feel at home where I sat; and I was convinced, into feeling at home and of a potential rage somewhere. A truly novel noxa, then, was this phenomenon, or so some might think. One time I even imagined myself as slave, taking her cup to one divulgent, indeed forlorn seat and table (movie scene! this); she rolls beside me, that she might be able to whisper to me to be careful not to spill it (she has pregnant humor, I know), so that, as I hopelessly get it safe to a disastrous destination, end (ah, I feel like a poet-in-residence saying this, so final are my words), I never yet cease to imagine further the back-to-the-counter passacaglias she dons, routinely, to pay for her powder-bean solution and my baked spaghetti, my baked spaghetti with pepper sauce spread extravagantly all over it, or is it rice cake for me? Monogyny---that is not the pretense, either (or of course), in this part of the tale, for sometimes I would picture the body shouting instructions whilst you, you, are clumsily gripping her cup of coffee, easily excited girl that you are---clumsy---a merry geranium. It's a german coincidence when she's beside you in my imagination, by the way. Twins, you seem to be, while she's whining those "take it easy, take it easy". But as often happens, later, she would not be with anyone (most of the time, at least) on a coffee break be you geranium or czar wanting to be there with her in the scene; so much so that it'd then be quite all right to see me there sitting obscurely also, simply sitting though shyly watching the rump of her at the next next table-row, one table pair between us, me nibbling my baked pepper-filled spaghetti (or is it rice cake) simultaneous to her sipping her coffee at the other end. Eleemosynary stuff all this is, perhaps, to my artistic deductions and literary permutations upon objects at hand, and objects in mind, women included (was I born to be of this taste?). She would watch herself on mirrored walls as walls were to Hemingway, death horizon symbols (thinks Malcolm Cowley), but here being mirrors let's say they might have functioned for her as a reassurance on life, or at least as checks on a flaw; or, she would watch the dynamism of "appearances," both real and imagined, though I'd doubt that. Perfect objectives-correlative---cups, and mirrored girls on mirrored walls (she might have been blind to it, to this dynamism)---, never for once watched me, not even so much as look in my direction. And it hurt me. . . . Then, suddenly, on a Friday evening's Elysian weather, she told me to come sit, for one last time, be nourished with her there at this supposedly numb inanimate hour perfidy to truths (numb, I said, as here everyone's mind glares, as it were, on sheer coffee, none with or beyond it). Obviously insane, though, that she'd suddenly be asking to be just as suddenly left alone for another self-enamoring while, just "for a while," though it's clear she never had me sit at her table since that last time, and it wasn't even her table to begin with. She wanted---I think now she's looking still for---freedom. Or maybe it was really Boredom she wanted, being quite so interesting, I remember she once mumbled to me---

Oh I tried so much at that time to avoid such debatable, exothermic subjects as freedom, boredom, truth, the imagination; yet, since I never did (nor could) cease to find myself living quite undeterminedly with these very questions oftentimes exact with the real, breathing examples, I'd say I've learned to overcome the pressures of the dichotomies and their exceptions-to-the-rules by simply, simply, taking tenaciously to the dark side of the moon whenever someone takes the bright, and so on. It was only with such a manner of treating events that my genius kept practice at checking and at balancing, as to be conditioned into believing its own pretty lies, eventually settling for this one side, holding tight to its security (for as long as its offer lasted), living life with its odor---. Early that night, though, in 1988 I was forced to return to a more honest, more definite pose resembling numbness, where I was to remain uncertain about which side to choose, if I was at all to continue to breathe logic, and, therefore, retain dear Sanity. There are certain questions which, when read between the lines, denote more than what is intended; that certainly leaves our long-standing philosophies in life surprised, as to become utterly meaningless, essentially unconvincing. As for instance, my father once asked me: "So you don't want to be a lawyer." So? Me? Don't? Want? To be? Not to be? A? What Karrissa would have returned had she been asked the stupid conjecture in the guise of a question (stupidity's slyness), so replete with semiotics, I wonder; for Karrissa seems unequivocally suicidal, by which I mean a personality quite unceasing in its proclivity to put up a challenge towards anything that might resemble loving care for what's to happen to her. For she thinks she knows what's best for her, seeming always to be darn sure of it.
    "So you don't care for what's to happen to you now," I said this in the early part of the evening, "and you don't want the simple necessity of maintaining a home of your own with your own string of dependents, now. Indeed I think you must be crazy."
    "I want you," she said, talking in everyday college English.
    "I want you, too," I affected, ersatzly I guess. . . .
    This is all irrepressibly making me recall now (by the way) the snag of life of a black car that belonged to someone, that hit her one first night with its headlight-at-the-right on terra incognita (the rump, as it were). And now, that this may not be mistaken for 'fiction,' I must tell you how it hit her. But, in recollection, remember it please to have hit her not so much, not so much as to hurt one to a degree catastrophic; ramshackle raillery would likewise be totally abnormal, for it hit her just enough to cause a little scene. Perhaps it was just a bit of a hint for me to get to know her---an excessive thought here, I know, but I was of a character heroic and equally suicidal at the time. At the time. Mud hit her stockings---that was tragic, even sweet, so, okay. The dress was a daring sacque (daring, being already out of fashion that season or year); the shoes, mud. And all these were to happen quite unexpectedly, just before I am to become painter-in-residence---I, one yet silver-plated finicky signor unfaithful to constitutions, irate proponent of mentalist erotica in the formal cubist manner (but more sadistic than de Kooning can become), all this angry art with me, in me, at a time when a disgusted Catholic reception for tropical supra-eroticism would explain the ire (I continued, though, didn't I indeed, to lobby for its support among the "councils," simply by hanging around "the campus"); furthermore, I was yet then encouraged by poverty to satisfy at least the moods of lachrymal carnality, this last being a Filipino mark considered just so, Filipino, I was told by a fellow faculty member, a sociologist. Holy pistils in efflorescence! why art we so finicky-and-frank about our respective personalities' reactions to stimuli, eh? Oh, very well. Let me illustrate.
    A Russian once said that life (if that's what things amount to) may all be a simple "rejoicing that things are still the way they are and that, for the time being, nobody knows worth a damn what determines our desires. . . . There's no need for free will to find that twice two is four. That's not what I call free will!"---Dostoevsky. I wheel him out here to say that truly there are marks peculiar and indigenous to the Pacific soul that parallel some European's mingling sensations with uncomfortable knowledge: we certainly have a little German Expressionism in our own terrors, a little pantheism, a little Gertrude Stein repetition in the hands of parental discipline, our own brand of tribal psychoanalysis and myth, even, while retaining the Buddhist material treatments on the self.
    Therefore, as a way of apologising, may I say that my reactions to the impending situation with the black car was nothing but . . . a cultural legacy's sheer manifestation, albeit deviant in a way, albeit tinged with foreign derivatives, albeit lost, in search of an author . . .
    you promptly suggested to take her to the canteen, quite appropriate, where for a minute we could buy her a drink. Flouncing academic and athletic heads present both witnessed the beginnings of an epoch, as milk or coffee was served to a corner table to aid one in recovering from a Live Shock, a kind of sleepwalk (such a shock has a combination not normally given to mortals), to breathe from a busy day of recurrent misfortune, and "to get her to come to," you said. Shocked, no, not really. More like temporarily deranged by an ineffable fate arrangement, beginning in a morning, proceeding through to an afternoon, a derangement possible after having been finally numbed by an angelus hour's finale push on her behind. Yeah. So that I had to softly caress, later kiss, her cheeks (sitting beside her in the shadows of the cafeteria corner, behind a large post), like in a happy tale---to be taken by the reader as my confirmation of her sanity and relative inalienation within the abandoned canteen (suddenly empty except for the closing shop booths)---to keep her tears at a minimal flow. Being incredulous to failure as the flow quietly increased, I kissed her instead on the lipstick surface when you, you, went up to a booth, me pulling her head towards me, the way some very nice fathers might play koochie-koo with baby, also---also---that you and I may hear at once her banal tales of recurrent misfortune. If I remember right, you were wearing a guimpe then. Were you in love with me then? Not yet? The moment coffee is served she refuses, preferring root beer. Over toast and black coffee (the latter seems typically academic, I said), dignifiedly unhesitating, sincere, you asked forgiveness and ere long announced your humblest of intentions, that you'd drive her home to her apartment or shack "or what have you," in your perilous black picaresque mobile. "Don't worry, I'll drive us there to thine abode, an apartment my pretty?"---dear God, the fresh English teacher flirting, with me. The crying girl, on the other hand, she with white teeth, no caps no nothing, grinned to red lipstick, deep red, the rain out suddenly pouring. Such corniness in things in this world.

Karrissa did try to finally infuse upon me in a long distance call of a month ago---in a hopefully truly final invasion of what were formerly recurring stalemates of consciousness in her, now just plain stories we can almost laugh a little about---the cursory doll-image of her husband's mundanely horrific death at twenty-two, as just one among her countless (perhaps deserved?---she asked) misfortunes, misfortunes however she did in the progress of time learned to swallow, living and flowing stimuli to which weeping later became an unlearned response. She was calling with a new cheerfulness in her voice. Now, . . . I know that you, Dina, hearing of what I just wrote here about some death, you, an English major (now graduate student/university employee), my former acquaintance, fan, and later sparring partner with your kind of arguments, . . . I know that you find tales of death and sudden freezes and immobilities a funny thing; funny, maybe as you've been accustomed to an insane (my favorite adjective there, "insane") hallucination, far from being Catholic, involving denouements---denouements as being really climaxes yet, this from your thinking everything to be going ever forward instead of upward. Biogenesis theory, I think, or regeneration, that may be the reason for your unwillingness now to discuss this as you here hastily disappear at our kitchen doorway, there to make pancakes for me and you, this afternoon---rococo leisure of Omar Khayyam's "hedonist" tooth may now be our overwhelming compatible ground, don't you think so? though pancakes be made of cheap flour, thus, political objects still. Are you truly opting stillness? Or is this unwillingness to talk and contribute something to my novella-memoir an unrehearsed whispered discussion between you and your jealous heart? O, from the kitchen, speak! How can your eyes be so alone (after Ginsberg), necessitating here my labor in deciphering truth and the real from within merely implied desires in tantrums? "Oh, okay. Go tell your readers the wife makes terrible pancakes, . . . go on! Address them in the correct person plural, and tell all that you wish now. That you wish our Karrissa were here to illustrate it---with her, to quote, 'white plump tiny young firm tits, the white teeth and the red lipstick' . . ." she goes, slowly but clearly, with a most sweet humor, I should add, since she would certainly be found smiling. What would you make, reader, of such wifey wit? Oh yes, reader, Dina's now my wife, didn't you know?
    I admit she and Karrissa have prize human character in common, in fact several, e.g. courage, fickleness, and a contradictory dedication to truth. Yet Karrissa is of a different mold, of something extrinsic and not rather theoretical. Got married and pregnant at sixteen---it's really the other way, got pregnant and unofficially married at si---her adolescent groom and prince (about her age) all too suddenly reciting the send-off at a hospital after barely two months in their illegal marriage, although to be in stupefying deadness for a long while before recently, at last, dying to finally boot it all. (Why do I say 'at last'? Does it---did it---please me to hear: he died? Imagine I were a novelist; wouldn't I certainly be accused now of killing the dude early in this story so that I could fuck the girl? But, ladies and gentlemen, that was not so with us. Not just because the boy would die five years later, but that I too wanted the boy to live. Just as Karrissa herself did.). Well, now, in case you want to know, I cannot offer, by the way, more description as to how one "terrible" technological crash distorted his grin, rage, and cry of pain into becoming a uniform sneer at the audience. Nor am I in a position to tell you details about how the hospital counted his impossible rescued days, me having neither known about, nor seen tiny glimpses---even---of, the chain presentation of these almost fictive incidents. I am only aware of a later death at twenty-two, a month ago, as per Karrissa's call---a call she made to inform me of its occurence, and of this occurence's hard smacking impact on the id, ego, and superego of her womanhood, her womanhood which I had come to like, and likewise to inform me of other non-pressing details (e.g. her new teaching job, her letter to my university's H.E. department, etc.). Oh, the idea of his death seems sometimes welcome, terrible thoughts sometimes invade our ethics; but there are likewise the nicer, futuristic notions of rebirth that have to be grasped as realities, rebirth which concerns his spirit, and then also Karrissa's carrying on. You see, we are only like men and women set adrift a river of shopping lists, with our respective money's low buying power only finally defeated by (through an additional crucial necessity for items) poor sparkles, all symbolizing the heavy psychological debris needed for some final cleaning, repair, and part replacements on our souls, but which shall still lead to some sudden loss. However, despite these recurrences, like it or not we wake up again, . . . to work, so that we may shop again. Stores, too, sullen with income, noisy of price increases, may find themselves cleansing their policies someday. So, therefore, this Countless Horal Destinies theory, really nothing. Even Zen Buddhism, if westernized, and tragic American Pop Art, would think it all intolerable, towards the possibility of suicide; but Karrissa (my Isang) . . . she always believed in a continuing hostility between craving for peace (equilibrium) and living one's true Fate. A naturally hostile world, it seemed to her, and one time suggested to me at my basement studio the genius of the German painters Munch and Ludwig Kirchner (one funny duo, really, whose personas I couldn't believe). And so, it was without doubt due to her husband's imminent decay accompanied by this pseudo-buddhist acknowledgment of pain that, in smelling the inevitable five years before his death, she would promptly place upon it a cruel (?) springboard from which to move on. A springboard it was, from which flew this uncompromising finality, this truly grim thought of callously leaving (was it truly callous?) the poor, rotten, dying prunes on his every gland's skin (prunes which would die now and then swell again tomorrow), accompanied by the last of the couple's bank deposits, all to the hospital's care and his relatives' monetary contributions. This, as she also decides, decides, . . . finally, . . . to live with me. A clearly violent arrangement, huh, almost Japanese in flavor. Well, tempting though it was, her proposal, consider this: for though Karrissa's girlish prettiness and feminine prowess may be directly coeval to Dina's irresistible magical tricks, she lacked much good repute around campus to retain me on the faculty for another couple years. Mine esteem couldn't be readily risked. Oh I have yes been seen talking with her, red lipstick attentive at my declarations, in some canteen or other, seen in situations where you could say I may have appeared to some like a kind of a seducer of a Ph.D. Man (honorary), . . . but these meetings were mostly in the same manner I talk with my other teener students, which is nothing more than the manner of a favorite jester. And, disregarding my kissing her on the night of the acquaintance (start of classes, start of the rainy season, start of a special year)---remaining witnessing eyes thought me only the clown pulling the usual pro-western clever joke and not really kissing as to touch her skin (and the usual were truly modernist jokes)---our early canteen rondos appeared only to have been no more than gestures felicitous among friends finding good company. Therefore none knew more, readers, except Dina. Yes, Dina. Dina. That fresh graduate, . . . she who would become my manager, who probably knew more than what she told me and then knew some more, more than even what more I knew . . . about the other one. Do you get it? She knows everything. And the faculty could get to know a lot. From her. Ah, this merry geranium called "my wife" emerges now triumphant---as though a conqueror---, carrying two suspended pancakes betwixt the thumbs and index fingers, flinging these down to my plate here. Click, click, masterpieces.

"Two chocolate-strawberry pancakes to begin," is what you say now, Dina, "try it."
    And Karrissa, the woman I had come to like, the woman-girl who despite her nature---whatever it is---loved the lure of my visions, was quite an infrangible creature soon seen one night in that same afferent locus we sat at on the night of the acquaintance, night of the accident, accident! or beginning. On this one night you saw her there you thought, "crying inside over coffee." How'd you know? In blue sacque this time---you told me. While other girls enclosed with reckless freedom within a Mirrored Structure in our 20th century were so passionately jumbled in a gauche luxury called companionship, with drinks and sandwiches-of-all-shapes-and-sizes---a stampede it might have been again of the feminine populace, I should imagine---, . . . yes, Karrissa sat alone with coffee; a copy of Time or Newsweek or Artforum covering her face, a woman's magazine on the table (the one she won a recipe contest in). But I believe, and most of the boys in the canteen then might agree, not at all as someone unhappy about anything remarkably sinister again, oh you actually knew that yourself, but merely there as a sober hostage of an unremembered isolation, involved perhaps in some fawning disclosure (most likely of some comic ethos), there at her favorite side of the table and her favorite side of a worldly installation, that's all. The eyes moved forward, the world moved aft; and this meeting of conflicting movements having been hard-earned, always seemed sweet, inspiring---that was the way I would always see struggles in her. . . . Oh science, oh art. Oh sex. And oh religion. She is all this, in the eternal. She and her against the conventional indexed world, without fighting this world, as she embraces the opposites as her way towards winning. She, indeed. Regal and ribald. It is what she is. How she is. In so many dumb words.

YES, within flowing time are moods that seem to hang over our heads hypnotic, certain real episodes or arrangements (the living consciousness holds within) taking unexpected form and substance so boring that they all too suddenly become interesting after a while (Satie on Zen described it most accurately). As when some triptych juxtaposition fails in sight to convey any successful air of significance or sensibleness---not even a simple absurdist value---, yet "cry" in their stillness, tense with the subtle decay that runs under. So sometimes such corny, necessary arrangements (everything necessary inevitably succumbs to boredom, time and again) as plate, wineglass, knives, spoons and forks, and all that goes along with them, oh even candles on mahogany tables, these sometimes come as no less than bourgeois keys to emptiness, like some Minimalist zero on a Duchamp readymade. That is to say, with these my "perspectives" halt, while the world spins on in doing for me the living. But, of course, this happens to me only during those times when no one would be sitting around me. Yeah.
    So that "now" that you were here, woman, a little late for dinner, as I said earlier, overdressed to be leery and yet somehow quickish; now that you had slipped one of your peach-stained gloves to a newly-bathed stomach, mine, and perfumed thigh there, also mine, . . . images simply went dense with overdabs and overdubs. Oh yes, so that you had to whisper to let me in on the lipstick as negative New York-Thessaloniki but your sister's. And I could of course have been forever happy within the rococoness of that night. But I must confess today that I quickly saw the need there to plan an old-age life of luxury, an early-age married life, making images appear like furniture in an insurance plan commercial, that I lost all libido calls; or simply saw things paying heed to some of these advanced warnings (as of typhoons and bad weather), as we're gifted a certain omniscience over time unlike the merely pleasure-seeking winged male ants that some of us are. A certain omniscience, yes, at least within a short time flowing. Time that we make (isn't success a time concept?), as though it's the real time that frighteningly isn't---FADE OUT.
    IN BLACK-AND-WHITE, FADE IN TO---Recapitulation, remembrance: one night, we took my new now-model Karrissa home, me and, and you that-were-not-even-my-girlfriend-yet silent, driving, while we sat at the back we Karrissa et I, et although she was again tearfully unmoving we kissed, she kissed with the university celebrity the rain was there and, "eidetic talents," hm you might remember amount of motion, swift shadows, exclusive, gone through in speeding cars, joyful, passed dimly-lit avenues the splash, dissolving light, full pails, wetness, attacked vehicle wind-shield unrelenting vigor, transparent glass, wiping with handkerchief, Atmosphere: opaque blackness, Contrast: asphalt, blue, tint scatters light, Sparkle from nightlife, rain, wetness, I remember you could never, not, not happy see me, happy not see me Karrissa nibble, areola, nipple, bellybutton, she thought I raping her and so sad, then then just let it man to her make it love he, so arrogant talk of schoolgirls, I gather you like me least, like not that night, or so shit much want me that night truly crave me so hate me terribly, hate me that would more than logical, you wanted kill me night didn't you? I'm certain said something, -where, drive you'd car directly into quite black into a, a opaque blackness except with headlight light, three of us in, into a urban gorge cityscape-cliff, some sort, we all our end-lives, hurt, It must've been intolerable, to you, suicide, see Karrissa, eyes close, bare strip, shine knees, rearview mirror almost-did-what? said you'd do, surely, "try me" did you say, hah, we almost our Biographies, almost, end, close, You! almost got books closed Do you have right? I been heroic, I been poor in spirit, I been . . . now though wealthy in pocket I save all . . . ah, even death not kill me, I have name I have name (everyone has't, yeah, if they call't. Anyway), I Power, I Knowledge, I! I aaaaammmm. . . .
    or, am I, really? For---here, "now"---I found you, not Karrissa, slipping one peach-stained palm to my perfumed stomach; now, that I came to know of your devotion, your crush on me, your love, which led me to marry you later---we're married in the real now, aren't we? You it was, who---as alibi---done told me things like, the sister wore lipstick and ye borrowed . . . (Araceli? Tina? Terry? Which sister was this? Were they even for real?); you, who had pleasures yet in embarrassing me to a full blush with that, one slick cover story boasting of a silly breast on these exclusive gloss covers distributed downtown from the editor's office uptown (north or south? which way is this up? Antipolo or Tagaytay? When is town down?). And I thought (you thought this was being reactionary)---disregarding your presence, with the felt-textured fingers smelling of peach or pudding taken aside (but what can one do with smells?), and disregarding, finally, you entire---I thought, that if without time's warning Karrissa can be so laconic a loony disciple as this, on some magazine too that parodies my treatises and everything (my subliminal sponsor, this), well . . . then she can begin to rule the world. Hell, my world. My world that exists between text and sex! My memory!

"O, but where'd you put the hotcake syrup, my love!" This is being said by me in the now. In the then, in the "that night,"
    over pudding Dina quavered, "Since high-school, Robbie, high school, she told me, she'd always had a reputation of being a goddess of some sort, or at least of likely becoming one, so why? tell me that," she said, "why all this embarrassment over some truths now strengthened by a magazine jeer that you interpret as either so much courage or so much ignorance, huh? Tell me that. Just tell me that," she begged, uncomprehending. Here I saw my patience tried by an academic irritant, a perpetual interrogative as to whence we come that we see ourselves as living, for as my light neared Death I then witnessed a joke, seeing: that we seem to repeat ourselves, unconsciously hell-bent always at humanizing the natural motifs. Such crap attitude continues to cram our literatures with manufactured passion (though not with a lesser sincerity than what's to be found in my own sincerity towards the interrogative), banally troubling yes, this angle, but for what purpose? All for the sake of simply having something in one's soul to get the party listening, perhaps. But . . . it's been part and parcel of many of the important behaviors within the layers of all history---so who am I to complain?
    "Tell me!" "All right," I said, reluctant to continue; "before you arrived here," I said, suddenly feeling challenged, "to, uh, share confidences with me . . . over tales . . . that would here consequently act as immediate mnemonics for all of Karrissa's fate refrain, Dina, . . . well, . . . you, Dina, may have been window-shopping down Pasay Road while she talked with me here, sitting right where you are seated now. . . . Bleakly softspoken, . . . she'd been pronouncing an indifference towards what may happen to her hence, and nevermore enthusiastic about seeking a . . . seemingly impossible stability in her own home, . . . along with those chain of dependents over . . . over whom she must be taking responsibility, if she'd only get to have them." "O God, Roberto, . . . don't you for Christ's sake realize that she never really had any home or family in those built-up dreams for the future she had, ever? No, she didn't have a room to herself in a boarding house even, it was all just a shack she shared with students from other schools, along with her boy husband before he--- . . . but I would imagine she doesn't really desire to get rich someday, too. She loves escapades too much to ever maintain properties, much less a department store. She's not even conscious of the value of such things---properties. The least she can do is be conscious of them, she doesn't have to want them! . . . (Whispers) Her boyfriend's dying. Dying. But she wouldn't give a hoot if he died now! There won't be any dependents, God! Don't you even realize, she doesn't even for a bit visit her son at that foster grandmother of hers! (Faint whistle, eyes on ceiling) . . . Never mind, it's all simple stupidity. All basic stupidity."
    Those were remarkably correct facts you induced upon my lost memory, Dina, confused with my creative imagination. I've been aware of all those facts, thank you. Even tiny details like a hospital visit to the boyfriend/hubby every three months! Courtesy of her hubby's family's funding. But those happen to have been far from the planet I wish now to have had discussed with you, for would you believe it if I tell you now, even, that she had both wanted me, Dina, and needed me? You must see the difference. Between desire and ownership, or between cinema-going and video-collecting. It all melds in the idea of clasping. Oh had I told you all this then, I wonder what you would have done had I told you also that even I, academic-sort-of, wanted her sprite too? But what do you do to stop me from saying anything more, you gave me this "cover story" and what does it tell? That this goddess of the week, oh! you bank managers for subscribers, comes from the planet Okra or something, and was hatched from---and so on. My God, Dina, you don't know me and I can't tell you what a devil I really am.
    Otherwise, you know me very well. Readers, listen here, I know that you imagine I might be committing a serious mistake here, even in recollection, even as she now cooks pancakes behind the kitchen door---but Dina is not now bound to take me seriously. Not now that I am recuperating from an insubordinate kidney operation, oh yes---insubordinate to my restless nature (my idea of what my nature might be); a necessary operation it was, the necessity of which derives from damage not induced by years of devotion to turpentine but years of devotion to Time, neglecting the urinal's readymade presence in the gallery. . . . Yet, really, I delivered some of those things-I-had-to-tell-her in the most outrageous manner that night, and she'd certainly been furious, disallowing my saying anything more troubling: unstable became her phonemes, frequent the swallowing. "Roberto, you are a man of distinction," she said, "a man of the elite educated class' art and wisdom, and a painter of a society distinguished by its discipline. You cannot let yourself be dragged into oblivion by an irksome infidel's claw! Be like the other Khayyam's, Gauguin, Frans Hals, is that what you want to become? O, ohh, yes. An infidel, Robert, that's what she is; may not be so or such to you, or even to me, but she's not only a sweet,whore,to,so,many,people's,eyes,but,also, and more importantly, Bitoy, a whore to herself. I am not being jealous here, Robbie, will you please listen? What I'm simply trying to tell you here---will you please listen? What I'm---ple-ease! Robert, I'm only saying that no matter how lovely, and fragrant, and adolescent-in-scent, and exotic-maybe, and extremely juice-y as any sea siren she may be, or as any land siren she can be, she will never be for you." ---Indeed. (That's not the way I put it, you say now, looking over my shoulder at the computer monitor, you're making me sound like I'm so greedy, and making you look like you're so pretty.).
    And so, as is usually the case in stories of this type, however true may have been the fact that Dina could afford to have lost me anytime then, she couldn't (ever) afford to have readily lost me because of her. Yeah, for why else would a woman of the feminist age call another woman a whore, simply because she slept with me. Why did any woman in any age, anyway? The thought, the thought, of Karrissa as a cause would simply not be good for the principles. It wasn't a battle between persons here, y'see, but of principles, to be exact. But, see here, reader, be that as it may have been, Dina really only said all that she had to say not firstly from a rich revolt nor entirely from greening eyes, perhaps from some shallow worry but I'd doubt that, and this is what I believe from having known Dina for so long (seven years); but, primarily, because of a pure, unabashed caring for me, and for what's to happen to me lest I may die in a slum, supported by occasional wealth from some bank managers' altruism towards Karrissa's sweetness.
    Dina's jealousy derives from a view of my person as a fine house unfinished, then. Such a planning-prone attitude does help. And it was that mathematical measure of the emotions that found an enemy in Karrissa, who was to be the perfect symbol for the chaos theory. She's the maternal type, Dina is; not necessarily what I'm looking for in a woman, quite obviously now to my readers. She's the responsible type; why else would an accomplice at my erotica go so far as to call my new evolutionary art, all too suddenly then, elitist? Just so she can guard my balance. And regarding her tone, well, talk about the usual sense of phonetic arrangements left unmarked at their silent cavities. For frank though Dina is, she'd been too damn secretive about her own rational type of deep love for me, after what seemed to me to be a number of shallow drastic bed-affairs, a secret she thought she had continued to keep even up to this particular night we're here talking about; yeah, she suffered with it for so many months, with the honorable demands for monogyny in her favor, at the same time that I tried to battle it all out in my eternal-chessboard of a brain. Now you'll ask, was that deep love the reason why she couldn't leave me even though she was a strong woman with a hatred for bigamy, and I was this kind of a man? Yes. Or I suppose so. Because she isn't simple. We're of the same mold. I lift some rather heavy weights myself, but am terribly helpless in love. Not that I encourage this helplessness---in women or men. That will be according to each's disciplining ability or nature and/or fear for the natural punishments.
    Now, on the other side---true, Karrissa was definitely not someone as subtle; it was subtle enough for me that she wasn't someone who'd have anything going for the arts unless those concern themselves with an overt pathos and a restless sensationalism (therefore Munch and misread surrealism---but isn't surrealism meant to be misread, by both the analytic and the non-analytical? or, maybe, unread? or put in bread and dipped in cocoa? Mmm, no, not everybody in schools would agree). Yeah; for she was, if you will, what you'd call an art dumbo---a mind that wouldn't see anything in shadows apart from being shadows (viewing that mind from the angle of mentalist apologists). But, now, am I not contradicting myself; wouldn't her own proclivities result in esthetic faiths so firm that should by themselves be valid qua lifestyle or philosophy of beauty? Or her simpleheadedness towards mundane motifs result in, though a most fantastic gossipy kind, a new science---this, through an ethnic validation within our multicultural society? Yet ask: what will the music be without the players, what be the planets of no biological traces, if she's to be allowed to get away with her own ideas on established intellectual traditions? Karrissa repeatedly grinned and balked at such fussy theory-forming assertions, weakminded and malicious in a position actually not tinged with the common euphoria of ignorant stereotypes but lo! with the common masochism of the "lost generations" who became great in their "lost"-nesses (in art history, at least, the way I was led to celebrate them), a masochism that would gaily drive the naturalists in literature, novelist E. Zola, for example, to the guillotine in euphoric song (professionally, at least). From a position, then, triumphant with the illusion that they (Karrissa and these generations) have understood illusions. Allowing them to wallow in the pleasurable, till these hurt them. But, yet, always, philosophically. In Karrissa's case, though, pretentiously philosophically. So:
    Karrissa Munoz, the last time we met on campus was sophomore, B.S. in Home Economics, waitress-to-scholar, what rhyme, what color! Inspires you to paint her. One among the first students to demand more science from the H.E. course than was ordinarily allowed by the curriculum, and, recently, more philosophy, I heard, all to my great delight. Such a character comes too strong, though. I hope I can write better of her as subject than how I am doing now---for I feel 'tis not enough, what I'm doing here, as there might be more to the protagonist than a mere case of -tagonism. Or, perhaps, as all this time too I've felt the terrible guilt of being the contra-tagonist one within several actual memories to do with black cars (I as subtle destroyer, but you cannot simplify me either, that way)---
    So, finally, for the due celerity: ask what be the anatomy of this moaning heart that wasn't entirely my fault. I've often thought now, look at what we've done, Dina; or, It had all been your fault, Dina: your unconcern for pedestrians with that front-wheel drive, the inevitable result of which was Karrissa's attempt at winning fame through anything other than mine. Which all in turn leads me to ask, Did she seek fame that would surpass mine, or did she seek something more intangible than the latent procurements of Salvador Dali and fellows, what? I, from my side, always seek fame for nothing. For nothing at all! Knowledge my means, fame just my end. For I have seen that, given much omniscience, the intellectual (in my case, as self-conscious painter/critic) sees everyone's doom, tires of reason, which by itself is/can be pleasant; therefore Fame as mere tool for watching celebrity's pathos, but tool for nothing else. (Now, I add this clause about the pleasantness of watching decay, simply to depart from the thunder effect of, say, the religious crozier fellows. But I would also in the same light advise against discos as escape. Er, as much as we can avoid it, of course.). O, let us go on, then! Each according to his/her own personality, to funnily seek approval from the world. Yeah. We then go on. Enact scenes for the hell of it. Artful subconscious 'entertainment.' Just so.
    So, then; despite a shame of events, what happens is a Friday night's Elysian weather calling. Karrissa asked me to sit with her at coffee (for the first time in the latter part of our year-of-knowing-each-other I was called, for I would almost always force her to talk to me in public---why was she like that? why an eye so defensive? or was it of a need to project an aura of isolation, towards enigma?). And there she didn't mention the preceding night, nor the magazine thing that could have caused her expulsion (but only could have, had it been discovered and reported, the magazine being "higher echelon" pornography, for the influential bankers I mentioned); and, seated now there, I announced my wedding. And this "night previous" (darkness before Elysium, before light, Thor's day) really shocked me terribly, numbed my nerves so that Dina's interrogation as to what Karrissa and I talked about when the latter woman came before her simply left me averse.
    "And what did you talk about when she came here?" Dina asked, sweetly; but I could sense: hardly relishing, of course, teaspoons of pudding that just went down her throat (she had the gall to eat! despite my counter-news); unstable became her phonemes, frequent became the swallowing. Bad actress, she. O, e'en the best swimmers go under---

"When She Came Here":
    "So you don't care about what's to happen to you now," I said this in the early part of that 'previous evening', "and you don't want the simple necessity of maintaining a home of your own with your own string of dependents now. Indeed I think you must be crazy."
    "I want you," she said, my Kisa.
    "I want you, too," I said; "but to deem it necessary that you stay here with me seems hardly a good idea, Kris, as I could anytime lose my job should any leak come out. You know as well as I do that the campus, being so revered and full of statues, has a reputation to keep. . . . And, uh, Dina's going to arrive here in a few minutes. She and I just had a, uh, . . . loyalty pact. . . . Now, you're still young, Kar, get into something worthwhile for yourself. . . . Hey, your child's being taken care of at your foster grandma's, that's really swell, . . . but it's also high time that you yourself face now to contend with all these odds working against you, Karrissa. Look, . . . Dina and I will help you," I continued, "and then maybe---"
    "You don't love me."
    "I love you," I said. "I also love Dina. I know I've made a mistake, I don't know, getting too involved with you while I knew---you yourself knew it---I was planning to engage Dina in a marriage pact; yeah, I know, intellectuals too can become playful, it's a fact in history, you are no adolescent to be told that. Anyway, yeah I feel guilty. And I feel guilty now with my seeming to condone it, this behavior of my person I mean. But I treated you fine, I hope. . . . Let's part as good friends, okay? I never hated you, not for a minute. I'll never forget you, either. Call me anytime, Kar, Dina herself would understand. She actually loves you too, you know? Like a sister? . . . I'll try to forget all about the, uh . . . nice sex between us. . . . Now, I can only wish . . . I can only wish all,the,stars,in,cosmic,flight, and I mean that . . . to all veer towards you, in support and celebration, when you start on this new road of your own, Isang, your . . . your promising journey to liberty. You see, Kris, my love, I am not free myself, but you know that. Well, no one is while living with paint, . . . or with images, and with an image. While living with madness, I think. . . . Only death can drown me in freedom, free from all worries, now. But suicide is out of the question, mind you, it might isolate you forever. Anyway, when I die, . . . when I die, death and I will look at each other in the eye. . . . I think when we die we open our eyes. In life we are all blind. What I'm saying, Karrissa, is . . . people like you, girls like you, are nearest the truth. Because you don't look for it. So . . . it comes to you, truth. You are the ones really free. And you, . . . you are intelligent, . . . but you don't put a price tag on it. Well, . . . I do. They do too at the political science department. And in the philosophy department. And the music department of acquired taste. They all have the illusion that they know, and so proudly sell what they think they know. But, . . . actually, a fisherman can tell that a good catch today will not last, I think that's the better knowledge. The truth about life, fishermen know it better. Theirs is the recognition of a truth that is no less and no more true. Yet more. . . . Do you see what I'm trying to say here, Kar? Oh, I know, I'm not talking sense, I know, shit, Karrissa, oh. Oh, my Chinese-Malay girl, but I love you so, you know? Oh come here, baby. Come here."
    "Canst thou not permit me, then, to be thine slave, in solit'ry confinement, the smell of thine cologne fuming at mine nose, Professor, mine sweet lover? Let's be you and me in this lifeboat, then, my love. O jump, my master, jump."
    "No," I said, "take that road I'm talking about, Karrissa. Now."
    And after this she couldn't help screaming (of course)---letting out the sobs---in good college English.
    "Robert, I've always been up on that road you're talking about, don't you be lecturing to me on it, for chryssake, don't you wanna follow me!" she cried to me, in long-suffering demure tearfulness so vehemently poured upon my lap, almost unconvincing in all its melodrama, like a hard part for an actress, but real I could see that. "For chryssake," that was so filmic a phrase. But as is obvious, Karrissa meant everything she pleaded quite so miserably then that she couldn't even think for a moment of Dina's position. Why would she? She didn't just want me, you see, I was a part of her now she wanted most to cling to. She, . . . my love, . . . my goddess. . . . Dina, reader, she's my wife.
    "Don't you wanna follow me!" it kept ringing. So, slowly I answered---
    "I cannot follow you. I am merely an artist, nothing more. It's my passion to remain solitary forever, in a state of equilibrium, following actions or reactions flowing from all sides within my brain, Kar, smashed by forces external to my wishes and my lone efforts. I and a natural leaf within me are two. That leaf is my curse. I go with you, I suffer the punishment for not living my nature. Goodbye, 'Sang, for though my right brain's quite amused, my left says no. Or is it the other way around?"
    On the TV news were warriors on tanks, tanks rolling grim. My eyes followed the camera's direction, the camera's illusion, with the tanks all moving toward me---me, a camera. She left. For nowhere. Leaving with a most subtle drama of courage, beaming non-sounds from all their inner noise with a half-closed door (we are finely attached as individuals-in-a-relationship by such past dramas---indeed, memories never fade of a war most cold or a love most photogenic). I stirred the trial milkshake (now completely liquid) I was experimenting on for Dina, who was soon to appear. Myself there coldly hoping our thoughts together, us three, could be as finely nearer the motifs as our synthesized emotions, if that's not being too ambitious. But then again, even our intrinsically correct emotions could be so mistaken, morality aside, for the innocences of feelings (suspicions, worries, etc.) are only excusable as realities in their own right, never as approaches to something else. And so although emotions are produced by stimuli, we are required as non-monkeys to justify, nay epistemologize, the extrinsic value, or the value to the extrinsic (weight, vis a vis punishments for mistakes), of these attitudes/reactions/approaches/prejudices/initial reflexes. Therefore, may I hasten to conclude that reality, then, is not in things or in things going on, nor in feelings toward these things, nor in the illusion of thoughts over these things and these feelings. Reality, as it were, is that eternal struggle itself. In painting terms, an artwork becomes sacred object as a semiotic cum anthropological spacecraft in as much as this spacecraft continues to orbit the senses. That is the whole fucking point, then, whether you put it in academic or street terms.
    Just "in time," then, though late for dinner, you arrived. Overdressed, but quick in letting go of this getup, you promptly displayed your own brand of exuberant courage (symbolist) in taking my palms and fingers, there pressing them upon a plateful of made-to-order combination special pudding, and upon a peach, on tightening bosom, . . . and I saw you were holding a magazine. Hah!
    So, might it be that she, that bastard child, knew in advance that I would say no? And, had I said yes, the magazine would've been my best test, right?! And I said no, continuing though to labor with my swimming, with only an academic jacket to strip myself of easily. What kind of a mystery is she? So spare, yet so deep! Could this . . . could this be her simple theme? Fuck! How abstract! How fucking abstract!

(TODAY. It is Friday in 1988---Elysian weather, I'm afraid---dusk and sunset that I sit here, not now forcing myself to be with you but only as told, on as numb an inanimate hour perfidy to truths as anything dedicated to focusing on sheer instant coffee. And I am here sitting watching you, Kar, watching you at coffee, our last, where it was my turn to insist a moment ago on walking to the shop booth now offering gourmet coffee, mirrored walls beside us reflecting French-style cheap chandelier and other people. You hold back tears from falling. Tears, yes---often reluctant sparklers of our minds' equally cheap but substantial chandeliers. And you try at least to describe to me flashing occurrences to you of the need for some meditation, both upon images that precede our constantly present becomings and upon our plans for the spreading future. . . .)---Well, of course you may know now, 'Sang, mounting one of these seats they manufacture in Bulacan (to where you've retreated at an aunt's pseudo-school after graduation), provincial gift, technological product, . . . can approximate at least what approaches easy comprehension in the quick company of coffee fumes floating white, e.g. how coffee was like in our past little histories, that brand sweeter? this shop's arabica stronger? or how it may be boiling now in measured temperatures, . . . and what you may wish your gourmet coffee as like tomorrow. But, . . . we don't think so much about forms, do we? or in terms of lines, planes, and all that. To be plainer, we don't think of images and events without thinking the associations, do we? . . . Therefore, while we are free to use our own time, all time, yet I shall tie my memories to my eyes alone, free from any plastic art. This, so that I may remember everything, as I wish you'd remember everything about me, 'Sang.
    ( . . . So, then. Well, . . . Dear readers. Uhh, Dear 'Sang. Dear comrades, . . . fellow citizens; dear whores, imperialists; dear friends, dear competitors; dear warriors and folks; dear all---remember now, . . . that I shall not anymore be an Artist. . . . Burn my plaques, go ahead, bury my trophies. And tomorrow and tomorrow, Dina and I will head for the comforts of what shall be a recurrent isolation and retreat [tropical walden pond, sure]. It is not good to sleep and drown at thirty-two, living like stupid tv, for then you are only a child. You know nothing about love, or Catholic---or pseudo-Catholic---girls, . . . and increasingly now I feel myself too young to be so concerned yet with the indecipherable echoes of the meager imagination. The academization of City Life is just an art film, and increasingly too I'm thinking that maybe we can do without High Culture. "Oh leave me alone," Kisa says, "please leave me to cry over simple coffee now." "But . . . I might not see you again, Maria Karrisse, . . . I might not see you again within so many spiteful, worrying years in the married state. And this is all regardless whether I'm going to be happy in this marriage or not." "Is that an excuse, monsignor? . . . You can't have us both, as I see it now!" True. That's just true. . . . She's right.)---Now, all I can remember with unceremonious Objectivity was the five years we've spent, Dina and I, in utter seclusion. Our indefinite honeymoon, free---for the moment---from the necessity of hearing ourselves (or is it what we think are our selves?). Dina in the kitchen now. . . . I keep sitting here near the window, the kidney outpatient, deaf though to the constant unveiling of the "true world" landscape-painting before me outside, concerned only with spilling lumpia sauce, or parmesan cheese on my pasta, and today with pancake syrup. Oh, hey, I also have some tonic vodka and cheese here. Some wine over there, if you like. . . . Uh, Dina, my love and goddess, she'll bring in the pancakes for us sooner. Do you like pancakes, readers? Syrup? Oh, uh, don't mind the cellular phone's ringing. Probably just Karrissa again, with the purpose of 1.) reannouncing her husband's death three months ago, after almost six years of his being hospital patient (outpatient, mostly) and his wife's financial liability (I have to confess my and Dina's having helped Karrissa a lot of times in this area), and 2.) proposing a possible meeting with me next month. Hahahahahahaha. Like I said, don't mind the cellular phone's ringing, readers. Just drink. Eat. But, God. My Lord! O Leader of the Universe. . . . Lord, . . . Lord! Can I have them both in heaven, perhaps? Oh, oh! . . . Reader, I simply ask this . . . though I here secretly begin to sob. I am facing the computer monitor. Yes, the computer. Equipment on which I write this novella; equipment the Foundation let me borrow, for me to work on under their Grant.

---1993