Hearing these happy songs after so many years. False memories of an ease you never acquired.
Memory will have to suffice.
Distributorship killed the authorship star.
In the morning I hear the long shriek of the hawk, as if to say, I am all that matters. Death from above.
Is your work keeping you young, or making you old?
At some point that year they renounced activities that assumed the existence of a viable future.
Layers to cover your ruined body, dark glasses for your ruined eyes.
For years I proceeded as if my activity had significance—a toddler solemnly pretend-working with blocks.
Time reveals in some the bowling ball-head gene, and in others the cinderblock-head gene.
That couple holding court over there, accomplished, attractive, older (my age?), she a composer and head of a department (the Composition Department, I would guess, if there is such a thing) and he a well-known painter, portraits of John Coltrane on black velvet, in kingly dress—I’d assumed undertaken with some irony, but having once mentioned this in his presence and receiving an embarrassed smile, as if he was embarrassed for me, apparently some internalized form of post-ironic sincerity.
When I am forced upon their radar, they regard me with a vague distaste that doesn’t quite come up to the level of dislike. I’ll show you later on—if we walk in that direction, the flurry of minute physical adjustments as they calculate whether they can safely avoid us without personal discomfort. Since the accident I’ve been pleased to detect a new note of fear in their uneasiness, as if I now represent the additional possibility of freakish misfortune that might befall anyone, no matter how charmed or lucky.
I bring this up because I owe my newfound awareness to you, the last time we met, when you mentioned that for you it would be hell on earth to know what other people really think of you. The way you said it, though, I got the impression that you really meant it would be hell on earth for me, and I haven’t been able to shake it.
