Last Words

December 21, 1996

What a bloody fool I was—unsung hero of a war with aliens nobody knew about (except the soldiers), and certainly would not want to hear about or believe now. And which “we” apparently lost.

In a dream an old bum told me:

“We lost!”

Remember David Edge for the British, wising me up about the CIA contingent:

“They order you to do things they are afraid to do themselves, and then laugh at you for doing it.”

Remember the (enter T.P.)—the flying contraption I was on. Arch music laid on by Paul Bowles. Christopher Wanklyn was also there. I could feel the ship cracking up under me, just made it back on Pan music.

Paul said to Christopher:

“I was afraid it was going up.”

“You mean the ship?”

“No, the whole planet.”

Paranoid fantasies. Real enough at the time and in retrospect.

No, I wasn’t hallucinating. “They” would like me to think I am—as Laurie Anderson says:

“THEY ARE.”

Well, old unhappy far off things and battles long ago.

But the scars are still there.

Reversal:

“I’ll take these into the art room,” says the Butler.

“Certainly sir,” says the titled master.

“Don’t give me no shit, sir,” says the Butler.

“Don’t give me no shit,” master interjects. “Sir?”

“Of course, you cocksucker …”—after long pause: “Sir.”

December 22, 1996. Sunday

Gloomy Sunday. Last night no breakfast, in the Land of the Dead. Dave and Sue were there in hotel room sort of, and I see the time is 7:20 A.M.

Go down. A room with a long table and a photo of some vague food—meat? Vaguely red. Halfway up back wall is a large opening, I presume accesses the kitchen.

Now four striped gray cats come out. Then I see a black dude with a high starched white collar. Face like ceramic mask. I brace him for breakfast. He does not react.

From Paul Bowles:

“I disturbed an agitated centipede.”

“Don’t kill it.”

“Someone should.”

Why the hell not. To me it is the most abominable of all creatures.

What hideous dead-end led to the creation of a centipede? If you can’t stand it, kill it!! With every other [animal] almost I say don’t kill it: snakes, lizards, any decent life-form. But you’re not a decent life-form anymore. Centipede legs is sprouting outa you.

“Get outa my bar. Quick. I don’t like centipedes!”

Just a guess: Centipede came from a hot impasse. Scorpion crawls out cold—maybe—well, a man has to play the cards he is dealt—and who deals the cards?

“Making [it] just as hard as you can on the dealer.”

Dealers change—his will is the wind’s will.

Papa Hemingway said it:

“It just doesn’t come anymore.”

Your credit’s gone Papa—your margin is et up.

Suicide is never good.

“It is a cowardly vetch, O my brothers.”

How you doing, Burgess?

A writer should feel his way into all his fans everywhere, and fan them to action.

The whole evil of which the War Against Drugs is one factor. Mark it to its place: it’s EVIL and it means no good for anything Homo (experiment) Sap can or will create of value. It is here to exterminate.

For I shot a comrade sleeping nine hundred of the hive, and the swarm’s disgrace.

Now they’ve halted it by a disposal unit on the ground.

“These are the unsightly tricks before high heaven, that make the Angels weep—”

When whales and seals and elephants weep, I cannot suppress the deadly Sin of Anger.

Always the cloth: “Toro! Toro!” and one charges again and again—

Let it go, like the men carried up by balloon ropes and couldn’t get the thing in time to turn loose.