Mametology

"Those with 'something to fall back on' invariably fall back on it. They intended to all along. That is why they provided themselves with it. But those with no alternative see the world differently."

Old Kind Bitter Thoughtful Beckett

"In a fit of despair I had written him once about what seemed to me an absolute, insoluble conflict between meditation and writing. "What is it about looking at the wall that makes the writing seem obsolete?" Two weeks later, when I'd almost forgotten my question, I received this reply, which I quote in its entirety:

Dear Larry,

When I start looking at walls, I begin to see the writing. From which even my own is a relief.

As ever,

Sam"

The Slow Dignity of Worms

I will write what I have to. There are reasons. I will not write the reasons, because the reasons do not matter. I will write of what matters. Of waking without really sleeping and finding nothing is the same. Of the long fall; of the sudden stop. Of plummeting and of plumage on the way down. Of the real, hard texture of wood. Of what's really going on down in the dirt. Of sitting still and of spinning, spinning, spinning.

I have a message from the people: We are sick. I think it's the strip malls.

There is no such thing as authority, and power dissolves in an instant like pudding. We need to be okay with that. I am making breakfast out of the soft morning light. I am calling you over to share it. We can hold the light in us all day long, and we can share it. By evening, we are like peacocks, and we are glowing.

This is how we sleep: when the inhale runs out, we pretend it isn't so. We are falling.

Rhythm is imaginary, but it is the answer. When the ground shakes, I dance like a motherfucker, and I do not collapse. When the ground shakes again, and everything falls, I surrender. At the bottom, I share my breakfast with the worms. They will bring the light back to the surface.

Please listen: It takes time, but if you bear the wait, the birds will paint the sky with it.

"Happiness,

[David Foster] Wallace suggests
in a Kierkegaardian note at the end
of this deeply sad, deeply philosophical
book, is the ability to pay attention,
to live in the present moment, to find
'second-by-second joy + gratitude
at the gift of being alive.'"

~M. Kakutani, reviewing the new DFW novel in the NY Times. Today.

The Life After

The sense of ease,
you know the one where it feels like you are sitting
in a plush chair
and all lined up with the stars,
telling the world's greatest jokes,
and when they ask,
where'd you get that one,
you say,
it just popped into my head

exists, unfortunately,
either in the mind or
by surprise. It is morning. You are thinking
about the way the furniture and the music
will arrange your evening guests
and weave together
their sentences, their silences.
It will never happen,
this kind of knee
slapping.

Then you are actually snapping off
the ends of beans with your daughter.
You wake from the joytrack
like waking from a dream
you can't recover
no matter how hard you
dive back under covers.

Or is that fortunate, fortune itself,
the way we're primed to unmake our stumbled upon
happiness with others?