The cemetery

When I was young and jobless and it was their world, I used to run through the old unkempt cemetery, weaving between the crooked tombstones and jumping over the thicket. People occasionally shouted at me for not running on the path and a pretty woman I didn’t recognise once cried out my name, but I always ran on as though I hadn’t heard. It was their world; I was just passing through. It was important to run every day, sometimes twice a day, and always along the exact same route. It gave my life a sort of structure. I’d run home and stand at my window while I waited for the doddery shower to warm up. The window gave on a slant of the river that wound through the town. I often stood watching it carry its grimy load seaward. Sometimes a kind of mental mist would steal over me like a shiver and make me feel like a stranger in my own body. As evening fell, my reflection would appear in the window, slowly replacing the river. The more I examined my face — those empty unblinking eyes, those straight lips — the harder it was to feel it was mine. It was a thing among things, untenanted. At times I was afraid my soul would detach itself altogether from my body and float away. This feeling came mostly at dusk. Then I would put on my windbreaker and run through the cemetery again. It was always empty at dusk.

People are like that

STUDENT: He was a kind man, then?

OLD MAN: Sometimes.

STUDENT: Not always?

OLD MAN: No. People are like that.

Strindberg

The day your famous luck returned

This was the day your luck returned, the luck you thought had left you. You little bastard! out of the fog, running around town sniffing out all the best deals. It was walking home after the last one had gone down, the latest in a run of jammy decisions, that you felt the dreck and drift of a two-year losing streak lift and vanish like the grimy puddles the streaming sun was steaming. You felt it like a satisfying click, a falling into place. Another befuddled mister lucky derided and delivered by Luck. To become yourself, lose yourself. Let yourself lose faith in your life and self-perception and ride it out until Luck builds it back up. Easy for me to say. I’m Luck.

Nihil ex nihilo

If a man looks for nothing, what right does he have to complain if he finds nothing?

Meister Eckhart

Nearly blind

Midsummer Feast
By Charles Simic

Here I am then, nearly blind in both eyes,
Half-dead, half-lame,
Touched in the head, frothing at the mouth,
A fearful, shrinking worm
Crawling in your carcass, oh mystery,
Raising hell, chewing you out.

My hunch is, you prefer to remain forever
Unthinkable and unsayable,
Merely delectable, so that I may continue
To sate myself on your sweet appearances,
Your luscious, flower-strewn meadows,
Your vast banquets of evening stars.

Before taking a trip

The black dogs have lost my scent; I hear one of them’s become a guide dog for the blind man down the street. I’ve started dreaming at night. In the story (the only one he ever wrote) the idealist worked in the mortuary, prettifying corpses with chemicals: a slave to fatality, and all the rest of it. He worked with nervous attention to detail, and in the evenings sank into torpor. But this is real life, these winds are blowing the dust off my desk; these words are being made flesh. I’ll drink from a different cup. I’ll run through any season’s weather.

The painting

‘The gentlemen are here.’
‘Which gentlemen?’
‘The ones with the painting.’
‘Send them away.’
‘But they’ve come a long way.’
‘Give them a cup of tea and send them away.’
‘And the painting?’
‘It’s not a real painting. It’s the work of an impostor.’
‘An impostor?’
‘A fake. A fake.’
‘And the gentlemen?’
‘Duped.’
‘And the money?’
‘Mine.’
‘Mr Walters?’
‘A fool. Like me.’
‘Duped?’
‘Finally you see. I’m a fool bobbing on a sea of fools.’
‘By Mrs Walters?’
‘Don’t you see, there was no Third-Eye Vision, there is no Art of the Infinite Dream Dimensions.’
‘Madness?’
‘Lies. A lover. A planned trip. With my money. I never want to see that thing again.’