Connect nothing!

F. said: Connect nothing. He screamed that remark at me while overlooking my wet cock about twenty years ago. I don't know what he saw in my swooning eyes, maybe some glimmering of a fake universal comprehension. Sometimes after I have come or just before I fall asleep, my mind seems to go out on a path the width of a thread and of endless length, a thread that is the same color as the night. Out, out along the narrow highway sails my mind, driven by curiosity, luminous with acceptance, far and out, like a feathered hook whipped deep into the light above the stream by a magnificent cast. Somewhere, out of my reach, my control, the hook unbends into a spear, the spear shears itself into a needle, and the needle sews the world together. It sews skin onto the skeleton and lipstick on a lip, it sews Edith to her greasepaint, crouching in our lightless sub-basement, it sews scarves to mountain, it goes through everything like a relentless bloodstream, and the tunnel is filled with a comforting message, a beautiful knowledge of unity. All the disparates of the world, the different wings of the paradox, coin-faces of problem, petal-pulling questions, scissors-shaped conscience, all the polarities, things and their images and things which cast no shadow, and just the everyday explosions on a street, this face and that, a house and a toothache, explosions which merely have different letters in their names, my needle pierces it all, and I myself, my greedy fantasies, everything which has existed and does exist, we are part of a necklace of incomparable beauty and unmeaning.

Connect nothing: F. shouted. Place things side by side on your arborite table, if you must, but connect nothing! Come back, F. shouted, pulling my limp cock like a bell rope, shaking it like a dinner bell in the hands of a grand hostess who wants the next course served. Don't be fooled, he cried.

from beautiful losers - Leonard Cohen

So far away from home

Nights that begin so glitter clear with hope, let's go see our friends, things, phones ring, people come and go, coats, hats, statements, bright reports, metropolitan excitements, a round of beers, another round of beers, the talk gets more beautiful, more excited, flushed, another round, the midnight hour, later, the flushed happy faces are now wild and soon there's the swaying buddy da day oobab bab smash smoke drunken latenight goof leading finally to the bartender, like a seer in Eliot, TIME TO CLOSE UP

from the subterraneans - Jack Kerouac

Niets

Het was het razende van de drang naar de droogte van het grote niets in de steeds ostentatievere schemering, als een doorregende derde dag in de maand november, elfde kapitel in de dodeciaanse indeling van de absolute nonsens van een lineair voortschrijdende tijd. Maar dat boeit niet.
Wat er toe doet is het verlangen naar een moment van geluk, dronken van schoonheid, onder tafel gezopen door hij die niets begrijpt, verslagen door zij die eeuwig leeft in een land achter de regenboog.

De lokroep van iets goddelijk, druipend uit de wijndruif die barst onder de dwingende druk van een loodzware zuiderzon. Met betoverende beweging onttrekt ze zich van haar bezitter en dwarrelt op bevel van de mistral langsheen onmetelijke leegtes tot het neerstort in de onverzadigbare droogte van alles.

Ik wil versnellen, versnellen - versnellen tegen een fel magenta gekleurd landschap, met groene palmbomen en baby blauwe chevy's. De zon is er altijd rood, lippenstiftrood en de maan kennen we enkel uit een godvergeten weekblad. Voor ons ligt de aarde kopergeel, boven ons de zee diepgroen, achter ons de nacht nachtzwart. Versnellend in purperen zaligheid en genietend van de oneindigheid onzer val wil ik versnellen en versnellen.

die Zeit

these moments, these moments
in which you understand time
in which you believe it is possible
to understand time
in which you feel, stare, shout
in which you smell, shut up! loud

waiting in the sadness
of relative emotions
you shiver
you trudge
fearing the shadow of hidden light.
and then

the grasp of time
the smell of love
the harmony of nothing
yes the absoluteness
of everything

The Garden

so is that, the hobo said.
what is what? altough it rained black tears,
the dog's mind seemed to be agitated.
it is true.
I knew it all along, I was wrong, it was wrong.
everything is wrong.
the hobo said it with some relief;
I had to be wrong, for my thoughts
to be correct.

you don't seem to be consistent.
the dog took a cigarette, lit it up
and gazed trough his half open eyes.
you don't seem to be consistent at all.
the hobo fell down in the sand, and
emptied a bit of jim beam's.
dogs can't get it.
the dog, not getting it, asked
do you get it?

the question seemed simple, but the hobo knew
that it wasn't. the answer
was at the center of his universe, probably even
at the center of everything.
I do, I get nothing.
question and answer started an eternal dance,
as if they knew eachother since an unknown moment.
born out of the other, it would give birth to the other,
on the rhythms of what you want it to be.
and as a whole it exists, no matter what.
it was the most fascinating perpetuum mobile of all.

the hobo got up and took his bourbon.
the sky was bright as always when he went off
and knowing that he didn't know neither
he stepped out of the garden.

Jack Kerouac on Charlie Parker

It can happen to anyone. These are the last days, the last days of something. Although the ending is not there yet, not really, it is his secret precedent which reminds you of his coming. But it's too early in the day for whispering melancholy. So you tell it to shut up, and listen to the beat.