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months I have begun to feel a weariness. The weariness is mostly
physical, yet it s also a touch spiritual. It could be that I am ready
to go into decline. It s a horrible thought, of course. The ideal was
to continue until the moment of my death, not to fade away. In
1989 I overcame TB. This year it has been an eye operation that
has not as yet worked out. And a painful right leg, ankle, foot.
Small things. Bits of skin cancer. Death nipping at my heels, letting
me know. I m an old fart, that s all. Well, I couldn t drink myself
to death. I came close but I didn t. Now I deserve to live with
what is left.
So, I haven t written for 3 nights. Should I go mad? Even at my
lowest times I can feel the words bubbling inside of me, getting
ready. I am not in a contest. I never wanted fame or money. I
wanted to get the word down the way I wanted it, that s all. And
I had to get the words down or be overcome by something worse
than death. Words not as precious things but as necessary things.
Yet when I begin to doubt my ability to work the word I simply
read another writer and then I know that I have nothing to worry
about. My contest is only with myself: to do it right, with power
and force and delight and gamble. Otherwise, forget it.
I have been wise enough to remain isolated. Visitors to this
house are rare. My 9 cats run like mad when a human
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arrives. And my wife, too, is getting to be more and more like
me. I don t want this for her. It s natural for me. But for Linda,
no. I m glad when she takes the car and goes off to some gather-
ing. After all, I have my god-damned racetrack. I can always write
about the racetrack, that great empty hole of nowhere. I go there
to sacrifice myself, to mutilate the hours, to murder them. The
hours must be killed. While you are waiting. The perfect hours
are the ones at this machine. But you must have imperfect hours
to get perfect hours. You must kill ten hours to make two hours
live. What you must be careful of is not to kill ALL the hours,
ALL the years.
You fix yourself up to be a writer by doing the instinctive things
which feed you and the word, which protect you against death
in life. For each, it s different. And for each, it changes. Once for
me it meant very heavy drinking, drinking to the point of mad-
ness. It sharpened the word for me, brought it out. And I needed
danger. I needed to put myself into dangerous situations. With
men. With women. With automobiles. With gambling. With
starvation. With anything. It fed the word. I had decades of that.
Now it has changed. What I need now is more subtle, more invis-
ible. It s a feeling in the air. Words spoken, words heard. Things
seen. I still need a few drinks. But I am now into nuances and
shadows. I am fed words by things that I am hardly aware of.
This is good. I write a different kind of crap now. Some have no-
ticed.
 You have broken through, is mainly what they tell me.
I am aware of what they sense. I feel it too. The words have
gotten simpler yet warmer, darker. I am being fed
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from new sources. Being near death is energizing. I have all the
advantages. I can see and feel things that are hidden from the
young. I have gone from the power of youth to the power of age.
There will be no decline. Uh uh. Now, pardon me, I must go to
bed, it s 12:55 a.m. Talking the night off. Have your laugh while
you can& .
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8/24/92 12:28 AM
Well, I ve been 72 years old for 8 days and nights now and I ll
never be able to say that again.
It s been a bad couple of months. Weary. Physically and spir-
itually. Death means nothing. It s walking around with your ass
dragging, it s when the words don t come flying from the ma-
chine, there s the gyp.
Now in my lower lip and under the lower lip, there is a large
puffiness. And I have no energy. I didn t go to the track today. I
just stayed in bed. Tired, tired. The Sunday crowds at the track
are the worst. I have problems with the human face. I find it very
difficult to look at. I find the sum total of each person s life written
there and it is a horrible sight. When one sees thousands of faces
in one day, it s tiring from the top of the head to the toes. And all
through the gut. Sundays are so crowded. It s amateur day. They
scream and curse. They rage. Then they go limp and leave, broke.
What did they expect?
I had a cataract operation on my right eye a few months ago.
The operation was not nearly as simple as the misinformation I
gathered from people who claimed to have had eye operations.
I heard my wife talking to her mother on the telephone:  You say
it was over in a few minutes? And that you drove your car home
afterwards? Another old guy told me,  Oh, it s nothing, it s over
in a flash and you just go about your business as normal. Others
spoke about the operation in an off-hand manner. It was a walk
in the park. Now, I didn t ask any of these people for information
about the operation, they just
105
came out with it. And after a while, I began to believe it. Although
I still wondered how a thing as delicate as the eye could be treated
more or less like cutting a toenail.
On my first visit to the doctor, he examined the eye and said
that I needed an operation.
 O.k., I said,  let s do it.
 What? he asked.
 Let s do it now. Let s rock and roll!
 Wait, he said,  first we must make an appointment with a
hospital. Then there are other preparations. First, we want to
show you a movie about the operation. It s only about 15 minutes
long.
 The operation?
 No, the movie.
What happens is that they take out the complete lens of the eye
and replace it with an artificial lens. The lens is stitched in and
the eye must adjust and recover. After about 3 weeks the stitches
are removed. It s no walk in the park and the operation takes
much longer than  a couple of minutes.
Anyhow, after it was all over, my wife s mother said it was
probably an after-operational procedure she was thinking of.
And the old guy? I asked him,  How long did it take for your
sight to really get better after your eye operation?  I m not so
sure I had an operation, he said.
Maybe I got this fat lip from drinking from the cat s water bowl?
I feel a little better tonight. Six days a week at the racetrack can
burn anybody out. Try it some time. Then come in and work on
your novel.
Or maybe death is giving me some signs?
106
The other day I was thinking about the world without me.
There is the world going on doing what it does. And I m not there.
Very odd. Think of the garbage truck coming by and picking up
the garbage and I m not there. Or the newspaper sits in the drive
and I m not there to pick it up. Impossible. And worse, some time
after I m dead, I m going to be truly discovered. All those who
were afraid of me or hated me when I was alive will suddenly
embrace me. My words will be everywhere. Clubs and societies
will be formed. It will be sickening. A movie will be made of my
life. I will be made a much more courageous and talented man
than I am. Much more. It will be enough to make the gods puke.
The human race exaggerates everything: its heroes, its enemies,
its importance.
The fuckers. There, I feel better. God-damned human race.
There, I feel better.
The night is cooling off. Maybe I ll pay the gas bill. I remember
in south central L.A. they shot a lady named Love for not paying
her gas bill. The co. wanted to shut it off. She fought them off.
Forget what with. Maybe a shovel. Cops came. Don t remember
how it worked. Think she reached for something in her apron.
They shot and killed her.
All right, all right, I ll pay the gas bill.
I worry about my novel. It s about a detective. But I keep getting [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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