Mercy (75 page)

I have to bolt but she sees some street tough or something wild

and gets all excited and I don’t have a lot o f respect for it; she

says I’m pure. I just smile because I don’t know what bullshit it

is exactly. Even if I don’t type she keeps me around. I can

barely keep m yself under wraps sometimes, frankly; I want to

bolt. I smile, I’m nice, I’m calm, but she treats me careful, as if

I’m volatile or dangerous somehow, which I am not, because

in m y soul I am a real sweetheart which is the truth, a deep

truth, an honest truth, I don’t yell or shout or think how to

hurt people and I feel dedicated to peace as she is too. I just get

bored so deep it hurts the pits o f me, stomach and groin

precisely, I feel a long pain and I can’t sit still through it; it’s

hit-the-road pain. She tells me how to be a writer and I listen

because as long as I am listening I don’t have to type; I listen,

though often I’m bored, and I haven’t mastered the art o f inner

stillness, though I will, I am sure. Then there’s the lovemaking

part, a moment comes, and I slide out from under, with a

certain newfound grace, I must say, and if I can’t slide, I bolt,

and it’s abrupt. She keeps me on, even though I never exactly

get the typing done or the filing done and she never nails me;

never. It’s a long walk to her place to type and I walk it often,

because I fucking love to walk, even though it’s stupid and not

safe and you have to be a prophet who can look down a street

and know what it’s got in store for you, and I do it happy and

proud and I fucking love the long walks. I go there and back

early and late and sometimes I get there and I just can’t bear to

stay so I leave right away, I take some cup o f coffee or food,

fast, with her, she’ll always make me something as if it’s

natural, and the typing doesn’t get done but I don’t have some

money either. Other times she gives me a cash advance and I

have it burning in m y hand and if I’m feeling slow and

stringent with m yself I get it to the bank and i f I'm feeling

restless, all speeded up, wanting to spit in the eye o f God, out

drink Him, out fuck Him, I keep it on me. I type, I walk long

walks across town, ballets on cement, jum ping and hopping

and then a slow, melancholy step, solemn or arms sw inging,

in the face o f the wind or in drizzle or rain or in sun, in calm,

cool sun. I walk m y sweet and jubilant dog in the neighborhood protecting the pads o f her feet from the stupid glass the winos leave all broken all over and the fucking junkie shit

that’s all over, and then there’s the time each day I sit down in

purposeful concentration to write in a notebook, some

sentences on a buried truth, an unnamed reality, things that

happened but are denied. It is hard to describe the stillness it

takes, the difficulty o f this act. It requires an almost perfect

concentration which I am trying to learn and there is no w ay to

learn it that is spelled out anywhere or so I can understand it

but I have a sense that it’s completely simple, on the order o f

being able to sit still and keep your mind dead center in you

without apology or fear. I squirm after some time but it ain’t

boredom, it’s fear o f w hat’s possible, how much you can

know if you can be quiet enough and simple enough. I m ove

around, m y mind wanders, I lose the ability to take words and

roll them through m y brain, m ove with them into their

interiors, feel their colors, touch w hat’s under them, where

they come from long ago and w ay back. I get frightened

seeing what’s in m y own mind if words get put to it. T here’s a

light there, it’s bright, it’s wide, it could make you blind if you

look direct into it and so I turn away, afraid; I get frightened

and I run and the only w ay to run is to abandon the process

altogether or com prom ise it beyond recognition. I think about

Celine sitting with his shit, for instance; I don’t know w hy he

didn’t run, he should’ve. It’s a quality you have to have o f

being near mad and at the same time so quiet in your heart that

you could pass for a spiritual warrior; you could probably

break things with the power in your mind. You got to be able

to stand it, because it’s a powerful and disturbing light, not

something easy and kind, it comes through your head to make

its w ay onto the page and you get fucking scared so your mind

runs away, it wanders, it gets distracted, it buckles, it deserts,

it takes a Goddamn freight train if it can find one, it wants

calming agents and soporifics, and you mask that you are

betraying the brightest and best light you will ever see, you are

betraying the mind that can be host to it; Blake’s light, which

he was not afraid o f and did not betray; Whitman’s light which

he degraded into some fucking singsong song like he was

Dinah Shore or Patti Page, how much is that doggie in the

w indow; the words didn’t rise up from the light, only from a

sentimental wish, he had a shadow life and in words he piled

shadow on shadow so there’s this tumult, a chaos o f dreams

running amok; dreams are only shadows; whereas Blake’s

light is perfect and pure, inside the words, so lucid, so simple,

so plain; never a cartoonish lie. O f course it’s different for me

because I turned tricks and been fucked nearly to death and I

have been made weary with dirt and m y mind’s been buried

alive, really, smashed down right into the ground, pushed

under deep; but something ain’t different if I could conquer the

fear o f seeing and knowing, if I wasn’t so afraid o f the light

burning right through m y stupid brain. Y ou want to smoke a

joint or something to make it calmer and duller; not brighter;

it ain’t brighter; it calms you right down or it frenzies you up

but so you are distracted, mentally m oving here and there,

you want something between you and the light, a shield, a

permeable barrier, you want to defuse it or deflect it, to

m ellow it out, to make it softer, not so deadly to your own

soul, not so likely to blow all your own circuits, you can’t

really stand too much light in a world where you got to get

used to crawling around like an insect in the dark, because it’s

like mining coal in that if you don’t get out o f the mine what

goes through you will collapse you. Y o u r mind does stupid

tricks to mask that you are betraying something o f grave

importance. It wanders so you w o n ’t notice that you are

deserting your own life, abandoning it to triviality and

garbage, how you are too fucking afraid to use your own brain

for what it’s for, which is to be a host to the light, to use it, to

focus it; let it shine and carry the burden o f what is illuminated,

everything buried there; the light’s scarier than anything it

shows, the pure, direct experience o f it in you as if your mind

ain’t the vegetable thing it’s generally conceived to be or the

nightmare thing you know it to be but a capacity you barely

imagined, real; overwhelm ing and real, pushing you out to

the edge o f ecstasy and knowing and then do you fall or do you

jum p or do you fly? Life can concentrate itself right in your head

and you get scared; it is cowardice. I notice that my eyes start to

wander across the wall, back and forth, keep wandering across

nothing, or looking at the fucking paint, I notice that my feet are

moving and I’m shifting on the chair, a straight-back wood chair

you have to sit still on, there’s no license to move but I’m

moving, rattling m y feet, rocking, rocking on m y heels, and

then there’s an urgent sensation in m y thighs and in my hips and