A Bernadette Mayer Reader Page 3

  The Way to Keep Going in

  Antarctica

  Be strong Bernadette

  Nobody will ever know

  I came here for a reason

  Perhaps there is a life here

  Of not being afraid of your own heart beating

  Do not be afraid of your own heart beating

  Look at very small things with your eyes

  & stay warm

  Nothing outside can cure you but everything’s outside

  There is great shame for the world in knowing

  You may have gone this far

  Perhaps this is why you love the presence of other people so much

  Perhaps this is why you wait so impatiently

  You have nothing more to teach

  Until there is no more panic at the knowledge of your own real existence

  & then only special childish laughter to be shown

  & no more lies no more

  Not to find you no

  More coming back & more returning

  Southern journey

  Small things & not my own debris

  Something to fight against

  & we are all very fluent about ourselves

  Our own ideas of food, a Wild sauce

  There’s not much point in its being over: but we do not speak them:

  I had written: “the man who sewed his soles back on his feet”

  And then I panicked most at the sound of what the wind could do

  to me

  if I crawled back to the house, two feet give no position, if

  the branches cracked over my head & their threatening me, if

  I covered my face with beer & sweated till you returned

  If I suffered what else could I do

  from Moving

  fear sure voice music body time listen

  being part, being trapped

  being part being trapped which is it?

  being trapped masculine

  should you be one

  should you be eight one eight

  anxious

  there’s the woman & there’s the woman

  the frame of a woman

  rib is a frame

  filling station

  Rhythm break age water searching. Rhythm age

  break water. Rhythm water searching. Age water. Water

  break. Break water. Age searching. Rhythm water.

  remember positions

  remember what you saw

  seeing people in positions. Remember what you

  saw, people in positions.

  the round jungle

  jungle round

  the jungle jungles filled

  tumbling to one

  tumbling to see outside

  hitting hitting the wind

  the wind hitting

  who is the prince

  what is the prince

  the prince hears the music

  he hears it last

  at the beginning

  the beginning over

  laugh

  scissors make sure

  ground reverse reverse ground

  cabbie a truck comes out the cab cabbie

  emerges indulgence comes out of the truck

  other planted drops

  drops, plant, drops, plant

  young plant

  young plants I hear what they’re saying

  square & lucky, & believeable

  saddle

  saddle the horses horse’s saddle

  large drop big drops

  a large account

  camera account on cameras

  the camera’s down

  down far enough

  the reverse

  face the camera

  because

  we’ve thrown it, the tough part

  use it, we’ve thrown it, we’ve used it, throw it,

  we’ve thrown it, used it

  transition

  the sea direct

  the sea of white

  the sea of organs

  the sea of sympathy

  wanted

  at the head of the thought, a pin, a pin in the middle of

  traffic, in traffic mind, a sea improve, in green, green

  could improve, green will, a certain green will bend the king

  a certain green will bend the king

  king, bend.

  jazz lid a mouth a covered mouth

  a guy jack wanted to cross

  never crossed

  realist, first first to touch

  first to touch plant

  touch plant touch exclusive plant

  real plant

  the expedition rose

  the expedition crossed

  dress of the expedition

  share of the dress

  piece of the holiday dress but such stars,

  they, those stars talk, go on, goes on,

  & come level, came level, & slaves & companions,

  level that their pistols, pistols play,

  level pistols, aiming behind,

  flowers

  flowers screaming

  flowers yelling, screaming

  earnestly,

  honestly blown

  honestly blown aside

  down side the mountain wheel, this is the wheel

  down the side the mountain wheel, this is the wheel, the wheel giants came

  giants lake, lake, & married

  giants fade giants fads, always five,

  when, then, when down smiled,

  when down smiled the beat right almonds

  when down smiled the almonds

  almonds descend almond down

  descend her on her now

  something loyal

  some flower screaming

  some fishing, & some loyal fishing

  custom nothing

  nothing season

  the season’s nothing

  the season was evidence

  move

  move will plow, did plow

  did plow their turning did plow their turning plow

  their turning plow did plow their turning plow share this

  from Memory

  July 5

  Chance it’s morning you forget to see blue you leave it out I looked at the windows do every morning, to see what the light is, how it is, what the day is, what part. Yellow before, green after projected large: the yellow before means too much light but what does green after mean. White pants french tv-shirt is red & white & cant find the sunshine going up & part of niagra’s missing going down: I put the film in the toycan a 2-lb coffee can for small toys, rain no rain having coke sassafras cigarette so you forget to see blue was morning was light on whatever was light was new but you return to 47THST, 47THST: new return nagra & stuff to arnold & fix the projector, get t. into film course, 47THST waiting: I look up eagles soar at signs cars sun on half of modern which half & I was & still am always bored waiting parked no parking waiting on west 47THST, I’ve been here before, on west 47THST between 5TH & 6TH aves empty streets the street goes west it was sunday or monday it was monday of the storm & revolution weekend, fire. You know this, that 47THST was deserted the war’s been over looking west through the windshield, fire. Red car across the street parked in front of siegelson’s & someone’s son & someone & stein’s with a giant red car with black top, you know this, that a man & a woman went by you forget to see green you stare at green you wait to stare at green & in the country you see red. You know this that the sign of the diamond exchange looked better off better off for its shadows my shadows by afternoon . . . & waiting: a room with a family where are you where will you be let me know, R, V & K, T water the plants grace randa anne paul let me remind you: by afternoon we were up in riverdale parked the car packed with our stuff in view of the window so we could watch it, will paul get his door? No one was there but tom, did I expect someone whole family of blondes they exist now you cant watch them on television no one was there but tom. It was quiet. American flag hangs out some window
heavy head near white & brick arch, the kings, & queens. We picked up a tape recorder a few things there left a few & ate a sandwich smoked hashish in a foil pipe took off very fast up the highway on our way to massachusetts, another highway on our way cia. Cigarette, get to see the trees moving like listening to them: what was that, I can hear it in my head as you begin to repeat . . . let’s go back to that tree, that one, cross the divider, turn around, is that the one? is that the one that moved to listen? & what are you listening to is it the line of the highway rising you hear it mark x on the sun, say, ed & tom are brothers. Outside the city we stopped for gas, no money, turned around & went back. In detail you went back? What’d you do that for? Tommy? & this is where it all begins. Sings under that name, he was watching tv looked sleepy & stoned shirt off the sun was on the left side of the highway shirt off. Forget for hours smoke hashish when we left for the second time the flag had been wrapped around itself a few times by the wind I guess oblivion sleep day was the day you were tied up remember? the road was empty we were going against the traffic. Remember to look up ron the cab driver in astoria. Ed took a picture of himself in the car, we left the top down (except, for a month you keep your eyes open) had to tie our hair back & pleasantville hill pleasantville hill see swear a resemblance in going over it, free fly twice as free. We stopped at another gas station about halfway up for coffee, remember? Not abstract he said like the argentine pampas, we flew, I dictated a few things to ed on the way up & he wrote down in my book: expand: ed was wearing sense the blue hockey shirt with stripes who turned it down? what? the tv. I turned it down when the cable tv man called. You have to get the landlord’s permission & the landlord said, they’re turning the electricity off so do what you want & they have to get the cable down here by, on schedule. When you stop at a gas station on the taconic parkway you can stand just a few feet from cars going by 60 mph drinking coffee, sweetheart cups. When you stop at a gas station on the taconic fantasy parkway you stand & look. We had a sandwich. A white car will pass by over your shadow if it’s afternoon. If you can control this the future will be easy easy to direct, it will make sense, we had a sandwich. An old man in new dungarees & a pale orange shirt goes by, 3 guys with cameras go by, a prostitute with a camera too. Now I see - 47THST. Do you see the argentine pampas, where, here here a red car, black top goes by on the parkway & the pampas the black-tops retrace your own steps, they do the work for you, it’ll go on like this. The bathroom looked like a woman’s prison & we took off again, top down stop still down on stop down I took pictures leaning on the dashboard dashboard of the car. The sun set. He flicked a pack of paper matches along the dash to nick. This is the taconic fantasy parkway: you look down a road to the left you look down a road to the right paradise: i was on a bicycle, the bicycle was electric if you want, i was always wearing clothes of yellow daisies green leaves, going down a road (a house is a forest) the road’s not dirt, a rocky road not pavement or asphalt, a road through trees but trees dont block your sight, you can see for miles, i had everything i needed with me. It wasnt anything. The road through trees with colors, it could be fall or flowers made them, or sun’s prism, & things along the way, where would i sleep, in the grass or in houses? whatever comes up, maybe a change in direction, i enjoyed being watched sense the presence of other people, it was not a road of one direction or a road getting somewhere, further on it wasn’t a road you kept to, later on i got more interested in flying. On the road that would’ve come up anyway. With this road you didnt need a house, everyone set the sun & sense the presence of other people. This is about watching other people, then creating one some for people to watch, understanding the desire to watch other people to understand them or just to watch them, not finding any place to set things down then save this for later & wait. I saw I talked about. The sun set. We’re at Near Road. The way smell detour moon train & the golf course. We get to massachusetts in the dark darkest to the theater to find out where jacques is living, would like to live in a house that comes close to being a forest, & where we will be living. They show us our room on main street we hate it and cause cause and miss malloy was in the other room, it was not a forest, & what about the seasons? Went to the stockbridge inn for a beer & ate a stewarts sandwich played songs A to Z & 1 to 8 chose nathan jones over a weak james taylor & what about the seasons in a house so, shot a game of pool & tried to find a house that we could live right in. Bought bourbon & went over to j&k’s yellow or blue small house up a hill near glendale, k in j’s green robe, we talk in the bathroom we like to sneak in the bathroom, there was to be a peter arrow concert in the hall so julia came by with some sheets, in the theater people move in a piece. Peter arrow was giving a concert in the theater where people move in a piece & they took us to a party for theater people. We drank the party but were bored, try to remember the downpour. A few people asked are you from syracuse are you from boston, what we were drinking was a strange old punch remember of champagne glasses, well where are you from? In destiny I owe you something if you ask that much, in the theater I do not. I am from the massacre & was the massacre night or day, we finished the bourbon under the table, in the movie will the massacre be night or day, the next day we drank with hitchhikers, over, in a movie you replace a shadow with something real, you do this by turning around. Whatever that real thing is, it’s framed in a mirror. We moved around a shadow yellow room & this is the hard part, exchanging identities, anne kathy & now kathleen, & now, turn around, there’s a boy with blond hair, k called him over, replace him & his friends with musicians from woodstock born in texas & k is from texas they had dope but wouldnt smoke at a party so fine so we went outside & framed in an old car mirror we stood around passing joints packed as fat as cigarettes, they really were from texas, the police cruise by, turn around, there’s a dog in the car, we went for a ride night. I took them to the bridge over the stream in the woods by the house I used to live in. Road was overgrown. We had never seen it that was in the spring or fall mirror. Stood on the bridge & talked about movies, turn around, k is in the car with the blond boy because of the mosquitoes and cause cause and of mosquitoes, she invites him to stay with us, musicians who have the word color or poet or earth in the title of their group & we stayed till we were bitten & then went back to get jacques. Shadow, there was no moon. We slept that night in our room with a family & how could a family come with a room? It usually does all right. I kept thinking someone was going to die in the house & then, turn around, you’d see them carried out. Now who is that? I think ed took a bath. There was an actress in the other room: in a movie theater the seats should face the back, turning around you see: you packed the car past hurry up beautiful bright sun in loft you leave nothing leaves, waiting: in a new state a schedule, on time: 10 am meet john in the paint shop which is the barn & 1 pm meet jacques to ride around for locations & 3 am experiment: Take as the stimulus a scrap of brightly colored paper about, say, the size of a penny & make a tiny pencil mark or pin-prick near its center. Lay this on a sheet of white paper & look fixedly at the mark in its center for perhaps twenty seconds. Remove the colored stimulus & fixate with the eyes some tiny mark on the large white sheet. After a few seconds during which nothing may happen, a patch of color will be seen. If we continue fixating, this patch will vanish, then return only to vanish once more; it may alternately appear & disappear as many as 20 or 40 times, growing fainter with each successive reappearance until a time is reached after a minute or so when it disappears altogether. Now, there are two surprising things about this image. The first is its color. If the stimulus is red the image is green; if the stimulus is blue the image is yellow-orange, if the stimulus is black, the image is white. These are the complementary colors. The second surprising thing about the negative after image is its size. If the stimulus is fixated one foot from the eye & the after image is obtained the same distance away, the image will be exactly the same size. But if the image is projected 2, 5, 10, or 15 feet away the size of the image will increase proportionately. It’s inte
lligent. For beings. What would that contact be like? or simply, where are they? Anarchy 4 florence, exile 4 dante: you have a name, you explain; this image or effect is due to the adaptation, it is due to the ‘fatigue’ of the color- & light-sensitive tissue—the retina—which lies at the back of the eyeball, the eye, like windows, like cameras, like image in sound. Seeing the red patch, we continuously stimulate the same area of the retina until it becomes no longer sensitive to the red, can no longer feel or see the red of the patch (as we fixate the red patch, we may notice that it seems to lose its color except round the edges). Then when we see some other surface, look at it, this adapted retinal area is insensitive to whatever red component the surface possesses & the negative after image results. The red is in the white. You leave it out you forget to see red. As we continue to look to see, the retina adapts to the color of the new surface, to all its color & the image an imagining wanes. The important thing is that the image is the after-effect of continuously stimulating you pay & so fatiguing you rest a specific area of the retina you see

  from Studying Hunger

  May 11, 1974

  I did this on May__. The dates must be exact, the dates were not exact on the tombstone or lowland stone. I made a fist. First let me tell you that I could not walk, I could not move around at all I could not fall asleep alone, I could not make it down the block. Something was missing: like a man who without knowing why, may perceive that he finds difficulty in discharging his ordinary tasks. . . . One day he is afflicted—whence he does not know—with a painful attack of feelings of anxiety, and from then on it needs a struggle with himself before he can cross a street alone or go in a train, he may even have to give up doing so altogether. In other words, there are people who cannot leave their houses. Others who cannot move. There are four fears: 1) the able: to be able, 2) the want—who want, 3) the eye—to kill, 4) the ear—listen: Like the blind, like blind people, like the congenitally deformed, this is my private space, this is my only space is an exception. You expect to do what you want. You expect to do whatever you want to do & not only do you expect it, You expect everyone besides, everyone who loves you, to make it easy, to make it new. The sun comes out & you are not blind & you are not congenitally deformed either or crippled but BOTH/AND, in a way. To do what you want, to have it made easy, well, doesnt everyone. This is not moral, you are my twin. No, everyone doesnt feel that way. No I dream alot. The dream of a train on an el, I climb down the steep steps to ground. Orphan: it’s a cinch to write it down as Ted would say. But first, it is in honor of these crimes that I am writing this book. Found a teddy bear on the street today & decided to write it down at least as far as orphan goes, and sex. Space. Slept with Ted right away, so did Marie. Space. I was born in Bethlehem’s Bethany Deaconess on May 12, 1945 in a German ghetto named Mockwood, Queens, the Queens Gardens; the Bund was there. Then. Right away I slept with Ted. Right away I was nursed & nursed, a nursing mother. She was round & weighed 98 lbs, at her wedding day at 22 years old, 98 lbs and a 38-inch bust, I tried on her wedding dress so I know, I had every right. Dressmaking. She had good taste (Ted was O.K.). I knew what it was like to be at her breast forever, easily an unending breast, flow of etc. Now I cant eat—that’s Ted’s fault—his penis is displaced to my neck & chest so swallowing is difficult. Make out with marie & sleep with Ted, or, my mother said, my father said, etcetera dead, and buried, are not corpses, nor should, they be, poetry. I am going to proselytize you—I am a Catholic—I am going to prostitute myself. There’s so much to tell—what a gigantic penis, Jesus! The priests penis was enormous but first I was born. And that is all there is of that. I did this on May 11th, the dates are exact. Visited the lowland stone. The next day I got food poisoning & a kid said hi to me, then I left home. Someone doesn’t know what’s happening to me. The dream of the train on an el—climb down the stairs, long way to, to get off, there’s a money order for $695, a black woman on the bus, she picked (not so many more for) it up. I shook (not while gotten or been) her up in a funny (does this or it has done) way, SOME ARE AS ONE. Long way down on the be-all el, steep steps to ground. I means I means I mean it. And were it yet done yet, you the what say kinds. Those either. I lost my friends, still ones, they were on the other side of town, still one, they might. I do as you say. I repeat. Malanga in furs. How do we end up. Was this as one does. My notes on the cemetery: cemetery, Vito, Rosemary, Lowland Stone, food poisoning, reason to believe, Hi, not overload, it’s holding back or hiding, the name of the game, blossoms in the dust, joseph conrad, laughing annie, giant, the world the flesh & the devil, night must fall, where’s the t.v. This or is it bolted. Cemetery. Both then and. This “I” thing. And this “you” thing. This vegetarian food, all offered, all offered up, by ma-maternal mother—does it stay, like among both still. How is a while going. In parts, like some, them, of some-them. The whole family is a while. The whole family should be intact, at least as what as it still’s one. What takes time? Bolts, as bolts of families. Bolts for families, bolts within families. Parts open from the insides like my dream of walking down the really treacherous steep steps of stairs, down, down, very down from the bus, or was it a train. As here, you might fall & break your head. Seeming. Will I get my mobility back, now that I know they’re dead, that I’ve seen the grave-site. Vito says you must make a fool of yourself. Now that I’ve orphaned self twice, between men, in them. Walk again, says the graph. Be tough, says someone, take it easy, says twin. And the school just says school & the school says I cant watch you, there’s nobody here. I laught at it. Ought will both does & as one it did. They laught now. You laugh now. Laugh . . . I’ll wait a minute. A ways it says of seas attend. As those meanies, like someone, who is not dead, whose name is not on the, I cant continue this. Much whence did. Clark Coolidge is my father, I cant continue that either. Some too seem as to do so. As Hugh Kenner said, “Steinese and its parent Hemingwayese”, all backwards. That’s how it all. He said he was out to destroy the I. I said he was out to destroy it—it’s all been seen, said, stop. Big period. There are only little whens. But buried the bottle, hidden it. Little no one. Must write to this, and or and so. What is seen? on the lowland stone. Tide’s in . . . dirt’s out. On a field, sable, & so on. No, let me give you the whole story: And after many years a new grave was delved, near an old & sunken one, in that burial-ground beside which King’s Chapel has since been built. It was near that old & sunken grave, yet with a space between, as if the dust of the two sleepers had no right to mingle. Yet one tombstone served for both. All around, there were monuments carved with armorial bearings; and on this simple slab of slate—as the curious investigator may still discern, and perplex himself with the purport—there appeared the semblance of an engraved escutcheon. It bore a device, a herald’s wording of which might serve for a motto & a brief description of our now concluded legend: so somber is it, and relieved only by one ever-glowing point of light gloomier than the shadow:—“ON A FIELD, SABLE, THE LETTER A, GULES.” At last there’s some freedom. Shakespeare & I make Clark. Shakespeare & Clark make I. Clark & I make Shakespeare. Shakespeare makes me & Clark. I’m still afraid of sleeping but everybody sleeps. Is it music? Will a meaning last all, as at, at funeral, and the will. We are plenty near to the grave site, but we cannot find it. A twin may well find it for us. Stealing flowers, others having fewer means and a lesser body. As a result of this visit to the grave site-cemetery, I am chaste of men & women—we all survive, but one. We light a mechanical match, even, maybe, with disdain. All the names are all the names. Like Vito. Vito lives there, no there, he lives there, yes, that’s right where he lives. When he wrote leaving he decided to writing for a living. I eat sparsely, like a bird. I could tell you the story of blossoms in the dust with greer garson & walter pidgeon, I could tell you the story of giant, with elizabeth taylor & james dean & rock hudson, I could tell you the story of the world the flesh & the devil with harry belafonte & inger stevens & mel ferrer, I could tell you the story of night must fall with rosalind russe
ll & robert montgomery, but at this late date. And So David & I got lost in middle village & I said we should go to Neiderstein’s but when we got to metropolitan avenue we didnt know which way we should turn, and just as we turned, we saw Neidersteins, where I was supposed to have my wedding reception. Now what happened was I slept with my fiance’s best friend & then I called off the wedding, dress & all & the next day Neiderstein’s burned down, wooden fans & all. But the wooden fans were still there & David had two vodka gibsons which means they have pickled onions in them, which he made me eat one each of, and I had two heineken’s in frozen glasses & what did we watch but a wedding & talked about queers that we knew & people in show business. Now David’s frozen glasses were different from mine, you have to understand. And the wedding people were also frozen & we were frozen in time, like black holes, and so on. On the ergosphere, if you know what I mean, the even horizon of a collapsed star. No we didnt talk about structuralism this time. So I left for the second time. And David predicted in the middle of mid-vil in Neidersteins that the man across the bar was a politician & that he would kiss the baby. So the man kissed the baby & all life was subsequently renewed, except that I had been staring. But we did not, something I cant say here, but that is another story, something about women. Now this room seems ominous, since I planned the crime. All the e’s and o’s of the entries are clouded, the a’s too & the people outside are screaming, not planning for the world’s restoration. All the names are all the names. They match, at least once, at least one time. Such will as that. We pass right by it unattended. Let me make them up—Anthony, Carmine, Mona Lisa, skip it. Those are childs, and childs room for us, with crayons in it. He wouldnt give me any of his money—strong, a sane one, a Survivor. Ceasing to make sense, listening, with money maybe with jokes. After the funeral of the rabbi’s wife, all the people returned to his house & found him fucking the maid. “What are you doing,” they asked. “In my grief do I know what I’m doing?” he replied. Ceasing to losing track, something about section 5, no. B-40, no 74. You are addressing you to me. I am addressing you to you. Too seldom a point of opening. Private space, opening private, opening space. I cant deal with the lost or last section. Not aside either. The joke: do you know people are dying to get in there; the joke: Vito lives there, no there, no here, at least wherever he lives or something, pointed out. Vital, vital force, vitalism, vitalistic, vitality, vitalization, vitalize, vitallium, vital principle, vital statistics, vitamin, A, B, C, D, E, G, H, K, P, &, X & different kinds of B were present, I wont go through their uses & statistics. There are 10 mg. of energy available in a dose, no more. More & your blood would thin like the blood of a rat who leaves the house & dies. What are these vitamins good for? Something about duty, I cant go into it now. Vitaminic, vitascope, in the childs room, in the nursery. This is my new, something I cant say, a female figure, say, 10 volts of her, matter least of, and her standing will. Whaddayou want? To let most be least past, but let most be most past, at least, standing still & seeing you. I’m starved. It could be, and that’s past or that’s this. A twister—you’re lost. I lost one, or two or three or four more, lost four in a row, lost some in the rosebush, no film of this. Nothing & nothing a film. Snakes up here. Sneakers on. You cant hear me. Few have I parted with and still. Few have a single place like the place I lost. I am the scapist, the stalker, the shafter, I wear a scapular. I am the queer & the whore, at least sitting behind glass windows playing with stage prop glass balls, now, and not before, something I cant say here, at least I have nothing to do, at least it’s ambitious. But she, she is different, she keeps the same phone number so as to always be accessible, like the you get wills, to those beyond, something I cant say here, in New York. All the somethings I cant say here, it’s just New York. Some matter. Changing & moving. Likes weakness, I dont. So I do. So I do all the work, moving & changing like a twin of weakness lost. It’s just New York, something I cant say here, if I hadnt stayed here. Sense of last chance.