Vignettes I

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The beauty of a word that survives the destruction of the world without anyone there to speak or write it.

You find a tape recorder in the street. You hear a message telling you to turn it over. On the other side, you read another message, scratched with a knife in the metal, and realize that what it says no voice could ever have spoken into the machine.

My words have lost their sense. I see them float up into the air like balloons, spinning about uselessly in space. Months later they descend over Japan. Some guy plucks them out of the air with his fingers and eats them, one by one. He begins to write poetry and becomes famous. And here I am, mute, a sad clown with his gestures and grunts, interlocutor of dogs and hummingbirds.

The man at the counter sells oranges. He also sells the juice of these oranges. And pineapples, and the juice of pineapples. He is a fat man, sitting on a stool fanning himself. Along comes a prostitute. She is a vendor too, but she sneers at the fat man sitting on the stool. She too is filled with juice but she sells only the rind.

The false propriety of trees, standing erect and apart, while beneath, like young lovers at the table, their roots mingle.

I have been without purpose before, between the folds of starched percale sheets, wondering why my body hair grows only so long, pacing up and down a hallway. At the end of this hallway is a small window. From there I can see a bus stop, seven people waiting, their clothes indicating the direction of the wind, their shadows the position of the sun, their blank faces the hurtling steely purpose that approaches, lined with empty seats waiting to be filled.
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