I first met Mataji at the river. I had travelled a long way by bus, boat, and truck. The Middle Eastern countries were hard to travel through. I was pelted with rocks once. Women just don’t travel alone in Muslim areas. The river at Benares seemed hospitable in comparison, a natural stopping point. A time to recoup, write home. Hindus came to Benares to die. Me, I just wanted to settle myself.
It has never been my policy to hold a grudge. Yet, I must confess that I have never been able to forgive Adam and Eve.
The artist speaks of the “muse” and the musician says “I was hot,” but in their hearts there is only mysterious joy: I was present at a beautiful event and yet it was not “I.”
I kept looking at Patty’s smooth face across the branch from me in the tree, and hearing Tony shouting into the house. Patty heard it too, but she just kept smiling and I leaned across the big branch and kissed her. Her mouth felt soft and like warm rubber against my mouth, and she smelled faintly like cooked cabbage. A funny, clean smell, but like the air inside the houses of poor people.
I like Ramona. I want to win the lottery, pay her brother back for the car, bounce her and the baby out of the attic apartment. But I’m not going to win the lottery. I cannot save Ramona from her life anymore than I can save the sulking girls upstairs from their potential punishment on Tuesday.
*NOTE: Original copies of this issue are no longer available. Unbound, laser-printed copies will be provided for print orders.
I lost William Burroughs’ Cities Of The Red Night on the way to a Grateful Dead concert last August. I was inwardly glad because it was full of sex and hangings. Finally I paid the Denver library $20.
“The mark of your ignorance is the depth of your belief in injustice and tragedy. What the caterpillar calls the end of the world, the master calls a butterfly.”
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