don't you think?)
~ * ~
2:30 PM
The snot-nosed kid selling puppies on Fifth Avenue (little muttlies, of course, but fucking damned cute) was a real heartbreaker. But then, that's what he was supposed to be (a heartbreaker). Clichés are the stock in trade of these poor creatures.
Like the phantom taxi driver who drove as if the Manhattan streets were filled only with air:
And Kennedy Whelan, the rotund detective looking for murder:
And the cynical editor who was sure that "literature" could serve her only if it served the masses:
And Stacey, the gorgeous second cousin of the lead male in these poor stories, who tickled his sensibilities:
And Phyllis Pellaprat herself, who showed him what love could be, then showed him that she'd been lying all along, though she hadn't known it.
What a bag of clichés.
If I could, I'd spit.
~ * ~
5:15 PM
It's a neat little house I live in, now—as small as my ambitions, but airy and livable, at least when I arrived not too awfully long ago. My neighbors are far enough away that they might as well be invisible, which suits me fine, and there are ample woods to walk in, and a hundred narrow paths winding through them. In this place, at least at first, I had a never-ending late spring and enough sun and storms and gray skies to keep me from becoming bored or complacent.
It's rare that anyone comes to my door. It has happened only twice, in fact—middle-age men asking to hunt on my land: I said no each time, though, minutes later, I could hear the low, rumbling chatter of their shotguns. I didn't chase these hunters down in order to shoo them away: In the ordinary sense of the word, at least, I'm not stupid.
(You're wondering, of course, if you can trust what I just told you. I'd say yes, but then you'd ask if you could trust that, and when I said yes, again, you'd repeat your question, and we'd go round and round and round and this little narrative would never get written. And, good Lord, it needs to get written.)
We're talking about real time. What I put down on paper, here, has happened, or is happening, or will happen, or is continuing to happen. That's the sort of universe this is—where all things happen in all tenses, and in tenses you've never experienced, too. Such a fascinating place, this universe—a place where I can remember, and rest, and die (which I'll get around to sooner or later).
Please don't trust me. Not everything I say is a lie, as far as I know, but I'm a miserably unreliable narrator. It's not that I want to be unreliable, but I really know nothing about anything, so I attempt to interpret what I experience, and I have no way of knowing if my interpretations are correct because nothing is correct here, just as, for instance, people are never at a "correct" age, and rainfall is never a "correct" amount: we can not control age or rainfall, so the idea of the "correctness" of age or rainfall simply doesn't pertain.
~ * ~
June 10, 12:02 AM
Well, shit, let me get down to specifics.
When I think of a ghost story, I think about children shivering
around a campfire while an aging man with a long, austere face
summons up--in resonant, wonderfully spectral tones—the way
the misdeeds of the dead will soon be visited upon the living, and I
think about old gray houses that have somehow had Evil
implanted in them, and I think about rocking chairs that rock all
on their own, and about crying in empty rooms, about cold spots,
warm spots, hot spots, hounds out of hell, men who hang
themselves in attics and in cellars, again and again and again.
And it’s all true.
I know it's all true.
But there's a whole lot more going on over there, on The Other
Side, than any of us can imagine.
—A Manhattan Ghost Story
TWO
I like being precise about these things, don't you? "TWO." It gives weight and parameters to this narrative, and specificity, too. It seems to impose order where order—at least as we have come to define it—cannot actually exist.
So
~ * ~
2:30 PM
The snot-nosed kid selling puppies on Fifth Avenue (little muttlies, of course, but fucking damned cute) was a real heartbreaker. But then, that's what he was supposed to be (a heartbreaker). Clichés are the stock in trade of these poor creatures.
Like the phantom taxi driver who drove as if the Manhattan streets were filled only with air:
And Kennedy Whelan, the rotund detective looking for murder:
And the cynical editor who was sure that "literature" could serve her only if it served the masses:
And Stacey, the gorgeous second cousin of the lead male in these poor stories, who tickled his sensibilities:
And Phyllis Pellaprat herself, who showed him what love could be, then showed him that she'd been lying all along, though she hadn't known it.
What a bag of clichés.
If I could, I'd spit.
~ * ~
5:15 PM
It's a neat little house I live in, now—as small as my ambitions, but airy and livable, at least when I arrived not too awfully long ago. My neighbors are far enough away that they might as well be invisible, which suits me fine, and there are ample woods to walk in, and a hundred narrow paths winding through them. In this place, at least at first, I had a never-ending late spring and enough sun and storms and gray skies to keep me from becoming bored or complacent.
It's rare that anyone comes to my door. It has happened only twice, in fact—middle-age men asking to hunt on my land: I said no each time, though, minutes later, I could hear the low, rumbling chatter of their shotguns. I didn't chase these hunters down in order to shoo them away: In the ordinary sense of the word, at least, I'm not stupid.
(You're wondering, of course, if you can trust what I just told you. I'd say yes, but then you'd ask if you could trust that, and when I said yes, again, you'd repeat your question, and we'd go round and round and round and this little narrative would never get written. And, good Lord, it needs to get written.)
We're talking about real time. What I put down on paper, here, has happened, or is happening, or will happen, or is continuing to happen. That's the sort of universe this is—where all things happen in all tenses, and in tenses you've never experienced, too. Such a fascinating place, this universe—a place where I can remember, and rest, and die (which I'll get around to sooner or later).
Please don't trust me. Not everything I say is a lie, as far as I know, but I'm a miserably unreliable narrator. It's not that I want to be unreliable, but I really know nothing about anything, so I attempt to interpret what I experience, and I have no way of knowing if my interpretations are correct because nothing is correct here, just as, for instance, people are never at a "correct" age, and rainfall is never a "correct" amount: we can not control age or rainfall, so the idea of the "correctness" of age or rainfall simply doesn't pertain.
~ * ~
June 10, 12:02 AM
Well, shit, let me get down to specifics.
When I think of a ghost story, I think about children shivering
around a campfire while an aging man with a long, austere face
summons up--in resonant, wonderfully spectral tones—the way
the misdeeds of the dead will soon be visited upon the living, and I
think about old gray houses that have somehow had Evil
implanted in them, and I think about rocking chairs that rock all
on their own, and about crying in empty rooms, about cold spots,
warm spots, hot spots, hounds out of hell, men who hang
themselves in attics and in cellars, again and again and again.
And it’s all true.
I know it's all true.
But there's a whole lot more going on over there, on The Other
Side, than any of us can imagine.
—A Manhattan Ghost Story
TWO
I like being precise about these things, don't you? "TWO." It gives weight and parameters to this narrative, and specificity, too. It seems to impose order where order—at least as we have come to define it—cannot actually exist.
So
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