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"Then we have this fellow who
insists he is on some interplanetary adventure--when he ought to be
able to perceive, for one thing, that this isn't even a planet."
"It's so . . . unfinished.
As worlds go."
"As the world . . . went."
"Maybe they flubbed the exit
in his case, or maybe he is right. After all, what do we know, being
excused from life and put in this hotel, what do we know?"
"I could always talk. Even
as a baby, I was talking before I was thinking. I'd start in talking
and make up for it, the lack of knowledge you might say, by keeping
up the talking--"
"All the while with amazement
on their faces. Look at this talking baby!"
"Then, in the life story, I
sought refuge from this burning ability, daily a torture on my brethren,
in secretively writing, which somehow also I was able to do most fluidly.
Though. . .-"
"Not with surefire confidence,
eh?"
"Yes, I was a most awkward
and intermittently inspired author, and not given to worldly ambition
in that way so prevalent among the provincials."
"So why? Why did you keep stumbling
forward, and frothing at the mouth?"
"Flattery. The flattery got
me. Flattery gets you, me, any little guy. You make a remark, people
laugh, you keep it up. You get so you are compelled to cheer up the
clerk at the store with some diffident tossing off . . . "
"Diffident? What does that
mean? Did I ever know what that word meant?"
"It means shy. I think he just
used it very expertly."
"Let's go over to the zoo.
And watch the hybrids."
"Let's go to the All-Hours
Cinema. You know what's playing?'
"Why, Life, of course. The
great unfinished movie Life, of course."
"I could understand going to
see Hot Air Balloons once. But year after year? I can't understand that.
If you seen them once, I would think seeing them year after year would
be just a choreý, wouldn't it?"
"What brought that in?"
"Change of topic."
"Then your perceptive relatives,
one after the other give like this hot air balloon lampshade, for Christmas,
then a hot air balloon T-shirt! It's a theme. You go back year after
year. Someone gives you a Hot Air Balloon set of earrings---for Gods
sake. There is no escaping it now."
"Same thing happened to my
mother with red robins."
"In the file called "Fixing
the Lamps" you'll find all that stuff about the lecherous plumber, and
the paranoid electrician. The stuff about the basement, the ruminations
given to a man who is painting the baseboard, etc. etc."
"That's what I say: Etc. Etc."
"The garbage trucks, very loud,
come on Thursday. Everybody has those blue recycling boxes, in our neighborhood,
now. We're very civilized, and guess what?--there is no generation gaps
anymore between the generations!"
"I'm not sure we are actually
dead."
"Oh well that's a great idea.
Now you say we aren't actually dead? Then, where are we exactly?"
"We're�Îe drugged.
We're part of an experiment. Or one of us is dreaming.
"Wake up, would you. You know
perfectly well what has happened. You just can't face it."
"No, really, I don't even remember
dying. Shouldn't I remember?"
"It would help me if I could
remember how long I've been here. But it's like I should have been making
marks on the wall next to my cot. I have no sense of time!"
"Time apparently has been abolished."
"Time only matters when something
is happening. That's funny!"
°
"I'm still not sure we have
this right. I think it might be a conspiracy. In my own case, for instance,
I don't remember what happened. Though I do remember imagining . . ."
"This? You imagined this?"
"Let's take a vote."
"Made no reservation, huh?"
"It's very simple. It's a switch.
When we were alive, we kept up the talk against a barricade, a mystery
seemingly defined by the barricade. Death was our incessant topic."
"Your incessant topic."
"Okay my obsessant topic. Now
that we are dead, we are only slightly astonished after all to see that
we are still around, and now we have a different topic."
"This is the beginning of the
true discussion of life!"
"I'm still not sure. Maybe
we were drugged, and like spliced in to this other story. This is too
much like life, really. I didn't really pay attention to the crossover."
"In what sense is this like
life? Look outside, if you can bear it. It looks like
the site of an old( )d World's
Fair for God's sake."
"As I recall, they were just
putting up another Goddamned Rite-Aid Pharmacy, across from Wegman's,
in that prairie-land of Monroe Avenue. That's what was going on. I used
to day after day go to the huge Barnes & Noble, buy some soup--they
had really excellent broccoli and cheese soup, and I'd sit there feeling
like, you know, I was getting away with something, reading the newspaper!
and hoping to jag some thoughts for my play I was writing. Lord, it's
like coming back. It's like yesterday--"
"Ask yourself a question. Are
you not feeling rather calm. Morbidly calm. Disattached, and yet rallying
with fervent emotions? Like they are setting up the circus at the edge
of town. Like the night before a holiday. Are you not beyond the pale,
past the worries, are you not utterly relaxed? Ask yourself--"
"Oh, look! They are putting
up the moon! Just for us. Can anybody remember what they have plan(c)planned
for tomorrow?"
"Not me."
"That's it, you see. They take
you right when your affairs are wrapped up, and tomorrow was not planned.
They can't take a man or a woman with anticipation's. Only those who
were finally dwelling totally within their thoughts."
"Well that's it! That explains
it. You make your big mistake, are internally killed, and you begin
to deal with those anticipation's differently. Instead of expanding
upon them, you set about dismantling them. This might take a year, or
three decades. When you are done, then, and in plain site of no one,
you do the final breathing--so to speak."
"When I was alive I died every
night. That's how I stayed alive. Setting up one eternity after another.
Which is why I suspect this other guy over here (what's your name?)
might be correct."
"People get this way at parties---this
may be a seemingly endless party, but soon the sirens will sound, and
we'll be back to the drab bus‹business of the next business day.
Or maybe it is Saturday."
"Saturdays are the worst!"
"What is that drawing on the
napkin?"
"It's the Polar Configuration."
"What is that olive in my drink?"
"The planet Saturn."
"Like I always said, you don't
need a universe to start a world. And, descending in this logic, you
don't need a world to start a city; nor a city for a neighborhood, nor
a street for a house. You hardly need a house for a room, a window,
a slice of moon, a darkly lit stairway, nor the emotion that keeps the
mystery of life going. I'm sure everyone has brought their belongings."
"Precious little. After all.
