This American Carnage (Part II)
Sometimes I feel like a simple Willard-Mullin-style hobo, alone in a huge, empty dirty boxcar, ridin' the ol' Erie Lackawanna to parts unshown and unknown, with the middle doors on both sides slid wide open, so the car itself becomes a kinda-sorta Robert Irwin light sculpture, each curve taken, each swing made, filling the boxcar with either exquisite light or--hey, it happens--darkness.
When the light's just right--just right--I untie my hobo handkerchief and get out the only book that would fit: A Samuel Beckett Reader. And I turn to this sentence on page 246, in about the middle of the page, from Molloy, and I read it out loud: "Yes, even then, when already all was fading, waves and particles, there could be no things but nameless things, no names but thingless names." Then I close the book--wham, bam, thank you, Sam!--get up and pull one of the sliding doors shut so there's only one open. Then I sit in the middle of the car and look out that big square 12-ft.-high opening and imagine it's the ground glass of an old Rollei. And then I just take imaginary pictures of what I see. And if I could ever figure out how to make 'em real, I guess they'd look something like these. |