OK, I'm going to read from--
or I'll begin reading from a novel which I just
finished, which is called, The Return of Painting.
So I'm picking up someplace in the middle.
And I'll actually skip at some point,
but I won't bother you with telling you about that.
OK, this is from The Return of Painting.
"Man gives her lift, not known very well.
Driving night across the long length of the city,
him speaking on the way.
Oh, it's a long time since she'd met anybody friendly then.
And coming gently, there is no time
to have been at them to the red lights, all along the way,
slows low, putting on the gas, and went
through every red light on the street of the entire city.
When he'd slowed at one in gutted-out buildings
for blocks, there's a poor man out walking with a small cat
on a leash and jerking it.
And the man in the car slows, stepping on the gas
and goes through the red light there.
Flying fish in the blue ocean, the freighter going,
whales in the swells or still, already having died,
seen from the side of one of the ships.
In mid-ocean, many so that they're amongst them.
Chugging of the engine, but a deep chugging
from the freighter slowing or stopping
amidst the blood clouds in swells
from the flagged, floating bodies of the creatures
that are being harpooned.
That's occurring.
A stowaway is sent in a rowboat from the freighter
to the other ship.
The stowaway or a whaler who falls out of the rowboat
into the high swells of waves.
The man who'd fallen from the boat waving,
but not so as to be picked up by them, which he is.
Lying on the rubber inflated mattress raft
in the dark city apartment, person alone.
People calling out who are yelling
at night, who are ordinary people, or many, many
all the way along the street in poor clothes asking for money.
One man happened to be given three dimes,
which were in the pocket of the person who
is later lying asleep deeply on the rubber mattress raft--
the man looking so defeated and disappointed
by the money that had been given to him.
Before the rubber raft mattress, her going into the department
store.
On the mattress raft, sleeping deeply as if sunken much later
at a different time.
From them there had been the crowd
of people at the front entrance, near subway entrance,
asking for money.
A man on a sled with no legs at the door of the department
store, which was merely that with the appearance of cities
in it that was really beautiful--
merely commercial as beautiful, and could not
be done otherwise.
The float mattress raft on the floor,
the person in a deep sleep on it, as that being the same,
but in bitter cold.
Her face, stung by the freezing wind, walking at night.
And people begging on the street in that.
Ordinary other people calling out at night or yelling things.
Heard from the person being on the float
mattress raft, the flesh machine body stretched out straight.
Balmy, the man crapping, squatting by the side
as the train goes by, seen from his back.
Lily bogs in the city with small, dark pigs
floating in them.
But it's bitterly cold outside, not
from lying on the mattress floor raft or people out, which
is the same, which is that.
People squatting outside or washing,
seen from riding in the bus.
So above-- people, many, all along
the street with their backs to the cars and bathing,
wet with soap, delicately from spigots
that would be out from a wall.
Many on the street.
Woman crapping on the sidewalk near a restaurant in front
of which she lives--
out, living there.
Going into the lobby, where the people who are really chic
or who've been met won't speak to a person who's
not important.
Class-ridden, asinine, really destroyed by them.
Who grew up in the forest and emerged from it
a singer because he had been talking with the birds
throughout his childhood.
Going on the subway, which stops and slows,
before that on the mattress raft float lying,
only shuts down to downtown trains
from a man who's walking on the track, obstructing.
Everywhere, people around, shivering in the freezing wind,
asking for money.