2/24/2002 Lisboa

dear phil

cloudy, not too warm, humid. portuguese, tenuous; time, out of joint; my eyes, still the curse of me. my room is near the train station. i feel like moving. west or east? water or earth? i spent the day near the sea.

these cities on the borders between land and water always seem to collect a lot of flotsam. men wash up on one side, driftwood on the other. hi, please to meet you, you were once a monterey pine, no? have you seen the wrecks off barbary?

no i have no crazy good goose plans, no glowing good geese. i bought a passport from a pretty girl and spent the rest on the ticket which does me for air fire, and love. earth or water, east or west… johnny doesn’t exist any more. no, his apartment is still occupied and still drives a car and plays the saxophone passingly weel and his girl friend still dreams of him in spanish.

should i explain? does it bring the whole thing into ruins? if it does i will have to go back and kick him out, that usurper. and how to: in memory or in symbols? drinking in the gold dust lounge around 1. mara sleeps and i armed with nicotine and papers am drinking. man next to me asks. before rolling fag draws on paper with little library 2 inch pencil a rose. i ask: the dead acquire what we destroy by fire, old chinese custom. for whom? for a, your: yes, of course, dead three years.

and if we too are in an underworld who sends us flowers? and what do they seem to those who receive? and what happens if a real flower? i believe, i tell him in whisper, slow, in a rose singular metaphysical; whose manifestation turns turns over time and space and thus whether it lives and dies by hours or years is actually and truly immortal. don’t tell; you understand so don’t tell.

so where is it: i don’t know, still don’t know. only this: the metaphysical universe is apt to falling apart and turning to something else and every so often for a few people it does so spectacularly leaving nothing but a single postulate axiomatic and illogical and a physical world filled with phenomena whose accustomed explanations are so much rubbish, and then, if there is anything so subtle and gigantic as this rose it will appear unclothed and undisguised, then and only then.

and i have longed for the world to change itself, i say, if i walked home and found myself lost.

he takes last drag and extinguishes. then, from pockets withdraws wallet keys and phone. do the same, he says, but keep your cigarettes. adeus, he says, leaving. come back here in one year, or never.

it’s a poor trade: there’s no woman in his bed. next day i find someone to fix the driver’s licence and make me a passport, and already she’s twice as lovely as mara, with sand-brown eyes. from spain, she says. maybe i’ll go there, i told her, and bring you back a rose.

write me here as always as i have no address

j