There are great and beautiful happenings afoot, though what they are, who knows.
It is finally autumn. This part of the world takes special pleasure in immolating itself. It is the final act of a tragic opera, wherein the heroine robed in flames screams out her lifeblood upon the stage with a gold sword in her heart and the hero falls down flat beside her like a black river. Let not your heart be troubled. She's Lady Lazarus. She dies in fact, but she comes back in fact as well.
All my high ideals pertaining to the use of my food stamps ended last week thus: A fine fall day. I squat on the curb outside a warehouse cramming a pound of smoked salmon into my mouth, with my fingers. My stomach begins to hurt. I don't stop until it's gone. Then I suck the fat off the skin. Unbelievably, I've run out of money and it's more than a week til the beginning of November. My dearest friend is coming to visit tomorrow and I didn't have the self-restraint to save enough to lavish yak milk ice cream on her. On the plus side, I sickened myself on the salmon, and so got what I deserved and will maybe learn a lesson. Though I have my doubts.
I have just read a book called The Master and Margarita by Bulgakov, which I recommend very seriously to all readers of this missive. It is the kind of story which lodges in your chest and does not move ever again, suspended there like a water globe in perfect clarity and brightness with ample shadows.
My housemate works on her press incessantly, and something about the clanking of it infuses me with energy and daring. I am presently working on typesetting and printing a long poem to Betsy House, a story about two women who attempt to fund a sex change by counterfeiting, and a Prague + Antigone linocut I sadly fucked up by miscarving the words, but will repair in due time.
As of the end of the month, my apprenticeship is halfway done. Come February, where shall I fly? There are many, many possibilities, and so few obligations left to me. Not entirely by accident. Any off-hand suggestion could decide it all. If you have even the slightest desire to live vicariously through me, then just say a name and I will go. New Orleans? Providence? Flagstaff? Sarajevo?
St. Christopher look kindly on me.
