Страница 14 из 19
6/26/92 12:34 AM
I have probably written more and better in the past 2 years than at any time in my life. It's as if from over 5 decades of doing it, I might have gotten close to really doing it. Yet, in the past 2 months I have begun to feel a weariness. The weariness is mostly physical, yet it's also a touch spiritual. It could be that I am ready to go into decline. It's a horrible thought, of course, The ideal was to continue until the moment of my death, not to fade away. In 1989 I overcame TB. This year it has been an eye operation that has not as yet worked out. And a painful right let, ankle, foot. Small things. Bits of skin cancer. Death nipping at my heels, letting me know. I'm and old fart, that's all. Well, I couldn't drink myself to death. I came close but I didn't. Now I deserve to live with what is left.
So, I haven't written for 3 nights. Should I go mad? Even at my lowest times I can feel the words bubbling inside of me, getting ready. I am not in a contest. I never wanted it, that's all. And I had to get the word down the way I wanted it, that's all. And I had to get the words down or be overcome by something worse than death. Words not as precious things but as necessary things.
Yet when I begin to doubt my ability to work the word I simply read another writer and then I know that I have nothing to worry about. My contest is only with myself: to do it right, with power and force and delight and gamble. Otherwise, forget it.
I have been wise enough to remain isolated. Visitors to this house are rare. My 9 cats run like mad when a human arrives. And my wife, too, is getting to be more and more like me. I don't want this for her. It's natural for me. But for Linda, no. I'm glad when she takes the car and goes off to some gathering. After all, I have my go-damned racetrack. I can always write about the racetrack, that great empty hole of nowhere. I go there to sacrifice myself, to mutilate the hours, to murder them. The hours must be killed. While you are waiting. The perfect hours must be killed. While you are waiting. The perfect hours are the ones at this machine. But you must have impefect hours to get perfect hours. You must kill ten hours to make two hours live. What you must be careful of is not to kill ALL the hours, ALL the years.
You fix yourself up to be a writer by doing the instinctive things which feed you and the word, which protect you against death in life. For each, it changes. Once for me it meant very heavy drinking, drinking to the point of madness. It sharpened the word for me, brought it out. And I needed danger. I needed to put myself into dangerous situations. With men. With women. With automobiles. With gambling. With starvation. With anything. It fed the word. I had decades of that. Now it has changed. What I need now is more subtle, more invisible. It's a feeling in the air. Words spoken, words heard. Things seen. I still need a few drinks. But I am now into nuances and shadows. I am fed words by things that I am hardly aware of. This is good. I write a different kind of crap now. Some have noticed.
„You have broken through,“ is mainly what they tell me.
I am aware of what they sense. I feel it too. The words have gotten simpler yet warmer, darker. I am being fed from new sources. Being near death is energizing. I have all the advantages. I can see and feel things that are hidden from the young. I have gone from the power of youth to the power of age. There will be no decline. Uh uh. Now, pardon me, I must got to be, it's 12:55 a.m. Talking the night off. Have your laugh while you can…
8/24/92 12:28 AM
Well, I've been 72 years old for 8 days and nights now and I'll never be able to say that again.
It's been a bad couple of months. Weary. Physically and spiritually. Death means nothing. It's walking around with your ass dragging, it's when the words don't come flying form the machine, there's the gyp.
Now in my lower lip and under the lower lip, there is a large puffiness. And I have no energy. I didn't go to the track today. I just stayed in bed. Tired, tired. The Sunday crowds at the track are the worst. I have problems with the human face. I find it very difficult to look at. I find the sum total of each person's life written there and it is a horrible sight. When one sees thousands of faces in one day, it's tiring from the top of the head to the toes. And all through the gut. Sundays are so crowded. It's amateur day. They scream and curse. They rage. Then they go limp and leave, broke. What did they expect?
I had a cataract operation on my right eye a few months ago. The operation was not nearly as simple as the misinformation I gathered from people who claimed to have had eye operations. I heard my wife talking to ther mother on the telephone: „You say it was over in a few minutes? And that you drove your car home afterwards?“ Another old guy told me, „Oh it's nothing, it's over in a flash and you just go about your business as normal.“ Others spoke about the operation in an off-hand ma