LET'S LISTEN TO THE LITTLE CROWD

92. LET’S LISTEN TO THE LITTLE CROWD:

When idiocy enters a legend there’s nothing left to deny and only at that moment do we listen to voices (like distant marks on a faraway planet) from a place where men have left markings and notes (but just as instead we harken to retribution against what we dislike so those arrayed against us too come forth with grudges and mayhem) in THEIR PARTICULAR form of matter - AND do you know that I am drowning in material and failing in my work ? that I am lost in translations and confused in what I take ? and all around me ONE BY ONE the compestuous interminglings of forcep and drown reap their own vague whirlwinds without my import or viewpoint being used (‘and I watched for a moment as she waltzed through the room and I merely wondered ONCE who she was’) and the waitress drew plenty and the cook produced a pen and the two people nearby (drowning their pancakes in syrup) sat just as transfixed as anything else and LIKE trophies in some living case while Civil War movies still played on the yellowed screen outside the entry where the black-faced lady with the dour spoon stood silent sentinel over everything which entered and STONE-AGE kids just born awoke and in the only way they knew screamed back with cries at the life just presented to them ALL THE WHILE in the same presentment their fallow parents both bickered and dodged the lowland life they led and lost amidst the mass morass ensconced in the feeble world of Earth and its matter they held forth just as confused as ever and put out all the WRONG efforts to dislodge such mis-education and YET THROUGH THE MOMENTS they stayed in one place listening to rabble and blabber and ANYTHING ELSE their dumb ears found out but nothing good came to them for their energies were so bad and attracted nothing but wrong and weak entreaties and like some wren from fourteen fathoms what landed on their heads was dross and what left its mark behind was death BUT THEY LISTENED as rubber hears the road or like the high jet cuts through the sky IMAGISTIC as a symbol and certain of meaning something but nothing more (‘I heard I heard two guys talking about a place called Carteret’) and there was no joke and we all ignored what we chose to hear and every kid’s parents are liars from Day One but there’s nothing to be done about that anymore – make sure the toaster works and the toadstool turns and Edward Grieg himself will visit Polynesia for you ONLY if you ask and the shadows which grow by the yellowing wall are higher than ever and growing quite tall but luck is in the logic and gratitude is nothing but payment for the PRIVILEGE of being born but ‘OH SO WHAT’ the Russian guy said and some shrugged it off while some others just wept for the voice was pristine and uncommon and arias and dirges alike came forth (‘Sunday but it was Sunday in the low graying sky with new snow on the way and the birds and deer hiding out and every tree I saw was dark brown and no green was to be seen but along the edge of the old miner’s cabin where the darkening smoke curled I swore I saw lightning and a glimpse of some other world’) but to millions of people I’ve never said a word and only now regret my passing them by without redemption being offered or something new and different (‘the small fat man in his overcoat I see him each day walking to his office door from the eager seat of his own Rolls Royce and he drives alone it seems alone and ever alone counting numbers and his racket in the stockbroker’s famous chair he’s lonely for something he’s lonely I swear’) but bush-league cameramen are planted by the window and their elongated lenses like eyes on a willow watch winds and hurricanes for anything occurring and somehow darling they mesh (‘Photoplay I think it was was once a magazine for the movie-star crowd but now they’re all struck dumb and dead and we might as well go home’) but cavalierly the young girl smiles with the bank-teller note as she stands there catching spiders and charting their webs and from inside the bank there’s only a squeal or something I’d heard AND I WANT TO BE SOMETHING - I really want to count…