When I enter a great naked hall at the hour of twilight
And that everything is silence it has for me the structure of a soul
It is vague and dusty and my steps echo strangely
Like those which echo in my soul when I walk
Through their sad windows, the sleeping light enters from without
And projects shadows and penumbras on the dark wall ahead
A great empty hall is a silent soul
And air currents that stir dust are thoughts

A flock of ewes is a sad thing
Because we shouldn't be able to associate it with other ideas that are not sad
And because it is so and only because it is so because it is the truth
That we should associate sad ideas with a flock of ewes
It is for this reason and only for this reason that ewes are sad in fact

I steal for pleasure when I am given an object of value
And I give in return a few bits of metal. This idea is neither common nor banal
For I face it differently and there is no relation between a bit of metal and another object
If I were to buy tin and paid with lettuce I would be arrested
I used to like hearing anyone expose and explain
How one can stop thinking that one thinks that anything is done
So as to lose the fear I have of some day knowing that
My thinking about things and thinking are nothing but a material and perfect thing

The position of a body is not unimportant to its equilibrium
And the sphere is not a body because it has no form
If it is so and if we all hear a sound in any position
I infer that it must not be a body
But those who know by intuition that a sound is not a body
Were not following my reasoning and thus this notion is of no use to them
When I remember that there are persons who play with words in displays of wit
And they laugh about it and tell personal stories about their own lives
So to brighten their spirits and that they find circus clowns amusing
And that they become annoyed when a drop of oil falls on their new suits
I am glad that there are so many things I do not understand
In the art of each worker I see a whole generation at labor
And therefore I do not understand any craft and only see that generation
The worker does not see anything of a generation in his craft
And therefore he is a worker and knows his craft

My physique often causes a deep depression in me
I know that I am a thing and because I am no different from any other thing
I know that other things must be like me and have to think that I am a common thing
And thus if it is so then I do not really think but only believe I think
And this my way of conditioning myself is good and it comforts me

I love alamedas full of curving shadowy trees
And walking through wide alamedas delightful to my gaze
Alamedas my gaze fashions without my knowing how
They are doors opening out into my incoherent being
And it is always alamedas I feel when the shock of so being makes me known

 

 

 

n e x t

[ page 2 of 7 ]