Suddenly life
My manhood seems only a dream to me. An idyllic daydream, that won't come true. I can't imagine the joy of it, having a girl. It is beyond me to imagine at all. Suddenly life. It is very life.
I see so many men who have women, are married or the same as that; yet they keep it such a good secret that this is very life itself, the touch with a woman. Oh it is great, it is “love” after all, they will admit—but apparently not life itself. It's not enough to give them their very meaning, their very legitimacy, it seems. Their woman is not enough, not at all, it seems, to appease their overwhelming need for afterlife, eternal life. Or if it is, it's the best kept secret I know of.
For me, I know a woman, the right one, a real one, a true woman, would be enough. It would be life. Suddenly life.
But there is a feeling that runs deep in me, that I'll never know a woman. That my manhood is all a dream: to be unfulfilled. A daydream even.
Why that must be I don't know. It is only a feeling; that doesn't mean there is necessarily anything to it.
Technicality
Really, it's just a technicality that I don't believe in God. That's all. My view of life is sacred, fully sacred.
What does it matter if there is a God, anyway? We've got life.
Life is better than God.
Besides, what does it matter?
The Other
Someday girl (if you'll let me be so familiar) you'll read this, whoever you are, And if you are the 'right girl'. . . Well I don't know what. (It's not my words that are important, it's me, and you'll know that; having as you will have a sacred view of this shimmering life, knowing well how momentary, how final, it is.)
And if you aren't the 'right girl'—well then you are probably a 'partly-right girl'—n'est-ce pas? Or is it something else? (Well I'm no futurologist, you know.)
But let's say you are the right girl . . . pretend . . .
Probably your hair is dark, or maybe brown, probably not blond—but why quibble? Anyway, it won't be Miss Clarol hair—won't be “Only her hairdresser knows for sure” hair.
And of course you'll have thrown all your earrings out, or given them away to poor friends (meaning, if they wear earrings, well poor friends, how we weep for you!)
But why harp on all that? You're the 'right girl', so no need for fuss. No, serious things, keep in mind serious things.
I want to hug you right through the pages. Right now, as I write this, oh I want to hug you. I would if I could, without a thought, and you know it. I want to hug, hug, hug—but poor me, I can only write, write, write.
If I could somehow slip my fingers through these words, or the pages, slip them through to you as you are reading this—oh I just want to touch you, right girl. Just a little finger-touch!
Agh! But this paper is a jail. It doesn't let me.
Words, words, they are so vain. They're no good at all, really. My words aren't me—I can't touch through my words—though God, I try, I really try. And I can imagine my touching through words—but I can't really do it, can't quite manage it.
Words seem to fall stillborn from me, always dead, because structured and set, never quick with the unexplainable touchableness of life. Life is touchable—a touching. That's the mystery. How life can be so touchable, so valuable, so momentary and final. All quick. All quivering, vital, physical. Oh I want to touch you. And I can't.
My life seems so surely headed for crash or for quick, living landing. Closer and closer the point of impact is coming, nearing, rising greatly upon me, all a sudden upon me. Will I crash? Will I fail, shatter into sterile pieces of pure frustration, pure meaninglessness? Or will there be a landing, a soft touch?
There are two darks. My plane drops from the sun towards—which one? I am after earth; to plant my feet in earth, and kiss the ground, darkly, with wonderful crazy blind life. I want the dark gods of life, of sheer joy. The plane dips down. Where to land? I am gliding down, belly towards earth, and no landing field in sight. Where to land? Where to be taken in? Must I crash? Is that my fate, to crash?
I want life—must I crash? Must the crash of final frustration always be the penalty for wanting life?
The wise men who say, “Without its illusions and myths, life would not be worth living, would be but a miserable, worthless burden”—must they always be right?
I expect too much out of life, I have been told. Is that it? Underneath it all, is there nothing meaningful, ultimate? If we strip away our hopes of afterlife, of eternity—is there nothing left? Must I crash? Must I find only meaninglessness?
I know earth is down there—I know touch is there to be had. I know it is possible. But must I crash? Must there be no way for me? Is expecting life out of life too much?
Everything depends on my one life. If I crash, God is dead. God dies.
And for every one that crashes, trying to land for their one life, God is dead. God dies.
That is why Carol's death has such an effect on me. It seems a large part of God died.
And there is only one God, only one life. When a woman (or a man) dies, that's the end of God. It is the final disaster, death.
Unless in life we are able to transmit God into the world; that is, unless we are able to make the soft landing on the folds of the skin of earth, and make touch. Enough touch, and we save God for yet awhile, in others yet alive to touch.
But we can't do this up in planes in the sky.
Planes, with their metal skin that only blocks us off from delicate touch, deep touch. Planes that only fly us tritely about in the empty ether of our minds.
Our minds are sick, have a fever of hot air, unless they remain down here on fertile earth, always concerned with vital, quick, unknown touch with the other.
And you, girl, the other for me, as you read this—run right now to me to kiss me. Yes do it! For this is no joke—this is life. We must be insane with life or we will but be insane without it. So now, run kiss me wherever I am. You must! You must! And what a surprised boy I will be! Now is your chance to prove you are the other indeed, the strange other, insane, quick with life, run jump on me. Do not care who is with me—be wild with the deeper flow of things, the ground-flow. Be careless what I think. Let me say,
“What? You? You're the other?”
“Yes! Yes!” you say. “Didn't you know?”
But what matter what I know or don't know—if you are the other, you know it and no one else. So go! run! quickly! and don't explain.
This is your one life—don't miss chances.
And besides, you have an excuse—my own words!
Now that you're back— (I hope that you really made a surprise of it—not some little old cheek-kiss but a real thing, of scent-strong touch. Or a real hug, of sensuous passion—or something, to shake me up and say
“What?”
“I'm the other.”
“The what?”
“The other.”
“Let's go over that again.”
“I'm the other.”
“No. Not that. I mean before, when I was sitting (or standing) here, and you slipped in and . . .”)
See? I like others.
The choice for us the living is not sanity or insanity. We cannot but be insane. Either we must be insane with life, or insane and sterile without it.
No, much better the insanity, the drunkenness of life. Let them think ill of you—for they are just insane the other way, insane in their lifelessness.
Oh, throw paper airplanes out the windows with love poems on them for whoever may come by. Oh, talk to every other you meet with quick, squirrel weakness.
Tell me, “I am the other,” and watch me squirm with uneasiness over it; then chide me for my self-consciousness, my uneasiness before life, for I will deserve it. Oh chide me, chide me when I am afraid of life. Chide me, like a squirrel. Chide me, but always as the other.
Do not chide me as the mother. Or the something-else-or-other. Do not be the another.
Be the girl-other. The ready-for-sacred-earth-touch-other, if it comes.
(If it doesn't come, take a more “active” role—but only if you are the other. You will know—not I. After all, you might only be partly other. In that case—tread with beware.)
Can I get this plane down? Can I do it without the crash of final frustration, the crash of giving up? And can I land softly and not harm the fields of the other I land in?
These are all very serious questions I cannot answer.
I don't know that it can be done—for I am only a beginner, not only at life but at flying. I don't even recall taking off. Now I'm trying to land, and do it safely.
But there are rocks—I don't want to hit the rocks. I must “make a living”. I must “be a member of society”. I must worry about my parents and my friends. I must “try to please everyone”.
I don't know. If only I don't starve, or have to live in a city, among those who only sting life. If only I can escape those who sting life. For I can't take stings to life, I can't take it.
If a man talks about “my delicate penis, that so needs to be nurtured and cared for, taken joy in, harbored by the woman”—you just get coarse laughs or, worse, hard embarrassed stares.
You can't even write such things and get away with it, unless you use some literary convention that in effect “takes it all back”. No, you just get stung.
I'm not sophisticated—I'm glad. I'm not some intellectual or some scholar secure in the search for truth. Truth doesn't seem of much importance for me, since I was born a body, for life. Since I'm a body I want the things of the body. But I won't have them reduced to jokes or mental chuckles, in the process. I won't have the body done dirt on. It is this turning of everything serious and important about life into obscenity, that I object to. Why must the penis be so hard to take seriously? Why must it only be taken scientifically or nastily or tritely? What is so wrong with making a god of the penis? What is so wrong with making a god of the whole body, which I do? And of the woman's body? What is so wrong with making everything quick and alive, everything that offers touch, into a god? I say the grass is a god, even winter-grass—will you laugh at this? Will you insist that God, even gods, must be beyond life?
Alright, I say. Let God be God for the beyond life. Fine. But I, here and now, I'm not beyond life. I'm alive. I'm in life. When I'm beyond life I'll worry about the God of the beyond life. But now, this momentary now that is called life, let me look after the gods of life, the gods of touch and experience.
I am a body, alive, I have no taste for the after-life. It seems only death to me. Tell me all you like of how I ought to care about after-life, about eternity, the fact is I don't. I'm after life. Life, you see? I'm a physical body alive; I want the bodily things. The things of earth. If that turns God stone-against me, who has he to blame but himself? For he made me alive bodily (assuming he did), and all I want is to be alive bodily. It is only for awhile; it is only one-two-three and then death.
But while we are alive, we can't know about the other-than-life—and why should we? I only know life. As far as I am concerned, it is everything. There is no meaning outside of it. Only death.
So the other is my God. Girl. Woman. But more, more than that: all life is other.
For mankind though, man, woman are a special other to each other. More other than all other others.
This is our one life, let us be drunken fully with it.
Drunk with life!
So run, girl, run to me, jump me, be wild with me, announce yourself as the other, the incoherent and drunken other!
Oh other, other! what will we do, once we have found each other? How will we “make our living?” God I wish I knew.
And, deep life explorers that we will be—how will we go about that exploration? Will there be an explosion of life? Or will it be rolling hillsides of life? Will we have to cower from the stings of others? Or from the stings of each other?
Please, please girl, I don't mean to sting you. Please, please don't be stung. I am only a beginner. I am only a new-searcher. I want you, the touch. I want you, the toucher. Can we do it without stinging?
I must write and I must write and I must write, because I am afraid. I have never been before, and I am afraid.
After all, it is only life that is at stake.
Only life!
This is life—this is it—the thing. We are just mere, living creatures. If we are willing to be just the mere, living creatures that we are, how can we lose? If we but resign ourselves to life. It is so easy! Just life, that's all!
Why be afraid of life?
Let them sting if they can: why be afraid of life?
Is the insect afraid?
Why is there no girl?
I can't get over my single-star need, my desire, my want for a girl. I must have one. I must have a girl.
Gradually my spirit has sunk out of me, turned bone, dropped out of me. No longer in quick, quivering flesh-form, but bone. Every car passing, tonight outside the window, helps drive my spirit out of me. And the day-hours in classes, in the library, reading, the order of day-to-day living—hounds the spirit more and more completely out of me. Damn knowledge, I want spirit.
All these Christians with their eternal afterlifes, they are able to hinge everything on knowledge, and on the mind that is a soul—not me.
It is my whole life that is at stake, here, now, this very minute. For me there is no afterlife; everything depends now on touch, on connecting with the other—on a girl.
And always, I recoil away from touch—afraid of stings.
I want a girl, touch with a girl. I want total consummation with her, the utter physical, emotional entrance. Everything, all life itself, must depend on it, touch with a girl; otherwise it isn't good enough. For me life itself is at stake, and must be at stake. It can be no other way.
I have to be willing to risk the sting of complete rejection, or the touch can't be gained. I have to risk. I have to risk.
But most girls—it just scares me to think of it.
My body, whole body, is ready, is created for a girl. And what keeps me from one?
How to make touch? How to know who to make touch with? How to judge stingers from non-stingers?
And damn Christianity is a further problem—so many Christians, so many God-believers. I don't want to be forced to deny someone else's experience. If a person believes in God, that's fine. I'll leave them alone; no need to go denying their experience, which is only cruel stinging.
But so many girls, 95%, believe in God, and how is one to know? Most of the other 5% are just vulgar, meaningless, searching stingers.
It seems to me easier to find boys who don't sting, who aren't Christian, yet view life sacredly—than it is to find girls.
My blood flows only for a girl—it has no other reason. The very redness of my blood is sexual; the very blood-flush that enters my breasts and lower chest skin, is sexual. My cheeks, even my earlobes, are sexual and await the sexual touch of a girl. My arms, even they seem to exist solely for intertwining the girl. They yearn. They yearn. With almost pain, they yearn for her. Beneath my fingernails, the redness, even that is sexual. Everywhere my blood goes, at the skin's surface, it is out for touch with woman. Touch of blood; touch of blood.
Blood.
The penis, so red with blood. The legs, thighs, red with blood. Neck, red with blood. Hands, hands, red, red, red with blood. And my arms are a light bronzy red.
But there is no girl.
“Why?” my arms ask. My whole body asks,
“Why?”
Why is there no girl?
“What are you up to up there, that there is no girl?” My body is not happy. My body is overcome with the urge to mutiny—a change in government.
“We want a change in government!”
“We want mating, or we mutiny!”
Why am I failing up there, when my whole body is blood-ready, won't fail—but gets no chance? My body; my dear, dear body. It won't take this. Must, must have a girl—it's only reasonable. A reasonable request. Just a girl, that's all. Surely there are girls around. So many, so many girls. So why this de-spiriting, involuntary chastity?
You see, there are emotional considerations, I explain; you can't just go out and grab a girl any girl. Like as not she or someone, you maybe, will suffer. You can't take a girl just as object—even if she takes you just as object back.
My body, even, agrees with this. It doesn't want pain—even emotional pain. Yet, it is telling me, sometimes the choice must be a choice between pains; and perhaps better to suffer a bit of emotional pain than the engulfing, sterilizing spiritlessness of this damn chastity.
Then, next girl I see, I'll invite her to bed. Even outdoors beneath the magnolia tree. But I warn you, there are repercussions to these things.
A touch means a touch; a blood-touch means a blood-bonding. Emotionally, physically, sexually, maybe even socially, if she becomes pregnant. There are repercussions. The bonding itself is a repercussion, when it bonds unlikes. When it bonds me with the wrong girl—with one who, it turns out, stings.
To be stung by the very one you touch, nothing can utterly destroy spirit faster.
One must discriminate among girls. And so my attention to earrings, to shaved legs. For those are major clues, see.
But all right, body. I'll be, from now on, more radical in my search for a girl. Every girl I'll ask:
“Do you wear earrings?”
“Do you shave your legs?”
If they slap me, I'll consider I got off lucky.
I've got to pass my life out of my body into another. My life, my whole life, must be passed. My seed, my blood, my body, my thoughts, my warmth, my sense-feelings, my emotions, my very breath, it must pass into her. Or I am nothing. I am a dead thing. And I want her, I must have her, all of her passed into me that can be passed. Or I have no spirit, my life ebbs low, miserly, and I am wretched.
The very hairs on my arm, the very hairs on my arm must be worshipped by someone. My own worship gives them nothing. They must be worshipped from outside, and I can't do it. In return, I will worship every part of her from outside.
I am desperate for this stuff. My desperate blood rushes, ready; but nothing is ever accomplished, for there is no other's blood to provide the accomplishment.
Tonight, how can I survive tonight?—another night passing, and no girl-touch.
In day, how the sun so sensuously falls on me, and my blood rushes to the skin, to lap at delightfully at the sun. Oh, oh, the strength given me by the sun, how I feel it streaming into me.
But it all goes to waste. All runs out, unused. My blood cannot hold onto it; it laments. It has the sun there burning in it, it rushes eager, eager, with the warm sun-embers in its power. But, nowhere to bestow them, its power. No other, outside; no girl, with which to turn embers into passion, into unknown, rushing, wild touch. It can't be done when there's no other. When there is no sister blood.
Oh my male blood seeks female blood, and can't find it. Oh it rushes, it rushes, and there is no thing to rush to. And the sun burns out, sterile, in my blood. Sterile, unused sun.
And after, my spirit just falls atrophied in me, strengthless, and a feeling of no meaning.
A girl. But she must be one who can give me her tip-full, blood-full touch, her whole self, and especially the eager, silent self.
Implicated
It does involve me.
Death is so unfair, so final, for those who die. Life is all they have and then, suddenly, it's stolen. For it is the soul, not the body, that dies. The very soul dies. The very spark, the very source of life, is extinguished. Afterwards, slowly, the body dies. Decomposes.
You can't put back life when it has gone. You can't make up for it, for what is lost. It is a brief excursion into experience, a spark of life-throb looping over. Only a brief, brief moment of life. Then gone.
We have to make our touch when we can, for any moment it may be stolen from us. We must make our touch, and not be afraid. Must must overcome this inertial fear of reaching out to touch. We have to be willing to brave ridicule, brave illegitimacy, for touch.
We must place our very life against the inertia.
Carol. Carol. What was she? I don't know. She remains beyond me, beyond my touch. Dead, because I couldn't touch her.
Her reaching to me was a reach for life. My reach back I had waited too late.
I am implicated. I am involved. I am an accessory. As we are all implicated, concerning the lives of those we know. We are, for all we have met, an accessory either to life or to death.
Are we to let circumstances bar us from life?
Are we to allow ourselves forced into being accessories to death?
Carol
Death and life haunt me. Yesterday the sun was barely enough to give warmth, and when the clouds covered it, wasn't enough. Today, between the sidewalk and wall that ajuts, like an earth barrier, the garden here, I came upon a squirrel lain on the grass at the base of the bricks. It didn't move, and its eye was glassy and thickened, and seemed to see me. Its paws, its belly, were stiff like hardened dirt, and cool, did not touch back my touch.
This was death, then, fur become but a cool covering on stone. Shiny, yet mucus eye, that seemed still to see me—seeing, and not knowing it saw. I walked on: so this was death.
Last Saturday morning, I laid in the grass in the sun on North Campus, reading my book. I was so happy in the sun, even if I had to read. And when I grew tired of reading I saw I was sitting in clover—surely this was clover, green and little and three-leaved. Clover! And I began eagerly searching for a four-leafed one—ah a sign—one sign, please.
I never found one.
Clover, when it comes in patches, is a grass of the moon. At night! at night! when the moon stands like a silver source of blood over the starless sky, clover underneath it takes into itself, its leaves, the silver moon-blood. It takes in the mystical darkness of the moon into its roots, into the deep soil. For Artemus, moon, is goddess over clover. And so it is that a four-leafed clover means luck in love: means something will happen.
I didn't find one.
Again on Sunday, all afternoon, again sitting in the grass reading, I found myself at a patch of clover. It was near that tree that, a month ago only, had been snowed with white petals, and then they had fallen, in the windy, two-faced days of early spring. Now there are no more of them, and now even their corpses have disappeared in the holes between the grass: become, perhaps, clover.
More clover! I thought; and took a break in reading. For a minute, not two, I looked diligently for the four-leafed clover.
Again, I found none.
Today, Tuesday, I sit here again, the same spot, and I stare down at the same clover. I am unable to read, unable. And the clover haunts me.
No four-leafed clover, somehow it doesn't matter any more, it is too late.
Damn clover.
I can't but think about the girl who died Sunday night.
I want to put it off as unimportant—I want to say, it doesn't involve me, not deeply anyway.
But death does involve me, her death. It is the end; she is, and she isn't. It is like a blow of wind come up against me, challenging me, taunting. A strange fate, beyond my power utterly, that has come slapped me in the face—see! it threatens me bitterly, see! Slapped life; and will kill, to serve its means.
It is all so improbable, so utterly improbable, that because it happened, it seems a fate beyond my power, at work.
As if I'd found a four-leafed clover things would have been different.
As it is it's such a lesson I've learned—always, always, every moment must be sacred, every experience, every meeting. Sacred.
For life is only a flower, or an insect, all too frail, all too close to being blown out in death.
So every touch with every living creature is sacred.
Saturday, just last Saturday, Morris Hall and Rutherford had a softball game and cookout. It was a long time ago. But the softball game was to be at 4:00, and I was late. Clouds came and went again all day, and it rained a little. It wasn't clear there would even be a softball game, if the sky didn't want one. On the walk over I stopped at the bridge, with the view down over the stadium, and watched the finish of the spring Red-Black game. As I reached Rutherford I saw—indeed—the softball game was being played, and was well in progress.
Recall I watched half an inning from behind the screened backstop—and then walked over to the steps of Rutherford, watched from there, where others stood, and girls sat in clumps on the steps. Kit arrived, and the two of us entered Rutherford, through the hallway, through the T.V. lounge-room, to the back porch, with its four tall white columns. And got beer. And two were back there, watching the hotdogs and hamburgers, as they grilled them. And we returned.
Finding a little foyer, or front-room, and a piano in it, Kit sat down for a second to play it. I set my look out the window, at backs of girls sitting on porch and steps. And then went outside and sat, and Kit too. Watched softball.
Small groups of girls, two, three, once a group of six, came from somewhere along the sidewalk, turning up the steps, some sitting, some passing through into the hall, but throwing conversation at others as they passed.
Shortly the softball game ended, the Morris and Rutherford students began flowing up the stairs. Time to get up and hurry inside, before it was too crowded and too late. And food was served: a hamburger, a hotdog, potato salad, beer and coke, and they tore half your “admission” ticket off, for it. In the crowded back porch I ate, and managed to fall into conversation with a fellow from Morris named Gary: he argued that an ecclesiastical monarchy was the perfect form of government, a sort of combination of the positions of Pope and King. Naturally I couldn't agree; but the upshot of his argument was, that as a Catholic, he had to feel that whatever the Pope said and did, was right, and had Lordly sanction and legitimacy; therefore, whatever the Pope did as King was also right. He absolutely refused to separate Monarch as Pope from Monarch as King. If you dissented politically, you therefore dissented religiously, and Gary refused to admit the separateness of the two. He admitted that those who weren't Catholics might not find his perfect government so perfect—but after all, it was his concept of the ideal government that I'd asked about (his field is political philosophy). But why punish religious dissenters? I asked—Why not let God punish them? Because, he answered, you've got to save their soul. It's quite justified even to kill them for heresy, if it might induce them to recant, and thus save their soul. Any price for a saved soul.
I argued that even Catholics would find it, like as not, a repressive government—look at the bad Popes in the middle ages, and look at tyrants like Henry VIII who felt himself not only King, but also head of the Church of England. How many, how many Thomas Mores would there be, in his world?
But he insisted that, as a Catholic, he would have to believe it impossible for the Pope-Monarch to be wrong. He was head of the Church, and what he said was so, was so.
And so we went on and on, and I amazed that there should be such an idea taken seriously, in this day. But after all, there are those who believe Dictatorship the perfect government, if your dictator is Julius Caesar, or some sort of “good man”. And since the Pope, by definition, is a good man, and a very religious one, directed by God, well—ecclesiastical monarchy it is, then.
But where would I, poor atheist, where would I be. Even if freedom of conscience was allowed, as in More's Utopia, where would I be in this modern world, if I could not talk and write freely my views?
But so much for that conversation. They offered seconds in food. I showed them my ticket stub (one had to show it) and got a second hot dog, no hamburger though, for the first had been but a juiceless, burned biscuit, that was half-unedible. And I broke down and had coke for the first time in half a year, or maybe longer. And they offered thirds, but not for me, no, I wouldn't have any.
So soon four or five of us were in conversation with two, sometimes one, girl (yes! it actually happened, conversations between Morris boys and Rutherford girls!).
This girl's name was—I don't remember.
I do remember she seemed very familiar to me, seemed like I'd seen her before—Augusta College, I thought. But no, she was from Atlanta, had never attended Augusta College, had attended Georgia State, or somewhere, instead. But her face looked like a face I'd met before—and I don't remember her name.
Coming around for beer was a short, perky girl, with a strangely busy way of talking. Shorter than five feet, but entertaining to listen to, and her name would later be Candy. An Atlanta and Atlanta-outskirts girl, part Cherokee, she claimed. Three of us talked for quite a while. Her five brothers, her Cherokee nickname as a little girl—which name she hated. Indians, especially, the Cherokees. This, that, and the other.
After a while it was only the two of us talking, and I think we even talked briefly of cities (how I didn't like them). And Candy was, believe it or not, a home economics major. That she had, last year, been Treasurer of the dorm council, and how good a council it had been. That, this time (and she was glad about it) she was not on the clean-up committee.
Suddenly, where had all the time gone? People were leaving—most people had left. The clean-up committee was cleaning up. And Candy, not on it, and glad not to be on it, found herself unable not to assist. And—why not?—I helped a little too.
In a few minutes Candy said goodbye and departed down the hall.
A few people were watching T.V. in the lounge, “family” room of the hall, and Johan was there, who had made the short films, and who is from Norway. We talked a little, he worried about the oil spill in the North Sea. I told him he ought to have brought his movie camera—complete with dolly (he doesn't have one) and assistants, and moved through the party crowds as if shooting a movie—what better way to attract interest, especially the interest of girls. And so we talked a little, and I sat and watched T.V. a little, and only a few people were left. And I was about in my mind to leave, though occasionally people would come by.
Then Candy came by, sat down, and we began talking again. This time the subject was diets and vitamins and other food minerals—for that's what she studied in home economics, and it fascinated her. Shortly, two people came by, and she introduced me to them—one was (I believe) Steve, the other Carol. Carol struck me right away, not short like Candy (who wasn't 5 feet), and she didn't seem to be wearing earrings, and generally struck me in a favorable way. Carol and Steven pulled chairs over, and talked a little, Carol sitting almost opposite. I admitted I was History, but had no intention of teaching, was willing to work with my hands, and that I was interested really in writing. When I asked Carol her major she laughed, said she didn't like to explain it—it took a long time, and finally admitted it was Agricultural Economics. Yes, uh huh.
Then—”What's this?” she asked and made an indication with her finger that she referred to the way I let my fingertips fall on my thighs as I talked (I sat with my right elbow tight against the arm-rest of the chair (which was too high) and arm extending out over my upper leg, with hand falling with a natural curl, fingertips resting on my left-thigh.)
“What? My fingernails?” I responded, looking at them, thinking Carol had meant how long they were—but no—apparently it was the way I rested them on my thighs. Candy then noticed I did have long fingernails (some, not all) and I explained that I believed it a sin to cut fingernails or hair.
“A what?” Carol asked. “A sin.” “Oh.”
Talk went on, and after a while Carol and Steven left, apparently downstairs.
This time Candy and I talked of airplanes (for her brother had flown her over and back only that morning or the night before); and also I had to explain (naturally) the peculiar shortness of my right hand index fingernail and thumbnail—which I keep short to put my soflens in and out. (See how much I remember!)
Presently, Candy was eager to find out “what they were doing down there”—and jumped to the phone. “What are you doing down there!' she exclaimed over the phone—half, I thought, for my benefit. “It sounds like a crazy place down there!” And so on.
She hung up, and motioned me—”Let's go se what they're doing down there.” So I went, gathering it was some sort of gameroom or something—or maybe, one thought sinfully, an orgy!
It was neither, naturally. In fact it wasn't much going on down there (nothing sexual!)
Where Candy took me was a large, 3-girl dorm room (Candy's, Charlotte's, and some other girl's). Carol, Charlotte, and the fellow Steven were down there, and apparently had been throwing a ball around, and maybe a pillow, mostly general cutting-up and talking. Carol sat in a chair, and Charlotte in a chair opposite, and Candy went over and sat on a bed, and I took a chair (the last left) by the wall—but I decided to excuse myself to attend the men's room, which I had spied on the way down. Returning I took the seat by the wall, so that to my left sat Charlotte so as to protect her collection of bottles lying on the stand behind her; to my direct right, Candy, on the bed, but a cluttered stand between; and to my forward right sat Carol. And Steven, the fellow with the prominent sideburns, stood more directly in front of me, in the open part of the room, a little leftward.
And what did we do—? we tossed a beachball quickly back and forth. And talked. And since Carol was identified as an animal-lover, someone (Steven) went to get her pet rabbit. Rabbit spent most of the time on the floor, hiding beneath the bed, or one of the stands, but later was enticed out by the offer of rabbit food, by Charlotte.
And conversation continued. I was informed about the “animals”—as Charlotte, Carol, and Candy called them—2 Bills, a Lee, a Jack of Hearts, and so on, and one was supposed to gather that they were the “animals”, somehow, from Carol's avowed love of animal—and so they became “animals” too.
Then the conversation moved over to their joking about searching for Peter Thursday night. Peter, who was supposed to work at a Wendy's, or at some place across from a Wendy's, or something. And Carol was all to blame for saying to turn right instead of left, and then when they found Wendy's it was the wrong Wendy's, and finally when they found where Peter worked, he was no longer there, having finished his shift. But Charlotte, Candy and Steven insisted it was all Carol's fault, taking them to the wrong Wendy's. Carol, for her part, protested innocence.
Suddenly, Charlotte and Steven got the idea to visit Peter again right now. Carol made it clear she wouldn't go: “You go on and Dwight and I will stay here.”
Soon they were going, and Candy too, and asked me if I was coming. I backed out, the thought of being alone with this girl Carol beckoning, though I never expected it. But surprisingly to me, Candy made no protest at all, and the three of them left. Carol and I sat alone—something I'd wanted since I'd seen her, and apparently she wanted.
Suddenly, though, they burst back in the room—at least Candy did: “Ah ha!” But we were just sitting there, not having had time to hardly begin speaking. And Candy—or was it Charlotte?—flicked off the light as she left, but our protests got it put back on. (Or did Carol probe over and flick it on?)
Carol and I began to talk more seriously.
“Where do you think I'm from?” she asked. I guess a farm, since I'd heard talk of goats and rabbits, earlier, concerning her growing up. No. So I guess Atlanta next. No. Didn't I think her accent sounded different? she asked. No, I confessed—I wasn't one to know accents.
Upon this, she observed that I “didn't have an accent.” So I explained, second time that night, that though I was born in Tallahassee, Fla (being born in Florida doesn't count as the South, she explained), and had lived my life in Georgia, except 3 years in Germany, my parents were both of them from New England.
Where in New England?
From the Vermont/Massachusetts border area. She knew someone who lived in Massachusetts, and she explained she was from Ithaca, N.Y.
We talked of high schools, my explaining that in the South at least, math wasn't taught in the schools—that I'd had calculus in high school and had learned absolutely nothing, never really even figured out what calculus was—yet got all A's.
She told me she had gathered Georgia high school education wasn't on a very high level, especially in math and sciences. And I mentioned that after three years in armed forces schools in Germany, I returned to U. S. schools to find them ridiculously easy. She explained that those schools were the equivalent of good private schools, which, to think about it, I find quite believable.
She, it turned out, went to a public high school (over 600 in the graduating class) that ajutted on Cornell University. That, in fact, Cornell used her particular high school as a fawning ground for future students—extremely strong high school in maths and sciences (but weak in English, as seen from the fact that she had scored too low on the English achievement tests, and had to take, here at Georgia, some pre-credit English courses—English 100, and so on.)
In high school, she always found history to be simple, almost pointless—always on the level of American Civics, and so on. Which was my experience as well, except for Mrs. Smith in 8th or 9th grade. She found World History a useless course, all memorization of wars and kings—and got C's. Which was same with me.
And conversation came round to college—she had originally gone to Cornell.
“Aren't you going to ask me why I'm not at Cornell right now—everyone asks me that.”
“Oh. O.K., why aren't you at Cornell right now?”
“It was too hard for me.”
And besides, 17 people a year commit suicide there, because of the pressure. Not for her. So now she was at Georgia, a freshman at Georgia.
He father, by the way, works at Cornell.
It came out that I hadn't been an undergraduate at UGa, but rather had attended Emory U. and Augusta College. Emory she had certainly heard of, and was impressed. I talked about how it was a rich kids school, attended by a lot of people from Northern private schools, very private, well-to-do schools, who couldn't get into the good Northern Ivy-League schools.
She had originally been in Genetics at Cornell, now here she was in Agricultural Economics at UGa. Most people found economics hard, but she liked it, and she liked animals, and it offered good careers, in Agri-business.
And so we talked. She like to train animals, and our talk went briefly to dogs, and she especially liked, she said, not the “fancy” poodle, but the poodle/half-cockerspaniel, or something.
Suddenly she asked me if I like Granola—she had some Country Morning—Granola mix—did I want some? Sure. So we went to her room—finally beginning to get somewhere.
Two doors down—Room 15—we entered, I swinging the door closed behind us, but it hung ajar. So as she passed she pressed it completely closed, carrying a large box, with a disprorportionately small amount of granola—Country Morning mix in it.
She asked if I played chess or backgammon, and since she “only knew how the pieces moved” in chess, it seemed better to me to play backgammon. But first she had to refresh the rules to me, since I'd only played once, and that was a while ago. So we played backgammon and ate granola—Country Morning.
Suddenly, Candy, Charlotte, Steven burst into the room. “Caught you!” But Carol and I were only sitting there playing Backgammon—innocent enough. So as the five of us talked, the two of us played backgammon on the bed. And every once in a while our eyes would meet—embarrassingly—for too long of a time.
The phone rang, and Charlotte jumped to it: “Carol's Animal Farm” (or something like that). The guard had some people outside, one gathered from the conversation—'the animals', and wanted to know if they were welcome in. Charlotte went to get them.
Charlotte returned ahead of them, and they burst in the room, the fellow named Lee in front descending on Charlotte with a great hug, then over to Carol for the same, no, an even greater one. And the other 'animals' were there—a fellow named Bill (I think) with curly black hair; another fellow named 'Jack of Hearts', who sat on the other bed.
After two great hugs and kisses from Lee, of which Carol appeared pleased, but also a little unpleased because of me, they all left, taking Candy down to her room.
“Did they take Candy to her room all alone, with her so drunk?” Carol asked. “We'd better watch them.”
Charlotte checked the room, but reported they were just sitting around talking. Then Steven, making use of his size, picked up Charlotte over his shoulder, and carried her out. Picking up girls on his shoulder and carrying them—that was “his thing”, at this moment. Soon he came and picked up Carol. Since that left me alone with an uninteresting backgammon board, I followed—first down to Candy/Charlotte's room, where the 'animals' and Candy and Charlotte just stood and sat around talking and cutting up; but Steven wasn't finished carrying Carol, he turned around and back down the hall. I returned to Carol's room, and Steven carried her back in, set her down on the bed, and that interlude was over.
Others came into the room—Candy, Charlotte, Bill, Jack of Hearts, Steven, and we talked with the poor rabbit out, trying to hide beneath the bed, and whenever Carol or Charlotte attempted to rescue poor rabbit from under the bed, Steven would reach forward and tickle them, to prevent it.
Carol and I managed to end the Backgammon game, somewhere along the line, perhaps before all this. I only know she won by one marker and one, just one square, if you can talk of 'squares' in Backgammon. Enough of that. Charlotte had a cornbread mix out, and prepared it, and began to cook it.
And somewhere, at some time, Carol asked me, it was the second time she'd asked it, it seems, if I played the guitar. I explained that I had one, and that I sure wished I could, but just hadn't been successful, mainly because strings kept breaking on me, and that, even now, it was at home with two broken strings. I looked like a guitar player, she said. If I could play the guitar—I would trade my chess ability for guitar ability—then I would write songs all day.
Carol also had a guitar, and was learning to play, and she got it out. After my insisting I couldn't play at all, she began to strum a few chords. She started to sing Blowing in the Wind—but neither of us could remember the words. For the few lines she did sing, her voice was surprisingly intensive, strong, melodious.
Perhaps it was now Charlotte came in with her intention of cooking cornbread. We talked, Charlotte sitting on the other bed, Candy, Steven, on the floor, Carol, I, on her bed. We had more and more of those embarrassing eye contacts, that I or she would break off, but gradually she stopped breaking off, and began to look so very attentive, at times, into mine, that I felt disarmed completely, and would invariably break off. After all, we weren't alone in the room. And as we talked Carol began to stretch out her legs on the bed, and nudge them against my back, in answer to which I didn't see anything I could discretely do, except look at her.
Later the animals, and later Lee, came in from Candy's room or somewhere, and more conversation. Again Lee hugged Carol, and made a display of it, and we were introduced, and so on.
Earlier, Charlotte or Candy had told Carol that Lee wasn't Lee's first name—so Carol asked him about it. “Lloyd Edward” was his first name—
“Boyd?” Carol asked.
“No, Lloyd.”
—neither of which he liked, so taking his initials, he got Lee. I found out he was from Waynesboro.
The bunch of us kept talking, Lee, Carol and I on her bed, Bill the political science major interested in politics, and “Jack of Hearts” on the other bed, Charlotte, Candy, Steven, sitting on the floor, and rabbit under the bed with us—somewhere, always. Carol still managed, occasionally, to touch me with her feet, despite Lee, and so on.
Later Carol also sat on the floor, in front of Lee and I on the bed. And Candy and Carol managed to dig up a few beers—Carol especially urging me to have some, for she apparently didn't think I'd had enough, since I hadn't tickled her, or gone touching her indiscretely, or for whatever reason. Talk went on, and even Lee was sometimes giving me looks, and I gave him looks—for I confess I liked him, with his dark hair and dark gypsy complexion—reminded me of the “gypsy” in the movie version of Lawrence's The Virgin and the Gypsy. Besides, he looked familiar to me—as if I'd met him before; and seeing he was from Waynesboro, it seemed likely; and quite possibly he was a friend of Peggy's, or George's, or somebody's.
For quite a while the bunch of us talked, until it was late, and someone in the room above knocked on the floor. “It can't be that late.”
But with the time change that took place just that night, it was five after three A.M. Visitation hours only went to two A.M.
We kept on talking, and occasionally Carol would say something to me to the effect that she hoped I wasn't getting the wrong idea—”You must think we're a bunch of crazy people—we're not like this all the time.”
“No, we're worse!” Candy or Charlotte would chime in.
Then the phone rang. It was someone complaining about the noise. But why?—It was only 4 A.M.
Lee, Charlotte, Steven, Candy, the others, wanted to go over to Myers Lobby, where it would be all right to be up and noisy. Carol didn't want to go. She was tired. But no, she must go—one way or another. So Lee picked her up over his shoulder. And we went over to Myers, Carol not eager, but yet enjoying the attention, making light of it.
So to Myers lobby into couches and chairs—Lee laid Carol on a couch, head in his lap—and I, having no place to sit, made a game of sitting on Carol's legs. After a while I let them up, and sat, and she put them in my lap. So Lee had her head, and her shoulders, and her arms, I had her feet and her legs. (But then, I'd only just met her.)
She made it clear to me she wanted to be tickled—or something, so I began tickling her feet. How she like it! Tickling eventually degenerated into mere stroking, since that turned out easier, for Carol had become immune to tickling. “Keep it up—I like it,” she whispered.
And the bunch of us talked. For a while Carol sat up, back to Lee, slipping her fingers onto my shoulders, and I slipping my fingers onto her, out of Lee's sight.
And the bunch of us talked. Lee had her head back in his lap, and I had her feet back in mine. Carol was a leg-shaver—I could feel the rough ends of her hair barely flush with her smooth skin—it felt disturbing, almost unsexual, to caress such denuded legs—definitely more womanly to have a little hair, then the rough whisker-ends of shaved hair.
Lee was more and more not happy at all with Carol's overtures to me, and I could hear whispers like, “You know what I mean.” “What?” And a hard look. And frank looks would pass, as well, between Lee and me. I would look at him, he would look at me, sort of sizing up, sort of wondering. And of course Carol would again and again catch my eye, and give me such a passionate, frank gaze, that it was, not being alone (and even had we been alone) most uncomfortable, for me. I would have to look away, usually, after a very short time.
Once, while Carol was sitting up, feet still in my lap, looking at me, back to Lee, he put his finger in her back, with a warning. “This is a knife.” Carol knew it wasn't, but then Lee thought and pulled out a knife, and put the blade at her back. “Yes, that is a knife. Yes.” Even in total fun, I don't like the use of knife-blades like that. It was, at least, a Freudian threat on Lee's part. I recognized it as such.
It was late—after five—and wise not to tickle or caress Carol's feet or legs, or to stare at her, since a certain dislike was flashing in Lee's eyes. I could feel how he felt, and couldn't blame him—but neither could I blame me, for Carol was making overtures, after all.
Finally, Carol pleaded to me to sign my name to her feet, and my phone number as well. So I began to sign my name on the bottom of her feet—Dwight to one foot, Lyman to the other—she insisted especially I sign my last name, for she didn't know it. I had to go slow, signing, for it was painful for her, the point of the bic into her tender foot.
But I didn't put my phone number—given the circumstances, that seemed too blatant. Besides, with my last name, she could get my phone number.
The others were leaving slowly—Candy, Steven, Charlotte, Jack of Hearts. It was time for me to leave.
“Well, you know where my room is.” said Carol.
It was 5:30 by the clock.
“I'll see you, Lee,” I said. And to Carol:
“I'll see you.”
And I left. I hadn't thought to ask her what her last name was.
I had misgivings about leaving Carol alone with Lee, in Myers lobby.
Outside it was night air. What will happen now, I thought, walking home. Has this girl Carol entered my life? Shaved legs? But no earrings. Girl that had gone to Cornell? And played Backgammon?
At least, I thought, it's a good ego-trip for me.
But I must set things straight, with her, I thought. Whatever happens must happen on my terms, or not happen.
Why was she so interested in me? Apparently because I was a graduate student, and I had gone to Emory. She had all these boys—Lee, Steven—around her, and no doubt others (that Steven more than liked her, was obvious from how he acted)—so why the interest in me.
It seemed to me, walking home, that she was reaching out for something more, for someone more intellectual. If that was the case, I thought, Lee needn't worry, a while with me would cure her of that.
A police car at a light looked me carefully over, and coyly went by. In a few minutes it came up behind me, and stopped. A plainclothesman got out—”Are you a student?”
“Yes.”
“Let's see your I.D.”
So I showed it him.
“O.K, Mr. Lyman O.K. We're just checking. It's kind of early in the morning, you know.”
“Yes it is, isn't it?”
And so they went on.
When I woke in the morning, I had much work to do. It was Sunday. I did reading; I did three or four hours in the library. Then, walking down Lumpkin to eat Sunday evening while it was still light, a white, probably Ford, fairly old-modeled car, passed. I had just been watching a pigeon take off in lame-looking flight, and the car tooted while passing. At me? I wasn't sure—no one around. A single person, it looked like a girl, was in it, and I thought it might be the girl Carol. The car slowed, after passing, then turned off quickly, on Wray Street.
Would she turn around and come back? Or would she come back around the block—and had it indeed been her—had the tooting even been at me? It seemed that it had, so looking back, I kept walking, sure the car would return, not sure from which direction.
After a while the car did return, from Wray Street, and came up on the other side of the four-laner. With a girl driving, that may have been Carol, and may not have been. At any rate she didn't seem to see me, and the car seemed to turn onto Broad almost angrily.
Now I regretted having kept on walking, and it seemed to me that it had been her—and she hadn't expected me to be further up the street. So I hurried to the corner, looking down Broad, expecting maybe she would turn around again. But I waited, and the car didn't show. So I shrugged, and crossed to go down to Blimpe's. But then across Broad, I thought I saw the same car again—it turned up Jackson. So I crossed Broad, to be on the right side, next time, and I waited at the corner of Herty and Broad. But the car didn't show again, and I presently walked back across and down to Blimpe's.
Later, walking home, I came upon the fellow named Bill, in political science, and he introduced me to a girl with him. I mentioned the police stopping me.
All day, I'd thought about the girl Carol, and how to get hold of her last name, and phone number—I saw no way but to go to Rutherford personally. I would do that Monday, when I would have more time.
And Monday afternoon, around 4:00, I found time, on excuse of going to the Science library, to work on the Bibliography. On the way over, I stopped in Rutherford, in the lobby, and checked the list of names. Carol Matyas, Room 15, #6345.
Sunday morning I'd found time to comb through a bit of the Student Directory, looking for a Carol Anybody in Rutherford Hall from Ithaca, N. Y. I gave up on it as futile, but did find Lloyd Edward Edenfield, of Waynesboro, in there.
Now, Monday, I didn't drop by her room, but went on to Science library, and did my hour's work. After, I dropped by Room 15, Rutherford. No one was in. A message-plaque, that hadn't been up Saturday night, was up, and I left work I'd been by, with my complete last name, as an afterthought. Perhaps I would call her later that night, or perhaps she would see my name and call me.
Back in Morris, the dreadful phone rang. Not Carol but Charlotte. Had I come by to see Carol? Yes. Then I hadn't heard what had happened. No—what happened? On Sunday night, she died.
Charlotte was extremely nervous, as if what she was telling was all too unbelievable. I couldn't believe it—it was too unbelievable.
Carol's always had a weak heart, Charlotte explained, and apparently that had been compiled with a lung-problem they hadn't know of—and Sunday night she died. They hadn't known how to contact me, until they had seen my name on the message board. A bunch of the 'animals', she told me, were meeting at Lairds that night, to drown their sorrows. I had a paper to do, but where was Lairds? “Don't you know?” “I haven't been there.” She explained it was up Baxter, across from a Piggly Wiggly.
Dead? It seemed so improbable. I meet her, and a day later she is dead? A great, a great something—not unlike fear of fate—came over me. No, it was too improbable.
No—it was a joke. That made sense. That was much more likely. Why else invite me to Lairds—no, it was a setup. I was being set up for a little surprise—wasn't that much more likely. But they hadn't told me what time to be at Lairds. No, Carol had instigated this, somehow. She had seen my name on the message board on her door—and had plotted this.
Immediately, I put on my shoes; there was nothing to do but go straight to Rutherford, straight to her room, and uncover this. Explain that I hadn't been fooled at all, not let on that I had really fallen for it, at first. It was an admiring, a bold trick, to pull, I had to admit to myself; and convincing. Charlotte, because her voice had sounded like it itself couldn't believe what she was saying, because it had been in a nervous, half-laugh, over the phone, sounded so very convincing. Because that's how the voice is, often, after death.
What if Carol was really dead? But the fact remained that was so improbable. How often do you meet a girl in such favorable, eager circumstances, and a day later she is dead?
At her room, on the message board was another message. Apparently written to the other Carol—Carol's roommate. “If there is anything we can do to help, let us know”, and signed by apparent friends of hers. Again I knocked, no one answered.
I stood limply in the hall a while. Could this be? This was too cruel to be a trick.
A girl came down the hall, my throat was very dry, I didn't know how to ask. I motioned at the door, dumbly.
“Did you hear something?” she asked quietly.
I managed a yes, or a nod.
“She died Sunday night. . .” and she told me the story. She'd had a weak heart—with apparent breathing problems, and so on. She was given artificial respiration, and rushed to a hospital, but still died. The girl was very compassionate, with very moist drops of compassion in her eyes, yet she talked calmly, serenely. Finally she asked me what it was I had heard.
“I heard she had died, or something.”
So Carol Ann Matyas, the very girl I'd just met, was dead. It was all real.
I had been so looking forward, so looking forward. . . .
But it was as if some thing, some fate, had stamped a veto on it, by making her die.
She met me, and a day later she was dead.
So eager to reach out to me, to make a touch. As if she knew she was going to die. She had to see me again. She just had to.
And I had been willing, but I never expected this.
We had just begun a touch.
Stillborn.
I found out Monday night at Larids, that Carol had been expecting to die. She had the heart problem. Even in walking to Snelling to eat—a scant block away—she would have to stop and rest, as of late—Charlotte and Candy explained to me. She had told them, “I could die at any time. You don't believe me do you.” “Yes, we believe you, we believe you.” they had insisted.
So she was up til 5:30, at least, early Sunday morning. Sunday evening, a bunch of them were in her room—Peter, Candy, Charlotte, at least, and began to watch a horror movie. But Carol seriously asked them to leave—with more insistence than they'd known from her before—and they left. Soon they heard screams from her roommate, and there was Carol, unable to breath. Peter gave mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, a campus policeman arrived, took over, ambulance took her to St. Mary's Hospital. And she died. It was about 11:00 Sunday night.
Carol Anne Matyas
15 Rutherford Hall 6345
409 Hanshaw Road, Ithaca, N.Y.
d. 24 April 1977
All of Threes
Three brown-eyed dogs and a woman
came up the grass
in the almost summer, and it was north campus.
And the woman walked gaily with the sun on her back
and the dogs watered every dogwood tree
with their yellow water.
Several people in front of north library
laid lazily back in the shade and giggled.
Prayer
Oh when will men, when will men reconcile themselves to life and death? When will they? Why must they have an afterlife of souls; why doesn't life itself, soulless life, why doesn't it satisfy them?
It's meaningless, that's why.
But it is meaningless because it has been made meaningless, unphysical and out of touch. It is meaningless because all our experience has been destroyed, and all our instincts frightened out of us.
Our instincts, ah bring back our instincts! Bring them back! Bring back our instincts of life and death. Let us know how to live, and how to die.
Related
None of which is to imply that I intend to die soon. I certainly don't.
Certainly, I am afraid of dying right now; certainly it would be all too soon to die.
I take special care not to endanger my life—not to be hit by cars, for example. Even I worry about airplanes that come too close.
I am just getting ready to live.
But just as it is necessary to fight for the rights of life, so it is necessary as well to fight for the rights of death.
The two are somehow connected.
Addendum
It doesn't matter that a will be legal or illegal—it is still a will. That the law doesn't recognize it is the fault of the law, no one else. The law insists on lawyers and justices-of-the-peace seals, and witness with their signatures—well that creates things to do, and keeps lawyers in business and in money. But a will is still a will in fact, whether there are witnesses or not. My will won't change just because I can't afford a lawyer, and no doubt couldn't find a sympathetic one anyway. (Though money does buy sympathy, especially from lawyers.)
A will can't be carried out if it violates the law. Well damn the law then. It is unreasonable in this case. If a law is against life, or if it is against death, which is the same thing, damn it I say. It's no good, so break it. When real death is made illegal, what else can you do?
So this is my will, when I die, to be treated with respect and be allowed to end as naked as I began, as close and part of earth. From the earth I sprang—but that doesn't mean I never intended to return. To the earth I shall spring as well. I want to be cold and naked and close to the weather, and decompose when I am dead. I want the transformation to natural inorganic life. I don't want to be embalmed, to be treated like meaningless, purposeless, senseless, unearthly shit. From the earth I sprang; to the earth, someday, I'd like to be allowed to return. It is my will. No law can change that.
I want no funeral. Funerals are usually an insult to the dead.
But if there is to be a funeral, read this at it. That will help keep it a healthy funeral.
And let Debbie (Rigas) Clark see my writings (my notebooks) and whoever else would find them meaningful—for I don't know who would, if anyone.
Boyd is dead over a year now.
My Will
On this day, 19 April 1977, I repeat my desire not to be buried in a cemetery, and thus humiliated. Nor to be shut up in a casket, and thus given the final insult of loss of freedom. I want to be buried preferably naked, not too deep, in woods or a field, or a swamp, or the sea (just tossed in), or something similar that is rather natural and not overgrown with buildings or roads. I want my body to decompose naturally, easily. Let wild animals dig at my bones if they want—I don't care.
Now I understand that such a request is usually illegal by state law. (Indeed, apparently it is illegal to spread someone's ashes over California!) Apparently it is only legal to be buried in a public or private cemetery, or to have ashes made of yourself. It is quite legal to bury pets wherever you want, and so far no one has passed laws against wild animals dying anywhere they choose, but people—can't have them anywhere but cemeteries! Nothing is more insulting than a cemetery, and absolutely nothing more disgusting than gravestones and coffins, with names and years. There is no better way to assign someone to meaninglessness. There is no better final insult than making even the dead live in cities.
When a flower dies, who puts up a marker? Only a fool.
I want to be thrown into the woods somewhere, and left. I want to die freely, at least, if I can't live freely. Or throw me into the sea, or a river, or a creek I don't care. After all, I'm dead. But let me decompose—let me grow up again as a flower or a bush; let me be food for other living things; let the wild have my bones and do with them what they do.
Which is more insane I can't decide: the desire to “preserve” the dead in caskets and to put up “monuments” (as if gravestones could be monuments) to them; or the passing of actual laws that people shall be buried in authorized cemeteries! (And they require the buying of a casket!)
Nothing, nothing could show more clearly the insanity of our legislative bodies, if they pass such laws and cling to them. There is something more here than the phobia of death, and thus of meaninglessness, in this insistence that people shall be buried in cemeteries, dutifully bound in caskets. And the embalming of bodies! Better to be burned, I say, better to be ashes, than so treated. It is all perverse. It is all pointless. And so damn costly. But surely the Undertaker's Lobby can't hold that much control over state legislatures! Surely a lobbying force can't turn men into fools, and perverse fools. I can't believe that.
And I can't believe that it is illegal to be buried naturally. The wild animals are allowed that freedom, why not I?
But men are not reasonable, they are insane, perverse fools. They only do dirt on life.
And apparently on the dead as well.
I can understand the religious reasons for burial—that without a proper burial and proper rites, the dead soul doesn't get to heaven. At least there is rationality to that, if you accept enough of the basic religious premises.
But why the legal requirements? The unburied body will stink. Only it won't if it's in the woods, because it will be eaten and pecked at, and so on, by animals, birds and ants. Or even buried a foot under, free of casket, will prevent the smell. Argue that it isn't sanitary—but those arguments are foolish. Bodies have lain in woods throughout the ages and never caused a sanitary problem. We're not talking about bodies left in the gutter in the city to rot. We're talking about bodies buried naked under a thin layer of earth, so that they can decompose back into earth. If an animal digs up the bones—let it!—for surely it knows what it's doing. (Except for dogs, which have turned into instinctless fools for being around men for so long.)
Is it indecent to treat dead bodies so? But it's not indecent for birds or for turtles, so why humans? Besides, if you find it indecent, don't look. Is it the nakedness that bothers you?—don't look. I wouldn't want you to look anyway, your eyes would only be dirty. And I prefer dirt, good moist brown earthy dirt, to dirty eyes.
The truth is, you cannot bear to see it, real death. It would only make you conscious of how fragile was your own life and, even worse, how doubtful your own meaning in time. But I'm not asking you to see it—I know that would be too much to ask.
I only ask to be allowed to die a real death.
People who never live a real life are afraid more than anything of a real death. But for myself, I plead at least for a real death, if I can't have a real life.
I want to die physically, and be allowed to cycle back into life physically by being left a dead thing of the earth, not an embalmed, sealed, casketed, citied body in Cemetery Dis.
Of Dis, the city of death, I want no part.
When I am dead I want to be stiff, naked, cold, exposed to the elements and the weather. For death, after all, is only a transformation from animate to inanimate life. I think it is perverse to be denied the transformation, to be denied the inanimate, inorganic life in its proper turn of the cycle.
Such is my will—19 April, 1977—no witnesses.
Dwight Lyman
A Fall (after love)
I came the short way down
unbraked through the tumbling gown
of green catalpa; and with the sound
of a hundred falling beans I came unbound
like thunder roaring.
And the sleepy snoring
of the quick ground’s whoring
hardness, brought me down.
Now I wait
castrate
in sovereign state:
too late.
The University or Andrew’s Walk
In the evening when the moon first rises, the sky is so black black black around it that it shocks one. And as the moon reaches up, rising up in the sky, the blackness lightens, almost a little grey-blueness gathers round, even though it be past midnight. And the moon as she rises forces away what few stars had lain there.
So it was this particular night.
So it is every night when a man is walking alone in the lonely night. But particularly on this night.
The atmosphere hung around Athens like numb, black cotton, as if dampening out its restless buzziness from pricking shocked night. The great library had closed down and gone black, except for those outdoor lamp rays that persistently hang down like bleached hair when it is night; and the chemistry complex of buildings on the hill, they too had closed down and were gone black; even the long hill rise up Baxter had fallen quiet and unhurried. So whence the restlessness then? Across the valley the Myers complex lay like sleeping bears, with a soft womanly snore; the farther out buildings of married housing also had slipped under for the long blank of night, even early April night. But down Lumpkin, diabolical Lumpkin, like sores, unscabbed sores, the restlessness broke out: fraternity houses, bands and music and sharply boogying—yes—people.
But it didn’t matter. This particular night it didn’t matter. Time comes, and a man must walk. And so it was with our particular fellow this evening.
He walked toward the hanging moon.
It had just come up like a bright balloon which at once the night engulfed, almost, in its black jagged edges, like scissors falling on it. But the moon, she held her own: for she was waxing.
And beneath her, waxing like a valiant woman with child as she was, beneath her lay Athens, self-absorbed, unnoticing, restless Athens upon the hills. And one man walking.
So this fellow walked.
Andrew—that was his name, Andrew—Andrew walked. Across Sanford bridge like one suspended above death, fearing the release that would let him drop. Up those long rising steps toward Chemistry, past it and on up higher, toward Biological Sciences. From one point you could look across and the jarred boogie of the Lumpkin scars came to you like something far, far off and beneath, quite beneath you: and disturbing, like the buzz of a mosquito behind your ears.
This was the university, he thought, this the very place, so many buildings. How long had it taken men, with all their learnings, how long had it taken them to build the first university like this—the first modern university?
It had taken them a goddamn long time.
And now he stood here as if perched on it all and looked down across that time, like one looking over waves dropping down. A damn, damn long time!
And here was the result. Here he was, perched like a vulture at the top. A sober, night-wearied critic.
From the first universities with modest buildings and students rowdy in the medieval towns, sprang this: the monolithic modern result. And he, Andrew, he stood at the top of it and looked down.
And all he got for it was a nagging mosquito at his ears, and a drowsy weariness in the back of his brain. Why? Where was mankind going with all this hill-climbing? What was the purpose of it all?
Andrew didn’t know. So he turned and walked again toward the hanging moon. For he was a strange fellow, this one, and didn’t know what else to walk towards. So he chose the moon, which by this time had gone higher, like a good bright maiden to beckon him. So it was he followed.
The anger flicked in him. And flickered higher with every step, every long continuous climbing step. It flamed up in him like angry blood. Angry against the enemies.
But it wasn’t the university—no, not that. The university was but a skeleton, a boney machine. It was the ghost in the machine that drew his hot anger, his racing, burning anger in the blood. It was the ghost. The ghost. Men.
Men, men and women, who were the ghost in the machine. Professors and students and administrators, but more. This was the world men had made, had built up the hillside. This was the made world—a machine, run by dreary ghosts: known as people. It was curious: the people were the ghosts of the buildings, the skeleton; but the skeleton was also the ghost of the people, and the only one they had. A mosquito buzz was all the meaning it had.
Andrew kept on his climb of the hill, up the steps, angry and more angry.
Once one gets to the Biological Sciences building one is at the top. One is on the flat of the hill, the hill with its flat-top hairdo. Only, the buildings surround you and tower above you—cut off the moon.
Through some of the windows there were lights; figures of men working away at chemicals and cultures before laboratory equipment, eccentric silhouetted shadowy tubing and beakers and liquid-holding flasks. Erie glass pieces casting erie shadows. Erie shadows of men floating among the tabletops, all in white shirts and dark ties.
Andrew hurried his step.
His moon had been cut off, he was guideless for the moment. Complex of buildings like a maze all around him, each filled with erie black and white kaleidoscopic phantasms. Hurry! He must hurry around the shadows of these buildings.
Suddenly there stood the moon again, golden cheeks leaning down to him. Come on, Andy, come on!
Beyond the parking lot there were trees, and he quickly crossed to one. The moon hung her shoulders among the branches and leaned wistfully down. He sat against the tree. Down leaned the moon, putting her white face almost to his.
At length the moon spoke:
“What you need is a girl, Andy, some girl.”
There was no arguing with that, so our fellow hung his head in shame.
“Get a girl!” pleaded the moon, face close to him. “Get a girl, Andy, or you betray me.”
“But who?”
“It doesn’t matter, doesn’t matter.”
But look at them all down there, he thought. Mosquitos! They buzz at you, behind your ears. They boogie like blind bugs on Lumpkin! They are ghosts in the machine—perverse—fake.
“You need a girl, Andy, any girl.”
But look at them! All their makeup. Earrings. Purple eyelashes, moist red lips that come off on touch. There are no girls.
“Surely there is one—any one—surely you can find one girl, Andy.”
“How? Damn you moon how? How?”
The moon backed away, stung, and also to consider.
Andy was walking again. Down a little path through the trees, and before long came to a foot bridge. Dark, wooden, and you couldn’t see the boards, how rotten they were. A wire mesh ran down the side of it as if protection for rotten boards. He ventured out.
The moon darted down at the bridge, to get his attention.
theNakedAtheist 