Here I am. I am here.

Is that something Emily Dickinson wrote? Probably not. I think I made that up. Or I stole it from the book of Ezekial, even though I'm not even sure what that is anymore--or how to spell it. I think I heard it mentioned once in a song. Or a psalm.

Something.

I'm at work. I'm drinking iced tea that cost exactly $1.79 and I am wondering if I should throw away the tigerlillies on my desk. Three out of the bunch are browner than the others. It makes me a little pensive to wonder about it; it's why I don't often have flowers around me that aren't planted firmly in the dirt, that I don't have to (bluntly) watch die. On the other hand, I looked at them this morning and they reminded me of all of the places I would rather be. I think I experienced one of those internal smile things that happens. It's like the feeling you get from taking a big bite of an ice cream cone that is melting and running down your wrist. Of course, I thought about all of this when the flowers were healthy. Now, it rouges my hand whenever I reach across the keyboard and wipe the pollen from the desk. But I decide to keep them.

I pull a few dead leaves away from the others just in time for the last garbage call today. I have a good imagination and will remember them as they were on Friday and I will promise myself that the next day I take off from here will be for reasons of following tigerlillies. I will let the front desk receptionist and my superiors know immediately.

I am also reading an interview with an artist I've never heard of. His initials are DH. He says, "I am interested in works in which something happens when you look at them." I am not so impressed with that statement, unless I imagine DH smirking when he said that to interviewer, SC. (Her first name is Sarah. For some reason, I think you should know this). He also says, "I am very concerned with the process of thinking and the process of meaning; I am not really concerned with thought or with what things mean. Works of art, according to TS Eliot, are objective correlatives; they are things in the world that we use to correlate our opinions about."

He goes on to call Jackson Pollock an asshole and quote Newsweek. Across the page from the interview is a plain black and white picture of a hotel. What I mean is: across the page from the interview is a plain grey picture of a hotel. I can't decide if it's his work or if the magazine just thought the picture was nice and put it there. You see, it's the kind of magazine that would do something like that. It's kind of like the way I quote essays when I am really writing about the underground like goddamn Dostoevsky.

Here, I am eroticizing dying flowers at 1:42 in the afternoon. It's a Tuesday and I have a Keats complex. I ought to be working, but I have quietly decided that the writing I do for a living is the equivalent of committing suicide slowly. I find myself writing cliches more than I used to (worse than dying flowers, even--if you can believe it). Sometimes when I am sitting here in the middle of the week, usually right after lunch (please note: the fact that I have arranged my internal organs to take lunch at a certain time every day is also depressing to me) I decide that the hum of the ventilation system above my head is what has replaced the otherwise determined outlook I had on life exactly two years ago, or at least the creative angst one uses to one's advantage: to make things. I do not think I make good things anymore. I simply make things that get bartered for money that I have ruthlessly been using to make myself forget that what I do does not make me happy. As a result, I have decided that I must either give up what I do or I must (better yet) give up the vices that take up the rest of my time first, namely gin. I have not had a drink in twenty-four hours. Already, I am a happier person. I think that's what they train you to say in AA. Not sure, though. I'll have to ask someone.

In a small way, that’s why I’m breaking from the usual work to write this. I need to dignify that inside this rather obtuse-looking head, there still exists the stirrings on which I had always counted, what make the difference between a lost person and a fairly interesting one, what attracted past lovers to me and what constituted a memorable night (in other words, that which wasn't beer-soaked). To be honest, I am not sure as to whether I will make something good come from these mediocre revelations, but I am fairly certain I’ll be better for trying.

Are you still reading?

To begin, my friend gave me a book this morning. It’s called The Painted Caves by Kate Thompson. She gave it to me because the cover is funny and it’s probably terrible (obviously part of the joke), but using it (though I haven’t read a single page) I decided that life is more subjective than what I have already written. I rewrite this as someone who forgets that we choose our colors accordingly, not as an artist who understands that red is not always red. Anyway, I have no idea if Kate Thompson woke up one day and decided to be a bad writer, even if I do believe there is some intrinsic benefit to be had from opening up the pages and understanding that sometimes "the bad" are really good things--or at least to question what it really means to make things at all.

And no, I do not believe just anyone can experience a Zen phase. It's far easier to be a bad writer, though.

The following are a few quotes from The Painted Caves. It was written in 1968. I think Kate Thompson is British, or she read a lot of Bronte back in the 50s:

“Wow. A dress.”

“My Pop suggests that you and I go with them to the Falls and Kariba.”

“Oh rubbish! It’s just this silly small town!”

“I never stop doing. I’ve just been to Mexico and got engaged to a boy.”

“Do you play tennis,” Richard asks.
“Sometimes.”
“Do you play well?”
“No.”

“The last thing Almira packed on her morning in Rome was her little silver pinbox.”

“If you drive into the hotel drive,” Almira warned, “everyone will wake up and hear the car and say ‘Oh, there’s that Huysen girl out on the razz again.’”

“The K is just for kisses.”

“Where is he supposed to find you?”
“Under the lime trees where he left me.”

“The laconic answers were not surly.”

“Edwina has been ill.”

"He was gripping her too tight. Almira began to fight. She must get out of answering somehow. She thought she was strong, but Richard was stronger and driven now by mad humour, twisting and crushing her and gradually bringing her closer and closer until she collapsed against him with surrendering whiffles and moans. 'You have hurt me!'"
“Serves you right!”
“Oh, be quiet!”

“Paris is where I have my domicile.”

“The invitation to Sunday sherry was one Almira always accepted.”

I wonder if it's illegal to compile a book of quotes that actually come from someone else's book? And what's a domicile?

Kate Thompson actually wrote several other books. You see, I just read that on the back of the cover. One of them is called Sugarbird. It sounds Southern, doesn't it? But I still think she’s British.

Oh, I have so much to think about today.