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Suppose you didn’t believe that you really did exist.

Suppose you believed that you didn’t really exist.


Holding on to yourself as your body starts to shake, you imagine the following.

You walk down the sunny boulevard in your new polka dot dress., with the skirt that flares out, and holding a small leather pocket book which you clutch to the side of your body even though you are smiling a faint smile.


And in the crowd occupying a café along that wide boulevard, you catch the eye of an appealing someone—and you think to yourself as you stop, smiling, your back to the sun—this is the one who will certify my existence.


And you stand there, smiling faintly, with the sun behind you, making your hair frizz like a golden halo, and the crowd on the boulevard is moving past, in all directions at one, but you are not moving, and the eyes of that man are upon you, and slowly, very slowly like honey dripping from a spoon into a cup of frozen tea, your physical self dissolves, and disappears like a slow fade, in front of his fascinated eyes and deep consciousness.


And the actual disappearance of your physical body—it could happen! As if it were melting into the world of sunlight behind you. It could happen!


And then—would you exist, finally? Or would it be necessary to keep telling the stories of your life inside your lifetime—even if you didn’t exist, would those stories exist and then—who would it be that was existing?

Pretend you were alone in a room, and suddenly, spontaneously, your body caught fire, and within seconds, all of your body was consumes by flame and turned to ash, within a few seconds—all but a left foot in a clean red shoe, untouched.


It could happen—it has happened before to a few bodies—that pure fire.

And if it should happen to you, what stories would remain—untouched like the left foot and the red shoe?


Is that why your body shakes and the stories go “knock knock knock—can I come out please?”


Do I still exist?

Suppose you were in bed and began shaking. The whole body—shaking.

Does that mean you exist or you do not exist.

Find out please!

Ask yourself an important story that has no importance because it really did happen—

So does this mean you exist or you do not exist, and what is the importance?


Ask yourself if you believe in this story more than you believe in other stories you could not tell.

Ask yourself if you believe you exist more at these moments, when your whole body is shaking, more than at those other moments when your story is being told.


Inside which of those times are you existing and is that really important?


Remember—if you disappear by fire—or if you disappear by time, slowly making you melt into nothingness against the sunlight—

or if you disappear into your own story which you are telling to stop the body from shaking--

remember—you will never exist more than now, right now,

--so which of those options is the option you chose by letting the world that is not you make that important choice—

for you alone.

Suppose it was the case that you were surrounded by people and by a world in which the depth and intricacy and solidness of the world and your fellow human beings was replaced by a world in which human beings were all—you know thin somehow, with no enfolded depth, with nothing but a surface-- even if that surface seemed clever and quick about the ways of the world but had no—you know—depth.


But suppose all this mean was that the scene of the action were elsewhere, no longer in human beings as such, but—you know, elsewhere—though human beings, the new thin kind, still participated in that action that was elsewhere, like some fluid, like there is spinal fluid, or atmospheric fluid between people—and that’s where all the action was taking place, not inside these now thin human beings but permiating them rather, as if they were permiated by this fluid --so they could just float-- and be buffetted by this ‘elsewhere’ of this life force that was operating in some new way on the surface of these new people with no depth on the inside


Suppose it was like this, really like this with people—here and now.P

Magic? Magic is no longer necessay—I tell you this and what happens? You hold your head and smile



Here, there is nothing but the celebration of things. Dare to be exhaused


If I am exhausted, how can there be celebration


Exhausted—this is great

Treading wateer. I do it. That. In order to swim backwards




Life: stolen from me


Making such demands that I am forced to turn into the son of a bitch I am now, so I can

Go with the flow

Which is shit, fuck, son of a bitch.


Right. We have been cheated


My life has been stolen from me

Here it comes, the space factory

Manufacturing more space, inside things


This perfect body, deepening space

Lost


Empty space, reproducing itself

Inside itself

But simultaniously

Such emptiness absorbing

Each different emptiness


You receive this orange

Which, until eaten

Feeds


Don’t eat this orange


Fruit factory

An entire planet

Fruit factory

You are the space angel


Space deepens

What it depends upon,

The brain, minus


A simple

Shift of focus

Why space empties

The unapproachable fact


This surface

Is dead


This manipulation of a surface

Eats all surrounding space

The anaonamous number

Multiples into deep space


Protect your eyes—

Things hurt


Space voids

Are the solid unimaginables

The space which compresses

Is pure

The space which multiplies

Is impenetrable and like fire


This is access

To my other self

Thank you


Why not revolve

Amodist

Nothing stable

Brief, bried

Slowlhy moving

Into the space

Made available

By other space


The heart

The great heart

Gripped by space

In an of itself nothinh

Yet

Unrelenting


I fly in deliberate

Reproductive frenzy

Empty space—

Recreating itself automatoically

Producing the same

Emptiness


The emptiness

Of an idea

Covering the whole world

Of the mind


Emptiness, full of

More and more

emptiness

Space has furniture

Disolving through distance


This table

All directions at once


Wind, with no

Physical manifestation

Of that wind

Space space space

Under-employed

By the genius mind


Three kills

To each reserection

Finally


A solid inside

Something even more dense

Real space

Space folding on

It’s empty self

More emptiness

Inside more space


The diamond of space

Compressed into multiple depths

Diamond


Space inside

The trajectory of each mind.

Empty, empty



People who talk continually about—


--Oh please, please, please!


(Pause)


People who talk continualy about their inner life—


Oh Please, don’t talk about your inner life.


(Pause)

I am like a flat surface, a pancake


You are not like a pancake


Yes. In these times, we are all like pancakes, spresad thin, no depth but approaching eaxh of us, the wide horizons of life itself


Oh please


Pancakes—


Sometimes, human beings are given to expressing their philosophy of life,

(Pause)

On rare occasions the depth of things produces sunlight, banal and beautiful at the same time.


(Pause)


Occasionally, a path followed diligently, looses it’s appeal


Sometimes the bottom falls out of life


Sometimes, you and me—


--This is not interesting. Things happening are not interesting. Being very tired is notinteresting, but being very tired and faling asleep, this is interesting. Being ready to fall asleep and ling down and doing it—or letting it happen—this is interesting



Falling asleep is interesting—dreaming is not interesting

Make sure to open any doors that promise hidden treasure

I am a man who has seen everything

Here I am. Overflowing and delerious

Of course, when the heart breaks, everything breaks.

The entire city seems to be opening from the inside, and there is a circular motion, headed, so it would seem, towards unavoidable catastrophy

Here I am, ready to take my stand. Not against reality, but deep inside reality. Invisible, therefore, but fed – in a way that other people are not fed. God speaks to me. This is because I have depths, constructed as parts of myself fold over oter parts of myself. And if I didn’t have to speak language—I could tell you the truth about everything


This café would be an unusual place for truth to suddenly appear.


Why? Why not this café?


I don;’t belong here. I don’t belong in a world where people hve speech patterns like idiots


No, we don’t speak like this becase we are idiots—we can speak normaly.


What the hell—


(Pause)

We choose to speak this way because it produces a more intense mental resonance

I encourage adventure by losing consciousness

Here comes another catastrophy.

It sometimes happens that a man with no desire to leave his usual neighborhood, finds himself in an unusual environment. Where am I he says. Without leaving his old neighborhood. Becuaes—his speed is sometimes faster than the world’s speed

Let me skim the cream off the top of this situation, Off the top of—well, any situation really.


And how do you skim the cream off the top of this situation?


Well, I take some little detail—one or two little details that appeal to me—and these details—that’s what I validate about the situation


Hat about the details you don’t validate


I left them go


OK. In this situation, what are those one or two little details


No, no, I never talk about them. I let them fuzz inside of me—but they are potent


Skimming the details seems like it would have to be a conscious thing. A willed and focused activity

I like it here. The sex and the violence are good here




What platent am I currently visiting

You being one of the few people who might understand this--

The darkness falls


The basic

Taking place that takes place


Having lost all belief in a better world, setting off, therefore, in search of the invisible


They expected something interesting to happen, and if they missed it somehow

Life went on, but—unendurable

Until the next interesting thing started happening

Lost in space


Driven crazy by forces that

Seduced others with

The promise of happiness


Look, here’s a person unting the knot

Using his body to mirror that deep entanglement

Be happy about your state of confusion. Do it again


You’re missing the point, you’re trying so hard you’re missing the point


There is a twist in things. From te very first moment, there is a twist


Thinking mean,s going wrong. But you have to think, so you have to go wrong, because…


You see things, but you can’t see everything, so you have to go wrong, because. . .


What should I do with this life. I have it. But..

You think I’m crazy, but I’m only HALF crazy

_

This -------- will have to stand in for that magic object I could easily call my revelatory encounter. But wait a minute. If I went out into the streets, would I be even more likely to encounter something that could genuinly change my life?


I do think so



Therefore

Catastrophy is just around the corner, but you will never see it, and therefore you will be happy, even though you will sometimes feel like crying, because you’re deepest wishes will never be gratified. And you will accept that. And therefore catastrophy is just around the corner.

Don’t you get it?

You exist inside a special kind of space, where depth is just one more paper thin surface.

Space, space, invisible space

It’s because of the space you don’t see,

Curled up inside the space you do see.

Invisible space


Suppose you were waiting in a café for a beloved someone,

To walk down the street in your direction

And the sunlight was so bright

You said o yourself if I look into that light

That light will blind me.

Thak god, thank god,

so blinded, you felt inside-- on fire


And the beloved for whom you waited appeared ,stepping down from a bus as the door opened

And the beloved appoeared, transformed

in the shape of the child she was in years past

carrying a little red suitcase that suited such a child which was the true shape of the beloved as she

sat with you now at the café table

ordering refreshement suitable for the occasion

smiling back into the sunlight

and deciding to open the red suitcase and finding that somebody

had packed the very same dress that both you and the beloved hoped agaoinst hope hoped she would be wearing

such a beloved one

as she the beloved

came walking toward you, down the wide boulevard

your eyes meeting like an electric shock

Wearing a dress --much too large for a little child sitting beside you

--While that beloved was wearing that dress

and disappearing under your very eyes

into space and time which was some different space and time

to which you believed heretofore, that you had no entry

though you too, you too

did exist, in fact, inside that different space and time

and you understood at last, that you did exist always

Inside that different space and time

You did, you did

You really did

Fire fire fire

Buring up

Into the best fire

The real fire

The fire that burns everything

Fire Fire


Space, space, disolving everything from the inside, making it the outside, pure--

To dosappear could mean, to become totally transparent. Where she, you, it, was—now: the whole wortld. The whole world