A WINDOW WITH A VIOLIN

This exchange in response to the posting: "JOURNAL ENTRY 02/24/2004" –

Email to the Buffalo

01/16/2009 8:40 PM Bersone:

I must say, my friend, I sometimes don't know if the words are coming through you or have come through me. This is the great fear of our age, the age of original talent, the great individual. In America, you cannot be an artist unless you are a genius, a Picasso, a Hemmingway: this is strange when viewed through other, older
cultures, those less infatuated with the signature at the end of the rainbow. It's a financially proprietary purpose, such a signature, flying in the face of all the great enquirers, the anonymous seekers who followed their divinations to further their quest for God or the unknowable, humbly, touched, in great communion with all people, all ignorant people who would, were they stripped of pretense, would
stand stupefied before miracle after miracle. To dive to the bottom
of the river, indeed, where things are transformed. Where an image,
to paraphrase Rilke, enters, is forgotten, sinking into the blood
where it is transformed, to rise again, the literal connection to
anything cut and dead, an image become a dream, turned like a pearl
inside a living being, to become an utterance, a fairy tale. A fairy
tale is like a river stone; it has been told so many times, been
turned and soothed with so many tellings, that it has become smooth
and essential. anonymous. Carved by the river, and heartbreakingly
beautiful. I am grateful I know you, a fellow witness.

This comes at the end of a day that began when, emerging from BART
onto Market Street, still dark, the bricks wet from the guy hosing
down in front of Walgreen's, I pass a guy in a sleeping bag, a
blanket over his head, jacking off like a rabbit for that little note
or two of pleasure in an existence filled with pain. We need
pleasure and beauty so constantly, and constantly deny ourselves of
it. Even the sound of the hose spraying the bricks brings an
ecstasy. As Rilke said, you are caught, say, walking past a window
with a violin in it: that is your charge.


01/19/2009 7:20 AM Buffalo:

We have journeyed side by side for many moons. We have hunted the buffalo for food and warmth. We have fathered stars, conjured songs, witnessed birth, watered gardens of weeds, laughed in the face of fear, painted the walls with love, genuflected before the old and feeble, died and been born time after time after time. We have studied life and found that beyond the fact of life there is nothing. Live. LIVE! That is all that is asked of us. After a lifetime of compromise and social intercourse I strive now to do nothing but to write in this novel that will never be read. To dream, to sing softly to the cold and heartless universe, to swim in frigid waters. I want nothing, not even a blanket to cover my passion. Give me an ocean to walk on. Give me a zillion stars to count at night. Give me one moon and one sun. Give me a flock of chattering sparrows. Give me a quivering puppy, an afternoon, an early morning dream, an hour of loneliness, one moment, one last breath. Give me a window with a violin. Nothing more.

Like we used to say in the 60s:

Peace and Love!