226
PARTISAN REVIEW
but could we meet anyway for lunch? I may also have added that I
had an old address of hers, and had tried to invite her to a party a
month or so earlier. The letter occasioned a reply, or rather two
replies:
hello robin-dear robin magowan,
perhaps i knew that i was invited to your party (i enclose
something i wrote about
a
dream i had slightly more than 2
few months ago). i had been living for
a
year in San
Francisco until recently. Oh did the ghetto make me ache–
at night you lay down and all around you can feel it turn on
its side and sometimes sigh. so altho my husband left me
a
year
&
a
half ago i went the day after halloween and stored all
of my
so
many possessions and made an assignation with
exile at my mother-in-Iaw's in East Oakland-the exile neces–
sary for the goal of saving
$$.
which i have-a little--& am
looking for
a
pad in which to be while i pursue this impossible
goal which the i ching says is possible.
Next week I am on
a
holiday, and it would be truly wonder–
ful to see you. I will call you on wednesday and if you 're not
there again after that.
You are wise
&
glad to go laughingly to Zambia
&
Madagascar. What have you been writing? my lungs are filled
with some of it from the fresh sea air at the ocean.
shanti shanti shanti
ling
ling perry
Along with this letter, which contained in its upper left-hand corner
a round window with some smartweed glued in on transparent paper,
came a note addressed ' 'to you":
I spent the nite
&
day with you in my dreams yesterday. You
appeared wearing
a
black
&
brown chinese robe.
We
walked
thru
a
garden, down
a
path to
a
tea room
&
drank
&
smoked
&
talked together. I cannot remember anything you said. But i
can see you still
as
you looked
&
moved then, until finally
we held each other
&
kissed. It was
a
vast soft moist satis–
fying kiss . ..
The note went on
in
the manner of a palmist to allegorize the dream
(freedom, love, happiness, water, bliss) before sexily concluding:
