Martin Brown
NIETZSCHE REMEMBERED
1. After Nietzsche came, we took our jackets off.
I got a haircut for a quarter. This was a long time ago.
It
was in the morning.
2. We had stayed up all night eating candy.
We didn't want to eat candy, we knew it
was bad for us, in general, bad for our teeth.
We 'd feel guilty about eating candy, the
crunch and squish of hard suckers in our mouths.
We felt rotten already. And
we liked that feeling.
We liked it a whole lot.
3. Nietzsche asked me point blank if I had read his work.
We were both pretty blitzed. I had no idea he was going
to bring that up again. I told him that I had read him,
smiling, but that wasn't the reason I liked him, even though
he was one of the best philosophers, if not
the
best,
who ever put a pen to paper.
Nietzsche looked at me, then stared in his beer.
He really was a deep well of a man.
4. We were late and Nietzsche knew it.
Still , he refused to shave any faster,
tie his tie, comb that awful hair.
He turned toward me and said
something about the 'importance
of working through a problem,
when the roots of it became suddenly perceptible.
He said it was more important than combing his hair.
The Blue Danube flooded in my ears.
