field equation dealing with potential (the electrical kind)
until the whole thing rounds itself out into a sort of promon–
tory or island where we stand, very small and very distinct,
staring out into all that blue , surprised at the amount of
affection we feel for it today as we realize how good it is
not to be the first ones here having to make up words for love
or songs for jumping rope because there are prerogatives, after
all, in heritage and chromosomes and history pulsing at our
feet in little blue waves by the shore. It really is just today,
like many another day in Evening Land where the action of the
story is now taking place, although action is hardly the word
for this exquisite moment since it doesn't matter whether we
get it right or wrong; in fact , we're supposed to fail. Our
pleasure really is in watching them sink out there in the
oriental surf, with the "full" knowledge that our turn may be
next-although it never is our turn because when it comes,
it's different. History is all around us in the shrouds of
the parachute , and it's serious this business of ours, inter–
linearity, writing glosses on the violet-blue text of seeming.
The brain turns round in its skull-pan, or the ear is trumpet
for the neck. The flowers have been roaring out their names
for the sky since early this morning. Each asterisk takes off
like a helicopter buzzing the inhabitants of the cove down
there who are waving or water-skiing behind their speedboats.
What are their names for it? The textual commentator labels
it a locus classicus and corrects the spelling. At least
three doctors have been collecting footnotes on my own corpus
in the hope of expunging errors and bringing out a corrected
text. And someday they will too, but by then the barbarians
will have sacked not only the provinces but also the capital,
disfiguring all the statues, and the story will have passed
to other hands who will carefully pack it with the two
"o's": oblivion and obliquity. The surface really is a surface
this time , receding just at the point where you want to enter
it - the silver screen made more out of mercury I think-
