Öyvind – well.

One: it won’t work.

Two: I tried that Aspen airport to Salt Lake City in a chartered Cessna 210. Then back. The drop to Denver. Did you read my C-72 book? The memo?

Three: Where are the vests?

Four (a): and I can’t emphasise this enough. My first brief was for the first SF test in Longshoreman’s Hall and I’m inclined. Really inclined. On balance. (b)  Bitterness, ambition, resentment, delirium.

Five: let’s talk to Oregon and keep Mexico out of this. And what I really find intolerable is this idea that time falls drop by drop and that you can turn the whole rigmarole into exoticism and a volatile yellow fever. Are you a Jesuit because that’s what I’m smelling here? That and Baudelaire. I’m hiding out at Petaluma, a downward drift done as style abuse. Anyhow. The last outposts against naturalism are salon hairdressers. They’re all vicious and evil like Herzog’s dead eyed chickens. Recruit as many as you can.  Mind you I like the range: it incarnates like a prophecy. He’ll probably live for a century.  Thing you’ve got here is a regulatory applied form, the sort of alchemy that goes berserk at the first right turn or catechism. I notice you have several detours built in. What are you going for – haloes or the wife’s silver? I mean, CHRIST! Not all philosophy has to be applied. It’s about as well organized as that artificial barbarianism we tried. Which is the equivalent of the spiritualist surge from 1848 onwards. I like the fact there’s no origin. I like the breakdown of schema. I like the classic irruption. I like the boys of 1889.  I like the sequestered depravity. I like the violence that might arise. I like the irreversible loss of dignity. I like the settled matter of obscurity. I like the necklace of bones. I like the oval spectacles. I like the brawls at Hippel’s. I like the venomous gift for nothingness.  I like the punctured sheath. I like the silence of Bartelby. Traven’s death ships. I like you know no profiles are real. I like you take part in your own massacres. I like as a sub text: physiological Veet-Naam. Why did we stumble? Simple really. Everything can be thrown away or re-used. E.g. legs of 22 year old boys. Why no mention of Schumman’s scores though? Why no doubt about doubt about doubt…? Why can’t you even imagine resurrection as a trap? One thought occurred to me that terrified and breached: you’re some sort of Weltgeschichteengineer. Why no mention of Scoop Jackson and Gerald Ford? What was your phrase? ‘ An ill-disguised fetal crouching.’ Something like that. That had balls and legs. Did you Xerox this as a draft? Lautreamont gives us more holy images than Gracie Mansion or the White House. We’re getting down to nut cutting. You see what I mean? Well then, all this energy, best not to channel it. I have dark centres. Do you? My laughter is terrorism as psychic godhood. Goo. Scatter line. Outline. Red line. Angeline. Thin blue…  What the hell, everything is unstable and incognito.  My chiasma. Let me give you this: “ The eye of venus is the most extreme.”     But it’s not the final word. I’m a zodiacal animal, heir of angels, circled by weeds, the precinct of mind, an unprecedented anthropological case, a comical domesticity inviting guests withdrawing to the attic like Odradek making everything in the room a totem. I’m that rustling sound. I’m every tattoo. But further to your plan:

Six. Where are the theorems to prove it?

Seven: a=b, and nothing transparent.

Eight: ego destruction.

Nine: (And here we get to the core issue frankly). Hircocervus. Half stag, half goat. The horror of the pauper becoming a process. A gaudy Kant.

Ten: It’s not productive to pick lice or stroke penises. And love’s a passion for prostitution. Hence God. In the meantime what do you propose? I’ve a de-activated M-3, .45 ACP grease gun with a barrel that came with the gun welded stone shut. It makes it shippable. Have you about 300 rounds? It’s nearly June. Nerves became historical with Baudelaire. People stopped wanting to have ideas. They wanted thoughts that acted. Toxic is never morals. How would you know you’re original if you’re mediocre? What if the Pythia was so? Look at me and see what’s there. The frisson with no illusions. I seek out the sort of sacrifice with the sponte sua of the victim. In Mongolia they pour brandy into the ear of sacrificial pigs. Shake and shake again. The Ehrlichman trial is being covered by Szule. Ali-Foreman in Zaire was round about September I recall. Another example of getting to the bottom of the unknown. Let me try and submit: is it the idea that a memory can be foreseen and becomes part of the ceremonials, like the clock in a deserted railway station, or Kafka’s leopards? When I saw your map for the first time I thought to myself: so many hedges but nothing on the other side. Or underneath. Or inside. Is anything there at all? I talked to the Mexican Rabassa in Acapulco about salinity in the Colerado River. Let me tell you, he appeared at the far end of my pool like a large and sullen and mournful child with something in his spirit that was arid, spiteful, sarcastic… I prefer a fomented sorrowful grievous urbanity.  

Eleven: the distance between ‘I am the state’ and ‘all this is yours’ is Satan.

Twelve: How will you grieve anything?

Thirteen: learn from this and redraw your whole expansive magic. Louis XV hand-reared a white fawn. Then he took it out to kill it. His first try wounded it. Bleeding, it crawled to him and nuzzled his hand. He set it apart again and shot it dead.

Fourteen: It’s always, always, best to have at least one loose end snapping around.

Yours, HK.