Einstein Intersection

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The Dove has torn her wing so no more songs of love. We are not here to sing: we're here to kill the Dove. Jacques Brel, "La Colombe" Jean Harlow? Christ, Orpheus, Billy the Kid, those three I can understand. But what's a young spade writer like you doing all caught up with the Great White Bitch?! Of course I guess it's pretty obvious. Gregory Corso, In conversation I think of people sighing over poetry, using it, I don't know what it's for . . . "Oh, I'll give your bores back!" Joanne Kyger, "The Pigs for Circe in May" She is with me evenings. My ear is funnel for all voice and trill and warble you can conceive this day. She is with me mornings. The Einstein Intersection 101 This page intentionally left blank Came back to the house early. They have brought wine for New Year. There were musicians down in the white city. I remember a year and a half ago when I finished The Fall of The Towers, saying to myself, you are twenty-one years old, going on twenty-two: you are too old to get by as a child prodigy: your accomplishments are more important than the age at which they were done; still, the images of youth plague me, Chatterton, Greenberg, Radiguet . By the end of TEI I hope to have excised them. Billy the Kid is the last to go. He staggers through this abstracted novel like one of the mad children in Crete's hills. Lobey will hunt you down, Billy. Tomorrow, weather permitting, I will return to Delos to explore the ruins around the Throne of Death in the center of die island that faces the necropolis across the water on Rhenia. Writer's Journal, Mykonos,December 1965 Throughout most of the history of man the importance of ritual has been clearly recognized, for it is through the ritual acts that man establishes his identity with the restorative powers of nature or makes and helps effect his passage into higher stages of personal development and experience. Masters & Houston, The Varieties of Psychedelic Experience The lights of Branning were yellow behind mist and brambles as, through the chill, night made its blue, wounded retreat . Sun streaked the east while there were still stars in the west. Batt blew up the fire. Three dragons had strolled down The Einstein Intersection 103 to the pavement, so I rode down and ran them back. We ate with grunts and silences. This close to the sea morning was damp. Beyond Branning , boats floated like papers towards the islands. To My Mount then, and the jerky, gentle trail down. Hisses left and right as we prodded them, but soon they were stomping and pawing in easy convergence. Spider sawthem first. "Up ahead. Who are they?" People were running along the road; behind them, people walked. The road lights, tuned to an earlier month and longer night, went out. Loosely curious, I rode to the head of the herd. "They're singing," I called back. Spider looked uncomfortable. 'You can hear the music?" I nodded. His head was still; the rest of his body swayed under his face. He switched his whip handle from hand to hand to hand; it was a quiet, beautiful wayto be nervous, I thought. I played the melody for him because the sound hadn't reached usyet. "They're singingtogether?" 'Yes," I told him. "They're chanting." "Green-eye," Spider called. "Stay by me." I put down my blade. "Is there anything wrong?" "Maybe," Spider said. "That's the family anthem of Greeneye 's line. They know he's here." I looked questioningly. "We wanted to get him back to Branning quietly." He flapped his dragon on the gills. "I just wonder how they found out he wascoming in this morning." I looked at Green-eye. Green-eye didn't look at me. He was watching the people along the road. I couldn't think of anything else to do, so I started to play. I didn't want to tell Spider about the man in the dog cart last night. The voices reached us. At which point I decided I better tell him anyway. He didn't say anything. Suddenly Green-eye urged his dragon ahead. Spider tried S A M U E L R. DF.LANY 104 to restrain him. But he slipped beneath one...