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Paul Murphy
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Murphy's Lore presents Paul Murphy in conversation with myself. Paul is best known as a poet, but is paradoxically most widely read (there's just more of this) as a remarkable critical sensibility. He's extremely well-known for his film criticism, and cultural and historical commentaries; and almost as much for his shafts on Germany and poetry. He often travels with devastating results to travel-writing. In Blake's 250th year, someone who doesn't cease from mental fight deserves honour and wider dissemination than here. His deconstruction of everything from Hollywood and German politics, to Turkish baths, frustration, the Velvet Underground, and Milton and the Civil War, make him compulsive, one might say compulsory reading on all the alienations we live under. The correspondence is presented in neccessarily reverse chronological order. Which means you often have to get through one of my letters first. But it can easily be skipped. We add the obligatory rider, that the views expressed here do not necessarily represent those of SP. The views of the Director, even, do not necessarily reflect those of the Director. He was beside himself, in a learned log-jam, he claims. Still, individual log-jams are also something. There's been another hiatus, due to SJ being ill and working at home part of June. But another element resides in our Chair (an enthusiastic reader) suggesting that this was a pretty abstruse discussion and everyone should join in. True. It ought to open up to others, like our old editor James Ferguson, avid reader and someone whose own emails I would cheerfully paste up. Just at that point PM veered almost exclusively to cricket, and wonders whether SJ is even reading him. He is - it's riveting for anyone who feels remotely interested in sport. But there's more than sport here: Michael Jackson, German art films (as ever), Belfast miscegnation invoking Tom Paulin and Kirsty Wark (you have to read that; July 7th). And the cricket. A selection follows. SJ will be away from the 13th August to 8th September, so after that the discussions will alter again. For myself, I'm not sure whether or not Murphy's Lore is suitable in its wild eclecticism; but it is an expression of alienation sometimes worthy of Pessoa, the greatest Portuguese poet who created a family of himselves, as heteronyms. The Book of Disquiet (Penguin) reminds me of Paul. But we've proposals for a place where it all might migrate. It would fit SP if others could participate; alas, the duologue has through my virtual silence become a diary. We'll let everyone know where it's going when it's fixed. Till then it stays, ever awkward, ever essential to its readers. The latest entry - a German film from 1976 Murphing to cricket in 2009 - was for July 18th; when Paul gave up for the summer and retired to Lord's as reserve. But suddenly - he's back - SJ.
Or, perhaps, a better conjecture is that God is black. Satan wants to pollute paradise with his 'white mischief'. Pandemonium, for instance, sounds like a very groovy place to be. Its easy to imagine Satan in a yogic trance, wearing a white kaftan or angora wraparound, listening to some hyperlink or compilation of Indian sounding pop music or watching a movie like 'The Fountain' although he might find that movie unbearable (it is).
Paradise Lost
I've been listening to both 'Paradise Lost' and 'Paradise Regained' on CD. They are fantastic long poems. Optimus Prime is a more plausible version of God for our times and Frankenstein is a better Adam too.
What about a new London club, Pandemonium? Above the door: Pandemonium or do what thy wilt is the whole of the law (Crowley). You could be the bagman?!?!?!?
August 12th - Hola Guapo! I am about to embark on a tour of the New World, taking in Montevideo, Buenos Airies, San Miguel and Frisco. I have a good supply of mules stationed with C F in Rio de la Plata, some tequila and a month's rations of nachos, peyote, coyote and probably Maria Callas. Incidentally we're also reading poetry. I intend to take it to the peons, landless and inhabitants of favellas. Now that Ronnie Biggs has gone we need a presence in LAm. bogus greetings, The Wolfman |
Mesrine - KIIt was great to see a film that doesn't pussyfoot around or add layers of unnecessary sentimentality. When Mesrine returns to the horrible gaol, where he has suffered unspeakably, his accomplice plus machine guns and hand grenades to kill the prison guards, I felt like cheering. At last a film-maker has dared to show what everyone wants to see, what everyone wants to enact. Taking a simple assault rifle and making a copper's head disappear like a grapefruit in a blender: that's all. Man's relation to locations, and through locations to spaces, inheres in his
July 18th SALON KITTY (1976 dir Tinto Brass, starring Teresa Anne Savoy, Helmut Berger, Ingrid Thulin) in 'Salon Kitty' it is the tawdry dialogue, the sentimental musak background, the kitsch sentimentalisation and basic exploitation of women, but for all that a cinematic intelligence does occasionally break through, such as the scene in the aquarium which is visually startling and contrasting, or the scene in the men's urinal as Salon Kitty makes love to her German officer lover and the camera pans up to a graffiti of a prick entering a quim. Its as if Tinto Brass is saying 'its all prick and quim'. But for all that 'Salon Kitty' depends on a fair amount of sensationalised lesbian intrigue to amass its effects, as in the scenes between Ingrid Thulin and Teresa Anne Savoy. This and the overemphasis of Teresa Anne Savoy's naked body make it a sordid and tacky ride. The dialogue is so overpoweringly dull that at times I wanted to take the DVD and throw it into the river. The softcore porn surround incriminates Brass as a director of cinematic attractions who has little or nothing to say. Its just as if Andy Strauss is there in a tent wearing Afrika Korps Feldwebel uniform, its the Western desert, 1942, playing the liebestod from Tristan und Isolde, saying things as; 'ze Tommies will burn, we will annihilate them mit der 88mm cannon. Der Fuhrer will send them all to Hell, you hear me!'. Andy 'Goebbels' Flintoff has announced his retirement, probably not enough gas left in the Panzer to finish the bloody business and the only one of them who seems at all real, who doesn't seem to be a PR man's package or dark imaginings of 'Aryan Reich warriors that might appeal to the masses' catalogue is Collingwood, who also seems to be the only one who has had real success with bat and ball. With England's showing in the First Test in Cardiff being so dismal, especially in the bowling department, although the batting also lacks substance, its obvious that the England selectors are casting around for some other players, such as Harmison and Onions, they being the usual suspects. But it seems to me that the selectors and the ECB may have to look in some odd places to the solution to their problems or suffer annhiliation at the hands of the Australians. Is that what they want? How much defeat can the paying public tolerate before they switch off the cricket and switch onto something else? Before cricket becomes an annoying, buzzing, boring, bloody fly of a thing that was swatted out of existence decades ago.
my bowling average? this season I've taken 9 for 98, an average of about 11. That's an incredible strike rate because I've only bowled 13 overs. I've made 75 runs from 12 games but am better than this.
X is very good at that PR stuff. He seems to thrive on it, whereas we look to the substance beyond. Trouble is I'm not sure the world cares about what's beyond.
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July 15th - I am so isolated here. It is impossible to make friends. I am sick and tired and there are no new trends or anything at all happening. I feel, however, that something momentous, something world historical is about to happen, but imperceptibly. I mean it won't be reported on the 9 o'clock news. Last week the death toll in Helmand went haywire. A level of unpredictability has suddenly appeared, yet it all has a familiar feel.
England luckily drew the Test, but they need some bowlers and will have to look right down the line for them. Their bowling attack looked ineffectual. I think things will get an awful lot worse, in fact so bad that even their darkest imaginings will be stretched. The british class system is to blame. There are probably lots of great cricketers out there but they never got the chance, because cricket is closely bound up with the public school system. It wasn't played at my school, a secondary in East Belfast, however hockey was played. England must look down the line for someone who can bowl and perhaps they will look in unlikely places, like that secondary school in east belfast. why were we underprivileged? why did other people get to participate, laying willow on leather? why are England so bad?
July 8th - Hi Simon, no Sam Smith went ahead with the Carlos Fleitas blurb. The book looks great, the cover illustration is by...well...er...me. He's already got the book up at Amazon.I hope simply that justice prevails and I get the recognition I deserve in the end. There's nothing I can do if the work simply isn't being exposed. I couldn't be bothered with that lit talk except to say that I've won the CONDOM prize for poetry that entitles me to absolutely nothing at all. I couldn't lift a finger to save myself and would have been useless on the last night of the Titanic. Last night in the nets I bowled an array of nifty outswingers and off cutters. They tantalised the batsmen who, in the end, survived and then was undone by a simple drifting off spinner that hung in the air for an eternity like a hummingbird, then dropped, turning a fraction and bowling the batsman all ends up. He walked back as if he'd just had a swim in the lake, bedraggled.
Sam Smith published 26 poems including the Brecht one. I have an even newer set of stuff that's not in that pamphlet. Unbelievably. best wishes, Paul
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CIYMS vs Portadown in Mid Ulster Bandit Country, circa 1995
I remember once playing a game of cricket in mid-Ulster. We arrived in cars and someone remarked: 'I don't think people here are very loyal.' There was a mural depicting Karl Marx, Nelson Mandela, Gerry Adams, another of Bobby Sands, yet another depicting an IRA guerilla in full combat gear, brandishing a kalashnikov assault rifle with the caption: Tiocfaidh ár lá (our day will come). Sometime around 1972 someone detonated a bomb in the village pub, killing everyone who could pay to be there. Afterwards relationships between catholics and protestants in the village were strained, to say the least. God, I thought to myself, am I not some kind of fascist turning up here with a cricket bat and white clothing to impinge upon these people who probably want to be left alone, who probably don't need to be reminded of the Plantation of Ulster, the triumph of King Billy in 1690, defeating James at the Battle of the Boyne, the Act of Union and every other aggressive Imperialist British action historically retrograde or whatever. I thought, how can we even get out of here (if things turned nasty, as they invariably did in Ulster.). Okay I can quote Lenin, Che and Marx, pretend to be an Australian touring side: I'm the captain Paul Murphy, these are the Melbourne Desperadoes or something and I'm their captain Paul O'Murphy (because that sounds even more Irish).
So I went into the wee shop to ask directions, addressing the shopkeeper:
"The philosophers have only interpreted the world, the point is to change it. That's Marx, Karl Marx. You know what Lenin said: the Kulak has one hand in his own pocket and one in the pocket of his serf. Can I have a packet of Protestants? Shit, sorry I meant a packet of milk and six bags of crisps and a large bottle of coke."
The only other time I'd been in a situation like this was in County Antrim at the John Hewitt Summer School. I met this seeming nutter in bar and got into a heated debate with him about the poetry of Louis MacNeice. This chap looked as if he'd got over the wall of the local booby hatch the night before and was in vital need of a dose of largactyl.
"By the way, can I just ask your name?"
"Who, me? I'm Tom Paulin. Perhaps you know me as Kirsty Wark's concubine?"
June 30th - Hi, strange that Jackson, the man with 13 face lifts, should die. They didn't spare us the putrefying details, did they? (dead bodies suffer a certain amount of putrefaction. this happens to all life when it encounters cessation of breath.) No one has to die of a heart attack at 50 in this day and age and that's the harrowing truth. at one time perhaps the richest man in the world didn't do anything to stop the preventable and the reason for this is that he wanted to die. Paul
Wednesday June 24 at Earlsfield - Strollers lost by seven wickets -Strollers 96 (Wood 27, Shattock 20)
Battersea Ironsides 97-3 (Walder 1-10, Gallagher 1-29)
Tom Wood and Mike Shattock struck out lustily and took full advantage of the short boundary before Shattock holed out off Murphy to the boundary cover fielder. He was closely followed by Aaron Walder who, unable to curb his boyish enthusiasm, skied Dilley to deep backward point. Wood retired, and Murphy then ripped through the Strollers’ middle order with a combination of turn, droppers and the confusing straight ball. Ed Gallagher was controversially bowled for nine, Alex Blyth was stumped for eight, Brendan Russell was bowled and Indy Dephu contrived to hit his own wicket after avoiding square leg the ball before to give Murphy a five-fer.
With ten overs still to go, Wood doing an emergency pickup at Earlsfield station, and Simon Brodbeck (visiting his first 20-20 game) steadfast in his refusal to pad up without wearing whites, the tail had to wag. And it did, a little. Ian Smith was eventually stumped for eight off Jobson (this is becoming a habit), Kimball Bailey was beaten by Butt’s pace and Nasir was caught trying to hit Butt out of the ground. The returning Wood was caught off Raj leaving Danny Boyle unbeaten on six. And the best part of three overs unused.
But were we downhearted? Well, yes, but we knew we had to bowl extremely well to win. And we did. Gallagher’s first ball was thick-edged through the vacant slips for four but there were then five dot balls. With the pitch becoming a “raging Bunsen”, Walder’s first over was a maiden, and the pressure was on. One ball vanished over the road and into the golf club, but Walder, then Nasir, then Russell frustrated the batsmen, and with only 45 runs off the first ten overs the game was still on. Boyle took a sporting stumping to give Walder a wicket maiden, but the target was always achievable, and despite a consolation wicket (a sharp catch by Boyle) for a hostile Ed Gal, the Ironsides strolled home with 15 balls to spare.
Post-match analysis took place in glorious sunshine at the club with our hosts (to whom thanks again for their hospitality and sportsmanship), and then at a nearby Indian restaurant. This match was hardly as close as the last ball win and the tied game of the two previous years – but there is always 2010.
Captain: Tom Wood. Wkt: Danny Boyle. Match fees: Tom Wood. |
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June 24th - Hi, another victory in the T20.
Fleet Street Strollers vs Battersea Ironsides
I was wheeled onto the square for some 'old timer' googly bowling. My bowling analysis: 4 overs 0 maidens 5 wickets 36 runs. Biff! Pow! 2 men bowled, one stumping, one caught and one hit wicket. Gareth also got runs and everyone contributed down the line. best wishes, Paul
June 23rd - The Sun rises over Arsenal, North London by Paul Murphy Plato expelled poets from his ideal Republic because they are “false pedagoges “ Ok. Translated: because they are itchy mosquitoes of the mind. So is Paul (better John). I like being surprised. A good mind shakes you up, as he does with our nervous grey brain. Or in maths lang: a non linear writing as poems should be. But trust me poets are also your confidents, your pillow they will never let you down. The last line of defense as music is. Imagine a world of guys and gals addicted to poetry. For sure is the first step to f*** the drug dealers.
Time to stop all my jazz. Go to the source: Read Paul's work! Oh btw:¡Have a nice day Mr. Brown!" |
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June 20th - Hi, today out at Perivale for a match with Mill Hill CC 4th XI. I soon found out that I was brought as a spare and was to bat at number 8. Not giving a newcomer a chance to either bat or bowl and yet expecting that person to pay a full match fee? However, the team quickly showed that they couldn't bat and I was soon in the action coming to the wicket at 60 for 6. At the other end the Aussie leg spinner Chris O'Shaughnessey had 34 but soon holed out to an awesome ball from their Pakistani leg spinner, a tall chap who spun and bounced the ball prodigiously. He took 8 wickets, the other 2 were run outs. So I quickly got on top of the medium pacer hitting him for two 4s and then took the quick single. Facing the leg spinner I made a classical forward defensive but the ball spun and bounced massively taking an edge. I was caught for 10. In all we made 95 in 25 overs. They knocked these off for the loss of one wicket (run out). I fielded at gully saving 20 or so runs in the process and bowled the last over. The keeper missed a straightforward stumping and then the batsman hit the next ball from me straight at mid-wicket who helped the ball over the boundary for 4.
When Chris came to bowl his bowling was simply dismantled completely and he gave them back the 34 he made in only 2 overs. The conclusion? Not giving me a chance was a mistake they'll live to regret.
best wishes,
Paul
June 19th - Okay today at Lords I tried to sell my bat autographed by former England and Middlesex captain Mike Gatting (fat Gatt who now has needs a 44 inch waist, considerably larger even than myself with a mere 38). Gatt was a great county player who didn't make the transition to being a great international player, and averaged only 35 with the bat at the highest level. His bowling simply failed to register at test level, although it was very successful at county level, one of those players who rode his luck to say the least and probably wouldn't get into the England set up today. Another throw back to a bygone era was Mike Brearley, also Middlesex and England captain, who was the epitomy of the old school tie, Eton and Oxbridge yet unable to muster much of a test average. He seemed to be included because there had to be a couple of these old boys/buggers in the team, instead of people questioning it they talked of his 'man management skills' and 'captaincy genius'. Of course he was a total imbecile who couldn't dress himself or recognise a bat from the back end of a bus and probably thought a woman to be a modern kind of urinal, but there you go. Just a legacy of the class system. Crap, isn't it?
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June 17th - playing tonight in Middlesex crashed one huge six into the fence and faced a real Aussie leg spinner for the first time. This guy has talent and can bat too. Maybe he's the next Arthur Benaud?
June 15th - Hi, sorry had to break off quickly there. Yes the pitches are drying out and getting bouncier so time for the helmet and the arm guard. Found running in the helmet tough, but not as tough as I thought and it is definitely restrictive. But I don't look upon batting as gladiatorial combat so I think its best to have it when playing for Sunday A or the Firsts and Seconds and maybe the Thirds. Made a small stand of 20 or so with Walleed which is the usual and stuck around for 5 overs or so but want to learn how to go on from this and the only way is probably through practice. So I hope this feedback is useful. I always like to write reflection on the games, not necessary for you to comment, bw, Paul
Twenty20 versus The Bricklayers Arms, Wednesday, June 3rd, 2009 Hi, another great match, this time a Twenty20 game against The Bricklayers Arms. This time I was put on as first change bowler, basic cannon fodder but reversed the scenario by bowling the opening batsman with an off break through the gate, a ripper and could have had 4 or 5 more wickets, if catches had been held and a plumb lbw upheld. So in the final analysis: 4 overs, 0 maidens, 1 wicket for 39 runs. They made 103 and we got them with 5 overs to spare. yeah bring 'em on! bw, Paul
Ps I'm just gobsmacked my pitiful off beam bowling wasn't tonked for 90 or so, but there you go!
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June 1st - yeah I'm into the cricket, but this team IS really into it. at the fall of every wicket they have a love in which (frankly) I find a bit embarrassing. but I remember how I felt the other week after hitting those 2 fours - great, on top of the world. even though it was a small club pitch in south London it might as well have been The Oval, as far as I was concerned and I don't put any limits on how high I can fly. as far as I'm concerned, if I have great results, I could bat at 5 for England this summer. its possible and all I have to do is go out and keep hitting 4s and 6s until the opposition beg me to stop or go and hide behind sandbags or all cowering in some clinic getting a dose of largactyl from nursey.
May 31st - Dear S, a blistering day yesterday and this time I had a game with the 3rd XI, a friendly against Old Hamptonians at Hampton. We drove to a beautiful pitch, like a great green meadow, a church spire in the background, oak trees and brilliant sunshine. So our opening bowlers began but nothing much happened until the first change in the bowling and a big South African called Paul Todd took 6 wickets in no time, but they clung on to get 179, a good total on this wicket. Then our response began steadily until one of the openers, an Australian, chipped the ball into his own face and retired hurt for 31 (bet he'll wear a helmet next time.). Then there was a clatter of wickets, a couple of guys got ducks, but the South African again got in and hit a fifty in even time. They'd put me down at number 8 to bat, but I went in when the fifth wicket fell because of the injury and the score was on 140 for 5 with about 15 overs in hand. I knew that I'd get plenty of batting, even though I went in at 8, because I reckoned that 3 or 4 of the batsman were playing too far up the order and I also knew I could bat well and better than they. In fact they could have saved themselves some hassle by promoting me to open or to number 3 which seems to be my natural position in the batting order. Anyway I chipped and nudged the ball around for singles, Paul Todd hit some fours, but when we got to 162 I was run out for 4 going for an implausible run off a mis-field as a result of Todd's call which left me well stranded. They say never run on a mis-field and it's true. So then the captain went in and hit his second ball for 4 and the innings was over and we had won. A run chase like this seemed implausible but we got them with 5 overs to spare.
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May 21st - (presently I'm listening to Anton Webern, and only found out today that he was shot dead by the Americans at the end of the war. I imagine, being the disciple of Schoenberg, that the Nazis dissapproved of his music but he was able to live under the regime and continue to make a living. Peter Greenaway made a film about him and 9 other composers, including John Lennon, who all died in mysterious or violent circumstances, 'The Death of a Composer'.) bw
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| May 19th - rather tragic events in Sri Lankan as the Tamil Tigers of Elam implode. The whole thing looks like a terrible, sordid mess. I think the international community lost sympathy with the TT in 2005 when they shot dead the foreign minister who was respected and taken seriously by many western diplomats. After that the West said nothing when the Sinhalese army made increasingly deeper intrusions into the North. I also suspect that the US ceased funding the TT after 9:11 and that is an even better explanation of what has just happened. I hope the region can recover, don't you? Paul |
| May 17th - Hi Simon, yes another (un) fascinating game of cricket. Basically the story went this way: they had us at 24-4 so I went in and did my Geoffrey Boycott impression. When I left the wicket it was 54-5, so we had a chance. Eventually we amassed 140 but they chipped them off for the loss of 2. best wishes, PM |
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May 16th - incredible hangover this morning after wine & cheese last night at the cricket club. a vast group of sheilas were there and also some abos, roos, crocs, for we had to annotate a map of Australia as part of the table quiz. I have to go now and open the batting which is kind of worrying since I feel drained, to say the least.
I have vaguely heard of that film. Have you seen 'The Draughtsman's Contract'? A film really worth watching especially the sound track by Michael Nyman. This was a work of genius that overcame its pretensions to seem like a new way of making films.
May 14th - Simon, in the nets tonight and they discovered I can spin the ball both ways, off spin and leg spin. Basically this means that I can turn the ball in and out, an obviously lethal combination. so I threw the ball up for them to drive and instead of turning out it turned in. The ball popped in and they popped out. Interesting young Aussie off spinner who was kind about my bowling and some others less so. I'm now playing in the Saturday league which is a bit more torrid than these social games.
Thanks for a fascinatingly dense email, which I shall consider at length. I'm preparing for a trip to San Miguel, Mexico, but I want to let this swine flu pandemic blow over first before I go. San Miguel, a centre for ex pats and writers, writers such as Tom 'The Right Stuff' Woolf, Ken Kesey and Neal Cassidy (who died down there at the railway lines after a rather torrid party.). I'd like to meet Tom Woolf, because and though I don't (as you know) give a fig for books, the aeronautics industry fascinates me as it does Woolf. (and I recently saw the film again by Phillip Kaufmann, although it is patriotic muck...)
The first piece is about Macedonia, I there about 2000. right in the middle of the end of the Balkan bollocks. best wishes Paul May 14th - Hi Paul, That’s more like it, with your permanent mix of languages like Eliot. Madame Zorastris would say you were both born under the sign of Libra, but I know you wrote a book on him. Oddly, been reading Geoffrey Hill in train, an essay on Eliot and his approach to the notion of the metaphysical – 17th Century British, late 19th century French, and Bradley who no-one reads. I picked this up from the SP Library, Agenda 1996 donated by One of his earliest poems mentions ‘pressure of the stars’ and I talk in one of mine (‘Halley’s Cambridge’) of ‘glaucoma, the eye-pressure of the stars’ which was in part an unconscious filch off Hill; which I think in the context repays it. Quite a surprise to find this on Tuesday. The only one I know of. Curiously, I’ve found last week someone dong that to me who’d written two huge essays on my poetry so is entitled to, being marinated as it were in Jenner. One of these essays is provisionally appearing in Tears in the Fence (51, Autumn, apparently), and Jim Keery is doing one on me in PN Review, also rather amazingly. Jim would be amused at the Hill snip since he can’t stand Hill and loves my poem. Steve Spence in Stride already has produced another review. A book three years late has major reviews. Odd. The phrase filched unconsciously from me was merely ‘electric generations’ and I’m sure Jeremy Reed used one in 1988, which I mentioned to Andrew Duncan. But he reads and absorbs so much and writes so much that this hardly counts. The poem used was one I’d given him, T. E. Hulme North Staffs 1917, which concludes ‘a table clear for gods/who play the indifferent counters of the stars’ which also refers to Bergson, Hulme’s idol: the word ‘counters’. Reed unconsciously used a bit of it. So what? I’ve learned more from Reed as a poet than he has from me. Though he’s always flattering. Anyway, you said I should be out there, and now I suppose I’m finally getting there. That wasn’t why I wrote. Back to work, to slough off this immortality.All the best, Simon |
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May 14th - Hi, flip me I do talk some guff in the morning, but that's the time for it. A good morning guffing to bring out all the psychological felch and goo so that one can get down to the hard work of mental wanking. This morning in Southwark for einen Bewerbung Gespricht mit einen grossen, berumpt Sprachenzentrum. Dann ich spaziergang im Sud Bank nach Dichtung Bibliothek. kennst du diese Bibliothek? So the German lumpy, though I do try. Last night game of cricket, established partnership with Zimbabwean professional and the game eventually became even thrilling, with he clubbing the ball over the sightscreen for 6, then I hit two 4s and was bowled. For just one second in my life I think I produced a thrilling sporting moment, whenever even I too became beguiled. But then it was back to porridge, the usual, with my bails doing a little singing, dancing act. So 25 runs from 2 matches at an average of 12.5 and who cares? And my 6th book is due out soon, 'Alone in a Camper Van on Halloween with a Psycho at the Window'. Should be a real humdinger! The press is THROW REINHARD OFF THE SKYCRAPER and the whole thang costs $12.00 but $13.00 to you.bw
May 14th - Hi Paul, I didn’t know that extraordinary story. When did it happen? ’05, if I recall, was your trip south. What I admire is your ability to remake yourself and throw everything up, starting again with no baggage, or at least no external baggage. I have too much of it and it’s meant that even my home time is now seriously compromised. I crave solitude, as you sometimes feel the richness of it to repletion. I listened, took the silence in my aunt’s house this morning, broken by the sound of a clock of small mechanisms faintly audible. Someone nearly her age (88 this November) phoned, a second cousin. The back door was open. I envied my aunt and cousin all this. |
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