XXXIII.
We walk downtown. It is dark and I am glad. For
the first time I feel a little ashamed of my
appearance. I have always been self conscious as a function of self
preservation, of a survival
ingrained some where in the spaces where sensations spring from the
urge to move into flight.
But this feeling of shame what to call it is new almost as if my
present fragmented puzzlement
has been broadcast on the evening news. Everybody knows! I am naked
and raw, alone, dirty,
rejected by god, people can see, I am tattooed in the large blue
letters of my unease.
Tetsuwon breaks into my thoughts. "You are not alone, though," he says.
"This pain will never go away," I tell him,
walking close to the walls, picking up the scent of
another animal not two blocks away. "I'll remember this dissociation,
it will etch a pathway in
the places of my body which contain memories and habits of thought,
such strong pains and
tremors as these, such nausea leaves its trace forever and my future
is to be in pain whenever
memory takes the stage. These ruptures and gaps will become the
channels of my torture.
I need to learn forgetting."
"No," he says, "you need to learn a good climbing
technique. You should not repress your
memories. And your good memory is your strength, so I think you
should use it. A good
foothold I should think, something to stand on while you climb
higher. You will emerge from
this muddy pond in which you now waddle. Maybe less stable and more
complicated but more
complete," he says skipping along the gutter and kicking an empty can
in the pattern of a dance.
"This tail!" I cry, "It is a burden and a filthy
object to me now. I want to cut it off, I am no
longer animal I am not just that, I hate myself for my tail and my
manifestation in this flesh
of men's making. I am ugly for this, hateful and obscene it reminds
me of my origins I need
to forget, base and without knowing that which I now know hunted and
despised!"
I can hear him nodding his head before he talks again.
"Do not repudiate your animal nature. Incorporate
it and use your tail as a rudder. Or something.
Whatever you like. Because you don't like the smell of your shit do
you then sew up your asshole?
My cock used to get in the way of my practice but naturally I was not
so stupid to cut it off in the
race to become self disciplined. Throw nothing away except those
milling thoughts as they pass by."
He bends down to pick up a stone which he throws ahead. "Hah!" he
says, and starts to hop and
jump up to the stone in a peculiar manner. Picks it up again while
standing on one leg and looks up
at me grinning. "Hee! Hoppuscohchi!" he sings out.
I look down at the ground frowning. I did not see
the white chalk marks on the path with the curtain
of my despair covering my eyes and darkening my vision.