I like to stand in the middle of the room and imagine my bed being made simple, what things would be like if I had notes I wrote for myself on the glass or metal fridge. If the bed had one blanket, was on the floor with one pillow, whiteish, and a small 4 compartment shelf in the corner with the books, this would be the only furniture. No one enters the room. I would have to be more self involved, more internally entrenched, which feels impossible in both directions. I am both a monk and pastor, opposite opposite, both projecting out out blab blabing and tucking it in. I explained to L that I know it is all too much, the curtains and the flags, the instruments and the books, I understood it is the room that reveals the habits and the management. I know that L does not really understand, that he is thinking about dancing.
The epic of Gilgamesh teaches us about different ways of being human, about how you can be a king then a god (though really, a god then a king) and how to be utterly idiotic and meant for garb and properness. How you can be the wild man, how sex will be you introduction to civility, then the person you have sex with will be your mother and get you a job and trim your hair and give you clothes, an ancient story, a wet dream. The people ask the lecturer about being gay, about women writers, and I understand that they are looking for permission in the ancient texts. At the bar this slightly–older–than–me guy is leaning on the rim of the bar and explaining to the bartender the basic premise of Gilgamesh. I see him tucked into his small patterned bed, mother on the edge. The bartender, I understand closer to myself; she talks about using a small shitty field recorder to record the lectures and transcribe them for some online thing. He asks her to turn off the light, tuck in the sides. An ancient story, a wet dream. A man sitting alone in a high chair reading something moderate keeps looking over here and I do the experiment where I stare back and see if I can make him leave. Gilgamesh was only 2/3 God yet immortal, he may be one of the most immortal gods I can think of, older than God god and Beowolf and Ahab. Still people crouch and read the tablets. The walls of Uruk (the ruins of the walls) still stand south of Baghdad.
On the train back from seeing A I am reading a slim volume in the right seat near the window. I am backwards to the movement of the train. A woman approaches me, gesturing and smiling. I think she is asking if she can sit down, and then I think she is complimenting my coat. I smile and say yes and thank you. No no no, waving her hands, she points at my book, I work for that publishing house, I work in translation. She hasn't read it but tells me about another translated novel that made them a bunch of money, it's also a story of a woman alone. She seems exasperated about this other book, these people are so excited by this concept and think it's new but I'm like have you even read Beckett or Koeppen, go read that and then tell me how you feel. I tell her to read this book, she really should, that all the volumes are just one book and they probably split them up to sell more copies or get readers interested. She keeps interrupting herself to insist I go back to reading, she doesn't want to keep me. I like her grey hair and loud voice and tell her (I say this only in my head, out loud I just smile) I can read things anytime, it's rare that someone nice and unthreatening approaches you on the train. I'm aware of the packed train car listening in, my head is fuzzy cotton inside from the beer and lateness and so I don't mind. She talks about "the poets", about how she's supposed to network with rich fucks but ends up just talking to "the poets". This makes me laugh, someone behind us on the train coughs and I wonder if it's a muffled laugh. We are like the monk and the pastor. She writes the weekly literary event review M and I read; she's the one who led me to the Gilgamesh lecture in the bar backroom. I tell her about this, about how I thought it would be crotchety and high-minded, and that it was, but that it was also uniquely indulgent, comical, interesting. I smiled slightly to myself through the question-asking portion of the evening. I enjoyed the ice in glass clink clinking that punctuated answers from the lecturer. I am in sync with the old man seated in front of me, we raise our glasses and drink at the same time, without fail. The guy seated next to E and I has a beer and keeps saying jokes to himself during the lecture. I like him. He reminds me of a history teacher or somebody's dad, I imagine he has 2 children. As the evening goes on the history teacher starts leaning over to E and I and telling us the jokes. The man in front of us, not the one I'm drinking with, the silent man, looks like my Opa, the dead one. He is sturdy and silent, his head is shiny in the middle. His wife asks a question, something about lost oral histories, and at the end of the lecturer's response the silent shining man says and yet we speak. The lecturer says, pardon me? and asks him to repeat, and yet we speak, asked to repeat again, and yet we speak! He says it the last time with certain triumph.
My room is sweaty this morning, the jackhammer is back at it on the corner and my bed shakes, the bowls rattle. If the bed was made simple it would be silent, no coin clinking instruments, no desk wood against the wall, frames threatening to come down. Though I am also certain that I would have no time for A or L or E or D or M or J or P or 123 or field recorder or the train woman, things would be much to entrenched, my mind would be the clean palace. And yet we speak!!
