Unspeakable Practices, Unnatural Acts 精彩片段：
See the Moon?
I KNOW YOU THINK Im wasting my time. Youve made that perfectly clear. But Im conducting these very important lunar hostility studies. And its not you wholl have to leave the warm safe capsule. And dip a toe into the threatening lunar surround.
I am still wearing my yellow flower which has lasted wonderfully.
My methods may seem a touch irregular. Have to do chiefly with folded paper airplanes at pres?ent. But the paper must be folded in the right way. Lots of calculations and worrying about edges.
Show me a man who worries about edges and Ill show you a natural-born winner. Cardinal Y agrees. Columbus himself worried, the Admiral of the Ocean Sea. But he kept it quiet.
The sun so warm on this screened porch, it re?minds me of my grandmothers place in Tampa. The same rusty creaky green glider and the same faded colored canvas cushions. And at night the moon graphed by the screen wire, if you squint.
The Sea of Tranquillity occupying squares 47 through 108.
See the moon? It hates us.
My methods are homely but remember Newton and the apple. And when Rutherford started out he didnt even have a decently heated laboratory. And then theres the matter of my security check -- Im waiting for the government. Somebody told it Im insecure. Thats true.
I suffer from a frightful illness of the mind, light-mindedness. Its not catching. You neednt shrink.
Youve noticed the wall? I pin things on it, souve?nirs. There is the red hat, there the book of in?structions for the Ant Farm. And this is a traffic ticket written on a saints day (which saint? I dont remember) in 1954 just outside a fat little town (which town? I dont remember) in Ohio by a cop who asked me what I did. I said I wrote poppy?cock for the president of a university, true then.
You can see how far Ive come. Lunar hostility studies arent for everyone.
Its my hope that these. . . souvenirs. . . will someday merge, blur -- cohere is the word, maybe -- into something meaningful. A grand word, mean?ingful. What do I look for? A work of art, Ill not accept anything less. Yes I know its shatteringly ingenuous but I wanted to be a painter. They get away with murder in my view; Mr. X. on the Times agrees with me. You dont know how I envy them. They can pick up a Baby Ruth wrapper on the street, glue it to the canvas (in the right place, of course, theres that), and lo! people crowd about and cry, "A real Baby Ruth wrapper, by God, what could be realer than that!" Fantastic metaphysical advantage. You hate them, if youre am?bitious.
The Ant Farm instructions are a souvenir of Sylvia. The red hat came from Cardinal Y. Were friends, in a way.
I wanted to be one, when I was young, a painter. But I couldnt stand stretching the canvas. Does things to the fingernails. And thats the first place people look.