Chapters (12)
(but not very often), and when it is,
it remembers itself,
I remember it, I think it and know it.
It’s not worth searching; the more you look
the more distant it seems, the better it hides.
You have to forget it completely,
almost to the point of suicide
(because without it life is worthless)
(because those who’ve never known it think life is worthless)
(which is why the world creaks as it turns).
This is my illness, my reason for living.
* * *
I’ve seen God
flash by in the eyes of a whore,
give me signs with an ant’s antennae,
turn to wine in a bunch of grapes in the dust,
appear before me in a dream as a disgusting giant slug;
I’ve seen God in a sunbeam, giving slanted life to the
afternoon,
in my lover’s purple jacket after a storm,
in a red traffic light,
in a stubborn bee sucking at a slight, wilted flower,
trampled and sad in the Plaza Congreso.
I have even seen God in a church.
March 11, 1990
I dreamed I was a photographer, running to and fro enthusiastically with a camera. I was somewhere very large, a kind of warehouse or depot, though it could also have been the lobby of a big hotel, and I was trying to find the right angle from which to photograph two lesbians so that, although they were located fairly far apart in the huge space and even at different heights (maybe one was up some stairs), their mouths met in a way that suggested a kiss. They both had their lips painted a deep red. The one closest to the camera was in profile; the other, who was higher up, was facing me.
Later I find myself aboard an enormous double-decker bus—on the roof, or in an open-top area on the upper level. I’m photographing or filming scenes from a big city. All of a sudden there’s a commotion, something happening in the distance, like waves crashing over skyscrapers. People tell me it’s the end of the world. I photograph the chaos, which is far away and difficult to make out, and feel excited and strangely elated. I wake up with tachycardia.
When I go back to sleep, someone’s telling a story (and I see the story taking place), or I’m watching a film, although somehow I’m also part of the action. There’s a brown rabbit buried in the snow, and he’s burrowing to and fro under the surface, moving quickly from place to place. I start to worry he’s going to hit something, a tree or a rock, because suddenly he seems hesitant, but then I find that he’s learned to communicate with a dove by means of a system that, in the dream, was explained in great detail. The dove was flying above the rabbit’s head, above the snow, and guiding his movements.