BEING. Holy word. Being cannot be recognized unless it succeeds in Seeming. So Gorgias asserted. Yet Seeming, itself, will be weak and ineffective unless it succeeds in Being. Paradox #75.

Your skin was an ocean of sky sliding toward me. There’s ink on my thumb. Plato and Gorgias—Lou—yes, you and I—suddenly Thucydicles—are names that occur to me. There’s the unstraightened deck of my manuscript. Mad Meg. The thick rug under me. Anxiety. The tunnel of my sleeve. How can history be a record of οὐσία? of life in a chair? Endless journey. Yet I had her in it. Act pleased. I did act pleased. Don’t hold back. And I groaned as I was coming. There, between her parted hairs, I acted out my pleasure. So she was pleased, and pretended to come, too, to please me. Aaaaaaaah . . . etc. And if I like a lover lie, and the lie’s believed, hasn’t ½ of appearance become reality? Then, Lou, as you turn to me, full of the love I’ve laid inside you like a shiny ceramic egg, I am ¼ informed by the feeling I originally bewinded; love rolls round on my love like a spindle winding, enlarging me with what is mine until I fatten up from

BEING. Holy word. Being cannot be recognized unless it succeeds in Seeming, So Gorgias asserted. Yet Seeming, itself, will be weak and ineffective unless it succeeds in Being. Paradox #75.

Your skin was an ocean of sky sliding toward me. There’s ink on my thumb. Plato and Gorgias—Lou—yes, you and I—suddenly Thucydicles—are names that occur to me. There’s the unstraightened deck of my manuscript. Mad Meg. The thick rug under me. Anxiety. The tunnel of my sleeve. How can history be a record of οὐσία? of life in a chair? Endless journey. So I paid the kid off in cigarettes and candy. I was pleased. But I didn’t move a muscle, make a sound. The boy knew how. My face was that of a fellow perusing his paper, sonny beside him on the bench, sort of asleep at his side, shaded from the sun by the big man’s jewspaper. The air was as cool as his clever fingers. He knew how. Then the boy giggled and said, Mister, you’re no bigger here than I am. I didn’t mind. Perhaps it was enough like his own to give him skill, tenderness, and a tight grip when the time came, and he caught me like a shortstop grabs a grounder. Sadly I fell from

Seem to Being. The actor is reacted to, thus acts, so is, and history cannot close itself to dream and every night’s hypocrisy. I said I’m such an easy fool. It was an easy thing, to say. But I am not easy. I’m sly. I’m all difficulty like tangled hair. I admitted the charge and wrote down the sentence callously. Shouldn’t I shake when I write such lies? Mad Meg shook. For Meg was mad. Shook until he died. Of aspenation. Rattle of wind in the lungs like leaves. But I’m not father to myself to hold in fear and trembling. In fact, when I am caught by such a judge as I am when I am over me, both of us are pleased. So much for that. So much for honesty.