See the Moon?

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    I KNOW YOU THINK Im wasting my time. Youve made that perfectly clear. But Im dug these very important lunar hostility studies.<mark>藏书网</mark> 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 airpla pres?ent. But the paper must be folded in the right way. Lots of calculations and w about edges.

    Show me a man who worries about edges and Ill show you a natural-born winner. Cardinal Y agrees. bus himself worried, the Admiral of the O Sea. But he kept it quiet.

    The sun so warm on this sed porch, it re?minds me of my grandmothers pla Tampa. The same rusty creaky green glider and the same faded colored vas cushions. And at night the moon graphed by the s 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 on and the apple. And when Rutherford started out he didnt even have a detly heated laboratory. And then theres the matter of my security check -- Im waiting for the gover. Somebody told it Im insecure. Thats true.

    I suffer from a frightful illness of the mind, light-mindedness. Its not catg. You  shrink.

    Youve noticed the wall? I pin things on it, souve?nirs. There is the red hat, there the book of in?strus 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 uy, true then.

    You  see how far Ive e. 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 wao be a paihey get away with murder in my view; Mr. X. oimes agrees with me. You dont know how I envy them. They  pick up a Baby Ruth er oreet, glue it to the vas (in the right place, of course, theres that), and lo! people crowd about and cry, &quot;A real Baby Ruth er, by God, what could be realer than that!&quot; Fantastic metaphysical advantage. You hate them, if youre am?bitious.

    The Ant Farm instrus are a souvenir of Sylvia. The red hat came from Cardinal Y. Were friends, in a way.

    I wao be one, when I was young, a painter. But I couldnt stand stretg the vas. Does things to the fingernails. And thats the first place people look.

    Fragments are the only forms I trust.

    Light-minded or no, Im. . . riotous with mental health. I measure myself against the Russians, thats fair. I have here a clipping datelined Mos?cow, four young people appreherangling a swan. Thats boredom. The swans name, Borka. The sentences as follows: Tsarev, metalworker, served time previously for stealing public prop?erty, four years in a labor camp, strict regime. Roslavtsev, electri, jailed previously for taking a car on a joyride, three years and four months in a labor camp, semi-strict regime. Tatyana Voblikova (only een and a Komsomol member too), tei, one and a half years in a labor camp, degree of striess unspecified. Anna G. Kirushina, teical worker, fine of twenty per t of salary for one year. Anna objected to the strangula?tion, but softly: she helped stuff the carcass in a bag.

    The clipping is tacked up on my wall. I i it from time to time, drawing the moral. Strangling swans is wrong.

    My brother who is a very distinguished pianist . . . has no fingernails at all. Dont look its horrible. He plays under another name. And tunes his piano peculiarly, some call it sour. And renders ragas he wrote himself. A night raga played at noon  cause darkness, did you know that? Its extraordi?nary.

    He wao be an Untouchable, Paul did. That was his idea of a porary career. But then a girl walked up and touched him (slapped him, actually; its a plicated story). And he joined us, here in the imbroglio.

    My father oher hand is perfectly ?fortable, and thats not a criticism. He makes flags, banners, bunting (sometimes runs me up a shirt). There was never any question of letting my father drink from the public well. He was on the Well ittee, he decided who dipped and who didnt. Thats not a criticism. Exercises his creativ?ity, nowadays, courtesy the emerging nations. Green for the veldt that nourishes the gracile Grants gazelle, white for the purity of our revolutionary aspirations. The red for blood is uood. Thats not a criticism. Its what they all ask for.

    A call tonight frory, my son by my first wife. Seventeen and at M.I.T. already. Retly hes been asking questions. Suddenly hes scious of himself as a being with a history.

    The telephs. Then, without a greeting: Why did I have to take those little pills? What little pills? Little white fills with a &quot;W&quot; on them. Oh. Oh yes. You had some kind of a nervous disorder, for a while. How old was I? Eight. Eight or nine. What was it? Was it epilepsy? Good God no, noth?ing so fancy. We never found out what it was. It went away. What did I do? Did I fall down? No no. Your mouth trembled, that was all. You couldnt trol it. Oh, O.K. See you.

    The receiver clicks.

    Or: What did my great-grandfather do? For a living I mean? He was a ballplayer, semi-pro ball?player, for a while. The into the building business. Whod he play for? A team called the St. Augustine Rowdies, I think it was. Never heard of them. Well. . . Did he make any money? In the building business? Quite a bit. Did your father i it? No, it was tied up in a lawsuit. When the suit was over there wasnt anythi. Oh. What was the lawsuit? Great-grandfather diddled a man in a land deal. So the stoes. Oh. When did he die? Lets see, 1938 I think. What of? Heart attack. Oh. O.K. See you.

    End of versation.

    Gregory, you didnt listen to my advice. I said try the Vernacular Isles. Where fish are two for a penny and women two for a fish. But you wanted M.I.T. aron-spin-resonance spectroscopy. You didnt even crack a smile in your six-ply heather hopsag.

    Gregory yoing to have a half brother now. Youll like that, wont you? Will you half like it?

    We talked about the size of the baby, Ann and I. What could be deduced from the outside.

    I said it doesnt look very big to me. She said its big enough for us. I said we dont need such a great r big oer all. She said they cost the earth, those extra-large sizes. Our holdings in Johnsons Baby Powder to be sidered too. Wed need acres and acres. I said well put it in a Skinner box maybe. She said no child of hers. Displayed under glass like a rump roast. I said you have lately. She said I keep getting bigger whether I laugh or cry.

    Dear Ann. I dont think youve quite. . .

    What you dont uand is, its like somebody walks up to you and says, I have a battleship I t use, would you like to have a battleship. And you say, yes yes, Ive never had a battleship, Ive always wanted one. And he says, it has four six-teen-inch guns forward, and a catapult for laung sco<bdi>.</bdi>ut planes. And you say, Ive always wao launch scout planes. And he says, its yours, and then you have this battleship. And then you have to paint it, because its rusting, and  it, be?cause its dirty, and anchor it somewhere, because the Police Department wants you to get it off the streets. And the crew is g, and there are silverfish in the chartroom and a funny knog noise in Fire trol, water rising in the No. 2 hold, and the chaplain t find the Palestrina tapes for the Sunday service. And you t get anybody to sit with it. And finally you discover that what you have here is this great, big, pink-and-blue rockabye battleship.

    Ann. Im going to keep her ghostly. Just the odd bit of dialogue:

    &quot;What is little Gog doing.&quot;

    &quot;Kig.&quot;

    I dont want her bursting in on us with the fresh?ness and inality of her observations. What we need here is perspective. Shes good with Gregory though. I think he half likes her.

    Dont go. The greased-pig chase and balloon laungs e .

    I romising once. After the Elgar, a summa cum laude. The uy roud of me. It was a bright shy white new uy on the Gulf Coast. Gulls and oleanders and quick howling hur?ries. The teachers brown burly men with power boats and beer s. The president a retired ad?miral whod doiful things in the Coral Sea.

    &quot;You will be a credit to us, Gee,&quot; the admiral said. Thats not my name. Im proteg my iden?tity, what there is of it.

    Applause from the stands filled with mothers and brothers. Then following the ma a long line back to the field house to ungown. Ready to take my place at the top.

    But a pause at Pusan, and the toy train to the Chorwon Valley. Walking down a road wearing green clothes. Kreen and blad silent. The truce had been signed. I had a carbio carry. My buddy Bo Tagliabue the bonus baby, for whom the Yanks had paid thirty thousand. We whitewashed rocks to enhance our area. els came crowding to feel Bos hurling arm. Mihe whitest rocks.

    I lunched with Thais from Thailand, hot curry from great galvanized washtubs. Engineers bang?ing down the road in six-by-sixes raising red dust. My friend Gib Mandell calling Elko, Nevada on his vas-covered field telephone. &quot;Operator I crave Elko, Nevada.&quot;

    Then I was a sergeant with stripes, getting the troops out of the sun. Tagliabue a sergeant too. Triste ienea Room in Tokyo, yakking it up in Yokohama. Then back to our little tent town on the side of a hill, boosting fifty-gallon drums of heating oil tentward in the snow.

    Ozzie the jeep driver waking me in the middle of the night. &quot;They got Julian iango Tank.&quot; And up and alert as they taught us in Leadership School, over the hills to Tango, seventy miles away. Whizzing through Teapot, Tempest, Toreador, with the jeeps vas top flapping. Pfc. Julian drunk and disorderly aen up. The M.P. sergeant held out a receipt book. I signed for the bawdy remains.

    Back over the pearly Pacifi a great vessel decorated with es. A trail e peel on the pla surface. Sitting in the bow fifty miles out of San Francisco, listening to the Stateside disc jockeys chattering cha cha cha. Ready to grab my spot at the top.

    My clothes looked old and wrong. The city looked new with tall buildings raised while my back was turned. I rushed here and there visiting friends. They were burning beef in their back yards, brown burly men with beer s. The beef bla the outside, red on the inside. My friend Horace had fidelity. &quot;Listen to that bass. Thats sixty watts worth of bass, boy.&quot;

    I spoke to my father. &quot;How is business?&quot; &quot;If Alaska makes it,&quot; he said, &quot;I  buy a Hasselblad. And were keeping an eye on Hawaii.&quot; Then he photographed my veteran face, f.6 at 300. My fa?ther once a cheerleader at a great Eastern school. Jumping in the air and making fiergry down-the-field gestures at the top of his leap.

    Thats not a criticism. We have to have cheer?leaders.

    I presented myself at the Plat Office. I was on file. My pertile was the pertile of choi>９９ｌiｂ?</a>. &quot;How e you were headman of only ou?dent anization, Gee?&quot; the Plat Officer asked. Many hats for top folk was the fashion then. I said I was rounded, and showed him my slash. From the Feng Club.

    &quot;But you served your try in an overseas post.&quot;

    &quot;And regard my career plan oly typed pages with wide margins.&quot;

    &quot;Exemplary,&quot; the Plat Officer said. &quot;You seem married, mature, malleable, how would you like to affiliate yourself with us here at the old school? We have a spot for a poppyan, to write the admirals speeches. Have you ever done poppycock?&quot;

    I said no but maybe I could fake it.

    &quot;Excellent, excellent,&quot; the Plat Officer said. &quot;I see you have grasp. And you  sup at the Faculty Club. And there is a ten-per-t dist on tickets for all home games.&quot;

    The admiral shook my hand. &quot;You will be a credit to us, Gee,&quot; he said. I wrote poppycock, sometimes cockypap. At four oclock the faculty hoisted the cocktail flag. We drank Daiquiris on each others sterns. I had equipped myself -- a fibreglass runabout, someplace to think. Iadia of friendly shy new uies we went down the field on Gulf Coast afternoons with gulls, or excit?ing nights uhe tall toothpick lights. The crowd roared. Sylvia roared. Gregrew.

    There was no particular point at which I stopped being promising.

    Moonstruck I was, after a fashion. Sitting on a bench by the practice field, where the jocks ted secret signals in their underwear behind tall vas blinds. Layabout babies loafing on blas, some staked out on twelve-foot dog s. Brown mothers squatting ko knee in shifts of scarlet and green. I stared at the moons pale day?time prese seemed. . . inimical.

    Moonstruck.

    Were playing Flinch. You flinched.

    The simplest things are the most difficult to ex?plain, all authorities agree. Say I was tired of p***yc**k, if that pleases you. Its true enough.

    Sylvia went up in a puff of smoke. She didnt like unsalaried life. And couldnt bear a male ac?quaintance moon-staring in the light of day. Det people look at night.

    We had trouble with Gregory: who would get which part. She settled for three-fifths, and got I think the worst of it, the dreaming raffish Romany part that thinks sce will save us. I get matter-of-fact midnight telephone calls: My E.E. instructor shot me down. What happened? I dont know, hes an ass anyhow. Well that may be but still -- Whens the baby due? January, I told you. Yeah,  I go to Mexico City for the holidays? Ask your mother, you know she -- Theres this guy, his old man has a villa. . . . Well, we  talk about it. Yeah, was grandmother a unist? Nothing so distin?guished, she -- You said she was kicked out of Ger?many. Her family was anti-Nazi. Adler means eagle in German. Thats true. There was something called the Weimar Republic, her father -- I read about it.

    We had trouble with Gregory, we wao be stific. Toys from Procreative Playthings of Prion. ory, that Prion crowd got you ing and going. Procreative Playthings at one end and the Educational Testing Service at the other. And that serious-minded co-op nursery, that was a mistake. &quot;A growing uandiween parent and child through shared group experi?ence.&quot; I still remember poor Henry Harding III. Under &quot;Sibs&quot; on the membership roll they listed his, by age:

    26

    25

    23

    20

    19

    15

    10

    9

    8

    6

    O Mrs. Harding, havent you heard? They have these little Christmas-tree ors for the womb now, they work wonders.

    Did we do &quot;badly&quot; by Gregory? Will we do &quot;better&quot; with Gog? Such questions curl the hair. Its wiser not to ask.

    I mentioned Cardinal Y (the red hat). Hes a friend, in a way. Or rather, the subject of one of my little projects.

    I set out to study cardinals, about whom sows nothing. It seemed to me that cardinals could be known in the same way we know fishes or roses, by classification and eion. A per?verse project, perhaps, but who else has embraced this point of view? Difficult nowadays to find a point of view kinky enough to call ones own, with Sade himself being carried through the streets on the shoulders of sociologists, cheers and shouting, ticker tape unwinding from high windows. . .

    The why of Cardinal Y. Youre entitled to an explanation.

    The Cardinal rushed from the Residence waving in the air his hands, gloved in yellow pigskin it appeared, I grasped a hand, &quot;Yes, yellow pigskin!&quot; the Cardinal cried. I wrote in my book, yellow pigskin.

    Signifit detail. The pectoral cross tains nine diamonds, the scarlet soutane is laundered right on the premises.

    I asked the Cardinal questions, we had a ?versation.

    &quot;I am thinking of a happy island more beautiful than  be imagined,&quot; I said.

    &quot;I am thinking of a golden mountain which does ,&quot; he said.

    &quot;Upon what does the world rest?&quot; I asked.

    &quot;Upon an elephant,&quot; he said.

    &quot;Upon what does the elepha?&quot;

    &quot;Upon a tortoise.&quot;

    &quot;Upon what does the tortoise rest?&quot;

    &quot;Upon a red lawnmower.&quot;

    I wrote in my book, playful.

    &quot;Is there any value that has value?&quot; I asked.

    &quot;If there is any value that has value, then it must lie outside the whole sphere of what happens and is the case, for all that happens and is the case is actal,&quot; he said. He was not serious. I wrote in my book, knows the drill.

    (Oh I had heard reports, how he slunk about in the snow telling children he was Santa Claus, how he disbursed funds in unauthorized disbursements to unshaven men who came to the kit door, how his housekeeper pointedly rolled his red socks together and black socks together hinting red with red and black with black, the Cardinal patiently unrolling a red ball to get a red sod a black ball to get a black sock, which he then wore to?gether. . .)

    Cardinal Y. Hes sly.

    I was thh. I popped the Cardinal oella with a little hammer, and looked into his eyes with a little light. I tested the Cardinals stomach acidity using Universal Indicator Paper, a scale of oo ten, a spectrum of red to blue. The pH value was 1 indig high acidity. I measured the Cardinals egth using the Mia Multiphastic Muzzle Map, he had an M.M.M.M. of four over three. I sang to the Cardi?nal, the song was &quot;Stella by Starlight,&quot; he did not rea any way. I calculated the number of gal?lons o fill the Cardinals bath to a depth of ten inches (beyond which depth, the Cardinal said, he never ventured). I took the Cardinal to the ballet, the ballet was &quot;The servatory.&quot; The Car?dinal applauded at fifty-seven points. Afterward, backstage, the Cardinal danced with Plenosova, holdi arms length with a good will and an ill grace. The skirts of the scarlet soutaood out to reveal high-button shoes, and the stagehands clapped.

    I asked the Cardinal his views on the moon, he said they were the ventional ones, and that is how I know all I know about cardinals. Not enough perhaps to rear a sce of cardinalogy upon, but enough perhaps to form a basis for the iiga?tions of other iigators. My report is over there, in the blue binding, o my copy of La Geoma la Neomancie des Ans by the Sei?gneur of Salerno.

    Cardinal Y. One  measure and measure and miss the most essential thing. I liked him. I still get the odd blessing in the mail now and then.

    Too, maybe I was trying on the role. Not for myself. When a child is born, the locus of ones hopes. . . shifts, slightly. Not altogether, not all at once. But you feel it, this displat. You speak up, strike attitudes, like the mother of a tiny Lollida. Drunk with possibility once more.

    I am still wearing my yellow flower which has lasted wonderfully.

    &quot;What is Gog doing.&quot;

    &quot;Sleeping.&quot;

    You see, Gog of mine, Gog o my heart, Im just trying to give you a little briefing here. I dont want you unpleasantly surprised. I t stand a startled loard me as a sort of Distant Early Warning System. Here is the world and here are the knowledgeable knowers knowing. What  I tell you? What has been pieced together from the reports of travellers.

    Fragments are the only forms I trust.

    Look at my wall, its all there. Thats a leaf, Gog, stuck up with Scotch Tape. No no, the Scotch Tape is the shiny transparent stuff, the leaf the veined irregularly shaped. . .

    There are several sides to this axe, Gog, ?sider the photostat, &quot;Mr. W. B. Yeats Presenting Mr. Gee Moore to the Queen of the Fairies.&quot; Thats a civilized gesture, I mean Beerbohms. And when the sculptor Aristide Maillol went into the printing business he made the paper by chewing the fibers himself. Thats dedication. And here is a Polaroid photo, shows your Aunt Sylvia ating an Ant Farm together. Thats how close we were in those days. Just an Ant Farm apart.

    See the moon? It hates us.

    And now es J. J. Sullivans e-and-blue Gulf Oil truck to throw keroseo the space heater. Driver in green siren suit, red face, blond shaved head, the following rich verbal transa:

    &quot;Beautiful day.&quot;

    &quot;Certainly is.&quot;

    And now settling ba this green glider with a copy of Man. Dear Ann when I look at Man I dont want you. Unfolded Ursala Thigpen seems ever so much more desirable. A  girl too and with is, cooking, botany, praphiovels. Someoo show my slash to.

    In another month Gog leaps fully armed from the womb. What  I do for him? I  get him into A.A., I have influence. And make sure no harsh moonlight falls on his new soft head.

    Hello there Gog. We hope youll be very happy here.

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