Brett or Something Close

a long time ago, i worked on a movie in houston. i met a few actors on location and hung out with them. the red hot chili peppers were on that shoot too, they were cool, but i knew those guys from l.a. brett was no actor, he was art department.

the man who set fire to his house because of me

there was a man. he lived next door. he was always in my garden. i had been lost and broken at nineteen and came back to my parent's guest house to heal. it was in a neighborhood with security guards around the clock.

i was attending UCLA (the first time) and riddled with the kind of headaches that make you throw up. the doctors couldn't find anything wrong with me. but, i was tested like a lab rat. many days i didn't make it to class because i couldn't see around the cluster of light that was caught in my eye. later i found out i was having some kind of seizure brought on by all the dieting.

anyway, one day the next door neighbors house was on fire. i'd had a premonition about it the night before, but never told anyone because how can you be responsible if you see a thing before it happens? no one would believe you anyway, they'd think you made it up.

i have had a lot of things happen to me that sound made up. that's why it's important to write it all down.

i came outside, like everyone. i got dressed first, because it was back when I still thought it mattered how i appeared to the outside world. the man had set his own house on fire. i remember my parents asking me what kind of relationship i had with the man.

i only said, "you mean the dude in the kumquats? he was on the property a lot and smiled and waved when i left." i wasn't a person yet. i didn't know he wanted to talk to me and i was very sick at the time.

my parents asked a few more times about it. they, or the man, or the wife of the man thought the arson had to do with me. not that i did it, but that the man did it in reaction to his imaginary relationship with me. i never knew what happened to that man or his wife.

they were german. my german neighbors.

Henry Miller to Anais Nin

This is a great letter. Henry Miller, to Anais Nin. A love letter of sorts.

August 14, 1932 

Anais:

Don't expect me to be sane anymore. Don't let's be sensible. It was a marriage at Louveciennes—you can't dispute it. I came away with pieces of you sticking to me; I am walking about, swimming, in an ocean of blood, your Andalusian blood, distilled and poisonous. Everything I do and say and think relates back to the marriage. I saw you as the mistress of your home, a Moor with a heavy face, a negress with a white body, eyes all over your skin, woman, woman, woman. I can't see how I can go on living away from you—these intermissions are death. How did it seem to you when Hugo came back? Was I still there? I can't picture you moving about with him as you did with me. Legs closed. Frailty. Sweet, treacherous acquiescence. Bird docility. You became a woman with me. I was almost terrified by it. You are not just thirty years old—you are a thousand years old.

Here I am back and still smouldering with passion, like wine smoking. Not a passion any longer for flesh, but a complete hunger for you, a devouring hunger. I read the paper about suicides and murders and I understand it all thoroughly. I feel murderous, suicidal. I feel somehow that it is a disgrace to do nothing, to just bide one's time, to take it philosophically, to be sensible. Where has gone the time when men fought, killed, died for a glove, a glance, etc? (A victrola is playing that terrible aria from Madama Butterfly—"Some day he'll come!")

I still hear you singing in the kitchen—a sort of inharmonic, monotonous Cuban wail. I know you're happy in the kitchen and the meal you're cooking is the best meal we ever ate together. I know you would scald yourself and not complain. I feel the greatest peace and joy sitting in the dining room listening to you rustling about, your dress like the goddess Indra studded with a thousand eyes.

Anais, I only thought I loved you before; it was nothing like this certainty that's in me now. Was all this so wonderful only because it was brief and stolen? Were we acting for each other, to each other? Was I less I, or more I, and you less or more you? Is it madness to believe that this could go on? When and where would the drab moments begin? I study you so much to discover the possible flaws, the weak points, the danger zones. I don't find them—not any. That means I am in love, blind, blind. To be blind forever! (Now they're singing "Heaven and Ocean" from La Gioconda.)

I picture you playing the records over and over—Hugo's records. "Parlez moi d amour." The double life, double taste, double joy and misery. How you must be furrowed and ploughed by it. I know all that, but I can't do anything to prevent it. I wish indeed it were me who had to endure it. I know now your eyes are wide open. Certain things you will never believe anymore, certain gestures you will never repeat, certain sorrows, misgivings, you will never again experience. A kind of white criminal fervor in your tenderness and cruelty. Neither remorse nor vengeance, neither sorrow nor guilt. A living it out, with nothing to save you from the abysm but a high hope, a faith, a joy that you tasted, that you can repeat when you will. 

All morning I was at my notes, ferreting through my life records, wondering where to begin, how to make a start, seeing not just another book before me but a life of books. But I don't begin. The walls are completely bare—I had taken everything down before going to meet you. It is as though I had made ready to leave for good. The spots on the walls stand out—where our heads rested. While it thunders and lightnings I lie on the bed and go through wild dreams. We're in Seville and then in Fez and then in Capri and then in Havana. We're journeying constantly, but there is always a machine and books, and your body is always close to me and the look in your eyes never changes. People are saying we will be miserable, we will regret, but we are happy, we are laughing always, we are singing. We are talking Spanish and French and Arabic and Turkish. We are admitted everywhere and they strew our path with flowers. 

I say this is a wild dream—but it is this dream I want to realize. Life and literature combined, love the dynamo, you with your chameleon's soul giving me a thousand loves, being anchored always in no matter what storm, home wherever we are. In the mornings, continuing where we left off. Resurrection after resurrection. You asserting yourself, getting the rich varied life you desire; and the more you assert yourself the more you want me, need me. Your voice getting hoarser, deeper, your eyes blacker, your blood thicker, your body fuller. A voluptuous servility and tyrannical necessity. More cruel now than before—consciously, wilfully cruel. The insatiable delight of experience.

HVM