side of the seawall with smaller rocks and finally at sundown with bent head over my sniffing endeavors (the way a kid sniffles when he’s been playing all day) I start inserting tiny pebbles in the spaces between the stones so that no water can sneak over to wash away the shore, even down to the tiniest sand, a perfect seawall, which I top with a wood plank for everybody to kneel on when they come there to fetch their holy water—Looking up from this work of an entire day, from noon till sundown, amazed to see where I was, who I was, what I’d done—The absolute innocence like of Indian fashioning a canoe all alone in the woods—And as I say only weeks earlier I’d fallen flat on my head in the Bowery and everybody thought Id hurt myself—So I make supper with a happy song and go out in the foggy moonlight (the moon sent its white luminescence through) and marveled to watch the new swift gurgling clear water run with its pretty flashes of light—“And when the fog’s over and the stars and the moon come out at night it’ll be a beautiful sight.”
And such things—A whole mess of little joys like that amazing me when I came back in the horror of later see how they’d all changed and become sinister, even my poor little wood platform and mill race when my eyes and my stomach nauseous and my soul screaming a thousand babbling words, oh—It’s hard to explain and best thing to do is not be false.
