Thomas Lowe Taylor -- JFK: The Adirondack Diary

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June 19, 1992

Masturbated all day again; nothing seems to come of it.
I can't move anything but my right arm. It's dark here.
What a headache! Sometimes I feel like my brain's in
a drawer behind me, connected to my body with silver wires.
What a gloom. O, where are they now, the Norma Jeans, the
Betties, the cute little cupcakes that used to thrill me--
I'm chilled to the bone and it's dark here and I don't
like anything any more. My appetite's gone and I'm getting
depressed. Oh well. Relax and enjoy it they said, but
this darkness is overwhelming me. I can't really see the
light at the end of the, wha, runnel? Funnel? Can't
even think about it, it's too depressing. Turn on the light!

2
So dark. I opened my eyes and something fell off,
sounded like a couple of quarters hitting the side of
side of this, this--I don't know where I am at all,
but I can hear something like, uh, somebody trying
to light a Bic, scritch-scritch. No points of light
anywhere in this gloom. We're driving along this
country road and it's a beautiful day, so many cars
in front of me and behind, with their little flags.
Look, there's a town, Dufur, and it says on the,
a billboard, population unknown, and the phrase,
"Ask not what you can do for Dufur, ask what
Dufur can do for you." I like that; it should be
in a speech or something. I'll have to use it.

3
I can't resist any more, I would call you to come
around and let me in on the great secret. But nobody
calls my name anymore, I think they've forgotten
everything. Later on I'll get the rest in order,
so there's no doubts about anything at all in the
name you have for love. Perhaps it's too long ago
to remember what went on anyway. But here it is,
the here-and-now. Too dark to see and too late to ask.
I'd go on, but what's the point, the statues all
broken, the lights gone out, I don't know any more...
You'll have to ask John about it, he'll remember, he
knows more than he's telling you anyway, you know that....

4
Fragments, falling, radio falling, on the way to where
you kept off from what, from what's going on, into the
eternal light, my heart burning like there's an eternal
fire on it, must remember my antacids, it hurts so bad,
but nobody calls any more, and the flowers have wilted,
the bloody clothes, the body close, where have all my
powers gone? Flowers. I can't remember my name, even.
But the film, I've seen that film a thousand times, and
I don't remember a thing about it, it was a nice day, even,
and I walked into the TV studio and said some smartass
thing, and they turned and said, "The President's been shot."
And when they turned, I could see it was serious.

5
Even the black crows have subsided. Flown away. No more
to sing my name within the stretch of highway I call my own.
No more distances relieved by your hand on my shoulder, no
more love between the anchors in the distance, melting from
one side to the other. It is cold and dark here where I am,
my heart has grown weary and I no longer remember my name.
It is too late to cry and I am too numb to even make the first
move if I were to love you again, how would I start? What
is the first page of the story and how did I get here? It is
night, and the darkness remains after I close my eyes. Where
am I, now that it is finished and done with, and where are my
children, and what are they doing today, I am so tired....

6
No more distance to the pleasures. No mere pressure
to your name in my eyes, forlorn presences determinate
however insulated, however informal lassitude abandoned
by the lesser terms for forgiveness, as I have no longer
any ties to do so, but am resting supinely in the darkness
of my own history, unrecommended unto others in the loneliness
of their own hearts, left by the choices they have made
and relegated to the portions thereof, whereby what is
made is also left alone to be what it is in the silence
of the heart's woe, and made of love by the song one sings
in the midst of others, in the longing of the heart.
The heart's longing has your own name written on it.

7
To become who we are in the isolation of what we have come
to inhabit, and be made into light by the thronging of the bell.
There is the moment of our own discord, and here is the term
we have made for forgiveness, that history will undo its measure
and lean forever in the term of light which we are become, here
in the moment of our own lives, there in the turmoil of what
we have become, and in the senses bereft nor abandoned, here
in the light of history's own terms, we are alone in the longing
after light of which we are sum and distance, we are alone
in the turmoil of the moment and abandoned to ourselves by
the terms of which we are made, unto no one made simple but
located in the hours of the day, into these meetings becalmed.

8
Within the light and dark of which we are part and sum,
we are made one in the seeming of who we are to others,
and in their love made sum and part. This is the hour of
which we spoke, and we are the sentinels of the hour made
into the light of which we are the final emanations. You
are the name of my own light, as love is the hour and light
is the sum. Whomsoever has abandoned me, let him deny that
history is the calling from which we have not looked aside,
but laid to rest the fire and the flame of history in its
own becoming what it is, as here we have passed the destiny
of the moment and become what we have feared, allowances for
the night are denied in these thousand points of darkness.

9
Of whom are we name and density, spared by the summary of the
moment from the names you've left along the way? Denying it is
no good; there are no more denials as the crows have flown into
the eye of the beholder, as the destiny of the hour has become
more a prophecy than a denial, as history has become a movie and
not a story, there you are abandoned in your own preference to
the real, as you are loaned to the other of whom we speak, and
made total in the summary of your doubts. Who has left me here
in this darkness, who has moved me from the mountain to the grave
if not myself, and by what choice have I lost my soul if not
by my own hand. Is it a suicide of the soul that has left me
here in the wilderness of my own ambitions, my need to be real?

10
This is the crossing, this is the moment when I leave my body
and transcend into the lighted space of which we have spoken, this
is the moment of which we have not been witness, and it is in the
lessons of the past that the hours have moved aside, have entered
the conscience of the heart, have become the name of the hours we
have left behind. You are the name of my heart and I welcome you
into the spaces left behind. This is the day we move ahead, and
this is the time we leave the house of our other parents. There
is no light in the new world, there is only the feeling of the heart
and the timing of the light, this is the moment that we follow
in within the mood of the day and the terms of its innocence.
This is the home of the heart's woe and temper, this is the moon.

11
Outside, a dove has fallen on the ground. It lifts its head
slowly and rests it again against the wall. Its feathers
are taut against its body, but it is crumpled. Perhaps it
is sweating, I cannot tell. The man who picks bottles out
of the trashcans is back again. He is well dressed and carries
a plastic bag which makes him look like a business man who
is carrying his groceries home. He walks with the distracted
air of a man collecting bottles for a living. I can see the
soles of his shoes and he has holes in them, but otherwise he
looks like any other man out collecting bottles from the trash
cans. It is cold in my heart and there is no air there. Why
have I fallen and forgotten my name? There is no one here.

12
You are with me in my indifference, and I can hear the cries
of the others in their own immensity and loneliness.
There is nothing to do about the destiny we have chosen,
and we have come into this airless state within the
confines of our own time and space. Yours is the name I
have been given to call for this pastoral reminiscence;
and when the wind blows, I hear my name blown between the leaves
and the cries of the others in their own loneliness. What
is the hour and whose is the term of silence to which
we are drawn by the allocations of other hearts? There
is no distance and there is no other immensity but the one
which surrounds me, and I am the only thing in this silence.

13
This is the distance, this darkness without pity or name.
This is the hour of which we spoke and yours is the name I
have been given and yet still there is no answering to the
rushing of the tides and the beating of the heart which has
no name. The air is still and quiet and there are no more
songs. Why have I come to this place and whose is the term
of silence with which I have been honored? There is no
answering machine hooked up to my brain, and still it rests
in the silence of the drawer behind me, pulsating with the
artificial silver of the plated wires which are plunged into
the spaces behind me, and there are visitors about whom
I know nothing, and yet there is nothing here within me.

13
Now is the time of our own choosing. This is the place and
now is the time, that much I have learned in this darkness
from which there is no rescue. The light beats about me, but
I can't form it into shape or distance. There are words taped
the furniture around me, but I can't read them. It is quiet
here and yet there is a semblance of motion to the eloquence
of their gestures and the quietude of their resignation. Perhaps
they, too, have forgotten who I am, just as I have. And perhaps
it no longer matters, as this is the hour of which we have
already spoken. There are no others in the silence of my
airless heart, and there is no beating, pulsating pressure from
within. It is dark and it is quiet and it is where I am.

14
Yours is the name love gives me, and yet love is the distance
from here to there. I cannot move. I am silent in this
enclosed space. I am nameless within the silence of my own
destiny, I am alone in the hours of my hands and feet, I am
removed from the passions of the time and yet there are no
tears and there is no distance between us. Here is the moon
and there is the dove fallen upon the ground, its head rising
and falling with the last vestiges of its life. No one sees
the dove upon the ground. The dove will soon be forgotten and
the hours will no longer pass between us. Soon, even the wires
will disintegrate between what is left of me and the drawer
behind me. Soon there will be no silence in my airless heart.

15
And there will be no darkness. There will be nothing at all.
Love is the anchor along the sides of the wall. Love is the
term we have for forgiveness. You are the name love gives to
forgiveness, and yours is the name I have been given. Now
is the time to call out, and I am calling out to you to come
across time and space and live in the darkness of which I
am part and sum. This is the hour and yours is the name love
gives to light. This is the moon and I am the silence. Here
is the term and there is the line across the sand across which
no one passes. The lights have gone out and now is the time.
Rocks are forming outside. They are growing into flowers of
lava and time. Outside, the light is shining into my eyes.

[c] 1992
Thomas Lowe Taylor
Susan Smith Nash
first published by Texture Press, Norman OK 1992