Richard Hell's Disgusting |
slipcase on each copy of the signed edition of twenty-six
two of the four variant front covers
two of the four variant front covers
an example of Josh Smith's hand-made unique endpapers
another example of Josh Smith's hand-made unique endpapers
pages 10-11--see text just below here
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New Years Day, 2002
I remember on my twenty-first birthday
we took acid and my girlfriend
said, "You know, you're only twenty-one once"
and I suddenly realized
I would never have a twenty-first birthday again
and I started crying.
I don't want 2001
to end. Actually I don't
want One to end.
I don't want Zero to stop.
It's not that I want to hold on to the past
but just to have everything in the present.
I guess that's why they made up Jesus Christ
and put him in the middle of the winter
seven days before New Year's
and had everybody give each other presents.
I would like to prophesy the end of time and the coming
of exquisite legs and golden auras among the hilltops and clouds
but it'll never happen. Well, not "never" exactly--
it just did happen. That counts, right?
Poets are fools but I don't give a fuck
anymore. Life's only good when it's well written.
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pages 14-15--see text just below here
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Paris March 27-28 2004
Lizzy. Warm talk for four hours in hospital the day after I arrive. She's still planning Corsica. Thin and hobbled but all herself--joking, affectionate, caustic about foolishness.
Then next day meet her and Kim and Samirah for restaurant lunch and L starts weakening. Stands and fumbles for pill and with transparent control-box linked to the tubes that reach into her. She's sweating. Must return to hospital. Later Kim says they were both crying in car, L despairing she can't keep up pretense… Is she feeling necessity of putting on front for me? Kim tells me she actually won't yet acknowledge she's dying. And how could she be in Corsica when she needs such serious daily care? I have to talk to her frankly.
Then today (yesterday) (Saturday) I'm with her all day alone, eight hours always talking. To start with I tell her please not to pretend with me and she says she's not and won't. I say she should be like my wife (Sheelagh's idea). That morning she accidentally leaves a little dollop of shit on the bed and I feel privileged and clean it up. Later I shop for diapers for her. Twice she cries. She explains how important Corsica is. She says if she dies in two days after she gets there it's better than waiting in hospital to die. It's clear she is fully aware of her situation. The day before, alone, I cried, but not with her yesterday.
Paris April 4
Leaving Corsica, L on terrace waving. Her face which is now face of 75-80 year old woman because of her illness and how it has her eating almost nothing, but as she waves goodbye looks childlike in its sobbing release into sadness.
New York June 7
In the morning I find email from Marshall with "?" subject line saying if I hadn't heard about Bob, call. Can't get through to cell. Call home, Gillian answers. I curse when I hear. Jim's there. He says he thinks it's not because Bob missed Alice but that he couldn't take care of himself. Alice did everything for him. That Jim is cold blooded but no doubt that's why Bob liked him so much. He was probably Quine's best friend.
Sheelagh reminds me to call Ivan. I do. I tell Ivan, as I did Jim, that I'd
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