"Painting isn't an aesthetic operation, it's a form of magic designed as a mediator between this strange hostile world and us, a way of seizing power by giving form to our terrors as well as our desires" --Pablo Picasso "If it isn't art, it's madness, do you understand?" --Gabby Segul "I pretend to be mad on purpose, for my own aims" --Vaslav Nijinsky "It didn't hurt me, not one bit" --Moisha Segul "This city is full of people who are slowly sliding down....Most of them resist at first; but then there are these faded, aging girls who constantly let themselves slip over without a struggle, strong girls, still unused in their innermost selves, who have never been loved" --Rainer Maria Rilke "Debbie Doobie for President" --Debbie Doobie "Love is always poor; and far from being tender and beautiful..., he is hard and rough and unshod and homeless, lying always on the ground without bedding, sleeping by the doors and in the streets in the open air, having his mother's nature, always dwelling with want. But from his father again he has designs upon beautiful and good things, being brave and go-ahead and high-strung, and...a successful coveter of wisdom, a philosopher all his days, a great wizard and sorcerer and sophist" --Plato "You respond like a magic dream" --Ilyich Kolokol "`He's dreaming now,' said Tweedledee, `and what do you think he's dreaming about?' "Alice said, `Nobody can guess that.' '`Why, about you!' Tweedledee exclaimed, clapping his hands triumphantly. `And if he left off dreaming about you, where do you suppose you'd be?' "`Where I am now, of course,' said Alice. "`Not you!' Tweedledee retorted contemptuously. `You'd be nowhere. Why you're only a sort of thing in his dream!' "'If that there King was to wake,' added Tweedledum, `you'd go out--bang!--just like a candle!'" --Lewis Carroll "Visit Uncle Moisha, it shouldn't kill you the whole day. I know in the home he is lonely for a family face" --Pesha Segul "A dream not interpreted is like a letter unread" --Talmud "This is my letter to the world, that never wrote to me"--Emily Dickinson "When this you see, remember me" --Ida Tweety Epigraphs from Secret Correspondence |
Secret CorrespondenceWed.?--James's magic uncle was Rasputin. It came back to me today as I read about sexual phantoms bloated with passion. Is Uncle trying to warn me? The wizard arouses heat in the woman he would possess. Her enamoured response brings into existence phantasms of lust. He uses these to bind her soul to his. What are the tricks of the demon lover? He shoots her with pangs of yearning--burning arrows that give the impression he has fallen under her spell. Flames ping out his eyes like hidden, unwilling revelations of desire, but they are really erotic spirits that, once inside her, inflate till she is gorged on phantoms, swollen with lust, and falls heavy as a passion fruit to rot. The magus must be in control at all times. In sorcery one gains what others give up. The sorcerer pretends uncontrollable lust; all the while, detached, he observes precious fluids spill, laps them. If he but once succumbs to his own desire, his imps have him to torture eternally, tickle tickle, with his own scorchery. What must it be to burn and not be consumed, to reach always for a climax never come, in the heat of passion to detach and observe one's victim writhe? Even as he burns he remains cold. The higher his indifference leaps, the more excruciating his victim's raging...and the tighter the ropes that tie her to his will like a witch to a stake. Do you know how eagles fuck? They soar above clouds and swoop in ecstasy, joined falling almost to the ground. But something stops them short; one eagle must take his eye off phantasy or eagles would be as extinct as phoenixes. In such a way does a magus love, hot and hard and never there. He injects invisible unejaculated seed to work from inside like a maggot, infatuating and infesting, till she makes him a nest, a home for wandering phantasms in her breast. August 2, 1953 On this day I am begining a record to set the truth down once and for all that Molly Segul is no longer my wife and if I should take her back into this apartment, she should live so. I am writing to set the record straight. I don't know what she says. She makes up stories. She stole my money. She stole my son and daughter. I come home last month after sewing a whole day gray pants, blue pants, black thread, white thread, buttons, snip, snap. If I say a word to a neighbor, it's "Shah, Moisha, they'll dock us." It's hot in the shop, stinking from bodies and wool. In summer it's winter garments, in winter, summer. Machines whirr. Sometimes in the machine I hear a voice. Wasn't there a group of angels in heaven once, angels of the wheels? I think there is an angel in the factory. I don't pay attention. If the angel wants to kibitz he must wait till I go on my break. I'm not going to get docked because an angel wants to talk union. Today the angel said, "Moisha, do not despair. Molly will be sorry. We hold you cupped in our hands. We spit on Molly, she thinks it's raining." I laugh, my neighbors turn around. "What's so funny?" I just laugh, put my fingers to my lips, point to the shop steward. copyright © 1990 by Marcia Golub All rights reserved |
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