Yoga, &c.

1 Everything is sacred

The heat was the first thing one remembered. The manycolored buildings fading silently in the dusk, the shirtless bigbellied men roaming the streets, the scurrying yuppies afraid of being mugged, the cars, one after another. Then a phone call.

2 Hail to the thief

Listen, I shouted.

3 Noon

Three in the afternoon is the perfect time to smoke. Seven in the evening the perfect time for yoga. A half-hour past midnight the perfect time for sex—or masturbation. Six in the morning the perfect time to walk. Two in the afternoon the perfect time for coffee. Eight in the morning the perfect time to cry. Noon the perfect time to forget you are alive.

4 Everything is sacred, 2

I don’t remember the last time I cried or finished a book.

5

Se te é impossível viver só nasceste escravo. —Pessoa

(Solitude is a leisure denied to slaves).

6

I’ve learned yesterday listening to your mother how like Ravel your father lost his mind after finishing his masterpiece, which is to say: you. I’d like to think I’m being poetic, believing love requires either ceaseless praise or pointless mystery. Who? You said. Then, forgetting of that false Spaniard, I told you how great men, how great artists, are seen by the world and by themselves as useless once the art they shall be immortalised for is finished. But, hey, am I boring you, I asked. Yes, you said.

7 Eternal damnation awaits you, brother

Where but here and now—