Last Words. William S. Burroughs
last night a Turkish Bath scene, vaguely sexual—ho hum.
I [was an] ultimate monster or drug dealer, and a child molester. Am [a] crack addict, but that only a sideline.
He loved cats and ferrets, and weasels and all sneaky killing animals. And he was into crystal balls and ectoplasm and all that unwholesome stuff.
I repeat: What the American Narcotics Dept, is doing, did do and will do, is Evil. They insist on the lie of absolute right and wrong. They want absolutes—all right. Evil from the point of view of any decent person. From the street narcs working their snitches to the kids turning in their parents.
I’m an old-fashioned person, and I don’t like informers. No matter how federal judges may be lenient with violators who have “cooperated” (rolled over) with authorities (“rolled over” is current phrase), and bear down heavy on those who “refuse to cooperate.”
Dec 1, 1996. Sunday
In a plane coming in for a landing in Paris. The plane landed in a narrow slot. Outside I could see Paris streets and then the plane angled upwards, looked ready to stall at any moment, and I felt physical fear.
“It’s going to crash!”
But it didn’t crash. Landed OK in Paris.
Paris is in many ways my favorite city. Never really got into Rome. London was always antithetical to me. Leaving NYC which is always New York. Small towns like Tangier.
December 2, 1996. Monday
Enemy have two notable weaknesses:
1. No sense of humor. They simply don’t get it.
2. They totally lack understanding of magic, and being totally oriented toward control, what they don’t understand is a menace, to be destroyed by any means—consequently they tip their hand. They don’t seem to care anymore—but famous last words: “We’ve got it made.”
Deadly by the logic of fiction.
Just can’t let them villains off scot-free?
Why Scot? Why not Swats, or Cot, Pot, Rot, Sot, slut, spot, shot, trot free—
Any case, they tend to overplay a hand. Ninety-nine percent bilious weasels.
It’s slappable—
and who is here now?—
best I can—got it back.
You never really have it till you lose it, Fritz. Till you lose it and then get it back. Few make it back from that track, Jack.
“As to what life may be worth when the honor is gone....”
“(French Naval officer in Lord Jim. One of the great characters of fiction.)
And look at the others by Conrad: Councillor Mikulin from Under Western Eyes, the Nigger “Wait” from Nigger of the Narcissus. All touched with [the] hand of creation.
Many others of course, maybe just a walk-on.
Brion Gysin hated Denton Welch. Didn’t see that it is just the petulant queerness in which he is straitjacketed—“Little Punky”—that makes his works such a great escape act.
Yes, for all of us in the Shakespeare Squadron, writing is just that: not an escape from reality, but an attempt to change reality, so [the] writer can escape the limits of reality.
The unworthies in power feel danger, like cows uneasily pawing the ground with a great “Moo.”
The song of the quick that is heard by the ears of the dead the widows ofLangley are loud in their wail and the idols are broken in the temples of Yale for the might of the Board unsmote by the sword has melted like snow in the glance of the bored
Ho hum— to look death in the eye, with no posturing lie, just one on one... who lives will see. Is Death an organism?
Way down in Tierra del Fuego—a lot of Eukodol ampules.
This horror of drugs, orchestrated by Hearst and his “yellow peril,” then Anslinger—Harrison Narcotics Act—criminals by Act of Congress. You can’t compare alcohol, cigarettes to narcotics. Why not? Because alcohol and tobacco are legal, that’s why. What nonsense is here.
What they really can’t understand is division, possession—or perhaps they understand all too well, and do not want [it] examined.
Tell any feminist I shot Joan in a state of possession, and she will scream:
“Nonsense! No such thing. HE did it.”
Opera of the Angler Fish that absorbs the male till nothing is left of him but his testicles, balls, nuts, sticking out of her body.
All of me why not take all of me so we become one big WE how great to be one great fat me Excuse me: include me out.
December 5, 1996. Thursday
Now imagine a woman dancing out rug rat?
Well, it was like he was dancing [it] out in terrible agony, something in his spine, and the smell of rotten crabs, sweet gagging stench of excrement—and death.
After the shot he collapsed on the bed and lay there inert, but something was stirring in his spine from neck to the tail—and now pieces tore loose in the eggs and then a red, glistening head emerges in reeking yellow slime—and then the whole centipede, crawling out quick.
I got out my Detective Special. Then, moving with hideous speed and purpose, it scuttled through [the] ballroom screen.
“Head it off. Must kill it.”
Too late, I turn back to the empty chrysalis of the body that once had been Parker, and even as I watched, the very flesh and bones disintegrated into a lost ballpoint pen on the floor.
Oh here it is—on the bed.
So.
December 8, 1996. Sunday
Dream last night that I was in a cubicle room with mosquitoes. (According to the news, Nov. 26,1996: dreams of insects on one can precede a deadly illness. Recall another recent dream of biting flies.)
I take train for Manhattan. Got off at 10th Street. Can I walk from here to where?
Dec 9, 1986—hum—I mean ’96
Check back on this date ten years ago.
In Paul’s dream we see a potential scenario, which should be indicated by a special mode or style—screaming in all languages known and unknown, suddenly cut off—dimmed down—old man with cat. Has 1890s look:
“Is it the end, Holmes?”
“Fraid so, old chap. Tried to get a warning out. No one could believe it. I mean, they were designed not to believe it.”
“What do you propose to do, Holmes?”
“Nothing whatever, Watson. The time for intervention is gone.”
Back to September 17,1996:
He steps to his modest balcony: to the sky, the powerful and rich of the earth on their knees beg his help.
“Aw, why dontcha ask your mother,” he snarls into the big mic, for all to hear.
The mob writhes forward, hands clasped in the [begging posture].
“Please—“
“These are unsightly tricks,’ in the words of the Immortal Bard.”
Fear! What is fear of. What is subject afraid of? The unknown?
Of course not. The half-known, the you-don’t-want-to-know. And what is that?
A reed in water—hieroglyph