The Other
Someday girl (if you'll let me be so familiar) you'll read this, whoever you are, And if you are the 'right girl'. . . Well I don't know what. (It's not my words that are important, it's me, and you'll know that; having as you will have a sacred view of this shimmering life, knowing well how momentary, how final, it is.)
And if you aren't the 'right girl'—well then you are probably a 'partly-right girl'—n'est-ce pas? Or is it something else? (Well I'm no futurologist, you know.)
But let's say you are the right girl . . . pretend . . .
Probably your hair is dark, or maybe brown, probably not blond—but why quibble? Anyway, it won't be Miss Clarol hair—won't be “Only her hairdresser knows for sure” hair.
And of course you'll have thrown all your earrings out, or given them away to poor friends (meaning, if they wear earrings, well poor friends, how we weep for you!)
But why harp on all that? You're the 'right girl', so no need for fuss. No, serious things, keep in mind serious things.
I want to hug you right through the pages. Right now, as I write this, oh I want to hug you. I would if I could, without a thought, and you know it. I want to hug, hug, hug—but poor me, I can only write, write, write.
If I could somehow slip my fingers through these words, or the pages, slip them through to you as you are reading this—oh I just want to touch you, right girl. Just a little finger-touch!
Agh! But this paper is a jail. It doesn't let me.
Words, words, they are so vain. They're no good at all, really. My words aren't me—I can't touch through my words—though God, I try, I really try. And I can imagine my touching through words—but I can't really do it, can't quite manage it.
Words seem to fall stillborn from me, always dead, because structured and set, never quick with the unexplainable touchableness of life. Life is touchable—a touching. That's the mystery. How life can be so touchable, so valuable, so momentary and final. All quick. All quivering, vital, physical. Oh I want to touch you. And I can't.
My life seems so surely headed for crash or for quick, living landing. Closer and closer the point of impact is coming, nearing, rising greatly upon me, all a sudden upon me. Will I crash? Will I fail, shatter into sterile pieces of pure frustration, pure meaninglessness? Or will there be a landing, a soft touch?
There are two darks. My plane drops from the sun towards—which one? I am after earth; to plant my feet in earth, and kiss the ground, darkly, with wonderful crazy blind life. I want the dark gods of life, of sheer joy. The plane dips down. Where to land? I am gliding down, belly towards earth, and no landing field in sight. Where to land? Where to be taken in? Must I crash? Is that my fate, to crash?
I want life—must I crash? Must the crash of final frustration always be the penalty for wanting life?
The wise men who say, “Without its illusions and myths, life would not be worth living, would be but a miserable, worthless burden”—must they always be right?
I expect too much out of life, I have been told. Is that it? Underneath it all, is there nothing meaningful, ultimate? If we strip away our hopes of afterlife, of eternity—is there nothing left? Must I crash? Must I find only meaninglessness?
I know earth is down there—I know touch is there to be had. I know it is possible. But must I crash? Must there be no way for me? Is expecting life out of life too much?
Everything depends on my one life. If I crash, God is dead. God dies.
And for every one that crashes, trying to land for their one life, God is dead. God dies.
That is why Carol's death has such an effect on me. It seems a large part of God died.
And there is only one God, only one life. When a woman (or a man) dies, that's the end of God. It is the final disaster, death.
Unless in life we are able to transmit God into the world; that is, unless we are able to make the soft landing on the folds of the skin of earth, and make touch. Enough touch, and we save God for yet awhile, in others yet alive to touch.
But we can't do this up in planes in the sky.
Planes, with their metal skin that only blocks us off from delicate touch, deep touch. Planes that only fly us tritely about in the empty ether of our minds.
Our minds are sick, have a fever of hot air, unless they remain down here on fertile earth, always concerned with vital, quick, unknown touch with the other.
And you, girl, the other for me, as you read this—run right now to me to kiss me. Yes do it! For this is no joke—this is life. We must be insane with life or we will but be insane without it. So now, run kiss me wherever I am. You must! You must! And what a surprised boy I will be! Now is your chance to prove you are the other indeed, the strange other, insane, quick with life, run jump on me. Do not care who is with me—be wild with the deeper flow of things, the ground-flow. Be careless what I think. Let me say,
“What? You? You're the other?”
“Yes! Yes!” you say. “Didn't you know?”
But what matter what I know or don't know—if you are the other, you know it and no one else. So go! run! quickly! and don't explain.
This is your one life—don't miss chances.
And besides, you have an excuse—my own words!
Now that you're back— (I hope that you really made a surprise of it—not some little old cheek-kiss but a real thing, of scent-strong touch. Or a real hug, of sensuous passion—or something, to shake me up and say
“What?”
“I'm the other.”
“The what?”
“The other.”
“Let's go over that again.”
“I'm the other.”
“No. Not that. I mean before, when I was sitting (or standing) here, and you slipped in and . . .”)
See? I like others.
The choice for us the living is not sanity or insanity. We cannot but be insane. Either we must be insane with life, or insane and sterile without it.
No, much better the insanity, the drunkenness of life. Let them think ill of you—for they are just insane the other way, insane in their lifelessness.
Oh, throw paper airplanes out the windows with love poems on them for whoever may come by. Oh, talk to every other you meet with quick, squirrel weakness.
Tell me, “I am the other,” and watch me squirm with uneasiness over it; then chide me for my self-consciousness, my uneasiness before life, for I will deserve it. Oh chide me, chide me when I am afraid of life. Chide me, like a squirrel. Chide me, but always as the other.
Do not chide me as the mother. Or the something-else-or-other. Do not be the another.
Be the girl-other. The ready-for-sacred-earth-touch-other, if it comes.
(If it doesn't come, take a more “active” role—but only if you are the other. You will know—not I. After all, you might only be partly other. In that case—tread with beware.)
Can I get this plane down? Can I do it without the crash of final frustration, the crash of giving up? And can I land softly and not harm the fields of the other I land in?
These are all very serious questions I cannot answer.
I don't know that it can be done—for I am only a beginner, not only at life but at flying. I don't even recall taking off. Now I'm trying to land, and do it safely.
But there are rocks—I don't want to hit the rocks. I must “make a living”. I must “be a member of society”. I must worry about my parents and my friends. I must “try to please everyone”.
I don't know. If only I don't starve, or have to live in a city, among those who only sting life. If only I can escape those who sting life. For I can't take stings to life, I can't take it.
If a man talks about “my delicate penis, that so needs to be nurtured and cared for, taken joy in, harbored by the woman”—you just get coarse laughs or, worse, hard embarrassed stares.
You can't even write such things and get away with it, unless you use some literary convention that in effect “takes it all back”. No, you just get stung.
I'm not sophisticated—I'm glad. I'm not some intellectual or some scholar secure in the search for truth. Truth doesn't seem of much importance for me, since I was born a body, for life. Since I'm a body I want the things of the body. But I won't have them reduced to jokes or mental chuckles, in the process. I won't have the body done dirt on. It is this turning of everything serious and important about life into obscenity, that I object to. Why must the penis be so hard to take seriously? Why must it only be taken scientifically or nastily or tritely? What is so wrong with making a god of the penis? What is so wrong with making a god of the whole body, which I do? And of the woman's body? What is so wrong with making everything quick and alive, everything that offers touch, into a god? I say the grass is a god, even winter-grass—will you laugh at this? Will you insist that God, even gods, must be beyond life?
Alright, I say. Let God be God for the beyond life. Fine. But I, here and now, I'm not beyond life. I'm alive. I'm in life. When I'm beyond life I'll worry about the God of the beyond life. But now, this momentary now that is called life, let me look after the gods of life, the gods of touch and experience.
I am a body, alive, I have no taste for the after-life. It seems only death to me. Tell me all you like of how I ought to care about after-life, about eternity, the fact is I don't. I'm after life. Life, you see? I'm a physical body alive; I want the bodily things. The things of earth. If that turns God stone-against me, who has he to blame but himself? For he made me alive bodily (assuming he did), and all I want is to be alive bodily. It is only for awhile; it is only one-two-three and then death.
But while we are alive, we can't know about the other-than-life—and why should we? I only know life. As far as I am concerned, it is everything. There is no meaning outside of it. Only death.
So the other is my God. Girl. Woman. But more, more than that: all life is other.
For mankind though, man, woman are a special other to each other. More other than all other others.
This is our one life, let us be drunken fully with it.
Drunk with life!
So run, girl, run to me, jump me, be wild with me, announce yourself as the other, the incoherent and drunken other!
Oh other, other! what will we do, once we have found each other? How will we “make our living?” God I wish I knew.
And, deep life explorers that we will be—how will we go about that exploration? Will there be an explosion of life? Or will it be rolling hillsides of life? Will we have to cower from the stings of others? Or from the stings of each other?
Please, please girl, I don't mean to sting you. Please, please don't be stung. I am only a beginner. I am only a new-searcher. I want you, the touch. I want you, the toucher. Can we do it without stinging?
I must write and I must write and I must write, because I am afraid. I have never been before, and I am afraid.
After all, it is only life that is at stake.
Only life!
This is life—this is it—the thing. We are just mere, living creatures. If we are willing to be just the mere, living creatures that we are, how can we lose? If we but resign ourselves to life. It is so easy! Just life, that's all!
Why be afraid of life?
Let them sting if they can: why be afraid of life?
Is the insect afraid?
