E. Doctorow - Loon Lake

At dawn we continue our journey. The sky is pink. We climb the trail alongside an amazing stream, so rock-strewn that the water, broken into millions of drops, falls like the sound of hail and bounces like steel pellets. I scrape the bark from a small pine tree tortured by the wind to grow like sunrays toward the earth. This lime-green powdery moss I allow to dry for four minutes in the palm of my hand. I then lick this powder from my palm and immediately my young love becomes a giantess looking down at me with amazement. I trip her and she falls backward, quaking the earth, I run into her vulva and by that means continue my lifelong search for the godhead. It is some sort of gland somewhere. The way becomes slippery. In this viscous darkness I use my knees and my hands like a water spider. The way becomes narrower. Soon I am flattened, drawn like a mote toward some powerful brilliantly lit eye. I feel myself enlarging. The light is blinding. I become my own size and break her open like an egg.

You are thinking it is a dream. It is no dream. It is the account in helpless linear translation of the unending love of our simultaneous but disynchrous lives.

Data linkage escape this is not emergency

Come with me compute with me

Coupling with me she becomes a couplet

Lovers leap in the sea

A drop of sunlit pee between two lips

Substitute a priapic navigator

I see inappropriate behavior

I recall Father Damien seeing his own pale blue eyes

Regarding him from a face resembling his own enlarged redblue heart

It is a woman, a leperess, expressing his sentiments.

I refer to the paired animals going up the ramp of the ark

Leopard leopard aardvark aardvark porpoise porpoise inchworm inchworm

The story of Noah is the religious vision of cloning.

Scientists tweeze pollen eyedrop spermatozoa

Dispatch flights of sexy sterile white moths to eliminate specie

They notice human lovers commonly resemble each other

Test it at home looking at their wives friends friends wives

Or if not each other then each other’s brother or sister

But in any event that love conducts a shock of recognition

Question haven’t I seen you somewhere before answer yes in the mirror

Given wars before wars after wars genocides

and competition for markets cloning will eliminate all chance

and love will be one hundred percent efficient

No Sturm und Drang German phrase no disynchronicity

but everyone having seen everyone else somewhere before

we will have realized serenity of perfect universal love

univerself love uniself love unilove

until the race withers and blows away like the dried husks

of moths but who’s complaining

They had either believed me or not believed me. If they had believed me I had been so effective, so frighteningly effective that they did not want to confirm what I told them, they were afraid to. If they called, he would want their names. So they had let me go.

If they had not believed me, then my desperation was so patent or my cravenness so truly loathsome that they didn’t have the heart to go on with it. Perhaps there were moral operations in this world that transcended the individual responsible for them and threatened to ruin everyone. Was that it? Was I perceived as a leper who threatened to contaminate them?

In either case the result was the same, wasn’t that so? I had been released thinking I’d made contact with Bennett and I had not.

That night I lay in Penfield’s bed and stared at the amber windowpanes and listened to the watchdogs baying. I tried to compose my terrible shame into something I could deal with, I tried to comprehend the weird sick brokenness I felt, the sense of irreparable damage I had done to myself the catastrophic discomposure of everything but the small light in my mind. It was most difficult.

Sandy James asleep forever on the coach seat amid the pilgrims: I take a few dollars out of my wallet and tuck the fat wallet with her death benefits under her chin she does not wake the train begins to move the small flaked tarnished charms of her charm bracelet swing in their arc the train picks up speed I jump hit the embankment the cinders imbedding themselves in my knees.

Compare the private railroad car of the Meiji emperor the imperial beloved, as it makes its way through the sunlit valley of the Bunraku province. It moves slowly and from the populated fields no closer than a mile thousands of little children wave paper flags in time to the small white puffs of smoke rising from the engine. The children are well behaved. Their parents kneel beside them and hold their shoulders. Their grandparents lie prostrate on the ground not even daring to glance toward the distant train where the line of mounted imperial guardsmen cantering at the base of the embankment alongside the dark green imperial car give it the look of a lampshade with a rippling fringe.

The man resisted all approaches he was stone he was steel I hated his grief his luxurious dereliction I hated his thoughts the quality of his voice his walk the way he spent his life proving his importance ritualizing his superiority his exercises of freedom his arrogant knowledge of the human heart I hated the back of his neck he was a killer of poets and explorers, a killer of boys and girls and he killed with as little thought as he gave to breathing, he killed by breathing he killed by existing he was an emperor, a maniac force in pantaloons and silk slippers and lacquered headdress dispensing like treasure pieces of his stool, making us throw ourselves on our faces to be beheaded one by one with gratitude, the outrageous absurdity of him was his power, his clucking crowing mewing shouting whistling ridiculousness is what stunned us into submission but not this boy, I know what to do about this pompous little self-idolator, I’m going to put the fucker where he belongs I swear oh my Clara I swear Mr. Penfield I swear by the memory of the Fat Lady I know how to do it, I know how to do it and I have the courage to do it and it will be a beautiful monumental thing I do I will testify to God that he is a human being, that is how, I will save him from wasting away, I will save him from crumbling into a piece of dried shit, into a foul eccentric, you see, I will give him hope, I will extend his reign, I will raise him and do it all so well with such style that he will thank me, thank me for growing in his heart his heart bursting his son.

And in the morning the whole spring of the earth has come forth and Loon Lake is a bowl of light. A sweet blue haze hangs in the trees. The sun is shining, a filigree of pale green leaf laces through the evergreens across the water. I run down the hill to the lake side pulling off my clothes as I go. I stop to remove my shoes. My feet thump along the boathouse deck. I stand poised on the edge and dive into the water. With powerful strokes learned in the filth of industrial rivers Joe swims a great circle crawl in the sweet clear cold mountain lake. He pulls himself up on the float and stands panting in the sun, his glistening white young body inhaling the light, the sun healing my scars my cracked bones my lacerated soul, the sun powering my loins warming them to a stir. I toss my hair back, smooth it back, shake the water from my arms, open my eyes. Up on the hill Bennett stands on his terrace, a tiny man totally attentive. He has seen the whole thing, as I knew he would. He waves at me. I smile my white teeth. I wave back.

Herewith bio Joseph Korzeniowski.

Born to a working-class family Paterson New Jersey August 2 1918.

Graduated Paterson Latin Grade School 1930.

Graduated Paterson Latin High School 1936. Voted by classmates

Best Shape of the Head. Hobbies: Street hockey, petit larceny.

Roustabout Hearn Bros. Carnival, summer 1936.