Carole Maso - Break Every Rule - Essays on Language, Longing, & Moments of Desire

Chapter Ava.

Don’t leave anything out.

To accomplish wishes one needs one’s lover.

— for Helen P

Can we stay in Pienza one more day?

Don’t leave anything out.

This must not be put in a book.

Why not.

Because it mustn’t.

Yes sir.

Chapter

I know at least four or five Amys now.

To begin to allow. To allow it.

She was not to come again. She came and she asked and she was answered and she was not to come again not to come she was asked and she was answered and she was answered and she was asked and she was not to come again well she was not to come again. This is the first time she came she was not to come again. To reason with Bertha and Josephine and Sarah and Susan and Adela and never Anns. What is the difference between chocolate and brown and sugar and blue and cream and yellow and eggs and white. What is the difference between addition and edges and adding and baskets and needing and pleasure. It was not a mistake.

When she was and help me when she was what was she to me.

…generosity depends upon what is and what is not held out and held up and held in that way.

Allow flowers.

A basket — for Gertrude Stein. And for Alice add flowers. And some eggs.

Explain looking. Explain looking again. Alice

explain looking again.

The sound of thinking and the sound of thought. A piece of thinking. Don’t forget to add flowers. First poppies and broom and then after awhile sunflowers come out. The yellow hovering.

Every color of saint.

Blue saints green saints yellow saints black saints and red angels.

A back and forth. A basket.

We need transference of letters and parcels and doubts and dates and easier.

A novel is useful in more ways than one.

Someday we will be rich. You’ll see and then we will spend money and buy everything a dog a Ford letter paper, furs, a hat, kinds of purse.

For Helen, touring Italy. And we will buy a villa someday or a farm if that is what you really want I love you. A Florentine chandelier and a Venetian one. Two more Maine coons perhaps (another gray, another one with stripes) and time to write and all the time in the world to write. Maybe another orange one.

What would you buy?

I would buy all the time in the world to write. I’d quit my job.

Because it takes all the time.

One wish: 1) time to write.

2) time to write.

And after that.

time to write.

Stretches and stretches of happiness.

More time.

Left.

Left.

Pretty.

I

had

pretty

a

good

pretty.

I often think about another.

Who need never be mentioned.

Lifting belly high.

That is what I adore always more and more.

Some Amys in that way and some not.

A basket and so forth and what got lost.

Delirious and looking up from lip and clitoris and mound she sees the city of Paris lit up. Trembling was all living, living was all loving, someone was then the other one. The women walk the streets syntactic. Sing Paris Paris Paris Paris. A large white poodle dog and walking down the boulevard.

Chapter Pussycat

Touring through that part of Italy. Her meals: written in a notebook — penne with funghi, game hen with Norcia sauce, tiramisu.

She came to be happier than anyone else who was living then.

She came to be happier… In the gorgeous city of Paris. Poodle dog. Yellow flowered hat. Alice Babette.

10,000 paradises

Everyone dies. Say it enough times. Everyone dies everyone dies everyone even you everyone

with and without cats

with and without baskets

dies 10,000 kinds of thank you and paradise

First religion

She saw me and she said two

will stay and two will go away, two will go away and two

will stay and two will stay and two will go away. Can you go

away so soon.

First religion

First religion here.

Second religion

Second religion here.

Third religion

Third religion here.

Fourth religion

Fourth religion being here and having

her and she having been and she is perfection.

Third religion

Third religion being here or is she perfection

third religion is here and she is perfection.

Third religion or is she perfection.

We have left the cathedral behind us. Saints seen so far:

How many saints are there in it?

Beginning again and again is a natural thing… Beginning again and again and again explaining composition and time is a natural thing

A Little Novel

Any and everyone is an authority.

Welcome.

Does it make any difference who comes first.

What Does She See When She Shuts her Eyes, a novel So the characters in this novel are the ones who walk in the fields and lose their dog and the ones who do not walk in the fields because they have no cows.

When she shuts her eyes she sees the green things among which she has been working and then as she falls asleep she sees them a little differently.

When she shuts her eyes… Everyone dies. I can’t cope. A gun would be nice. What’s wrong with me? Please say it soon.

Everyone dies.

You have cancer.

Why do you lie?

Everyone.

A Short Novel

I feel useless

Is it in any particular corner?

What does she see when she shuts her eyes a novel.

Paradise. What does she see?

And how to thank you.

You changed my life.

And how to thank you.

It was nearly very carefully in plenty of time.

This is the time to do or say so.

Chapter

Not useless. Not a bird. Not a cherry. Not a third. Not useless.

Not at all. Not elite. Not small.

It’s useless.

So the characters in this novel are looking out the window of a green Fiat touring Italy and one of them is thinking about Gertrude Stein and reading her out loud in between cypress cypress cypress and the map and the guidebook and I feel useless.

Zenka.

The month of June and Defiance due and The Bay of Angels excerpt due and The novel of thank you due for Martine. And that perfectly awful woman Mattie Garrett at the Tuscany Writing Workshop and the computer up in smoke.

Oh that perfectly awful Mattie Garrett, she thought turning toward the dark window, has spoiled all of our fun!

The fax this afternoon. Useless.

Blue birds on a black hat. And as it happens. Black birds on a blue hat. And as it happens. Blue birds on a blue hat. And not next to as it happens. Black bird and a black hat.

Chapters 84 and almost 85, but not quite

People die in and out of order

in easy and hard ways people die

people die out of—

The things we used to do

sweetness of the yellow broom.

even though you are 84

even though everyone must

everyone has got to

in or out of order

drinking vieux marc, a trip to the sea

as if love could send you back there again

swept up, side swept, wind

like magic as if love

your beloved Dylan Thomas and Eliot your friend,

he was always kind, he lent me money, not anti-Semitic, he

lent me money, nonsense, oh such nonsense.

And your Gertrude Stein

People die in 5, 6, 7 and

7, 6, 5

in the day and the night.

Afraid and not.

Happy and sad times.

And that fall how I just thought if I could make a pot-au-feu I might survive — and you looked on sadly. And you took my hand after awhile. That fall you saved my life. For the first time. Thank you.

And if I could only help you now. Somehow. I want to very much.

Elissa and Annabelle and Anatole. Dale and Julie and Suzanne and Marilyn and Monica and the French Carole and Diana Chapmann she’s called.

Judith.

Urgent. My darling Zenka passed away this morning. She was in the nursing home. Please call. Love, Judith