conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Provide the first five paragraphs for a book with the title 'Tropic of Capricorn'.. Start with the sentence 'Tropic of Capricorn
  Standing in the garden listening to the din I could scarcely believe that it was the same city'.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Tropic of Capricorn
  Standing in the garden listening to the din I could scarcely believe that it was the same city. And if I had ever opened my trap and exposed my guts it would have been all over. Not one of these bozos amounted to anything, as the world reckons. They were just good eggs, children, fellows who liked music and who liked a good time. They liked it so much that sometimes we had to call the ambulance. Like the night Al Burger twisted his knee while showing us one of his stunts. Everybody so happy, so full of music, so lit up, that it took him an hour to persuade us he was really hurt. We try to carry him to a hospital but it's too far away and besides, it's such a good joke, that we drop him now and then and that makes him yell like a maniac. So finally we telephone for help from a police box, and the ambulance comes and the patrol wagon too. They take Al to the hospital and the rest of us to the hoosegow. And on the way we sing at the top of our lungs. And after we're bailed out we're still feeling good and the cops are feeling good too, and so we all adjourn to the basement where there's a cracked piano and we go on singing and playing. All this is like some period s.c. in history which ends not because there's a war but because even a joint like Ed Bauries' is not immune to the poison seeping in from the periphery. Because every street is becoming a Myrtle Avenue, because emptiness is filling the whole continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific. Because, after a certain time, you can't enter a single house throughout the length and breadth of the land and find a man standing on his hands singing. It just ain't done any more. And there ain't two pianos going at once anywhere, nor are there two men anywhere willing to play all night just for the fun of it. Two men who can play like Ed Bauries and George Neumiller are hired by the radio or the movies and only a thimbleful of their talent is used and the rest is thrown into the garbage can. Nobody knows, judging from public spectacles, what talent is disposable in the great American continent. Later on, and that's why I used to sit around on doorsteps in Tin Pan Alley, I would while away the afternoons listening to the professionals mugging it out. That was good too, but it was different. There was no fun in it, it was a perpetual rehearsal to bring in dollars and cents. Any man in America who had an ounce of humor in him was saving it up to put himself across. There were some wonderful nuts among them too, men I'll never forget, men who left no name behind them, and they were the best we produced. I remember an anonymous performer on the Keith circuit who was probably the craziest man in America, and perhaps he got fifty dollars a week for it. Three times a day, every day in the week, he came out and held the audience spellbound. He didn't have an act--he just improvised. He never repeated his jokes or his stunts. He gave himself prodigally, and I don't think he was a hop fiend either. He was one of those guys who are born in the corn crakes and the energy and the joy in him was so fierce that nothing could contain it. He could play any instrument and dance any step and he could invent a story on the spot and string it out till the bell rang. He was not only satisfied to do his own act but he would help the others out. He would stand in the wings and wait for the right moment to break into the other guy's act. He was the whole show and it was a show that contained more therapy than the whole arsenal of modern science. They ought to have paid a man like this the wages which the President of the United States receives. They ought to sack the President of the United States and the whole Supreme Court and set up a man like this as ruler. This man could cure any disease on the calendar. He was the kind of guy, moreover, as would do it for nothing, if you asked him to. This is the type of man which empties the insane asylums. He doesn't propose a curehe makes everybody crazy. Between this solution and a perpetual state of war, which is civilization, there is only one other way out-and that is the road we will all take eventually because everything else is doomed to failure. The type that represents this one and only way bears a head with six faces and eight eyes; the head is a revolving lighthouse, and instead of a triple crown at the top, as there might well be, there is a hole which ventilates what few brains there are. There is very little brain, as I say, because there is very little baggage to carry about, because living in full consciousness, the gray matter passes off into light. This is the only type of man one can place above the comedian; he neither laughs nor weeps, he is beyond suffering. We don't recognize him yet because he is too close to us, right under the skin, as a matter of fact. When the comedian catches us in the guts this man, whose name might be God, I suppose, if he had to use a name, speaks up. When the whole human race is rocking with laughter, laughing so hard that it hurts, I mean, everybody then has his foot on the path. In that moment everybody can just as well be God as anything else. In that moment you have the annihilation of dual, triple, quadruple and multiple consciousness, which is what makes the gray matter coil up in dead folds at the top of the skull. At that moment you can really feel the hole in the top of the head; you know that you once had an eye there and that this eye was capable of taking in everything at once. The eye is gone now, but when you laugh until the tears flow and your belly aches, you are really opening the skylight and ventilating the brains. Nobody can persuade you at that moment to take a gun and kill your enemy; neither can anybody persuade you to open a fat tome containing the metaphysical truths of the world and read it. If you know what freedom means, absolute freedom and not a relative freedom, then you must recognize that this is the nearest to it you will ever get. If I am against the condition of the world it is not because I am a moralist-it is because I want to laugh more. I don't say that God is one grand laugh: I say that you've got to laugh hard before you can get anywhere near God. My whole aim in life is to get near to God, that is, to get nearer to myself. That's why it doesn't matter to me what road I take. But music is very important. Music is a tonic for the pineal gland. Music isn't Bach or Beethoven; music is the can opener of the soul. It makes you terribly quiet inside, makes you aware that there's a roof to your being.
  The stabbing horror of life is not contained in calamities and disasters, because these things wake one up and one gets very familiar and intimate with them and finally they become tame again... no, it is more like being in a hotel room in Hoboken, let us say, and just enough money in one's pocket for another meal. You are in a city that you never expect to be in again and you have only to pass the night in your hotel room, but it takes all the courage and pluck you possess to stay in that room. There must be a good reason why certain cities, certain places, inspire such loathing and dread. There must be some kind of perpetual murder going on in these places. The people are of the same race as you, they go about their business as people do anywhere, they build the same sort of house, no better, no worse, they have the same system of education, the same currency, the same newspapersand yet they are absolutely different from the other people you know, and the whole atmosphere is different, and the rhythm is different and the tension is different. It's almost like looking at yourself in another incarnation. You know, with a most disturbing certitude, that what governs life is not money, not politics, not religion, not training, not race, not language, not customs, but something else, something you're trying to throttle all the time and which is really throttling you, because otherwise you wouldn't be terrified all of a sudden and wonder how you were going to escape. Some cities you don't even have to pass a night in-just an hour or two is enough to unnerve you. I think of Bayonne that way. I came on it in the night with a few addresses that had been given me. I had a brief case under my arm with a prospectus of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. I was supposed to go under cover of dark and sell the bloody encyclopedia to some poor devils who wanted to improve themselves. If I had been dropped off at Helsingfors I couldn't have felt more ill at ease than walking the streets of Bayonne. It wasn't an American city to me. It wasn't a city at all, but a huge octopus wriggling in the dark. The first door I came to looked so forbidding I didn't even bother to knock; I went like that to several addresses before I could summon the courage to knock. The first face I took a look at frightened the shit out of me. I don't mean timidity or embarrassment -I mean fear. It was the face of a hod carrier, an ignorant mick who would as lief fell you with an ax as spit in your eye. I pretended I had the wrong name and hurried on to the next address. Each time the door opened I saw another monster. And then I came at last to a poor simp who really wanted to improve himself and that broke me down. I felt truly ashamed of myself, of my country, my race, my epoch. I had a devil of a time persuading him not to buy the damned encyclopedia. He asked me innocently what then had brought me to his home-and without a minute's hesitation I told him an astounding lie, a lie which was later to prove a great truth. I told him I was only pretending to sell the encyclopedia in order to meet people and write about them. That interested him enormously, even more than the encyclopedia. He wanted to know what I would write about him, if I could say. It's taken me twenty years to answer that question, but here it is. If you would still like to know, John Doe of the City of Bayonne, this is it.... I owe you a great deal because after that lie I told you I left your house and I tore up the prospectus furnished me by the Encyclopaedia Britannica and I threw it in the gutter. I said to myself I will never again go to people under false pretenses even if it is to give them the Holy Bible. I will never again sell anything, even if I have to starve. I am going home now and I will sit down and really write about people. And if anybody knocks at my door to sell me something I will invite him in and say "why are you doing this?" And if he says it is because he has to make a living I will offer him what money I have and beg him once again to think what he is doing. I want to prevent as many men as possible from pretending that they have to do this or that because they must earn a living. It is not true. One can starve to death-it is much better. Every man who voluntarily starves to death jams another cog in the automatic process. I would rather see a man take a gun and kill his neighbor, in order to get the food he needs, than keep up the automatic process by pretending that he has to earn a living. That's what I want to say, Mr. John Doe.
  Pass on.... Sitting outside a barber shop by the James River. I'll be here just ten minutes, while I take a load off my feet. There's a hotel and a few stores opposite me; it all tails off quickly, ends like it began-for no reason. From the bottom of my soul I pity the poor devils who are born and die here. There is no earthly reason why this place should exist. There is no reason why anybody should cross the street and get himself a shave and haircut, or even a sirloin steak. Men, buy yourselves a gun and kill each other off! Wipe this street out of my mind foreverit hasn't an ounce of meaning in it.
  The same day, after nightfall. Still plugging on, digging deeper and deeper into the South. I'm coming away from a little town by a short road leading to the highway. Suddenly I hear footsteps behind me and soon a young man passes me on the trot, breathing heavily and cursing with all his might. I stand there a moment, wondering what it's all about. I hear another man coming on the trot; he's an older man and he's carrying a gun. He breathes fairly easy, and not a word out of his trap. Just as he comes in view the moon breaks through the clouds and I catch a good look at his face. He's a manhunter. I stand back as the others come up behind him. I'm trembling with fear. It's the sheriff, I hear a man say, and he's going to get him. Horrible. I move on toward the highway waiting to hear the shot that will end it all. I hear nothing-just this heavy breathing of the young man and the quick, eager steps of the mob following behind the sheriff. Just as I get near the main road a man steps out of the darkness and comes over to me very quietly. "Where yer goin', son?" he says, quiet like and almost tenderly. I stammer out something about the next town. "Better stay right here, son," he says. I didn't say another word. I let him take me back into town and hand me over like a thief. I lay on the floor with about fifty other blokes. I had a marvelous sexual dream which ended with the guillotine.
  I plug on.... It's just as hard to go back as to go forward. I don't have the feeling of being an American citizen any more. The part of America I came from, where I had some rights, where I felt free, is so far behind me that it's beginning to get fuzzy in my memory. I feel as though someone's got a gun against my back all the time. Keep moving, is all I seem to hear. If a man talks to me I try not to seem too intelligent. I try to pretend that I am vitally interested in the crops, in the weather, in the elections. If I stand and stop they look at me, whites and blacks-they look me through and through as though I were juicy and edible. I've got to walk another thousand miles or so as though I had a deep purpose, as though I were really going somewhere. I've got to look sort of grateful, too, that nobody has yet taken a fancy to plug me. It's depressing and exhilarating at the same time. You're a marked man-and yet nobody pulls the trigger. They let you walk unmolested right into the Gulf of Mexico where you can drown yourself.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Provide four more paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: Truth lies in this knowledge of the end which is ruthless and remorseless. We can know the truth and accept it, or we can refuse the knowledge of it and neither die nor be born again. In this manner it is possible to live forever, a negative life as solid and complete, or as dispersed and fragmentary, as the atom. And if we pursue this road far enough, even this atomic eternity can yield to nothingness and the universe itself fall apart.
  For years now I have been trying to tell this story; each time I have started out I have chosen a different route. I am like an explorer who, wishing to circumnavigate the globe, deems it unnecessary to carry even a compass. Moreover, from dreaming over it so long, the story itself has come to resemble a vast, fortified city, and I who dream it over and over, am outside the city, a wanderer, arriving before one gate after another too exhausted to enter. And as with the wanderer, this city in which my story is situated eludes me perpetually. Always in sight it nevertheless remains unattainable, a sort of ghostly citadel floating in the clouds. From the soaring, crenelated battlements flocks of huge white geese swoop down in steady, wedge-shaped formation. With the tips of their blue-white wings they brush the dreams that dazzle my vision. My feet move confusedly; no sooner do I gain a foothold than I am lost again. I wander aimlessly, trying to gain a solid, unshakable foothold whence I can command a view of my life, but behind me there lies only a welter of crisscrossed tracks, a groping, confused, encircling, the spasmodic gambit of the chicken whose head has just been lopped off.
  Whenever I try to explain to myself the peculiar pattern which my life has taken, when I reach back to the first cause, as it were, I think inevitably of the girl I first loved. It seems to me that everything dates from that aborted affair. A strange, masochistic affair it was, ridiculous and tragic at the same time. Perhaps I had the pleasure of kissing her two or three times, the sort of kiss one reserves for a goddess. Perhaps I saw her alone several times. Certainly she could never have dreamed that for over a year I walked past her home every night hoping to catch a glimpse of her at the window. Every night after dinner I would get up from the table and take the long route which led to her home. She was never at the window when I passed and I never had the courage to stand in front of the house and wait. Back and forth I passed, back and forth, but never hide nor hair of her. Why didn't I write her? Why didn't I call her up? Once I remember summoning enough pluck to invite her to the theater. I arrived at her home with a bunch of violets, the first and only time I ever bought flowers for a woman. As we were leaving the theater the violets dropped from her corsage, and in my confusion I stepped on them. I begged her to leave them there, but she insisted on gathering them up. I was thinking how awkward I was-it was only long afterwards that I recalled the smile she had given me as she stooped down to pick up the violets.
  It was a complete fiasco. In the end I ran away. Actually I was running away from another woman, but the day before leaving town I decided to see her once again. It was midafternoon and she came out to talk to me in the street, in the little areaway which was fenced off. She was already engaged to another man; she pretended to be happy about it but I could see, blind as I was, that she wasn't as happy as she pretended to be. If I had only said the word I am sure she would have dropped the other fellow; perhaps she would even have gone away with me. I preferred to punish myself. I said good-by nonchalantly and I went down the street like a dead man. The next morning I was bound for the Coast, determined to start a new life.
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Reverse the sentences.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: The next morning I was bound for the Coast, determined to start a new life.. I said good-by nonchalantly and I went down the street like a dead man. I preferred to punish myself. If I had only said the word I am sure she would have dropped the other fellow; perhaps she would even have gone away with me. She was already engaged to another man; she pretended to be happy about it but I could see, blind as I was, that she wasn't as happy as she pretended to be. It was midafternoon and she came out to talk to me in the street, in the little areaway which was fenced off. Actually I was running away from another woman, but the day before leaving town I decided to see her once again. In the end I ran away.
  It was a complete fiasco. I was thinking how awkward I was-it was only long afterwards that I recalled the smile she had given me as she stooped down to pick up the violets. I begged her to leave them there, but she insisted on gathering them up. As we were leaving the theater the violets dropped from her corsage, and in my confusion I stepped on them. I arrived at her home with a bunch of violets, the first and only time I ever bought flowers for a woman. Why didn't I write her? Why didn't I call her up? Once I remember summoning enough pluck to invite her to the theater. Back and forth I passed, back and forth, but never hide nor hair of her. She was never at the window when I passed and I never had the courage to stand in front of the house and wait. Every night after dinner I would get up from the table and take the long route which led to her home. Certainly she could never have dreamed that for over a year I walked past her home every night hoping to catch a glimpse of her at the window. Perhaps I saw her alone several times. Perhaps I had the pleasure of kissing her two or three times, the sort of kiss one reserves for a goddess. A strange, masochistic affair it was, ridiculous and tragic at the same time. It seems to me that everything dates from that aborted affair.
  Whenever I try to explain to myself the peculiar pattern which my life has taken, when I reach back to the first cause, as it were, I think inevitably of the girl I first loved. I wander aimlessly, trying to gain a solid, unshakable foothold whence I can command a view of my life, but behind me there lies only a welter of crisscrossed tracks, a groping, confused, encircling, the spasmodic gambit of the chicken whose head has just been lopped off. My feet move confusedly; no sooner do I gain a foothold than I am lost again. With the tips of their blue-white wings they brush the dreams that dazzle my vision. From the soaring, crenelated battlements flocks of huge white geese swoop down in steady, wedge-shaped formation. Always in sight it nevertheless remains unattainable, a sort of ghostly citadel floating in the clouds. And as with the wanderer, this city in which my story is situated eludes me perpetually. Moreover, from dreaming over it so long, the story itself has come to resemble a vast, fortified city, and I who dream it over and over, am outside the city, a wanderer, arriving before one gate after another too exhausted to enter. I am like an explorer who, wishing to circumnavigate the globe, deems it unnecessary to carry even a compass.
  For years now I have been trying to tell this story; each time I have started out I have chosen a different route. And if we pursue this road far enough, even this atomic eternity can yield to nothingness and the universe itself fall apart. In this manner it is possible to live forever, a negative life as solid and complete, or as dispersed and fragmentary, as the atom. We can know the truth and accept it, or we can refuse the knowledge of it and neither die nor be born again.Truth lies in this knowledge of the end which is ruthless and remorseless
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Provide the last five paragraphs.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: We are seated in a little booth in the Chinese restaurant across the way. Out of the corner of my eye I catch the flicker of the illuminated letters running up and down the sky. She is still talking about Henriette, or maybe it is about herself. Her little black bonnet, her bag and fur are lying beside her on the bench. Every few minutes she lights a fresh cigarette which bums away as she talks. There is no beginning nor end; it spurts out of her like a flame and consumes everything within reach. No knowing how or where she began. Suddenly she is in the midst of a long narrative, a fresh one, but it is always the same. Her talk is as formless as dream: there are no grooves, no walls, no exits, no stops. I have the feeling of being drowned in a deep mesh of words, of crawling painfully back to the top of the net, of looking into her eyes and trying to find there some reflection of the significance of her words-but I can find nothing, nothing except my own image wavering in a bottomless well. Though she speaks of nothing but herself I am unable to form the slightest image of her being. She leans forward, with elbows on the table, and her words inundate me; wave after wave rolling over me and yet nothing builds up inside me, nothing that I can seize with my mind. She's telling me about her father, about the strange life they led at the edge of Sherwood Forest where she was born, or at least she was telling me about this, but now it's about Henriette again, or is it Dostoevski?-I'm not sure -but anyway, suddenly I realize that she's not talking about any of these any more but about a man who took her home one night and as they stood on the stoop saying good-night he suddenly reached down and pulled up her dress. She pauses a moment as though to reassure me that this is what she means to talk about. I look at her bewilderedly. I can't imagine by what route we got to this point. What man? What had he been saying to her? I let her continue, thinking that she will probably come back to it, but no, she's ahead of me again and now it seems the man, this man, is already dead, a suicide, and she is trying to make me understand that it was an awful blow to her, but what she really seems to convey is that she is proud of the fact that she drove a man to suicide. I can't picture the man as dead; I can only think of him as he stood on her stoop lifting her dress, a man without a name but alive and perpetually fixed in the act of bending down to lift up her dress. There is another man who was her father and I see him with a string of race horses, or sometimes in a little inn just outside Vienna; rather I see him on the roof of the inn flying kites to while the time away. And between this man who was her father and the man with whom she was madly in love I can make no separation. He is someone in her life about whom she would rather not talk, but just the same she comes back to him all the time, and though I'm not sure that it was not the man who lifted up her dress neither am I sure that it wasn't the man who committed suicide. Perhaps it's the man whom she started to talk about when we sat down to eat. Just as we were sitting down I remember now that she began to talk rather hectically about a man whom she had just seen entering the cafeteria. She even mentioned his name, but I forgot it immediately. But I remember her saying that she had lived with him and that he had done something which she didn't like-she didn't say what-and so she had walked out on him, left him flat, without a word of explanation. And then, just as we were entering the chop suey joint, they ran into each other and she was still trembling over it as we sat down in the little booth.... For one long moment I have the most uneasy sensation. Maybe every word she uttered was a lie! Not an ordinary lie, no, something worse, something indescribable. Only sometimes the truth comes out like that too, especially if you think you're never going to see the person again. Sometimes you can tell a perfect stranger what you would never dare reveal to your most intimate friend. It's like going to sleep in the midst of a party; you become so interested in yourself that you go to sleep. And when you're sound asleep you begin to talk to someone, someone who was in the same room with you all the time and therefore understands everything even though you begin in the middle of a sentence. And perhaps this other person goes to sleep also, or was always asleep, and that's why it was so easy to encounter him, and if he doesn't say anything to disturb you then you know that what you are saying is real and true and that you are wide-awake and there is no other reality except this being wide-awake asleep. Never before have I been so wide-awake and so sound asleep at the same time. If the ogre in my dreams had really pushed the bars aside and taken me by the hand I would have been frightened to death and consequently now dead, that is, forever asleep and therefore always at large, and nothing would be strange any more, nor untrue, even if what happened did not happen. What happened must have happened long ago, in the night undoubtedly. And what is now happening is also happening long ago, in the night, and this is no more true than the dream of the ogre and the bars which would not give, except that now the bars are broken and she whom I feared has me by the hand and there is no difference between that which I feared and what is, because I was asleep and now I am wide-awake asleep and there is nothing more to fear, nor to expect, nor to hope for, but just this which is and which knows no end.
  She wants to go. To go.... Again her haunch, that slippery glide as when she came down from the dance hall and moved into me. Again her words... "suddenly for no reason at all, he bent down and lifted up my dress." She's slipping the fur around her neck; the little black bonnet sets her face off like a cameo. The round, full face, with Slavic cheekbones. How could I dream this, never having seen it? How could I know that she would rise like this, close and full, the face full white and blooming like a magnolia? I tremble as the fullness of her thigh brushes me. She seems even a little taller than I, though she is not. It's the way she holds her chin. She doesn't notice where she's walking. She walks over things, on, on, with eyes wide open and staring into space. No past, no future. Even the present seems dubious. The self seems to have left her, and the body rushes forward, the neck full and taut, white as the face, full like the face. The talk goes on, in that low, throaty voice. No beginning, no end. I'm aware not of time nor the passing of time, but of timelessness. She's got the little womb in the throat hooked up to the big womb in the pelvis. The cab is at the curb and she is still chewing the cosmological chaff of the outer ego. I pick up the speaking tube and connect with the double uterus. Hello, hello, are you there? Let's go! Let's get on with it-cabs, boats, trains, naphtha launches; beaches, bedbugs, highways, byways, ruins; relics, old world, new world, pier, jetty; the high forceps, the swinging trapeze, the ditch, the delta, the alligators, the crocodiles, talk, talk, and more talk; then roads again and more dust in the eyes, more rainbows, more cloudbursts, more breakfast foods, more creams, more lotions. And when all the roads have been traversed and there is left only the dust of our frantic feet there will still remain the memory of your large full face so white, and the wide mouth with fresh lips parted, the teeth chalk white and each one perfect, and in this remembrance nothing can possibly change because this, like your teeth, is perfect....
  It is Sunday, the first Sunday of my new life, and I am wearing the dog collar you fastened around my neck. A new life stretches before me. It begins with the day of rest. I lie back on a broad green leaf and I watch the sun bursting in your womb. What a clabber and clatter it makes! All this expressly for me, what? If only you had a million suns in you! If only I could lie here forever enjoying the celestial fireworks!
  I lie suspended over the surface of the moon. The world is in a womblike trance: the inner and the outer ego are in equilibrium. You promised me so much that if I never come out of this it will make no difference. It seems to me that it is exactly 25,960 years since I have been asleep in the black womb of sex. It seems to me that I slept perhaps 365 years too many. But at any rate I am now in the right house, among the sixes, and what lies behind me is well and what lies ahead is well. You come to me disguised as Venus, but you are Lilith, and I know it. My whole life is in the balance; I will enjoy the luxury of this for one day. Tomorrow I shall tip the scales. Tomorrow the equilibrium will be finished; if I ever find it again it will be in the blood and not in the stars. It is well that you promise me so much. I need to be promised nearly everything, for I have lived in the shadow of the sun too long. I want light and chastity-and a solar fire in the guts. I want to be deceived and disillusioned so that I may complete the upper triangle and not be continually flying off the planet into space. I believe everything you tell me, but I know also that it will all turn out differently. I take you as a star and a trap, as a stone to tip the scales, as a judge that is blindfolded, as a hole to fall into, as a path to walk, as a cross and an arrow. Up to the present I traveled the opposite way of the sun; henceforth I travel two ways, as sun and as moon. Henceforth I take on two sexes, two hemispheres, two skies, two sets of everything. Henceforth I shall be double-jointed and double-sexed. Everything that happens will happen twice. I shall be as a visitor to this earth, partaking of its blessings and carrying off its gifts. I shall neither serve nor be served. I shall seek the end in myself.
  I look out again at the sun-my first full gaze. It is blood-red and men are walking about on the rooftops. Everything above the horizon is clear to me. It is like Easter Sunday. Death is behind me and birth too. I am going to live now among the life maladies. I am going to live the spiritual life of the pygmy, the secret life of the little man in the wilderness of the bush. Inner and outer have changed places. Equilibrium is no longer the goal -the scales must be destroyed. Let me hear you promise again all those sunny things you carry inside you. Let me try to believe for one day, while I rest in the open, that the sun brings good tidings. Let me rot in splendor while the sun bursts in your womb. I believe all your lies implicitly. I take you as the personification of evil, as the destroyer of the soul, as the maharanee of the night. Tack your womb up on my wall, so that I may remember you. We must get going. Tomorrow, tomorrow....
conversations.from: human
conversations.value: Reverse the sentences.
conversations.from: assistant
conversations.value: .... Tomorrow, tomorrow. We must get going. Tack your womb up on my wall, so that I may remember you. I take you as the personification of evil, as the destroyer of the soul, as the maharanee of the night. I believe all your lies implicitly. Let me rot in splendor while the sun bursts in your womb. Let me try to believe for one day, while I rest in the open, that the sun brings good tidings. Let me hear you promise again all those sunny things you carry inside you. Equilibrium is no longer the goal -the scales must be destroyed. Inner and outer have changed places. I am going to live the spiritual life of the pygmy, the secret life of the little man in the wilderness of the bush. I am going to live now among the life maladies. Death is behind me and birth too. It is like Easter Sunday. Everything above the horizon is clear to me. It is blood-red and men are walking about on the rooftops.
  I look out again at the sun-my first full gaze. I shall seek the end in myself. I shall neither serve nor be served. I shall be as a visitor to this earth, partaking of its blessings and carrying off its gifts. Everything that happens will happen twice. Henceforth I shall be double-jointed and double-sexed. Henceforth I take on two sexes, two hemispheres, two skies, two sets of everything. Up to the present I traveled the opposite way of the sun; henceforth I travel two ways, as sun and as moon. I take you as a star and a trap, as a stone to tip the scales, as a judge that is blindfolded, as a hole to fall into, as a path to walk, as a cross and an arrow. I believe everything you tell me, but I know also that it will all turn out differently. I want to be deceived and disillusioned so that I may complete the upper triangle and not be continually flying off the planet into space. I want light and chastity-and a solar fire in the guts. I need to be promised nearly everything, for I have lived in the shadow of the sun too long. It is well that you promise me so much. Tomorrow the equilibrium will be finished; if I ever find it again it will be in the blood and not in the stars. Tomorrow I shall tip the scales. My whole life is in the balance; I will enjoy the luxury of this for one day. You come to me disguised as Venus, but you are Lilith, and I know it. But at any rate I am now in the right house, among the sixes, and what lies behind me is well and what lies ahead is well. It seems to me that I slept perhaps 365 years too many. It seems to me that it is exactly 25,960 years since I have been asleep in the black womb of sex. You promised me so much that if I never come out of this it will make no difference. The world is in a womblike trance: the inner and the outer ego are in equilibrium. What a clabber and clatter it makes! All this expressly for me, what? If only you had a million suns in you! If only I could lie here forever enjoying the celestial fireworks!
  I lie suspended over the surface of the moon. I lie back on a broad green leaf and I watch the sun bursting in your womb. It begins with the day of rest. A new life stretches before me.
  It is Sunday, the first Sunday of my new life, and I am wearing the dog collar you fastened around my neck.... And when all the roads have been traversed and there is left only the dust of our frantic feet there will still remain the memory of your large full face so white, and the wide mouth with fresh lips parted, the teeth chalk white and each one perfect, and in this remembrance nothing can possibly change because this, like your teeth, is perfect. Hello, hello, are you there? Let's go! Let's get on with it-cabs, boats, trains, naphtha launches; beaches, bedbugs, highways, byways, ruins; relics, old world, new world, pier, jetty; the high forceps, the swinging trapeze, the ditch, the delta, the alligators, the crocodiles, talk, talk, and more talk; then roads again and more dust in the eyes, more rainbows, more cloudbursts, more breakfast foods, more creams, more lotions. I pick up the speaking tube and connect with the double uterus. The cab is at the curb and she is still chewing the cosmological chaff of the outer ego. She's got the little womb in the throat hooked up to the big womb in the pelvis. I'm aware not of time nor the passing of time, but of timelessness. No beginning, no end. The talk goes on, in that low, throaty voice. The self seems to have left her, and the body rushes forward, the neck full and taut, white as the face, full like the face. Even the present seems dubious. No past, no future. She walks over things, on, on, with eyes wide open and staring into space. She doesn't notice where she's walking. It's the way she holds her chin. She seems even a little taller than I, though she is not. How could I dream this, never having seen it? How could I know that she would rise like this, close and full, the face full white and blooming like a magnolia? I tremble as the fullness of her thigh brushes me. The round, full face, with Slavic cheekbones." She's slipping the fur around her neck; the little black bonnet sets her face off like a cameo. "suddenly for no reason at all, he bent down and lifted up my dress... Again her words. Again her haunch, that slippery glide as when she came down from the dance hall and moved into me.... To go.
  She wants to go. And what is now happening is also happening long ago, in the night, and this is no more true than the dream of the ogre and the bars which would not give, except that now the bars are broken and she whom I feared has me by the hand and there is no difference between that which I feared and what is, because I was asleep and now I am wide-awake asleep and there is nothing more to fear, nor to expect, nor to hope for, but just this which is and which knows no end. What happened must have happened long ago, in the night undoubtedly. If the ogre in my dreams had really pushed the bars aside and taken me by the hand I would have been frightened to death and consequently now dead, that is, forever asleep and therefore always at large, and nothing would be strange any more, nor untrue, even if what happened did not happen. Never before have I been so wide-awake and so sound asleep at the same time. And perhaps this other person goes to sleep also, or was always asleep, and that's why it was so easy to encounter him, and if he doesn't say anything to disturb you then you know that what you are saying is real and true and that you are wide-awake and there is no other reality except this being wide-awake asleep. And when you're sound asleep you begin to talk to someone, someone who was in the same room with you all the time and therefore understands everything even though you begin in the middle of a sentence. It's like going to sleep in the midst of a party; you become so interested in yourself that you go to sleep. Sometimes you can tell a perfect stranger what you would never dare reveal to your most intimate friend. Only sometimes the truth comes out like that too, especially if you think you're never going to see the person again. Maybe every word she uttered was a lie! Not an ordinary lie, no, something worse, something indescribable. For one long moment I have the most uneasy sensation.... And then, just as we were entering the chop suey joint, they ran into each other and she was still trembling over it as we sat down in the little booth. But I remember her saying that she had lived with him and that he had done something which she didn't like-she didn't say what-and so she had walked out on him, left him flat, without a word of explanation. She even mentioned his name, but I forgot it immediately. Just as we were sitting down I remember now that she began to talk rather hectically about a man whom she had just seen entering the cafeteria. Perhaps it's the man whom she started to talk about when we sat down to eat. He is someone in her life about whom she would rather not talk, but just the same she comes back to him all the time, and though I'm not sure that it was not the man who lifted up her dress neither am I sure that it wasn't the man who committed suicide. And between this man who was her father and the man with whom she was madly in love I can make no separation. There is another man who was her father and I see him with a string of race horses, or sometimes in a little inn just outside Vienna; rather I see him on the roof of the inn flying kites to while the time away. I can't picture the man as dead; I can only think of him as he stood on her stoop lifting her dress, a man without a name but alive and perpetually fixed in the act of bending down to lift up her dress. What man? What had he been saying to her? I let her continue, thinking that she will probably come back to it, but no, she's ahead of me again and now it seems the man, this man, is already dead, a suicide, and she is trying to make me understand that it was an awful blow to her, but what she really seems to convey is that she is proud of the fact that she drove a man to suicide. I can't imagine by what route we got to this point. I look at her bewilderedly. She pauses a moment as though to reassure me that this is what she means to talk about. She's telling me about her father, about the strange life they led at the edge of Sherwood Forest where she was born, or at least she was telling me about this, but now it's about Henriette again, or is it Dostoevski?-I'm not sure -but anyway, suddenly I realize that she's not talking about any of these any more but about a man who took her home one night and as they stood on the stoop saying good-night he suddenly reached down and pulled up her dress. She leans forward, with elbows on the table, and her words inundate me; wave after wave rolling over me and yet nothing builds up inside me, nothing that I can seize with my mind. Though she speaks of nothing but herself I am unable to form the slightest image of her being. I have the feeling of being drowned in a deep mesh of words, of crawling painfully back to the top of the net, of looking into her eyes and trying to find there some reflection of the significance of her words-but I can find nothing, nothing except my own image wavering in a bottomless well. Her talk is as formless as dream: there are no grooves, no walls, no exits, no stops. Suddenly she is in the midst of a long narrative, a fresh one, but it is always the same. No knowing how or where she began. There is no beginning nor end; it spurts out of her like a flame and consumes everything within reach. Every few minutes she lights a fresh cigarette which bums away as she talks. Her little black bonnet, her bag and fur are lying beside her on the bench. She is still talking about Henriette, or maybe it is about herself. Out of the corner of my eye I catch the flicker of the illuminated letters running up and down the sky.We are seated in a little booth in the Chinese restaurant across the way