The ner­vous fluid of a city is simi­lar to a gram­mar or an elec­tric cur­rent. Loving and loa­thing, we cir­cu­late. I myself did not exist before bathing in this medium. Here I become a style of enun­cia­tion, a stra­te­gic misun­ders­tan­ding, a lin­guis­tic fun­nel, a wedge in lan­guage. Here I thought I’d des­troy my ori­gin, or I did des­troy it, by beco­ming the she-dan­dy I found in the mar­gins of used paper­backs. What do I love ? I love the elsew­here of moving clouds.

Reading unfolds like a game cal­led ‘I,’ in public gar­dens in good wea­ther, in a series of worn-down hotel rooms, in museums in win­ter, where ‘I’ is the com­po­site figure who is going to write but hasn’t yet. If I am not alone in these rooms, if I could be known, it would be by the skin­ny red-hai­red street sin­ger, the secre­ta­ry of Cologne in her iro­ni­cal cast-off dress, the hard-shod hor­se­girls nei­ghing in the dark apart­ment, by simi­lar­ly hybrid she-stran­gers and forei­gners, any girl with the com­bi­ned rage of las­si­tude and com­pli­ci­ty. They are bla­zons. Cool threads of anger bind me to them. We cease to be human. We’re neu­tral, desi­tua­ted clouds. There is nothing left to fear. This rea­li­za­tion is a voca­tion.