Houses & buil­dings were not just left as they were : all doors are large, none are revol­ving, there are no cage­like places, ele­va­tors are trans­pa­rent, all win­dows can open, places open out onto other places, hall­ways are gene­rous, there is no rent, backyards behind city buil­dings are joi­ned without fences so you could ride a horse behind the streets, some pave­ments have tur­ned back to dirt, there isnt any money, money became so phy­si­cal­ly large that to accu­mu­late five dol­lars it would take a whole old-fashio­­ned room full of these big metal things ellip­soid in shape, all the sewage of…

The sauce is done. Then I went to visit a girl­friend of mine who was going to a Jesuit col­lege in Syracuse. When I came home Bob met me at the air­port, it was the first time I’d flown and I had fal­len in love with someone and that was Ed. We went back to my house in Ridgewood, this was when I was trying to go to Barnard but it took me two hours to get there. Bob’s mother had given me a wed­ding sho­wer because my grand­fa­ther had given me my mother’s dia­mond ring and she took that…

that if you can get enough to eat will sus­tain itself can move for­ward & can live till it dies at this moment in this world there are mil­lions of others of your spe­cies who you could say in lan­guage eat stand & site, fuck & shit, ingest pro­create & defe­cate on or near this same ground, whi­che­ver may you like it you sit stand or lie on a world globe orb or cir­cum­stance that’s a pla­net revol­ving on its axis in an orbit around so-cal­­led sun what else could you say that’s true ? You could begin to tell how…

I ask are you fini­shed, you seem to want mine. There’s only time left to tell how the floors met the walls and we saw cen­ti­pedes all the time craw­ling across the car­pets which were green beneath the blue glass table which was a mir­ror with a plate of balls on it under the win­dows which on some days we clea­ned but not too well so we wouldn’t fall out like my mother did not but someone else’s mother did and she died but my sis­ter fell out once with a piece of cheese in her hand but she was…

A calm sen­tence like a sto­ry. I used to know a man who had a dog and I fol­lo­wed their steps in the snow, I got into the habit of wal­king just as far as they did eve­ry day. At the same time I also knew a woman whose hus­band had seven guns. I used to know a woman who’s the woman who mar­ried Neil Simon. I like the woman who used to work in the Lenox mar­ket, she never wears boots, then she reti­red. In New England the women are often more exci­ting than the men, Lewis thinks so…

I had been wan­ting to keep a jour­nal of one week of living in New York and eve­ry detail of eve­ry­thing that hap­pe­ned at work, home and in the com­mu­ni­ty, to see if recor­ding eve­ry­thing about living in the city would be illu­mi­na­ting fun­ny or use­ful because it would be about money, work, poli­tics and sex. Everything you or I or any­bo­dy says always seems 100% wrong some­times, unless you keep for­cing it to be clo­ser to the truth, kids have shar­per memo­ries till they learn to use the lan­guage well and then there is always all that pre­va­ri­ca­ting and…

I have an image of a beau­ti­ful man or woman who walks in the door like Christ and ear­nest­ly spends some time with us like the UPS man does. Bernadette Mayer Mindwinter day (22nd December 1978) New Directions Books 1982 35…

An idea is to spend days wal­king nights wri­ting never eating, sleep only when it rains and have an occa­sio­nal beer. Bernadette Mayer Mindwinter day (22nd December 1978) New Directions Books 1982 34…