he future is past, what do you do about that? The secret tonight isn’t relevant. It is hidden. You put lime in your beer. What do you want of a night? What do you look for in a woman, what do you look for in a man? The easy answers were taken a long time ago, you realize that. The answers you want to claim for yourself are invalid. So you go out searching. You walk down Mission to Doc’s. The drink in your hand isn’t the remedy you thought it would be. Later, at the LA club, you bump into the pool table, your force knocks a ball in the pocket. Score! That’s a winning number nobody had up their sleeves. Keys slide in easily or they challenge you, they fight you. Will you make them work? I don’t have your answer. I have words you don’t have and these, too, fall far short of saying what you wish had been said. Life hides like dust under a sofa for centuries, or until a family moves, or dies, and there’s a reason to look at what was neglected for so long. Hold me! It’s Tuesday and I happen to be alone tonight. You will remember this literature you created as one of the great false lies of your life, like a grade you didn’t deserve. Nobody will know what you accomplished. It’s Tuesday. The week stretches forever. There is Scott holding a camera reminding you of who you are, or who you are not, or who you might one day be. What ambition! What grace holds you, like fluid, in the womb of the life you never wanted, but love, now that you have it. Hold tightly to me. Remember the picture that didn’t get developed with the stack you turned in on Tuesday. Tuesday! You wanted this life like nothing. You wanted it like fame. You lie to yourself about your reluctance, but you love what love surrounds you. Give to it. The train won’t stand in its stall forever. William is hungry. He reads poetry to himself before bed, as if his desire can be found in the language he doesn’t have. Fame costs a fortune, don’t forget. Tomorrow is Saturday. The density of texts written and unwritten surround you, suddenly, like the call of larks sent from . . . as if larks were from somewhere sent. All of the dreams which you have been sent have been sent from yourself to you. In the end, in the present, you finally realize that all of your fate has been sent by you to you. And you are sloped towards a pillow as you turn off your stereo and begin to contemplate a dream without sleeping as you do every night without sleep but with hope your dream is not without restlessness. Senseless visions. The stereo still plays. You can’t see a thing. The sun won’t be out for hours, and when it’s out it’ll blind you. It’s Tuesday. You can’t escape the week. You can’t escape the responsibility you were given, not given. Who cares? What do you want from time, from music, from music that’s time, time that’s music. Silence won’t speak to you but it will say one word, what it is, a monotony. William, perhaps he sleeps now, perhaps. Dirk’s nose hurts, he picks it, it hurts worse. In the present you have days, you have dreams. Tomorrow is Saturday. Tomorrow. Saturdays can be dense like sand at the beach. You never know what you’ve sent or if the postage will carry it the distance you imagined it would traverse. Restlessness is no more than the sum of its part, like you. Dirk is dreaming of the Internet and the young man’s nose he destroyed in a battle-until-the-end-of-the-finish fight he won whilst trying to woo T.C. Boyle’s minions, you remember. The end of quintessence is essence. The battle is not that and if it was has no point in its fears. Frank is fighting sleep for fear of what will be written. Frank will sleep. Frank is sleeping. Frank sleeps.

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