Well chaps first I'd like to say a few
vile things more or less at random, not only because
it is expected of me but also because I enjoy it. One
of them is that this cunt you've got here, although
I've never seen her with my own eyes, is probably
not worth worrying about. Now excuse me if I'm
treading on your toes in this matter. God knows I
love a female gesture as much as any man, as when,
for instance, sitting in the front seat of a car in their
bikini, they kind of shrug themselves into a street
shift before getting out, or while the car door is
open but they haven't gotten out yet; and if you
happen to be looking out of a window of a house
near the curb, you can sometimes see one sitting
in her absolute underwear, in the hot weather, and
then going through that 'shrugging' business, and
sort of hitching the shift up over her hips, and then
shaking her head to get the hair to fall the right way,
and all that. And all this is the best that has been
thought and said, in my opinion, or ever will be
thought and said, for the only thing worth a rap in
the whole world is the beauty of women, and maybe
certain foods, and possibly music of all kinds, especially 'cheap'
music such as that furnished at parades
by for instance the St. Pulaski Tatterdemalion Band
of Orange, New Jersey, which can reduce you to
tears, in the right light, by speaking to you from the
heart about your land, and what a fine land it is, and
that it is *your* land really, and my land, this land of
ours--that particular insight can chill you, rendered
by a marching unit. But I wander. The main thing I
wanted to point out is that the world is full of
cunts, that they grow like clams in all quarters of
the earth, cunts as multitudinous as the cherrystones
and littlenecks burrowing into the mud in all the
bays of the world. The point is that the loss of any
particular one is not to be taken seriously. She stays
with you as long as she can put up with your shit
and you stay with her as long as you can put up
with her shit. That's the way it is behind the veil of
flummery that usually veils these matters. Now
think, I ask you, of all those women who are beyond
the moment of splendor. They are depressed.
The minister comes to call and recommends to
them the things of the spirit, and tells them how the
things of the spirit are more durable than the things
of the flesh and all that. Well he is entirely correct,
they are more durable, but durable is not what we
wanted. The terrible poignance of this predicament
is not vitiated by the fact that everybody knows it,
in the backs of their minds. Ruin of the physical
envelope is our great theme here, and if we keep
changing girls every four or five years, it is because
of this ruin, which I will never agree to, to my
dying day. And that is why I keep looking out of
the window, and why we all keep looking out of
the window, to see what is passing, what has been
cast up on the beach of our existence. Because
something is always being cast up on that beach, as
new classes of girls mature, and you can always get
a new one, if you are willing to overlook certain
weaknesses in the departments of thought and feeling.
But if it is thought and feeling you want, you
can always read a book, or see a film, or have an
interior monologue. But of course with the spread
of literacy you now tend to get girls who have
thought and feeling too, in some measure, and some
of them will probably belong to the Royal Philological
Society or something, or in any case have
their own 'thing,' which must be respected, and
catered to, and nattered about, just as if you gave a
shit about all this blague. But of course we may be
different, perhaps you do care about it. It's not
unheard of. But my main point is that you should
bear in mind multiplicity, and forget about uniqueness.
The earth is broad, and flat, and deep, and
high. And remember what Freud said.