7/9/76

XZ would first have to write the letter.
After all, he's been reading the same
one (ones) over and over and all
responses had come to a halt. Actually,
he's up against the wall and he can't
write. In another way it might be
possible to construct a (must it be funny?)
series of actions that the player would
do over and over- any series could
provide him with an infinite set of
manifestations. At this impulse he would
have to dissolve all the bifurcations.
That's ridiculous, he would think, there
has to be some realistic connection.
In other words it would
be possible to constuct a code
that would be interesting to
understand...have an effect of
suggestion...would plant some
savvy idea in your brain. After
this XZ would go straight, cut
his hair the whole thing, take apart
his ego factor by factor.

In fact- there had to be
some room left for this- the
whole thing could be planned
around some mysterious absence.
The letter, for instance, what was
that? As dense YZ (he calls
himself that for short) would say,
as dense as you could imagine it.
This would also include a
precise and durable enclosure.
One you could go back to. In
French, for example , just eluding
your comprehension. No, XYZ,
would consider that kind of analysis
was dispensable anyway. You always
have to get rid of things, leave
yourself empty, ready for nothing
to happen. Nothing really explodes.
The loudest things are the quietest
anyway. At least, you've got to be
sure of that...You would
have to think of things. Everything
would have to end.

It would all dissolve because
it would be sure of its...what?
Where would it stop short? How
would it explain itself. Of course it
would all connect, it would always have
one lovely touch of paranoia. That would
tickle you. So you bring in a name,
a letter. It could go anywhere, and
anyway it would be saved, it would
conclude with an address. Now there's
someplace for it to go. The
drone, drones

SZ, SZ, SZ,

or

XYZ, XZ, X7

then, by dropping one line he
becomes X7. That, plus the
address in the whole code.

Can you translate that for
me? Formalize it into a code.
XZ doesn't want to be that specific.

-Nonsense, he says. There's no
need to be so arbitrary. The
argument can run on like this for
days.

Winning, you're back up against
the wall. You are in violation and
I know you are a trickster, you'll
do anything.

XZ knows full well what will
keep me from getting there. He knows the
real meaning of silence.

Are you still gritting your
teeth he asks me?

I'm sure XYZ want to see this
more organized. He's left all the
drawers open.

-Why 6, he keeps muttering to
himself, why 6.

That's only a twist. I understand.
I undersand. Only a twist so you
could go on from there.

Is that what they're all doing?
That why they're all making sounds
like that. XZ can see all the way
to the stars. The other way to say it
would be to say it backwards. You understand
that. That leaves everything more open,
more dangerous. You know where to proceed.
You know where to leave all the
scary reminders.

XYZ seems to like this fear. He
likes working it dangerous, even in
unbalanced situations.

In this way he compares himself
to ZC who also writes. She
would have absolutely no trouble
with your code but she also sees
*you* as beautiful. And even more
beautiful once abandoned. Poor
poor lost boy. He's so cute like
that...

6/18/76

Juxtaposition of being alone. Awakening
to think about the phone and hurt
feelings. To remember. Vision of an
intellectual romance, of a supreme
fiction. Repressed wishes. Endless
possibilities of connection, disconnection.
The feelings before, etc. Dangerous
impulses.What is expected. Also,
notes,- H, J.
Too intellectual. As simple as
dreaming. Leave your mind alone,
yr emotion alone. To keep. What may
be inserted at any time. The connection
and its possibilities. P's opposites,
poles, distractions, vanishing. Consider
a noun. Or being alone,
overeating, lead back.In town. Could
have anything in this context leaving
it open to extend indefinitely backwards,
forwards or still by adding,
subtracting or dividing, keeping,
owning, pronouncing, notes on the
keyboard of the imagination, imagine
taking away or taking apart, conceptually
or by expropriation in touching others
words silently, you ask me
questions I understand, which is
why you go on expecting me not to
stop hesitating in order to heal by
listening and constructing, inventing
every time the new structure of the
sentence, finally leaving me empty
and nude, just sitting here and
leaning back, reassembling, reordering
my positions, my body language,
my narcissism, anxiety and world
view, itself a reference to other
sentences: the turn of the century,
the screw, existence of the letter,
the telephone, telegraph, automobile,
Edison's deafness. Finnigan's Wake

[here, I am out of breath, 6/26]

That would be a. List. Why someone bumped
into periods and clauses, jangled
in the. Text.

May 8, 1976

Every time I write the date I speak
your name [there is no ambiguity about
which year it is.] The words before are
symbols for the very specific fact that this
year is separate, specific. When I forgot
how to write I could read almost any
sign before or after. Does this
shuttling avoid emotions that are
subsequent to an absence of the
corresponding words- the disclosure of a
secret message behind the words that
contains everything? I hold back the
response, and loaded with
language, I can change the pitch.
Where do I get the colors from, then, the
form of the things described. Does everything
have to remain previous to the disclosure,
restraining myself before I write the
symbol that corresponds to the object?
Reverie and confusion. When the world
seems to be conspiring for me I feel
it is conspiring against me. Also, I
see in this a desire for freedom. Love
believes very strongly in its opposite. The
this in us most strongly bound wants
to get bound in order to get the strength
to break free. The relativity of my
feelings in relation to yours make
this whole game seem ridiculous.
After all that struggle I only
found out that the feelings existed
only for themselves. Only for themselves!
And the ambiguity never changes. It is
our only real surprise.

The Desert Island Bookshelf Company Presents

Another list of books Nick would take with him to a desert island

(actually this IS a desert island- every inch of it! A very wet desert island.)

Theresa Hak Kyung Cha "Dictee"

"A Book of Correspondances for Jack Spicer" edited by David Levi Strauss and Benjamin Hollander

The Notebooks of Samuel Butler

Ernesto Livon Grosman, editor "The XUL Reader, An Anthology of Argentine Poetry, 1980-1996

Alan Sondheim "Disorders of the Real"

Anselm Berrigan "Zero Star Hotel"

Michel Foucault "Fearless Speech"

Chet Baker "As Though I Had Wings" the lost memoir

Theodore Adorno "The Culture Industry"

John Ashbery "Wakefulness"

Robert Sheckley "Draconian New York"

Robert Fitterman "Metropolis 1-15"

Jack Spicer "After Lorca"

Rachel Levitsky "Under the Sun"

E.M.Cioran "A Short History of Decay"

Jackson MacLow "Twenties"

Stephen-Paul Martin "Fear and Philosophy"

Cydney Chadwick "Inside The Hours"

Patrick Durgin "Sorter"

WRD Fairbairn "Psychoanalytic Studies of the Personality"

John D. Sutherland, "Faibairn's Journey into the Interior"

David Markson, "Reader's Block"

Tom Raworth, "Collected Poems"

Henry David Thoreau "Civil Disobediance" (extremely important on desert islands, by the way)

Whitman, Poems

Christian Bok, "Eunoia"

Daniel Davidson, "Culture"

Patrick Durgin, "Color Music"

Michel de Certeau, "Hetroogies, Discourse on the Other"

Michel de Certeau, "The Practice of Everyday Life"

Barrett Watten, "The Turn to Language and the 60's," Critical Inquiry, Fall 2002, Volume 29, Number 1

Ernesto Livon Grosman, "The XUL Reader, An Anthology of Argentine Poetry, 1980-1996

The Notebooks of Samuel Butler

Drew Gardner, "Sugar Pill"

Claudette Sartiliot, "Citation and Modernity: Derrida, Joyce, Brecht"

7/26/76

Can it be like any other Monday
When the first words given are silent
And every other word covers its prayers and plans
With syllables of intractable silence?
No design will unravel the core of memories
That run like late night movies between each thought
Dissolving like dreams in the morning.
Monday promises nothing: but, oh, the
afternoon follows you around every
minute, whispers in your ear all its
ineffable yearnings. No going back,
yet so nice to linger gently in
childhood's indecision, the pain a
reminder and a prod, the disappearing
light seems to hold fast.

Caught between yesterday, memory,
and today, desire,
revery is our only protection. It
yields nothing but asks no admission.
Monday is its own movie, each syllable
absorbs stillness, each moment
untranslateable.

Out of the revery, Monday pleases
your children, arms encircling,
voices touching; now the hour regains
its pace and revery has called back its
answers- no specific hour, no day,
no minute- nameless, faceless warmth
of self enclosed in the ocean
of self.

Again you wake and swim thinking
nothing, nothing...this time
a face smiles back and it is your
own and another face, changing,
hiding, looking anxious, afraid,
indifferent, concerned, amazed.

Unless, until...



for Jane
Monday Revery

Words, prayers of silence
thoughts dissolve between thoughts.

Haunted whispers
constant afternoon
the pain a prod

Concentration of childish indecision

7/26/76


7/28

Stay inside the dark, don't go towards the
dark, I mean the light is what was
swallowed up in words. Don't say nothing
is happening: all the dark order of nothing
leading towards the light can never fully
explain this disappearance of desire without
any interruption. At least we speak in
many languages, the feeling of frightening
admixtures doesn't display any amplitude.
I don't exactly know the loudness of the world
and it doesn't have a name.

Nobody knows
exactly what is criminal, nobody but XZ
can tell me exactly how loud my voice is
and he doesn't exactly exist.

Valery, don't tell me now if I am
now confused. I only wanted to go on.
But there I go pleading with you again.
In a way, that laughter was the truth. "That
means..."

The line that began with "that means..."

She said it was "only a conception,
a line made up of words."

I won't any longer have to say
what I mean. A word dissolves into
muscular shadows, the feeling of things
creeping all over you. It never was
exactly over and it never was exactly
begun.

You know exactly how to believe me, X7.

I know you know exactly what I mean.

And you also know it is composed
so much of tension and excitement. You
noticed that. You only wanted a hero,
someone to remember your dream by.

Yes, XZ it is possible to stay here
but now I want to leave, to relax.
The tension is unbearable. I feel
like I am suffocating. Gets harder
and harder. That's how I expand the
tension.

How much of me can I permit you to
have, XZ. How tired will I have to
get. No stars to dissolve into
the geraniums. He says the world
is dry. No one really believes me.

8/2

Translating words from words.

Very cautious- these are psychological things.
Why my voice might be a little louder-
commit yourself to what you are saying.

SO SLOW- SO SLOW BECAUSE
SO CAUTIOUS.

10/14

I had to stop writing because I got
so wrapped up in the play.
How much E's criticism is worth
it? Maybe (like my mother) I equate the
criticism with genuine concern. Taking a critical
attitude. She hates my slowness. So that
the last time I wrote-I wrote about my
my own slowness. But that slowness
came out of a desire to think before
acting. I have a hunch E knows a lot.
But I really hate her critical, grumpy
attitudes. I give so freely, Others
bargain and barter. They conserve,
they hold back. She equates
everything to the way I make love.

I feel sad. I wonder also if it
can work. This is the first time
with E I've totally doubted.
And now I totally doubt what?
Her worth? No. My worth to
her. *What* she discovers or admits
is there. A- "What does C
need you for?" She still talks to me.
She isn't all that interested in talking to
him.

11/27

Ideas noted while assembling book for Slit
Wrist piece

Writing makes me want to talk with someone
Theme: writing and the need for someone
Theme: F
Theme: my psychoanalysis- my assessment of
myself

idea- going in and out of "making up things"
- thinking before you write

write about the book itself- the assembled book
theme- Lillian

[critical thoughts- what for?
do they try to neutralize anxiety?
social conditioning]

I am trying to bracket them

[putting things down or back an impulse
action]

Feel the fizz, get the buzz, rinse those cares away!!! Shampoo 18 is online now!

(I have loads of great photos of Del Ray Cross- and the other postcard book poets- taken at the Oxygen Bar Postcard Book Reading on August 3, 2003. Hopefully I will be getting some of these photos online soon.)

Cassie Lewis is the publisher of the postcard poet books under the imprint of Cafe Expresso.

December 30, 1975

What are the words inside the words. Rage.
Babbling, speaking and talking-that it
sounds like, you know, always waiting.
A way to pass through this by filling
it with words. I remember what they were
to me. What are they now? Something
moved there, things were gathered. I wrote
no poetry (fear of abandonment) (abandonment)
no poetry. What I see are words inside
words. Rage. It's only one night. I saw
words. No voices. Finally no voices. You
don't have to suffer broken bones to love. Power.

January 15 (1975)

It seems impossible that I wrote in
here only two weeks ago. Tonight I
thought to call someone- P or P-
and say- why does there have to be
news? It's the same as history- why
there has to be history. I don't know
if the above date is exact and I
don't care. I wish there could be an
end to landmarks- to specifying
events. The thing I think is oddest
about me is that I don't care about
remembering things. I *want* to be
out of touch with time. It is possible,
particularly in solitude. In a frenzy
there wouldn't be time enough- and
in a depression, too much time:
I hate the newspaper, journalist
concept of time. I am beginning to
hate the musical concept of time too.
I think I lost the envelopes full of
notes I wrote in offices. Maybe that's
good. There are no years on them so
it doesn't matter. "So tired and depressed"
could sum up most of them. One is
most grateful for statements of
things as they are. "Realities."
The story of a depressed man who
kept track of time. Fuzziness. His
awareness of things, realities, he is
missing- another's voiced articulation
of these things, "realities." The
desire for news a desire for change-
the very deep longing for apolcalypse.

***

Have been without trances for nearly a month
and have no idea how I will pay my bills. I
went to see Les yesterday to task for more
money. He gave me some, enough to pay my rent
for a month. What is left from that will
pay for my food and cigarettes.
I've become used to the trances I don't know
what I'll do without them. I'm used to the
customers who listen to my predictions which are
90 percent accurate.

*****

21 days but these are
doing nothing
teeming with ideas and images
funny
what you see in it
and both the man and the girl
were from Tennessee. They really were.

*****


December 18, 1975

Under a full sky
As empty as you can make it
I feel so good
I could dance
Motionless-nothing
Comes out of nothing
Decorated like as or it
You make it

These are my words for you
And I know exactly what to do

Come closer
No go away, doesn't matter
So pretty- as clear as the
And you are, full moon

Words come at me from Everywhere
I tell you there were so many
I can't remember them
But I remember their opposites
LIke murder or sleep
Instead of waking and love
That person who you are escaping

Language come close to feelings,
I ask you to tell me what to say.
Words tell me what you are, what
do you want of me? Without words,
the boredom of words, with words.
What do they speak about even between
us? It was feelings, they have more
to do with it. Maybe I wanted to sing.
I saw you laugh. Be firm. Know
what was said and felt. Has to have
a solid base. Who were they, what
deals were being made out of needs.
No promises- but I know. And
day after day, minute by minute,
what it was that took us forward
into something. Not noticable
and always a little scary. You
laughed louder than anyone else and
your pleasure felt terrific. It was
great.

We have to invent. We had
to invent shadows and earthquakes
to explain these dark tremors, these
slight variations of balance and
dizziness.

I imagned silence, I played with cars
and airplanes, I stood on a gigantic
skyscraper and thumped on my chest.
King Kong, that's who I was. I just wanted
to hold her, not to hurt her; I felt so
great and powerful.

Ever since Alli Warren drove from Los Angeles to Oakland, in a flash, picking up Kasey Mohammed in Santa Cruz on the way, and arriving at Stephanie Young's reading/party before me (I was 15 minutes away in the Berkeley hills), looking as relaxed as if she had arrived from next door, I have been inordinately fond of her blog title Five Fingers Strong because, among other things, she must have some strong hands to drive like that, and secondly, she's very nice and I think of "five fingers strong" also as a "high five."

So, Alli, if you like "The Ingredient", fine, a blog by you by any name would smell as sweet (enjoy your photos too!), but , I vote for keeping it as Five Fingers Strong.

No desert island for me without: Jim Behrle's chapbooks. "Think of One," and "Red Shift", P. Inman, "A(gains)2 st the odds, Tina Darragh, "My Life," Lyn Hejiniann, "Absence Sensorium, Tom Mandel and Daniel Davidson, "Errata 5uite," Joan Retallack, "Space" by Clark Coolidge, Jerome Sala (selected), books by Elaine Equi.

Breakfast Served All Day

I'll have mine on August 27, 2003.

Dig it! My Life by Lyn Hejinian

CorpsePoetics....Eileen Tabios posts on the beautiful poetry of Mei-Mei Bersenbrugge.

*

One of the passing pleasures of blogging. I enjoy glancing at the names of new blogs showing up on New Blogger. A recent one (don't know anything about the blog): "Lilac Phonograph." Kind of like reading the hundreds of new names of bands in the Village Voice every week.

Construct or not, I like the succession of days, weeks, months and years, the numbers, the dates, all the remembrances and holidays, though I don't like birthdays and in particular, I don't like my own birthday, don't like to even think about it. But I still enjoy birth dates, the whole, foolish progression of astrological signs, the diaspora of generations. I like the dailiness of blogging, the newness and relevance and equality of each and every day, nevertheless within that equivalence an astonishing diversity of moods, themes, clusters, clashes, giggles, sighs, asides apprehensions, mornings, mournings, innovations, improvisations, proddings. welcomings.

Anyway, I just wanted to start Tuesday off with a few more lines from Elizabeth Robinson's "Apprehend",
(Apogee, 2003), read a bit more, maybe listen to some Paul Butterfield, and hit the hay. So, good night, good morning or afternoon, as the case may be!

"The witch herself wears stripes
marking her as a pariah.
How she happened to know
that there are options even in repetition:
starvation breeds resourcefulness.

Yes, she paints one line atop another
until the stripe itself acquires dimension
and curls like a tongue
from the limits of two dimensionality.

She paints one line atop another on her naked form"

Chris Lott has been struggling for awhile now whether or not to continue his blog,- Ruminate-. In a recent post, he mentions that bloggers have suddenly become concerned with "essential texts" and provides his own interesting list. I must admit that the moment I read Chris' perception, I had the thought: "This is because blogging is causing these texts to be *less* essential." Is it possible that Chris is surfacing the fact that our blogging activities may be causing our previous poetic practices to become more marginal than ever?

When I became interested in writing theoretical texts, which resulted largely from my study of the critical work of Robert Smithson, I had the feeling that the theoretical work might make the poetic work more accessible. Gradually I realized that my theoretical work was changing what I wanted to write and how I wanted to write. My theoretical essay writing eventually gave way to writing aphorisms which eventually gave way to my creating a form I called "theoretical objects"- a term that Douglas Messerli provided me with.

Now I am finding that my blogging writing, that I had convinced myself would bring new readers to my theoretical objects, is driving me towards still another change in perspective, one that is more collaborative, more open, less constructed, more responsive: the qualities of the typical blog that I enjoy and admire. I may as well adopt as my motto the last line of "The Great Gatsby" which has long preoccupied me: "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past." But I would also reverse it and say: "So we look back, longing for origins, borne forward ceaselessly towards the unknown."

Only there is no "past", no "present" no "future." These are constructs, all of which may be morphing into something that is becoming harder and harder to recognize, and even more difficult to adapt to.

So Chris' conflicts about Ruminate may be more relevant and challenging than he thought. As he struggles, the alternatives appear to be becoming less and less relevant. Maybe even less real.

I mentioned earlier I bought five books for six bucks at the Antiquarian Bookshop in Boston.

from "Apprehend" by Elizabeth Robinson (Apogee)

"You, Reader, come closer
and extend your fingers
through the bars of the cage

so I can feel their pleasing tenderness..."


from "Childhood" by Nathalie Sarraute

"The day the mistress gave back our essays, I wait with
the presentiment, but it's more like the certainty, that the
list will begin with my name. The mark written on the paper
is less important...it will probably be an 8 or a 9...
But, to confirm my success, it is absolutely necessary for my
name to be at the head of the list!..."

from "Sesame and Lilies" by John Ruskin

"My friends, I do not know why any of us should talk about
reading. We want some sharper discipline than that of reading; but,
at all events, be assured, we cannot read. No reading is possible for
a people with a mind in this state. No sentence of any great writer
is intelligible to them. It is simply and sternly impossible for the English
public , at this moment, to understand any thoughtful writing- so incapable
has thought become in the insanity of avarice: we ring true still, when
anything strikes home to us; and ...the idea that everything should
"pay" has infected our every purpose so deeply..."

from "Essays, Reviews, etc, etc" by William Makepeace Thackeray

"Arguing for liberty of conscience against any authority, however
great- against Doctor Arnold himself, who seems to me to be the greatest,
wisest, and best of men that has appeared for eighteen hundred years- let us
take a stand at once, and ask, Why should not the day have its literature?
Why should not authors make light sketches? Why should not the public
be amused daily or frequently by kindly fictions? The trivial and familiar
are out of place there; the harmless joker must walk away abashed
from such a presence, as he would be silent and hushed in a cathedral.
But all the world is not make of that angelic stuff..."

"The Double Dream of Spring" by John Ashbery

"I am still completely happy.
My resolve to win further I have
Thrown out, and am charged by the thrill
Of the sun coming up..."

Performing Objects Stationed In The Sub World by Carla Harryman
opens in San Francisco on September 10th

A performance collaboration
written by Carla Harryman
Designed by Amy Trachtenberg and directed by Jim Cave
with music by Erling Wold


Click here for dates, times and an advance review by guess who?

Performing Objects Stationed In The Sub World

This weekend I am visiting Toni's sister and brother-in-law in Arlington, Mass. Way back when I audblogged some of their son's electronic music and today he is off to college in Boston- Emerson- evidently a good place to focus on music composition and theater. Some years back, my favorite antiquarian bookstore in the world, Arlington Books moved to Boston so I haven't been there in years. Bob and Beryl kindly brought me there today and for a little over six bucks I bought what I might consider some pretty good desert island material. By the way, my top choices for desert island reading would be: V.imp (Nada Gordon), Swoon (Nada Gordon and Gary Sullivan),"How to Proceed in the Arts" (Gary Sullivan), Jordan Davis' "Million Poems", three books in manuscript I have by Stephanie Young, the works of Walter Benjamin (in translation), the works of William Hazlitt, the works of Paul Celan (in translation), "Trilce" (Cesar Vallejo, in translation), the works of Rainer Maria Rilke (in translation), the collected Wallace Stevens, Charles Bernstein's "Islets/Irritations", Ashbery's "Tennis Court Oath" , "Desire" by David Bromige, "Wobbling" by Bruce Andrews, and "Moving" and "Studying Hunger" by Bernadette Mayer, as well as "The L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E Book", Kathleen Fraser's selected, Ann Lauterbach's selected, one of Alan Davies' books and one of Michael Gottlieb's and one of Ray DiPalma's. Carla Harryman's "Under The Bridge", Barrett Watten's selected, Ron Silliman's collection of essays including "The Chinese Notebook", Ron Silliman's Ketjak, a book of Douglas Messerli's, a book of Lynn Dreyer's, a book by Lyn Hejinian, one by Kit Robinson, one of Leslie Scalapino's, a book by Keith Waldrop and one by Rosemarie Waldrop. I'd also include both Sun and Moon Gertrude Stein Awards anthologies and probably several books of aphorisms, including the Oxford Press selection. And because I have not yet read them, but I'm confident I will be fascinated, I would bring all the books published by Tougher Disguises Press, though I don't yet have them, and all my copies of Kenning, including the CD and several issues of Chain. I would probably also bring a book of Rotella's collages and maybe some other books of collages, including my own: "Free Fall" (unpublished).This is a big box, but I brought a bigger one to Rapallo when I went there for a year in 1968 (I wound up suffering through all the books of Virginia Woolf in the English language library there). I would also toss in the five books I bought today at Antiquarian Books of Boston,( Old South Meeting House, Washington/Milk Streets, 1-617-292-4700.)

I will do a list of desert island CD's and movies another time.

I bought: (lovely, just like its author): "Apprehend" by Elizabeth Robinson (Apogee, 2003)-winner of the Fence modern poet's series. By the way, if you are in Berkeley or near it and ER has any more of her backyard poetry readings, my advice is GO.

"Childhood" by Nathalie Sarraute (Braziller, 1984)

"Sesame and Lilies" three lectures by John Ruskin, Thomas Crowell, originally published 1871, surely a more recent reprint

"Essays, Reviews" by Willliam Makepeace Thackeray, 1909, leatherbound small edition

"The Double Dream of Spring" by John Ashbery, Ecco Press, 1976

(I'll post a few quotes later)

"He tried to make her understand. "This was an exceptional case. It wasn't just a question of somebody being killed. Do you realize that the past, starting from yesterday, has actually been abolished? If it survives anywhere, it's in a few solid objects with no words attached to them, like that lump of glass there. Already we know almost literally nothing about the Revolution and the years before the Revolution. Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book has been rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street and building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And that process is ontinuing day by day and minute by minute. History has been stopped. Nothing exists except an endless present in which the Party is always right. I *know*, of course, that the past is falsified but it would never be possible for me to prove it, even when I did the falsification myself. After the thing is done, no evidence ever remains. The only evidence is inside my own mind, and I don't know with any certainty that any other human being shares my memories. Just in that one instance, in my whole life, I did posess actual concrete evidence *after* the event- years after it.

"And what good was that?"

"It was no good, because I threw it away a few minutes later. But if the same thing happened today, I should keep it."

"Well I wouldn't!" said Julia. "I"m quite ready to take risks, but only for something worth while, not for bits of old newspaper. What could you have done with it even if you had kept it?"

"Not much, perhaps. But it was evidence. It might have planted a few doubts here and there, supposing that I'd dare to show it to anybody. I don't imagine that we can alter anything in our own lifetime. But one can imagine little knots of resistance sprining up here and there- small groups of people banding themselves together, and gradually growing and even leaving a few records behind, so that the next generation can carry on where we leave off."

"I'm not interested in the next generation, dear. I'm interested in *us*.

"You're only a rebel from the waist downwards," he told her.

She thought this brilliantly witty and flung her arms around him in delight."

George Orwell, *1984*