Letter 3.70

If you think winter was great, wait until you try a sweet-&-sour stringhopper: guaranteed to draw a fine line between (or is it around?) reality and illusion. Only trouble is, which side is reality?

What do you mean did I get the tail-end of Bones? If you mean did I finish writing it the answer is no; if you mean that you mailed me something more, the answer is still no, but with a question: what did you mail, when was it mailed, and where was it mailed to? And does the 'tail-end' suggest that you've mailed a middle-end and/or front-end as well (or would it be tail-middle and tail-beginning?)? Well, I haven't received any of that either, whether or not you've mailed it. That makes it serious. Waylaid by a brown-nosed coprophile (coprophobe?)? Hope not. Bless you and your 'feeble hawkings'. Spit for shit. That about sums up the selling of delusions. I'm especially interested in the negative commentary of readers and form letters which so carefully avoid saying anything in as few innocuous words as possible. So keep them cards and letters comin', folks.

So you woke up one morning laughing and nothing mattered in the slightest? Wunderbar! (But why laugh, then?) Did the woman appear because of, as a result of laughing/waking up/nothing mattering in the slightest? Or co-incidentally? Subsequently? Hyperspacially? (Land o' goshen, don't that beat all? Hyperspace would be merely an excuse for hypershit.) But then you say this woman wasn't actually there in the flesh. What was she there in? What is allowed now that wasn't before? In short, brother, whatever has or hasn't happened to you is all great and good (it's all perfect, it's all perfect), particularly so if I rightly interpret your statements as meaning that you have seen/do see Dhamma (it's all suffering, it's all suffering), but I'm not sure that that's what you mean. (Perhaps you're not sure either?) But then again I'm not sure about a lot of things, but I am sure that it's time to start a new paragraph.

I'm staying outside of Chiang Mai, about a 1500 feet climb from alms round every morning -- does my lungs and sweat glands a world of good, though it's hell on the knees and ankles -- in a square but decaying kuti. The carika was very good, found some fine places, including one actually inhabitable, which I may return to, and lots of adventures and experiences ('But what's so great about adventures and experiences?' you may ask; to which I reply, tellingly, 'Well you may ask.') of no use to anybody, and more on the way. Why do I do it? Hell, I haven't even figured out (yet) how I do it. In fact, I'm only a shade on the side of thinking that I actually do do it, or at least that it's done (but not over and done; perhaps under and done).

I agree Something Happened didn't measure up to Catch-22 (from an overblown wordiness, trying to tell too much, but not from a lack of trying). Catch-22 is still, for me, one of the great influences on my life (an adventure and experience both?)

V.