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... Patrolling is, in fact, my principle occupation.... No matter how tight Security, I am always somewhere Outside giving orders and Inside this straight jacket of jelly that gives and stretches but always reforms ahead of every movement, thought, impulse, stamped with the seal of alien inspection.... Writers talk about the sweet-sick smell of death whereas any junky can tell you that death has no smell . at the same time a smell that shuts off breath and stops blood... colorless no-smell of death... no one can breathe and smell it through pink convolutions and black blood filters of flesh... the death smell is unmistakably a smell and complete absence of smell smell absence hits the nose first because all or- ganic life has smell... stopping of smell is felt like darkness to the eyes, silence to the ears, stress and weightlessness to the balance and location sense.... You always smell it and give it out for others to smell during junk withdrawal.... A kicking junky can make a whole apartment unlivable with his death smell... but a good airing will stink the place up again so a body can breathe.... You also smell it during one of those oil burner habits that suddenly starts jumping geometric like a topping forest fire.... Cure is always: Let go! Jump1 A friend of mine found himself naked in a Marrakech hotel room second floor.... (He is after processing by a Texas mother who dressed him in girl's clothes as a child.... Crude but effective against infant proto- plasm.... ) The other occupants are Arabs, three Arabs... knives in hand... watching him . glint of metal and points of light in dark eyes . pieces of murder falling slow as opal chips through gly- cerine... Slower animal reactions allow him a full second to decide: Straight through the window and down into the crowded street like a falling star his wake of glass glittering in the sun... sustained a broken ankle and a chipped shoulder... clad in a diaphanous pink curtain, with a curtain-rod staff, hobbled away to the Commissariat de Police.... Sooner or later The Vigilante, The Rube, Lee The Agent, A. J., Clem and Jody The Ergot Twins, Hassan O'Leary the After Birth Tycoon, The Sailor, The Exter- minator, Andrew Keif, "Fats" Terminal, Doc Benway, "Fingers" Schafer are subject to say the same thing in the same words to occupy, at that intersection point, the same position in space-time. Using a common vocal apparatus complete with all metabolic appliances that is to be the same person -- a most inaccurate way of expressing Recognition: The junky naked in sunlight... The writer sees himself reading to the mirror as always... He must check now and again to reassure himself that The Crime Of Separate Action has not, is not, cannot occur.... Anyone who has ever looked into a mirror knows what this crime is and what it means in terms of lost control when the reflection no longer obeys.... Too late to dial P o l i c e.... I personally wish to terminate my services as of now in that I cannot continue to sell the raw materials of death.... Yours, sir, is a hopeless case and a noisome one.... "Defense is meaningless in the present state of our knowledge, said The Defense looking up from an elec- tron microscope.... Take your business to Walgreen's We are not responsible Steal anything in sight I don't know how to return it to the white reader You can write or yell or croon about it. |
