Nexus
2 November 2007
Book 3 of The Rosy Crucifixion
by the One, the Only: HVM
Henry Miller is a man standing outside time. He gestures to us with his hands, he beacons to us with his voice, “Come over and join me. It’s so god-damned grand over here.” Taking Nexus by the tail and stripping off its skin retrogressively gives us Henry standing on deck as he bids farewell to the only country he has ever known. “Oh beautiful for spacious skies. . .” I too have again put an ocean between me and it (it: the red, white and blue) for reasons obvious enough.
If I was unhappy in America, if I craved more room, more adventure, more freedom of expression, it was because I needed these things. . .(I will reluctantly spare you the bulk, though it is brilliance.). . .I am not an atomizer from which you can spray a thin ray of hope. I see America spreading disaster. I see America as a black curse upon the world. Black Spring
Art and the consuming flag poled in at every ‘victory’ will never mix; oil and water, as has always been and most likely will always be.
“More room, more adventure, more freedom of expression. . .” Oops! I made a mistake in my first sentence. What is the Europe Henry looked towards and that I also revere? Europe (when directly compared to U.S) gives one (or only me?) a more complete time. No longer against time – fuck your plastic wrappings, screw that imbecilic regime – one rides time like a mustang, for time is the grit in Europe’s soil. Time lingers; its smells waft to me from mediaeval days, my floor is made of bricks poured by those men’s hands, my foundation surpasses centuries of accumulated American brick-a-brack. In the States I ambulate rootless. Here I know my definitions. So. . .what I meant to say was that Henry is a man standing outside HIS time or MY time or OUR time. He stands in a much greater time. This is the time Krishna speaks to Arjuna about; this is the time Borges elaborates in his Labyrinths. Beyond and with every one of us, let’s jump the clockwork together.
Here we go! Don’t lose me now! The thoughts are just getting good.
When Henry Miller set sail he was committing himself to a decisive statement. This I say for I entitle my own actions as thus, actions acted soon before meeting this great man. This decisive statement is the axle around which my present life turns. Though, by axle I do not mean held but a simple state of rotation. By pushing myself in a very firm direction very firmly, by sticking to my guns come hell or high water I was given rights to enter in the time of all times, the being of all beings, the I of my I. With this will I forced myself beyond the mind and have taken to the bird’s angle. You too have considered this, this I know. “There must be something else,” your strangled consciousness whispers from darkened corridors.
What is it that pushes some and allows the others to be left behind? What is the drive? a formula? to tickle the curiosity and the questioning to start the flowing. How many potentials have been slaughtered before they were even given a chance to be reborn? How often have these questions been asked?. . .Sometimes I’m not sure if they really matter.
Going out of a night in Campo de’Fiori I am accosted by the grating voices of the females of America. An ocean is not enough distance, I guess; give me Patagonia or Russia, Morocco or Madagascar or some hole in the Mayan ruins so that I may bury my face and some deep sea sponges so that I may plug my ears. To listen to them causes me to want to take the defensive with a pneumatic hammer, to see them makes me want to vomit in their sculpted faces. Whatever weaknesses, whatever defects that society holds over us are blatantly presented in this feeble minded species. They speak with toad’s tongues, they act as if they are some kind of blessing to behold, they trip over the cobbles with their ‘European’ high heels in absolute inebriation. “Oh My God!” they cacophonously croak. I have it out for you. I know your secrets and your lack of self, your struggles with that imperfect medium of look. One day you will rise from your life long slumber to find an empty hag to greet you in the mirror.
But really, what should I care? Henry advises me that these presences, these streets full of inflatable balloons, are exactly what fuels my creation and thus I should be glad. “Thank you!” I cry, choking on my own saliva. This is one hard piece of shit for me to swallow. I’m still learning. Aren’t we all? And in the meantime, back to my singing. . .why not hymn no.22 for a change, it was always my favorite.
Nexus is the story of a birth. Round about we go just like the good ole Bhagavad-Gita says until we can shake off the cycle, until we can step out reborn. Well, the whole Crucifixion is a story of a birth but in Nexus Henry has condensed it for us. To go back to the beginning, where I should have begun, Henry is scrounging around like a dog on all fours. Woof! Woof woof! (Maybe this is exactly the medicine those American girls need. Bark for once you mutts!) I have always found it clever that the closing words of Sexus and the commencing words of Nexus are tied together by the woofing; as if Plexus existed not and was mere sailing on the boundless sea.
Woof! Woof woof! Watch as Henry scrounges on the floor for scraps. See how Mona and her lesbian lover step over him in their blind and joyful merry making. But don’t take pity. Least of all when the duo sets out for Paris together without forewarning and only a cheaply scrawled note. For eventually, Mona returns and she returns alone, more calm, more serene. Every page flipped consequently brings Henry nearer to the vision he has kept stored in his heart. Paris. . .Europe, a little seed that has snagged on his mind. Look! There passes Gogol’s troika, those horses are set to full speed. Giddy-up!
Henry’s passage was purchased by Pop for the writing of Moloch, a book I can full-heartedly not recommend. The manuscript was composed under Mona’s name and fed to Pop in intervals. An ingenious scheme to say the least because with the money problems in order a serenity veils the final half of this book. Forgetting about Stasia, the forlorn basement, the endless winter nights, I lost Henry’s struggles in the quiet air. Though I grant this attribute mostly to the time of the writing of Nexus. Henry sitting behind an anchoring wooden desk, sitting high up the spectacular Big Sur coastline plugging out a history that had unfolded some thirty years before. What a memory! What a monolith of a mind! Poetry spurts out in the oddest forms. His passion for obscure nouns causes speckles on the pages that make my mouth water. And it is exactly this that makes Moloch such a stumbling book: Henry is trying to load it all in, he’s attempting too hard, he’s pushing too much for the voice.
“A tree does not search for its fruits, it grows them.” To write, I concluded, was to garner the fruits of the imagination, to grow into the life of the mind like a tree putting forth leaves.
When Henry disembarked in Paris, after the preliminary squandering about, those apples that had been forming during all those New York years, began falling off the tree in bucket-fulls. What a rich man he was and is today. For on the under side of time, always there across the hair/pin border, is the eternal. Henry is there. I feel his radiant glow. And sometimes, when my fingers race like Gogol’s troika across the white page, I join him. Onward! To all time!
Bracciano, Italy
November 2007
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