Dada 167

Then there was my appeal, I made the most of this idea, thinking of all the resounding phrases that would ring around the court room on my behalf. It would be cooler in there as well, studying the effects of each note of support so as to extract the most consolation from the judge while the conditioner clanked and groaned. ‘He’s done his punishment but expect nothing’ said the lady in blue. My appeal was dismissed. I was back with the three slipped knots. I was to die. It’s common knowledge I said to myself; life isn’t worth living anyway, it’s too much of a struggle. And on a wider view what does it matter if you die at twenty three or eighty three; there is only another sixty years to have got through. Seeing things like this did not seem so bad. Iskra could have his forty years of pimping before his skin turned to parchment and his hands begin to shake like old Srino’s. I had slept with men and women, rolled the dice and smoked the Ice. I worked at my trade and smelled the river each morning instead of letting my life go by. It was better than sitting behind a desk or tiring my brain with voluminous studies. Men and women will continue on living, families will struggle, death will come for each one of us.This business of dying just had to be got through, the same way you had to fight to come down the birth canal. Everything was a journey and then again it wasn’t. The thought of another forty years of life, of laughing and getting high, of parties and work, sunshine and sleep seemed like an never ending celebration, like a river in motion. I wanted it.I wanted the poetry of the days. I wanted it as surely as the sea or that stack of summer hours, day upon day that you could extract from the bud like a bee takes pollen from a flower, the sweetest orange flower.