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   ooooo   ooooo  .oooooo.  oooooooooooo       HOE E'ZINE RELEASE #777
   `888'   `888' d8P'  `Y8b `888'     `8
    888     888 888      888 888                  "May and the Past"
    888ooooo888 888      888 888oooo8
    888     888 888      888 888    "               by Viledandy
    888     888 `88b    d88' 888       o               8/2/99
   o888o   o888o `Y8bood8P' o888ooooood8
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        After she had gone, I pondered all she was evidently keeping from me.
 The information I had received from her was insufficient for me to do more
 than subject it to the broadest and most superficial analysis.  The
 information I had received from her, meagre, banal, threadbare, misleading
 or, where precise, outlandish, did me in fact precious little damn bloody
 good.  She was on a train, she said, leaving the Gare de Lyon; dozens of
 lines crossed; an exquisite arrangement of train upon train, undoubtedly
 bound for the Cote d'Azur, cheek to cheek with her own, and in the azure
 window (sunset, or dawn, scattered upon the pane) the darkhaired, darkeyed
 boy she had known, and loved, when a girl, long gone, long last seen,
 dancing so lightly in her young arms, amid flowering plants.  It was love at
 second sight, confirmed, tattoed between them on golden windows (a moment
 when dawn and sunset glided together in summer) his eyes his hair so lost in
 shocking seconds graze of light on departing Paris gone.  But that cannot be
 all.  She has left me to ponder all she has kept from me.

        Saw May again.  What rubbish.  Why do I go there?  Up her old stairs,
 the long wait for the door to open, the door opens, always the hesitation,
 oh hello, door kept ajar, oh hello, oh it's you, what a surprise, thought it
 was Matthew, come in.  We go in, we stand, thought it might be Matthew, you
 can never tell when he might drop by, sit down, sit, sit, tell me, for God's
 sake, all that is momentous in your life.

        I tell her this:  I am very happy in my house in the city and my life
 as an artist.  I enjoy taking long walks by the side of the river, on either
 side, north or south, depending on my mood, the conditions, the time of day.
 It is autumn.  The life of the city delights me, the life that bleeds
 through the smog.  In the park I see boys fishing.  They often fish with
 their fathers.  There is no end to the cars.  They disappear across Waterloo
 upstream in a long wake.  So easeful their progress, wide their wake of
 light and noise.  There is no scar on my landscape.  I gain no pleasure
 whatsoever from my journeys elsewhere, apart from seeing my oldest friend,
 you.  I remain so closely interested in you.  I think of you late at night.
 I imagine you sitting amid your candles and lilies, keeping your solitary
 wake.  No candle I know holds a candle to your candles.

        I think that I might write of you, make you the central figure of a
 modest novella; modest since I doubt I could ever fully capture the heart of
 your character, never precisely catch you within my noose, so to speak.  I
 see you only in the shuddering of candles, an old woman, one who had never
 known girlhood, or other distinctions of light.  My respect for you rests in
 the fact that you do not waver, that your patience does not waver, since,
 your life rapidly failing, you sit in your room paying unwavering attention
 to the Matthew of your wavering candles.  My contempt for you follows from
 this.  My contempt for you rests in the fact that you wait only for Matthew
 to enter, wait only for the collision of you with his bouncing flamboyant
 bellbottomed bottom, the collision that will be the end of you.

        She responds:  Tell me more about the train incident.

        What train incident?

        The incident which contained a darkhaired darkeyed boy, in a train
 leaving Paris, in a window, passing.  A dawning sunset.  You both had loved,
 years before.  He looked at you, through grazing light.  You saw.  He had
 not forgotten you.  When you had last seen him he cried, you touched his
 wrist, he buried his head, you withdrew your hand.  All this took place
 miles away, long before you embarked on your trip to this room.

        Can I for much longer tolerate the insults to which she subjects me?

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 [ (c) !LA HOE REVOLUCION PRESS!  HOE #777 - WRITTEN BY: VILEDANDY - 8/2/99 ]