From THE HISTORY OF ZERO

Here are six of the fifty-four sections that comprise The History of Zero (Candle Aria Press, 2008). Above all, I was thinking about the relationship of language and the world, more specifically a question of immediacy, or the (im)possibility of immediacy. A lot of this writing was done when we didn’t have a place to live. We were between motels, friends and family and drove a lot. This became the book of that movement. Everything we had was in the car with us. Writers whose work was important to this project were Rikki Ducornet, David Markson, Bhanu Kapil, Kenneth Patchen and Renee Gladman.

XIII

Digital Zero is a crisp silence though I droop consistently towards the analogue. Montana is a house built entirely of driftwood. Design is itself a mirror. A grate set into the floor. Any tea or coffee, sir? Any tea of coffee at all? Hot snack? The captain has turned on the fasten seatbelt sign. I don’t know how much longer I can do this without you.







XIV

Beretta drove her car to the Severn. Beretta whose name is Celandine. Whose nature is Zero. Beretta who is the longest river in the world.

Her car was not a flatbed and the Severn is not in Montana. Nor is it outside of Denver or anywhere on I-70. Although everything, except Denver, is by Design outside of Denver.

I should understand this by now. As I should understand Commerce and gymnasiums. As I have learnt to understand baseball. Just yesterday I said handbrake when I meant parking brake and for a moment everything was ruined. Much of my dialect is gathered from original Kentucky conversation. This film has been altered from its original format, it has been modified to fit this screen.







XV

Where there are deserts, we will redirect rivers and build polythene cities. Beretta finds herself in Las Vegas, a community of doctors. The shortest distance between two people is a smile. A smile is all teeth. And smiles, I have learnt, were born in Irvine, California. Many of these procedures may appear cosmetic. At every rest stop I bathe in the soil.












XVI

Design is a doctor. Zero is Montana. Commerce is the most beautiful suburb in Europe. Irvine, California is a hospital on the banks of the longest river in the world. John Betjeman is himself a mirror. A transistor is more reliable than a traditional human heart. My limbs are cirrus clouds. Celandine is the tenement. I am the machine.












XVII

Q: If all of this is true, then I am a passenger on an aeroplane somewhere above Kentucky. Where am I going?

A: Montana. No. If I am on this aeroplane I am not going to Montana because I am going to Montana in a flatbed pickup.

All of this is true.

Q: Is all of this true only by Design?

A: If I wake up in Montana then this is not true. I didn’t realize I was sleeping. There is no such thing as fiction.

It occurs that perhaps I am Montana. That my growth, vinelike, is something mechanical not animal. My head is in Billings but my heart is in Missoula. Outside Ottawa, I kept regular appointments with an albino Iranian barber named Khalil. Ottawa is not in Montana. Nor is it in Xante. His shop was located in the Billings Bridge complex. If nothing else, this is true.

I am Montana behind windows looking out over Kentucky in an unknown conveyance. Much depends on whether I am airborne. But everything has always been airborne.












XVIII

Q: Is this a story? Or a dictionary? What is an intransitive poetic?

A: When Beretta drove her car to the Severn she built a bridge to Zero.

Q: Or was the bridge Zero? Or was it Celandine who drove her car to the Severn?

A: There are two bridges that connect England and Wales. I am neither of these bridges. I am an aeroplane. I am frequently dizzy and my name is Zero. Design is itself a mirror. A grate set into the floor.