At the Bottom of the River Read Online Free PDF

sea corresponds to the dry land, the dry land corresponds to the snake whose limbs are now reduced; I saw a man, He was in a shroud, I sat in a rowboat, He whistled sweetly to me, I narrowed my eyes, He beckoned to me, Come now; I turned and rowed away, as if I didn’t know what I was doing.

WHAT I HAVE BEEN DOING LATELY
    What I have been doing lately: I was lying in bed and the doorbell rang. I ran downstairs. Quick. I opened the door. There was no one there. I stepped outside. Either it was drizzling or there was a lot of dust in the air and the dust was damp. I stuck out my tongue and the drizzle or the damp dust tasted like government school ink. I looked north. I looked south. I decided to start walking north. While walking north, I noticed that I was barefoot. While walking north, I looked up and saw the planet Venus. I said, “It must be almost morning.” I saw a monkey in a tree. The tree had no leaves. I said, “Ah, a monkey. Just look at that. A monkey.” I walked for I don’t know how long before I came up to a big body of water. I wanted to get across it but I couldn’t swim. I wanted to get across it but it would take me years to build a boat. I wanted to get across it but it would take me I didn’t know how long to build a bridge. Years passed and then one day, feeling like it, I got into my boat and rowed across. When I got to the other side, it was noon and my shadow was small and fell beneath me. I set out on a path that stretched out straight ahead. I passed a house, and a dog was sitting on the verandah but it looked the other way when it saw me coming. I passed a boy tossing a ball in the air but the boy looked the other way when he saw me coming. I walked and I walked but I couldn’t tell if I walked a long time because my feet didn’t feel as if they would drop off. I turned around to see what I had left behind me but nothing was familiar. Instead of the straight path, I saw hills. Instead of the boy with his ball, I saw tall flowering trees. I looked up and the sky was without clouds and seemed near, as if it were the ceiling in my house and, if I stood on a chair, I could touch it with the tips of my fingers. I turned around and looked ahead of me again. A deep hole had opened up before me. I looked in. The hole was deep and dark and I couldn’t see the bottom. I thought, What’s down there?, so on purpose I fell in. I fell and I fell, over and over, as if I were an old suitcase. On the sides of the deep hole I could see things written, but perhaps it was in a foreign language because I couldn’t read them. Still I fell, for I don’t know how long. As I fell I began to see that I didn’t like the way falling made me feel. Falling made me feel sick and I missed all the people I had loved. I said, I don’t want to fall anymore, and I reversed myself. I was standing again on the edge of the deep hole. I looked at the deep hole and I said, You can close up now, and it did. I walked some more without knowing distance. I only knew that I passed through days and nights, I only knew that I passed through rain and shine, light and darkness. I was never thirsty and I felt no pain. Looking at the horizon, I made a joke for myself: I said, “The earth has thin lips,” and I laughed.
    Looking at the horizon again, I saw a lone figure coming toward me, but I wasn’t frightened because I was sure it was my mother. As I got closer to the figure, I could see that it wasn’t my mother, but still I wasn’t frightened because I could see that it was a woman.
    When this woman got closer to me, she looked at me hard and then she threw up her hands. She must have seen me somewhere before because she said, “It’s you. Just look at that. It’s you. And just what have you been doing lately?”
    I could have said, “I have been praying not to grow any taller.”
    I could have said, “I have been listening carefully to