Dancing in the Dark Read Online Free PDF Page A

pool of ink, like a scalp, floating on top of their dome. Sure, but that happens with every social change. I think Ned’s trying to talk about Thailand now. He probably doesn’t even know where it is. I think it’s next door to Vietnam or Cambodia. I’m just going to close my eyes and drift for half an hour, nod off, half-closed eyes, watching this beautiful girl in the pink&greensplash print dress moving her legs back and forth like a stationary dancer in the dark, car sounds, Paul talking about raspberry pie with ice cream, sounds good. I’m not going to wind up on any street corner, or hanging out at some dick bar or coffeehouse; I’m going to get behind the best singers that come along, the best singers, with the best songs, I’m going to put down bass lines that they can move around, dance, sing, for hours.

DARK PIGMENTATION & LIGHTLY COLOURED AMERICANS
         I have a copy of Dany Laferrière’s
An Aroma of Coffee
    sitting at the far end of the long table
                                                where I sit & work
    in the morning. This is a clear & blue morning
    about -10° with some random patches of white snow. The kind
    of January day I like although I’d probably rather be in St. Kitts
    or the rural market-gardening west side of Florida. I’m trying to think
    about what dark pigmentation has to do with anything
    except that it’s a colour. Okay, different people have curly black
    hair,
    or blue eyes, or blond hair, or grey eyes, or hazel eyes. And
    I think, it’s simply a tradition of colour
coding
– practised by various
    dark pigmentation & lightly coloured Americans. Charlie
    Parker was a genius, period, I don’t see him as a
black
musician.
    Mike Tyson is a boxer, that’s what he does. Nina Simone is a singer.
    I’m not crazy about Billie Holiday at times because
    she doesn’t state the pain & then rise above the pain. Laferrière’s
    book is an extraordinary novel because it’s so clear
    & so evocative. You can just read it one sentence at a time
    & it’s simple, but it adds up to a complex image
    & it’s perfect. It’s a book about a place, Haiti, in this case,
    where he was born before he came to Montreal & then to Miami,
    & also
       a period in your life when sometimes you’re a child
    & sometimes you’re letting go of childhood – & then of course
    you’ll probably have to send a postcard from a different city,
    Miami, & you’ll say things are good here, & you’ll probably say
    it in French, always in large distinctive writing,
    not black but simply
    the writing of a person with a great visual sense of detail
    & a very clear mind.
                     I think Dany Laferrière
    & Wynton Marsalis are both dark pigmentation Americans.
    I would describe myself as a lightly coloured American. Not
    as a “white.”
         Actually Dany’s postcard arrived in dark blue
    Pentel,
    blue is a contemplative colour
    & it’s his story as he sees it now from Miami.

GREAT DANES IN AUTUMN
         I call the largest of the 2 Great Danes
    Alice,
      he’s the largest of the 2, & 3 months older. The female
    is William,
        because Gertrude Stein loved William James,
    the author of
Pragmatism
,
    for his quirky and generally exact intelligence.
                           This is
    Laura speaking, she
                    says, “I think you like Alice because he’s
    got such a big schlong,”
                         & she laughs, she’s standing here
    on the front lawn of her parents’ summer house in Uxbridge
    wearing a sleeveless wide-vent pale lemon yellow blouse
    & loose floppy plaid shorts. She has great legs, long & tan,
    but you can’t see much above her knees
    one of which has a grass stain. I’m leaning over Alice
    who has come out to meet me with my hands flat on his shoulders
    his big head is almost up to my waist
    he’s huge and he’s 3 years old