Would you believe that I actually LOST your telephone #?? It was
on an envelope, an empty envelope, pre-addressed to the telephone
company, and I of course used that envelope to pay my telephone
bill, not thinking at the moment that your phone # was on it, but
maybe thinking that I would remember to write it down elsewhere,
when I had a moment or two to remember. Life is so confusing, so
tired and disjunct that I am surprised little things like this do
not go wrong more often.

You will be pleased to know that I was at last able to procurea
book of poems by Jacques Prevert. What can I say? They’re
strange, they’re lovely, they’re fun and loose, tainted by slight
madness. He seems to use the image of little birds quite often,
don’t you think? I wonder if the stuff sounds the same musically
in English as in French?? Thanks for suggesting him to me. You
know, I saw the book at the store one day, didn’t have enough
money with me to get it, so I went back the next day, and they
were almost sold out! JP seems to be a hot property around here.

I have practiced myself dumb this holiday weekend (is it also a
holiday for you?). I am preparing a new program that I will play
at wealthy people’s homes and apartments for their private
parties. I understand that they basically throw money to the
wind at these events, and would not think twice to pay me some
outrageous fee. I am anticipating a second pay-raise in the
coming two or three weeks, and hope that I will be able to move
to an apartment on Park Avenue by mid-June. It is all I really
want right now, to live in a quiet, lovely neighborhood, not this
gateway to hell that I live in now. You say I should not become
rich, but I say that I must, I must become richer than all the
industrial nations combined, if only to make up for these early
years of my adulthood which have been so less than glamorous, and
which have not created in me the idea that I could achieve any
other people’s respect, not even my own. I mean sure, I love
art, music, poetry; I understand the most obscure allusions,
comprehend the most discursive outlines — but when will I be
able to explore these matters with any level of legitimacy? When
can I do thus without sounding like a babbling parkbench
imbecile, singing one song while my radio plays another? Does
this make any sense to you?

It is Monday, May 31, 1993. Memorial Day, so I am at home. The
weather is so-so, so I probably will not venture outside too
much. I don’t like holidays. Do you?

I listen to my Marlene Dietrich recordings in a different way
now, now that I have shared one of them with you on the telephone
at 4:00 or whatever time it was in the morning your time. Music
is to be shared, I think. It really is a social phenomenon,
isn’t it? I mean so little music is itself memorable, but the
circumstances under which it was heard are most clearly recalled.

I just finished breakfast of strawberries and coffee. It is
still early, and I am hoping to clean this apartment once and for
all, and do miles and miles of laundry, too. The summer is
coming, which means that the hours at work will relax quite a
bit, as they do around Christmas. I have a tremendous
opportunity at work to make a strong impression on my bosses and
on the executives upstairs. I am exploring the possibility of
incorporating Avon into the interactive, high-definition
televisions of the future. No one else in the company is doing
this, and in fact I don’t think any of them even know what I am
talking about when I tell them that one day you will be able to
select a movie from a list of thousands right there on your TV,
and one day you will be able to play video games from a network
service as you would do today with an in-home game system.
People dismiss me, can’t identify with what I am saying, are not
even able to take notes on what I say because it’s so foreign to
them. It’s like trying to tell someone in 1850 that one day
there will be a box which transmits visual images of the day’s
events right into your home. Sounds ridiculous, I admit, but
it’s kind of frustrating to see that a company with the resources
of Avon is not already actively seeking out every conceivable way
to keep itself from going out of business.

Well, I am ranting a bit here, and I am becoming a trifle
frustrated with this dumpy computer into which I pour these
mid-morning thoughts, because it is an old, obtuse thing which
becomes slower and slower the longer it remains turned on. I
wrote my last letter to you on the computer at work, which is
actually not a whole lot faster than this one…

Tell me your telephone # again, won’t you? Please..

So I think I need to go, need to do laundry, sweep this floor
that lies beneath the chair on which I sit at this time. Need to
throw away 4 weeks worth of New York Times, useless wires and
cables that litter the place. This could be a droll, empty day,
like most holidays. Hope your Monday, May 31, 1993, was pleasant
and remarkable in some way.

Octagonally,
-mt