Indeed, what one would want with this Diary would be to record, à la René Char, the shabby pages. To record the pages without value, the scant pages. These pages could be like the cheap, subliminal little music one hears at Publix.
That is, the process would go something like this: first silence; then silence giving rise to the cheap, subliminal little music; then the page, which, in trying to describe the cheap little subliminal music, would sort of make a pastiche of the original silence. This is what the Bag tells himself, though perhaps this makes no sense.
Bulldozer over the vacant lot. Gone forever are the rickety sofa and the thin mattress.
He goes for another walk in the afternoon. He passes again in front of the vacant lot. Now he notices that, in the place where the sofa must have been, someone has dumped a supermarket cart (many people, in this Albino Beach, take shopping carts from the markets and then leave them abandoned anywhere). But the afternoon is splendid, and some birds cross by.
Smoky Sunday, cloudy Sunday. It is the music that seems to drag along a past. Music with ghosts (in this case, Beethoven’s Sonata for cello and piano). The music…, and he has passed again by the vacant lot. There is an area that still has not been stripped bare, an area where there is a strange fragment (a fragment with a piece of a car pipe?). But the interesting thing is that, in addition to hearing Beethoven’s music — mentally, of course — he hears a noise resembling a thing. Resembling a thing?
Today, Saturday, the Bag Boy does not have to go to Publix. It is a day of good winter coolness, and he takes his “repetitive walk” (the repetitive walk is the one taken through the same places). So he passes by the vacant lot where the rickety sofa once stood. And there, in the morning brightness and the good winter coldness, he feels accompanied by a strange cenesthesia. A strange cenesthesia in which the earth of the vacant lot settles on his fingers, while a piece of narrative turns around his left arm (the arm of the gods). This, without a doubt, feels very comforting to him. And so he turns his gaze toward the place where the Navarro Pharmacy Discount is, and in that way manages to stroll through the air, mounted on a yellow balloon.
To fix a light bulb, an insect. Insect fluttering. The insect fluttering around the light bulb. Therefore, the Bag Boy tells himself, every other element must be annulled. To remain alone, with cheap texture.
Although the noise of the television invades the Bag’s house, there remains a small trail of silence. A small trail that is… What is it like? How does one enter that trail? Where does that trail lead?
The birds continue, the seagulls continue. Sometimes they make gray drawings.
The absurd memory that always comes over him. Repeat, repeat, repeat. It was at nightfall. A railroad seemed to turn toward a mysterious level. Toward where? Repeat, repeat. He was with his father. Strange.
