Today! Today, today, today, at 6:30am on February 9th, 2012, marks the date that I have finished Henry Miller’s The Tropic Of Capricorn. Never would I have believed upon being initially gifted this book that it would become notable enough to celebrate its completion! In it, I not only have found the perfect opening quote for my novel, but now I realize, the perfect closing one as well. And how symmetrical, that these chosen verses fall within the opening ten and closing ten pages of Miller’s book, just as they fall within the five opening and closing of mine.
It begins like this:
Everything that happens, when it has significance, is in the nature of a contradiction.
Until the one for whom this is written came along I imagined that somewhere outside,
in life, as they say, lay the solution to all things. I thought, when I came upon her, that
I was seizing hold of life, seizing hold of something which I could bite into. Instead
I lost hold of life completely. I reached out for something to attach myself to — and
I found nothing. But in reaching out, in the effort to grasp, to attach myself, left
high and dry as I was, I nevertheless found something I had not looked for — myself.
I found that what I had desired all my life was not to live — if what others are doing
is called living — but to express myself. I realized that I had never the least interest
in living, but only in this which I am doing now, something which is parallel to life, of
it at the same time, and beyond it.
And it ends like this:
It seems to me that it is exactly 25,960 years since I have been asleep in the black womb of sex. It seems to me that I slept perhaps 365 years too many. But at my any rate I am now in the right house, among the sixes, and what lies behind me is well and what lies ahead is well. You come to me disguised as Venus, but you are Lilith, and I know it. My whole life is in the balance; I will enjoy the luxury of this for one day. Tomorrow I shall tip the scales. Tomorrow the equilibrium will be finished; if I ever find it again it will be in the blood and not in the stars.
I, too, have begun and ended like this, though in reverse to this process. Henry Miller and I’s parallel romantic experiences are twain mirrors of our separated lives. But sandwiched between bookends of our shared experiences – symbolized by death and then birth, birth and then death – everything else in-between is variable, different, made similar only by our each writing a book and finding ourselves because of pain. Both hint towards the future, though seventy years of question marks divide them, his having completed The Tropic Of Capricorn in 1938 (appropriately, in Paris).
I suppose, contextually, for one to understand what I mean really is to capture this exact passage from The Tropic Of Capricorn – this passage that will begin my second book, the continuation of the first, the hello to the one for whom that is written, my star-aligned Aries, my age-old familiarity, for which this verse rings true:
“One can wait a whole lifetime for a moment like this.
The woman whom you never hoped to meet now sits before you,
and she talks and looks exactly like the person you dreamed about.
But strangest of all is that you never realized before that you had dreamed about her.
Your whole past is like a long sleep which would have been forgotten had there been no dream.
And the dream too might have been forgotten had there been no memory, but remembrance is there in the blood and the blood is like an ocean in which everything is washed away but that which is new and more substantial even than life: REALITY.”
Up until this moment, I knew not where to begin with the continuation; I knew only that my work must be continued. But here, before me, with its red jacket sleeve and 95 cent price point, lies the answer, the door-opening key spun from paper and memory and imagination, brought to me in the present by one Henry Miller, whose history and astrology I shall wander to research in the immediate future. Henry Miller, who his hive-minded, zombie-brained contemporaries foolishly sought to banish due to their lack of understanding his genius. Henry Miller, who similarly finds as much weight in astrology as do I; for no other reason would he write two books in homage of Cancer and Capricorn, for no other reason would he have said that he is “now in the right house, among the sixes…” upon finding his ultimate second love…
EDIT
I did find out that the book is not purely fiction or non-fiction, that the truths and non-truths are one and the same, indistinguishable. I wonder if his description of this love is about his wife, June? Or Anais Nin? Or none of the above? Purely fiction? Regardless, I did find this book, to the right, which has a synopsis like this (it is exactly what I aim to do with my own book, coincidentally) according to this lovely post on Psychicchic’s Paranormal Curtain:
“This book, Henry Miller: His World of Urania, was written by the late Hollywood astrologer, Sidney Omarr in 1960. The book analyzes the effect the planets had on Miller and his many works, including Tropic of Cancer, Tropic of Capricorn, Black Spring and even Sour Orange Juice… I have yet to come across a book like this one – a book that dissects a life history in an attempt to examine the impact of any cosmic thinking.”
>>>
Now to get barfy. Forgive me.
I awoke this morning, as if from plague, afflicted, tumbling from me waters like catharsis – only waters poisoned. I have been bed-ridden since late last evening, feeling like complete pale-faced horror, eating rice and carbs in an attempt to create solid ground inside me, but there is none. It’s horrible. I need to work but I have no internet in my home, and I must make the decision of going out and risking disaster or staying here to do nothing except for occasionally write when the appropriate words come to mind. But aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah, I feel as though I am dying, though I am not, I hope; I am not often sick in this way, and it is the worst kind. At the same time, I am growing a pimple, I am sweating, oh, it’s horrible. Bathe me royally, is there anywhere for bandages to stop these ridiculous horrors?!! DEATTTTTTTTTTTH.
I’ve ventured out am in public. I’ve scarcely been here half an hour. I need to go home. I need to go home. I need to queue up some bookmark links about Henry Miller — no internet at home — and I need to go home. Over this for the time being. Why did I think I wanted to face the world? Oh, right, responsibility. Getting in the way of my comforts. Sick.
