i wasn't the one who shot down saint-ex, believe me!

i know what i want now. i want to walk the empty streets of a busy city. early evening, orange light. a greenish river moving upstream. i want to go into a comic books store near closing time. the store will be unattended. piles of acme novelty library vols. 45-75 as high as the sky. i will browse thru vol. 47 in the french traduction, about how jimmy corrigan lost his brain stem in a freak batobus accident and now he's the stupidest kid on earth. the stupidest kid on earth in a coma. i will leave the comic books store, 'tis called galacticos, and i will leave the door open. exposed to the recently falling snow. i will walk to the direction of this park i know, since i had been spending to much time there listening to the sun, and i will find a bench, wet with dew and snow, sit down and read a sang ram* in the dark. in the morning (the night i spent sipping wine, red, straight out of the bottle) i will watch the leaves on the nameless (to me) trees turn from yellow to green and i will watch with amazement and nonchalantly a bronze of condorcet grow wings on the spats. morning hermès, i'd greet him, would you like a mcdonald's coffee and a mcmuffin? no, he'd say. get me something from the hotel rimbaud at the rue descartes. and off i'll go, with that morning's copy of le figaro under my left armpit. i will get the petit déjeuner and totally forget about condorcet. then i will go to CBGB's and watch the velvet undergound in its original (trans)formation. nico would still be hot, though she never was. they will jam with neil hagerty and serge gainsbourg will pelt them with his white calf skin repetto zizi hommes. i will feel crap seeing so many talented people on and off stage and i will catch the lastest métro to la flèche d'or and watch an imitation white stripes dressed in blue polkadots. the watered-down beer will cost 10 euros and i will be a millionaire, having just received my heritage money from the flaubert estate and i'll spend the rest of the money on a grand apartment overlooking place victor hugo and i will play petanque with holiday_sendiri on the velvet carpet. we go hungry after 30 minutes and we'll walk down jalan jaksa and look for a cheap soto betawi. there's one but they've run out of the goat's eyes and there's no way we'll eat at an establishment like that. it's not even 5 a.m. not yet. so she says why don't we go to bladok and order an omelette with melting cheese inside instead? sure, that's only a 24-hour non-stop flight on emirates with a quick transit in dubai. let's go. do you wanna get an a/w marni dress at periplus to go? to go with yr dilapidated copy of de nijs/niewenhuys's faded portraits! the frogs were all over batavia early last century. sure, why not, i like losing my head in the clouds. aren't the girls pretty in this sleepy royal javanese town? i'd say majestic if they weren't all wearing sandals made of swallows. ah, you complain too much, life is what you make out of nothing. then i will make nothing out of life haha hoho heehee. let's just go rafting on the brown river and be a couple of smartasses and call it brownwater rafting. you do that. i do that? i do a lot of things but never things that make money, or dust out of reputations. okay then, let's just go burn bridges and watch slamet gundono play wayang with the flames. let's.

*the sequel to lorrie moore's anagrams, by stephen dixon of i. fame.