Read Online The Adding Machine by William S. Burroughs - Free Book Online Page B

turned off Houston past The Volunteers of America. I am thinking about New Mexico and I look up and there is a New Mexico license plate. Land of Enchantment. So note and write down in the margin actual interruptions, which may be frequent if you are riding on a subway. I admire the intrepid breed of subway readers; perhaps they are quite literally escaping into their books. I have never heard of a reader being attacked. Why only yesterday a black youth was occupying a double seat with such truculent insolence that no one, myself included, dared to demand our squatters rights, but a young man with a large book on mathematics, he was very technical, made the sullen youth move his briefcase and set right to work on his formulae. So choose the subway for really adventurous intersections, but waiting rooms and airports are also rich motherlodes. You can just sit there and attract incidents like a blue serge suit attracts lint.
    And trains are the best because you’re perfectly safe and some oaf won’t suddenly confront you with a bestial snarl: ‘Who are you reading at?’
    I just tried an interesting experiment. I turn on the TV, open an anthology of poetry and read a few lines, noting action and words on screen. I throw away some duds but the hits are impressive. Just try it.
    ‘A violet by a mossy stone half hidden from the eye.’ Wordsworth/ Lucy poems. There’s a flower on screen right now.
    ‘How dull it is to make an end/ to rust unburnished not to shine in use.’ Tennyson/Ulysses. On screen a cowhand is explaining to the girl he doesn’t want to be tied down . He wants to keep moving like a tumbleweed.
    ‘And never lifted up a single stone.’ Wordsworth/ Michael. On screen some woman is rubbing on her hand cream. No stone lifting for her.
    Tor sweetest things turn sour by their deeds/ and lilies that fester smell far worse than weeds.’ Shakespeare. On screen a personable model extols some kinda toothpaste called POL makes your breath soul-kissing sweet.
    ‘The same bourgeois magic wherever the mail train sets you down.’ Rimbaud /Historic Evening. A documentary on screen shows computerized travel at Kennedy Airport.
    ‘And the dream fades .. .’ Rimbaud/ Vigils. On screen the lights in the Empire State Building go out.
    ‘The clouds gathered over the seas formed of an eternity of hot tears.’ Rimbaud/ Childhood. On screen Arthur Miller is relating the death of this magnificent old salesman who died while trying to sell some shit or other over the phone.
    ‘Death will come when thou art dead... soon soon.’ Shelley/ To Night. News story about some psycho tried to strangle a black man in a hospital. Seems this same Perp had shot two other black victims and cut their hearts out and taken their hearts away with him.
    What do we conclude from this exercise? It seems like our entire sensory input is pre-programmed. Mektoub. It is written. Snip. Snip. Cut it up.
    You can imagine a context. Say you are reading this in some 19th century jungle outpost Your traitorous boys slink away into the night. ‘Ali! Mustapha! Where are you?’ You ready your submachine gun and settle down to read to the pulsing signal drums. How sleep the brave/ REDRUM REDRUM REDRUM the drums pulse. ‘Sounds like they got Red and a rottener bastard never drew a breath. By Allah their country’s wishes blast...
    ‘Just doing our job is all. Recollect in the Congo they have a bounty on Niggers you turn in a pair of ears and collect. But it turns out some do-gooder bleeding heart bounty hunters was just cutting off the ears and letting the nigger go to undermine the whole purpose of the program. So after that you had to turn in his plumbing, cock and balls. And Red used to sit there counting the pricks and handing out the gold. But who am I to be critical with a fishing creel full waiting on the line?’ ‘And freedom shall a while repair to dwell a weeping hermit there...’
    Fire arrows rain on the roof.
    Or maybe you are a sixteen