(return home) So this morning I pretended to work for a few minutes, but it wasn't working, so I picked up a poetry anthology and went out to read under an oak tree. The tree is almost as tall as my three-story building, and it forks about four feet up, but its twin trunks rise in tandem, hardly moving apart from each other. It's not exactly true to say that I set out to sit under it, since I'd never actually noticed it before. I knew as I left my study that it had been a pretty day out when I'd come in, and I knew that there were trees of some kind somewhere nearby, and I had even noticed a large patch of shade right in front of my door, but I'd never looked right at that split double oak with attention. When I saw it, however, this morning, as I shut the door behind me, I felt a moment of world-filling strangeness and thought, This is how it always was. The night before, last night, the author of this story had given a reading, and I sat for forty minutes or so watching his moving lips and listening to the sound of his voice, and assuming that lips and voice were connected. I saw a white halo around his head, against a beige wall, and it reminded me that I used to think that halos like that were auras. I thought I was seeing into some spiritual world that sat on top of this one. When I learned that the halos were only a trick of tired eyes, I was actually more entranced, because such a sensory failure seemed like a loose thread in the tapestry of the perceived world, and if I pulled the thread, maybe the tapestry would unravel. A patch of wall below the reader's chin would disintegrate into visible rows and columns of knots; the unraveling would spread up and across his face, and across the room, the audience scattering silently, but not quickly enough--silently because the only noise would be a great rushing sound--and some endless chessboard world of tall translucent players would be revealed. As I crossed to the double oak this morning, I thought about how I used to search for answers. Somebody told me to read phenomenology, so I thought about optical illusions. Somebody else said I was a Buddhist, so I tried to meditate. Next came psychoanalysis, and the question of why I was so attached to the truth at all, and I understood why, but the answer to that question didn't answer my question. Then I bumped into Camus at the bookstore, and learned to pray, and realized that I hadn't been getting anywhere because my eyes were on the front of my head. A deer sees three quarters of a circle, but a human face, like a locomotive, like my face, can only look forward. I wonder whether a grazing ewe thinks the world is grass, or if she imagines, while she's chewing, the boundless blue heaven behind her back that watches her chew, and, if she does imagine it, whether she remembers to remember that she's bound to be imagining it wrong. And so under the boundless blue sky this morning, sitting cross-legged on the small mound of grass that rises over the roots of a split double oak tree, I opened my Bible to think about what to write. "Why don't you write about sparrows?" I asked the book. "Have them re-enact your famous stories?" But the book answered back, "What would be the point?" And my first answer answered, "Does it need to have a point?" and the second answer said, "No, but then what does it mean?" And the first answer silenced the second answer by answering, "How do we know what it means before we say it?" So the author of this piece, let's say, sitting cross-legged under the oak tree, peers down through the white tissue pages of his Bible at the black letters swimming in its murky white deeps, and is startled when a sparrow of regal bearing lands suddenly on the left-hand page. The page gives slightly under its tiny weight, and then, because the bird nervously shuffles its needle-like legs, it tangles and rips the surface, and sinks down into the book. When you first asked me to write this, I refused. I said I had nothing to say. But after I went to sleep, I dreamed about the question, and in the dream I proposed writing about two sparrows reenacting the story of Balaam. The sparrow on the right-hand page would play the King of Moab, who sends his ladybug messengers to the prophet Balaam to ask him to curse the horde of Israelite ants swarming across the quadrangle. Balaam, like I did, refuses, because he has nothing, he says, to say, except what has to be said, which is that the Israelites will prevail, which is not what the King wants to say. But when the ladybugs bring this back to the King, the King sends out more messengers--dragonflies, this time, with beady eyes and expensive wings--who implore Balaam and promise him rewards: gold cups, silver fountain pens, acclaim, meat. This is also the point where I begin to think about what a wonderful story I could write, because, in fact, I have written a few paragraphs already that establish a style and a direction. So I go back to sleep, and Balaam goes back to the mountaintop, and a double voice issues from out of the oak tree, like a temple bell ringing inside a ringing temple bell: "You can't say anything except what you can say," says the voice from the tree, while also saying, "But if you ask me again, see what happens." But the author of this piece didn't wait to be asked: he stood up and began walking, dropping the book in the grass, while his left ear said, "Write about the leftier mainstream journalists before the Iraq War who repeated Cheney's lies because, despite their education, they believed him," and his right ear said, "Write about the process of writing about the process of writing about the attempt to write a story about a reenactment of the story of Balaam using sparrows," and his skin said, "I'm burning, it's hot," and one hemisphere of his brain said, "This is self indulgent," while the other replied, "It's much too soon to make a judgment like that--I'm just trying to get something down," and his right hand said, "You can play with different voices as much as you want, but the reader's not going to follow you unless you're playing in some kind of framework," and his cock said, "Fuck the reader," but his left hand said, "The reader will understand it as long as you understand it," and the back of his head said, "Who knows if there is a reader? Who knows what the reader wants?" and his right eye said, "Of course we don't know, but the point is that imagining one will affect the way we talk," and the left eye, adding depth to what the right eye had said while changing it only slightly, said, "It's a question of trying to communicate rather than simply trying to talk," but the amygdala cried out, "We're losing track! We're losing track!" and my legs buckled under me. When I had collapsed in the grass, they said, "Write about Balaam's donkey, which stopped three times in the road because it saw an angel barring the way which Balaam didn't see," while also saying, "The donkey is a metaphor for the body." But you tell me that a symbol that can be parsed so easily obviously isn't good enough. So what is it you want me to say? I just want you to tell the truth without knowing what it is. But how do I do that? Tell the truth; remove the parts you recognize, remove the parts that are easy, remove the parts you understand; then tell the truth. But what if nothing's left? Start again. But then what if nothing's left? Try harder. But then what if nothing's left? Start again. But what if all I find is blind urges and old neuroses? Try to understand them; remove the parts you understand, remove the parts that are easy; then tell the truth. But what if I just invent it? You'll know the difference. But what if I don't? Try harder. But what's the sound of one hand clapping? Find out what it is, and then remove it. But how many Irishmen does it take to get to Carnegie Hall? Yes, yes, but what if I want to write about my brother's brain tumor? What if I want to write about how West Broadway has changed since I was small? What if I want to write about why I never left New York? What if the problem is that I just don't trust you in the first place? "That's the problem," says the King of Moab through his interpreter. "How can there be conversation where there isn't any trust?" "All right," I say, "so let's talk about that--is that interesting?" "No," says the King of Moab, "it's not."