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Guest speaker -
Richard Brautigan
HOMAGE TO THE SAN FRANCISCO YMCA
by Richard Brautigan
Once upon a time in San Francisco there
was a man who really liked the finer things in life, especially
poetry. He liked good verse.
He could afford to indulge himself in this
liking, which meant that he didn't have to work because he
was receiving a generous pension that was the result of a
1920s investment that his grandfather had made in a private
insane asylum that was operating quite profitably in Southern
California. In the black, as they say and located in the San
Fernando Valley, just outside of Tarzana. It was one of those
places that do not look like an insane asylum. It looked like
something else with flowers all around it, mostly roses.
The cheques always arrived on the 1st and
the 15th of every month, even when there was not a mail delivery
on that day. He had a lovely house in Pacific Heights and
he would go out and buy more poetry. He of course had never
met a poet in person. That would have been a little too much.
One day he decided that his liking for poetry
could not be fully expressed in just reading poetry or listening
to poets reading on phonograph records. He decided to take
the plumbing out of his house and completely replace it with
poetry, and so he did.
He turned off the water and took out the
pipes and put in John Donne to replace them. The pipes did
not look too happy. He took out his bathtub and put in William
Shakespeare. The bathtub did not know what was happening.
He took out his kitchen sink and put in
Emily Dickinson. The kitchen sink could only stare back in
wonder. He took out his bathroom sink and put in Vladimir
Mayakovsky. The bathroom sink, even though the water was off,
broke out into tears.
He took out his hot water heater and put
in Michael McClure's poetry. The hot water heater could barely
contain its sanity. Finally he took out his toilet and put
in the minor poets. The toilet planned on leaving the country.
And now the time had come to see how it
all worked, to enjoy the fruit of his amazing labour. Christopher
Columbus' slight venture sailing West was merely the shadow
of a dismal event in the comparison. He turned the water back
on again and surveyed the countenance of his vision brought
to reality. He was a happy man.
'I think I'll take a bath,' he said, to
celebrate. He tried to heat up some Michael McClure to take
a bath in some William Shakespeare and what happened was not
actually what he had planned on happening.
'Might as well do the dishes, then,' he
said. He tried to wash some plates in 'I taste a liquor never
brewed,' and found there was quite a difference between that
liquid and a kitchen sink. Despair was on its way. He tried
to go to the toilet and the minor poets did not do at all.
They began gossiping about their careers as he sat there trying
to take a shit. One of them had written 197 sonnets about
a penguin he had once seen in a travelling circus. He sensed
a Pulitzer Prize in this material.
Suddenly the man realized that poetry could
not replace plumbing. It's what they call seeing the light.
He decided immediately to take the poetry out and put the
pipes back in, along with the sinks, the bathtub, the hot
water heater and the toilet.
'This just didn't work out the way I planned
it,' he said. 'I'll have to put the plumbing back. Take the
poetry out.' It made sense standing there naked in the total
light of failure.
But then he ran into more trouble than there
was in the first place. The poetry did not want to go. It
liked very much occupying the positions of the former plumbing.
'I look great as a kitchen sink,' Emily
Dickinson's poetry said.
'We look wonderful as a toilet,' the minor
poets said.
'I'm grand as pipes,' John Donne's poetry
said.
'I'm a perfect hot water heater,' Michael
McClure's poetry said. Vladimir Mayakovsky sang new faucets
from the bathroom, there are faucets beyond suffering, and
William Shakespeare's poetry was nothing but smiles.
'That's well and dandy for you,' the man
said. 'But I have to have plumbing, real plumbing in this
house. Did you notice the emphasis I put on real? Real! Poetry
just can't handle it. Face up to reality,' the man said to
the poetry.
But the poetry refused to go. 'We're staying.'
The man offered to call the police. 'Go ahead and lock us
up, you illiterate,' the poetry said in one voice.
'I'll call the fire department!'
'Book burner!' the poetry shouted.
The man began to fight the poetry. It was
the first time he had ever been in a fight. He kicked the
poetry of Emily Dickinson in the nose.
Of course the poetry of Michael McClure
and Vladimir Mayakovsky walked over and said in English and
in Russian, 'That won't do at all,' and threw the man down
a flight of stairs. He got the message.
That was two years ago. The man is now living
in the YMCA in San Francisco and loves it. He spends more
time in the bathroom than everybody else. He goes in there
at night and talks to himself with the light out.
© Richard Brautigan
From an email sent by Canongate
Books.
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