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Holding Pattern Over Providence

For new things one necessarily chooses new words. Call our adepts

spiritists, our teaching spiritism, our reading

books of spirits. Forget the past—one cannot know everything—the spirit

loses memories to become itself. The veil

is the return to bodily life.

Divine angels, you expected, predictably enough, these corrections

which I implore you to make in the manuscript. Mad as a tripod,

and difficult, I dictate nothing more, all else will derive

from actors’ games. Play Les Scythes as if it were

La Philosophie dans le boudoir, and Les Scythes will have an effect

of cold, of nonsense, of fabric cut against the grain.

We have only volume two; how can we be responsible

for ratcheting our faults beyond the limit of the past? How can we profit

from experience acquired in forgetfulness? There are gaps

or things missed out in this account. To make up

for something forgotten or for a lapse or oversight that cost him his life.

I can’t remember whom I should warn.

I have not forgotten the guide, kind sir who at each new level of existence

surveys the mistakes committed, judges the given position as just,

makes amends for what has leaked out along the way. He looks

for proofs analogous to those we learned before, and asks the spirits

who are his superiors for help in this new task, intuition,

piecework I’ll do in my own good time.