NEXUS by Henry Miller

Author:Henry Miller [Miller, Henry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: prose_contemporary
ISBN: 0-8021-5178-7
Publisher: The Odelick Press
Published: 1960-03-19T05:00:00+00:00

11

The following day, while rummaging through the waste basket in search of a missing letter, I ran across a crumpled letter which the Commissioner had obviously tossed there in disgust. The handwriting was thin and shaky, as if written by an old man, but legible despite the elaborate curlicues he delighted in employing. I took one glance at it, then slipped it into my pocket to read at leisure.

It was this letter, ridiculous and pathetic in its way, which saved me from eating my heart out. If the Commissioner had thrown it there then it must have been at the bidding of my guardian angel.

"Honourable Sir ... it began, and with the very next words a weight was lifted from me. I found not only that I could laugh as of old, I found that I could laugh at myself, which was vastly more important.

Honourable Sir: I hope that you are well and enjoying good health during this very changeable weather that we are now having. I am quite well myself at the present time and I am glad to say so.

Then, without further ado, the author of this curious document launched into his arborico-solipsistic harangue. Here are his words...

I wish that you would do me a very kind-hearted and a very special favor and kindly have the men of the Park Department go around now and start by the Borough Lines of Queens and King's Counties and work outward easterly and back westerly and likewise northerly and southerly and remove the numerous dead and dying trees, trees all open at the base part and in the trunk part and trees bending and leaning over and ready to fall down and do damage to human life, limb and property, and to give all the good trees both large and small sizes an extra good, thorough, proper, systematic and symmetrical pruning, trimming and paring off from the base to the very top parts and all through.

I wish that you would do me a very kind-hearted and very special favor and kindly have the men of the Park Department greatly reduce all the top-heavy and overgrown trees in height to a height of about 25 feet high and to have all the long boughs and branches shortened considerably in the length and all parts of the trees greatly thinned out from the base to the very top parts and thereby give a great deal more light, more natural light, more air, more beauty, and very much more safety to the pedestrians, the general thoroughfares and to the surroundings along by the streets, avenues, places, roadways, roads, highways, boulevards, terraces, parkways (streets called courts, lanes, etc.) and by the Parks inside and outside.

I would greatly, kindly and very urgently request that the boughs and branches be pruned, trimmed and pared off at a distance of from twelve to fifteen feet from the front, side and rear walls of all houses and other buildings of every description and not allow them to come in

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