Tropic of Capricorn by Henry Miller

Author:Henry Miller [Miller, Henry]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3, pdf
ISBN: 9780007204458
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Published: 2005-08-14T23:00:00+00:00

the imperishable schizerino, a blazing seed hidden in the heart of death. Every day she thinks to find another means of sustenance, but there is no other, only this eternal seed of light which by dying each day I rediscover for her. Fly, 0 devouring bird, fly to the limits of the universe! Here is your nourishment glowing in the sickening emptiness you have created! You will come back to perish once more in the black hole; you will come back again and again, for you have not the wings to carry you out of the world. This is the only world you can inhabit, this tomb of the snake where darkness reigns.

And suddenly for no reason at all, when I think of her returning to her nest, I remember Sunday mornings in the little old house near the cemetery. I remember sitting at the piano in my nightshirt, working away at the pedals with bare feet, and the folks lying in bed toasting themselves in the next room. The rooms opened one on the other, telescope fashion, as in the good old American railroad flats. Sunday mornings one lay in bed until one was ready to screech with well-being. Towards eleven or so the folks used to rap on the wall of my bedroom for me to come and play for them. I would dance into the room like the Fratellini Brothers, so full of flame and feathers that I could hoist myself like a derrick to the topmost limb of the tree of heaven. I could do anything and everything singlehanded, being double-jointed at the same time. The old man called me "Sunny Jim", because I was full of "Force", full of vim and vigour. First I would do a few handsprings for them on the carpet before the bed; then I would sing falsetto, trying to imitate a ventriloquist's dummy; then I would dance a few light fantastic steps to show which way the wind lay, and zoom! Like a breeze I was on the piano stool and doing a velocity exercise. I always began with Czemy, in order to limber up for the performance. The old man hated Czemy, and so did I, but Czemy was the plat du jour on the bill of fare then, and so Czemy it was until my joints were rubber. In some vague way Czemy reminds me of the great emptiness which came upon me later. What a velocity I would work up, riveted to the piano stool! It was like swallowing a bottle of tonic at one gulp and then having someone strap you to the bed. After I had played

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about ninety-eight exercises I was ready to do a little improvising. I used to take a fist-full of chords and crash the piano from one end to the other, then sullenly modulate into "The Burning of Rome" or the "Ben Hur Chariot Race" which everybody liked because it was intelligible noise. Long before I read Wittgenstein's Tractatvs Logico-Philosophicus I was composing the music to it, in the key of sassafras.

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