By Manfred Wise

TROUBLE and UNDERSTANDING:

time and human trouble

Reprinted from THE BRIDGE (le petit joumal), Portland 14, Oregon, with permission. The scene described bere took place in Flagstaff, Arizona, in 1951. Manfred Wise is an author, critic and poet who spends a summer now and then in the arid Southwest, but returns to the California Coast near San Francisco, where be resides the rest of the time.

were

... Now the sexes were three, and such as I have described them; because the sun, moon and earth are three; and the man was originally the child of the sun, the woman of the earth, and the manwoman of the moon, which is made up of sun and earth, and they were all around and moved round and round like their parents." the SYMPOSIUM of Plato.

around the mouth and intense frank eyes that said as much as anything if not more than anything that be was aware of all the pouring life of bis bandsome organism. Time Himself having held up a moment in the town, and looking back at this picture of all Time's strange somewhere-he-knew-ancient-need, ran square into the glass corner of a modern shoe store, cutting a heavy blue dent in his nose, while up and down the streets men were both rallied and upset, took off in divers directions, stopped, looked around, ceased to draw on their pipes, threw cigarettes away or suddenly lighted up and forgot where they were in conversation, what they were saying, began to backtrack on themselves, cleared their throats and swallowed, and buildings jumped up and down and just twisted all around as if they were elephant's trunks and finally settled in new places, the weight and jolt of it all breaking up much curbing. People tried to think, eyelashes rose up and down in reflection, and couldn't, nor could they analyze themselves and know what they were trying to think. It all told of something old, new and beautiful in humanity, dangerous and strange and with a magnificence that goes beyond, needless to say, most things. But Beauty continued, head in air, dwon the street, his black wavy head bobbing up and down, excellent Beauty, advancing right through the middle and beyond the mad tbrongs. The point is that everything gave some kind of response to this, even Time, even the sun came closer, tho not too close, to the earth, but almost only Time, and a few unnerved, wise and thoroughly misunderstood people knew what a wonder it was.

People are living customs and manners that permit nothing, or very little, of the extra joys and amenities of existence. They have taken to laughing at themselves and at each other, more or less unmercifully, sometimes having to run from each other's company, hiding their faces while they go into the most disgusting, uncontrollable spasms; also to dancing steps that have never been chorographed to music heard and unheard. They are determined to get themselves mates for the purpose of union. They are living in sexually prolific, unrealizable times; and in almost every case the earth over, have made up their minds or have their minds set on asking out of a clear blue sky a certain Beauty to their rooms for a drinking bout..... The nerve of Beauty, the nerve of a certain Beauty, one of excellent form, form beyond words — for throwing the whole town out of kilter by walking down the business sec tion last Saturday morning with a tool box balanced over bead, wearing painfully tight pants, displaying development that was fabulous: a fair Spaniard. A smile playing over the face and 10 mattachine REVIEW

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