The Largesse of the Sea Maiden

by Denis Johnson

I mean it’s like I get that glass as far as just touching against my lower lip, and next thing I know I’m on the Ghost-Bus to Vegas. There’s a certain power in that you know, it’s like if you don’t like the movie you’re in you just grab this jug going by and it takes you and flings you into a completely different story.

Sometimes I wonder if I didn’t die. And I’m really dead, and this is Purgatory, Heaven, or Hell. And it’s up to me which one.

Writing. It’s easy work. The equipment isn’t expensive, and you can pursue this occupation anywhere. You make your own hours, mess around the house in your pajamas, listening to jazz recordings and sipping coffee while another day makes its escape. You don’t have to be high-functioning or even, for the most part, functioning at all. If I could drink liquor without being drunk all the time, I’d certainly drink enough to be drunk half the time, and production wouldn’t suffer. Bouts of poverty come along, anxiety, shocking debt, but nothing lasts forever. I’ve gone from rags to riches and back again, and more than once. Whatever happens to you, you put it on a page, work it into a shape, cast it in a light. It’s not much different, really, from filming a parade of clouds across the sky and calling it a movie—although it has to be admitted that the clouds can descend, take you up, carry you to all kinds of places, some of them terrible, and you don’t get back where you came from for years and years.

You’re frail, Kev, you have this quality—as if your childhood terrors aren’t done with you.”