Sitting With William Burroughs

ah, the falling leaves

St. Louis, MO 09/10/2025

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Above is all I could bring myself to write. I sat beside the grave of author William Burroughs for nearly three hours. Below will be the first in a series of travelogues describing my journeys.

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My health poor. My mind consumed by dust.

And perhaps travel?

There was Charlotte, North Carolina to see Daniel and to miss Daniel. To see George, and to see him leaving.

Black Mountain College in Asheville, always.

There have been others, and there will be more.

September 09, that night I felt god’s whisper on my neck. A celebration of birth.

Before the sun, there was the moon. Eight hours later, there was the sun and the Mississippi River. The arch. The cemetery.

Kentucky ate my tires. Illinois is where Superman lived. But I was there.

It was cold when I came, and hot when I left.

The falling leaves, the falling leaves.

And so I sit. When I was a stone, I was a stone.

I left a lemur. I left three hours.

A weeping of fallen leaves. Why?

A few minutes away, I saw a second birth.

A few seconds away, the World Chess Hall of Fame. Even then, in shock, red of weeping, I was cursing Kramnik. And now, now, what of it now? Now a weeping in algebraic notation and absence-laced nonsense.

In fear and exhaustion I crossed the river. Always a river. Always, the river.

Eight hours and my mind dusting radiance.

A return.

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I certainly do not condone driving 16 hours a day unless absolutely necessary, as I feel it was in my case. I will be continuing these travelogues as I make small journeys. There will be Huntsville in November, Texas in December, Louisiana in January, and New York, Boston, and Waltham in March or April, Kansas not long after. Likely small journeys in between, such as Athens to stalk Michael Stipe, Nashville in May for this exhibition, and possibly a trip to Florida.

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