Remembering Richard Brautigan

A TROUT FISHING IN AMERICA

Trout Fishing in America stepped into my room, this morning, or my office as we are coming to call it. In this old, sagging house, it is the second-floor space at the top of the creaking, narrow, wooden stairs overlooking the tree-lined, Midwestern, one-way street where I endeavor to midwife words being born in new and unusual combinations. Sometimes those words are like magnets that attract other words together to create Trout Fishing in America synergy. Sometimes the words breach and making something of them takes great care. Sometimes they are stillborn and no matter what I do, the synergy does not materialize.

Although he doesn't use it often enough, as far as I am concerned, I am happy to share my "office" with Trout Fishing in America. He is a bit reclusive, preferring to linger in the library with the likes of Snyder, Rumi, Yourgrau, and Zen Soup all squeezed together like adolescent boys waiting in line for the doors to open to the premiere of Barbarella. In their hipness, they are sublimated like farts in a matchbox.

My girlfriend - our girlfriend - is off painting sunshine on this cloudy day. She is an artist in all things though she hasn't found the art of Trout Fishing in America. What it really comes down to is this: she isn't comfortable with the idea of a threesome. That proposition, communicated by proxy, belongs to Trout Fishing in America. He's quite the lady's man. His thinking is that since he's not out and about that much, his presence would hardly be noticed. He could just slip in and out without getting in the way. Her thinking is that there is only room for two in the bed. My thinking is Trout Fishing In America can come along with me.

[When Richard Brautigan checked out in 1984, Trout Fishing in America went to heaven.]