□ To my delight, the chauffeur was a girl, a tall young lesbian soft-skinned under her green silky mannish uniform. I thought of the softness of her calves inside the boots, & went so far as to insert a finger. She smiled in a business-like way, but made me sit in the back. I could watch her through the glass partition. She would not talk, but did answer specific … Read more Robert Kelly: An Alchemical Journal (10)
□ It was in front of the cathedral that the lepers gathered, the same in every city. They were the imperfections of the system, hopefully consigned outside it, segregated, wished to death. They showed themselves to men while men were on the steps of the place they went to show themselves to God. Heal me cries the burnt tree. Heal me, the new-born lamb. □ The phone rings twice … Read more Robert Kelly: An Alchemical Journal (9)
□ I’m me, that’s the point of it. I am at your disposal. □ She was at the door, I know it, wrote her letter to me, sealed it in the wood of the door with a kiss, has gone away. We are at the disposal of everybody. □ The books give different numbers for the phases of the Work. The books appear to contradict themselves. In such a … Read more Robert Kelly: An Alchemical Journal (8)
□ I hold this one’s breasts & this one’s thighs & press myself on this one’s mouth & ask each one in turn: What is it that happened between us at the Pinner in Wakefield, three hundred years ago, September? We learned the secret, & it cost us our deaths. Back, far down in my blood, an orchestra tunes up. My dearest wife, I will hear you forever & … Read more Robert Kelly: An Alchemical Journal (7)
□ A lifetime supply of goose-quills. Ocean of ink. First lessons in chancery cursive. Have an erection. Keep it. There’s your college of the spirit sank, she said, keep talking big boy. □ It has been my intention to banish all learning from these pages. Only what I have stood under will serve our purposes, gentlemen. Say the blessing &, we will begin. When in the course of human … Read more Robert Kelly: An Alchemical Journal (6)
The third time, she tells me, is the Charm. I try again: Hoping to learn by a sign how the Work prospers, I look out into the morning & see a black hen, her white chick. □ What does she do now she is naked? Is this anti-climax? What did I do when the el train rolled on? What was that kingdom of my Consequence? Climax & anti-climax. The … Read more Robert Kelly: An Alchemical Journal (5)
□ In 1955 I & some school-fellows attempted a revival of Batman as an object of inquiry. It does not feel good to have been in the avant-garde of kitsch. Yet my fingers smell of her authenticity, She Who Is To Be Obeyed, She who is wet. □ These are the books: The works of Gerhard Dorn Michael Maier Jakob Böhme Robert Fludd Thomas Vaughan Not one of them … Read more Robert Kelly: An Alchemical Journal (4)
□ And now we have been in the rain. She pulled her shirt off & ran before me up the slope, turning back to note how fast I followed, the eagerness of my address to this step of the operation. There was no measure to this time, no bounds to my eagerness, hence no measure of it, hence no seeming to run faster though I pursued. It was quiet … Read more Robert Kelly: An Alchemical Journal (2)