Sexus by Henry Miller — Read

And now it's Saturday afternoon, the sun's out bright and strong, and I'm sipping some pale Chinese tea in Dr. Wuchee Hachee Tao's garden. He's just handed me a long poem about Mother written on fire-cracker paper. He looks like a superior type of man-not very communicable either. I'd like to ask him something about the original Tao but it so happens that at this point in time, retrogressively speaking, I haven't yet read the Tao Teh Ching. If I had read it I wouldn't need to ask him any questions-nor in all probability would I be sitting in his garden waiting for a woman named Mara. Had I been intelligent enough to have read that most illustrious and most elliptical piece of ancient wisdom I would have been spared a great many woes that befell me and which I am now about to relate.

As I sit in the garden, B. C. 17, I have utterly different thoughts than these. To be quite honest, I can't recall a single one at this moment. I vaguely remember that I didn't like the poem about Mother-it struck me as being sheer crap. And what's more, I didn't like the Chink who wrote it-I remember that very distinctly. I know too that I was getting furious because it was beginning to look like another stand-up. (Had I imbibed a bit of Tao I would not have lost my temper. I would have sat there as contented as a cow, thankful that the sun was out and grateful to be alive.) To-day as I write this there is no sun and no Mara and, though I have not yet become a contented cow, I feel very much alive and at peace with the world.