— What the hell’s the problem just bring it in and pile it here… he clattered the tub cover down passing, — busy with some work I can’t stop to…
— Take a look out your window there.
— What that truck? Biggest damned truck I ever, look who’s this for.
— Mister Bast J R Corp whole fucking truckload here’s your invoice, shipment three five nine seven…
— That’s absurd here let me, look you can’t bring a hundred thousand plastic flowers up here good God, what…
— What I’m telling you, so where do you want them.
— I don’t want them look take them back where they came from or, wait drive around the block while I call…
— Came from Hong Kong take me an hour to get that fucking rig around the fucking block what do you…
— Good great take two hours ride around the block go back to Hong Kong look God damn it don’t give me… he caught the door, left it hanging till he was back from the dim recess of plumbing in the hall examining a square of tissue in the light — business is very good where the hell this came from, can’t be Bast must be Bast… it dropped crumpled, — God damned morning half gone not even a chance to get started here…
He came in with a red cup floating a teabag, set it beside the red cup submersing a teabag on Moody’s — run right through it today Christ got to get it done, another day like yesterday and I, where those matches… he drew the enchilada can in reach — where was I, where John Dewey came groping wait, damn it, well God damn it missed a whole page… He picked them apart — groping for the pages stuck together with this God damned cheese, close and intimate acquaintance got with nature broke off in the middle of this Dewey quote didn’t even notice it, intimate acquaintance got with nature at first hand, with real things and materials, with the actual processes of their manipulation, and the knowledge of their social necessities and uses most awkward writer in the God damned language, break off in the middle of one of his clumsy God damned sentences don’t even notice it. Now. In a Cambridge house where William James was busy pasting up a collage of what worked into a philosophy, E L Thorndike emerged from actual processes of manipulation in the cellar with his book Animal Intelligence to lay foundations for modern public school testing in terms got from nature at first hand in the intelligent behavior of chickens, terms irrefragable enough to be measured and compared as time and motion were currently being strait-jacketed by F W Taylor in a Bethlehem steel plant, to be sorted and evaluated as readily as the nickel and dime items on Frank Woolworth’s expanding counters, ingredients of the tangible world Mary Baker Eddy was profitably demonstrating could be classified and organized in unruffled confidence that it did not exist while, as profitably confident it did, the shoe machinery trust was showing such organization to be as vital to the prospects of the shoe machinery industry as shoe machinery itself. Disappointed with Niagara there, follows beautifully reads God damned well out loud too…
Foot tapped foot on Thomas Register as he dug for matches, — follows so God damned well though how can I leave out a whole page never miss it, skipped a whole God damned page never even missed it probably ought to take it right out speed up the Christ… his feet came down — start thinking that way be nothing left of it but the God damned title right back where I started… He came forward, picked up the roll of film — end up reduce the title to a God damned period give an intelligent reader the essence of the whole God damned thing… he stretched an arm’s length of film up to the light — incredible, look at this German footage think they staged the whole God damned war for their combat photographers… and another arm’s length of film came up, another, it rose in coils at his feet — Huertgen Forest must be Schramm’s didn’t know he, damn it just let the God damned thing ring try to get anything done here no… he was up, — might be…
