William S. Burroughs : TIME/HEMISPHERE (excerpt)

Now pay attention we are going to give a few hints..Look at your book
of Egyptian hieroglphs.Just here is a boy sitting down.  Now instead of
the stylized glphy suppose we had a painting of a boy which would
logically lead to painting others and some of them would be doing more
than sitting down in my army or just here is a plough we now I can
see a plow in the window of Sterner’s Hardward store that Jew in Cold
Spring charges too much for fence wire and I can see bronze plows in
corn and youn farm boys too in the old outhouse doing what boys will
do so charge it all up to fertility rise and her is ‘to pout out
water, to micturate’ hummm looks to me likes he pouring out more than
water and that brings up some pretty pictures.So you see I take a
picture that stands for and by God is a word and it just naturally
opens itself out feeling for other pictures doing what pictures will
doSO just let the words XXXXXX desolve in the picture.Why listen to
one house when you can see all the houses??So my words just disintegrate
in Gysin.I dont know if Mr.Graham Green is going to like this but he has
his place in the garden along with Truman Capotes  music across the golf
course echoes from high cool corner of the dining room a queer little
breeze flutters candle s on the table and swishes away down the dead
dead days..’ Now that could just swish away calkigrapghic like mice that
slph for you. Charcter pouring water wer his self “the Priest” they called
him.  A sick old junky pour water over hiself????Blood of Christ where
they made the atom bomb I went to school there..saw some boys glpy no
phallus, what is masculine glypy 94. male organs ghpy 74 to receive
77.to hold in the hand 92 and93 Sir E. A. Wallis Budge refuses to trans
late but we get the general idead and just here i Time as kin Tutt saw
it remember  ‘I’d rather be a mummy’ .. secon.. We have here on screen
some dried poppy pods a hawke and the sun and a skull cap near as I can
make it out from remote landing..Well an old junky in off the xxxxxx
parched plains of Kanas ate the poppy pods and got relief..The howk
xxxxx circles in the shattered bloe sky over Mexico..the skull cap is
still there..Minutes we have here a boxer dog a skull cap and the sun..
Now that boxer dog was called Shane and he was called in to lick a girl
out of her coma I Read about it only today in the Daily Mail for June 29
her father said ‘I prey that Shane will help her to get better’ ..Well
now I would’nt want to see too much sun light on a thing like that..Is
one expected to remove one’s skull cap?? Hour:: Well we got a hare here
setting down, some nice blue water a jar the sun and a roll of film
negative..Well the hare went thataway.A film boy stripped hiself naked
filled the jar with water from a blue river magic of all movies is
remembered kid standing there poured th water over himself and jacked
off into his skull cap. So left an old junky selling Christmas seals on
North Clark St.  Yes there’s the boy and there’s the blue river.Remember
the song. Yes I can see all the bandoned country clubs and weed grown
old courses a thousand lost   skull caps red mostly see the boys spitting
blood in the violet evening sky over Lima?   ‘Fight tuberculosis folks’
An old junky on North Clark St. Selling Christmas seals used too be me
Mister remember the caddy shirt o open on the golf course you’ll find him
here by the Blue River when the wind is right.And remember the old
junk on North Clark St.?? The Priest’ they called him.  Used to be me
Mister..cold blue alleys of Chicago..Lake wind like a knife..Pour water
on a sick old junky??Sacred Blood of Christ you son of puta..And here is
a picture from Spain.. the abandoned railroad..tunnel in th iron rock..
Weeds in front of the tunnel..two boys in there.. I see some white gobs..
boy on a long grey beach with dusky rose colored genitals, ankora on the
beach..all the old blue calandar pictures over here..Now as to how to
present it on page and how to indicate just where I am in pictures when
I write what this poses a problem..Unless the picture just lights up when
you press a button..What I mean is why not extend  our uh analogy of a
map and give precise coordinate points subject of course to change without
notice as when Clark street shifts from one picture to the other the way
an old St. will..And maybe next time I pass the tunnel those boys wont be
there just winds of Spain stirring the weeds in front of the tunnel so
refer you to The Book of the Dead..” field of grasshoppers..bushes--the
olive tree is my name..North of the bushes did you see there the leg and
the thigh’ washed back on Spain Repeate Performance page-. Maybe it was’nt
just hash Hassan J. Sabbah picked up on in Egypt..What about the glphies?
Now here is the progression.Words..glphys..drawing or painting expansion
of the glphys into a Gysin picture..You can do the same of course with
any photo..The “Priest they called him..The photo..Draw and old junk
there--blue grid of windows Winter sunlight..ice on the street..wind cold
from the lake..  Now as to presentation on page within a pracicl
budget.  First page text and the phoot.Second page..drawing  on image
lines-- Third page a Gysin picture.. That is using your time format   a
sapce on eace page for photo or picture..We could then wind it up with
a page of the intersection photos followed by a page of pictures..  Two
silent pages that could be immediately read by any attentive reader who
had followed the text and the intersections of text xxx wtih photos and
pictures.. (Alternately we could use  glyphs instead of photos or of course
both.. -------------------------------------------------------------------
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                        love, Bill



excerpt from “The Hemisphere.” in TIME by William Burroughs with 4 drawings by brion gysin

“C” Press  1965

Transcribed from a copy in the Getty Research Institute Special Collections, accessed 10.17.2011 -
Christina McPhee