All the flowers of speech. All the rhymes and lilts. All the niceties of manner and the assurances of routine. They must all go. All effort must go. You've not only got to be free of the alphabet. And not only free of the traditions. And not only free of the cliques. But you've got to be free of effort. You've got to cease trying. You've got to get where you have stopped caring or not caring. My call is for indifference. I say you are not to go round humble about what you dont do and proud about what you do do. Life dont call for arguers and hairsplitters. Do what you cant help doing. Refuse to do what you can help doing. Ease up on your nerves and your ambitions. Desire is richest in the absence of desire. A man's lungs dont ask any questions. They just breathe. His feet walk. His eyes open and shut. Shall a man's art do less? Shall it consume itself in quibbles? Shall it dress itself according to the mode? Or shall it stay in rags? You cant have both things. So which will you have? You cant advance and retreat at the same time. So which will you do? Can you imagine yourself neither alive nor dead? Can you see yourself neither anxious nor not anxious? Can you conceive of yourself as staking all and staking nothing on the survival of a book? No man can become an artist short of that. No artist can become a man short of that. Nirvana to technique. Oblivion to rules and traditions. Letting the soul retreat to nebula every time it wishes to advance to creation. Starting all over again with every word. Making every word again the first word. Are you to refrain from scheming? Yes. You are to let the waters flow unto their normal levels. You are to let the law take its course. The law of words. The law of books. A man may get into the way of looking too much into himself. A book may have a man's fault. It too may brood too much. Most every book that ever tried to be a book has gone bankrupt. And most every book that didn't worry whether it was a book or not has won a place in the human circle. It's an awful thing for a man to want to be good. It's as awful as for a man to want to be bad. It's an awful thing for a man's style to want to be a book. It's as awful for a man's book to want to be a style. It's terrible to want to be the worst man in the world. But it's far more terrible to want to be the best man in the world. You writers who try: you must keep on trying till you get beyond trying. The man who tries: he may sell out: he may go into the market with his equity. But the man who's got past trying: he's unshakably defiant. You fraud rhymers. You humbug versifiers. You dictionary hunters. You users of crooked words for straight. You professors and poets. I call on you to stop trying. I dont want to hear any more of your claims. I only want to hear of your love. I dont want you to waste your time naming yourselves. I dont care what you are called. I am only interested in what you are. You make me sick trying to be clever. Now