Kate Greenstreet Is Indispensable

Kate Greenstreet
The Last Four Things

Everyone must have a copy of this book. If you don’t yet, you must order it immediately. There is something indispensable about Kate Greenstreet’s work. Here are four examples on what I think it is.


from The Last 4 Things


I was going to drive a train across the country.
And then a ship, across the sea.
She came to see me off. It was a little caboose
that I was driving. She asked me what was wrong.

I told her
that I’d had a dream. The ship was going to sink.
She said: “Remember—when you were a boy?
And we used to do the Magic of Believing?”


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First I was setting fire to the house, but we didn’t want the authorities to know. So I was setting small fires. Setting the blue rug in the living room on fire in several spots. I asked my mother, should we try to save anything?

We can begin with the projection.

—What would illustrations of the inner life tell?
—It was forbidden, but there was no wall.


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from 56 Days


22 December


It begins in trouble, like all romance. There’s a bad guy, a good guy, a handsome kid, some beautiful young women, there’s a dog—the thing about dreams is, there’s a plot. Full of sex, antibiotics. In the middle of a comeback, safe as ghosts.

Her horse lay down beside her. That’s what my horse would do.



6 January

First, you have a little sea inside you. A little sea and a little fish, in the sea. Just a tiny fish but then it grows, it starts to move around. It wants to get out. The sea can’t stay inside you—it has to come out. And the little fish comes with it.

And then you have the little being. The little being in the world. Everybody loves their little baby. It’s a lot of work, yes, but you’re in a trance—you’re in a trance of love. You get sick of it, sure—but you’re still in the trance. Unless you hate the baby for some reason. But that didn’t happen to me.

—Would you call these nightmares?
—No, they’re just regular dreams. Afterwards, you forget.