Page 136

By Jack Joseph Smith

Before The Top There before the circus I was sitting in Seattle With Gibbons In this grandstand He had taken me to At about six in the morning After drinking a whole lot from the docks to Queen Ann Hill;, a misty nineteen sixty two experience, alone meaning no one else there And over that Edge Huge wooden fit Up in the first shine He was fixing the highwire He was underneath it Tightening the clamps Two hands around the wind and the wind of the cord

Original Scan

AI Interpretation

GPT

This second "Before The Top" page narrows the Seattle memory into a dawn scene with Gibbons under the highwire, while the handwritten notes pull the memory toward circus edge, wooden structure, and approaching spectacle.

What was scenic on the previous page becomes tactile here: clamps, cord, shine, and the precise labor of preparing danger. Gibbons is no longer just companion or witness; he is the figure literally beneath the spectacle, making it possible. The right-margin note gives the page another physical edge around Queen Ann Hill, huge wood, and the circus setting.

Claude

A second 'Before The Top' page makes the Seattle dawn tactile: the same drunken grandstand memory 'from the docks to Queen Ann / Hill' narrows to Gibbons 'Up in the first shine,' 'underneath' the highwire, 'Tightening the clamps' with 'Two hands around the wind / and the wind of the cord.' Gibbons shifts from companion to the figure literally beneath the spectacle, making the danger possible; the handwritten margin fragments 'And over that / Edge / Huge wooden / fit' add a rougher physical edge, and this reading stays partly provisional because the page is OCR-mixed with placed marginal handwriting.