TRIPTYCH THE RHINE MAIDEN

87. TRIPTYCH THE RHINE MAIDEN:

Another time like rain came back again and with it thunder and lightning AND smoke too and I sat in one place for the entire day thinking - thinking of marks and marksmanship too - and I saw pictures Andrea Merkel for instance Angela DeMeens Theolonious Monk and even Ishmael Reed whom I'd liked to have met on a perpendicular writer's cruise or some cross-town taxi interloper's interference but there was no chance of that since we're all sworn to silence now and juxtaposed jaggedly to Jughead and JarJar Minx or whatever his name was we cannot even deign to TRY to speak to one another because the languages no longer overlap but there's no meaning to the means and no endsite for the convention to be held and we're all alone or raging in crowds and swooning in herds and reading asides we shouldn't have overheard : the world's newest photographer shoots 8-hour exposures of Fifty-ninth and Fifth just watching whatever goes by go by but it's all a blur anyway when it's all one and THE ONLY THINGS you really see are the firm fixed footings of the buildings stern and bold and completely unmoving by that scale anyway - geology has a way with time that has NOTHING to do with any of this - and people pass Pippa passes too Bunyon would know but someone asks me anyway 'what is it you're trying to do or say anyway and why is it so difficult for anything to come from you straight?' and I laughed back and said 'if I was the martyr you'd been looking for you'd never ask me that' and some errant form of lowlife sizzles by with his arm up some poor girl's dress but he's smiling like Bugger Brown or somebody famous and she too grins and keeps passing on her way and for one quick moment I wished it was me but couldn't decide why and off they went - laughing all the way a tisket a tasket and the rest blew a gasket and anyway if ANYONE keeps a lens open and in one spot for that long there's no telling WHAT you'll see - people passing by dogs and animals too and yellow cabs and buses and vans and livery things and bicycle messengers and cake-walkers and sidewalk salesmen and three-card monte bums and jugglers too but the only thing I'd want to see is some few violinists walking by crouched for fun under a broad Vivaldi awning somewhere near the millionaires' club and meanwhile the small group of schoolchildren was listening to the classical music lesson but not understanding a word and looking otherwise for the constant split-ear crescendo boom-beat three-minute blast of overdone ballast instead from their ghetto block radio-faced DJ factotum but getting only pause and staccato and crescendo and then another change of theme and intermixed music overlapping the seams and NO FALSE ENDING in sight - but they knew not what to say and the teacher had run out of words so they all had instead some fresh salami sandwiches made by hand and a few very large Cokes to wash it all down - you know how frazzled summertime kids can be - and everyone breathed a sigh of relief for FINALLY those annoying and crazy kids were going home and the teacher I noted stayed behind ALONE but she was looking for love in all the wrong places and the next thing I knew she was GONE too with no T R A C E S!!! (but I stayed there myself arm-in-arm with my lovely new Spanish girlfriend) but her name turned out to be Helga or Heide or Heggers or something I'll never remember so I figured she wasn't really Spanish - just wanted to be.