TO THE DOCTOR OF BREATHTAKING ELEGANCE II

269. TO THE DOCTOR OF BREATHTAKING ELEGANCE (II- 'won't that be the day'):

And oh baby thy namesake is golden - swimming thirteen laps already in that sad sad ocean of doom - and have you heard all the cats just talking and talking - be-bop diddly-wop - while they played horns and they crooned 'oh the black man's in the alley again and I can hear my mama just saying 'when' as she sneaks out the backporch door' but the small piece of paper the workman left me said nothing when I read it but this: 'leave open the final opportunity - for chance will never come your way again' and I took it to the gypsy who couldn't read a thing but said instead she'd 'never seen a such as this before' and lit a candle and I left holding the bag she'd given me : the low black car along 23rd had just stopped near the Chelsea Hotel and a wild Winter storm was coming - the frothy Hudson was waved and twisted over and over again upon itself : and here it was ALREADY 1968 so so dawning : two guys had gotten out and then a third who swaddled some woman in a big thick coat and together swiftly they all went into the lobby and sweltered a moment in that way-too-hot heat only a lobby can give and they disappeared to where I knew not and the girl whom I knew only as Marney had just settled down in her chair so I sat next to her to start this conversation and she smiled delightedly and said 'let's go upstairs' by which she meant New Year's Eve was approaching or had just passed (I can't remember) and once we got there she gave me a small package wrapped in paper and told me to open it - so I did - and what it was was a photo in a small book - a photo of Pablo Picasso kissing her hand - and she said she wished for me to have this but just for ONE year and I had to give it back IF I TOOK IT this very same night a year from now - she'd gotten it in Malaga when Picasso was there - she spend three or four days with him and his wife in the stucco-white atelier they were staying in - fame might have had its perks but I couldn't yet figure where she fit in : and I agreed to all that and we had a glass of wine and soon after I left with the photo and the book (a miniature Inferno) and I stayed intent for a real long time on seeing her again the very next year - to give it all back or just to see her - but as it turned out I saw her lots of times until about August - when she disappeared and that was the end of that and the photo ended up FORGOTTEN and forlorn somewhere to this day unknown BUT when and if I ever turn it up again WON'T THAT BE THE DAY!
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They made you partake of something you didn't understand or share feelings for they made you a parfait of the elements of swank - in their thinking - while you were used to gnawing on tar they underscored your alignment with rightness by saddling you with depth and meaning unlike the reality you brushed through they made you listen to the noises of steam in a carriage-house of dread while you were used to fast light at the edges of travel - places where things compress and draw back into themselves and solidify and gain mass before disappearing BUT 'once the orphan always the waif' as the Sisters of Mercy said so you went along not willingly but along nonetheless and they threw marbles back at your face and the sting-marks of rebuke left small welts not yet healed and your place at their table was taken over by a bear who did tricks for a master and the dances of wizards seemed broken by the factory-light of some pale yellow fire and the death-defying gorge from which some sacred river roared seemed deeper and rockier than ever before but the highlands - you knew - always have lakes which then drain to the lowlands and that was the one noise you heard - the thrust of the minions of three-thousand sickening faces looking up the swamp of iniquity where the piled-up people built their villages and towns - fens of diversion malodorous buckets of scum swamps and perverted valleys with hangmen seeking trees for a noose to be placed on perfect fat limbs : there was no succor nor solace in what was left after any of this but you withstood it all nonetheless.