Established Marvel : a Monk by Abbreviation

164. THE WRETCHED OF THE EARTH (nyc/philadelphia, 1967/8):

‘With the requisite recommendations you can really go far’ (it wasn’t like I had tipped my hat to the sun or anything) and that was really all I heard – some guy was talking to me from the side of his mouth but I wasn’t listening and I said to him instead – ‘no that’s OK because that way it just sounds like all I need to do is make the right connections to succeed but that wouldn’t prove anything to me and it wouldn’t satisfy me either’ – he’d been referring to (as usual) learning the ways of the artworld and all that gallery-society crap in ways I just couldn’t abide : I heard it all a hundred times and realized too that there really were people who tried to specialize in nothing more than that – not talent or work or culture – just the ‘getting ahead’ by playing the necessary game perfectly – it also usually took family money of some sort and they all had big-time fathers and family money and stock fortunes and properties and stuff - oft’ and again trips to Europe and England the Louvre and even The Hermitage in Moscow or somewhere I wasn't sure (I thought it was Andrew Jackson's mansion at first) but all that cultural attachment meant nothing to me at that level because it really was but consumption and nothing more (some old guy used to say to me on the docks ‘I remember when consumption was a disease’ and I always thought it funny – contrasting today’s got-to-have-it culture of acquisition with some old-time use of the same word with different meaning) - but that all meant nothing now because these people were truly S-E-R-I-O-U-S about their stuff : no messing around and no fooling either - these were half of them red-diaper babies with a foot in the bank - mommy and daddy were often Jew-leftist leanies by night espousing equality and certain forms of revolution while by day walking discreetly to the bank once more : it all came down to nothing really and in its essence was laughable - for who could help that they sometimes had beautiful daughters or desirable sons with esoteric and wilded-out tastes about art and music and careers and life itself : generally everyone was free and easy and wanted to stage that very same revolution mostly under the covers but often wherever they could : so I decided I didn't need no smarmy mettle-mouthed constabulary of taste and edification deciding for me when and how I'd be 'right' with the prevailing tastes of things and thus be deemed 'successful' and with the 'requisite recommendations' - I'd heard it all before and wasn't ready for the trouble nor to pay my obsequious ass-kissing dues either so THUS then and there down the drain went 'career' - get that 'cuz I'm only to say it once - and like W.C. Fields himself on the whole I would have rather (sometimes) been in Philadelphia.
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Which I soon was : I arrived there on some fortuitous circumstance of getting a few bucks to drive some legal briefs to the offices of an attorney filing an appeal who had an office in the Philadelphia City Hall - and after the first time I received the same job over and over again and along with it the use of the car owned by the person who sent me - a public legal-printer - it was a 1967 Ford Galaxy - very black and very sleek and still very new : I enjoyed driving it quite fast both up and down the New Jersey Turnpike and my 'excuse' to myself was 'deadline' as the briefs had to filed by 3pm on any given day I was making the delivery so that in reality my 'deadline' premise was real enough - I'd go 75-80 miles per hour steadily down the Turnpike (fast for those days) and I really don't remember much but I recall enjoying Philadelphia immensely as a predetermined and very different city for me : another place entirely and one with not near as much familiarity to me and I remember back in those days being stunned by the perfectly planned layout of Broad and Walnut and the convergences of all those streets as they wrapped around the square the center of which was City Hall and the great tower and statue of William Penn high above - the street there was lined with oddities and curiosities outdoor book stalls mounted police magicians street-players crooners and bums - among all of which I'd browse for hours after making the delivery and getting whatever documentary legal signatures were needed and I'd park for free somewhere I cannot recall - leaving the car for hours unencumbered : it was a wonderful little occasional job and a great task and I was getting paid to boot with a free car to use and free gasoline too - I grew found of Philadelphia and its art-schools and studio ateliers and galleries along Broad Street or whatever street it was - the entire area was laid out nearly formally and many of the grand old buildings held their grace and charm so that it all felt as a small Paris of some sort - rivers and waterfronts old history nice buildings stoneworks pediments and edifices with grander allusions to art and culture then I'd seen in a long time - if NYC had been 'masculine' in my mind Philadelphia then by contrast was quite 'feminine' and I was quickly falling in love : with something with what I wasn't sure and didn't care - whenever I was there I found again that I 'saw' differently and things just 'appeared' differently - music halls historic lanes and alleys old cobble streets gas lanterns federal-style brickworks and all that Liberty Bell and Betsey Ross stuff too - quite wonderful.