Established Marvel : a Monk by Abbreviation

181. SOLVE FOR X:

Gone delirious and I am sitting around reading the House of Bernarda Alba by Garcia-Lorca but I don't know why yet I read it anyway and wonder instead about the Poet in New York title figuring it might be better but I let it go and I realize I hate reading drama where you have to decide between the lines and distinguish the scene and the placing of it and who says what and the breaks between the phrases with names spoken by different people and the blocking of the scene interspersed with parenthetical intrusions showing instructions and facial expressions and movement and phraseology of characters and such and I realize it's all so outlandish and just plain boring in its predictive pomposity so much so as to be unnatural and even dictatorial in its workings and if it's a play it's meant I'm sure to be staged and acted and not merely read so why read it but it's like the equivalent of riding a bus needing the Daily News on your lap for whatever reason and then the bus careens haphazardly and crashes and the newsmen arrive and you sincerely hide the Daily News for you do not want to be seen with it or at least do not wish to be photographed and covered in the press while holding it for in the back of your mind it's somehow shameful ('Bronx Man Indicted in Wife-Beating! Alligators Again Found in Local Sewers! Mets Battered By Brewers!') and that's the same feeling I get reading Garcia-Lorca's play I should be at the Joyce Theater or somewhere instead maybe watching the performance or at least reading something else instead - like Brecht's Caucasian Chalk Circle or something - but not doing that I'm in its place throwing dice and casting sticks I'm throwing the I Ching for anything and trying my hand at measuring FATE and the weary luck it all may bring and here again before me are the two lions at the Library staring out looking far across to the East River missing I'm sure the old Tannery Row and leather workshops and slaughter houses and coal heaps all now gone and forgotten POWERPLANTTUDORCITYUNITEDNATIONS too everything all a'jumble just like that and I'm confused too and my head hurts and the cold makes it pound and it's hard to breath in the half-dark menagerie I inhabit walking through a dim city light turned over and about by winds and debris and trash and junk all blowing around topsy-turvy potpourri and everything smashed about as cold can be and the two night-guards by the Siamese Connection I hear them talking : 'but where the hell have I heard that before ? or saw that girl in the white billowy shirt say something like that maybe last Summer I can't remember but I know her face and for sure I'd know that fine ass anywhere too - must be last year and ain't I a fucking Rip VanWinkle myself or not ? hey Joe how's about a cup of coffee no?' : and as I look around me I suddenly realize again that there's not any reason for me to stay here or not one enough anyway and I'm just improvising a poor jazz life here and there's not even anybody around anyway who would know Lorca anyway 'cept maybe one or two I can maybe remember if I try and even if he did write Spanish I'm not about to read it and nobody would recognize the words anyway no matter what tongue they were in ('my good God we've come to this impasse?') and I look over east and the nighttime soldiers are in a line over by some embassy or mission or something - all those weird Slavic types brooding and stiff - and the dark blue car is idling and just waiting for action ('Police Line Do Not Cross') and even I can tell it's a cop car with no markings about as hidden as a monkey in a nursery with the big spotlight on the mirror and the special lights cut into the grill and the really nondescript license plate for sure ('shit if I'd know that was a cop car') but just as time passes so too does traffic and that car's gone as I watch it running down the Grand Central ramp heading south down Park somewhere and leaving me right here solid as ice and ready to melt ('I swear Summer's coming early this year and there won't even be a Spring') so who knows and who cares what the hell the weather will bring.