Established Marvel : a Monk by Abbreviation

211. ONE MARVELOUS ENTABLATURE (and a midnight dreary, nyc,1967):

I took off with the best of intentions walking sullenly through the darkness of 17th - bleak and forbidding was the night as above me the curious hum of lamp and streetlight thrummed in the air and I'd learned long before that there was really nothing to my mind more mysterious and exciting than the absolute dead depth of the bottom of midnight the lowest point of black nighttime along the streets of a New York City night with everything silent (I'd learned that all that 'city that never sleeps' crap had no real basis in fact other than the ten or twelve monstrous blocks of the seemingly never-ending junk of the entertainment districts where people played until they either dropped or died both being much the same to the vacant mind at play) and dark - loading docks closed up windows barred and even the nighttime attendants of these places visibly reluctant to even peer out until daybreak - those I did see walked gingerly with flashlight and keys or huddled in doorways looking out with coffee and a smoke - it was a confederation of negatives and big dark nothings a huge unfolding mystery awaiting light before it once again could start up re-wind and un-wind and churn itself anew through all the froth of another 'productive' day : of course in all of this I was nothing but a stevedore without value a cipher walking through the pith of the night and as I walked (unending too were the means by which I kept myself awake and hating sleep) I dreamed the curious and fabled dreams of those awake - weird kingdoms of glitter and gold made of froth and ideas which would pass and disappear just as swiftly as they passed - through my mind and right out again - leaving in their wake the jumbled confusion of deja vu and misplaced identities : I watched trucks haul by - those huge multi-wheelers which trailed the waterfront docks and loading areas and I witnessed the silent cloaked movements of the very occasional person walking by me or past me and around me or in the other direction across from me - single units monads within time male or female witnessing their own lives and walking in a fashion towards a destiny of their own - I pulled the mental shades down low on anything I'd not wish to see and eagerly peered hard at other things I'd wish to see - opposites like that somehow meld everything together : what I would have given for a companion or a friend the boon of a lover or the fidelity of someone to keep me well and warm but there was none and as I stewed along on my way I understood that and realized this was but the end-result of all that I'd lived until that moment : the stupidity of being a child way too long the rancid effects of sheltered living and parents and siblings and home and place - all those things which weigh around the neck like a deadly anchor and bespoil all independent days UNLESS one throws them off early and surely - which I swore I'd done : I'd sought to break free and break away and had - by my own final wits - done so and here then was the resultant life : ME once and forever alone walking scabrous city streets learning every dot and every essence of everything I'd see and every new way for me was a new way - I'd figure - for all of Mankind too and that was the manner and the means of what I'd be doing for the rest of my life : I'd turned off 17th and had headed up to 23rd and there was the place I was going - just past the post-midnight coil of ironwork and the steel of the old Chelsea Hotel - 3rd floor left into which location I'd enter and sit at the window waiting for the arrival of my good friend Marcus Gray of whom more in a bit.
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Marcus Gray was an artist of two left hands - as he put it - he did everything the way he wanted and only knew one way as awkward as a right-handed batter in a left-handed batter's box - but his art had a magic quality of some kind of darkness something between both the shadow and the light of what makes up ordinary life and at the moment I was in his cheap employ to mix pigments and lay out colors (not understanding why - the very idea of an 'artist' having reached the point of needing to have this done FOR him and not doing it himself was still unsettling) and he worked at fiercely odd hours and drank and cavorted too - to such an extent that having my own key allowed me at least somewhere to wait out these blisteringly strange hours - he'd usually arrive very happy or at least drunk past a certain point and with a certain fair aplomb he'd have some wonderful creature draped over his arm - I was glad for a change it wasn't another man my having witnessed enough homosexual artist love as to wish fondly for the female sort - and by the time the light came up I knew she'd be asleep exhausted sated and probably undressed too - all of which made for pleasant atmospheres in spite of low pay : he'd give me a list - 'cerulean' and 'alizarin' and such - denoting which pigments he needed - and by pre-arranged formulas and agreed-on amounts I'd mix and lay out his mounds of color as paint to await his thrashful heaving or his pallet-knife spreading - as eventually he'd blast into his work as a boiler throws its flame - I'd sit back and watch or make sure of coffee and alcohol get hard rolls and pastries when requested and just generally do this or do that - which generously sometimes included (to my great satisfaction) a lickety-split taste of the finery he'd brought home - they always seemed happy and willing to bask in whatever reflected Marcus Gray glory I too could give them and for a mere wee lad ! and egads what glory it was.