Phoebe had no way of knowing. She told him she would come but she really had no intention. Not that she would not go but she most likely would not. By late August a New Yorker has no promises to keep. Why even make them then. Phoebe had no way of knowing and no intention of finding out. He was not bad but she could do better. It could be fun but by late August fun had nothing to do with it. Phoebe hated parties and even when she went she never really stayed. She could just go and what the hell. Phoebe left that at that. She guessed she would go. Not that that mattered.

There is something infuriating about shadows in New York in the summer. There are many shadows but not really any shade. Walking up West 4 Phoebe felt fantastic. There were strangers she passed them and felt like she knew them and would never give them the time of day. It was high noon and just like a movie but better than any movie Phoebe had ever seen and there were no angles. Phoebe was no stunner but made for the summer.

Papa and Old EZ

Ernest and Ezra would travel through Italy together and would write pithy, back country epistles while away. For awhile they were rarely apart. They were living in the same arrondissement in Paris through the 20s. This was a breakthrough time for both of them. Ezra would write Hugh Selwyn Mauberley and reanimate Propertius and Ernest would publish his first groundbreaking short stories and the blockbuster novels The Sun Also Rises and A Farewell to Arms. Hemingway had the charm of a disciplined but irascible disciple and Ezra by all accounts was a generous, ingenious and dubious mentor. They relished the posture of a cowboy bohemian in Paris. Twin modernist from Idaho and Illinois, Hem and Ez brought verve and musculature to the efflorescent Parisian kulture of that epoch.

They really were soulmates in those early days. Lovers of satire and honesty with a taste of bawdy humor and womanizing that would go on to define American verse and prose prosody. Disagreeing on politics and the universality of bullfighting, Papa and Grampa had a falling out. Hemingway condemning Pound to ridicule from his fascist sympathies (if you could call it that) and Pound for Papa's lack thereof. Among the insults flung this one surpasses all: “Since when are you an economist, pal? The last I knew you you were a fuckin' bassoon player." Ezra famously had an avid taste for music with indefinite (to put it delicately) talent. Pound also pursued a colossal range of interests from Confucian odes to Social Credit. Impresario par excellence Pound corresponded with everybody from Cocteau to George Santayana. Hemingway had diverse interests as well. 'Gee I'd love to take you to a bull fight. You'd like it better than anything I'll bet ... I saw 3 matadors badly gored out of 24 bulls killed.' Tourists before tourism was almost universal among middle class Americans, these youngins bragged to their compatriots back home of distant Romantic lands of matadors and holocausts.

When Hemingway writes that Ezra was "more Catholic" of course we must take him at his word.

"Great literary periods, like that of Provence in the twelfth century, may be almost destitute of literary sense and of literary criteria; this sense and these criteria might even have prevented the periods." | "Literature is a state of culture, poetry is a state of grace, before and after culture." -Juan Ramon Jimenez

And after the litany of misplaced names "Also Alcools, by Guillaume Apollonaire (Mercure), is clever."

"As if like the earth itself they had participated in all the cataclysms of nature..."

On his grand obsessional walks Henry Miller babbles on about this and that and blows his allowance on an superfluous battalion of sex workers. His claims to fame being mainly his instaprose and erect pose. I found moving his elegy to the dead of Brooklyn. And of course he influenced everyone. The world will go out like a Roman Candle. And we all have heard Kerouac say it. And he did pin humanity on the mindless hive charge. All and all a man to be reckoned with. His spiel features the driveling generalizations of a beleaguered relative and none of the buoyant tenderness of true ingenious improvisers of American prosody. But what the hell. I got to say that I could never get through a book of his. But what do I know. Problem is his porno is not too hot. Compared with the greats like Fernando de Rojas and the anonymous Apollinaire and Pierre Louys and later Joyce - nothing going. Also Henry Miller is the Blockbuster of writers. Plus his liberated sexuality is as lame as the fetishism of Mussolini, Hem labeled the biggest bluff in Europe. I always liked Anias Ninn. She can write. Who cares about their love triangle tho? I mean goddamn. Partigiani wear polkadot pantaloons. Henry Miller hated New York. His East Coast lays were lame. He worked as a Dostoyevskian clerk. I think he had a business card. I believe Fyodor paid him under the table. He ate a friends houses. He was a regular Freddie Freeloader Moose the Mooche. He wrote too much about this and nobody can read it. You read Sexus or worse Plexus. Henry Miller put down Bob Dylan as a ping pong player but not as a poet. He knew nothing of poetry. His tin man ear and Ron Burgundy heart are terrifically modern. Henry Miller only ran into automatons in America. Nobody there had any earthiness. They only wanted it in streetcars. Dodgers and lodgers and airconditioned codgers. Henry Miller wails Let us have more oceans,more upheavals, more wars, more holocausts. You better believe it. Ezra Pound tried to get Henry to write a pamphlet on money. You should read it, hilarious. Money and How It Gets That Way. Amazing! To walk in money through the night crowd, protected by money, lulled by money, dulled by money, the crowd itself a money, the breath money, no least single object anywhere that is not money. Money, money everywhere and still not enough! And then no money, or a little money, or less money, or more money but money always money. and if you have money, or you don't have money, it is the money that counts, and money makes money, but what makes money make money? Henry Miller pens an essay on Séraphîta by Honoré de and says he has not read it but digs it. Baad.

"He wanted to take this whole…you know, somewhere. Later on, we talked about it… He and I have been talking on the phone about the human…the development of the humanitarian, you know, stuff…the human aspect of what you’re doing, no matter what profession it is." - Wayne Shorter

New York's wild. I mean the city. Is it really? You better believe it. You can feel it. You take your chances. You fly thru the changes. Have a conversation for once. You get off. Here you are. You're late. Make no mistake about it. Finally something I can get into. You say and you yawn. Nobody laughs. Not even kidding. You purchase the fourth volume of A Natural History of the Ducks off a guy on the corner. Man this weather is something else. Something awful. Would you want it any other way. Yes any other way.

I get hysterical sometimes. You say and laugh. Somebody yawns. You put words on the page. Outrageous. You say it to piss me off.

You elocute like a goddamn grand piano. You know that. You string together pearls of syllables. I just feel bad for the clams man. You empathize too much. You can go to Portland if you feel that way. Bunch of Harvard grads collecting unemployment. Sounds like hell.

America has a real thing going for it. You drone on and on. You make me sick. You get together. You get lost. You never take the time to modulate. You always chasing tail like Dizzy Gillespie. You mistake foreigners for Italians. You embarrass me. New York looks like shit. Hot shit.

You investigate fraud. You lie the whole time. You say phony to be ironic ironically. Some of the turtles made it to the sea. Some of us…

What else is there to do? And is there anything besides that? After all there is not much difference but you are better off going. Definitely than staying, which is worse. Could you imagine?  Not just anybody has the right. And of way and that complicates things. Things are everywhere and everything. Like signage. Like a post that is lamp or somebody. Lying appeals to me. It has a particular appeal. Liking has nowhere near the same appeal. It could be anywhere, not in this case. Appealing applies to conversion. In this case as in any free market. Contagion converses. In an ideal world. In any case. Oh. You have a reason. This is then a much less interesting conversation. And there you have it. Then campaigning ends in champagne. You again, Shampoo.

Walking bass. Very funny, like the fish. More like, flopping! Jesu where were you going with that.  Excuse you. And take it with you.

Go around the corner and there you are. What else would trees do with an avenue? You take a lot for granted. My favorite thing about you is you do and the best thing for you too. What are you looking at? Take a walk pal.

What you to do me. Standard. You Phrygian son of a bitch. What an insult! I got you. You say it to a retired person too.

Sure I like it but mostly it. I could go for that sure. Some Jack Montrose. Am I right or am I right. You play too much piano. Always on your beat like Tart Atum. Elsewhere known as "Up and At Up." Gramps for my taste, I would. You and what tennis racket. Topical drinks.

Tiny umbrellas. This is a plus for society. You could even say miniature. Sure you could. But you have to have. Trample over any old leaf like a child. Put 2 and 2 together.

The curiosity of all Paris will not be assuaged until she knows what M. Jacques de Lacretelle will say this afternoon-is saying now-about Henri de Regnier. It will be frontpage news, stop-press news, crowding out all tidings of bombs on Barcelona, in an hour or so and for all tomorrow, in all the papers of France. All minds here are on the figure of the handsome, young Monsieur Jacques who is standing under the cupola, in his green uniform - with his sword at his side, because Napoleon thought that Men of Letters were gentlemen and should have the wherewithal to fight duels - waiting to deliver his eulogy of his predecessor in the academic fauteuil that he shall occupy.

This passage is hilarious. Of course Ford does not mention the stance of M. Jacques de Lacretelle in albeit ambivalent defense of European Jewry as it was known then and the political motive.

Ford Maddox Ford was a bugger of a chap and had the wit of an Albion caterpillar. All high and mighty and with just a bit of goodnight, good ladies for you there. And good old Ford had almost no lower jaw if you care about that sort of thing and you do. His writing pleases like passing gas. Funny in a silly way but also necessary. Ford is also a snob in the Proustian sense. Impossible to be unenvious of the gentleman that pens this phrase: Of intrinsic value as a wife, I think she had none at all for me. I fancy I was not even proud of the way she dressed. Or this nugget of a gem: Well, it was the first time I had ever been embraced by a woman-- and it was the last when a woman's embrace has had in it any warmth for me. . . . And finally an Englishman has written seriously about American sacramental marriage. Ford M. Ford is as Anglo as he is obese. And he should know about commuter practices: Florence had, of course, several other fellows, too--strapping young New Englanders, who worked during the day in New York and spent only the evenings in the village of their birth. This must have been a novel concept. But honestly I actually read The Good Soldier, not read, listened on Librivox a few years back, and being utter disinterest I found  The Good Soldier (book report style) to be most hilarious saddest story I ever heard at triple the speed. Actually I remember now that I listened to it while weeding beets on the West Coast. West Coast beets baby. I also listened then to The Personal Recollections of Joan of Arc by Mark Twain another batshit ridiculous book.

An emotional affect sounds like a overstatement to me. Affected emotion maybe. Affectation and not affection as in nothing matters but the quality. But nobody wants an argument over pathos and bathos any more than anybody wants to distinguish. But do learn to discriminate. D.H. Lawrence stuck in a stucco wall. But as to the technique, of course it is emasculate, excuse me immaculate. Ford Maddox Ford had the genuine affection of many brilliant man. Pound, William Carlos Williams, both of whom wrote charming eulogy to the man. I laugh to think of you wheezing in Heaven. He was at any rate a stupendously liar. Williams blurts out damn it you lied grossly / sometimes. But it was all, I / see now, a carelessness, the part  of a man / that is homeless here on earth. Touching and Hem would spit on it. But how so? Ford Maddox Ford had been cast out of English literary and social favor and aligned himself progressively with the avant-gard of American and French letters. Pound praises Ford  in that Fordie / never dented an idea for a phrase’s sake. This refers to an honesty beyond language. As for Paris and verité, Hem and Ford told their truth. They were as a matter of fact and a matter of speaking full of it. 

A Moveable Feast has moved me. What can I say? And what else?

Mayakovsky was a good guy and killed

himself, I suppose, not to embarass you.

What else is there to do? And is there anything besides that? After all there is not much difference but you are better off going. Definitely than staying, which is worse. Could you imagine?  Not just anybody has the right. And of way and that complicates things. Things are everywhere and everything. Like signage. Like a post that is lamp or somebody. Lying appeals to me. It has a particular appeal. Liking has nowhere near the same appeal. It could be anywhere, not in this case. Appealing applies to conversion. In this case as in any free market. Contagion converses. In an ideal world. In any case. Oh. You have a reason. This is then a much less interesting conversation. And there you have it. Then campaigning ends in champagne. You again, Shampoo.

Walking bass. Very funny, like the fish. More like, flopping! Jesu where were you going with that.  Excuse you. And take it with you.

Go around the corner and there you are. What else would trees do with an avenue? You take a lot for granted. My favorite thing about you is you do and the best thing for you too. What are you looking at? Take a walk pal.

What you to do me. Standard. You Phrygian son of a bitch. What an insult! I got you. You say it to a retired person too.

Sure I like it but mostly it. I could go for that sure. Some Jack Montrose. Am I right or am I right. You play too much piano. Always on your beat like Tart Atum. Elsewhere known as "Up and At Up." Gramps for my taste, I would. You and what tennis racket. Topical drinks.

Tiny umbrellas. This is a plus for society. You could even say miniature. Sure you could. But you have to have. Trample over any old leaf like a child. Put 2 and 2 together.

"or maybe how he did not do what he could have done." Hem

How to talk about what could have been. Could have been a contender. But without the fuss. How to tell of loss that once told is no longer lost. How anybody could possibly care. With things as they are and not much time for them to stay that way. Too much to ask for your attention.

  Victor Linart, "le sioux," with his bike looking like a bad motherfucker.

Hemingway pairing Ronald Firbank and Scott Fitzgerald in the affections of Miss Stein - another swipe at Francis' masculinity. Marvelous comparison however. Really these novelists do share a gay felicity. Eminently readable. A la mode and in vogue. Satire not too wry and not too nice. Just the kind of thing anybody likes.

I always love the passage of Hemingway walking home at night and criticizing the monuments. Truly unbelievable and so honest. Paris is a still city by night. 21st century elsewhere.

Jeez, Gertrude Stein, literary Godmother, burn. Study abroad in an ambulance: Archibald Macleish, dos Pasos, Hem, e.e. cummings. Disillusion fuses with genius. Many who had it so

Gun em down. We cannot consecrate - we cannot hallow -  this ground. Duh

"The word jazz in its progress toward respectability has meant first sex, then dancing, then music. It is associated with a state of nervous stimulation, not unlike that of big cities behind the lines in a war." O Fitz. As Sidney would say You got to be in the sun to feel the sun.

Still Life

Paul Gauguin

In my yellow room - sunflowers, with purple eyes, stand against the yellow walls, bathing their feet in a yellow flower pot, on a yellow table. - In the corner of the interior, the signature of a painter: Vincent. And the yellow sun, flooding through the yellow drapes of my room, flowering golden everywhere, and the morning, from my bed, when I wake, I imagine that all this smells very good.

O, yes! He loves yellow, this good Vincent, this painter from Holland. Sun warms his soul. A horror of fog. A need to warm.

Together in Arles we go crazy, always warring over beautiful colors. As for me, I adore red - where can I find the perfect vermillion? As for him, tracing his yellowest brush along the wall, all of a sudden purple.

Je suis sain d’Esprit

Je suis Saint-Esprit

In my yellow room, a little still life. Purple, this one. A pair of enormous shoes, used, deformed. The shoes of Vincent. Those he took, a lovely morning, at 9, to go by foot, from Holland to Belgium. The young priest - he went to finish his theological studies to be like his father, a pastor - he went to see, in the mines, those he called his brothers. Like he had seen them in the Bible, oppressed, ordinary laborers, for the luxury of the grand.

Contrary to the lessons of the professors, wise Dutchman, Vincent has faith in a Jesus who loves the poor, and his soul, full of charity, would have it so, and the consoling word, and the sacrifice: for the weak, the grand fight. Decidedly, decidedly,  Vincent was already a fool.

His lesson from the Bible in the mines was, I believe, profitable for the miners down below, disagreeable to the authorities on high, above ground. He was quickly reminded, rebuked, and the Family Council came together and declared him mad - He was however not put away, thanks to his brother Theo.

One day in the black mine the yellow of chrome flooded in, terrible rays of firedamp, dynamite of the rich, never lacking down there. Then those that crawl, swarming in the coal, say goodbye to life, goodbye to men, without blaspheme.

One of them, terribly mutilated, burnt to the face, was rescued by Vincent. “But” said the country doctor, “this is a blasted man, would take a miracle, or costly maternal care. No, would be foolish to try.”

Vincent believes in miracles, and maternity.

The fool - decidedly he is a fool - spent forty days by the bedside of this dying man. He prevented air from penetrating his wounds and paid for his medication. - Consoling priest  - decidedly he is a fool - he spoke. Work revived the dead, a Christian.

When the wounded, finally healed, descended the mine again to begin his work, you could see, Vincent says, the head of Jesus the martyr, on his forehead the aureole, the gashes of the thorny crown, red scars on the yellow earth in front of the miner.

And me…I am him, - Vincent - tracing his yellowest brush along the wall, all of a sudden:

Je suis sain d’Esprit

Je suis Saint-Esprit

Decidedly, this man is a Fool.