of course i was wrong: cabeza de vaca. de de de. as in 'de ville'. 'cept that's french. CowHeadBoy (tm). we'll refer to him as cowheadboy.
sunday: baby and mary beth attend the dalai llama ( it's crowded - they're out of spitting range). i go down to the west village where on the corner of 4th and perry is a structure being re-built to house the new sant ambroeus. oh sorely missed shrine of alternative spellings. sant ambroeus? west fourth street? positively fourth street? but i kid thee not. and where others might doubt, the prescient quality of hans paoli's gaze heretofore is apt to persuade me. sure enough the corner already throngs with those fabuously attired and horribly bored beautiful little girls that are the evidences of tasteful discernment and deep, deep pockets. horribly bored and waiting for sant ambroeus.
i remember telling paoli of my anger when goonliani started running the artists off from in front of the metropolitan museum of money. ("painting" read lederman's crib of the goonliani lawyer briefs before the federal courts - i'll give you it was lederman's crib - "painting is less communicative than speech, and therefore does not fall under the purview of the first ammendment." something like that.) "yes, it is bad," paoli responded. "it does not look," he thought for the english word, "liberal." sant ambroeus would not strike most americans as a shrine of liberality.
but after the revolution we're all gonna stay in our private hells. we would simply change the character of the commodity base so that with which we medicated our grief was not so injurious to ourselves and others. a perfect world is out of everyone's theoretical grasp - even you loony crazies with your gods. but if a better one can be had by simply throwing money at it, then surely it is our holy duty to make more so we got some to throw. hippy capitalism. if i ever say anything positive truly it's a stretch. i know we don't get out of this alive.
down west fourth street (it's a conceptual street at odds with reason out west there in what once was the gayest neighborhood in america and maybe still is) an avenue or two are the sex shops. i go into one - the pink pussycat? - two small floors, costumes and bondage wear above, vibrators and a sorry range of video below. a latina in a pink tracksuit greets me, "hi, are you looking for anything in particular?" "i was passing.. just came to look.." "just ask, if there's anything you need.." i gather she is in part performing for the middle aged chinese woman who without looking up does sums silently in a ledger. below are more girls manning the vibrator counter. and as i run my eye over prices from the street a whole family of brown girls enters with surpressed whoops. i try to look gay and unleersome. i leave quickly fearing my presence might be inhibitory and wanting for the shop money i can't give them. i think un-nostalgically of the old new york sex shops and the sad surly indians who clerked in them. i must - i realize as i write these words - create a commodity by which i might participate in these commercial studies in positive change.
monday: go down to donnell library on 53rd chasing the penguin (98?) reissue of fanny somebody's 1905 translation of alfar nunes cabeza de vaca's chronicle of his first american voyage. (note: a 1905 translation means almost certainly "free" in the quin eye). don't find it. go to children's library. winnie the pooh is there! really! winnie the pooh, tigger and kanga, and eeyore, and piglet. they all moved to new york in 1947. now they live in the library. if you were here i could take you there to see. piglet is very small. smaller than you imagined. you can understand how he might be nervous.
read a 1974 biography of cowheadboy by some lady who then divided her time 'twixt new york and a log cabin in the berkshires. her illustrator lived in westchester. ( i vaguely flash their cheever storied ice storm lives). "we'd never put this book on the shelves.." the very sweet and slightly wacky librarianess confides, "look!" she ruffles the pages, "made up dialogue.." she shakes her head sorrowfully.. "the old style..."
i think how hard it must be for her everyday maintaining the distinction between fiction and non-fiction.
when i was a boy teachers still related to us the strange untruth that people in europe thought the world was flat prior to columbus. perhaps our teachers actually believed this. how would such a story get started? it's like mencken's bostonian bath ban.
cowheadboy was three when columbus discovered america and i figure thirty eight thereabouts when he voyaged to the new world. cowheadboy came to america looking for gold, became a slave, and then became a god. being a god was an everyday nerve-wracking enterprise and i don't think cowheadboy enjoyed it. esteban - cowheadboy's friend and godly colleague - was the first black man in america. i think maybe esteban had a better time as a god than cowheadboy, though being a god got him killed earlier. cowheadboy kept looking for gold. in those days gold exerted a stronger fascination i think than it can today among men of discerment and culture. gold may be necessary but ain't it icky and tasteless and stinking of pointless death. embarrassing like an engagement ring. something to be sold in malls to stupid people fattened on straw. would everyone realize how horribly boring gold is (b.f. skinner? didn't he say that?).
george bush speaks to th u.n. and my radio. ain't i horribly bored and craving the appearance of liberal?
11:40:30 AM 
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