Man, look at it, will you just look at it? — it's a downward spiral, this is, isn't it?
All this downward spiral of it.
You try to make it up to people, you get set to make it up to people, and then the next thing you know, there is this terrible spiral downward with them on account of the fact that you are always starting to spiral downward with people, and then once you start the downward spiral with them, it is all going to keep on going downward like this — namely, in like a definite downward spiral downward.
If only things weren't always so downward like this!
If only things were not rigged to always keep going spiraling so downward like this!
Everything wrongward and downish.
This Jon Cone and me, how come we could not have, the two of us, how come we could not have sailed right off of here up out from here at the outset from here to anywhere terrific?
Maybe soared right on up out from here — and then up some more upward from here, and then some more upward after that — and then, after that, ever upward from that — sailing — soaring — ever upward.
Terrifically.
Or upwardly.
And not like the way it really always is.
Which is like a letter you take a chance and go post to them like a warbird to them instead of feather back and get fluttered from the motherfucking world.
THREE JEWS ON THE WAY HOME FROM A CLASS WE TOOK A TAXI
Then call it a cab.
Fine, we took a taxicab. Don't tell me they weren't as Jewish as I am as Jewish, the two of them, the pair of them, in the back seat with me in the taxicab with me. We would have taken a subway, except who wanted to get killed? They kill Jews on subways. This has been the practice here for ever so long. It must be plain, then, that the others had never been on a subway, for if they had been, then how could they have got into a taxicab with me the night of my class Wednesday last? How indeed could have done they? Look, I think I have a concussion. My head, I believe it to have been concussed — at 84th Street and Park — where the taxicab I and my students were riding in collided with the planet Mars. Or with, lesserly, the moon. Or more probably upon the fenestration of a legion of marching Christians, it felt like. We were smashed. Firetrucks show up. Ambulances show up. The sidewalks are thronged (is this permissable, thronged?) — were athrong with cheering horses. Hordes, one imagines oneself to have said. Hey, if I have a head injury, if any of this evinces (evinces?) the vince of a head injury, then don't cry for me, Babylon! Nor Bayonne. They took us away on boards. Aboard boards. In the emergency room, the hue and cry was as follows: "These are Jews!" But a doctor cameth and applied salves. I was healed. My students were healed. He said, "You be the people of interpretation, yes?" There was acknowledgment. This was curative. He said, "Cab crashes phalanx of unclean, correctomento?" Acknowledgement — but in the nodding off of it of, hear something clink. Within. Take the fellow by the buttonhole, expressing to him alarm, saying, "My, you know, my head." "Ah," the man says, brightening, "you be bashed in it in, no?" "But my brain," I opine, "my brain, what of its concourse now?" There is smiling. My students, the nurses, the firemen, the administrators — Ma and Pa — they smileth and smilen. "We were three Jews on the way home from a class!" I allow, stressing the titular aspects of the matter. The telephone rings. The telephone is ringing. Everybody answers. "Hello," it states. "Duffy's Tavern," it states. "Duffy's not here," it states. "John Oakes speaking." "John!" I say. "Oh, God — thank God, thank Jesus, it's John!" I say. I say, "John, Jesus pal, there's been an efficiency, okay? We hit something. The tenses are changing. We were promising uptown and we hit something and now all the tenses are changing. Can you, you know, in your heart, can you possibly maybe make anything out of this for me as a person?" It states, "Like one fellow to another? Like one victim to another? Like one aspect to another? You mean like as in humanitarianly-wise?" But I had to hang up. Everybody was dying. It was like it had all of it — the pay-off — been postponed or something, but now — look out! — the gist was up. Except for me, of course. Except for me and for the one true, the one verdanto, church, of course.
Now it was just the twain of us.
"Guardimente!" I snarleth.
"Go ahead!" I chasteneth.
"Make your move!" I, with ligament, chirg.
PRACTICE COUPLE OF THINGS ON MY MIND
Not on it so much as near it. At, you might say, the margins of it. Or is it sidelines? Off there, then, at the fringes, you might say — this thing of thinking somebody once said to me something about some woman I know — but which woman, which woman? — having consorted with another woman. Or currently consorting with ditto. So crazy, this is all so crazy — because what further of info can I furnish anybody? — none, none! — I having no knowledge of anything save of the tidbit — well, it's hardly that, hardly a tidbit in the sense of its being anything toothsome, I reckon — save for the snippet, then, which I just gave you. But now to give you the other thing that's there at these reaches of what? — of this mouldering slag-scape of mine — out there where it all turns all to rubble and is getting ready for it to any instant drop off into the great basin of gone and beyond — it's, this other thing, this thing this guy tells me where he's sitting somewhere making small talk somewhere with this other guy somewhere and this other guy somewhere says to him, "But look at this, look at this," whipping out his wallet and going fingering around in it and plucking free from it this tiny pic which he's got in there which is of a woman's feet on what looks to him — we're speaking now, when I say him, about this guy who is saying all of this to me — which looks to him as if the woman is standing on a bathroom floor — tiles and so forth, sort of bathroom-floor-looking tiles and so forth — not that there is any woman, because there is no woman, what there is is just these gorgeous feet of hers, there's just these really perfect feet of hers — top-notch feet in this top-notch relation to the floor, or so this guy is saying to this other guy of mine, saying check it, will you, check it out, won't you, this gorgeously perfect contact between these gorgeously perfect feet of hers, and, you know, the floor. So my guy, this guy who is telling me this, this guy says to me that he says to this other guy, that he says to the pic-exhibiting guy, that he says to him, "Some feet, uh?" So my guy, he then, this my guy of mine, he then says to me that he says to this pic-exhibiting guy, "Hey, you don't see feet like these feet every day of the week, right?" Says to me he says to this pic-exhibiting guy, "Hey, I can certainly see what you're getting at, showing me, hey, the way these feet of whoever's sort of really achieve real contact and all with the floor and all, am I right?" So that's the thing — so that's all I have — that's, I mean, the second thing I thought I had — but what do I have? Because I don't know, one, who either of these guys is or, two, who's the woman whose feet they are that are there in the pic, and, three, is it her bathroom the woman is standing bare-footed in — I'd like to say naked-footed in if you don't mind my saying it — is it her bathroom the woman is standing naked-footed in, and, four, zaniest of all, or actually most alluring of all, was it, was the pic a pic taken of just the feet or was what the guy who's talking to me looking at when the other guy is showing him the pic, is it a pic somebody took scissors to to reduce it, to minimalize it, to make a minum of it right down to the, you know, to the absolute footmost crux of it?