Andante, Fresco, Ciao! (Part One of a rather long short story. . . .)

 Andante, Fresco, Ciao!       
(A Story in 13 Parts, or                                                          6,500+ words!)

                                                                                 

And the sunlight clasps the earth

And the moonbeams kiss the sea:

What are all these kissings worth

If thou kiss not me?

                      -Percy Bysshe Shelley

It’s the winter of 1963 and I’m all shrink-wrapped up.

Chocolate brown and black enshroud nearly my entire being in dark wraparound skirts, slim woolen “sheath” dresses, short, teasing tunics, tight black turtlenecks, long black tights, snug black leather heels, charcoal eyeliner, cocoa eye shadow, deep amber lipstick and an esoteric major in English and Drama.

A few errant Christmas trees still appear at the curb, tiny strands of tinsel clinging to the branches of a wintry new year. Dark novels nurture the melancholy sensibility; I’m enraptured with words like “ye.”

`Beauty is truth, truth beauty,’- that is all

 Ye know on earth and all ye need to know.

Poignant tales help pass time on the subway, in the back of snorting city buses, under the covers with a flashlight in the early hours of freezing Bronx mornings- paperbacks with shadowy covers that bespeak intense, dour tales of destitution and dolor. A radiator sputters as Thomas Hardy reveals the obscure, unspeakable tragedies of Jude and Tess. 

For comic relief I peruse Conrad, and Anna Karenina is my role model. I picture a brilliantly lit nineteenth century Russian ball teeming with dissipated, bejeweled aristocrats, chandeliers and gleaming floors from whence to make an entrance in one of those low shouldered evening gowns of rich black velvet designed to drive dashing rakes like Vronsky mad with desire. I’m also constructing an imaginary, existential diary of a young life somewhat along the lines of “Notes from the Underground” and I’m inexplicably fond of the prefix “be” in front of certain words to intensify meaning and sound vaguely literary: bestir, bemoan, belie, bedeck, behoove, besmirch, beguile. . . .

To make matters worse, I’ve more or less given myself over entirely to the enchantment of La Belle Dame Sans Merci, longing piteously, as it were, for the world of sedge, mead and the elusive faery child.

Thin, pale and haunted in a “bohemian” sort of way, my mind is not at rest. Everyone I know is dreaming of getting away, bedeviled and besieged as we all are with restlessness and rebellion. You could say there’s an entire generation betaken with thoughts of flying off to Europe, joining a kibbutz, heading out west, living on a commune, signing up for the Peace Corps, be-ing there. The violet, chilly winters of New York are especially biting through the tilted canyons of the borough, with temperatures in the pre-teens.

 Everything is slower, and takes time. You patiently dial a rotary phone for climate conditions at Weather 6-1212 to get something like wild guessing at the other end in those artless days before computers. The entirety of New York City is still 212, even to the furthest, most remote corners of Staten Island with fewer telephone numbers, fewer connections.  

Carla Thomas, little known gospel singer epitomizes the soulful crossover from gospel to R & B and I and others already have been shamelessl humming along to the naked, teenage sensuality emanating from the likes of Gee Whiz, look at his eyes/ Gee whiz, how they hypnotize. . . . It is still prior to the imminent ascendancy of the peppy Motown beat, Diana Ross and the Supremes and eventually Sly and the Family Stone. 

There’s all kinds of abundance everywhere, jobs, jobs, jobs and you don’t have to attend college to prosper. Manhattan rentals are plentiful and cheap, studios of exposed brick walls in five story walk-ups, brownstones with scruffy, wildflower gardens, modern cookie cutter nests in flimsy, white towers manned by smarmy doormen and the illusion of cache- and all so very boring seeming. The notion of a black president is non-existent, pure sci-fi. In any event it’s a moot point. For starters, there are no blacks, just Negroes, no Hispanics or Latinos, only Puerto Ricans, Asians are “Orientals.”  

A historical tsunami is covertly moving the earth’s tectonic plates and meteors are crashing silently above our heads, but the infrasonic pulses are tucked so far below any level of human hearing the racket can be detected only by certain animals of peculiar sensitivity, such as cats and the occasional elephant herd. . . .
                                     (to be cont'd on 9/23)