RAPHAEL RUBINSTEIN New Observations The mania for "correcting" masterworks was already in full swing when, in a partly unforseen change of tenor, I found myself slipping past sleeping ticket takers to join, in my usual inexact yet persistent way, all kinds of people I was about to call "invitees" and would have done, too, in the era before the one I am describing. Maybe it is impossible to phrase this kind of perspective without the decorative barbs that let on more than you are letting on. Maybe it is also impossible to convince a face to stay in focus for more than one breath. I have stayed in that room longer and better than I expected but medals aren't much on which to base a second conversation and neither are strategies of entry or that movie everyone insists you'll love in which the originality of the crowd's misfortune is the leitmotif which keeps goading the hero to nip at the heels of his unassailable hosts. On a Late Date It's gloaming time in the cordons, the notorious Mr Johann blocks the road or at least his fatally fluent hymnbook of lies does. They're offering complimentary copies in the pricey clothes stores I never see even browsers in like the one across the street from the big twilight window where I'm sitting. At this late date, from this new location, I can't believe restructured menus are still appearing as if the proprietors (or the fast-talking experts they call in for such matters) were long incommunicado to the truth that, for you, I don't have to even bother naming. As early as the first or second anniversary I've known there was a better way. Soon I will have had enough of watching someone else soak up the pretty girl's sibilant chatter. Here I am, close enough to pull back, within inches of our prearranged fiasco and did I mean bitter? X doesn't bother calling anymore, a word filling five paintings in the studio of someone X will always envy. I sent her a map of the cordons but no apology. What I Had With Me That Day in 1985 (from The Basement of the Cafe' Rilke) It's not worth the trouble to complain about distance. Distance is barely worth mentioning. Complaints are not magnets to say that the limping pigeon or the blonde girl lying on the sunny grass make me sad leaves everything where it was before. I light another cigarette. 5:30 I am about to escape you, Place des Voges, for a hotel two blocks away. Bye, limping pigeon. Bye, supine blonde. Sunglasses, Lyres by Francis Ponge, notebook, pen. Raphael Rubinstein is the author of The Basement of the Cafe Rilke published by Hard Press