To Marcel Duchamp

18th of March, 79

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I slipped the newspaper clipping from yesterday's Le Monde, into the pocket of my blue thrift-store blazer. 

DEPARTURE from Marseilles in a violent wind. 

I am trying to leave my years of devotion to gospel teachings. I am in barbaric pursuit of the girl sitting beside me, clad in a soft, airy red dress. We will spend our days along the coastline, subsisting on her trust fund. Absorbing Sartre and Gide.

No! No money for records! She loves swing and she loves chanson. She has an ear for the blues and tears for algerian folk. She will spend all our money on polyvinyl chloride. My stomach begs her to eke out our existence on the coast, 'til our blue fiat reaches the cobblestones of old Milan.

The sun is choleric and offers no respite to my mounting qualms, perspiring onto my poor, weary forehead. We drive into a local ESSO. I walk into the magasin (store) to buy a pack of marlboro reds. As he swipes the black and white code, I tinker with a cassette rack full of "essentials": essential mod, essential elvis, essential bop...etc. Meanwhile the guy is waiting for me to pay up. He has silky long hair, flowing down onto his blue esso collared shirt, concealing a purple tie-die tee underneath. This guy must know time. Maybe he can afford me some advice on my current folly; does my destiny meander with a red dress in Milan? He sways from side to side to a tune, uncomfortably self-conscious of my burning gaze. Most people must walk right past him. But this kid, and he's just a kid in his early twenties, he's adding some momentum to the turbulence in my carotid artery, shooting up to my brain. I almost crush the pack in my palm, with a sudden pang of acid distrust. I place five francs on the counter and run out .