Not that anyone’ll notice…why, there’s just too much going on, are too many people, person pressing pushing up against personality, straining to keep their manners good, their faces fixed pleasant: dressed impressed and to, their dresses swishing up against the pleat and flat of their pants, folds to tails, striped, starred, ringed, then bound with necklaces chained of bracelets. Necks low, hems high. Anything but ashamed of their naked. Here, they’re poised to point, their lips pursed to whisper within the tomblike calm of the Museum’s dark cool, amid the wellventilated, recirculated air, this spring garden, a milder jungle — to live landscaped amid such drastic swoops almost demanding of awe, the ornamentation sinuous atop the hard lines, the austere, lean geometry, the public weight scaled of fruitbasket and bird…everyone focused, on point, kept on topic: on the preservation, on memory, anticipatory of what, a holy vessel to be expertly processed, labeled for ease of digestibility (though no one’ll eat it — how could they even begin to pronounce its manyclaused bracha?); but the manners, they can’t last forever, pleasantries live only halflives, remember, these are the Affiliated we’re talking about, you know the type and so soon, talk in its most or maybe least stupefying varieties breaks out, comes echoing loudly from whisper to shout; there’s fartalk, neartalk, eyetalk, nosetalk, sidetalk in all of its multiloquent geographic manifestations: Upper Eastsidetalk, Upper Westsidetalk, Westchestertalk, Joyseytalk, the murmurings bebabbled of Greenwich on down to Red Bank…smalltalk, largetalk, tabletalk, thattalk, thistalk, overtalk, under-talk, nthtalk, xtalk — a gossip apocalypse, a pack of lips…a salivary fleck-flock, a herding of mouths — this mass kibitzing, this metakvetch, orbits of noise gathering around the assemblage, to ring, planetary gas, puffing the drapery, wilting the appletrees despite the fayg’s fervid shpritzing; guests (they’ll never forget they once had been guests) discussing weighty matters, doing deals of Creationary proportions, spying steals of Biblical scope: Numbers, Numbers 2, Numbers 3, names dropped then picked up, dusted off, returned to Sender again whether Mr. or Mrs., this is our second & final attempt…linnerplans preempted by only a sneeze, a mere cough, matches handshaked on and off and then on again as offhandedly as possible as empires plot themselves then disintegrate to dust all around them; seismographs altared upon the floor register the insistent stomping of feet, the whole mess standing, shuffling, rising, sitting, squeezing hearts’ tight on loveseats, the spinechill wombcold of low tallowtoned marble benches, blue & white slipcovered sofas rented out for a mint down, hauled in for the occasion only to wear and then, stain, they’re pressed against walls, pushed up against doors…standing high up on chairs and on tables, how they’re speechifying, offering jeremiads, ezekielisms, and isaiahtirades, exhorting from chairs stacked one on the other or set atop tables or stacked and set thereupon both, how they’re leaning up against the balcony’s railing draped blue & white, too, in the standard of the U.S. of Affiliation, show your respect.
