New York City. June 21, 1972. Eight-thirty in the evening, according to the position of two mechanical hands on an arbitrary dial. Mars is in the House of Virgo, Jupiter is in the House of Values and Venus is in the House of Pies. The weather: hot hokey puppy poopie with billows of industrial paranoia at 600 feet. Manhattan smells like the litter box for the Kitty of the World. It has twisted its body into the dog-shit asana. Close by but far away, in a world beyond odors, ghosts of the original inhabitants are laughing their feathers off, remembering how they’d stuck the white devils with this doomed piece of real estate for some very chic beads and a box of Dutch Masters. The Big Apple, polished with Rockefeller spit and wiped on the tight pants of a multitude of Puerto Ricans, is ready for the chomps and nibbles of Friday-nighters from everywhere. Junkies are stirring in their warrens, pizzas are primping in their ovens, Wall Street is resting its bloody butthole and the Statue of Liberty wears a frown that won’t quit. As City College professors, disgruntled over martinis, talk about dropping out and farming rhubarb in Oregon, neon signs all over town rejoice because it’s the shortest night of the year. Headline on the fron page of the New York Daily News: THE CHINK SUMS IT UP, SAYS LIFE IS HARD IF YOU THINK IT’S HARD. New York City. In progress. Not a cowgirl in sight.

Tom Robbins: “Even Cowgirls Get the Blues”