is even more fun than going to San Sebastian, Irún, Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonne  or being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in Barcelona  partly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St. Sebastian  partly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for yoghurt  partly because of the fluorescent orange tulips around the birches  partly because of the secrecy our smiles take on before people and statuary  it is hard to believe when I’m with you that there can be anything as still  as solemn as unpleasantly definitive as statuary when right in front of it  in the warm New York 4 o’clock light we are drifting back and forth  between each other like a tree breathing through its spectacles 

and the portrait show seems to have no faces in it at all, just paint  you suddenly wonder why in the world anyone ever did them  I look  at you and I would rather look at you than all the portraits in the world  except possibly for the Polish Rider occasionally and anyway it’s in the Frick  which thank heavens you haven’t gone to yet so we can go together the first time  and the fact that you move so beautifully more or less takes care of Futurism  just as at home I never think of the Nude Descending a Staircase or  at a rehearsal a single drawing of Leonardo or Michelangelo that used to wow me  and what good does all the research of the Impressionists do them  when they never got the right person to stand near the tree when the sun sank  or for that matter Marino Marini when he didn’t pick the rider as carefully  as the horse  it seems they were all cheated of some marvellous experience  which is not going to go wasted on me which is why I’m telling you about it