Jerome Bonaparte Bray
General Delivery
Lily Dale NY 14752
June 17 1969
Mr & Mrs Gerald Bray a.k.a. Gadblank III
c/o Ranger & Mme H C Burlingame VI
Backwater National Wildlife Refuge
Dorchester County Maryland
Dearest Parents & Foster Parents
Every RESET has a RESET Back where we started All shall be ill Jack shant have Jill the man shant have his mare again and naught will be well Not bad how about a spot of punctuation, that’s better. Continue to delete all references to blank, very good, the mails aren’t safe, but don’t reset every time you see a pattern, or these letters will be a meaningless jumble of you-know-whats, here we go.
Dear Mother and Father and Foster Ditto it is not easy to write this letter. Are having a terrible time. Wish you were here. Why have you forsaken us, you too, like H.M. II a.k.a. G. III, Todd Andrews, Andrews Mack, and bad Merope Bernstein a.k.a. Margana y Fael, anti-Bonapartists all? Old Ranger B., dear Madame: Are you still at sweet Backwater or flown to your reward? Do you recall this orphan of the storm, that you rescued from his bulrush basket and raised up in the marsh as though he were yours despite his bad foot? Whose mother was a royal virgin whose father RESET Whose maternal grandfather RESET Please forward. Have you learned in the evening of your lives what you never knew in the morn of ours: where our true Mommy & Daddy are, and why they don’t write clearer letters? Please forward.
Dear parents: It is not easy to RESET Your long message to us of April 1 was duly printed out and delivered by LILYVAC, but we cannot find the key to that treasure, and we despair. Numbed by your numbers, stung like fallen Bellerophon, we wander far from the paths of men, devouring our own soul. The midpoint of our life approaches, unhappy birthday, ditto the Phi-point of our 5-Year Plan, 618 etc., and we are nowhere. The Tidewater Foundation has rejected us; they shall pay. Our letters go unanswered; our enemies rejoice. Year T (a.k.a. V) ends; soon it will be time to mate. With whom, Ma? NOT will not come to ES! Our business will go unfinished ha RESET Oh stop.
Themurah a.k.a. anagrammatical transposition is all humblank. Everything comes out scrambled after MARGANAYFAEL, leafy anagram for bad Margana y Flae, who bit us bye-bye on May 18, she shall RESET It was the anniversary of Napoleon’s coronation, 1st Sunday after Ascension, mild & cloudy, ☿ stationary in Right Ascension, ☍♆☉, hear the buzzing of the blanks in the apple trees, Apollo-10 launched, will land on USS Blank, etc. The bad news had just arrived from the Tidewater Foundation; we were RESET Drove down to Chautauqua in our VW Blank to share our sorrow with Margana y Rodriguez y Thelma y Irving, loyal comrades so we thought, with the weariness that only true revolutionary lovers Forget it. We did not knock; strode into their pad in the old St. Elret Hotel on the institution grounds for the comradely consolation that only RESET It was but May, Ma, and they were mating! In hemp smoke so thick it brought tears to our eye of newt! Irving with Thelma! Rodriguez with my Margana!
Look who here, said Thelma: it old Numbers. I can explain, Jer, said Margana. What’s to explain? Rodriguez asked rhetorically: Everybody must make the revolution in his/her et cetera heh heh. We’re like practicing up for the Mating Flight, joshed Irving; pull up some smoke and join us. He not joining me, declared Thelma; he give me the heeb-jeebs. Jerome, Margana said, it’s time I told you. Tell shmell, sniffed Rodriguez; he’s got eyes. What big ones, Irving chaffed. Cool it, hombres, urged Margana; remember what I said. Now look here, Jer, these spray guns aren’t what you think, okay? she went on (for while numbly regarding them we had not failed to notice the hideous weapons deployed about their quarters); we ripped off some herbicide from the county agent’s office, right? Our plan is to defoliate the Ivy League during their commencement exercises. Think what you please, Jerry; it’s the truth. And Roddy and I, well, we’re lovers: true revolutionary RESET Quick Henry, cried Thelma as we angrily opened our cape, the Flit! Jesus H. Keerist, expostulated Irv, put that thing away, man!
They flew for the exits: perfidious Margana alone stood her ground, spray gun in hand. Wicked, beautiful le Fay! Abdomen we so prized, that was to have taken our seed come August to hatch a brood of Conquerors! We hefted our barb; her courage failed, with a squeal she flung the spray gun at us and turned to flee, that’s F-L-E-RESET She deserved to die, Da, but we but numbed her: little shot in the tail to teach her a lesson and keep Rodriguez out of there till after mating season. Her friends abandoned her as she’d abandoned us, afraid either to come to her aid or to call the police lest they be burst for Illegal Possession. We ourself telephoned the Chautauqua Infirmary, gave the St. Elret number, reported a young female apparently O.D.‘d on some narcotic.
Faithless Merope! Margana y Blank! We kissed her numb face; we covered her numb and swiftly swelling shame; we retracted our number, rearranged ourself, waited with her till we heard the ambulance before slipping out through the screen and making a blankline home. All the way weeping and wondering, Now who’ll unscramble things? Who’ll feed the goats for fudge and slaughter? Who’ll take delivery in the rear, as wanton Merope was wont, come mating season? Perfidious M y F, would thou wert a blank preserved in amber! Yet never return to Lily Dale: we will not so spare you a 2nd time.
That was last month. Alone since with these senseless numbers, as Maimonides says that YHWH RESET We see now the scale of our betrayal. Agents of you-know-whom, the lot of them, and Merope Bernstein was their tool! The foundation was their creature; they supported us only to learn and steal and neutralize our plans; they put the blanks in LILYVAC’s program, saw to it our spring work period was wasted in vain unscrambling. This is no leafy anagram at all!
Ma y Da: Mayday! Mayday! We are back where we began. How to recycle? Every RESET Now they swarm to Chautauqua for the kill, operatives of the false T.F., under pretext of making an anti-Bonapartist film: perfidious Prinz, his ally Mensch, their beautiful captive Bea Golden (whose mind they have drugged with C2H6O; whose name they are not worthy to RESET Tomorrow, we daresay, they will celebrate the 154th of Waterloo; tonight they have chartered the Gadblank III (ah, Da) for a party cruise around the lake. We are not fooled: They know we are its pilot; they think by this crude stratagem to snare us in their web.
And we shall go, Ma, though counterstratagem we have none. We shall set out from the institute dock, Da, making false merry. Numbly we shall steer around the familiar circuits: 1st the lower lake, then up through the narrows where the bag of Chautauqua is tied in the middle. There, no doubt, as we round the buoys to begin the upper lake, or 2nd circuit, they will swap their gins-and-tonics for dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane, and it will be finished. Pfft, forgotten, we shall RESET Unless dot dot dot
Lost Mother, old articifrix, key to the key: R.S.V.P.!
J.B.B.
I: Ambrose Mensch to Yours Truly. Anniversary of the bees’ descent. Encounters with Jacob Horner and Marsha Blank. He identifies his condition with Perseus’s, and despairs.
Athenaeum Hotel
Chautauqua, New York 14722
Monday, June 16, 1969
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