More Random "...NOTES..." From Wrinkled Scraps...

SHOCKED AND DISMAYED, I RE-READ THE ARTICLE...

...how can it be!

What went wrong? How could they have missed me? Where did I fail? Indeed, did I fail? Yes, it seems I did, and miserably so I must admit. There it was: 'US Foundation Awards Genius Grants to 32 People' ...and I not among them. Bummer.

Genius Grants from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation are unrestricted cash awards ranging from $200,000 to $375,000, and unrestricted means if you feel like spending it all at Baskin-Robbins that's up to you, no auditor nor CPAs peering over your shoulder. Go ahead, have all 36 flavors over and over again.

There was a mathematician who studied knots (my marlinspike IS a little rusty, so he's one up on me); a linguist trying to save Brazil's vanishing languages (I'm a little tongue-tied myself); a painter whose 3-dimensional images are metaphors for the emotions (whatever that means), and some people in geology, chemistry, more scientists, architects, a lawyer even and a zoologist; there was another artist and a musician, all in all all well-deserving of the awards, no sour (grrrr)apes here...

The foundation does not accept applications for grants and the 100 hand-picked talent scouts who nominated the winners did so on the basis of exceptional creativity - now I ask you (he whiningly pouted) what could be more exceptionally creative than this novelty item of ours?

Well, John, Catherine - I'm serving notice: "...NOTES FROM THE DUMP..."
will still be around next year when you unleash the talent scouts to go a-
searching. I'll be ready and my chauffeur will be ready to whisk me away to the nearest ice cream parlor to begin the squandering of my grant-to-be...

NO ONE HAS THE RIGHT...

...to feel as good as I do today.

Or perhaps, everyone has the right to feel as good as I do today but hardly anybody really does, and why I do is beyond me except that it has something to do with the silence beneath the trees I'm sitting under, the slate gray of the sky, the lean of my gleaming black & silver Triumph, the robin's song, the mourning dove cooing.

Plus I got a pocketful of money which, let's face it, helps.

...and I'm a realist so I understand that at a moment's notice I could be plunged into an abyss of despair, but meanwhile...what can I do with this new-found wealth? - out of nowhere appears 28 hundred bucks! (Well,not quite out of nowhere - I've had to sell this beautiful motorcycle which has me spellbound, staring at it as one might Manet's Olympia). Still, it's what I do - sell bikes - so if I miss this one after just having my last ride on it, I welcome the cash from it and I'm off to buy another.

So far my gambit to not sell bikes to younger people (with all due respect kids) has paid off; I wait until a young-old geezer like myself comes along and then I snare (her)him into my net, but I'm reluctant to sell these classic motorcycles to young people because young people tend to do everything at fast forward and I don't want her/him to wipe out and ruin my bikes, I mean I don't want them to get hurt...the older fellows I've sold bikes to - Lynn, Denal and Charlie - might still get wasted on their bikes, unseated and upended by a Peterbilt maybe, or a yuppie scum Volvo, or maybe even run off the road by a pack of shrieking Ninjas, but I don't think these three guys will be burning up the macadam hot patch.

I know, I know - tell that to T. E. Lawrence.

Random NOTES From Wrinkled Scraps...

THE CITY FOLKS TAKE ON WOOD STOVES AND FIREPLACES…

…in my view is they are up for the weekend (tryst) in their toney little cabin tucked away in the forest and a wood stove and/or fireplace is just what is needed to get real cozy, the ambience, the warmth, ah the wine…’Bring that bottle over here Darlin’, come and sit by my side, let us mess around a little…’ Which is cool, that’s what cabins and weekends are for…

…hmm…where was I going with this…what’s up with that…o yeah I remember…

…but it – the weekend and the wood stove – doesn’t tell the whole story. For 28 years my sole (& soul) source of heat was wood, wood I cut down, wood I cut up, wood I split and wood I stacked and restacked and carried into the house for roughly seven months out of the year; invariably there was always smoke, always ashes, insects, bark and splinters of wood and more smoke; there were frozen chunks of green elm buried under a foot of snow which had to be dug out, laboriously split, and practically nothing short of the fires of perdition would set it aflame, plus it stinks…nothing sensual about it.

…I don’t miss it; I loved it then when I was young (young, that I miss) but I’m just as happy now to walk across the room and spin the dial on the thermostat.

nftdnotes@yahoo.com

WHEN IT COMES TO WRITING…

…I’m kind of a cross between William F. Buckley Jr. & Jed Clampett, me being sort of an erudite hillbilly, a Hill William if you will, upper crust lower class…I appreciate the trappings of the wealthy class, the aristocracy, but if I am called to visit any of the autocratic redoubts, high in their lofty airy aeries, well I’m gonna track a little mud onto the Aubusson, get dirt on the Hepplewhites and during the Henry the 8th feeding frenzy stand back for I’m of the Medieval manner born and must needs plough through the trough shaking my jowly trencherman’s flews and send flying all sorts of festering detritus…visigoths don’t do Amy Vanderbilt, so you might want to think twice about it, Emily, before you actually put the invite to dinner in the post.

As a tyro on a small big-city daily newspaper I used to think I was Hemingway-ish but thankfully I caught on before I got trapped in any of his bombast; better to write like John Fante, Celine, Frederick Exley, Seth Morgan; I’m not going to blast Papa Hemingway too much, though I have run him over the coals in the past, but what’s the sense of it? In those days I could have made the earth move too, life was a moveable feast but the sun also rises so I decided I would head back across the river and into the trees.

…where I remain in seclusion today, seclusion - the only thing I have in common with J. D. Salinger, but in seclusion is the only place I am able to write, whether good bad or indifferent it is a task best undertaken alone.

Shakespeare...on drinking...

“O God, that men should put an enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains!”

DUDE, LIKE ANOTHER YEAR SLIPS BY…

…another day older and deeper in debt…to a young person time is nothing, there’s lots of it; to an old person time is everything there’s hardly any of it left…in my case much of that time (I’ve lived so far approximately 20,800 days, many of them days on days in a daze) was squandered, frittered away in a number of hedonistic pursuits…but withal, still only that one big regret…

INCIDENTALLY…

…and all anent of nothing (as is the wont of this screed which comes with, this screed NFTD comes with, interjections, parenthetical interruptions and nouns-in-apposition) considerable thought has been given to what is written here and similar considerable thinking is required to read it, at your peril or - in a perfect world - for your everlasting enjoyment, thereby validating my need for positive self-image and low self-esteem reinforcement, not to mention catapulting me into a new tax bracket…

I LIKE TO WATCH THE SUN COME UP IN THE MORNING…

…but I don’t like to watch it go down; it’s a metaphor I guess of life, the coming and going…and as for daylight, the less the better; I am essentially crepuscular leaning toward nocturnal, and diurnal only of necessity…

"...NOTES FROM THE DUMP..." - by Terry Ward

'Sticks and stones may break my bones...'

'...but words will never hurt me...'

...is about as far from the truth as you can get if you think about it. Yes, from the rock up side your head or the nightstick slammed over the top of it, you will experience considerable pain. If you believe the above quoted statement, words will not hurt you - you're in for a rude awakening. I must say it is my belief, that some of the words directed at me in my scurrilous life have hurt tenfold, a hundredfold more than any stick or stone, and unlike the pain from a physical wound which sooner or later in most cases goes away, the pain and hurt of a well-aimed word doesn't diminish, lingers throughout life taking on a life of its own...

To a friend of mine I had wronged I said one time, 'Even though I'm sorry for what I have done and you have said I am forgiven, I feel like I am no longer your friend,' to which he replied, 'You're NOT!' Rather he had punched me senseless to the ground; he walked away and when I see him nowadays instead of a fond embrace - a curt nod of the head...

Let's see here...hmmm, let me dig into my self-pitying bag of sentimental-semantical tricks and see what I can come up with here...hmmmmm...ah yes, here you go, 'ere's one for ya Mate: I'm seventeen or so at the time, my sister Linda's wedding. She's first-born, big day for Dad, giving his daughter away down the aisle, big reception, the whole thing, get the picture?

Enter Terry.

Enter Terry drunk at 17, hammered, drunk and out of control, reeling, staggering, acting the fool, kneeling on the floor and babbling drunkenly away and barfing and all manner of ungentlemanly behavior and at the end of this tirade, O I'll never forget it! - my Dear Old Dad took me aside and said with tears in his eyes and hurt and anger in his heart, my Father said to me, 'Terry, I just want you to know that you RUINED the best day of my life,' and walked away into the house...some words have the sting of a whip in the face…

Why I love Iggy Pop

(From Washington Post)

Sometimes a magazine asks the right question to the right person. It happened this year when Spin asked Iggy Pop, the famously crazed rocker, "What's the most insane thing you've ever done?"

"At the Redondo Beach Motel in L.A. in 1974, I was stoned," Pop replied, "and there was this floor tile, a gray or brown background with a kind of meandering white marble effect striated throughout. And I thought all the white lines were cocaine. I spent all night trying to snort the floor!"

'Blackjack' Crossing...

…got shot at and hit sometime in 1969 in a faraway country called Vietnam. I’m sure he could tell you the exact date. When he jumped from the chopper he didn’t realize at first that the place was a huge field of reefer on fire and as he hot-footed it for cover he went down shot in the leg, hobbled...the North Vietnamese were mad as hornets, all their weed up in smoke, and AK-47s rattled away, but the helicopter came back and retrieved Lance Corporal Crossing, so he got saved and discharged with a disability pension. ‘Nothing excites me since Vietnam,’ he once told me, ‘…murder can be fun…’ I wondered. How can all this happen to a homeboy and then he returns to work in a jewelry shop pushing a broom…there’s little exciting there…

I pick up the morning paper and there in the police blotter is our boy Blackjack busted for B & E in the nighttime as he breaks in through a skylight to a supermarket and when the cops bust him he’s standing at the produce counter eating an orange with about a 100 dollars worth of steaks in his pockets…’I was hungry…’ he told the cops, ‘...couldn’t wait til they opened…’

Scanning the bottles lined up...

...at the bar, all fetchingly and cleverly disguised to cover up the poison in them, I noticed that with many of them - Jameson's, Kahlua, Johnny Walker Red, 7 Star Metaxa Brandy, Sambuca, JD, even that Midori crap, all figure in a world of funny, sad, sordid and/or squalid stories in my life.

Years of imbibitionary indiscretions have taken a toll but in the wake left an
anthology of bar-life tales I've been drawing on for 35 years. I have laid claim to having drunk a lake of Jameson's in my life but in truth it was probably no more than a large bathtub full, fifteen or so gallons maybe 20...stereotypical Irish behavior...

Good Christ! What a waste. Each gallon represents a number of brain cells gone forever - by the friggin' thousands! - they are not fingernails and don't grow back you know, each gallon of this disgusting rotgut whiskey posing as class has been every bit as much a nail in my coffin as any cigarette I ever smoked. (...but o in those days it was soooo good! And necessary...)

This doesn't even figure the financial cost which actually didn't amount to much out of MY pocket as I was quite adroit at sleazing a drink or two out of yours, having mastered the derelict lingo "...o and perhaps you might also buy me a beer chaser for this...ah yes, yes, thank you!"

Wet brain. Cerebellum floating in a sea of distillates.

Sitting here in limbo is a lot like being in front of a mirror with no one around to try and impress. Alone with my thoughts I ruminate the foolishness of being a drunk for so many years and even though I am about to wash down my soup and sandwich here at lunch with a Heineken I am no longer the wastrel I once was.

Alcoholically speaking anyway. These bottles arrayed so invitingly before me, could they talk, a horrid tale would tell.

Notes From The Dump...by Terry Ward

THE SATURDAY EVENING POST USED TO CALL IT...

...The Perfect Squelch - hip, caustic, clever funny or poignant ripostes to puncture inflated egos among other things and I was reminded of it one time years ago when People Magazine photographer Richard Howard was at my house doing a photo spread about NFTD (I would say Richard took 200 or so pictures that day & the rag used ONE, but as they say, film's cheap...and my Friend Joey said, "Well Foolish that's one more picture than you had in People last year...")

Anyway...

Where was I?

O yes...

Me about to be flippant with the People photog.

I says to Richard as he fiddled with lenses, "Next to me who's the most famous person you ever photographed?"

"I just left Paul Newman's house..."

IT’S LIKE I’VE REACHED AN INTELLECTUAL CLIMACTERIC…

…for hours on end I stare (‘…every day I sit here by the window, starin’ at the lonely avenue…’) out the window at the activity in the courtyard below, watching the Raisins (wrinkled old people like me) come and go from assisted living, in and out in ambulances, gurney in, body bag out, three in a month, unsettling to have a front row seat…ambulances with no sirens, no lights and in no hurry – silent runners - are way too commonplace…they are a compelling distraction, one of a number which keep me idle, away from the keyboard, unproductive, deep in thought, no action save for scrabble and cribbage against the computer hour after hour, daysondaze…lost, lost, all is lost!

…an all but indescribable vacuum has me in its clutches…a stream(ing) of consciousness is the best I can do…no continuity in my world nor my mind at the moment…but with Brobdingnagian second effort I raise up and out of this miasma…wheeew…I’m back…that hangin’ out in Bleaksville is nowhere Dude, get hip…

NFTD TRIVIA…

…what is significant, if that’s the word and it’s not, so let us say then, what is the common denominator of the following three dates:

1881, 1961, 6009

…give up? Do you even care Dude? I mean haven’t you got anything better to do than play silly word games? Neither me, so look here’s the thing. 1881, I think I got this right but I mean hey can you believe all you read…the thing is 1881 was the first time the year could be read upside up, the next time it happened was 1961 and the next time it’s going to happen is 6009…

"I'M JUST DRIFTIN' AN DRIFTIN' BABE...

"...like a ship out on the sea..."

Ruddlerless I might add on the ocean of life, no direction known, no purpose easily seen o'er the vast horizon...

What it's all about I haven't the foggiest notion - if indeed it's even about anything at all which I sometimes doubt. What is this so-called purpose in life, if any - and who says so?

I'll be damned if I can tell; fact is I'll probably be damned regardless - faithless, irreverent, kind of a social pariah (as opposed to a Murray Pariah), funny and witty sometimes as you know but it doesn't appear to carry a lot of weight - humor - in the next life.

Nowhere - other than in Mark Twain's equally irreverent writings - have I ever seen humor and The Hereafter hand in hand, almost as though God was something of a humorless curmudgeon wielding a discriminating cudgel with which to whack your silly, evilly-inclined head back and forth and never cracking a Supreme Being smile...

Who knows?

Which essentially is my point: who does know?

Virtually no one I know.

And no one you know either is my guess.

Wheeling and dealing just to get by on earth regardless of the eventual Eternal
outcome.

Notes From The Dump...by Terry Ward

Trying to follow the flatuent political winds...

...and make any sense of the whole stinking lot of brigands running for office is an arduous and debilitating task to say the least. Of all the sanctimonious politicos running for a variety of openings, none seem particularly qualified, and trying to choose one is like trying to choose which head of the many-headed hydra attacking you should NOT be lopped off...

The blatant chicanery of the principals involved with their idiotic diatribes and their pseudo-philosophical ramblings along with their patronizing manners to curry favor from the electorate is enough to make you puke, you should pardon the expression, but the blatherings of politicians every election year highlights their congenital predisposition to squawk and equivocate!

So and So wins and you lose.

Now for the next two or four years you get to watch from the sidelines as all those promises they made with such hyperbolic and histrionic fervor go down the drain. Ole So and So was going to do this and So and So that: don't believe it. They are neither going to do much of anything except sit back in their easy chairs and make life miserable for you.

On the other hand I could be wrong...

This is the last issue of "...NOTES FROM THE DUMP..."

…for this year and also ends its 21st year in print and marks 10 years online; in the main it’s been fun (at least for me…) depending on one’s definition of fun, and what IS fun…hmmm…Webster’s says: ‘…what provides amusement or enjoyment’, okay so it’s been fun, aha!

…the #4 down the line definition of fun is more to my way of defining fun: excited activity…hmmm…not much excites me anymore. Words properly arranged excite me, but is that the word – excite, I mean Dude c’mon if you’re gonna get into Webster this morning, get down to it, what is exciting according to Noah?

…to ‘arouse’, ok dig it, I’m hip, words properly arranged arouse me, excite me & so do some words when set to music; the spoken word has broken my heart and healed my wounds…words thrill me, drive me ‘round the bend, are my salvation; words are my sole means of trying to get it right in my head…words are everything, words are nothing…words are my bread and butter…one word can devastate, destroy…one word can save…hmmm…getting carried away here, my word…I need a few choice words of wisdom to get out of this…I’ll leave it to Rene Descartes: ‘Salvation lies in fidelity to one’s own genius’ - to which I amend, maybe…

THE UNITED STATES IS THE WORLD’S LEADING ARMS EXPORTER…

…no one sells more guns (or has more guns) than we do, us, the United States of America, my ever-loving home for 64 years, a place I dearly love – O beautiful for spacious skies for amber waves of grain…what happened to that America?

…cluster bombs are notorious for blowing limbs off children, we make and ship millions of them to anybody with enough money…lending her voice and considerable reputation to stopping the slaughter of children by these insidious devices may have cost Princess Diana her life in a Paris tunnel…For purple mountain majesties above the fruited plain……

…it is so bizarre, so against everything we should represent in this country, not to mention sad and a disgrace, to on the one hand plead for peace on earth and with the other hand pass off every conceivable weapon in the world to anybody, anybody…all you need is money…America! America! God shed his grace on thee…and crown thy good with brotherhood from sea to shining sea…

Part of my jactitatious braying...

...over the years has been to portray myself as prodigious in literary output but in fact if you subtract all the stories which I've told in a dozen different ways many times over there'd be but about three stories in my life and they in turn would boil down to just the one you'll never know about, nor much care about I suspect; and therefore you are privy only to fancy here in NFTD, this thing of ours, not fact, or very little of it anyway. How could I tell the truth when it is so awful?

Aha...

Or is that just more shuckin' & jivin' from a jiveass liar? In fact I just needed a place to use my new word. No, not jiveass, nope a new one for me - jactitatious, means bragging, which I do a lot of on paper, but little in real life is there about which to jactitate.

If you use a new word three times in writing or in conversation, I've been told and found to be true, you can say without jactitating that it is then yours forever...or at least as long as you may live, and may you live longer than me for I don't do sadness well and your leaving surely would sadden me.

Stick around - we can jawbone and jactitate together deep into the new century...but if my no-news blackout holds I will only be able to discuss history, for of the day's current events I remain ignorant.

I am not unhappy with this form of ignorance.

Notes From The Dump

SPEAKING OF THUGS, VILLAINS, RAPSCALLIONS & ROGUES...

...Congressmen and Senators are not the only marauding culprits of Washington who roam the sullied halls of the world's largest debating society, the US Congress - they are hammer and tong in league with another bunch of thugs, villains, rapscallions & rogues - the Big Business CEOs who rule the roost; the captains of any number of useless industries and/or their henchmen not-so-cleverly-disguised as the grinning, glad-handing, backslapping lobbyists, who have come armed to the pearly-white capped teeth with blank checks and fat-cat suitcases and wallets stuffed with cash in order that the esteemed Rep.________ and Sen._________ will see fit to vote in their favor.

I would imagine an inch thick stack of century notes is pretty irresistible although so far I've resisted; also it's never been offered...for what would anyone offer me such a bribe?

Anyway, it is my contention that this give-and-take is the sum and substance of a capitalist democracy, thus: anything goes. All's well if you can buy a Senator's vote, and you can if you've got enough money; but what if you don't have enough money? Sorry pal, you're shit outta luck. Constitution?

The Phil Armour/George Pullman/John D.Rockefeller 'era of avarice' has returned with a vengeance, in full flower - did it ever even go away? As a lone vote or lone voice in the wilderness, forget it if you're penniless no matter how just your cause. Next thing you know the Pinkertons will be back caving in your front door and bashing you in the head for your free-thinking, don't doubt it...

While the landed gentry and the blue bloods continue to prowl the nation's corridors of power in a maniacal rush to sack the Capitol/capital and add to their pile of riches heaped upon riches - isn't anyone ever satisfied - does anyone have enough? - not much changes in the netherworld where all is chaos, turmoil, poverty, loss and despair; there are no country clubs, no marinas to leave the sailboat in, no safe havens; safe havens cost money.

Through no choice of my own (debatable) I've been living in poverty with other impoverished people most of my life and whereas I don't like poverty I do like poor people.

Long live Albert Parsons!

"...NOTES FROM THE DUMP..."

THERE ARE CHRISTMAS CELEBRATIONS…

…and there are Christmas celebrations…

…Christmas Eve, noontime in Carrie Nations, everybody is already drunk or fucked up on something or both…all the good drugs come in with Santa too and never mind that ‘…have you been a good boy’ crap, cut out a line Dude…ho, ho, ho…

…Louie and I needed a break from this and staggered around the corner to The Golden Nugget, a misnomer if ever there was one for it was only a step up from Nations and the only one for whom it was golden was Ray who owned the dump and who grilled up a couple of cheeseburgers for me and Louie while we tipped a little bar whiskey; physical need to eat sated we returned to the most nefarious watering hole in all of Drinkdom, the original den of iniquity, Carrie Nations where you could get, not to put too fine a point on it, anything illegal…back to Nations, there to contemplate in drunken misery our plight: where to cadge more money to continue dissipating in a robust manner?

…the only criteria one needed for entry into Subterranea was cash…’Roach here’s 50 bucks go get me some (fill in the blank)…Pioneer John what you got for the head? Big Boy got any weed, no…how about money Dennis, got a few bucks man like it’s Christmas Dude, I need to be drunk…help me push the boat out’…and so on…these lines are culled from the book ‘Derelict Lines 101’, a book I haven’t written yet except in my head where all the best things are in storage. I can only coax a few of them to sally forth…

…where was I before I so rudely (wisely?) interrupted my other self, my twin and doppelganger, The Fool In The Mirror? O yeah in Carrie Nation’s – which Nation’s had several owners in its day but none compared to the late great J.A. Doolittle, who once rested a .25 cal. Beretta across his forearm and began to shoot the antiques lining the walls but was interrupted on the 3rd shot when a bullet ploughed through his forearm before hitting the wall…

…mired in this olio, beyond making sense, in another dazed out world, drifting in and out of darkness, crashing to the floor of the mop closet to sleep – pass out - midst the debris, four hours of sleep in the arms of a devil, then raising up clothed in the reeking habiliments of street people, back to it, ‘Merry Christmas Louie…Dude, you got a cigarette? Left mine in the car…’ (Derelict Line 1A)…

Random "...NOTES..." From Wrinkled Scraps...

WHAT I WRITE NOW…

…is mostly made up but when I die it will be thought of as true; future readers will look back at my non-adventurous life of drunken, drugged-out ease and actually believe I lived large and played hard when in fact I barely left home…although my imagination frequently went out…truth is I’ve spent most of the last six decades trying to figure out how to get by without actually working, I almost got it down to a science; it takes persistence and you have to compromise, but if you’re any good at what you do you’ll someday reap the bennies & eventually you’ll make money, so to that end I am in hot pursuit…I’m a successful writer without a dime…ditto painter, that’s it though, those are my only two real successes, but many people go through life without any.

SUDDENLY THE MEANING OF ‘IT’ BECAME ABUNDANTLY CLEAR…

…and I immediately and for days on end plunged into and was drowning in the sea of despair, morbid in deepest Kafkaesque despondency; it’s too late to change anything, the damage is done. The future is certain, the end is near…

…and that Dear Reader is where I’ve stayed humorlessly (until about 30 minutes ago) for the last two dope-free weeks after a run-in with 911 and a nighttime visit by the EMTs from Grace Cottage, Lou & Scott…to whom I am heavily indebted…so okay I had a major choking spell, nothing new there…but withal I quit smoking reefer - only nothing seems to have changed except my attitude has gone from not-very-good-anyway to bad to worse to worst, so moments ago I said well frig this Dude, choke to death or not, I’m having a toke, and did, and the improvement was immediate - life again is good, my semi-positive attitude and equilibrium return…on balance, it’s a trade-off but what in life isn’t?

…Dude, I mean I was so bummed out by this whole scenario I was like a zombie, immobilized, could not seem to rise above it, had no interest even in writing NOTES which for 21 years has been my catalyst, not to mention my raison d’etre and bete noir all in one…a package deal, but even NFTD couldn’t carry me over this one so I spun up a fatty and got right…

…my love-hate relationship with a life of dissipation continues apace.

From NFTD Archival Shuckin' 'n jivin'...

WATER FROZEN, DRAINPIPES FROZEN...

...no water in, no water out...

...no drinking water, no toilet, no shower nor bath nor neither sink, gettin' nastier by the hour beginning to stink...clothes funkier, dishes running out. Bitter cold outside, very cold in; all in all typical foils of winter life in the great Granite State - none too bothersome although yea verily twouldst welcome a clean set of clothes and buffed up body which would do wonders for my sinking psyche.

Meanwhile I still essentially have no legitimate complaints about life; most of my troubles I brought down on myself, i. e. my remaining teeth are driving me 'round the bend, it is true. Weak, loose, painfully sensitive to hot or cold - indeed the rush of my babbling breath rattles them in my aching head like so many loose Chiclets, but this problem is the end result of a youth spent idly and insouciantly noshing away on peanut butter cups instead of broccoli and basically it's too late to do anything about it. Complaint legitimacy: negative findings, denied.

Then of course the perpetual plaint of having no dough (doe) but that is also a self-wrought dilemma brought on by the ignominy of having no so-called job and no job = no $$. Actually I do have a job, you're looking at it, but it doesn't pay much and I'm willing to endure that because of the huge freedom NFTD grants me from having to actually go out & work. I live with less is all, unlike the halcyon days (daze) working at The Dump, when on most any given day I could whip out a twenty, lo these many years ago, and buy a round. Legitimacy of complaint number two: threadbare proof, complaint denied.

All my sordid past ganging up and slamming into me with a portmanteauful of complaints - if only I had, if only I hadn't; I wished I did, I wished I didn't...if only, if only...if, if...IF!

Too late to be bothered by all that baggage from the great lost beyond. There's no sense of relief in letting the past roll over you and screw you down, there's no relief - nor sense - in being held captive to your history; what's done is done, forge ahead, I think as I stand before The Fool In The Mirror, hairbrush in hand flicking away at the few remainng hoary wisps backlit by MPB...

Today is the 25th anniversary...

…of my 39th birthday and I am filled with wonder at all that has transpired! Once anon I’ve cheated the hangman…I never figured to see 18, now look…I’ve lived three 18s plus ten…how could it be, where did youth and time go, where am I, what happened, who am I, what lies, gulp, ahead around the curve?

…withal I consider myself a lucky man, extremely so, and wealthy beyond Croesus, discounting the fact I have no money, and also a success – again discounting the fact that no other success compensates for failure in the home – but that aside (you never really stray far from this haunting, daunting truth) as a writer I am manifestly successful if the approbation of my minions is any measure…

…hmmm…minions, minions, that may be demeaning or condescending which I mean to be neither, so okay I don’t mean minions, let us say my small cadre of Friends and Dear Readers of NFTD lo these 21 years would in the main agree, and most of them would also assure the newcomers that NFTD often, indeed generally, babbles on inconclusively just to fill up a page and be done with it, if you can believe me capable of such chicanery…

OKAY, SO MUCH FOR MY...

…not-drinking-beer today program as I absentmindedly (and habitually) pop the top on a Bud for breakfast. O well, try again tomorrow – meanwhile my ½ century-plus love-hate relationship with the Demon Rum continues apace as we race neck and neck headlong to the precipice of the afterlife; through thick and thin, good times and bad, in sadness and joy, always there was/is you, the original two-edged sword, mixed blessing and raison d’etre/bete noir all rolled in one…everything and nothing all at once…I haffta laff but it’s no joke and, o, be still my heart, don’t you know as I glance at the wall I see it’s 4:20 so not only do I have breakfast going I must also spin and burn a fatty as I’m never one to break with tradition…

Gasping for air...breathless...

…I awaken to musical rales, the death rattle, mine; my choking lamentations and scurrilous curses go unheard, no help on the horizon…gasping for air, heart pounding like a jackhammer I stumble to the door and wing it open, dropping like a stone onto the porch with a crash that might have woken the neighborhood but for the torrential downpour...wheeew, close call but I made it. Life is good continues as my mantra…inhale, exhale, inspire, expire…life is good, life is good!

When you think about all the oddball things you do in life...

...it's strange to then be out on the highway and realize that all those people you're whizzing by/being whizzed by by, '...are just as much a bunch of loose cannons as you are...', I say to The Fool In The Mirror - I can speak for no one else but I have my suspicions.

To the girl in the red Camry: Where have you been and what have you been doing? WHAT!? For shame - but fun, so hence maybe your smile as you fly by in the fast lane, and you up there in that Big Pete, why the frown? O I see...she did that huh? Well, maybe you should pull off give it a rest...

A State Cop...oooh...adrenalin pumping all down the line...

Hands on the wheel, I say, eyes forward, 58 mph, no dope, no booze, all legal, me and the car. He keeps going. Everbody on the road is sweating his
approach, cleaning up coke spills, eating roaches, slowing down, sweating bullets 'cuz they don't got no license...worry, worry, worry - even if you're totally legal and The Man pulls up behind you you get nervous, can't be helped...it's the nature of your scurrilous existence, I again address the mirror and the fellow in it, and comes with the territory.

He pulls off the exit, we are all safe for awhile, a collective sigh of relief heaved as the mass of traffic accelerates and cruises away down the smoggy highway, me among them, coming from and going to nowhere.


SPYING, I'VE ALWAYS THOUGHT...

...was a good way to make big fast bucks in a hurry if you didn't get caught, had no scruples and assuming you had something for sale your enemy wanted, but selling one's country down the river for the money is bad form, not to mention tacky, whereas if you've done it - sold the old state secrets - for philosophical-idealogical reasons, then there was a little weight to your arguments, although the penalties are much the same, i. e. Ethel and Julius Rosenberg being fried in Sing Sing, or Aldrich Ames being shipped off to Maximum Marion where he no doubt will soon be joined by this fellow Nicholson, if he's guilty, and there they will have plenty of opportunity to review where they fucked up. My guess is that in prison spies do not get most-favored inmate status but rather are shunned and/or beaten.

In the 50s when the Rosenbergs were front page news for a long time, I was just a boy and only knew what I read in the papers and so thought they were guilty but as I grew older and delved into the case I thought they'd been framed and of course reading Louis Nizer's 'Implosion Conspiracy' cinched it for me: a frame-up.

Lo and behold when the Soviet Union crumbles there stored away in KGB vaults are transcripts of exchanges with the KGB handlers/agents & The Rosenbergs. They were guilty after all it seems! And so was Alger Hiss who I also thought was railroaded. In fact they were in league with their Fellow Travelers all along...

Nicholson & Ames beat the death penalty but unless they escape they're not going anywhere again until they pass out of those walls in a hearse and then only to Pauper's Field.

Erase s-p-y from your wish list of careers, better you should try being a clerk at 7-11 - it's dangerous too if danger is what you seek in life.

IT SEEMS IMPOSSIBLE THAT 43 YEARS HAVE PASSED...
...since I stood bollicky bareass behind Bobbsy at Camp Nimitz having our physicals at the Naval Training Center just as the news flashed on the radio and around the world that President Kennedy had been killed in Dallas. In a trice the harbor at San Diego was alive with activity, suddenly ships which had tied up at the piers quickly set sail and guns reverberated through the day as big ships saluted the death of our young leader, much of the world was plunged into sorrow and fear crept across the land.

After the initial report we'd heard on the radio all was quiet, no one told us any more until Sunday when we were allowed to read the papers.

Suddenly we 19-20 year-old recruits were no longer leaving to see the world
with the Navy, but instead, for all we knew, were being readied to plunge into
war. What had promised to be a six-year vacation had taken an ominous turn.

Four decades ago. How could it be? Where did the time go? All of Camelot is dead now, the men of my Company 545 have scattered around the globe, those bygone days now but fading troubled memories.

Like Rome, we too are crumbling...

…western civilization is grinding to a halt, the decline and fall of modern civilization is as sure as the collapse of Rome…much of the rest of the world is aligned against us, if not in actuality, in theory, and behind our backs when we’re not looking – America, once the ideal, is now the reviled.

…there’s plenty of blame to go around and really no one to hold responsible; over the age of, say 12, we’ve all had a hand in it…along with civilization declining, so too has civility and respect.

…America is being knocked off its perch not so much by an unpopular war – although it is at the core of all that is wrong here – and even though Iraq plays a role in it what is undermining our pins in my unasked for opinion is the economy, my Keynesian theory is not that sharp but the dollar is in a slide and we are in a rout, that much I can see without being John Maynard Keynes or John Kenneth Galbraith…the money markets are shaky, we’re no longer the beacon of light guiding the expenditures of the world, we’re about to become a second-tier player, laid waste by economics, the dollar is losing ground, the ground is slipping away under it and the landslide will bury us. Nikita Khrushchev was right.

On the other hand I could be wrong...NFTD: equivocation a specialty...

If I could go anywhere in the world...

...I don't know where it would be.

Hmmm...I've often said, 'Jamaica, mon...' but I'm a white, aging, hippy freak and feel I would be out of place there, out of my league, a novelty item sure to draw attention which is what I'd like to escape, for my own peace of mind. Hmmm...

No blinding white-light, gleaming sandy beach-type places shimmering in the heat either, nor any place cold...ah me, where can I go where I will be comfortable? Hmmm...West? I've lived in all three Pacific coast states; plus Colorado, Wyoming, Virginia, Vermont, New Hampshire, Massachusetts and New York...

South? Well I didn't stay in Florida very long because there's nothing meaner than a Dade County Deputy Sheriff, so anything South of Baltimore is out - and so is Baltimore too, too hot! The coolest spot I found in Baltimore was The Pennsylvania Station - 102 degrees outside, air-conditioned in the terminal, anyway Baltimore too hot, and the Southwest too. Lord y'all how could I, a Yankee from Vermont, settle into Houston with all them RCA cowpokes pokin' fun at dweeb-y me all duded up in my 5-Star Resistol hat and Tony Lama boots? I suffered through that in Lander.

Out of country maybe? Hmmm...

Where? To newly smogged-in Prague, there to choke on Eastern Europe's effluence? I can get the same stuff in Newark. To The Mediterranean? I've sailed the Med from Gibraltar to Beirut and then through the Dardanelles to the Sea of Marmara and on to Istanbul; in none of these places would the likes of me be welcomed.

A pot smoking vagabond with no visible means of support would (does) attract cops like magnets draw iron...

"Papers, please..."
"Huh? You talkin' to me? Papers, papers? Zig-Zags all I got..."

If you should suddenly find yourself riding in the back seat of a police car in Athens, being driven around by two plain-clothed policemen in no mood to listen to your goofy transcendentalist's theory, it can get very lonely, you could find yourself in an alley getting your ass stomped by two spartan Athenian pigs.
So OK, I'll stay home already, count my blessings, one, two, three, ah they are endless really...four, five, six...home, yes home! Seven, eight, nine...on and on these blessings go as long as there is a home.

Home is where the heart is, yes, but it is also where The Heat isn't.

Huntsville Texas Death Row Inmates...

(From NFTD Archives)

...none too happy; the state is legally, lethally and gleefully shooting them up to death with poison on a very regular basis, (wrestle the convict to the floor, pepper mace spray him if you must and then strap his struggling body - yelling for Mommy,to Freddy Leuchter's gurney) and - voila- setting records of a dubious nature - in my opinion.

It's nothing to boast about that you're number one in the country for number of executions. Even if you're pro-execution, which I am not, it seems a stretch to look at them as though they were some kind of badge of honor; and if you're anti-death penalty, which I am also not, you will notice the swiftness of frontier justice is outpacing all appeals - 15 men have died by lethal injection this year in Texas alone, and even though often I feel, well, good enough for them the dirty bastards for the heinous and nasty crimes they've pulled, I don't think capital punishment is the answer. What is the answer? Good question. How to stop killers from killing and the state from killing the killers?

MOST of the people I know have been in (or are in) jail and I don't know anybody who ever got rehabilitated in prison, at least as the general public might define rehabilitate; they were/are changed individuals to be sure, but rehabilitated they ain't. The prison system is set up to punish not mete out GEDs to Little Lord Fauntleroys.

Knock on wood, I've been in lots of prisons but never been sent to one, yet,well, jail, but prisons and jails are different and I hope I never am in a prison and one jail was plenty; prison is an experience I'd like to forego based on what I've seen, heard, read and can nightmarishly imagine.

There are no immediate plans in my life to blow anybody away so I won't be going down for murder; prison staring me in the face IS a major deterrent but I'm not sure the death penalty is, plus murder is not my style. Mercy, I can't imagine having the nerve to shoot/stab/beat/ somebody to death for anything.

I don't hate anybody! In self-defense I don't think I'd hesitate if I had a gun or a tree limb whatever it takes, and - hero-wannabe that I am, I like to think that if YOU were in terrible straits and I could help I would even if it meant knocking off your assailant, but generally I'm a peaceable guy & little physical mayhem trails in my wake, though havoc I have wreaked.

...and even though in my heart of hearts I know it isn't right that the state take the life of another, when I read that So & So was put to death last night for the crime of murdering an old woman in a botched stickup my reaction was '...too bad...couldn't happen to a nicer guy...'

...then on to the crossword.

What woke me I'm not sure...

...perhaps a moment in an unsatisfying dream but I can never remember what I dreamed anyway - don't you hate people who remember their dreams and bore you to tears with their recounting? That queer duck Sigmund Freud musta listened to a lot of them, and so too the shrinks of today. I would never tell anybody my deepest darkest thoughts. First off who cares and secondly, what business have I tormenting others with my sinister take on life?

...not to mention shrinks are a devious lot dressed in suits (to give them some sort of sartorial validation) with a leering voyeur's interest in the sleazy inner machinations of your addled head. A friend of mine once sought counseling from a shrink and when I saw her later she told me he had sat there throughout her several 55-minute-hour visits eating Twinkies and chain-smoking Camels.

Anyway at 3 thirty I wake and get up, re-heat yesterday's coffee, get the fire going, roll and smoke a bone and listen to this sweet sweet recorder I feel sure is being played by a darling litle girl who, when finished, will walk smiling out of the radio across the room and into my open arms...talk about needing a shrink, howz that?

Shrinks are like lawyers; they invented themselves, made their services necessary when actually things were going along 'okay' before they entered on the scene. Psychiatry made up all these wild tales to explain your wild tales and lawyers made up laws and wrote them up so confusingly that only they would be able to interpret them, thus insuring them a living, at your expense.

I can't imagine using a psychiatrist but I have to concede, like Albee the lawyer says, 'You can make all the jokes you want but when you get busted the first person you call is not your clergyman...'

Random "...NOTES..." From Wrinkled Scraps...

I’M A TOWNIE…A HOMEBOY…

…good, I needed the dramatic change – now to really get down to work; I’m settled in for keeps. Two more stops on this road of life and then I’m outta here, Dude, bound for glory, one hopes, or to hell. Either way, next move is to assisted living across the courtyard then on to Oakwood to join Ginny and Alexander in Eternity. I’m in no hurry to get there but you never know when you’re gonna get it….

…the transition for me from East Eden in the Great Granite State of New Hampshire to the West River Valley in Vermont (the provenance of the progenitor of this screed) was smooth enough; from one home I leave after nearly three decades and return to my Vermont roots. My love for both – New Hampshire and Vermont – runs as deep and as wide and as long as the Connecticut River, the Queen of Rivers, which both separates and connects them…

…generally in life I’m into the overview, too much digging around in the minutiae gonna get you burned. To that end I’m overjoyed in the main to be looking down from my rarefied 3rd floor aerie in Senior Housing…dig it? I’m happy there is such a place and pleased to be in it but not that happy with the senior appellation…to a drive by window unseen at the speaker asking, ‘May I help you,’ I said, ‘Biscuit and an egg, small oj, small coffee, cream and no sugar please…’ She said, ‘$6.41 at the second window…’ I drove up she looked, hesitated ever so slightly, turned to her computer register without a word then back to me and said, ‘That’ll be $5.41…’

…I said, ‘You said $6.41…’ now I hesitated…’…but you see I’m a senior citizen so I get the cut-rate right?’ She said, ‘Yes…’ and I laughed. The overview was funny, the details depressing. Getting old and infirm is not that much fun and you sort of don’t think you are either until someone brings it up…

THE NEGATIVE SIDE OF ME…

…I look like a modern-day, orotund version of Lon Chaney as Wolfman, although I don’t think The Man of A Thousand Faces, as he – Lon Chaney – was known, wore glasses playing the tormented Transylvanian soul looking for help from a Romany Gypsy woman named Maria Ouspenskaya, after Wolfie had went on a killing spree and was being hounded by irate Romanians and their baying hounds in a black and white Hollywood flick from the 1930s…it was frightening when I saw it as a 13 –year-old; today it is laughable…

…but, like him I too howl at the moon and I am not being alliterative…hmmm…alliterative, is that the word…I’ll look it up as soon as I get my internet back on after Verizon hooks me up…anyway for the 26 years I lived alone in the woods of deepest East Eden I regularly howled at the moon and yelped with the coyotes (not so many wolves in New Hampshire) and raced headlong through the darkest old growth forests at night, driven sometimes by joy and others by fear and dread…

…everyone has a negative doppelganger. Apparently, if what I read can be believed, some people have numerous multiple personalities, like they are 25 people rolled into one…it’s hard enough trying to keep track of the two me’s to say nothing of 25 of us, C’rist, one of me was plenty, two was overkill but we’ve managed to compromise and jointly dictate policy.

WHEN YOU THINK ABOUT IT…

…we’re all hybrids, none of our highly-touted pedigrees proclaiming our singularity are for real; it takes two to make one, at the least we’re half-breeds and then after so many nearly countless generations there’s nothing left of the original and we’re all a mix could be no more unmixed than Humpty Dumpty can be put together…that said, it – this admixture – also makes us one of a kind, there’s no other you, you are it, you are on your own, you are good, you are great, or maybe you are not…the ones in your bloodline which came before you have similar traits to yours and the ones who come after you will too, but you are the one and only.

TO KEEP FROM THINKING TOO MUCH ABOUT DYING…

…I play a lot of Scrabble (you can’t beat me…) and Cribbage (you can’t beat me much…) both of which eat up the clock and ease the way for me across the threshold of life and into the black hole of the Afterlife, into which I am fast disappearing…waaay too fast...

…I mean I was quite content with reaching the Golden Years and hanging out in good health for a few years of post-adolescent revelry, but then this…so the dynamic has changed, instead of a decade-long rave in the mosh pit I sit here trying to unscramble DGLEWZA - the best I can do with it is: GLAZED…then to cribbage where my worthy opponent, Kalo Paythee, pegs for two and ends up dead-hole bound while from 27 out I got a Queen and three fives and a five has been cut so Lady Luck pulls one off for me…without Lady Luck all bets are off.

…speaking of cribbage, you cribbage players, quick! – How many numbers between 0 and 31 can you not get when you count your hand? You should have said, 19, 25, 26, and 27, 30 & 31 because if you think your hand equals any one of those you’ve counted wrong and interestingly enough (if you’re not a cribbage player this may bore you to tears and it might even if you are…well, I don’t know what to tell you…where was I, o yeah, holding forth on cribbage…) a 19-hand (in cribbage parlance a 19-hand is slang for nothing) somewhere in it will add up to 19, 25, 26, 27, 30 or 31, he went on longwindedly…well enough of that for now…I have other things to bore you with, or not, all one to me for I have to do my world-class writing to my world-class readers, come what may, till death us do part…

WELL, I CAN’T TAKE IT ANYMORE…

…can wait no longer, I need relief from reality and I need it now, instant gratification, instantaneous relief, but I only know a couple (way too temporary) ways out of it…it’s nearly four ayem and my chemical alarm system is ajangle, clanging cacophonously away advising me in no uncertain terms that a Budweiser awaits my shaking hand; before the refrigerator door shuts it is half gone…

…ok, now…where’s that fuckin’ bottle of vodka too, and a joint, quick roll a friggin’ bone and a perc, man, break out a percocet, help me out of here Dude…I’m not mad, mad as in angry, but I’m going mad with what is happening…

…I sometimes even have the temerity to say, ‘Why me?’ But in truth I know why, so I believe there is after all justice even though it’s me on the receiving end of it..

…gasping for air, leaning on walls and in elevators for support, choking my way across the parking lot, strangling for lack of oxygen, tumbling through the door and into a waiting chair…wheeew, made it again…inhale, exhale, inhale, exhale, inspire, expire…inspire, expire…breathe deep the night air…’Nothing else matters when you can’t breathe!’ I once thought was just a pithy remark…

AS LEGIONS OF LONG-TIME "...NOTES..." READERS KNOW…

(The following is an NFTD disclaimer in the event of any suits leveled against me for being a study in libel and vituperation…)

…there’s scarce a word of truth in it, most of what is said to have happened, didn’t - the dialogues you may have read were never spoken, the places didn’t exist, there was no you, the only character has always and only been The Fool In The Mirror and a faux entourage of incarnations, a compendium of everything I’ve ever heard seen, done or thought having no basis in fact, with closets full of baggage…

CARTWRIGHT MOVING & STORAGE, GRANDVIEW, MO…

…was where I cut my teeth in line-haul bedbug hauling across America…25,000 miles through 36 states is a nice trip to take, especially when you got paid for it and when you’re 25 which I more or less was.

…you’re at peak and can carry a refrigerator up and down stairs a number of times in any given day and still go out at night as me, Bob and that big old cab-over Cummins humming along on top of the Big Pete dog house, cruised the US of A…how can it have been nearly 40 years ago?

…how is it possible that I, a handsome, virile 19-year-old living in a broken down 64-year-old body, can have memories of so long ago? I actually remember something happened when I was four…a picture I have in my mind and in fact as my Dad captured the moment…six decades ago…memory is long stretching so far…if I can go back a few more years I’ll be at the beginning again and I’ll see it coming, or maybe I can go back in memory even further, before there was a me, that is something called, I think, metempsychosis which is the idea, if you don’t know, that you can do that, remember things before you physically were…maybe, who’s to say…for sure I only go back to four…

More Random "...NOTES..." From Wrinkled Scraps...

IN AN ALL-TOO FAMILIAR SCENARIO…

…an orgy of self-indulgence…I plow through a container of homemade peanut butter fudge and chocolate fudge with walnuts and moments later am overcome with regret, but o how momentarily satisfying is instant gratification, and hey, eating wrong is big during the present-day faux celebratory season and who am I to buck the tide? And besides ‘Doing things wrong is my way of doing things right…’

...I nosh madly away in the Mother of All Feeding Frenzies, trying to attain the look du jour, be it heroin chic, blancmange or a sudden world-wide endorsement of the ectomorphic profile – I am ready for all eventualities, my wardrobe includes the smallest sizes as well as the long flowing robes we humongos seem to favor, thinking, oddly, that to de-emphasize the bulk which comes with this overindulgence, piling on the sweaters, triple XXX pants and sweat suits with floor length coats is a way to hide it all…really instead of one slob hoving into few it seems like two…I quickly finish brushing my few remaining follicular wisps and turn wistfully away from the glass that tells no lies…youth, youth, youth…where did you go?

WHY IT SHOULD COME TO HAUNT ME NOW, HALF A CENTURY LATER…

…I can’t say…unless it is because it is true that ‘everything you do comes back to you’, because on numerous occasions in the recent past I have woke with a fright and there she was big as life, Christy.

...misshapen and grotesque beyond belief she lurched miserably through the streets of my youth chased by the taunts of myself and many others, mercilessly imitating her bow-legged, crippled-hipped, bent-armed shuffle, dragging one foot along muttering in a croaked whisper…how the poor woman must have suffered her whole life through because of people like me!

A bad memory lain dormant lo these many years, since the 50s, there is no one to say to, ‘Christy I’m so sorry I hurt you, here let me help…’

If she were still alive – she couldn’t possibly be – and was as feisty now as she was then she’d take her hickory cane to me, which she often tried to do in 1954 and 1955 - but then I was too quick; now she’d probably catch me.

As I matured (in several respects) I changed in appearance and after a fashion she no longer recognized me and also, of course, when I grew older and (one hopes) wiser, I left the poor dear alone.

Now I wake with a start as I hear her cane whistling through the air cracking me across the back of my legs...a tingle of fear and pain shoots up and down my spine…

Random "...NOTES..." From Wrinkled Scraps...

DEEPER INTO THE NETHER WORLD I SINK…

…no, not the subterranean world of crime but rather the sub-conscious world, or with me maybe the Unconscious world, where one’s existence is in one’s head - whereby one spends a lot of time doing what might be considered thinking great and ponderous thoughts, but which in fact may be only so much daydreaming and spurious posturing, a bunch of silly idle twaddle clattering and rattling around in my hollow cerebellum; anything to keep from having to get up, sally forth and get a job…

...fundamentally I guess there’s nothing wrong with sitting around all day lost in thought, be it reverie or revelation, yet I often feel, ‘Shouldn’t I be doing something? Shouldn’t I be up and about, roaming around looking for someone to help?’

...caught up in lethargy and lassitude, surfeited by an appalling ennui, or lost in pleasant contemplation, all one to me as I roam the labyrinth of my mind, my personal computer, every bit as good as an abacus, an Apple, the Internet Explorer or a Mac. Not outdated at all.

…who says I can’t sit around all day and do nothing? Watch this…you should see me!

...it’s a dazzling display of restraint as I sit nearly motionless for hours on end except occasionally to light the pipe, look out the window or maybe even, if I’m feeling particularly energetic, swivel the chair.

...truth be told I have a very easy life and little room for complaint.

WITH ALL THE EUGLENA, AMOEBAE, PARAMECIUMS…

…spirochetes & annoplura and malophaga in our collective lives, not to mention bibbits, fleas and lice, it’s a wonder we don’t scratch ourselves plumb to death from the itching. Bad form to scratch your butt or head or ‘other’ in public but you and I know that is the only place it ever really needs to be scratched - when there are 800 people standing about, all focused on what you are about to sneakily do with your free hand as you mince along the mall walkway…no one’s exempt.

PYTHAGORAS, EUCLID, ARCHIMEDES, AVOGADRO…

…and Edmond Boyce. They were all right, their mathematical equations have proved true every time. They are inexorably correct and extrapolated to their fullest can be seen as prime reasons why the world has been able to survive and also incontrovertible evidence that it cannot continue to do so forever, I think…

The core roots of my long-hair history...

...are firmly grounded in lore (which may bore) and go to the tender tendrils of my lowlife youth when first it was aggressively and agitatingly brought to my attention that my hearing apparatae were Dumbonian compared to those of my diminutive-lobed brethren; the reality of my ear size was brought home early on in my childhood, first on Halloween at the tender age of seven or so when the big ears I had on my costume were too small to fit over my own!

O, how those other school children shrieked with joy when I struggled in vain, and I saw the smirks on their parents' faces too! And of course I heard the whispers across the room above the din...

As I grew older and the taunts more shrill and acrimonious became, I decided I would (a) kill everybody I knew or (b) grow my hair long. So far plan (b) has saved a lot of lives.

Also in there is the fact that in the 40s and 50s when I grew up my Dad's punishment for many an infraction - skip school, getting drunk, swearing, other - was the 'butch' - o how I hated it! My globular, sloped head perched on narrow tapered shoulders with ears so big the wind would blow them back and forth, the bane of my existence; the good vet Dr. Quimby refused to dock my ears like a Doberman, Doc Seeley didn't think there was anyway to pin them back short of driving a rivet into my skull with snaps on the back of my flaps, but I think he was kidding.

Mercifully the Hippies came along and I blended right in and have stayed pretty much like that for 30-plus years; now I sweat Male Pattern Baldness and worry that anon once again my wings will appear...vanity? Please, don't get me started...

That incredibly violent scene yesterday...

...even though perpetrated on a piece of machinery, a keyboard I pounded into pieces in a fit of high-testosterone rage, as it refused to write, was a chink in the armor, a breech in the wall; neurotic, nutty behavior slipped through the cracks and spilled over the edges; with a volley of expletives I hurled the smashed word processor across the room, slamming against the wall, broken drives and disks crashing to the floor.

Not really what one could call `fine tuning' in the course of trying to orchestrate one's destiny, something I claim to be doing, by virtue I sometimes think, of lunatic fiat. I quickly fixed an icy, steely glare on the fool in the mirror who stood there panting, red-faced, a heart attack waiting to happen in every wheezing breath. Then we both turned and walked away.

Today IT seems to have passed and I'm in control...

`Remember', Whitey says,`...if you're in control of it, it's in control of you.' Ok, so I'm not in control of anything at all. Still today is better. I'm sure this doobie a guy just gave me down at the store plays a vital role in my new-found serenity (and my sanity) for the foreseeable future. Given that I may live through the night in relative tranquility I have to say I owe this temporary surcease from life's vexations, in part to the salutary effects of reefer madness.

The ratio of guns to people in...

…The Palace on Washington Street in Boston around 1962 was probably something like 1:4, every 4th person was armed to their gold teeth and if you added the number of people herein who had more than one piece tucked away in their 3-piece zoot suits, the numbers surely went up…

I, wet behind the ears and kind of a hick/doofus kid from Vermont who’d seen more cows than black people, was unarmed in those days, and I was out of my element in this pre-Combat Zone, nefarious den of iniquity but I soon found my equilibrium in a fifth of gin (later lost it in that same Bombay bottle) and got comfortable while the legendary William Henry Robinson Jr. from Roxbury, a classmate of mine at Cambridge, conducted my break-in tour to The Blues, and gave me a sneak peek at one side of black Night Life, a tour I’ve continued ever since. I’ve had The Blues for 38 years now. Before this night I thought it was just a color.

…and whereas I knew a Hammond was an organ I didn’t know a Hammond B with Jimmy Smith or Jimmy McGriff on the ivories was light years away from Catholic Catherine Clifford’s doleful organ playing in church, light years away with a cultural divide wide as a Nebraska horizon, not to mention it’s quite a ways from ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’ to ‘Got My Mojo Workin’…

Later featured on the front cover of a crime investigation report ordered by the City of Boston, there it was in all it’s tawdry splendor, in living, peeling color – ‘The Palace’, a misnomer if ever there was one, but as for crime, ahhhh, there was plenty to go around…there wasn’t much you couldn’t get at this place after midnight, which I discovered during ten months of projectile drinking, laying the groundwork for a decades-long life of dissolution lost in Subterranea.
…then along came Urban Renewal and The Palace got paved and turned into a parking lot. I had to further my musical education elsewhere. In The Green Door, Carrie Nation’s, The Last Call Saloon, Nick’s et al…on and on the learning process went & goes in a variety of venues and classrooms. It’s all school this life, every minute of life is in a classroom of one kind or another no matter what you are doing. As far as I know the learning process goes on to the very brink of the grave.

The urban wars are...

...just around the corner...

…indeed the scuffles are bigger all the time, the conflicts nastier and nastier and invariably the battle lines have been drawn between neighborhoods as surely as between countries, which they are in microcosmic form; and as inexorably as a river flows to the sea, War In The Streets worldwide is inevitable; semi-unarmed masses to arms to arms vs. the well-heeled, well-armed right and ruling class, the aristocracy, or…

…maybe not, we may be hammer and tong & mob & gangbangas & Rotary Club in league with one another fighting off a common enemy from elsewhere in the Cosmos, another planet and another people (thing) to stress us out, but first:

The Urban Wars, ethnic group on ethnic group, block against block, street against street; a lunatic’s sarabande of flashing box cutters and street sweepers mowing down the opposition…where else but in America. Indeed where else? By now, everywhere.

...the news is out, all over town, around the globe, dans le village and in the hinterlands, down 5th Avenue and into Kabul to the Steppes of Russia and the world over, we have reached critical mass, the point of no return; those 60s posters of the world and all on it run amok are either true or coming true at a rate approaching terminal velocity.

The Doomsday Report, an irregular feature of NFTD, was brought to you this edition courtesy of Messrs. Hemp, Guinness & Budweiser…

For one reason or another...

…I have been in or around a number of insane asylums – Creedmoor, Willowbrook, Wrentham State School, Paul A. Dever, anyway, a number of them. They are terrible places make no mistake about it, more maddeningly noisy than prison with which I am also familiar but that’s another story, and they are dirtier than jails, and at least as dangerous, filled with monstrosities you wish you’d never seen, creatures armless and/or legless or both, yowling their brainless heads out – and who wouldn’t? – people with spatulated half-heads so flat you could iron on ‘em, deformities so horrible they defy telling, indeed my gorge was on the rise every time I crossed the threshold of Bedlam; I couldn’t get away quick enough and I was ashamed of myself because I was more sickened than stricken with compassion.

But as bad as they were, these sanitariums, it beat having those poor insensates running at large not knowing how to take care of themselves and, yes, frightening and threatening the public domain. Then along come some bright legislators screaming civil rights are being abused and shortly these inmates of the asylums ARE released and in about one weekend the streets of Hempstead went from fairly safe to very dangerous.

Another NFTD synopsis to be sure, but cut to the chase: the corners at 3 ayem where I lived – 28 Hoff Court & 97 Baldwin Rd. heretofore were quiet – now they’d become little street corner talkin’ cells of howling Creedmoor warlocks, zombies, banshees & viragos making house calls.

If only I could get back those wasted years...

…things would be different, but no one could’ve told me that then and even now I’m not sure what I would do if I could start over, but I am sure of some things I would not do.

Every time I see a young, well-dressed fellow come out of the store & get in his car on his way to work it is me I am looking at, 35-40 years ago. I practically groan for that young man in me; I was going to be somebody! Make an impact, have an effect, a righteous purpose, a design, but the grand plans of my life were seriously uprooted by The Fool In The Mirror, never to root again in this life and I watched decades go by in a stupor, numbed by catastrophic personal events (and to be honest a number of doobies & numerous numbing drinks beyond counting aided immeasurably to my numbness) which I overcame but not in time, the damage was done. Such is life.

Had I remained in the Navy I see now would have been intelligent too; it is the only place & time in my life – six short years – when there was any sense of order; since then all has been chaos. Aboard ship at sea, or stationed in a two-year long vacation in Nea Makri, Greece could not have been more idyllic and all-providing at little personal expense, notwithstanding the irrefutable fact that in the military as always one was liable to get shot. But you are in Brooklyn, too. Anyway, not to digress too far as is the wont of NFTD, I’m back in the here & now, the only place one can really dwell without going ‘round the bend. That too is relative. My ‘here & now’ is a walk in the park compared to the here and now of a condemned man in the Huntsville Texas death house which is no place to be doing here and now…

I toss off the rest of my coffee and head out on the highway, no longer looking for adventure. To hell with a suit and tie job. When I was younger, over early ayem drinks one day in Carrie Nation’s, Vermont’s most nefarious watering hole, I told Hard Rock I was going to do a makeover, I’d buff up, put on a three-piece suit, wing-tips, blow dry, manicure, the works, and give it another shot (speaking of which, o bartender, mayhaps a libation for me and Brother Cioffi here who will spring for this round as he so kindly did the previous and will any subsequent…ah, where was I? O yes, in the past with Hard Rock Cioffi in Nation’s) and I would make a clean breast of it, an idea from which Hard Rock demurred. ‘Terry, the resume reads the same…’ I haffta laff and do and we, that is he, gets a pitcher of brew to go with our boilermakers.

A literary simoom...

…jolts academia as a number of heretofore well-respected authors of considerable repute – Steven Ambrose and Doris Kearns Goodwin foremost among them - go down in flames for plagiarizing from their distinguished colleagues. There’s a lot of it going around.

Such nonsense, I tell you. At NFTD we’d look upon the practice as nothing short of reprehensible, why, indeed, righteous denunciation of the guilty parties is a necessary part of the hygiene of critics like me and greatly enhances the circulation of our blood, it’s a fact.

Like everything else it’s politics and everyone knows real politics has little to do with morality. Mr. Ambrose and Ms Goodwin should not necessarily have known better but rather should have devised a, shall we say, more clever means by which to evade getting caught.

Theirs to ponder indefinitely the breadth of their errors, theirs to replay over and again how they managed to ease into their subjects so endearingly but ended up by shoving every subject they touched into a virtual jungle of disoriented syntax – much in the fashion of NFTD I might add while lamenting this overt plagiarism – and squeezing out every ray of light and choking out every breath of fresh air…for shame, all of you! (With apologies to V. S. Naipaul, Logan Piersall-Smith and William F. Buckley Jr. from whom I plagiarized this screed, sort of…)

e-mail: nftdnotes@yahoo.com

As space cadet-in-residence...

…here in East Eden, East Eden which lies somewhere between Jupiter and Arcturus, it is incumbent upon me (dba NFTD) to regale you with my dazzling artistry, my joie de vivre, my elan; indeed my aim is to leave you breathless, strike you dumb, mouth agape at every subtle nuance I so cleverly impart, to leave you chortling with mirth, bent with bittersweet sadness and/or joy; and various other incarnations one writhes through as life goes on. Indeed, if I fail to do as I have mentioned, the onus is on me, I will have failed for want of trying.

I’m going to start next issue.

Meanwhile, welcome back to the more modest version.

Just playing with words as usual – I like the bit about out in space between Jupiter/Arcturus, stole it from either Lisa Scottoline (very fine writer of Philly detective stories) or Joseph Tannebaum (very fine writer of New York detective stories – both former lawyers, may in fact still be) but the ‘space cadet-in-residence’ is my own so not all love’s labors lost, which is ripped off from Shakespeare.

I’ve read or heard that there’s really no need to say or write anything anymore because by now it’s all been said one way or another by somebody else; still I keep prattling on hoping to hit the Mother Lode now and then, literarily and fi$cally $peaking.

NFTD may not after all be the vehicle I’ve so long thought; instead of salvation from, it may be deliverance to…anyway, just warming up the fingers, letting the clutch out on the cerebellum, shifting into overdrive, heading out on the highways of the mind, looking for adventures of all kinds. (A lily of Steppenwolf’s I gilded.)

I’ll concentrate on trying to hit versions of things that may not have reached your domain as yet, esoteric and eclectic, eldritch screams and hoydenish/adolescent blatherings notwithstanding…

Enjoy? That may not be the word, but read on, MacDuff…

"Nobody looks good in spandex..." (from NFTD Archives)

…I exclaim to the silvered glass, “…don’t think you’re the exception, you’re not, your wattles show, your jiggly adipose tissue flounces around behind all that rubber like silly putty and the tire wound round your plus-40 waist is stretched so taut your blue varicose veins are translucent…”

I peel the shorts off like they were cosmolene and decide not to go jogging after all, nor ride the mountain bike nor for all that, nothing exerting I am bound for today, but rather another sedentary day of letting the muscles atrophy and flatten against this chair seat. Yawwwn…

...spandex, bicycles, jogging…what a nightmare! Now roller blading, that’s something I’m hip to; it’s a spectator sport only, at least for me, but how supple the human form rippling down the byways on roller blades, don’t you think?

...well, here again, unfortunately at that I suppose, this sporting observation is predicated on looks, appearances. Does she/he have the pecs, the abs, the boobs, the ass? I doubt that I, weighing in at a cool 1/8th of a ton, would attract much more than a little tittering attention as I thundered past on painfully-bended ankles, rippling the sidewalk as I rumbled over it like a train pressing down the tracks; no, I probably would not cause quite the stir a 19-year-old hardbelly – male or female – would cause as they flashed by.

I was never blessed with your basic beautiful body nor handsome face, if blessed is the word I want; I’ve had to settle for keen intellect, clever wit and charm, plus my natural animal magnetism, erudition and disarming modesty to get me by.

Who needs spandex?

Blah, Blah...blah, blah, blah...

BLAH BLAH BLAH...BLAH BLAH...

...blah, blah, blah...

Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah!

...blah, blah?

Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah...blah (blah blah blah blah) blah blah blah; blah blah blah? Blah!

...blah blah blah blah (!) blah blah blah. "Blah blah blah blah blah blah, blah blah blah," blah blah blah. Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah, blah blah blah; blah blah blah, blah blah blah. Blah blah blah: Blah! Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah: "...blah blah blah blah..."

Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah...blah blah blah? Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Blah, blah blah - blah blah blah blah blah - blah blah blah.

Blah? Blah blah blah blah blah.

Blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah.

...in my opinion.

Did you ever get hit in the mouth...

...there's nothing quite like it is there? I much prefer a kiss, but I have in fact been hit in the mouth in my life, not a lot, but enough to know I don't want to be a boxer - which is where I took one of those shots; I neither want to drink ouzo again because doing so wrought another punch, plus a baseball got me once and it was at least as bad as the branch which had also slapped me in the mouth as I raced through the forest, so I could see what was coming and I told Harry, "Look Harry, you don't want to do this, you don't wanna arm wrestle this guy (Roy White)...he's not a good loser if you should beat him...blow it off, let's go have another draught..."

"Get outta my way," he exclaimed with a grin and a push so I did and he and Roy squared off at the corner of the dim-red lit Carrie Nation's bar and started twisting wrists, Harry grinning and Roy looking determined and somber, indeed mean, and so when Harry pinned him once Roy shrugged it off and they went at it again and again Harry put him down only this time Roy didn't laugh. Like lightning he reached out and slapped Harry open-handed with a smack I heard above Warren Zevon and Harry turned to me and said, "Did you see what he did? Did you see that?!"

He spun around and hit Roy White with a punch he had to go back to the country for and then he grabbed Roy's lightweight jacket, jerked it up over his head so Roy couldn't see and was effectively blinded & strait-jacketed, and then went to work on his head, organized brain damage, bam, bam, slap, bam until Roy, gasping on the floor unable to see or defend himself, started screaming and Harry gave him another shot and humiliated him by making him cry uncle, and there he was: a beaten sobbing Roy White groaning and moaning and yelling "Uncle! UNCLE!"

He stood up and fled the bar, crimson with humiliation and boiling with rage, while Harry was chuckling and nursing his battered fists. "You better get outta here Harry," I said, "...you don't know that guy...he'll be back with a fuckin' pistol..." He laughs.

But I know Roy White, he WILL be back but I won't be there. You stay if you want, I think to myself and say to Harry, but I'm headed...

And I left. I didn't want to be in on the sequel, which came later and poor Harry...Whats' The Matter With Harry? What's the matter with Harry is Harry's dead because as I say Roy came back and blasted him while I was puttin' away a double baconcheeseburgersmotheredwithmayoandrelish, at The Green Door. Timing is everything. Roy gets out in 2017, Harry's in for keeps.

Where the thought came from...

…was deep within and popped up out of nowhere, as opposed to me thinking it over and pondering the pros and cons of such a move, but as I routinely put paper into the printer I suddenly @ 4 ayem said aloud, ‘I need a drink,’ and barked out a couple death-rattle laughs from my constricted throat…

…where did the thought come from…what triggered the impulse…I chuckled a little more at the cunning ability of the left parietal lobe to blind-side me, and of course had the drink, a soul-satisfying Guinness stout which I, ever adaptable (Sonny calls me ‘…a man of convenient convictions…’) and as malleable as Proteus I thought, ‘Well shit, the days shot now…’ - so I followed suit and spun up a fattie and got wasted, which since I’m now well-beyond entry level recreational drug abuse and hitting on the addictive end of the spectrum I said the hell with it I only got one left and I might as well have all my vices going at once, and downed the last percocet, the recalling of which cracks me up as I write about it through a gossamer veil…

…chortling with laughter and with a nod to moderation just a little bit too late, I sit here enjoying my chemical reverie…not exactly a lesson in Spartan behavior nor the role model for anybody but you know and I know that sometimes you just give it all up and get laid back…or wish you could. Everybody gets high on something…it makes it hard to stand in judgment over anybody or anything they might do. And don’t worry, I’m not taking this show on the road.

Sometimes I wonder if...

...(From dusty NFTD Archives)

...this thing of ours, "...NOTES FROM THE DUMP..." is just so much pseudo-intellectual junk food for your already overworked cerebellum; folderol where there should be substance; or if in fact there might be a purpose to it.

…tell the truth I'm not sure what the purpose would be...actually I'm not at all sure of much of anything. NFTD could BE real literature as defined by - well, whoever decides what literature is, and incidentally, who does? To my way of thinking, YOU do. You the reader as opposed to they the critics.

…this antediluvian dictionary I have says literature is: the profession of an author; production of writings, especially of imaginative prose, verse etc. So I have to say I qualify, NFTD is imaginative and rife with prose and verse and worse...if you can take Noah at his word. …(…ok, ok, we don't exactly have 'War and Peace' here…) Nor is NFTD boring…

…hmmm…what in literature bores me? When first I began to read 'Wuthering Heights' I was expecting and prepared to be lulled to sleep and bored to tears but au contraire, it was wonderful...I was going to say 'Studs Lonigan' but I guess after all it wasn't a bore but rather it was tedious reading because this schmuck Lonigan was SUCH a friggin' loser...got to me after awhile it did. Great for your melancholia...

…so ok, NFTD isn't boring. Then what is it? For me it's an act of sublimation; figuratively speaking I am purifying and refining my 'socially unacceptable impulses & biological drives,' this according to Webster. (...and Sam...and Freud) Webster makes it seem to me that I have serious psychological problems underlying "...NOTES FROM THE DUMP..." and he may be right, but...what can one do? Besides, who the Hell is he?

FITZPATRICK! SPENCER! RASA! RASA DABRILLA...

...where o where have you gone friends of my wild youth in Boston...O Rasa you Lithuanian crown jewel with your inimitable accent and heart-breaking laugh...your apple-green jade, almond eyes...and you Paul...what's become of you? In all my life Charlie - are you there, Charlie, are you? Are you there!? In all my life Charlie I never would have said that metal spade would actually have pierced the rooftop of the squad car below in the alley off Commonwealth Avenue, but there it was pointing up at us three stories above and we soon were fast making tracks down the fire escape...but o as you know Fate will intervene at every step in your life and it suddenly loomed large before you as you slipped and fell the last fifteen feet to the ground, breaking your forearm in the fall. Ouch, I can hear the bone snap lo these 40 years later…

...all of you gone now, victims of heartless time, relentless, pursuing, ubiquitous indiscriminating time...more than likely I'll never see any of you again...my aching heart breaks for you dear memories of lost youth, why, you may be dead...breakfast in Bickford's...drinks on The Carousel, in the Stuart Street Tavern...the dangers...robbing, being robbed, mugging, being mugged...the city lights gleaming down on the seamy side of life…

...and light years from Vermont, from Attleboro, from reason...the memories rivet my attention and for just a brief moment I'm actually back there in 278 Commonwealth Avenue, riffling through the stolen mails and swilling pilfered wine and bootlegged beer...counting the swag...The Palace on Washington Street, long gone now...in those days, home of the blues, my black friend William Henry Robinson Jr. introduced me into the juke joint and I was quite comfortable, no one seemed to care I was white...and that music! I may never see Bill Robinson again, o you tall handsome drink of water you with your distinguished moustache and grey silver fox hair, you I'll never forget...a walk on the wild side...no I may never see you again but I've had The Blues ever since.

Excerpts from your ever-lovin' letters...

"What a high seeing you and Sam again. The (Boston) Globe profile (I'm passing it on) was a fitting tribute. That Lois Shea is a damn good writer...`It's hard not to feel as though Ward has just spent a few hours in your living room, tipping pints and shooting the breeze...' - Lois Shea, Boston Sunday Globe, May 8, 1994).

"How true.

"I notice you always acknowledge-affirm other people's gifts (e.g. Parkman, Taj Mahal, Joey - all the people in the Ben & Jerry's piece).That really is your special gift. You touch many lives Terry; I feel good when you touch my life. I'll surprise you one of these days and pop up in your shack..." - Sam Cucchiara, Fitchburg MA

"As you well know I'm about as conservative a libertarian as you will find. Often I disagree with your musings, but you do have a marvelous prose style...best regards..." - Adrian Krieg, Acworth NH

"Here's the Esquire Seth Morgan interview. Nothing new to report from the Wolverine State. Liked the comment about Ben Hamper and `Rivethead.' It was a good read. I did 4 years one month at GM and the book don't lie. Enuff said..." - Cutt, Canton MI

"Great writing as usual! Yeah, I caught a strange volt when I heard Rabin quoting Lennon. Maybe a little like `prophet Lennon' wasn't accepted in his own country or time?" - Judy Miller, Sparks NV

"Some writer wrote recently, `I have never seen a wild animal sorry for itself.' Perhaps that is the human problem...that great brain has its ups and downs. Not so with animals. Perhaps even plants...I will not go that far however...you do have quite a readership out there. Keep at it!"
- CJ Davis, Wirtz VA

"Thanx for the copy of NFTD you sent a few days ago. Dazzling - makes Ginsberg look like one of the New Kids On The Block. I keep it around as required reading for all houseguests...just got back from London a few hours ago and my body is still confused so I'm going to drink more coffee or take a nap...keep up the good work." - Kimberly Bright, Martinsville IN

"Thank you for your willingness to work with us to bring your account to a current status...we have suspended further collection based on the following payment arrangement...if payments are not made as agreed, and if the account remains in a delinquent status, your service may be subject to disconnection for nonpayment without further notice..." - Sue Smith, Credit Supervisor NH Elec. Co-Op

...IN THOSE DAYS I WASN'T VERY STREET-WISE...

...so as I walked through the dark, labrynthine warren of the Combat Zone to my own garret at 278 Commonwealth Avenue in Boston, a toney part of Back Bay I lived in light years & many fears and years ago, a naif to the world and very as-yet untried& unenlightened...I well recall throwing half-finished cigs into the gutters and watching the down and out scabrous bums of the day practically club one another to get to the smoldering butt in the filthy street, as I walked away laughing, an 18-year-old know-it-all with an attitude and a lot to learn, and learn that lesson I did as, fast forward 25 years, it was I - ME - scrambling for the butts in the gutter tossed by show-off kids!

Turnabout being fair play (this too I had learned) I had to laugh.

...at another point in this embryonic period of my life, we are talking 1961 and 1962, I in my unworldly ignorance was cruising afoot when I saw a man walking briskly along alone in the early Fall evening, through the Common which runs down the middle of Commonwealth Avenue, an easy mark I think as I draw alongside him, he stepping lively in his three-piece herring-bone tweed suit, pointed-toe boots, pale blue shirt, fancy Brooks Brothers tie, and a walking-stick umbrella tapping along beside him.

This should be good...

(I am not going to apologize for this, I have paid in many ways for decades, and - as you will see - I also paid for it immediately and have remembered the lesson all my life and become much enlightened since this incident, but not alone because of it; one grows and comes to know.)

Anyway...

He looked like a pushover.

"Give it up," I said to him, "...gimme your wallet or else..."

He grinned bigly...

...then went to work on me with the brolly! I created a monster! He was like Jack Sparrow fer Cris'sakes, jabbing and poking that goddamned thing into my ribs and the next one was in my ass Dude because I was running away from this crazy bastard as fast as I could go and he was just as fastly hitting me with that umbrella and finally tripped me from behind and put the dukes to me without ever mussing up his fuckin' vest...

I looked for another career...you could call it an object lesson in acceptance of others.

Life is good, short but good...

…so as time flies and takes my life with it I’ve been indulging my passions for dope, alcohol and Johann Sebastian Bach, with a generous serving of Rock & Roll – after all you never outgrow your need for Rock & Roll – in case there are none of these things in Hell.

For all the bad press they get - except for JS Bach – why you’d think Hell would be full of not only sinners & hellions, rockers, slackers and a motley crew of dissolutes – kindred spirits as I see it; Dante be damned, it sounds like THE place to be - but also those apparatos dos Diablo which get us sent there in the first place – like lots of reefer madness and Guinness, a CD in every modular apartment, an endless cornucopia of junk food, junk and junkies – & would it be too much to ask for a couple, well okay, a few, Sweet Young Things to help me thru my 1st several millennia as a devil?

In fact, compared to yodeling, sneezing in the canyon, singing hymns or whatever the hell they’ll be doing in Heaven, Hell seems a walk in the park; I don’t know one goddamned hymn from another but just in case Hell does not come so provided with the aforementioned tools of the devil and cleverly-disguised poisons, I’m getting a leg up on it and getting as %$#@&# up as I can now. What about it?

MORE THAN EVER…

…my tired mind races out of control; with every trembling breath I gaspingly take – especially at night when I’m alone – I feel the day of reckoning drawing closer. I sleep only as much as I have to and then I’m up and out of here, man, because I don’t want to miss what time is left. I’ll sleep when I’m dead. And I crave being with certain people, you know who you are, whom I am going to miss Big Time.

There’s no sense to make any plans, to read, to write, to do anything, but it’s impossible to not do something so I write anyway and I drink, smoke dope, eat to excess, drink – did I mention that? – and play cribbage, 200 games a week at four minutes per is a lot of cribbage, no human can beat me and this %^$#@*& computer has its electronic hands full trying to beat me too…I am not easy to keep down. And of course as per my NFTD job description I…

…babble on and babble on in a vain attempt to fill what remains of this life (and page) before I enter the vacuum ahead. I can’t say it doesn’t scare me, it does but I’m not afraid I tell you…many things on earth have terrified me much more than the thought of being dead…

Hmmmm…is that true? Let me think about that…hmmm….hmm…no, no it’s not true I guess. Truth be told I’m like that painting ‘The Scream’ – that is me full time now only so far I’ve been very private about it and have managed not to shriek in terror in public…I should give it a try some morning in the diner.

Emmanuelle...hi there, hello, hey...

...yes of course I mean you, you're the only Emmanuelle I (don't) really know...

...sorry about taking our relationship out in public with this more or less open letter, but then lots of people think I've made you up anyway, although David in Carrboro believes because you got your name in Braille from him, well - let them wonder longer. Plus, having a Friend with such a name, Emmanuelle, has a certain je ne sais quois to it and there's a pleasing cachet to the overall mystique of, well, of vous Ma Belle Ami!

I know, I know...moi French non too bon.

I only speak phrases of most languages, including this one (English), but I find it interesting that the few foreign words I know sometimes synopsize volumes into a quick phrase, for instance, I'm quick to toss off a bon mot, but at the same time such bon mots are at once ma bete noire et ma raison d'etre...

That may not make sense in French or English, nor neither Esperanto, ah yes, Emmanuelle, how I remember our days in Esperant, frolicking in the lianas and wafting to and fro in the ether...me Groucho to your Zelda; Fernandel to Brigitte, Woody to Diane; yes vividly I recall the Esparantans and how mellifluous and echolalian everything sounded when they caterwauled in their l'Esperanto tongue - o how we trembled when arose from the gloaming such a moaning, 'Mi divas skribi sed la tempon mankas...'

...I'll never forget that chilling moment...be still my heart!

...well I suppose you had to be there...

My Dear, are you still in Red Stick? Do you still play your drum? Are you well? Better? (Good) Worse? (Sorry) Hope things improve; sometimes they do, sometimes not.

TWard, half of two-person crime wave

The night passes...

...or like Ichabod Crane maybe I've been asleep for 20 years...

...whichever it is I open off the early morning with tea because I have no coffee. Now I like tea but it doesn't take the place of that cup of coffee does it? Especially the ones So and So used to make for me; they were the best ever, but tea will do today.

I was going to have tea and crumpets but I'm also out of crumpets. Truth be told I wouldn't know a crumpet if one stepped on me...hmmmm...let's see what Noah says a crumpet is: crumpet, krumpit, bent, crooked; an unsweetened batter cake baked on a griddle like a pancake...I guess I can live without a crumpet and I'm already bent and crooked.

So on to something else.

Too much time on my hands, or is it not enough? I can't decide if I've got too much in this life, or too little. It's hard to believe I'm already this age (I'm 64 if I live to November 30th) when it was only an hour ago, or so it seems, when Greg Hubbard and I were downing our first two quarts of beer in the cornfield across the street from the Hampton (NY) Hotel somewhere around August 1958, an endeavor I've pursued ever since but in no wise blame neither Greg nor Anheuser-Busch...they're just pieces in the puzzle of my life as you have the pieces in your's.