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.

Wide awake at 3 ayem...

...can't sleep...can't eat, can't even walk the floor...nothing to drink or do but sit here lamenting life without you. I suppose I should be thanking my lucky stars that I got away basically intact instead of continually going on about this sorry state of affairs, but the heart is a peculiar organ and once smitten quite reluctant to let go...

But let go I do and here I am alone at three a. m. wondering who you are 'dancing' with and where, but soon this self-pitying blast leaves and I am still here with no thoughts of you nor anything else; a blank in the night staring out the dark windows into endless black space.

What matter anything?

I shake loose from the gloom of life and spin one up, put the lucifer to it and toke away...fill the bowl and watch blue smoke dancing on the windflaws...

Dreamy, filled with longing, aching for a break, THE break from dependency on others to the freedom only brought about by liquid assets...in the meantime these 'liquid assets' take the form of a six pack of Guinness dropped off periodically by well-meaning friends inadvertently feeding my fever, for which I am grateful beyond telling, believe me, even though I realize that at this rate I shall probably drink myself to death in a few more short years, but such is life in the breakdown lane...

Notes From The Dump e-mail: nftdnotes@yahoo.com

Something about redheads...

...sets the endorphins rolling and I'm off in a swoon everytime I get near one, especially if they're female, but the one I'm presently smitten (from a great distance) by is several years my junior which EYE could live with but could she? Secondarily she's an activist and I don't mean the kind of activist parading through hostile streets with placards for one cause or another, no, as an activist I mean she likes to DO things, like ride horses, bar-hop, go DANCING for Cris'sakes and take hikes, o spare me!

I on the other hand don't like leaving the kitchen, and as for riding horses? Not this cowboy. An Iron Horse maybe but no Appaloosas. Anatomically speaking, men should ride side-saddle so they don't flatten their turgid member and squash their stones; women did not CHOOSE to ride side-saddle, Daddy (Boy Friend, Hubby) MADE them ride side-saddle because they knew riding with one leg thrown over one side of the horse and one over the other produced moans and groans of pleasure and fulfillment THEY couldn't...

Anyway I don't do horses nor hikes, two beers is more or less my limit so I'd be a cheap date for her in a bar but she'd have to do all her dancing with someone else which would be no problem for her because she's a beauty but then I'd get jealous and...ahhh...what's the sense of any of it? I'll stay right here by the wood stove, alone with the radiant heat, suffused with warmth, not lonely at all really. Ki-yi-yippi-eye-ay...yahoo...

More Random "...NOTES..."

…I’m making my mark as a writer, I have been one all of my life; it’s what I do, good bad or indifferent I always wanted to be a writer and a painter and I am both…for years I’ve blathered and driveled away with puling bombast and idle twaddle only to be eclipsed in the end by a stream of spontaneously combustible consciousness like no other; no one writes like me - in the future, writers will be compared to me but there will be no one attains this peak for quite awhile…now this is what you call confidence!

It does no one any long-term good to be falsely modest about one’s attributes, talents and abilities; I’m no wallflower nor a braggart but I am a smart guy and I know it…or maybe it’s arrogance; whichever, it is semi-based in fact mixed with maximum embellishment, as is the wont of this screed…in the world of art I’ve been fairly prolific, a 1000 paintings in a lifetime is not too shabby, all are good, some are really good and about two dozen or so were really great in every sense of the timeless word…here’s three good ones...I call them Early Primitives.

How is it possible...

…my life is going/has gone by so fast!? How could it be that I - (in my aging, hoary head, looking in the memory mirror, am still a child, then a boy, an adolescent and then a man grown to maturity, now grown old and infirm!?) -how can it be that I have memories which are 60 years old!

How can it be that the thought of dying and of death is something I once rarely gave pause to but now when I think about It, it’s from an at-the-brink-of-the-grave viewpoint; all my life my mantra has been the unending refrain, Think About IT! Now I’m not so sure…there are frightening aspects to it.

'Few people think more than two or three times a year; I have made an international reputation for myself by thinking once or twice a week...' - George Bernard Shaw

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

As co-founder of Buzzard Brothers Construction ("Don't Call Us - We'll Call You..."), it was my job to not return calls and I was very good at not doing it, story of my life. In later years, with the passing of Dudley and Dewey Buzzard, an odd couple of birds, I inherited the firm, changed the name, sold off all our inventory and semi-singlehandedly began MY firm.

I take great pleasure in introducing to you: Hermit Construction.

In the 15 years of its laissez-faire existence since then, I am proud and pleased to announce as President-For-Life and Founder Emeritus, that to this day, only twice, think of it only TWO times - has Hermit Construction taken on a job, any job! The remainder of the time I've assiduously ascribed to our carved-in-stone motto, which we proudly display on our company t-shirts:

Hermit Construction
"...Turning Down Work A Specialty..."

"Rest Assured...We'll Be NO Help"

Had to leave town for a couple days...

...a friend of mine wanted to know could he use my pickup while I was gone so he might gather some firewood and I said sure you can only don't go getting drunk and driving my truck like a damned fool..."I won't."

Fast forward two days, I'm coming home a day early and it is after dark on a very snowy night, roads are treacherous, four inches of wet snow has piled up and those few of us on the road are anxious to be home.

As I come slowly down the steep and slippery South Acworth Hill Rd. about fifty yards above Michael and Lillie's house, suddenly from across the intersection my truck comes ripping around the corner streaking toward the store and my friend who is driving like a wildman, tires spinning, engine screaming, fishtailing side to side sending up a rooster tail of snow, is hammeredAND - I can't believe my eyes!- trailed by a flat-bottomed boat tied to the bumper on a long rope like a water skier and in this little pram Danny is sitting facing aft with a bottle in one hand (probably rotgut Schaefer) and holding on to the oarlock with the other, the two of 'em yahooing their way to the store before it closes so they can grab another case of beer they obviously do not need, and in my truck.

I say nothing and go home; they hadn't even seen me and next day when my truck is returned with BIG dents in the rear fender my friend dismisses it with '"Well, sorry, but it was really snowing and icy and I just slid off the road in slow motion..."

I haffta laff. Slow motion? Please...that little boat came around the corner like the last kid in 'crack-the-whip' on ice skates.

Where does 'Two can live cheaper than one' come from...

...and who says so?

In a way it's true, two CAN live cheaper than one, well, one of the two, the other's burden increases exponentially if my past relationships are any criteria; everytime I moved in with someone MY expenses went down, their's up, so two were living cheaper than one, yes, but one was bent like a fuckin' serf and doing most of the work while the other, namely me, was reaping in most of the bennys and making it seem that while you were out busting your ass for a living, I somehow was paying my way because the house was clean and the dishes done when you got home, as though you needed a maid, and in this case, a 'maid' - me - who would (did) eat/drink/smoke/be merry you out of your weekly paycheck...

Good job if you can get it but they don't last. Even the numbest catch on after awhile (at the end of one such rapprochement my companion de jour had gone so far as to mark the levels of bottles with a felt tip, meticulously count loose change, weigh every gram, check the odometer, left notes to 'KEEP OUT!' and generally badgered me into leaving) - and there you are, out in the street again, on the loose, prowling the alleys looking for a home.

Any ole port in a storm is never more true than when you're homeless.

Beer can-strewn closets in filthy after-hours speakeasys for a bedroom, dirty string mops for pillows with a cardboard mattress and a Rutland Herald blanket...ah me, maybe if I had polished the silverware and Lemon-Pledged the end tables I'd still have a home...

For all its (real or imagined) brilliance...

"...NOTES FROM THE DUMP..." seems to have peaked, reached critical mass, is afloat in the doldrums of apathy - no one seems to notice it anymore; now more than ever NFTD has become a novelty item, a keepsake as it were, of times bygone when writing was powerful and fluid, fun and informative, filled with deathless prose; the forecast was rosy...

Riches and fame beyond compare were mine! I was Golden Boy!

Say what?

...for whatever reasons, subscriptions have plummeted, renewals dried up,
old friends avoid it (me) as though I were - it were - anathema, a plague bacillus unleashed upon the land as in biblical days of yore...next thing you know locusts will destroy my crops...

OK...fling me into the bulrushes already...sheesh...

So now what? I can hardly reveal the foregoing to you and in the next sentence touch you up for your 30 dollar renewal in my usual appealing, if guileless, fashion; if no one else is re-upping, why should you?

Therefore, ever so reluctantly and with no little trepidation, I inquire of you (and request most urgently!) to tell me Dear Reader, where I have erred, if I have, and where and how I might correct our glide path through life aboard the good ship NFTD. (After all there's always the chance with me that I might blame it on every(body)thing except me; I've often convinced myself thusly of the rightness of a wrong argument. A la George Thorogood, doing things wrong is my way of doing things right...)

If you would be so kind - take a minute to jot down or e-mail or call and let me know what I might do in order to retrieve this thing of ours from the scrap heap of bygone journals - and thanks, much obliged!

We're doomed, kiss your ass good by...

…the United States, Russia and Britain are the world’s largest suppliers of arms…India, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, not to mention Israel, are bristling with weaponry of every imaginable horror thanx to this Axis of Death…and Russia, doing a solo blast, sold a bunch of stuff to Hugo Chavez who wants to show a little military sack to the world…fuckin’ Hugo got hisself some SU-30s – high tech Russian jets, lots of bombs, and a shitload of AK47s plus a promise from soon-to-be-prime minister Vladimir Putin, to build a 350 million dollar factory in Venezuela to, who’da thunk it – to manufacture AK-47s…talk about Russian roulette…we’re not spreading Democracy anywhere and there’s a dearth of it right here at home…the evil twins in the White House – President Bush and Dick Cheney riding shotgun, have set the world afire and left everyone on it on edge…

…no matter who wins the elections for the Oval Office the war will go on because logistically it can’t end overnight, ask the people of Saigon how that went…the damage is done and the damage is ongoing and the continuing damage, in my unasked for and less-than-expert opinion, will go on for years, bodies piling up – George Bush will be planning his library in retirement and continue to pretend to be an old cowhand; Dick Cheney will head back to Wyoming to shoot down his friends in duck blinds…I was on a hunt with him once – the One-Shot Antelope Hunt in Lander Wyoming, 1968 – 39 years ago he was a jerk too, but less dangerous, he only had one bullet, now he is second in command to the world’s largest arsenal and the man to see as overseer of the largest supplier of arms in the history of the world…what a despicable legacy.

Do you know what an AK-47 is and where its name came from? A for Alexander, K for Kalashnikov, Alexander’s surname, and the 47 is from the year 1947, the year the first AK-47 reared its ugly head – it is now the weapon of choice round the world…it is not paranoia my poor, innocent Dear Reader to think that you are surrounded by a ring of steel as volatile as an explosive belt because the truth is I/you/we/they are surrounded, and in check…

On the other hand I may be wrong and all is just ducky…