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...