NOTES FROM THE DUMP

Tuesday, August 19, 2008

I s'pose you had to be there, but...

…I’m parked on top of the dam, to my left the wooden covered bridge a 100 feet above the gorge across which is jogging a Fox (sorry for the reversion to MCP 70s lingo) but she was so pretty and as she ran along was doing arm stretches and taking in the breathtaking view, then veered and stopped 15 feet from me and started leg exercises on the guard rail – be still my heart – and after a few of these goes by my open window and politely says, ‘Good morning,’ and begins more leg stretches at the other guard rail, now only ten feet away from me – the thrill of being privy to this youthful beauty is nearly more than I can bear and I practically swoon from the rush - suddenly she comes over to my window and says, ‘Do you know where there’s a good bakery?’

‘Bakery,’ I barked laughing, ‘…you’re doing all these exercises to keep looking as good as you do and you want to know where there’s some donuts?!’

‘It’s why I exercise,’ she said, ‘...so I can go to the bakery…’ I filled her in on the nearest jelly donut and she disappeared down the bleak road…

Monday, August 18, 2008

Now, where was I...

…BEFORE THE SHOTS RANG OUT…

…o yes, going on at length about life, I mean what else is there? And how can I not rattle on about my life if I’m going to prate on about anybody’s, for how could I rattle on about yours? You know you I don’t, and even if I did I don’t know you as well as I thought I did or maybe I know you more than I wanted to, or…ad infinitum…I only know me and not very well at that; I tend to keep an arm’s length from myself and The Fool In The Mirror, both of whom have caused/are causing me no end of problems…it wouldn’t be right of me to write of you, fact is – not really having much to do and not quite yet ready to leave the comfort of my new nest and get an actual job – I sit around writing all my life, making things up; most of NFTD is made up of people who don’t exist and friends I don’t really have, believe me, the imaginary lovers, the instances and incidents which took place only in the mind, stories of places I’ve never been about people I never knew doing things that didn’t happen, anything just to get out of this miasma I DO live in…NFTD, the apotheosis of apocrypha…the apogee of exaggeration and the penultimate (the ultimate but one) in plagiarism, all in all a package deal. Hey, you get what you pay for…

…SPEAKING OF WHICH…DON’T READ THIS…

(Dude, look here, this is gotta be sorta sotto voce, small print know what I’m saying…don’t want just anyolebody to know I’m tapped and I was, ah, like wondering if I could, you know Dude like touch you up for like, you know, a handout, help with my drinking, I mean printing costs…any amount would do, from George Washington to Ben Franklin or a fistful of both would be nice…I once won $50,000 in a scratch ticket lottery, big pay days like that are few and far between for the hoi-polloi but man I mean I had lots of fun with that windfall and yes I know I shoulda tucked some away for a rainy day but hey, I didn’t, who knew…besides, every day is a rainy day…anyway Brother, anyway Sister, can you spare a dime? A c-note? Six Guinness? A bone Dude?! Many heartfelt thanx from me…I mean I know I joke about it but I am so greatful to you, without you NFTD would have ceased to exist long ago – what is world-class writing without world-class readers? Instead in January it’ll be 21, I will be three times older than that, neither of us anywhere near quitting!)

Wednesday, August 6, 2008

I've noticed that (we) fat people...

…pile on the clothes no matter the weather; on the hottest of days – it could be noon in The Mojave fer cryin’ out loud – on they go – undergarments, shirt, pants, sweater over shirt, vest over sweater, jacket over vest, add a scarf – thinking for some odd reason that somehow people will think, ‘Well (he/she) is not fat they are really Twiggy under all the canvas and are merely making a fashion statement…’

AS WE RODE HARMONIOUSLY ALONG…

…thru the dazzling night I remarked to my Good Friend Wisdom how enraptured I was of her and how blissed-out I was in her daunting presence; I waxed rhapsodically so eloquently in my aching-hearted soliloquy that I nearly wept myself, touched as I was by my own sincerity and so filled with love and affection for my Dear Friend, when she turned and beamed those amazing apple-green jade eyes at me and said, ‘Sorry, I had Hendrix cranked under the earphones…were you saying something?’ I withdrew into my shell; Turtle Man departs.

WHAT I HAD FIGURED ON DOING…

…with my sagacious, Sephardim amanuensis was that me and her would celebrate my erudition and literal/literary genius as she dutifully transcribed 35 years of my journals onto a disk from which, in a perfect world, I was to extrapolate the gems, discard the awful offal and get published to become the latest darling of the jet-setting literary world, traveling far and worldwide together to spread The Word, my word(s), but they – the journals – wrought forth only her most acerbic wrath (‘…you were such a drunk, wasting your whole fucking life…’) and my dream cum nightmare quickly dissolved into what has turned out to be a verbal burning of me in effigy as I am skewered by her caustic barbs, light years away from the adulation and praises I had envisioned, to wit: ‘…the work isn’t stimulating…’) Excuse me? What a blow to my already low self-esteem. What happened to my approbation? This egg on my face was supposed to be the jewel in my crown…

Far Away & Long Ago...

...how could it be?

With the shimmering, blinding brightness of the red sun rising over the Aegean Sea while I crawl from under my goatskin blanket into the gleaming September morn as fishermen in brightly colored boats toil away offshore it might have been 480 B.C. and I a messenger enroute to warn Leonidas of the approaching Persian army of Xerxes on its way to Thermopylae…

It might have been except for the Dylan Highway 61 Revisited album I slipped onto the tiny tinny Phillips portable stereo (perfect for Dylan’s raspin’ and rheumin’) and notwithstanding the Zippo I lit my Marlboro with as I hitched up my tattered jeans and began packing my stuff onto the back of the little 2-wheeled BMW I'd rented back in Marathona a few days ago when this odyssey began after a week of projectile drinking/dope smoking on the Acropolis and in the Plaka, listening to bouzoukias ringing through the dizzying star-lit nights and watching the dusky Mediterranean maidens strut their peasant, pleasant selves in sensual, supple native dancing...groooan…

Nearly five decades ago! Those young lovelies of yore, if they've managed to survive the passing years, today are all my age more or less, for I was barely 20 then and invincible. Now I am almost 65 and no longer invincible.

MAKE NO MISTAKE ABOUT IT…

…Hillary Clinton won’t be VP but she will become Secretary of State; the new Vice President under President Obama will be Nancy Pelosi. I feel sure for I’ve been watching & reading the body English and listening to what isn’t said, never mind what you see & hear in politics; the deals are cut where no one sees nor hears and the gloves come off…courtly diplomats’ Pecksniffian rhetoric quickly gives way to the vernacular, neither side trusts the other, any rapprochement is a façade & temporary…so there you have it Dear Readers - time will tell but I’d bet on it…No telling what the honorable Sen. McCain might do, but with Senator Clinton on deck for Secretary of State, a relieved Condoleeza Rice might like the idea of VP in her resume, for when she finally gets back to UCLA to play her Mozart. Both sides of the aisle playing the race card and the gender card…