I'm @ work if you can call it that...

…sitting motionless in the searing heat, waiting for a consumer to breech the door and buy up half the store, the Thrift Shop in Townshend in which I while away a few hours per week trying to be of some use…a doleful Edward Elgar elegy saps my positive attitude and strength; drained I slump deeper into the chair, deeper, deeper in thought…

…at this instant in time there’s nowhere else I’d rather be and no one here but me is good for my melancholy mood but not for business…

…a sadness as palpable as fog enshrouds me as I see my poor Mom wracked with Parkinson’s Disease, lurching to and fro, eyes bulging, tongue darting in and out, until now Parkinson’s was something that happened to somebody else – who new what it looked like!

UNLIKE AN AROMATIC HORSE STABLE…

…pig barns stink, they stink and they stink a lot, so I wasn’t too keen when I worked for Buzzard Brothers Construction (Don’t Call Us We’ll Call You) and Zane the boss contracted to tear down a pig barn and build it elsewhere as a house…’It’s gonna stink Dudley,’ I said to Zane – I once asked him what kind of a name Zane was and he growled ‘I’m an Arabic-Jew from New Jersey, what about it…’ I let it pass – ‘…just ‘cause there’s no pigs in it now it still stinks right? Years from now it still will stink…’

…we built it anyway, no one listens to me initially…we built it anyway and by the time we were through the ridge pole was three inches lower at one end and the shingles were all bunched up at the peak; no word of a lie fifteen years later you could still smell Porky Pig…

LOST IN REVERIE…

…dimly aware of dawn and birds and of a sussurant breeze wafting the cool air; it’s like I’m perc-ed out but I’m not, ‘tho stoned I yam…you could almost always say that…I’ve known people for decades who’ve known me no other way, anyway I was lost in reverie revisiting and revising history to no avail…the facts are immutable, irrefutable and the truth hurts.

I stand accused, I plead guilty and I am sentenced to life on earth…

…I yearn for a beer, a couple maybe to take the chill off, to calm down, catch my stride and move on. The past is no place to dwell I tell the Fool In The Mirror, there’s nothing to be done about it & you can’t usually define the whole by a single part…out of nowhere Schubert’s Rosamunde overture comes crashing down around my sensibilities and I am jolted back to the here and now, the only place to dwell.

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

…it was a good call. As I was leaving Sonya suddenly hollered out the window as I was about to get into my car near which stood half a dozen people each waiting for one of Wacky Willy’s foot long dogs and not-quite-world-famous salsa, she said…’Terry! Wait, come back…’ to which Wacky Willie shouted ‘Bet you don’t hear that much…’ Which of course cracked me up, but it was a bittersweet laugh of irony at just how true it was…

…I can think of no other place I’d rather not be than where I am. Once it was my favorite town in all the world, now I can’t stand it, 15 months I have been gone, it is anathema to me, it has become a suppurating wound which won’t heal and this time when I clear the borders I won’t be back…

…having nearly strangled to death on a thrice daily basis for the last four years I can relate to being hung or sent to the gas chamber; nothing in my cloistered life prepared me for not being able to breathe…nor neither did I have any idea how terrifying the harrowing psychological horrors could be/are…sitting bolt upright at night, gagging, gagging, no air in no air out, gasping, heaving great sobs of airless despair…sweat running in rivulets down my brow, heart beating like a trip hammer, mind racing out of control, fear and dread, fear and dread consuming me as I fumble and grope in the darkness for the air hose, finally, breathe in breathe out, inspire, expire, breathe in breathe out, finally the terror recedes, the heart beats on – takes a lickin’ and keeps on tickin’ – and I? I continue to live and love and proclaim once for all that life, with a capital G, is Good. Dying not so good…

…It’s been a long time it seems…since last we met; I've been in seclusion, on holiday, took leave of my various jobs and my myriad senses & sensibilities - but I'm back, as you can tell...I’m back and I'm new and improved, although I must agree with the common(wo)man and the public domain that precious little was lacking in my previous incarnation; plus the hue and cry raised because of my prolonged literary absence has been rewarding in every way - egotistically, financially, literarily and literally; I had no idea my supporters, though few in number, were such rabid devotees who brook no opprobrium in re NFTD, readers who have no truck with the ruling class and do not truckle under to the status quo! For them – You! - I forge ahead, carry on, sally forth, go the extra mile, give it my all and my best second effort; in short, knuckle down to work for there's a world of rest beyond.