More Random NOTES From Wrinkled Scraps...

…after six decades finally a dream comes true…the end-all, the cremma della cremma of dreams, at long heartbreaking last and - I should have seen it coming - rapidly deteriorates into a nightmare. In a way it’s funny – like Dude, nightmares don’t usually come true & dreams that do aren’t dreams after all…chaos is the net result, a disorder so discombobulated that the chances of repairing the schism are humptydumptyian in scope…

…the Lower Class, of which I am a plank-owning charter member, is not as clean as the Aristocracy, with whom I only occasionally rub (dirty) elbows. As a benchmark for this dubious & questionable observation I note that as I watch those of us not to the manor born clean our beaters at the Abenaque Car Wash I see that the floor mats give off, when slapped against the bars used for such a purpose, a cloud of dust right out of The Grapes of Wrath but when the patrician fellow and his blue-haired country club wife exit their toney Lincoln Continental their barely-slapped mats give up nothing, neither dust mite nor mote; they don’t know from dirt.

…my many moods are at the behest of whim, but music alone can change them on cue. Instead of bubbling with literary enthusiasm I’m babbling effluvia (did someone say nothing new there?) For some reason no enthusiasm accrues to me as I continue living alone in a lassitude a latitude wide, enslaved to ennui so moribund I think nothing can lift me, but hark…once anon a Bach orchestral suite to the rescue; all about me lies in ruins but Bach lifts me from the depths of despondency, up a notch to just plain old misery at the turn of events (I’m never satisfied don’t you know…) but even a little better is better than none & I was wallowing deeply into the abyss of despair, so thank you Johann, well, also in this case, Isaac Stern…

…I was once crashed out in Central Park when I heard in the distance another Bach suite & when I emerged from my den there was Isaac Stern & the NY Philharmonic playing Bach at a free for all Manhattan event and – could it be! – yes - there was Pablo Casals on cello…he was about six years older than God but when he played his beautiful bird’s eye maple cello man I mean he was young again & had everyfuckingbody in tears, even moreso when he staggered to the mike with Mayor John Lindsay at his side and said with his wonderful Catalonian lilt, ‘You young people have thee right idea I tell you, Love ees the answer, love ees the answer…’ and about 10,000 people started shouting it to the heavens…

LOOK HERE DUDE, DOES 4:20 MEAN ANYTHING TO YOU…

…it didn’t to me for quite awhile either, just the time twice a day, ho-hum, but I have since learned that it is at 4:20, either and/or both of them, that it is becoming something of a tradition to spin and burn one, to light the bowlful of spicy herbs…put the phosphorous to the bhang; NFTD being always in the vanguard I’m quick to jump on board, but from whence its provenance? Who started it? I mean all across America at 4:20 the dynamic changes. It used to be just a train and the time a train came in or left…

If all The People, Yes who smoked dope – 4:20 or otherwise - didn’t show up for work tomorrow this country wouldn’t open. I don’t mean to put too much emphasis on dope-smoking as a way of life even though I’ve pursued it since 1965 - I don’t believe for a minute that reefer gave me lung cancer; if so I’m the only one - but too much time and expense is wasted on catching and jailing dopers; we’re your Sons & Daughters, Mother & Fathers, Brothers and Sisters etc. It’s basically a victimless crime. If everybody you know was locked up this morning for burning evidence you wouldn’t have anyone to talk to, streets would be empty and the jails would be spilling over even more than they are - 1.5 million Americans are locked up and 1 in 34 adults have been in jail and/or are on parole/probation…that means everybody knows someone on ice, or is on ice.

Kinda hard to get my mind off it...

…I mean c'mon Dude, lung cancer! Me?! ME! How can it be!? I look in the mirror, rip my shirt off…can’t see it…no suppurating wound, no lump big as a golf ball…can’t even fucking feel anything yet…I must be asleep…it’s got to be a dream, I’m dreaming that’s it, no, no goddamitall I’m awake and it’s a nightmare come true with all the attendant grisly scenarios in the wings…stay calm I say, stay calm…calm? What’s that fer Cris’sakes?! Can’t breathe…nothing else matters when you can’t breathe…I’m gasping for air, clawing at the wall…not calm at all, outwardly maybe, inwardly I’m trembling with fear and dread, throat dry, bowels turn to water, blood runs cold as ice, heart banging like a fucking trip hammer, teeth chattering, both of them…knees shaking, both of them too, and just generally fucked up by this grim news…but it passes and in a few minutes, humor intact, I’m able to hum along a little better and forge ahead anyway…probably no sense gettin’ any more ink…and no more love affairs, well, I’m sworn off them anyhow lung cancer or not; and chances are the lease going to get broken, some bills won’t get paid, all the usual accompaniments to rolling snake eyes. Things to disperse. Christ, I don’t have anything to give anybody really? I mean how many people need old sweat suits? What kind of legacy is that? Who knew this is the way it would end? Youth, youth, health - where did you go? Time, o good good time, where did you go? I’m sorry to burden you Dear Reader with this tale of woe but I ask you, where else to turn? And for those of you who are grammatically correct please forgive the one paragraph semi-stream of consciousness I’m (per usual) rattling on with, because a whole night has passed and I sat here staring bug-eyed at a blank screen, wide-eyed like a fucking frog fer Cris’sakes, amazed that all this is happening. It’s a trip I hadn’t planned on taking, like Dude I was busy man, I was going other places, fact is I was going to take you with me, at my expense, can you believe it? Now this. We ain’t goin’ nowhere…well, enuff of this already, there are some things need be done of an immediate nature, hmmmm…where’s my dope…what’d I do with the opener?

HOW COULD IT BE ANY OTHER WAY...

...I practically moan...this was the only possible finale. What was I expecting? That suddenly the years would melt away & there would stand I, in my serendipitous youth, all desirability? Animal magnetism and false modesty returned anew!? And then, filled with love, nearly sycophantic devotion and great expectations all would be right in my little corner of the world? O please, don’t go there…abject sorrow was the one and only end result and any objective observer to the bittersweet, incarnadine carnage would have agreed and would have seen it coming…but o no - not me Dude, I mean man I was too far gone and too obsessed to see much of anything else for quite awhile – years! - and by then it was too late, the hook was set…

Well what can I tell ya Dude? Like, don’t do that man?! OK, next life I won’t. And for the rest of this foreshortened life I won’t either, there are many diversions in life, some take human form but they come with a lot of baggage (I mean me too of course…) Hmmm…think I’ll grab a few Buds instead & a few buds; home alone, there’s no sense standing on ceremony whether midst a den of thieves nor in this solo outpost of mine bobbing on the threnody of an intellectual desert, an artistic climacteric & with a heart shot full of holes. Being naturally atrabilious helps…

Ahhhh yes…inhale, hold, exhale…inhale, hold, exhale, swallow, swallow, glug, glug, repeat as needed…nothin’ to it…I can beat this rap too…I didn’t last this long by imaginative foresight, o no, it was a fortuitous accident like a never-ending-as-of-yet accident, an ongoing accident as we speak, continuously rolling non-stop over and over…no planning is why I am where I am…it takes a lot of regrettable hindsight to get this far and finally see the answer as I’m crawling from the wreckage. The irony strikes me funny while I am hot and I haffta laff…then decap a stout, roll a bone & eat a perc…life is good o yes, life is good I guess, just depends on how you look at it…

Notes From The Dump

“VISSI D’ARTE, VISSI D’AMORE…”

…I lived for art, I lived for love…

Hmmm…I wonder…is it true and if it is, was it worth it? At certain times in my life I lived for a drink never mind Art, let him get his own and what did love have to do with it after all?

Ah me, maybe being a realist is not the way to approach this; I should have been/should become more cynical…and less circumspect too I suppose but I get off on these tangents (double entendre intended) and never quite seem to get back to the seminal/root causes and effects of ½ a century of dissolution, speaking of which…hold on Dude I gotta get an opener…

…ahhhh, that’s better, now where was I…

O yes, prattling on much in the fashion of NFTD and O I have to tell you about this Friend of mine who I told I had (have) a Jones for Johnny Depp which she immediately made clear she thought I wanted to jump his bones and I hastened to explain that this was not going to be the day I came out of the closet and that I had misspoke because I don’t really have a Jones for Johnny but rather for Jack Sparrow and I did not want to have sex with Captain Jack, I want to BE him that’s all…she snorted with derision. Look here I said, “I’ve given Dudes a peck on the cheek but never a cheek on the pecker and I’ve never puffed a pecker either which is more than you can say, “ and we laughed.

LIKE A 6-DECADES-OLD, DRUNKEN STUMBLEBUM (AHEM…)

…I lurch from bed and stagger to my feet, aging, barely-used legs wobbly to the max, heart pounding, ruined lungs flat like those latex birthday balloons the day after the party, and on fire, mind racing out of control, fear and dread consuming the essence of me, and this Dvorak cello and violin concerto is tearing me up…tearing me up and tearing me up, ahhhh, what might have been! As fast as these pins can get me to the fridge I am on a Bud pounder and it is half gone before I realize I have opened it…you’ve been there if you drink.

…so ok, I settle down a little, glug, glug - the troubles ease a bit, you’ve been there too whether you drink or not, some days things are alright and some days they are not alright.

…like yesterday was a beautiful day for me, shelter from the storm, things were wonderful; I had the great privilege and good fortune of going to dinner with my Darling Daughter & her Darling Daughter last night for the former’s birthday in The Riverview Restaurant down in Brattleboro overlooking the Queen of Rivers, The Connecticut. The setting, the ambiance, the food, all was tasty, and in the company of my two all-time favorite females I was in fine fettle and in heaven-on-earth…all too soon the night passed, we parted, and in solitary melancholy did I make the long ride home.

Random NOTES From Wrinkled Scraps

THERE’S A NUMBER OF THINGS ABOUT DYING…

…which do not hold that much appeal for me, indeed to none of us, but must be dealt with, so let’s cut to the chase…you and I both know that one of the main reasons the nursing home looks so grim in your mind’s eye is because, a) somebody’s got to wipe your ass and brush your teeth, and b) rarely do you leave the place except in a pine box…so part of the dying process is, unless you get it over with quick like a heart attack or somebody puts a round through you, you gotta move out of your cozy little apartment and into a room with a stranger who wants to talk, and who stinks. All nursing homes stink and you know why, no need to get too picturesque…

Many, maybe even most of the people who work in nursing homes and hospice care are loving and dedicated but in every one of them there’s a virago with a rectal thermometer, an attitude and your morphine so you’ve got to kiss a little ass even on your death bed fer Cris’sakes; for comfort one finds solace in the fact that the poor dear spends all day looking up/down and sideways at assholes; if you are not the lead dog in the traces what are you looking at?

NOT SURE I CAN TELL THIS RIGHT OR IF YOU HAD TO BE THERE…

…but it goes something like this: Some friends went on vacation one summer and had me look after their home etc. and as such I was afforded the use of a shower out of which I have just stepped and noticing a summer heat rash at the top of my legs – let’s get the anatomy out of the way here – the crotch, front…a drainpipe, a scrotum and the twins dangled there – so I saw in the medicine cabinet some cream and put it on…as I dressed, my groin area began to tingle and get warm, then warmer, then warmer - now hot and hotter - the twins are burning up and I begin yelling and yanking my clothes off – thank heavens no one was there – to touch this tender area with this cream on it is like putting a Zippo to my flesh and it’s burning me so badly I am no longer shouting but shrieking in agony – it was at this juncture in my life when I realized that the celluloid heroes who holler manly and shout like stentorians to the very end, actually scream in ear-piercing, off-the-charts, high-pitched decibels; no heroic roars here Dude, o no not this boy - and jumping up and down and racing from room to room – bareass mind you – suffering the worst agonies I’ve ever known…nothing physical before or since hurt that much! Think H2SO4…

O man, had anyone happened through the door they would have seen a raving lunatic yowling in pain and leaping up & down in-place while pointing at his bouncing gonads – funny visual no? Two more showers and one hour later the blaze was out. Lesson learned: Desitin yes, but never put Desenex crème on your nuts…

(I have a beloved Aunt Gogi who loves me but quit reading NFTD many years ago after I told a number of my homeless-covered-with-lice and living-with-rats tales…I wonder how this one would go over…)

Flags waving as opposed to flag waving

MY DARLING GRANDDAUGHTER AND I…

…had the great good fortune of spending a few hours on the morning of the 4th of July with an extraordinary woman whose singular passion to drive home the realities of war in Iraq, and war in the abstract, is manifested in a riveting, roving display of 3,581 miniature American flags, a Flag Memorial gently waving in the susurrant breeze, each one representing a fallen Father, Mother, Brother, Sister, Son, Daughter, killed in war, specifically Iraq, but the sad figure would soar by 409 if you add in Afghanistan and if you factored in all the dead of the war, no matter where they are from, and painted one flag for each you’d be painting flags in round-the-clock shifts; no one knows how many men, women and children are dead in this horrifying conflagration, and never mind whether you’re anti-war or ready to ship out yourself, for here on the Newfane (VT) Common, there is heard little posturing from either quarter, all seem focused only on this windblown paean to the dead…

…as we three, Lauri Richardson - dedicated to memorializing the fallen - and my Granddaughter Devon and me, are going through the motions, painting the field of blue and the Stars ‘n Stripes, and when dry attach to the display - each flag a death - a palpable sadness hovered near, there was no joy in what we were doing – each brush stroke it seemed to me put an exclamation point on the fact that one more soldier would not be coming home again except in a pine box covered with a flag, and laid to rest. We didn’t want there to be any more flags to paint. Since I started writing this issue 25 days ago, 58 more flags have been added.