More Random NOTES From Wrinkled Scraps...

IT IS NOT ONLY APPALLING BUT SICKENING…

…that 46 nations have signed on to prohibit the use of cluster bombs in war but the Unites State, Russia, China and Israel, the largest makers of bombs in the world, are not among the signatories…imagine, our great country approves the use of cluster bombs, indeed makes them! The people who supposedly are in charge of this world make bombs specifically designed to blow up civilians, principally children who have been murdered and maimed by the 1000s…it is a sick world we live in run by sickos…throw the bounders out! Whatever it takes, rise up, act up, run the blaggards out of town…

What is happening to us – all of us, any man woman or child over, say, 12, needs to pitch in for Peace On Earth for real before it’s too late which it almost is…it’s still true that if you’re not part of the solution you’re part of the problem…well, far be it from me to get too preachy having done so little myself in this war to wage peace…

…meanwhile, what has become of us? Hyperbolic blustering and macho swaggering and saber rattling nut cases are in charge and bringing the world to its collective knees in shock, horror, sorrow and even prayer…

…of Russia, China and Israel one might expect this nefarious behavior and this ignominious device to be in their arsenal, but us, the US? We’re supposed to be the Good Guys; tell that to the survivors of cluster bombs, tell that to the parents of the dead children. ‘Bring out the dead, bring out the dead…’

REAPPEARING AFTER A WHITEOUT…

…I say/swoon to myself that ‘…all in all it’s very pleasant once you get beyond the strangulation…’ and I haffta laff… ‘…it’s a bitch though,’ I add aloud to no one. Make no mistake about it, the fear of dying when no breath comes in or goes out is very real but then somehow I am enshrouded in this serene cocoon that a whiteout is (as opposed to my still-warm cadaver being wrapped in the purple habiliments of death when one of these days the whiteout turns to blackout turns to lights out); it is womblike in its comforting warmth…not that I metempsychosically remember the womb, I don’t think I do but it apparently was a good place to be, fairly safe, free food & drink, all it lacked was a pool table, and you got to stretch your legs now and then at Mom’s expense, anyway I reappeared again from yet another whiteout; if being dead is anything like it, it’s not half-bad.

A whiteout as I call ‘em but which may in fact be tia’s or transient ischemic attacks, comes with the pulmonary illness territory, no way around it; it’s an adrenalin rush as frightfully thrilling as it gets and when you return to earth and aren’t dead after all, is as exhilarating as being shot at and missed…but that for another time…

…meanwhile I get to keep on tickin’ and taking no lickin’ and fob off another issue of NOTES on an unsuspecting public soon to be under my spell…you are getting sleepy, your eyes are heavy, your hands are reaching for your wallet…

Trinity, 1st Big One

I was going to be a star...

…of something, only I wasn’t sure what because I had no talent, but lots of stars don’t, they got a good pr man that’s all, anyway, in my case I didn’t feel I had any overpowering talents the madding crowd would shell out good money for…so the dilemma of What To Be was confounded and compounded…aHA!

...I’ll be an artist, as though calling oneself an artist made one an artist, so okay I’m a painter not a snooty artist, I’m a journeyman apprentice painter never to be a master, nor the inspiration for the T. Ward School of Art like the Hudson River boys, no, I’m a 1st class undiscovered, second tier painter and I still exult when I occasionally pull one off.

Of the 1,000 or so paintings I’ve done in the last 45 years I would say maybe 200 of them were very good, 75 or so of them were exceptional, maybe 25 of the 75 were absolutely beautiful and a handful of the 25 - brilliantly executed & dazzling to behold, and one timeless painting I call (see below) ‘Detail From Genesis’

...even though a picture is worth a 1,000 words (& in this case $3000 bucks but really it's not for sale...) might I explain this stroke of luck (as opposed to planned)?

...picture this: to the right - swooping in red-eyed and angry from being up all night, The Creator is spewing lightning, light and life, water, earth, sky and creatures – the gryphon to the left & behind it the long-neck of a dinosaur towering above…’Let There Be Light!’

...then later we came along is the NFTD synopsized version of the Old Testament...

Detail From Genesis

First, Dylan is a rocker...

…then everything else.
The world’s best worst voice.
…no one says it better, and as for that electric guitar he can’t play? I tell you, between that rare jewel and his magnificent once-in-mankind’s-existence voice, little musically is left to be desired; toss in that instantly recognizable harmonica coupled with the bittersweet, profound and sad/funny/true lyrics and his multi-talented musical sidekicks for the last nearly 40 years and you have arguably the single biggest musical phenomenon in history, The Beatles notwithstanding, and, ah, o…I should tell you…I’m getting drunk; no particular reason comes to mind to do so, but – it’s the mammal thing…
Dylan has played for everybody, Popes, Kings, Queens, Presidents, even me, Jill, Jeff & Ann, and everybody who is anybody has played for Dylan. Because of aforementioned JJ & A, not to mention T-Bone Wolk and Nick Branch, I once had the extraordinary privilege of being back stage with the Bob Dylan Band and met every member of it but one…the closest I got to Bob was 30 feet. Baron, his personal bodyguard, was there to see the hoi-polloi didn’t get too close. Hey, who wants to fight a 3rd generation kick-boxing karate teacher?
…did I mention I was drinking…o yes I see I did…well anyway…
In another life ‘Blood On The Tracks’ was playing when X jammed the pistol in my stomach and pulled the trigger for Cris’sakes on an empty chamber and I nearly threw up but somehow I managed to say ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about…’ which was true and he believed me, at least that time and then…well…later, THAT happened…lemme decap another brew here, hold on…(Dylan discography sponsored/fueled by Guinness/Kahlua & faulty memory, with embellishments…)

Yet another semi-sleepless night...

…up at two on with Dylan, Wisdom Indexfinger heavy on my mind; lonely days & nights, solo breakfasts & a thousand yard stare from The Fool In The Mirror await me, the future is permeated with misery; happiness, such as it is/briefly was, boards a wide-body Lufthansa & is gone in a moonlit flash. My heart plummets to earth. For all too brief a time I was youth incarnate again, Wisdom riding shotgun, well, at least in my addled head I was young again, the reality was that the age differential cannot be ignored. You think you’re 19 when you are 62 but you are not - the twilight years are on me, she is in the sunrise of life seeking (and born to) an uncommon destiny. Nu, I am blue, I tell you…

From: The Last Will & Testament of Terry's Trucking

March, 1985: I’d have to say that Nuda outsnores and can outsleep anybody. Last night, hammered, he fell asleep at the table, later got up, ate, drank some more – like (we) he really needed more, then nodded out on the mattress on the floor and began a deep-throated, phlegmatic snore that vibrated the windows and with great heaving, snucking gasping sobs he roared on oblivious to himself, lost in tranquility, disturbed not the least while I was not going to sleep a wink. “…I’ll show you you prick!”, I yell above the tumult and grabbing my baseball bat begin to bang on the floor as hard as I can – a home run with every swing - two feet from Nuda’s snoring proboscis and he doesn’t even hear it. “O yeah you bastard…” I holler and begin smashing the cast iron top of my wood stove with a dust pan and the maddening cacophony is enough to deafen me & wake the dead but not Nuda who drones on and so now I execute the piece de resistance, the coup de grace and crank up the chain saw as absolutely loud as it will snarlingly go and I swear I heard his snore above the din. Exasperated and beaten I shut the saw down and return bewildered and sleepless to bed as Brother Soussery snorts and groans and moans his way through deepest slumber…

The only reason I ever became...

…a night owl was because I was poor as can be and didn’t have a home to go to so in order not to have to sleep in the rain/snow/heat/cold until the very last minute, I’d hang around in the bars until closing, one two o’clock, and if you hung around in Carrie Nation’s, The Green Door, Murphy’s, The Golden Nugget and The Silver Dollar also, as long as I did, well, you had to drink, a lot too, you couldn’t just stand around in the warmth of the dingy dives so you had to drink and to do so you had to be cagey to cadge that draught and that shot of rye, and you had to have your derelict lines down pat, ad lib too, with great emotion sometimes when instead you’d (I’d) rather have had a nice warm bed somewhere and a louse-free home, but…indiscriminate Fate making a beggar out of Golden Boy is an old story, and today, domiciled in this very house for the last 13 years in a row, why, it’s no sooner dark and I am in bed with a book, haven’t been in a bar twice in two years I bet and not drunk at all, although I will have a beer with dinner irregularly, but not a dozen of 'em...

…even tho I must say sometimes the mighty urge is there and I’m barely able to restrain myself from leaping up and blasting out of this sublime scene and go racing west to the nearest saloon, there to put on a serious package, but so far so good...early to bed, early to rise it is for me...pull that blanket up, adjust the reading lamp, ease down into the pillows…I had enuff of the crazy life in my other life to last me two lifetimes…

S'TI NEEB A DOOG YAD...

…at least now that it’s over I can say that, but o man racing down always-dangerous Route 2 through Massachusetts in the torrents of rain issued by Floyd for seven straight hours, wore me out, but: now that it’s past and I’ve pocketed &/or banked a 100 bucks, plus filled the larder etc, well, all is doog, good, no Petes or Kennys crashed into me, not too much road rage on my part, well…a little coming in from Keene where this, ah never mind, I’ll just get all in a snit again, Christ it’s a wonder I don’t have a goddamned heart attack with my unbridled temper, and never mind heart attack – it’s a wonder someone doesn’t pull over and put a round through me as I pass waving the middle finger and spewing forth a volley of the vilest expletives. Now see, you might have been on the receiving end of all that craziness exhibited by me today on the highway and are not having a good time dealing with the all-too fresh memory of that lunatic (ahem) with a magenta-colored face, who was about to burst a handful of capillaries or go into stroke mode as he went screaming past you in a maniacal fury, and so you might not like to read about how my day ended good…since chances are I ruined yours.