Looking for a secluded oceanside retreat...

...in case you should happen to have one available for next to nothing in which I might enjoy the recuperative salt air and warm breezes of the Carribean for a while or two (prior to my Netherlands campaign I should take respite in a hammock for a fortnight perhaps, pina colada at the ready, reggae music coming at me on all sides) or even I might stoop to a visit in yon Florida Keys midst mangoes and pelicans, why not?

Wherever is warmth is my heart and soul. I've had 66 winters in New England more or less and the novelty has worn off. I don't care if I ever see snow or ice again, which I may regret saying someday as I languish in the tropics with nothing to do but paint and read and write and eat and drink and smoke and...

But meanwhile...

We're in the midst of what is known as a silver thaw where all the
branches and roadways and everything is encased in gleaming shimmering ice
- o yes it's very beautiful - beneath an ice-blue sky peppered with huge white clouds driven by an occluded front which translates down here to a bone-chilling ten degrees as I tramp across the tundra arms loaded with ice-caked wood...wood so green it needs a blowtorch to get it going.

Who needs it!?

The hell with this mountain man/cabin in the woods bullshit, I want a hammock in the jungle about 50 easy yards from the azure sea, breeze wafting my sarong to and fro...buds of resin-soaked ganje at my beck and call, buckets of fruit, bottles of Red Stripe, the sun bursting forth in a shower of glorious color in the morning and folding at night into ink-blue darkness - all the while I've barely stirred save to turn the page, light a splif, take a swallow, maybe even kiss your pretty plum-colored lips if you should show up. (Please be a girl...)

Don't stay though; I do my fantasizing alone.

Not to worry I tell myself; nobody stays very long. `You're better on paper than you are in real life' is a regular refrain in my memory, and still true for which I offer no apology.

THE FIRST THING I’M GONNA DO…

“…is stand up, but that’s as far ahead as I’ve planned…enuff of this sophomoric sophistry…”, I mutter aloud to no one and, upright now even if listing to port, head for the fridge to decap a stout, returning from which arduous chore (psychologically speaking the love-hate relationship is always there) I wonder did I mean that literally…sophomoric sophistry…hmmm…again Merriam-Webster to the rescue, I leave it to Noah’s wisdom and hope he delivers big time, because in the realm of the pure idea where NFTD is from - sophomoric reigns, Dude! It is like the foundation on which this sophistry is built!

…leave it to the lexicographers, just look at the synonyms for sophomoric: bombastic, foolish, immature, inexperienced, infantile, inflated, naive, pretentious, reckless, brash, young - except for young every word is me incarnate…and a sophist? How’s this, sophistry: specious, inconsistent, ah, be still my heart – NFTD is about as deft a hand of casuistry as you’re ever gonna see…we’re kindred spirits.

I STARTED LIFE WITH MONEY…

…for awhile I had some, then life began in earnest and the free ride was over; for the next forty years I had no money, then I hit a lottery, couple of them actually and, as happens in a life which isn’t fair, I had lots of fun and pretty much did what I wanted for a couple years then when it was gone reverted to type and continued life broke but not broken; about poor I know, and wealth too, the yin and yang of Galbraithian/Keynesian economic theory.

…everything you do is predicated on ‘can I afford it’…I have no stats to back me up but it seems to me that many, I will say even most, relationships and families which break up are grounded in the one common denominator of not enough money. Occasionally there’s a cuckolding interloper but usually it’s cash flow…

…look here Dude – I had $36,000 cash in my hand and I am here to tell you that people who go on and on about money can’t buy happiness don’t know what they’re talking about…for the duration of that 36Gs I was deliriously happy and, sad to say too because I abused some of it, sometimes just delirious…well, that is one of the deleterious side effects of having too much…but I was much younger and more foolish then than I am now; I’d like to get another windfall, this time you could color me frugal. Parenthetically, I could never understand why to husband means to save, to parse it out, whereas husbands are not noted for thrift…and speaking of thrift:
…It’s high time to hie thee to…

The Thrift Shop
Route 30, Townshend VT
Next to Mary Myers & Stuffed Bun
Open 10-4 M-W-F-S
Sun 10-1
You can outfit your entire family in clean, quality clothing for 20 bucks!
(Try THAT at Wal-Mart)

So right away I bury myself in Rousseau...

Jean Jacques Rousseau and his `Confessions' about which I've heard so much over the years but never until now had any truck with...why am I compared to him I ask myself and before long I see why with a quote like this: "My passions are extremely strong, and while I am under their sway nothing can equal my impetuosity. I am amenable to no restraint, respect, fear or decorum. I am cynical, bold, violent, and daring. No shame can stop me, no fear of danger alarm me. Except for the one object in my mind, the universe for me is non-existent. But all this lasts only a moment; and the next moment plunges me into complete annihilation. Catch me in a calm mood, I am all indolence and timidity. Everything alarms me, everything discourages me. I am frightened by a buzzing fly. I am too lazy to speak a word or make a gesture. So much am I a slave to fears and shames that I long to vanish from mortal sight. If action is necessary I do not know what to do; if I must speak I do not know what to say; if anyone looks at me I drop my eyes. When roused by passion, I can sometimes find the right words to say, but in ordinary conversation I can find none, none at all. I find conversation unbearable owing to the very fact that I am obliged to speak..."

I burst out laughing…a man after my own heart I must say but I'll have to read on further to see if his life's confessions and mine are compatible beyond these rather dubious distinctions...

Business and pleasure may not mix...

…but pleasure and pleasure do...does…so in concelebrating this not-so-ballyhooed non-event, the 24th birthday of “…NOTES…” I salute us, me and you Dear Reader, by burning evidence with a bone which is the herbal equivalent of an all-day sucker and a jeroboam of Moet which, alas Dear Reader, because you are not here, I had to drink it myself lest it go bad; you would have liked it…I think I did, I don’t quite remember, about half-way down the label things got a little lightheaded which is what champagne is all about so I let it take over and drifted off into the ether, into the distant universe, lost in space, adrift in the Sea of Tranquility and never left the chair. That is a sum and substance synopsis of that inauspicious moment.

THE LOVES OF MY LIFE PREPARE TO LEAVE…

…I fear I shall never see them again…anguish and despair overcome me, no idea what I’m going to do without them…well that’s pretty selfish, nothing new there with me always thinking of me me me as I drift off into one of my many simpering, self-pitying harangues…well, it soon passes and life is still good even if it’s not as good as it was…there's an unfillable void where they stood...

I'm not exactly a great role model...

…unless how-not-to is the template…cracks me up; wears me down too, the weight of life is sometimes enervating but often as not fun and exciting…you get knocked about quite a bit before you get it right then it comes as a shock like it happened over night…meanwhile six and a fucking half decades have come and gone, now: chickens come home to roost, pay back, time is up…in the words of my buddy Killer, ‘You’ve cheated the hangman for a long time…’

THERE'S NOTHING I DON'T KNOW...

...about drinking. Nothing…and you can give me any test you like and I will prove my, ah, boast; well, it's not a boast it's true. In actual fact, since my first beer around 1957-58, being conservative in my estimate, I have probably drank up (using 55-gallon drums as a benchmark) about - GOOD CHRIST!- 5 of them. How can it be?! I should be dead long ago and we haven't even tossed in a couple barrels of Jameson's and a variety of other rotgut liquors, not to mention a half-barrel of Kahlua…I don't do it anymore, drink to excess, rarely even drink although I like Michael's homemade Dogbolter and/or a Guinness occasionally, but no more by the case lot and no liquor either...well (whisper, whisper) more or less, but I do love those Mudslides...

…if you drink too much you're going to get wet brain and babble on like a bloody fool (ahem), your liver will fail you - don't think it won't, and you'll stumble and fall, get battered and bruised, smash up your car(s), go to jail, go to the morgue. Diminished capacity as a way of life…as a drunk the route is necessarily circuitous so you'll have lots of laughs along the way but all in all you're the big loser; in the main, though regrets I have a few, I think I learned more from those wasted years than I ever could have picked up in a classroom but how valuable these lessons are who is to say?

…these are some of the things awaiting you with each bottle you decant, and don't be misled into thinking that because you drink expensive wines from Bordeaux from your very own wine cellar beneath your chateau, and not Old Duke from a cheap tin flask, that you're any less of a drunk.

IT AIN’T ILLEGAL, OR EVEN BAD, UNTIL YOU GET CAUGHT…

…then, can you believe it, the accused suddenly is filled with remorse - it was a mistake…very remorseful your honor, isn’t the real me…had I only known I never would have done it, etc – but only once ‘they’ (I/you/we) get found out, then in sets the regret, the restitution, the oily and sycophantic pledges to reform, etc. to dodge the truth of the matter, which is guilty, guilty beyond all get-out, there was guilt, however, only because (I/you/we/they again) got bagged…I shan’t speak for you, so you’re excused, I mean me of course, it’s always me me me in my world…hmmm…where was I…o yeah, banging on about time spent in another life - the money was good, if I hadn’t got caught I’d still be doing it…

“ONLY THROUGH GUILE…”

…I exclaim to The Fool In The Mirror, “…have you gotten this far!” Hmmm…I wonder, is guile what I mean? I’ll leave it to Merriam-Webster and with a hoot bark out a laugh, “Just what I had in mind,” I say, deceitful, cunning…too funny and, also of course, not funny at all…

A TOMASO ALBINONI OBOE CONCERTO…

…is so so pretty I am weak in the knees like a young fellow gets just before he gets to kiss his little girl friends lips for the first time, first for both, a sweet moment that lasts nearly 60 years…that kiss and this concerto are inextricably entwined…

HOW COULD IT HAVE COME TO THIS…

…I holler and instantly follow it with a shouted, ‘HOW COULD IT NOT!!?’

O, o, to have known then what I know now.

A concatenation of conflicting events...

…and POOF! – 65 years pass in a heartbeat eliciting a withering stare from the Fool In The Mirror, a look that would freeze the nuts off a steel bridge…’This what you end up with…’ Two rooms in a pre-nursing home facility, a very nice one mind you for which I am decidedly more than grateful but, like most of us here, would rather be in what were our homes elsewhere, when we were young…well, this is what we’re left with, two rooms half full and a small storage facility, all of it not worth $5000, so from the fiscal standpoint it ends up not so good, but Dude! I’ve spent a fortune, hardly any of it mine…in some cases I’m still getting bills, some of which money could pay off but moral debts born of character flaws cannot be repaid in my considered opinion…