WHENEVER YOU THROW GOD INTO THE OLIO…

…you’re going to have trouble because everybody’s got their own version of God. Moslems have a certain God, the Jews have a certain God, so too the Christians and each individual in those three beliefs has his/her personal concept of God and so we are left with a different God for each believer - six billion or so different concepts of what/who God is and what he/she/it does, or, factoring in the non-believers, who he/she/it isn’t and what he/she/it doesn’t do. As a survived Catholic my picture of God was sort of an old Christ, very old…now 59 years into this life I’m not sure what if anything is out there; nothingness is my aging existentialist guess, nothing & no purpose, but I’m open to suggestions although I don’t want anybody jamming their ideas down (or slitting) my throat. My favor needs be curried. The secular humanist in me cries out for reason midst chaos, or is it the other way around?

A careful reading of current events hints broadly of further carnage by all of the above in the name of God. Juxtapose the order as you will, Jews are killing Moslems are killing Christians are killing Jews are killing Christians are killing Moslems ad nauseum and, I’m afraid, ad infinitum, as there is no end of the circuitous, ubiquitous slaughter in sight.

Armed forces are fighting hammer and tong around the globe, the battle in the streets has not come full-circle to America yet but soon a cabbie in Manhattan will blow himself up in front of Sardi’s, the war comes home, the WTC, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania prelude to the catastrophes sure to follow.

I USE TO HAVE A SHORT FUSE AND A HAIR-TRIGGER BAD TEMPER...

...but I no longer have the horsepower to back it up. I never really did; bluster, bravado and nuance saved me a few beatings…push comes to shove, I'm sunk…so these days I tend to blow fuses and throw tantrums at home alone, with only the walls to witness the childish/churlish display of outrageously inane behavior, a case study in Type A male running amok, me the sole victim...perp & victim rolled-in-one. Little wonder I live alone...

One night Betty gave me a ride home to my little hovel by the brook and upon entering the dimly-lit-with-a-red-bulb, one room former chicken coop I lived in and called home, immediately I saw a painting was missing, a big one, no way I could've misplaced it, it was gone - oh, incidentally, at this point my relationship with Betty was about six beers and four hours old and I was plumb ready to get cozy with the little beauty but the minute I saw my painting was gone I flew into a rage and began screaming bloody blue murder and yelling and hollering into the late night sound-asleep neighborhood, and, not that anything else was needed, but for emphasis I began flinging pots of paint Pollocky around the walls of the chicken coop and when last I saw my main squeeze Betty, well, with a screech of tires, she was hightailing it up the driveway in her slant-six Dodge and even though I couldn't see her I just know she was wiping her brow with the back of her hand and going, "Wheeeew, fuckin' head case...lemme outta here..." and Dear Reader - can you believe it, I never saw the poor lass again, but I did find my painting which some of my buddies had hid (Doc Pomus-like) up on the roof...

…PINGUID AND ODIFEROUS WITH GRUMP…

…and incandescent with disbelief, I lay my head on the table, stunned and shaken by the grim news. Life hasn’t been fun for quite awhile but the death of the mother of my children, Sean and Cassandra, my ex- and only wife, Linda, the love of my life, has plunged me into despair. She was a wonderful girl and a great woman. Lady doesn’t fit, wrong era, she could break a horse, tie a fly, climb a tree or cut it down and wrestle you to the ground. She also looked very pretty in a dress.

She was 17 to my 21 then on The Acropolis where we met and in the warren of streets beneath it, The Plaka, where we played, when she astonished me one day and said, “Will you marry me Terry? I will always love you and never leave you?” I know what it means to weep for joy and now with her gone forever I know what it is to weep from a sorrow so deep I see no end to it in this life.

It points up exactly my many faults and as I have said before, no other success compensates for failure in the home; it is a badge of insufferable pain and shame I will take to the grave. I would’ve, I should’ve, I could’ve come crashing down on me…

"...Notes From The Dump..." - by Terry Ward

The Plaka, Athens, 1965

…the streets of my early sorrows where I once lived, loved, wrote, read, painted, first smoked dope…there we were - high above the city on The Acropolis @ sunrise – me and Linda, the light & love of my ever-loving past life!

Now this young love – so real then, so thrilling, so filled with promise, is a distant memory and a, let’s face it, tacky literary device…some people write what they believe others would like to read, hear; others – me for instance, write and make people believe what they are reading, or so I hope.

…a Bach orchestral suite interrupts my reveries…Bach’s 2nd orchestral suite for a flute and, Dude, this guy Ransom Wilson is blowin’ his brains out through his pennywhistle, it is just great and plunges me into a state of introspective lachrymosa, the only place for a melancholy man to be; I tried being happy once, I didn’t like it…I was young, thought there was actually something to it all, that somewhere an uncommon, if lugubrious, destiny awaited me…

NOTES FROM THE DUMP...by Terry Ward

Warning: Not for the faint of heart...

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

…the way things are going I expect a stroke will likely cut me down mate and shiver my timbers right into the grave, there to repose ad infinitum…

…I didn’t realize my house was such a sty until someone cleaned it for me and I saw the enormous difference. Who knew? For months dust and dust mites have had free rein…

…I never was a big fan of the Three Stooges but I always loved the word stooge, it is so descriptive; even without looking up the definition you know what it means…hmmm, but do I…okay so I look it up: stooge, well there’s the definition we know but alternately ‘an underling’ or ‘an associate’…I don’t know many stooges but it’s another vaudeville term originally…

…lungs like one of those flattened latex party balloons two days later, an apt analogy after having ruined my air bags and life through a variety of what in a polite society might be called missteps but really were far worse, smoking until I could barely draw a breath, strangling myself, gasping, can barely make it up in the morning or down at night, breathless, terrified, alone and in a psychological, physiological, philosophical, fiscal and physical meltdown, hell on earth!

…other than that everything’s pretty good…

…if it ever comes to it the tobacco industry won’t have to do too much to retool for dope. Instead of drying the leaf, dry the bud; shred and package like Camels and – bingo – off with your head…

…too much reality is not good for you which is where NFTD comes in handy…NFTD – Much ado about nothing since 1986…

…what happens when you crack your knuckles is, as I understand it, little sacs of senovial fluid are exploding which is cute and/or annoying in youth and sometimes beyond but that exploding senovial fluid was a lubricant like WD40 and now at nearly 66, having cracked my knuckles every which way known to man, twist, yank, bend, snap fingers practically off until the shit all dried up and now, an aging fool, merely bending a thumb and a forefinger around a pen is friggin’ agony…

…like a heart attack I once had I can assure you dying is not that much fun either, way not fun…I’m no visionary but everyday many times a day through each unbearable spell of barely breathing I envision death and dying, a grave deep in Mother Earth, pitch black (it’s the one thing I own I fear, having outlived all my other fears) not darkness while you wait for your eyes to adjust but true dark, black, no light, no getting used to, no in no out no up no down no escape…eternal darkness…then my air bags (so far) finally refill and life is back, o hey I didn’t buck the kicket yet, wheeew, that was close…now, where was I…

…my DgD (Darling Granddaughter) had the great good fortune of going to Van’s Warped Tour this summer down to Hartford and there was treated to a number of fine bands including this one, Flogging Molly, singing among other tunes this fine 21st Century Irish ballad, ‘Drunken Lullabies’

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pDwlGbEcJ6Y

Here’s three books will make your life more full:

Steaming to Bamboola – (Can’t remember who wrote it…)

The Ginger Man – J. P. Donleavy

A Fan’s Notes – Frederick Exley

I hate telling you this...

...in a way because it pokes yet another hole in the worn fabric which is my shredded character, but it goes like this and you can do with it what you might:

Later...

Whatever I had in mind to divulge to you has fled and so...you didn't want to know anyway...drunker. Stoned. All manner of the so-called real world blotting out - or trying to blot out anyway - the REAL world.

The REAL world, as I see it is an infinite variety of things one would never have thought possible. Isn't the real world starving children? In this latter-day Athens, Rome or Bamboola, isn't the real world a kick in the ass?

Shouldn't we pass out at night after busting our asses all day to help the afflicted? Should we be so complacent with our meager achievements while somewhere in this world our fellow Brothers and Sisters are dying like flies because they have nothing to eat? The white world-at-large doesn't seem to care much that blacks are starving to death. Maybe I'm wrong; the media could be painting an unclear picture, but it seems to me that if a half-million Limeys were starving in London they'd have whatever food they needed tomorrow.

Or sick with no cure in sight? I think, if I may speak my mind, that if AIDS were striking the middle-class and upper echelons of society instead of the poor, a bunch of junkies and homosexuals, that the cure would have been found about 50,000 deaths ago. The real world is a throbbing abscessed molar bringing tears to your eyes as you painfully, slowly - masticate your Gerber's.

It is a drive-by killing in LA, NY, SF - pick a city.

I realize the real world is also azaleas on Mineola Boulevard in the early spring and the real world is a kiss from your sweetheart at just the right moment in just the right place, so of course the life is somewhat improved by these things, and there are other reasons why the world isn't all that bad a place, things being relative.

A tooth is killing me (hyperbole, but it hurts like hell) so I drop a couple Rugby's a friend laid on me and a half hour or so later I'm feelin' alright, better. In fact, good but it'll pass and it'll be back to the real world again, pain and all. Whatta ya gonna do?