The Road to Mandalay...

…once littered with bougainvillea, jasmine and other lush jungle fauna is now covered with blood and the litter of fleeing multitudes as the Myanmar army mows down its own in an internecine struggle decades old…if ever there was a time for the United Nations to show what it’s made of, this is it. We need to see some major diplomacy here, and never mind putting more boots on the ground & guns in-country.

Be assured intervention could come from China, Burma/Myanmar’s largest trade partner, or Russia another one, and America of course has a hand in everything so it too must be considered. Burma’s totalitarian army has lots of guns and the three China, Russia & America are major arms dealers so there’s that to deal with; everyone has a vested interest.

Unfortunately for the poor People of Burma there’s a lot of oil and gas nearby that the aforementioned all have a craving, crying, hedonistic need for - so the strategy for who gets what if the Burmese Army gets routed, is a chess game…it’s anybody’s guess…the Chinese are not kowtowing to anybody these days – Mattel Toys kissed their ass after China sent lead-paint tainted toys for America’s kids – what’s with that? And Russia is reasserting itself as a force to re-reckoned with – George Bush is Vladimir Putin’s patsy; Bush thinks Putin is his friend; he isn’t. Putin likes American Jazz, not America.

I have no way of proving it but in my estimation a number of Burmese people have been beaten up, tortured or killed in just the time it’s taken me to write these few abysmally deficient paragraphs trying to highlight their plight…it’s everyone’s business; we’re all in this together and if we can help we are duty bound to do so even if only to sign a petition…no one expects you to sell the farm, grab your musket and head for Rangoon.

It’s a complex world and a wonder that anything runs at all.

I was thinking about great wealth...

...and how, once I DO hit the Mother Lode (and I will), it will take some getting used to.

Think about it...

One day, for instance, little Elvis is walking hand in hand down the streets of Tupelo with Grace, going to get an ice cream with a very short supply of extra cash and twenty years later this same Elvis is winging his way in the middle of the night on a private Lear jet from Graceland to Denver with a plane load of buddies, all because Elvis liked the way a certain joint in Denver made its peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, for which he had a sudden hankerin'...it turns out the PB & J, taking all expenses for the flight into consideration, cost about 1500 bucks.

I'll try to exercise a little control, maybe have them send me one UPS or Fed Ex me a Omaha steak or something...

Trouble is I'm going to be sitting here with all this cash and nothing to do. Other than to upgrade this beat weed I got I don't know what I'd do first if suddenly there stood in the doorway the Benevolent Sponsor I've awaited so eagerly for the last half-century (oddly enough my addled head over the years has convinced itself that this wraithlike creature with a philanthropic interest in me - and a bankroll to back it up, WILL show up one day...)

It's why I don't have a job! Why bother, knowing as I do that any day now, any day now, there (s)he is, portfolio in one hand, blank check with my name on it in the other?!

Meanwhile I've been doing my share of peanut butter and jelly myself Elvis.

Incidentally, how come Elvis' picture is on a stamp? I thought you had to be dead to rate a stamp?

Of course there being no normal...

...then there's really no abnormal, no crazy.

`There's no normal' is not just some meaningless refrain I've been repeating for the last 30 years, there IS NO normal (What is it and who says so?), so all manner of behavior is therein implied, if not exactly forgiven when it strays way beyond`generally accepted' behavior, but even that is relative...it's alright to
_____________________ but you better not ___________________, fill in your own blanks, based on what YOU call normal.

But...

Ah yes, but - the qualifier, the modifier, the mitigating circumstances you say, a benchmark from which to judge. Well, I make no value judgments - I don't know how I could ever sit on a jury - but if you want to pay witness to far-out behavior in a world you may not be familar with but toward which you have a vicarious leaning (long windy sentence huh? It's the blowhard way of diehard NFTD...)

...now where was I? (I just had some GOOOD bud!)

Yes I recall now: If you want to see how the flip side of Family Values lives I suggest you pay court to Seth Morgan's book called `Homeboy', a tour de force and a walk on the wild side courtesy of Fate, courtesy of the California State Board of Prisons and the great talent of Seth Morgan, who had to be writing more or less autobiographically and for all I know may still be languishing on ice waiting to raise up out of Coldwater. It's a wild ride on the wild side. Pretty violent but pretty right on.

`Homeboy,' by Seth Morgan. I think it was Vintage Press, yes it was, it's Vintage. It's Vintage press and it's vintage prison. So all of a sudden I review books you say? Among my remaining qualities is a love for good writing and I feel eminently qualified to hold forth. Maybe I'm boasting but I got 6,000 books in my head to back me up. That may be a little high - Henry Miller once claimed I think that he'd read 5,000 books in his life he figured, course he was around 80 when he said that so maybe I'm pushing it but if I've read one book I've read thousands and thousands.

Seth Morgan and Edith Wharton are about as far removed as two people can
get in literature but truly they are soulmates. Both transcribed a period and
a way of life with profound exactness, or at least wrote in such a way as to
make a believer out of me anyway, poetic license don't you know...

Well, so much for my book report...

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. Drunk. 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?

Space travel notwithstanding, my dream is to return to Nea Makri...

...although I've never really left there in my heart of hearts - 19 months of my young life was spent there; two lifetimes there would not be enough to satisfy me. In that same vehicle, my heart - eemay Hellenas - I am a Greek, yes in my heart a special place for this little village by the sea, the Aegean Sea that is if you don't know - Nea Makri, an ancient horyatiki - village, stretched out alongside a robin's egg blue expanse of this historic body of water and behind me in rugged splendor, brilliant hillsides dotted with olive trees and long-haired goats, plenty of rocks for everybody, and, ah yes, The Blue Lights, a dreamy little waterside watering hole with dusky Mediterranean beauties dancing with other dusky Mediterranean beauties...

...and there was me, a dweeb-like presence in this fairyland, getting cuckoo as only ouzo can make you cuckoo. Regular readers will note that NFTD makes frequent use of drinking stories and rarely calls for abstinence but in the case of ouzo I urge you, skip it, better you should drink boiling oil.

I'll have to admit I was a quick-study and only once in my life did I ever drink too much ouzo (any is too much) but it lasted me all my life.

If Vassili was still alive (he'd only be about 98 or so) I'd slip him the 100 drachma I've owed him since August of 1964; I've been thoroughly entrenched in indebtedness since long before that even, since I stole the paper money from my paper route and plowed it into doughnuts hoping to make it back in tips but always came up short and it's just a lifelong habit of mine to never have any money except what YOU might have.

Hmmm...maybe also I'll look up Gina even though she's probably no longer 18 years old...Christ she's 65 if she's even alive! OK, I'll look up her daughter. "Ella tho Koritzee moo, sa ga po polee nomeezo, nay nay, vevayos."
(Come here Sweetheart, I think I love you, yes, yes, I'm sure of it...)

On that rare occasion when I...

...deign to immaculate my surroundings I do so to the strains of Bach - Hip-hop (which don't get me wrong I love you Ice Ice Baby) would have me prone before I got the dusting done - whose many concerti and oratoriae(-i-e-i-o) soothes and lulls the Oscar in me while Felix cleans.

Besides which Hip-hop leaves you no room for introspection because your
bouncing cerebellum can barely keep up with your jiggling cellulite and
flouncing adipose tissue; brain cells too tossed-about to think, plus Hip-hop, Rock or Country will have you banging into shit in the living room with your whirling dervish feet skittering across the gritty parquet in a cloud of choking dust carbon dating back to May, so Bach must prevail in the opening stages, at least until the dust clears, then gradually moving into high gear, out comes one of the late William Clarke's too few CDs, and as usual on this one William is blowing his brains out through that diatonic Hohner, a recording called: 'Serious Intentions', then you shuffle along in a 1-4-5 into the final stages of your abberational and temporary plunge into '...a new beginning, starting with the house cleaning!' which ends soon enough, and you, I, I mean I, me...I'm forever using - you - but I usually mean me...

Anyway, just warming up my fingers on the keyboard, speaking of gritty...

I would like to make clear that I am...

...neither monster, beast nor creep but I have led a wildly irresponsible life which is driven home to me with every strain of Bach I listen to, each melancholy note driving me deeper into introspection, brooding even, for instead of leaning back and reflecting on the life I've led (lead) with pleasure, it is a reflection tinged by, nay tinged, charred! & accompanied by head-shaking disbelief; how could I have done that! What was I thinking?

And of course, there you have it, I wasn't thinking. Thinking is something I didn't do much of in those days and now it is about all I do.

I often hear people say something to the effect that 'O I'd love to go
back and see So & So again...' Not me, I'd be mortified. And I still wouldn't have an answer.

No, in the reflected light of my past there is no golden glow and my youthful dreams of being the non-catamite Walt Whitman/Jack Kerouac of my day, which ambition gave way to a myriad other desires and took a variety of guises to keep from being ME, crashed in the dust of dissolution.

Elsewhere in these "...NOTES..." my Friend Sam writes '...you possibly may try to shift the NFTD focus in a bit of a direction other than Terry's life...'

Sometimes I would like to do that, Sam, write a sustained narrative and never use the pronoun I, but I don't do it, wouldn't know how, have lived this way too long to suddenly about-face. I'm stuck with me, and according to the trickle down theory, so are you.

Well, we'll have to bear up under the strain and press on, there are still things to do, what exactly I'm not sure, but each day I hit the deck running, ready for come what may.

What on earth is he thinking?

...our Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who is about to ask of our gutless wonders in the sullied halls of Congress, the world's most chickenshit debating society, to approve $190 billion with which to fight the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, neither of which can be won if the dirtbag trebled his request and got it; it's an unwinnable war...he and his Boss, the Commander-in-Grief are so astonishingly out of touch with the world and The People, Yes - not to mention reality, they make my head spin...George Bush, Dick Cheney and Robert Gates et al are the biggest threat to the safety of our earth, way more than the so-called Axis of Evil, these three clueless malcontents have brought down on America The Beautiful the opprobrium of most of the world.

$190 billion dollars for a war that can't be won while I'm trying to stretch a $790 per month disability and Social Security pension to pay the bills while this Neanderthal throwback and the monkey he represents have the audacity to plumb the taxpayer for more - the United States is building an embassy in Baghdad which we will never occupy, in my opinion, never...592 million of your/our tax dollars up in smoke...

George Bush is the worst president the United States has ever had and Dick Cheney - the penultimate in dirtbags, usurped for the honor of ultimate only by his boss, is the worst Vice President; they should be impeached, tried for war crimes, drummed out of office and thrown in a dungeon.

As of 10 a.m. this morning they have been responsible for the deaths of 3,797 of our loving Brothers & Sisters, Sons & Daughters, Mothers and Fathers.

War, what is it good for? Nothin', absolutely nothing!

‘The man who in times of popular excitement boldly and unflinchingly resists hot-tempered clamor for an unnecessary war, and thus exposes himself to the opprobrious imputation of a lack of patriotism or of courage, to the end of saving his country from a great calamity, is, as to loving and faithfully serving his country, at least as good a patriot as the hero of the most daring feat of arms, and a far better one than those who, with an ostentatious pretense of superior patriotism, cry for war before it is needed, especially if then they let others do the fighting…our country right or wrong. When right, to be kept right; when wrong, to be put right…’ Carl Schurz, Union General, Civil War…

EXCERPTS FROM YOUR LOVING CARDS, LETTERS & E MAILS...

"...I forgot! Thank you again for the fabulous description of your East Clintwood out to the sweet young thing's car & getting shot down. Been there, been there, been there. Screamed in laughter & pain. Also loved your Finlandia kitchen dance." - Susan Mueller, Wilmette IL

"...I am always delighted to find a penned note tucked in the pages of NFTD. Enjoy a good read when it arrives. We must have been in NYC around the same time - Allison Steele (The Night Bird) - I was a fan. Knives in the gullet, fear in the street & silent footsteps on the fire escape of my Hell's Kitchen flat, listening for the `all-clear' whistle from the bloke on the roof are all too familiar..." - Judith Linstedt, Fitchburg MA

"Not that it is news to you, but you are one prolific dude...it would be great if you could find the time sometime to do a list of books you've read - 6,000 books is an awfully impressive reading history, and any list that includes Frederick Exley, Edith Wharton AND Seth Morgan is a list I'd like to publish!" - Mark R. Harris, Publisher, REDISCOVERIES Passaic, NJ 07055

"...again I'd really like to thank you for the kind words...the encouragement of friends is what keeps you going. I was very moved by your honesty a few issues back...if anyone has paid their dues THOU has...I'd like to think that once the Karmic debts tilt to OUR credit side, we can relax just a little. Poverty gets OLD, but seems to nurture my sense of humor..." - Judy Miller, Sparks NV