...you're not being taken in by the gimcrack-brained televangelists passing themselves off as emissaries of god are you? They're a hokey lot of mostly honky monkeys aren't they? $300 blow drys (and jobs, the hypocrites) plus $1000 suits and $500 alligator shoes they'd have you believe are made from scraps of Jesus Christ Almighty's own goddamned sandals fer Cris'sakes...
Many people do believe these charlatans, these fake fakirs; their shrill hyperbole nets them millions annually; their pontificating peurilisms redound with absconded funds in the name of some non-existent god. They babble ridiculously on like zealots from Babylon in their zeal to convert you and your funds to their accounts and they prattle and blather stupidly away in an idly twaddling manner reminiscent of yours truly.
Religion is by far the sleaziest of pyramid schemes - you reap zero
benefitsuntil you die, according to its lights - and its multitudinous and
nefarious proselityzing (and wealthy) acolytes are the most unctuous of snake oil salesmen.
I only wish I had got in on it earlier myself so I coulda cleaned house.
'Brother Terry Speaks Tonight, All Are Welcome...$15 offering'
'Brother$ & $i$ter$, Plea$e Hear The Word From Brother T Bob...'
'Lord Have Mercy!', he cried, and the congregation fell to its collective knees, bound under the spell of Brother Terry's ringing oratory exhorting sinners one and all to heed the word of the Lord as defined in paragraph two of Bro T's spellbinding autobiography as only he can tell it, ten bucks at the door on the way in,$15 on leaving...get it while you can and
praise god when high, hallelujah...
Sunday, September 28, 2008
Saturday, September 13, 2008
Thursday, September 11, 2008
NFTD PATS ON THE BACK, SORT OF...
Wardster,
It's always good to read your drivel. I enjoy having my mind clogged with your wordsmanship like I've been clogging my arteries for the past 58 years. What's another blockage? Anyway, I just returned from 39 days/nights in a tent in the southwestern deserts and mountains. You can view some (I haven't had a chance to process them all yet) of the photos at my website. www.MikeDiRenzo.com I'll attach a couple for your viewing pleasure. Stay well, keep doing what you do.
Regards, Mike
Northern Foolish,
Haven't had a minute to keep in touch which is something I promised myself I would not do with any of my friends. My busy season just ended with Labor Day. Weekends will stay busy but mid week is now slow with a few exceptions like October Bike Week and a Golf Convention. I am now getting ready to experience Hurricane Season. I guess I don't really understand all the worry about it. We have the weather channel. If a hurricane is coming, fucking leave. How difficult is that?
Anyways, I am writing to tell you that I have finally had a moment to pack up another package for you. AGAIN, nothing in it will get you locked up. Some lager libations, some pickles for "miss pickles", some Bloody Mary Mix that will satisfy your exquisite palette, it is Vodka Free and a few more local delicacies along with a letter and some pictures. Let me know when it arrives, it will be coming via UPS. Enjoy and keep in touch.
Southern Foolish
Hey Terry
Checked out your blog and read the newsletter you gave to me when I took your picture - looks good on the blog. Love the stories man. You have the clear honesty of a true artist - and the angst to go with it. You can make me laugh - sometimes to keep from cryin - right?
I wish I could make a movie about some of your tales - they do read like scenes for me. Little vignettes from the Zen of the moment. And your writing style and persona really brings it through.
Hope things are good in beautiful VT. The CERN atom smasher is in the news lately. Some scientists are afraid it might create a black hole, or strangelets and end the world. That sounds like something you would make up. "The strangelets have arrived".
Anyways the Mayan calendar ends in 2012. See you at the party.
Stan
(Dear NFTD READER - Stan, above, is Stan Sadowski from somewhere in PA who is responsible (I mean Thank You Stan) for the photograph of me above, hard at work in the Thrift Shop in Townshend VT 802/365-7234
It's always good to read your drivel. I enjoy having my mind clogged with your wordsmanship like I've been clogging my arteries for the past 58 years. What's another blockage? Anyway, I just returned from 39 days/nights in a tent in the southwestern deserts and mountains. You can view some (I haven't had a chance to process them all yet) of the photos at my website. www.MikeDiRenzo.com I'll attach a couple for your viewing pleasure. Stay well, keep doing what you do.
Regards, Mike
Northern Foolish,
Haven't had a minute to keep in touch which is something I promised myself I would not do with any of my friends. My busy season just ended with Labor Day. Weekends will stay busy but mid week is now slow with a few exceptions like October Bike Week and a Golf Convention. I am now getting ready to experience Hurricane Season. I guess I don't really understand all the worry about it. We have the weather channel. If a hurricane is coming, fucking leave. How difficult is that?
Anyways, I am writing to tell you that I have finally had a moment to pack up another package for you. AGAIN, nothing in it will get you locked up. Some lager libations, some pickles for "miss pickles", some Bloody Mary Mix that will satisfy your exquisite palette, it is Vodka Free and a few more local delicacies along with a letter and some pictures. Let me know when it arrives, it will be coming via UPS. Enjoy and keep in touch.
Southern Foolish
Hey Terry
Checked out your blog and read the newsletter you gave to me when I took your picture - looks good on the blog. Love the stories man. You have the clear honesty of a true artist - and the angst to go with it. You can make me laugh - sometimes to keep from cryin - right?
I wish I could make a movie about some of your tales - they do read like scenes for me. Little vignettes from the Zen of the moment. And your writing style and persona really brings it through.
Hope things are good in beautiful VT. The CERN atom smasher is in the news lately. Some scientists are afraid it might create a black hole, or strangelets and end the world. That sounds like something you would make up. "The strangelets have arrived".
Anyways the Mayan calendar ends in 2012. See you at the party.
Stan
(Dear NFTD READER - Stan, above, is Stan Sadowski from somewhere in PA who is responsible (I mean Thank You Stan) for the photograph of me above, hard at work in the Thrift Shop in Townshend VT 802/365-7234
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
In those days...
...I WASN'T VERY STREET-WISE...
...so as I walked through the dark, labrynthine warren of the Combat Zone to my own garret along Commonwealth Avenue in Boston, a toney part of Back Bay I lived in light years & many fears ago, a naif to the world and very as-yet untried & unenlightened...
...I well recall throwing half-finished cigs into the gutters and watching the down and out scabrous bums of the day practically club one another to get to the smoldering butt in the filthy street, as I walked away laughing, an 18-year-old know-it-all with an attitude and a lot to learn, and learn that lesson I did as, fast forward 25 years, it was I - ME - scrambling for the butts in the gutter tossed by show-off kids!
...turnabout being fair play (this too I had learned) I had to laugh.
...at another point in this embryonic period of my life, we are talking 1961 and 1962, I in my unworldly ignorance was cruising afoot when I saw a man walking briskly along alone in the early Fall evening, through the Common which runs down the middle of Commonwealth Avenue, an easy mark I think as I draw alongside him, he stepping lively in his three-piece herring-bone tweed suit, pointed-toe boots, pale blue shirt, fancy Brooks Brothers tie, and a walking-stick umbrella tapping along beside him.
This should be good...
(I am not going to apologize for this, I have paid in many ways for decades, and - as you will see - I also paid for it immediately and have remembered the lesson all my life and become much enlightened since this incident, but not alone because of it; one grows and comes to know.)
Anyway...he looked like a pushover.
"Give it up," I said to him, "...gimme your wallet or else..."
...he grinned bigly...
...then went to work on me with the brolly! I created a monster! He was like Johnny Depp fer Cris'sakes, jabbing and poking that goddamned thing into my ribs and the next one was in my ass Jack because I was running away from this crazy bastard as fast as I could go and he was just as fastly hitting me with that umbrella and finally tripped me from behind and put the dukes to me without ever mussing up his fuckin' vest...
...you could call it an object lesson in crime control.
HANDEL'S OVERTURE TO 'THE ALEXANDER FEAST'...
...plays an unending loop in my mind...
It is so beautiful a melding of instruments and sound that I am held speechless, spellbound.
It is, in my humble estimation, one of the best pieces of music to ever
come down the pike and for myself, think it should definitely be my going away
music, but not yet, not yet...o, listen to it...it is so beautiful...you can
almost hear the encomiums pouring down on your anointed head as your ashes are
strewn willy-nilly over the back 40, or is it opprobrium being heaped upon my
poor mortal's earthly remains?
I'm sorry already, sheeesh...get a Handel on it. I make light of it but
it is a glorious work of art and I can listen to it as often as I can view a beautiful painting and never tire of it...
Yet, something about it is so bittersweet it breaks down every false
courage I ever had, leaves me...how could I explain...I SLAP my forhead!? How
explain indeed. There's no explaining some things.
Violins counterpoint to cello to bass to winds...it is all too much.
...then again it could be the Kahlua...
'THE REASON I HAVEN'T INFLICTED MYSELF ON YOU MORE FREQUENTLY,'
...I have been meaning to tell a Friend of mine, '...is because I come with a lot of baggage, sort of a goyisha Woody Allen, mayo on my angst; he's got his klezmer/jazz clarinet, I got Hank Williams Jr. "...nobody wants me, I'm nobody's child..." Do you need the grief?'
And besides I would say, 'I'd probably bore you in no time at all; I mean yawn/ho-hum boredom; I've been told I'm much better on paper than in real life and having been around me for so long I can attest to that.'
Withal I require fealty unbound almost to the point of mouth agape at every pithy remark I utter and a sort of 'Yes, my liege' look at all times on your pretty, heart-shaped face. And all too soon what I now consider your o-so-clever repartee, I would be calling your bitter invective and a harangue against all that I stand for! (Huh? Duh?)
Then there's the cooking you'll have to do and my entree with dinner is...well, I could go on, but all in all you see it's better I don't call, come over or write very often. Please try to control your anxiety at this sad turn of events and don't do anything rash. It'll be tough for awhile but you can get by without me.
AFTER RED-DOTTING A FRIEND...
...who was doubling as a recalcitrant subscriber I sent a second red-dot reminder - six blank pages titled "Not From The Dump" and sure enough the prod worked because a few days later, there in the incoming was a 20 dollar check and once again a reader was euchred, ah, ushered into the fold...
I put the check in my wallet and thought no more of it until today when I
signed it and put it in my checking account and noticed that in the place where you put what the check was for he'd written 'Junkmail'...
...so as I walked through the dark, labrynthine warren of the Combat Zone to my own garret along Commonwealth Avenue in Boston, a toney part of Back Bay I lived in light years & many fears ago, a naif to the world and very as-yet untried & unenlightened...
...I well recall throwing half-finished cigs into the gutters and watching the down and out scabrous bums of the day practically club one another to get to the smoldering butt in the filthy street, as I walked away laughing, an 18-year-old know-it-all with an attitude and a lot to learn, and learn that lesson I did as, fast forward 25 years, it was I - ME - scrambling for the butts in the gutter tossed by show-off kids!
...turnabout being fair play (this too I had learned) I had to laugh.
...at another point in this embryonic period of my life, we are talking 1961 and 1962, I in my unworldly ignorance was cruising afoot when I saw a man walking briskly along alone in the early Fall evening, through the Common which runs down the middle of Commonwealth Avenue, an easy mark I think as I draw alongside him, he stepping lively in his three-piece herring-bone tweed suit, pointed-toe boots, pale blue shirt, fancy Brooks Brothers tie, and a walking-stick umbrella tapping along beside him.
This should be good...
(I am not going to apologize for this, I have paid in many ways for decades, and - as you will see - I also paid for it immediately and have remembered the lesson all my life and become much enlightened since this incident, but not alone because of it; one grows and comes to know.)
Anyway...he looked like a pushover.
"Give it up," I said to him, "...gimme your wallet or else..."
...he grinned bigly...
...then went to work on me with the brolly! I created a monster! He was like Johnny Depp fer Cris'sakes, jabbing and poking that goddamned thing into my ribs and the next one was in my ass Jack because I was running away from this crazy bastard as fast as I could go and he was just as fastly hitting me with that umbrella and finally tripped me from behind and put the dukes to me without ever mussing up his fuckin' vest...
...you could call it an object lesson in crime control.
HANDEL'S OVERTURE TO 'THE ALEXANDER FEAST'...
...plays an unending loop in my mind...
It is so beautiful a melding of instruments and sound that I am held speechless, spellbound.
It is, in my humble estimation, one of the best pieces of music to ever
come down the pike and for myself, think it should definitely be my going away
music, but not yet, not yet...o, listen to it...it is so beautiful...you can
almost hear the encomiums pouring down on your anointed head as your ashes are
strewn willy-nilly over the back 40, or is it opprobrium being heaped upon my
poor mortal's earthly remains?
I'm sorry already, sheeesh...get a Handel on it. I make light of it but
it is a glorious work of art and I can listen to it as often as I can view a beautiful painting and never tire of it...
Yet, something about it is so bittersweet it breaks down every false
courage I ever had, leaves me...how could I explain...I SLAP my forhead!? How
explain indeed. There's no explaining some things.
Violins counterpoint to cello to bass to winds...it is all too much.
...then again it could be the Kahlua...
'THE REASON I HAVEN'T INFLICTED MYSELF ON YOU MORE FREQUENTLY,'
...I have been meaning to tell a Friend of mine, '...is because I come with a lot of baggage, sort of a goyisha Woody Allen, mayo on my angst; he's got his klezmer/jazz clarinet, I got Hank Williams Jr. "...nobody wants me, I'm nobody's child..." Do you need the grief?'
And besides I would say, 'I'd probably bore you in no time at all; I mean yawn/ho-hum boredom; I've been told I'm much better on paper than in real life and having been around me for so long I can attest to that.'
Withal I require fealty unbound almost to the point of mouth agape at every pithy remark I utter and a sort of 'Yes, my liege' look at all times on your pretty, heart-shaped face. And all too soon what I now consider your o-so-clever repartee, I would be calling your bitter invective and a harangue against all that I stand for! (Huh? Duh?)
Then there's the cooking you'll have to do and my entree with dinner is...well, I could go on, but all in all you see it's better I don't call, come over or write very often. Please try to control your anxiety at this sad turn of events and don't do anything rash. It'll be tough for awhile but you can get by without me.
AFTER RED-DOTTING A FRIEND...
...who was doubling as a recalcitrant subscriber I sent a second red-dot reminder - six blank pages titled "Not From The Dump" and sure enough the prod worked because a few days later, there in the incoming was a 20 dollar check and once again a reader was euchred, ah, ushered into the fold...
I put the check in my wallet and thought no more of it until today when I
signed it and put it in my checking account and noticed that in the place where you put what the check was for he'd written 'Junkmail'...
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
I s'pose you had to be there, but...
…I’m parked on top of the dam, to my left the wooden covered bridge a 100 feet above the gorge across which is jogging a Fox (sorry for the reversion to MCP 70s lingo) but she was so pretty and as she ran along was doing arm stretches and taking in the breathtaking view, then veered and stopped 15 feet from me and started leg exercises on the guard rail – be still my heart – and after a few of these goes by my open window and politely says, ‘Good morning,’ and begins more leg stretches at the other guard rail, now only ten feet away from me – the thrill of being privy to this youthful beauty is nearly more than I can bear and I practically swoon from the rush - suddenly she comes over to my window and says, ‘Do you know where there’s a good bakery?’
‘Bakery,’ I barked laughing, ‘…you’re doing all these exercises to keep looking as good as you do and you want to know where there’s some donuts?!’
‘It’s why I exercise,’ she said, ‘...so I can go to the bakery…’ I filled her in on the nearest jelly donut and she disappeared down the bleak road…
‘Bakery,’ I barked laughing, ‘…you’re doing all these exercises to keep looking as good as you do and you want to know where there’s some donuts?!’
‘It’s why I exercise,’ she said, ‘...so I can go to the bakery…’ I filled her in on the nearest jelly donut and she disappeared down the bleak road…
Monday, August 18, 2008
Now, where was I...
…BEFORE THE SHOTS RANG OUT…
…o yes, going on at length about life, I mean what else is there? And how can I not rattle on about my life if I’m going to prate on about anybody’s, for how could I rattle on about yours? You know you I don’t, and even if I did I don’t know you as well as I thought I did or maybe I know you more than I wanted to, or…ad infinitum…I only know me and not very well at that; I tend to keep an arm’s length from myself and The Fool In The Mirror, both of whom have caused/are causing me no end of problems…it wouldn’t be right of me to write of you, fact is – not really having much to do and not quite yet ready to leave the comfort of my new nest and get an actual job – I sit around writing all my life, making things up; most of NFTD is made up of people who don’t exist and friends I don’t really have, believe me, the imaginary lovers, the instances and incidents which took place only in the mind, stories of places I’ve never been about people I never knew doing things that didn’t happen, anything just to get out of this miasma I DO live in…NFTD, the apotheosis of apocrypha…the apogee of exaggeration and the penultimate (the ultimate but one) in plagiarism, all in all a package deal. Hey, you get what you pay for…
…SPEAKING OF WHICH…DON’T READ THIS…
(Dude, look here, this is gotta be sorta sotto voce, small print know what I’m saying…don’t want just anyolebody to know I’m tapped and I was, ah, like wondering if I could, you know Dude like touch you up for like, you know, a handout, help with my drinking, I mean printing costs…any amount would do, from George Washington to Ben Franklin or a fistful of both would be nice…I once won $50,000 in a scratch ticket lottery, big pay days like that are few and far between for the hoi-polloi but man I mean I had lots of fun with that windfall and yes I know I shoulda tucked some away for a rainy day but hey, I didn’t, who knew…besides, every day is a rainy day…anyway Brother, anyway Sister, can you spare a dime? A c-note? Six Guinness? A bone Dude?! Many heartfelt thanx from me…I mean I know I joke about it but I am so greatful to you, without you NFTD would have ceased to exist long ago – what is world-class writing without world-class readers? Instead in January it’ll be 21, I will be three times older than that, neither of us anywhere near quitting!)
…o yes, going on at length about life, I mean what else is there? And how can I not rattle on about my life if I’m going to prate on about anybody’s, for how could I rattle on about yours? You know you I don’t, and even if I did I don’t know you as well as I thought I did or maybe I know you more than I wanted to, or…ad infinitum…I only know me and not very well at that; I tend to keep an arm’s length from myself and The Fool In The Mirror, both of whom have caused/are causing me no end of problems…it wouldn’t be right of me to write of you, fact is – not really having much to do and not quite yet ready to leave the comfort of my new nest and get an actual job – I sit around writing all my life, making things up; most of NFTD is made up of people who don’t exist and friends I don’t really have, believe me, the imaginary lovers, the instances and incidents which took place only in the mind, stories of places I’ve never been about people I never knew doing things that didn’t happen, anything just to get out of this miasma I DO live in…NFTD, the apotheosis of apocrypha…the apogee of exaggeration and the penultimate (the ultimate but one) in plagiarism, all in all a package deal. Hey, you get what you pay for…
…SPEAKING OF WHICH…DON’T READ THIS…
(Dude, look here, this is gotta be sorta sotto voce, small print know what I’m saying…don’t want just anyolebody to know I’m tapped and I was, ah, like wondering if I could, you know Dude like touch you up for like, you know, a handout, help with my drinking, I mean printing costs…any amount would do, from George Washington to Ben Franklin or a fistful of both would be nice…I once won $50,000 in a scratch ticket lottery, big pay days like that are few and far between for the hoi-polloi but man I mean I had lots of fun with that windfall and yes I know I shoulda tucked some away for a rainy day but hey, I didn’t, who knew…besides, every day is a rainy day…anyway Brother, anyway Sister, can you spare a dime? A c-note? Six Guinness? A bone Dude?! Many heartfelt thanx from me…I mean I know I joke about it but I am so greatful to you, without you NFTD would have ceased to exist long ago – what is world-class writing without world-class readers? Instead in January it’ll be 21, I will be three times older than that, neither of us anywhere near quitting!)
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
I've noticed that (we) fat people...
…pile on the clothes no matter the weather; on the hottest of days – it could be noon in The Mojave fer cryin’ out loud – on they go – undergarments, shirt, pants, sweater over shirt, vest over sweater, jacket over vest, add a scarf – thinking for some odd reason that somehow people will think, ‘Well (he/she) is not fat they are really Twiggy under all the canvas and are merely making a fashion statement…’
AS WE RODE HARMONIOUSLY ALONG…
…thru the dazzling night I remarked to my Good Friend Wisdom how enraptured I was of her and how blissed-out I was in her daunting presence; I waxed rhapsodically so eloquently in my aching-hearted soliloquy that I nearly wept myself, touched as I was by my own sincerity and so filled with love and affection for my Dear Friend, when she turned and beamed those amazing apple-green jade eyes at me and said, ‘Sorry, I had Hendrix cranked under the earphones…were you saying something?’ I withdrew into my shell; Turtle Man departs.
WHAT I HAD FIGURED ON DOING…
…with my sagacious, Sephardim amanuensis was that me and her would celebrate my erudition and literal/literary genius as she dutifully transcribed 35 years of my journals onto a disk from which, in a perfect world, I was to extrapolate the gems, discard the awful offal and get published to become the latest darling of the jet-setting literary world, traveling far and worldwide together to spread The Word, my word(s), but they – the journals – wrought forth only her most acerbic wrath (‘…you were such a drunk, wasting your whole fucking life…’) and my dream cum nightmare quickly dissolved into what has turned out to be a verbal burning of me in effigy as I am skewered by her caustic barbs, light years away from the adulation and praises I had envisioned, to wit: ‘…the work isn’t stimulating…’) Excuse me? What a blow to my already low self-esteem. What happened to my approbation? This egg on my face was supposed to be the jewel in my crown…
AS WE RODE HARMONIOUSLY ALONG…
…thru the dazzling night I remarked to my Good Friend Wisdom how enraptured I was of her and how blissed-out I was in her daunting presence; I waxed rhapsodically so eloquently in my aching-hearted soliloquy that I nearly wept myself, touched as I was by my own sincerity and so filled with love and affection for my Dear Friend, when she turned and beamed those amazing apple-green jade eyes at me and said, ‘Sorry, I had Hendrix cranked under the earphones…were you saying something?’ I withdrew into my shell; Turtle Man departs.
WHAT I HAD FIGURED ON DOING…
…with my sagacious, Sephardim amanuensis was that me and her would celebrate my erudition and literal/literary genius as she dutifully transcribed 35 years of my journals onto a disk from which, in a perfect world, I was to extrapolate the gems, discard the awful offal and get published to become the latest darling of the jet-setting literary world, traveling far and worldwide together to spread The Word, my word(s), but they – the journals – wrought forth only her most acerbic wrath (‘…you were such a drunk, wasting your whole fucking life…’) and my dream cum nightmare quickly dissolved into what has turned out to be a verbal burning of me in effigy as I am skewered by her caustic barbs, light years away from the adulation and praises I had envisioned, to wit: ‘…the work isn’t stimulating…’) Excuse me? What a blow to my already low self-esteem. What happened to my approbation? This egg on my face was supposed to be the jewel in my crown…
Far Away & Long Ago...
...how could it be?
With the shimmering, blinding brightness of the red sun rising over the Aegean Sea while I crawl from under my goatskin blanket into the gleaming September morn as fishermen in brightly colored boats toil away offshore it might have been 480 B.C. and I a messenger enroute to warn Leonidas of the approaching Persian army of Xerxes on its way to Thermopylae…
It might have been except for the Dylan Highway 61 Revisited album I slipped onto the tiny tinny Phillips portable stereo (perfect for Dylan’s raspin’ and rheumin’) and notwithstanding the Zippo I lit my Marlboro with as I hitched up my tattered jeans and began packing my stuff onto the back of the little 2-wheeled BMW I'd rented back in Marathona a few days ago when this odyssey began after a week of projectile drinking/dope smoking on the Acropolis and in the Plaka, listening to bouzoukias ringing through the dizzying star-lit nights and watching the dusky Mediterranean maidens strut their peasant, pleasant selves in sensual, supple native dancing...groooan…
Nearly five decades ago! Those young lovelies of yore, if they've managed to survive the passing years, today are all my age more or less, for I was barely 20 then and invincible. Now I am almost 65 and no longer invincible.
MAKE NO MISTAKE ABOUT IT…
…Hillary Clinton won’t be VP but she will become Secretary of State; the new Vice President under President Obama will be Nancy Pelosi. I feel sure for I’ve been watching & reading the body English and listening to what isn’t said, never mind what you see & hear in politics; the deals are cut where no one sees nor hears and the gloves come off…courtly diplomats’ Pecksniffian rhetoric quickly gives way to the vernacular, neither side trusts the other, any rapprochement is a façade & temporary…so there you have it Dear Readers - time will tell but I’d bet on it…No telling what the honorable Sen. McCain might do, but with Senator Clinton on deck for Secretary of State, a relieved Condoleeza Rice might like the idea of VP in her resume, for when she finally gets back to UCLA to play her Mozart. Both sides of the aisle playing the race card and the gender card…
With the shimmering, blinding brightness of the red sun rising over the Aegean Sea while I crawl from under my goatskin blanket into the gleaming September morn as fishermen in brightly colored boats toil away offshore it might have been 480 B.C. and I a messenger enroute to warn Leonidas of the approaching Persian army of Xerxes on its way to Thermopylae…
It might have been except for the Dylan Highway 61 Revisited album I slipped onto the tiny tinny Phillips portable stereo (perfect for Dylan’s raspin’ and rheumin’) and notwithstanding the Zippo I lit my Marlboro with as I hitched up my tattered jeans and began packing my stuff onto the back of the little 2-wheeled BMW I'd rented back in Marathona a few days ago when this odyssey began after a week of projectile drinking/dope smoking on the Acropolis and in the Plaka, listening to bouzoukias ringing through the dizzying star-lit nights and watching the dusky Mediterranean maidens strut their peasant, pleasant selves in sensual, supple native dancing...groooan…
Nearly five decades ago! Those young lovelies of yore, if they've managed to survive the passing years, today are all my age more or less, for I was barely 20 then and invincible. Now I am almost 65 and no longer invincible.
MAKE NO MISTAKE ABOUT IT…
…Hillary Clinton won’t be VP but she will become Secretary of State; the new Vice President under President Obama will be Nancy Pelosi. I feel sure for I’ve been watching & reading the body English and listening to what isn’t said, never mind what you see & hear in politics; the deals are cut where no one sees nor hears and the gloves come off…courtly diplomats’ Pecksniffian rhetoric quickly gives way to the vernacular, neither side trusts the other, any rapprochement is a façade & temporary…so there you have it Dear Readers - time will tell but I’d bet on it…No telling what the honorable Sen. McCain might do, but with Senator Clinton on deck for Secretary of State, a relieved Condoleeza Rice might like the idea of VP in her resume, for when she finally gets back to UCLA to play her Mozart. Both sides of the aisle playing the race card and the gender card…
Monday, June 23, 2008
I'm @ work if you can call it that...
…sitting motionless in the searing heat, waiting for a consumer to breech the door and buy up half the store, the Thrift Shop in Townshend in which I while away a few hours per week trying to be of some use…a doleful Edward Elgar elegy saps my positive attitude and strength; drained I slump deeper into the chair, deeper, deeper in thought…
…at this instant in time there’s nowhere else I’d rather be and no one here but me is good for my melancholy mood but not for business…
…a sadness as palpable as fog enshrouds me as I see my poor Mom wracked with Parkinson’s Disease, lurching to and fro, eyes bulging, tongue darting in and out, until now Parkinson’s was something that happened to somebody else – who new what it looked like!
UNLIKE AN AROMATIC HORSE STABLE…
…pig barns stink, they stink and they stink a lot, so I wasn’t too keen when I worked for Buzzard Brothers Construction (Don’t Call Us We’ll Call You) and Zane the boss contracted to tear down a pig barn and build it elsewhere as a house…’It’s gonna stink Dudley,’ I said to Zane – I once asked him what kind of a name Zane was and he growled ‘I’m an Arabic-Jew from New Jersey, what about it…’ I let it pass – ‘…just ‘cause there’s no pigs in it now it still stinks right? Years from now it still will stink…’
…we built it anyway, no one listens to me initially…we built it anyway and by the time we were through the ridge pole was three inches lower at one end and the shingles were all bunched up at the peak; no word of a lie fifteen years later you could still smell Porky Pig…
LOST IN REVERIE…
…dimly aware of dawn and birds and of a sussurant breeze wafting the cool air; it’s like I’m perc-ed out but I’m not, ‘tho stoned I yam…you could almost always say that…I’ve known people for decades who’ve known me no other way, anyway I was lost in reverie revisiting and revising history to no avail…the facts are immutable, irrefutable and the truth hurts.
I stand accused, I plead guilty and I am sentenced to life on earth…
…I yearn for a beer, a couple maybe to take the chill off, to calm down, catch my stride and move on. The past is no place to dwell I tell the Fool In The Mirror, there’s nothing to be done about it & you can’t usually define the whole by a single part…out of nowhere Schubert’s Rosamunde overture comes crashing down around my sensibilities and I am jolted back to the here and now, the only place to dwell.
…at this instant in time there’s nowhere else I’d rather be and no one here but me is good for my melancholy mood but not for business…
…a sadness as palpable as fog enshrouds me as I see my poor Mom wracked with Parkinson’s Disease, lurching to and fro, eyes bulging, tongue darting in and out, until now Parkinson’s was something that happened to somebody else – who new what it looked like!
UNLIKE AN AROMATIC HORSE STABLE…
…pig barns stink, they stink and they stink a lot, so I wasn’t too keen when I worked for Buzzard Brothers Construction (Don’t Call Us We’ll Call You) and Zane the boss contracted to tear down a pig barn and build it elsewhere as a house…’It’s gonna stink Dudley,’ I said to Zane – I once asked him what kind of a name Zane was and he growled ‘I’m an Arabic-Jew from New Jersey, what about it…’ I let it pass – ‘…just ‘cause there’s no pigs in it now it still stinks right? Years from now it still will stink…’
…we built it anyway, no one listens to me initially…we built it anyway and by the time we were through the ridge pole was three inches lower at one end and the shingles were all bunched up at the peak; no word of a lie fifteen years later you could still smell Porky Pig…
LOST IN REVERIE…
…dimly aware of dawn and birds and of a sussurant breeze wafting the cool air; it’s like I’m perc-ed out but I’m not, ‘tho stoned I yam…you could almost always say that…I’ve known people for decades who’ve known me no other way, anyway I was lost in reverie revisiting and revising history to no avail…the facts are immutable, irrefutable and the truth hurts.
I stand accused, I plead guilty and I am sentenced to life on earth…
…I yearn for a beer, a couple maybe to take the chill off, to calm down, catch my stride and move on. The past is no place to dwell I tell the Fool In The Mirror, there’s nothing to be done about it & you can’t usually define the whole by a single part…out of nowhere Schubert’s Rosamunde overture comes crashing down around my sensibilities and I am jolted back to the here and now, the only place to dwell.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
#####################################################
Code for every other page (invisible counter):
#####################################################
