Change is all there is...

…in more ways than one, like change in the geologic sense, i. e. with the passage of time things change - someday the pyramids will be dust in the Sahara and the mountain peaks of Katmandu will be valleys and deserts, victim of inexorable time, and of course then there’s no change, as in broke, no change, no money not a friggin’ farthing and don’t you know everything is either due or past due.

…how was that for a disjointed opening salvo? As usual NFTD is streaming consciousness, updating the Dharma Bum in cyberspace. To that end, oyez, hold on while I burn one and down a stout soz to get right into character. Ah yes, much better even though it’s probably not good.

…much of what feels good or tastes good isn’t good for you; living for the moment has severe and irreparable long-term consequences as I am finding out at 65 years of age (Today! How can it be!?) so believe me NOW I am REALLY living for the moment @ the speed of light Dude, it’s all over too quick!? Get with it…quickly I open another Guinness and drop a perc and a couple of Mother’s Little Helpers…so much for leaving the house today on an exhilarating walk through the park…

Behind every great fortune...

…there’s a crime – think Oliver and Oakes Ames…say what? Who? The Ames Brothers? The ones who sing?

…nope, wrong part of the family tree, these two - Oliver and Oakes Ames, made their fortune on the backs of slave labor, for these Ames Brothers of Easton MA made shovels, shovels since the late 18th century up to today even, but along about the time of the Civil War they were so busy turning out shovels they couldn’t fill the orders; those shovels were worn out digging graves, while when the railroads were crossing the nation to meet in Utah, 100s of thousands of so-called Coolies were imported from China to dig a trench to lay steel rails on - up, over, across and through, the hottest and the coldest and the most treacherous places Mother Nature had to offer in the lower 48, all dug with an Ames shovel…millions of them.

…here in Townshend’s Oakwood Cemetery lies among many others the grave of Alexander M. Cushing who was from Newfane and got shot and killed at Antietam and whose grave no doubt was dug with an Ames shovel.

…here lies Alexander M. Cushing, shot dead at 39 and next him his dear Caroline, widowed at 39 and come to think of it she probably got buried thanks to an Ames shovel too…they didn’t have any competition…

…I move on, it’s Veteran’s Day, there are lots of Civil War vets in this cemetery and at least one from every war since…I check in on them now and then, we talk…well…ok, ok, I’m not that crazy – they talk, I listen…

Memory Lane is nowhere to hang out...

…there’s nothing left there; in many cases there was never anything there even when then was now…I race away from the past and return home to the present, the here, the now…I am on automatic pilot with tunnel vision my accompanist, looking neither backwards nor left nor right; I continue through the infinite mindscape at the end of which there is no light.

…say, how was that for a gloomy paragraph? Nice, no? - and verbose too, huh!? It’s what I do, Dude, I’m not really a gloomy guy at all, nobody likes to have a good time more than me, but neither am I one of those whistling grinning-ninny cheerio hey hey goody-goody two shoes…there’s little more annoying than a happy-go-lucky so and so to spoil the bittersweet melancholy of a lugubrious moment…

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

I OFTEN WISH FOR NOTHING…

…it’s all I really want, nothing, nothing in the sort of difficult to comprehend philosophical/physical nothing, like to have never been, to not be, to UNbe, not even a void where I was because I wasn’t…

…ah Nothingness, how I yearn for you…meanwhile, since I still do be, I decap a stout, spin and burn one and push the boat out; the closest I can get to Nothing is to drift in the hazy ephemeral cloud which is called Life…

AS A CALLOW YOUTH…

…my idea of academia was turtle-neck wool sweaters with leather elbow patches, herringbone tweed jackets, Florsheim wingtips, a tam, a pipe and an Austin-Healey Sprite…

…who knew there was a lot of work involved, which ultimately I did not take to so my academic life was brief if sartorially resplendent…from there it was all downhill for about 40 years, then as I approached the nadir of my non-intellectual pursuits and the end of my life suddenly I righted, took a look around me and corrected the course, sort of, color me a slow learner…

THE CLOSER TO DEATH I GET…

…the more uncomfortable I am with life; I was a recalcitrant neophyte and didn’t realize until this end of the cycle how much I had missed/am missing. Decades ago Curt said to me, ‘You don’t know what you’re missing…’ Waaay too late I realized how right the old boy was…

PLUS IT’S A MISERABLE MORNING…

…no two ways about it; fogged in meteorologically and metaphysically; from neither is escape sure. What life turned out to be is nothing like what I had in mind, and it is not a refreshing spring-like mist cooling me but rather a thick miasma I am caught up in like a fly in a web (“…help me, help me…”)…I haff ta laff at this ridiculously verbose take on poor, poor pitiful; me…well, it’s how we (I) make (don’t make) a living…

No one has the right...

...to feel as good as I do today.

Or perhaps, everyone has the right to feel as good as I do today but hardly anybody really does, and why I do is beyond me except that it has something to do with the silence beneath the trees I'm sitting under, the slate gray of the sky, the lean of my gleaming black & silver Triumph, the robin's song, the mourning dove cooing.

Plus I got a pocketful of money which, let's face it, helps.

...and I'm a realist so I understand that at a moment's notice I could be
plunged into an abyss of despair, but meanwhile...what can I do with this new-found wealth? - out of nowhere appears 28 hundred bucks! (Well,not quite out of nowhere - I've had to sell this beautiful motorcycle which has me spellbound, staring at it as one might Manet's Olympia). Still, it's what I do - sell bikes - so if I miss this one after just having my last ride on it, I welcome the cash from it and I'm off to buy another.

So far my gambit to not sell bikes to younger people (with all due respect kids) has paid off; I wait until a young-old geezer like myself comes along and then I snare (her)him into my net, but I'm reluctant to sell these classic motorcycles to young people because young people tend to do everything at fast forward and I don't want her/him to wipe out and ruin my bikes, I mean I don't want them to get hurt...the older fellows I've sold bikes to - Lynn, Denal and Charlie - might still get wasted on their bikes, unseated and upended by a Peterbilt maybe, or a yuppie scum Volvo, or maybe even run off the road by a pack of shrieking Ninjas, but I don't think these three guys will be burning up the macadam hot patch.

I know, I know - tell that to T. E. Lawrence.

About yours I don't know...

...but my fantasies incarnate would land me in jail. However, illegal though they may be they are human and since we all have them - subject not to derision are they by others; strange they may seem, but with all (y)our pecadilloes -who's left to judge?

...still, knowing the inner self makes it often difficult to deal with the public persona...I mean I sometimes hear myself saying (or see myself writing)
one thing, possibly even very profound, rare though that may be, but midway through my professed profundity I find myself tripping and stammering over what I am saying because the Real Me Inside is saying, 'How DARE you say that knowing how you are behind closed doors alone?' So my speech trails off and what I was about to pronounce goes half-said then falls apart at the absurdity of this everpresent, relentless posturing one does to cope...

It's not easy being me.

How about you? Hard to live with yourself? I can relate...but you can't get away so you have to deal with it...nu? Who knew...the truth hurts doesn't it?! Only kidding...only kidding, Friend; you're alright in my book - and never mind your quirks. Say did I ever tell you about...

I've had a lot of fun today (from NFTD Archives)

...bear with me, let me explain...rewind...at six o'clock yesterday morning (6/28/98) I bought three $3 instant scratch tickets and went to have a coffee with a couple friends. Sitting at the kitchen table I scratched first one, a loser, and slid it across the table to Larry, 'Nope Larry, yours is a loser.' Now Joyce's, same thing, sorry Sister you're a loser too...well, your ticket is, you're not...and then...

Then I scratched the third ticket, mine. The instructions read something like match any one of your numbers to any one of theirs and win prize indicated. One of their numbers was a 2, so was one of mine, and the prize for me matching their number was: $50,000. I passed the ticket over to Larry. 'Does this say what I think it says?' 'I think it does...' Joyce? 'Absolutely, you got a 2, they got a 2, the prize is 50 grand!' A flurry of excited activity ensued, then 'I gotta go!'

I flew back to Linda at the Jiffy Mart who only moments ago had sold them to me, her first customer of the day. I gave it to her. 'I'd like to cash this in,' I told her, knowing you can only cash up to 599 dollars without going to the Lottery Commission. She took the ticket somewhat ho-humishly and ran it through the computer which popped up with the information that the ticket was legit and $50,000 with my name on it was in a vault down in Concord! Then things got a little animated...I can't stand still but neither can I go to Concord to claim my prize because it's Sunday and they don't open until Monday at 8 - 24 hours I am walking around with a $50,000 ticket in my pocket so of course I can't sleep nor eat and feel that somehow there's been an error and tomorrow my little balloon will burst...a restless night…as happens, morning came and by 8 I was standing tall at the lottery office where I said to Fran, the woman at the front office, 'I'd like to cash this in...' and she looked at it, eyes agog and said, 'Yes, yes, I should think you would,' and began the process of shelling out 50Gs to me!