…to awake on the cold ground of a dreary morning to your 19th century father’s bark to get moving and hitch up the 20-mule team because “…we got a contract with Borax and are fixin’ to cross the Mojave, and when you’ve got all them leathers and traces hitched up and fixed get your self a piece of hardtack and one ladle of water to drink or wash with, don’t spill a drop…”
…I’m a 21st century man and feel put upon if I have to walk across the room to put bread in the toaster. Pioneering would not have been my thing. I’da been one of those guys who got off the boat in Plymouth, Massachusetts and directly headed to California but the privations drove me to despair and I only got as far as the great Green Mountain State of Vermont and stayed…
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Well, it's High Noon here in...
…the downtown Townshend metropolitan area and in my small part of it, all is mediocre…practically paralyzed by the sudden realization that life is not forever, I face each day with increasing trepidation and waning hope…but with the gentle ministrations from a cute little bottle of Bailey’s Irish Crème Whiskey, coupled with a nip or two of Kahlua and all washed down with a libation by the redoubtable Arthur Guinness, I manage to cope, plus a little dope helps; I mean let’s be real here, this is no time to suddenly become abstemious – in fact, if there was never a reason to be absolutely dissolute before, this is the one I’ve been waiting for, pull out all the stops, go for broke and all that, projectile drinking, smoking up Mexico and snorting up Peru, all part of the current day in a life…well, in my mind maybe; the reality is more boring day after day fencing with the fool in the mirror…waiting for God and Godot.
I SUPPOSE YOU HAD TO BE THERE...(from NFTD Archives)
...but I'll give it my best shot...
'Big Ed', as in big biker Ed, 6-5, 280, at least an ax handle across at the shoulders, narrow at the hip, black leather-clad, drinkin' Bud, talking Harley-Davidson, Carlos Santana blasting in the background; Big Ed with his long & very gray hair braided half-way down his back, pounding down another Budweiser, having a good ole time hanging with like-minded people on this the first real weekend of bike ridin' warm weather, when suddenly from an adjacent 2nd story window, Kari, a beautiful teen-aged girl pokes her pretty head over the sill, and spying her Big Ed spins on his booted heels and throws his arms wide crying, 'Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down thy golden hair...' - I hooted with laughter; it was such an anomaly coming from so unexpected a quarter...
(I should probably tread lightly here or Big Ed spin on his booted heels and walk all over me...)
IT'S TAKEN 12 YEARS, 3,000 APPROVING LETTERS AND DOZENS OF REVIEWS...
...to the contrary but finally someone's gone and done it...finally NFTD has gotten a couple baaaad reviews...and I don't mean gooood...about which more anon, meanwhile...
Without further ado I quote from page 34 of Zine World #6, Spring 1998:
#284: 'You know when you meet someone, and they say one or two clever things, so you jump into a conversation...which grows increasingly bombastic and dull, until you realize you already heard the best this guy has to offer? This is like that. Nothing much of interest, dressed up with pretty language from someone who's full of himself' - E. Persimmon, PO Box 460931, SF CA 94146
(I hate when people see through me...honest to God it's like I wrote that paragraph myself! It's just exactly what I say when I'm telling the truth, which doesn't happen very often, only I use more expletives...)
#291: 'Terry rambles on about a fictional drunk lawyer, a ghost he saw, doing shrooms long ago, Brahms, drinking and driving, how great his paintings are, and how great his zine is. The ego is strong but the writing isn't, and a lot of it seems like padding, just more words to fill the zine's six-page allotment. Terry, you're obviously convinced you have plenty of talent, so quit coasting and write something worth reading.' - Pam Yamaguchi, c/o Zine World, 537 Jones St. #2386, San Francisco CA 94102
(I'll see if I can do better; my standards aren't too severe. Like Ms Persimmon, you are very perceptive...too perceptive by half for me: once again my transparency shines through, although you’re gracious enough not to call NFTD actually boring).
I SUPPOSE YOU HAD TO BE THERE...(from NFTD Archives)
...but I'll give it my best shot...
'Big Ed', as in big biker Ed, 6-5, 280, at least an ax handle across at the shoulders, narrow at the hip, black leather-clad, drinkin' Bud, talking Harley-Davidson, Carlos Santana blasting in the background; Big Ed with his long & very gray hair braided half-way down his back, pounding down another Budweiser, having a good ole time hanging with like-minded people on this the first real weekend of bike ridin' warm weather, when suddenly from an adjacent 2nd story window, Kari, a beautiful teen-aged girl pokes her pretty head over the sill, and spying her Big Ed spins on his booted heels and throws his arms wide crying, 'Rapunzel, Rapunzel, let down thy golden hair...' - I hooted with laughter; it was such an anomaly coming from so unexpected a quarter...
(I should probably tread lightly here or Big Ed spin on his booted heels and walk all over me...)
IT'S TAKEN 12 YEARS, 3,000 APPROVING LETTERS AND DOZENS OF REVIEWS...
...to the contrary but finally someone's gone and done it...finally NFTD has gotten a couple baaaad reviews...and I don't mean gooood...about which more anon, meanwhile...
Without further ado I quote from page 34 of Zine World #6, Spring 1998:
#284: 'You know when you meet someone, and they say one or two clever things, so you jump into a conversation...which grows increasingly bombastic and dull, until you realize you already heard the best this guy has to offer? This is like that. Nothing much of interest, dressed up with pretty language from someone who's full of himself' - E. Persimmon, PO Box 460931, SF CA 94146
(I hate when people see through me...honest to God it's like I wrote that paragraph myself! It's just exactly what I say when I'm telling the truth, which doesn't happen very often, only I use more expletives...)
#291: 'Terry rambles on about a fictional drunk lawyer, a ghost he saw, doing shrooms long ago, Brahms, drinking and driving, how great his paintings are, and how great his zine is. The ego is strong but the writing isn't, and a lot of it seems like padding, just more words to fill the zine's six-page allotment. Terry, you're obviously convinced you have plenty of talent, so quit coasting and write something worth reading.' - Pam Yamaguchi, c/o Zine World, 537 Jones St. #2386, San Francisco CA 94102
(I'll see if I can do better; my standards aren't too severe. Like Ms Persimmon, you are very perceptive...too perceptive by half for me: once again my transparency shines through, although you’re gracious enough not to call NFTD actually boring).
Monday, February 15, 2010
AS I SWOONED, COLLAPSING IN A HEAP...
...deeper into the big easy chair on which I'm sitting, I close my eyes and disappear from here in a blue-smoke cloud of ethereal warmness and comforting unconsciousness, about as close to an out-of-body experience as you'll get smoking dope, but as pleasant as the sensation is you wouldn't want to have it when driving because if you do you're going to hit a tree and not only will you be having an ‘out-of-body’ experience you'll also be having an out-of-car experience as your formerly somnambulant self hurtles out the windshield, wide-eyed and mouth agape through space; so do your tokin' at the kitchen table in your shebang, where the most you'll hurt as you drop to the dirty floor (clean your house too!) is maybe get a knot on the head or bust a few dishes up on the way down.
Save yourself a lot of grief; moderation in all things, including moderation (which will thereby allow you an occasional fling), but maintain yourself, don't get drunk and out of control, or all messed up on heavy-duty drugs & show off how berserk you can get, bad form, plus: you'll live longer. (Hold on a minute here son...up above you're telling me you just passed out from a huge toke and now a couple sentences later you're going on about moderation? Did I miss something?) Actually, I've been getting (limited) flack from the USPS regarding the fact NFTD is what is termed a ‘bi-fold’ and as such must be handed across at a window for canceling, or rubber-banded and dropped in a box, all in all more inconvenience for me. I've been curious if the reason is that I'm being singled-out for my pro-reefer stance...or is my addled thinking merely idle twaddle - pot-induced paranoia striking deep?
Save yourself a lot of grief; moderation in all things, including moderation (which will thereby allow you an occasional fling), but maintain yourself, don't get drunk and out of control, or all messed up on heavy-duty drugs & show off how berserk you can get, bad form, plus: you'll live longer. (Hold on a minute here son...up above you're telling me you just passed out from a huge toke and now a couple sentences later you're going on about moderation? Did I miss something?) Actually, I've been getting (limited) flack from the USPS regarding the fact NFTD is what is termed a ‘bi-fold’ and as such must be handed across at a window for canceling, or rubber-banded and dropped in a box, all in all more inconvenience for me. I've been curious if the reason is that I'm being singled-out for my pro-reefer stance...or is my addled thinking merely idle twaddle - pot-induced paranoia striking deep?
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.
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.
Saturday, January 16, 2010
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...
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…
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…
Wednesday, November 4, 2009
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…
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…
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
#####################################################
Code for every other page (invisible counter):
#####################################################
