7871. ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS

ALL THAT HEAVEN ALLOWS

Willow tree, and birch. Everything together.

The moonlight calls the whippoorwill back;

but I hear neither. I am blind to this life and

deaf to those things. It is midnight before the

four horsemen arrive. I think that I must find

a mate, and get out of here alive.

-

A cold man is still allowed a warm dream?

Or is that no longer right? I walk the crested

hills of this old, sorry place, just thinking back 

on the things I might have done. Didn't do, 

but would again. I once spent thirty dollars

on a send-away offer for tools. And thought

I was a millionaire by doing so. What a

fool's errand I entered.

-

So many years later, I'm still here and that

card remains yet in my hand. I trowel on the

grease in the separate hanging of dreams.

Those with whom I've spoken today, they

really didn't hold my interest, but I stayed.

The sales guy from the nursery, always

looking about. The girl with the hardtack

hands who carried bales. The guy who had

just shaved off a very long beard, going on

and on about his skin, and how it felt.

-

I chose to reply to nothing, just stay instead

and listen. No one knows what I'm about and,

like me in theirs, they're just extras in my play.

7870. THE SCORCHED CORPSES OF ANIMALS

THE SCORCHED CORPSES 

OF ANIMALS

Let us eat then, you and I.

But not that, please. They

have a will to live, and

they feel the breeze.

7869. MEGALITH AND MONAURAL

MEGALITH AND MONAURAL

And Oregon too.  That's the simple 

summation the judge-master gave 

just before leaving town. I was

studying books when I heard

him on TV. No picture, just

sound. All Oregon bound.

7868. BELOW THE WATER LINE (pt. 178)

BELOW THE WATER LINE

(pt. 178)

Sometimes I get to think that we all

are nothing more than the sum totals

of our experiences, on an almost

'automatic-like' scale. It may very

well be that I'm wrong, but the feeling

I get is that there's a certain 'vaster'

preponderance of our make-ups that

comes up from those moments. All

the learning and reasoning we later

acquire doesn't change it much. When

I was young, my aunt and uncle lived

in Union City. It's a really small, grubby

and crowded hub  -  not a city at all  -  

now mostly Cuban and Hispanic, but 
that's what it calls itself, and whatever. 

It sits up on the ridge of rock ending NJ

eastward. Over the Hudson River, which

runs below. Behind it, to the west, and far

below, is Route One, (Tonnelle Avenue),

usually pronounced Tonnally Ave). That

part of things is a horrible mishmash of old,

wrecked places, car-yards  old foundries

and factories, but all now nothing but

cheap motels (a lot of the 42nd street

whoring business moved out here in the

90's  -  now  they just walk along Route

One showing their wares. Sure makes

traffic jams a little easier to take). Lincoln

Tunnel. Holland Tunnel. There's even

some light-rail stuff now. Anyway, up

above all that, on really steep streets

and twisty curves, is Union City, and

North Bergen, and places like that. My

aunt and uncle, as I said, lived in Union

City. I was probably 4. We'd go visit them

and I remember to this day being stunned

and awed by the view between houses. Thin

openings (the housing was close together and

tight, people living 'cheek by jowl', as I now

say), heralded the eye towards a grand view of

New York City  -  wonderful 1954 Manhattan  -

and all I ever did was find spots but to stare

and gaze out at the equivalent, to me, of Oz

itself. A concrete, steel and glass emporium

of wonder, dreams, light, angles, creativity,

excitement, danger, trouble, possibilities,

movement, highs and lows, heights and

chasms, luck and missed chances, all. And

that was only inside my tiny head at the time!

It spoke to me, I was able to understand and

read the message, feel it in my slimeball bones.

We had not yet moved to Avenel, I'd probably

never even heard of the place and would have

had no concept of where I'd soon be headed.

Swamps, fens, trailers and shacks? Who ever

had heard of that? This, on the other hand, out

before me stretched, was living, was life, was

all the source of my golden waters. I could not

wait. It sometimes seems, in retrospect, that

the experienced 'past', before it was 'present'

simply must have been imagined as 'future' in

order for it to have occurred. Time flips around

audaciously like that, and we miss things at

our peril. As it went, I felt every second of

all this in my bones, before it occurred; like a

dream state, from which you only seldom

awaken. I can't put into words exactly what

I mean. However. The terms of this agreement

are that I will continue speaking, regardless.

Once I arrived in Avenel, it wasn't as if a

rooster was crowing, or that this was farmland.

No, it wasn't at all.  It was just that, admittedly,

there were fields and open spaces around me,

getting quickly sacrificed for the 'good of all'.

Probably mostly for the good of banks, but the

entire process did bring a lot of people out from

their strange situations in paltry surrounding

towns. Summer Street in Elizabeth. Any of

the numbered Newark Streets, slowly being

turned over to 'others.' My aunt, a different,

aunt, used to say (she lived her entire live in

Bayonne, seldom ever leaving its confines,

in a small, old-style tenement/apartment

set-up), that the good thing about Bayonne

was that they had never let the 'element' in.

Never making it clear what the 'element' was,

I only later surmised she meant the blacks or

the Spanish, who now are there anyway. She's

the one who's not any longer there. Death,

then, recovers time, and always wins. Her

coveted town, by those standards, has been

long lost.

-

I don't know what any of that's supposed to

mean, but Avenel never had any 'element'

either. It was basically one, homogeneous

community made of white American people,

from wherever and however they got there.

Yet, at the same time, no one was ever overly

pronounced over this - maybe a few cracks

now and then, about the usual black people or

Hispanic people, using their slang names. My

father used to call blacks (baffling to me)

'moulinyans' or something I never got, which

I later found out meant eggplants (?) and

referred to the color. However, I also found

out that it was a sometime-slang for Italians as

well, coloring too. Baffling, so I never did get

to the bottom of that one. I had heard of the

Moulin Rouge yes, but that was different. I'd

also heard of the Rue Morgue. In fact, I never

liked name-calling, by whatever means and for

whatever purpose. It was annoying, picking

people out people for something and then

needling them with some crack name. Just

tedious. And anyway, my father could most

probably, by those terms, have been called

a Guinea Papist. He'd have killed on that one.

I was just plopped down into the middle of

this : felled trees, run-down sheds, a dog house,

a driveway, some bicycles. It all bore no real

relation to Bayonne, or the waterfront, but  -

being a kid  -  it didn't matter to me and I was

always ready to pick up from some imaginary 

point zero and just start anew. Which I had to 

do, and did. None of the lines really connected.

It was all unconnected wires, everywhere.

- 

Maybe there were echoes, but that was about it.

Avenel had existed before my arrival, and it 

probably had stories. None of which I'd ever

heard. When you get to someplace where 

everyone is new, or newly arrived, there's 

not much to delve into. We never delved into

the life-stories or the pasts of the older Avenel

people, families who'd bee here a while. I can

remember my wife's family telling about the

people directly across the street from them, in

1947, when all the new houses were just built 

and my wife's family arrived, how those older

people rued all the new housing and activity. 

For twenty years or so, their house had been 

alone, nestled in a tree'd in section of woods,

and they'd been alone  - until one day, they 

said, they awoke and the woods were all 

coming down around them. And then

there was, suddenly, curbs and roadways, 

houses and people. Families and kids. That

had to hurt. They left soon after. Also, 

among the first residents, down some just 

a bit, on Dartmouth, were a group of Scots

people. The story I got anyway  -  they'd

bough 4 or 5 houses in  a row, whoever 

they were, and thereby made a small sort 

of Scotch Village or something right there. 

It did eventually all scatter, and they moved 

away, but the story and the circumstance 

lingered. I always liked to picture it. It's all

pretty funny, because no matter how any of it

looks now, to those living in it at the time, that 

was all the cutting edge of modernity. All those

car fins and TV antennas, and new driveways

and 'super' markets and all the rest; when it

just comes at you, you accept it. It only all

looks funny in retrospect, when people  -  

others, living then in their own onrush of 

'modernity', begin chuckling at and making 

fun of what went before them. As if they knew

any better. I guess that's what nostalgia, and

kitsch, and 'retro', are all about. So, by moving

to Avenel, in essence, my parents were simply

moving into the future  -  having made their 

own decision, whether consciously or through 

some weird unknown urges, to stake out some 

new land for a new continuation of time. Ah yes,

and then there's me : in Scripture, it's said that

'God calls people who are uniquely unsuited for

the task that he sets them to.' I never quite knew

what they meant, but they used it on us all the 

time at the seminary too  -  calling it, quaintly,

'vocation.' A calling, an interior urge, set to by

this quirky 'God' fellow, to which you had to

answer  -  deliberate a little, then, okay, but you

were sort of considered bound to say 'yes'. Or

get out of Dodge, and quickly. For me, it was 

more like fulfilling a duty to the world, whatever 

I may have seen it as, or seen the world as, for 

that matter. The vocation part of it, even here 

in faraway Avenel, pressed hard. I sensed I 

had been plunked there for a reason, and God 

forbid if it became a reason I never found.

Many are called, but few are frozen. That 

was probably more like it.

-

So I walked around, I played with friends, I

found ways of making things matter. At one 

point, about age 11, I sent to the F.B.I., in far-

off Washington D.C., where I'd actually been 

once. My letter asked for information, career

stuff  -  and I received back this crazy, entire

packet with a cover letter (supposedly) 

addressed to me and signed by J. Edgar Hoover

himself. I was pretty floored -   they actually

took me serious, gave me the time of day, all 

that stuff. It was, what, 1960? Everything was

precious, and filled with possibility and the

expectation of undertaking  -  as in doing, not

the funeral stuff.
-
That was that then. For a long time I just subsisted
on whatever dreams about place and time I could 
come up with. I'd go to bed at night having these
imaginary cowboy fights and shoot-outs, scenes 
where I somehow always wound up managing to
'best' some other force of bullies or scoundrels, 
thieves or crooks. Far too weird to retell or 
understand, I never knew what or how I'd 
gotten so absorbed in this sort of stuff : TV, 
shoot 'em up westerns, whatever. It was way too  
easy to be 'hero' in your own adventure, and behind  
all that I knew that somewhere in the experience of 
living, there really were punches in the face, failures, 
mistakes, and losses to come. It could never be only 
victorious triumph and rightness. No one could tell  
me different. So I retreated. What does a kid retreat 
too? Toys and trinkets in cereal boxes. That was a really 
big deal to me at about 9 or 10. It was a grand gimmick, 
and I don't think they do that stuff any more, but there 
was a time when you'd get a toy auto, or some sort of 
figurine, or a catapult, mini pull-toy, anything  -  some 
of it really pretty neat  -  at the bottom, or near the 
bottom, of your cereal. Presupposing that it would 
be the incentive to force kids to get their Moms and 
Dads to buy the product, I guess it worked. I ate a lot 
of cereal, and collected a lot of stuff  - usually, to make 
it even neater, the things were single-wrapped in their 
own little paper sleeves, or packets, or holders. I guess 
they were blown in during packaging, settling some, 
and then being found by the kids as they worked 
through the box. I used to love that stuff. I remember 
really loving the collectible little cars the best. That's 
the sum total of my experience on that count, I guess. 
And it's really some total!

7867. BELOW THE WATER LINE (pt. 177)

BELOW THE WATER LINE

(pt. 177)

I've had a great deal of fun reliving things,

and it seems as though the little library I

draw from keeps replenishing itself. The

world I lived in  -  back then, 1956 and

up through 1964, mainly, and then back

again, and the again, it was all a very

different world. One which, by late '67

had me somewhere else completely and,

frankly, inhabiting a different universe

entirely, one which I'll eventually get to

here. But the initial point I make, which

is most important, is that I am beholden,

for better or worse, for the formation of

my character and for the initiation of 

much of my thought, to Avenel. Flat-out, 

straight praise on that count. It was a 

devilish disguise, this place was, and I 

walked through whatever symbolic fire 

it presented. Probably, were I to win a 

lottery today in some big-time fashion, 

I'd remain right here in place. Unlike so 

many, many others, I've got no hardness 

towards Avenel. It is what it is and was,

and that's me too. I had a friend once

-  Bill Turkus  -  who rode to Alaska 

on his motorcycle. The night he left 

we'd thrown him a backyard-barbecue 

send-off party. After getting to Alaska, he 

wanted to continue, towards the Arctic Circle, 

which he did. When he got there, he came 

across a spot where many, many people have 

left mementos of their own visit there  -

streetsigns and sign-posts from the towns 

of their origin. He took a photo of a sign, 

right there, which read  -  'Avenel, NJ'. 

Go figure.

-

The world is so vastly different today that it

sometimes makes me laugh; Avenel or not. It's

almost 70 years down the line for me, and I get

around it all very well. Yesterday, I passed a

storefront in Rahway all lit with candles and

wreaths and all sorts of memorial things out

front for the guy who'd had just been killed,

the day before, in his sneaker store. Right

next to the Masonic Temple  -  the white

guy's one, not the old, now gone, the black

lodge that I wrote of earlier and which I had

gone into a few times. That was the other side

of Rahway (the Avenel side), on the riverbank.

Long, long gone, near 30 years now, as are

all those black families who lived along the

river.  When I was a kid, just the thought

of any of this, along Irving Street in Rahway,

would have never crossed my mind. A culture,

with black people, thugs and their music, 

where a black guy gets killed in his own 

store, in open view, for some insider 

infraction? Sneakers? Drugs? Clubs? 

Hip Hop alliances? There was a televised 

story, an interview, about this killing, on the 

local news. It was so bad, and weird, to see. 

All these people, friends of the dead guy, 

barely articulate, taking their stances and 

spouting their words in the usual fashion 

of the crowd they were involved with  -  

gaudy clothes, gold and silver, metallic

teeth, aggressively folded arms, and, most

tellingly, as in some stupid video of a rap

music format, guys behind guys, nodding

and assenting with their mumbled 'yeahs' 

to what the big guy (rotund) was saying 

in the foreground. It was as if all staged 

and readied. I could tell, right off, that all

these guys were doing was mimicking the

dumb-jive thug image they'd been exposed 

to. To live by. Nothing more. It was pathetic.

No way I  -  or any of my friends  -  would 

have understood long ago. And, the funniest 

thing, just today, and something which really 

made me think  -  right here in Avenel  -  

seemed to exemplify the danger we created 

when the spreading awareness of everything 

for everybody took hold of the body politic.

There used to be merit, and there used to

be 'achievement', stuff you got through

your own work, intelligence, and gumption.

Reasoned wisdom. Not the school stuff,

again, more just what comes from being

genuinely interested in the life you live

and lead. Now it's all just drivel.

-

In Avenel today, at the local 'Quick-Chek',

I was waiting. As I waited, I heard someone

from around the corner, approaching, 

speaking loudly and without thought, into 

his cell-phone, going on with someone about 

something. Black guy. These sorts of phone 

people are quite annoying to me, but this 

guy was hilarious, as I overheard him. He'd 

stopped nearby, and was still going on. 

There are, apparently, people who do not 

readily have the mental capacity to get the

idea that, with a telephone, your amplified

voice comes through quite clearly, by 

electronics and amplification, to the other 

party, whether it's down the street or 

California. They somehow think they 

must shout, or talk quite loud anyway.

He was one of those  -  the command of 

his lock and loud verbal posture was 

frightening. And then it happened! He 

actually said this! Speaking of himself, 

and his inability to do something, whatever

it was, he actually (I swear) said 'I can't 

do that, my equiliberty is still off by 50 

percent.' Equiliberty! The phrase of a genius. 

A genius I swear!

-

I always loved things like that  -  the people 

who mangle the language, get it half right, 

get their idea across but sound so bizarre 

doing it. Like 'let me be pacific, when I 

need my yard done I'll be certain to call a

landscraper.' That's another one I'd heard

long ago  -  the guy's name was Jim; no 

longer with us. He'd say 'pacific' for 'specific', 

always. And he always said 'landscraper' 

instead of 'landscaper'. But I always got 

his drift. It was like that. He'd tell me how 

many beers he had that night. He drank a 

lot, but it never showed, until the end. 

One day, home alone, he just died 

in his armchair. The whole thing was, 

at that point, as sad as it was funny. He 

used to have a guy, John, a kid actually, 

maybe 25 tops, who would stop over, most 

early evenings, just to use his toilet. He

claimed he didn't like to poop at home, 

his mother was always bothering him 

about something. Jim would let him in, have 

a go, while he stayed on the porch having 

his beer. Summertime stuff, I'm meaning. 

Then John would come out and have a 

beer with him too. That was a real Avenel

camaraderie thing, I always thought. Where 

else does that kind of thing happen? 

I never heard.

-

There used to be a travel agency on St. George

Avenue. Right there, in a house next to where

Frystock Jeep was for years. It's gone now, all

of it. Walgreen's. Condos, a bunch of junk, was 

long ago put into its place. Ghostly idea now.

This travel agency was in an old white house,

and it the windows and display areas, at street

level, it always had travel posters, and photos 

of faraway places. It was pretty exotic to think

about. I think that side of the street was actually

'Colonia', but that hardly mattered. The beaches

of Rio, and the old cathedrals of London and Paris

and Rome were always startling for me to see

in the windows of a small-house travel agency,

right there for Avenel, NJ. Amazing stuff. And

across the street was a bar  - the Blue Bird; just

more very mysterious intent. Topping it all off,

from California no less, in 1978, right next to it,

they built a 'Denny's'. That was really amazing to

me and it felt as if the world was enclosing in on

Avenel. All the proverbial 'doors and windows'

were opening up. I had been in California in 1976,

and we utilized Denny's for lunches and coffee's.

I had thought then it was pure California  -  light,

meaningless, quick, cosmopolitan in flavor, and

very west-coast. And then, there it was, in Avenel.

It was amazing. I know it threw my equiliberty off.

7866. HELLO, PIERRE

HELLO, PIERRE

The gestation period for any storyline is

three thousand years. Hello Esther and

hello then Ruth! My countertop try is 

heavily laden with chocolates and stories

to go with them. At my window taps a

bird, irksomely demanding to be let in.

I acquiesce in such a wish. Come in, 

then, where the air is finer.

7865. IN ALL THE POCKET OF MY MEMORY

IN ALL THE POCKET 

OF MY MEMORY

When I empty them, sometimes, at night,

things fall out. Accumulated hardtack of a

long day's night. I pick up things along the 

way; the seeds of dreams and buttons; the 

old nails of distant sheds and bridges. I have

no currency except for the idle riches of dream.

In that respect, I am the billionaire I think about,

the man with the spacious manor on the banks

of the River Real; servants and carriages and

riches detailed by the retainers and the help

of employ. But, alas, not ideal  -  my property

and life were sealed long, long ago, and this

is not to be. All I have are these tiny crumbs

in all the pocket of my memory.

7864. NOT SO STRANGE

NOT SO STRANGE

'Thanks for the mammaries? Is that what 

I heard?' Some guy was singing in the

12th Street park  -  he had a small 

keyboard set-up and was sitting by 

himself. Next to him, on this fairly

warm day at the end of a month at the

tail of a Winter, carrots and cabbage

were set out to buy. The old wooden

tables sagged, yet this guy kept singing.

Others passed by, and that snippet came

from the one in the blue jacket. I love the

misunderstood moment and the mixed up

words of all this passing time. 

-

Once, in a time long ago, there were locals

here : native in olive skin, casting small

stones out into an oyster-clogged river.

7863. THE FRAGMENTS OF A DULCIMER

THE FRAGMENTS 

OF A DULCIMER

'This calendar says nothing right. It's from

seven years ago and still hanging on this wall.

Four issues, on the table here too, of outdated

'Arizona Highways' magazine. What a place

is this, but this is the way it is.'

-

And that's exactly how I found this to be,

way back in 1971. A still-life watercolor, of

a now-late afternoon. That was a song, about

the same time that calendar was good. But, then

again, I guess a song remains always a song,

but what does an outdated calendar become?

-

I had parked by the gully, in an unpaved ditch.

The road all around was just tire tracks, really.

This was going to be my home, so I knew I'd

better get used to it. My own dirt path to nowhere;

a hundred-year old house at the edge of a field, with 

a dump beyond it, long ago closed. All sorts of things

from the 1930's past. Lanterns and fenders, and

clocks that had crashed. I once found - even - 

the fragments of a dulcimer there.

7862. BELOW THE WATER LINE (pt. 176)

BELOW THE WATER LINE

(pt. 176)

I've read that the Book of Esther, in the

Bible, is the only book therein that

doesn't mention, doesn't contain the

word 'God.' To be truthful, I've never

checked that out precisely, but it was

always a curious one. In St. Andrew's,

or even in the seminary, as I've here

mentioned previously, the Old Testament

was pretty much ignored  -  it being

considered old-hat set-up for all the

new stuff. It always appeared as

unseemly and wrong to do that; like

ignoring unwisely any of the tradition

by which the rest of your structure is set

up to respond to. None of that ever really

mattered, but it just seemed strange. So

much else of Avenel went by the wayside

when stacking things up against what you

were told. It sort of just left things up in

the air; without definition.

-

I always liked to find out little tidbits and

think about them. It gave my otherwise

awkward life some form. We otherwise

lived a kind of rough and ragged life in

Avenel  -  I've already mentioned the 

crazy games, the banging around, the 

little fights here and there. As kids, we 

never cared for much as far as limitations 

went. No one ever got carted off to the 

hospital or anything like that. I never 

remember broken bones or stitches or

anything (I'd already had my own fill 

of all that). And then, later on, I found 

out that, in the 'medical' world it was 

considered better that kids got banged 

around and roughed up.  It all seemed 

so perfect, so Avenel-right. Here's what

I'm talking of : 'Children are anti-fragile. 

Bone is anti-fragile. If you treat it gently, 

it will get brittle and break. Bone actually 

needs to get banged around to toughen up. 

And so do children.' That was pretty 

innocuous stuff, but it so well summed 

up what was going on, unwittingly. 

Avenel was cutting edge!

-

One of my favorite things used to be the 

Bayway Circle, up past Linden, on Route 

One, entering the area of Elizabeth. My 

father, in doing his basement upholstery 

side-jobs, often had people from up that 

way as customers. I'd often go with

him, drafted, as it were, to lift and haul, 

to pick up or drop off furniture -   the 

usual chairs, couches, etc., using his 

'60 Chevy station wagon, seats down 

in the rear, and the rear flaps left open, 

with some furniture concoction usually 

sticking out and being roped in for the 

ride. It was far-off stuff for me, and 

exotic. Riding up Rt. One was like 

going on a major trek, and then taking 

the Bayway Circle, and using it to get 

halfway around again for whatever that 

other road is heading west, was always 

cool. I used to pretend there was, sticking 

out from my hands, holding it, an 

enormous sword that was just chopping 

everything down, cutting everything 

we passed  -  telephones poles, trees, 

houses  -  into half-height of what it 

was. Very weird now, in retrospect, 

but that's the image I traveled with. If 

I were to get heavy into trying to 

psychoanalyse  that, I'd probably 

just have to stop short, at 'psycho.' 

There was a time after this when I 

used my bicycle, on a Saturday I recall, 

to ride up to the very Bayway Circle 

I'm speaking of here. I made it, barely. 

It was pretty treacherous, in that most 

of the way there wasn't really a place 

for the bicycle on Route One, obviously, 

and the cars and trucks whizzing by 

seemed to just treat me as if I was in 

the way. (And I didn't have my sword 

with me that day). Once I got back home, 

my friend Robert Shipley, upon hearing 

of what I'd done that morning, just shook 

his 2-years-older-than-me head and said, 

'You're brave!' incredulously, as if I'd just 

stuck my head into the mouth of a lion or 

something. Hey, bones are meant to be

broken, or whatever that quote was.

-

I never thought straight. I never did anything 

too straight. My life was just always an oddly

erratic end run around things. I made things 

up often enough so they'd grant me a better 

solution. Like in Chemistry class or something, 

if you totally controlled the experiment, you'd 

then also have total control over the outcome.

And, in addition, you could come off like a

crazed genius of sorts to others by actually

'predicting' the outcome of the experiment 

and being found right! It was all bogus, but it

seemed no one ever detected that. Baffling!

Of course you can predict the result successfully

if you select craftily, and stack the deck rightly, 

for all the matter along the way. How 

fundamental is all that? It's relatively easy.

All those other people devising formulas,

measuring capacities and times, pondering 

the Periodic Table of the Elements for the 

sake of the rightness. Pshaw! Just do it. 

(Nike owes me money?).

-

'Which brings me back to Esther. There's no

mention of God in Esther? Why would that be?
Probably a mistake. Probably an omission.
You could never think it was on purpose, or
serving some other agenda. It's just a proper 
place for the same sort of twist on the simple
name of fate or place or being. Like me, here, 
waiting for a train at the Avenel station.'
-
That's the sort of abstract stuff that twists around
in my mind all day  -  doing the littlest and the 
simplest local tasks. I used to think I was in the
first quarter of my life  -  that was all Avenel.
Then I fled it, for the first half, and then the first
three-quarters, and that had really little to do
with Avenel. Now I find it pleasant, and reachable
to all else  -  that's all I really need now. In
the fourth quarter of my life. Yeah, right,
if I'm gonna live to be a hundred.