Wednesday, March 31, 2021

13,521. RIMBAUD HAD

RIMBAUD HAD
Artur Rimbaud had a
charley-horse leaving
Charleville. Oh, that's
where he lived, in case
you didn't know. Running
guns across Africa, he died
of some  leg-rot disease.
It goes like that, the long,
horrid story  -  some sort
of emergency surgery too.
I think he had it cut off.
-
All of this is a meager gruel,
and not something anyone
normal would even care
about  -  or should even care 
about. Like some weird and
mathematical feud, how many
equations with these numbers
fit? Certainly, the normal
man would not care.
-
My opinion, OK. I will say...
I find all these sorts of romantic
crazies to be of overblown
reputation and, also, hung
up, very much, on their
mothers. You can't really
get around that. They all are.


13,520. JUST BECAUSE

JUST BECAUSE
Just because you say things
doesn't make them true; that
goes for Heaven, Hell, and
things in-between too. it's a 
myriad of hallways we get 
lost in, each, along the way. 
Even when we stumble there's 
usually someone there to say...
'See, I told you.'
-
No one reads the newspaper 
any more, even though maybe
some kids still deliver: to the 
doorsteps and post boxes so
assigned, where they flick 
their bicycle wrists and the
arc of some rainbow curves
its unnoticed line through the
yellowed suburban sky.  Just
because they throw them does
not mean that anything lands.
-
They air is fraught with premonitions:
Flying newspaper buttresses, claims
of fame and power, coups and plots,
murders and deaths. Trying to report
all this is useless; just because you
say something, doesn't make it true.

13,519. RUSSINA

RUSSINA
Just the cow that was glowing
red was the only one he could 
sell me, he said. 'What kind of 
Chernobyl deal was that?' I said. 
He laughed, but in Russian instead, 
and though I understood not a word, 
I got the gist. 'Which cow is this?' 
I asked. He said he called her Russina. 
'Good milk, but of a flaming red. Too.' 
I remember making the deal, but walking 
away somehow unsatisfied in my loss of
those rubles for this cow from  Chernobyl. 
It's funny the things you never regret.

Tuesday, March 30, 2021

13,518. MY MOST ENIGMATIC APPROACH

MY MOST ENIGMATIC APPROACH
On these roads the guys don't wear
helmets when they pounce those
motor-sickles. All the guys from
Baer's like the tickles on their
scalp and all those hairs go flying.
I've not yet seen a female head
unfettered. Must be Maybelline.
Like any old time I used to know,
they ride, but no no one gets drunk.
Or drunk enough to show? Or go?
I don't know  -  we used to, what we
called, 'recreational  dunk drive' -
like an adder slinking somewhere
off across a road.
-
Never you mind. This bears no
recognition factor to life as it should
be lived. Out behind the dealership,
and down the hill, across the river,
the rest of the real town just waits.
It's not much, anymore : Just lawyers
and a courthouse, houses and gates,
a library and some swooning local
businesses that each wish for better
days. There's an old stained-glass
I've seen  -  up above some doorway  -
that names a car-shop or a dealer,
when they used to be downtown. 
I guess. CVS, Walgreens, fast-food
places, and some coffee shops too.
-
Here come those motorcycle boys,
ripping on through. It's so hard
to sit outside.

13,517. RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,160

 RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,160
(sunshine? superman? foretold?)
As far as it went, I never
much like the Village Fugs,
nor Cat Mother and the All
Night Newsboys either. They
were two local east-village
rock bands, of their own
sort. Loose, oily, garage-band
sounds. In the case of the
Fugs, more scatological 
than anything. Silly things
like 'After we ball, I hope
that won't be all.' Their 
record label, whatever it 
was, wouldn't produce them
with their original name, The
Fucks,' so the slipshod other
name had them as The Fugs.
They were actually marginally
successful for a while. On the
other hand, along 2nd Ave and
such, Cat Mother was more a
'let's get laid' band. Miserable
college smirks and all. (That
would have been a good band
name, back then: Miserable
College Smirks). I've always
hated irony too.
-
Ed Sanders, and Tuli Kupferberg. 
They, or Ed anyway, had the
Peace Eye Bookstore, on 10th
street alongside Tompkins Square
Park. Pretty cool; mysterious, back
then. Esoteric, let's call it. And, at
the corner, near to Peace Eye, was
the famed 'Psychedelicatessant'  -  
you can check my spelling because 
I could be wrong. That was a 'space
out space,' as I called it. You could
zone out there, high on whatever,
and sit in one place for three days
and it would all be excused because
you were 'grooving'  -  on where or
what no one ever much said. My
place at 509 e11th was right around
the next corner, so I'd pass it all the 
time. I went in some too. It was just 
a cool space, oddly painted, maybe
in spacey purples and stuff, sort of
dark and not much lit by normal
lighting, music usually pumping. I
used to like to watch the girls, and the
weirded out guys too  -  all together
they seemed a crappy sum-total
of the famed 'Summer Of Love.'
There were one or another other
rooms too, but I little knew what
went on there. This is all funny now,
60 years later, with drugs and pot
and all the rest of that crap now
made proper and accepted, even 
legal. Now that's ironic! With the
the 'Government' no less now so
involved in the trade and changing
what was once 'lawlessness into
now a new version of ironic
and accepted fun  - dispensing
centers and trade-inventory. No
accountability for all the lives ruined
and imprisoned over the last
50 years because of their stupid
attitudes coming (then) first. If you
once thought that handing out 
(my mind wants to say 'Novocain'
but it's not that, even though that
funny), methadone was dumb, this
now is the latest version of dumb.
-
That entire area was pretty crazy,
and one could walk the range and
see it all  -  from Gracie Mansion
Gallery  -  which came later, when
for a brief time the East Village 
actually made a stab at being a
new 'arts and galleries' area (BIG
flop), to the bicycle repair guy at
10thm who'd set up his outdoor
bicycle-repair curb most every
day, and stay busy at it too: axles,
chains, bearings, adjustments and
re-fittings too. Bars and pop-up
storefronts for whatever seasonal
moment was underway. In ways of
making money, it always seemed that
the inveterate New Yorkers had a
million tricks up their sleeves. The
small and obscure eating places, and
the weird forms of delivery too. Yes,
something was always underway.
-
Maybe even the places I've mentioned
were part of that : rule-free zones that,
eventually  -  it was hoped  -  would
draw the miserable 1967 dollars or
change out of someone's pocket, for
whatever crap could be peddled. It was
like that with the music too  -  the Fugs,
and Cat Mother, to use just two, then
local, examples. The music sucked, it
was actually horrid, but  -  in the
broader ethos of those days, like
today  -  you were supposed to check 
your judgment at the door, just go for
cool, get it, and laugh along. It was
loud, fast, rude, and foul and ironic
too. Back then, a regular prole would
not have a sense of the 'ironic' factor,
of course. It had not become so vainly
established as it did later. All those pop
songs, and Beatles and Dylan and the
rest, suddenly self-consciously and
wryly about themselves, singing! With
a wink. You try to listen to 'Leopard
Skin Pillbox Hat' now, or 'Rainy Day
Woman, #12 & 35' and it's really all
you can do to keep from barfing over
what you hear, The irony and self
conscious wink-factors were so broad as
to be patently offensive. Like 'Tomorrow
Never Knows,' 'I Am the Walrus' and
all the rest. Different fish, same school.
-
I remember the titters and sneers, in
school, when learning about things
like 'Lake Titicaca' in Peru, or  -
another time  -  when some woman
friend of mine began snickering, and
said  -  about a baseball player named
Albert Pujols  -  'I can't believe they're
cheering for a guy named 'poo-hole.'
I meant to say back, 'Yes, and ha ha,
this whole twisted world is a funny
place.' But more to my matter was
the idea of the huge waste that had,
by now, and then too, gone into
belittling the world, for what it is,
maybe too for what it can be, or is 
headed to be. In 1967, the hordes 
of young kids swarming into the
east village were meant to be no
harm, do nothing negative but seek
and have their own sensated fun. Of
course, it never turned out that way.
Nor did I ever see it that way. I found
that I just could not get into the fabric
of that ill-fitting suit; oh though I
tried. And then, one day, just like
that, after the deaths and the riots, 
the protests and the hiding outs, and
all the rest, I realized that, truly, all
was lost. Those miserable trends had
actually taken root and spread and
had been assimilated into the society
at large. And no one blinked. No one
cared. The Vietnam Death Choir raged
on, the irony there being the anarchy
of soldiers. Killing, but with a new
and redefined definition of what that
killing was. On the NY city streets,
that same redefinition broke down 
everything else  -  the dry-rot of
the 1970's, and then the rococo
sick glamor of the '80's tried so
valiantly to give meaning to pathos,
shape and form to a blob of misery
that, by then, and perhaps ironically
too, had spread everywhere : Schools,
cafeterias, encounter groups, therapy
session, marriage counseling, drug 
clinics, art-therapy session, rap sessions,
polyester and double-knit clothing.
The entire mid-afternoon martinis
crowd, flambe'd and sickened of
itself, turned to irony, killed their
own nation, and merrily tumbled
along their way. 'Sunshine came
softly to my window today. Could
have tripped out easy, but I changed
my ways.' Sunshine? Superman?
It was all foretold....

Monday, March 29, 2021

13,516. TRENCHANT PROHIBITIONS

TRENCHANT PROHIBITIONS
The dog walks softly on its own
cloud of being, while I, in effect,
jet ski across my presumptions.
There is no tarnish to this silver,
nor any twist within this lace.
-
We both rove, yet remain alone,
together. Not too much in common,
even the words and the shoulders
are all different between us. I step
through the mud, while the dog
tries lapping the waters I avoid.

13,515. I STRING FOR FELLOWS

I STRING FOR FELLOWS
Hold the hand that held the hand
that held the hand of Mickey Rivers.
If that's some sort of big deal to you,
good; he played baseball for the
Yankees, but always looked like 
a cripple, with a sort of hobbled
walk and pigeon-like stance. But,
that man could dance  -  once he 
got rolling along the bases. 
-
A punch-hitter; singles were good
enough for doubles, stretching that
lead into a stolen base in 3-second
spurts. Kind of was a legend in his
little, own, time, that Rivers was.
I think he's dead now, but I forget.
-
Another time, I saw Ron Darling, as
a retired ex-Met, and broadcaster
too, at the White Horse. He was
sitting alone, and facing the TV 
screen up over the bar  -  it was
an October World Series day,
sometime about 2006. We said
hi, and then I got to wondering if
he was there for the betting and
spreads than the actual game 
itself.

13,514. THIS THING IS A PROBLEM

 THIS THING IS A PROBLEM
When Atlas came down from the
Atlas mountains, I'd bet he was 
in a real snit. One thing after 
another, it must have seemed. 
The sunlight drew the water for
the bath, but it turned into a
mountain stream; the pond
where he used to linger, into
a raging sea?
-
Those Gods, or whatever they
were, crawling along Mt. Olympus,
now that was more than even he 
could bear. 'Were we not Gods?', 
he thought unto himself, 'or just
more exalted humans full of snuff
and fire?'
-
Balancing preoccupations takes
up lot of time. Some other God,
or fire, or time, Chronus or
Hephaestus, help us with this
burden please.


Sunday, March 28, 2021

13,513. NOW THE LATTICE-WORK SHOWS

NOW THE 
LATTICE-WORK 
SHOWS
And though there is something missing,
the flowers still cling to the wooden slats.
Nothing tentative, I mean, they cling. That
curlicue of tendril they grew can really
grab. I guess that's what 'I remember you'
tries to get it. By saying something so
pointed, I will not forget a thing.

13, 512. RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,159

RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,159
(...in just going on...)
One time I went to a birthday party,
in Chinatown. Kids were around the
table, singing. 'Happy Birthday, To Yu.'
Yes, that was pretty funny. So were
those dumplings and black bean
pastries the adults were eating. I
did always like Chinatown, even 
as much as it was a sort of no-man's
land even then. If one wasn't Chinese
it took an extra thought or two to go 
there. There was period of time, in 
the Studio School, when getting an
apartment in Chinatown was taken
up as a great way to find cheap rent.
I knew one or two people who did it,
and the forthcoming stories were
then legion  -  of strange scenes and
smells, groups of people, and the
obscure, behind the scenes, streetlife
they'd see. Barber-shop schools that
doubled as Tong hideouts, small
doorways leading to deep alleys 
and opium dens, and  -  in fact  - 
there were a few lurid tales of
underground passages leading right
to the east River, from which people
sued to be taken away (and never
seen again). Chinatown was strange.
I got to know, purely by repeated
seeings, the really odd beggar-types
as the stood or sat at their same
places all the time, endlessly chain
smoking, or playing one-string lutes
or whatever they were, with a metal
cup for handouts, and what appeared
to me as, (whether they purported to
be blind or not) eerie lookout-scans
along the streets and passers-by, as
if on alert for gang infractions or
murderers or thieves. I always
wondered about whatever sort of
network those street gangs and 
Chinese Benevelent Societies
were running. One other time, as
friends with a Taiwan Exchange
Student  -  who called herself
Mary Tsei (pronounced like  'Shay'),
I went to a second-story Buddhist
Temple on the east side of  what's
called Confucius Plaza  -  a sort of
crummy-now location where Bowery
begins, and Police Plaza starts too,
in the other direction down, southward.
It was all once called Five Points; at
Street, Orange Street, etc., and was,
early on, the most notorious and
dangerous death den of old NYC.
Many of the streets are gone now, 
and, as with Police Plaza and the
civic and municipal buildings 
that were constructed in their
places, Government has solved
the problems by simply taking the
places over  -  jails, pavement,
huge buildings, family courts, etc.
One way of solving the old, human,
problems, I suppose. (But just then
replacing them with another, just
as bad). Anyway, she took me to
that Buddhist Temple (an uncle or
some connection of hers was a monk
there). It overlooked prime Chinatown,
Doyer Street and the rest, but was a
very  - seeming  -  calm large room,
with incense, pillows, some sort of
music, etc. Large, swing-out windows
(no AC, in 1974 anyway) let in street
sounds and some voices too, but nothing
really disconcerting. Halfway or so up
the walls were shelves with candles,
bowls filled with oranges, incense
sticks, and dollar bills too. I was 
told they were all offerings, and 
ongoing. People would come in, sit 
and meditate or rest, while dwelling 
on their problems of the moment, and 
leave behind offerings. We managed
to stay there, meditatively, for about
five minutes, and then Mary in to
the side rooms, in search of her
relative. Curtains parted, heads
poked out, Mary was gone a bit.
Then she came back out and said
simply, 'We must leave. They are
not happy that I brought outsiders
in, and wish us to go now.'
-
That was the end of that. Not much 
else was mentioned about it, and I 
certainly wasn't going to be the one 
to dwell on the subject. I guessed 
some odd line had been crossed, one 
by which I was the outsider. It was 
a strange feeling. OK, so of course
it got me to thinking about what
being an outsider actually is (was).
I had always been one, and that was
always apparent to me, although this
form of outsider was different. That
was all physical and material form.
My own 'outsider' claim, I realized,
stemmed from internal, psychic
causes of my very own. Yet, they
were agreeable to me, accepted 
and, in fact, welcomed by being 
most prevalent.
-
As I sit here, writing these things,
I am reminded of much else, and
of others who have said things 
about what manners of memory 
and  recollection we keep our 
inner lives alive. Even these now
most basic remembrances of
Chinatown  - Mott, Doyers,
Mulberry Streets and the rest  -
swirl in with their own new
concretes acting as foundations
for my 'memory.' To an individual
involved, it's all out of their own
control  -  life makes what it will
of its own manners and memories.
John Updike had it thusly: 
"Composition, in crystallizing
memory, displaces it." I think that
means to say that the memory
aspect of it takes over the event(s)
themselves and allow us them to
weave our new selves over and
into whichever memory we are
working. Strange, that is. (I
write this today, after just
receiving news of another
childhood friend's sudden death
and I, in my turn, realize, 'There
has never been anything in my
life quite as compressed, 
simultaneously as communicative
to me of my own power and worth
and of the irremedial grief in just
living, in just going on.')....




Saturday, March 27, 2021

13,511. DELIVERY

DELIVERY
It seems the mailman was
pulling strings, or trailing them
anyway. Driving along the dirt
covered road with the yellow
light on : stopping place to place
to reach and stretch, the mail to
the right-handed box, the box to
the right-handed mail. He should
be carrying helium balloons to
help with gas mileage. I'm over
in the heather, watching, from
behind the budding trees.

13,510. SURREPTITOUS TRAINING BUSINESSMAN

SURREPTITIOUS TRAING: BUSINESSMAN
When the wind dies down
my surreptitious training can
cease. Listening to all your
new instructions is like getting
training from a dog. Not that I
mind, understand, but simply
that this far along in deep stages
of life, I'd rather be ranging in
Dreamland. Business and, now,
commerce,  -  your sought-for 
intentions of  trading for coin  -
are seen pulling me back to the
Devil external. That' s a nice
house up on the hill, for sure;
but let's let it stay there for now.

Friday, March 26, 2021

13,509. NOBLESS OBLIGE

NOBLESS OBLIGE
Nobody today knows how to
leave anything alone. The curse
of a modern day. The fixture on
the charnel-house landing.
-
We sometimes stand alone, or
think we do, or stand back - to
watch things occur, the mix with
the ladle, the churn of the mortar
being mixed.
-
But when we are done, how so
many love the bricks, and with 
them erect their kingdoms of high 
railing and stately heights. No one
leaves anything alone.

13,508. RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,158

RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,158
(new york city was sure a weird place)
Maybe I walked too many
miles in all those walking
days I had. In a certain way
of seeing things, there wasn't
too much else I ever had to
do. I'd landed, feet-first and
fortunate, on the long slide of
Manhattan : knowing little
about it, really. There seemed
to be a torch at every corner,
yet only now I realize they
were the old-style, short-stalk
2-color traffic lamps that New
York City used to have. Amber,
I guess, had not yet been
invented. If they tried that
today, the dead would be
lining the streets. Except, as
it is, I can't recall what actually
happened, back then, between
red and green. Maybe it was
red for all for a few seconds?
I don't know. Havoc, in any 
case, was always my bedfellow,
so it wouldn't have mattered.
Now, like anywhere else, the
traffic lights are all overhead
and seen by all. It used to be
you had to really ferret them 
out; hard to find in a crowd.
-
It was pretty maddening anyway,
along east 11th street, and I hardly
knew what I was doing there.
Spanish murders. Drug cases.
Crumbling buildings, yet somehow
filled with people  -  families of
8 or 9. I guess the parents, in
all that misery, just never stopped
pounding each other and thus
kept producing kids. Juicy ones,
dripping over everything. August
ice-creams. Custodians of custard
and sweets. 
-
I don't know, and I probably never
was meant to. A few things I did
find out, haphazardly, while I was
settling in : newcomer kids, the
hippies, all rolling in, the girls 
among them, novices, once they 
started smoking pot, they always 
had their clothes off not long after. 
I guess it was a sort of rite-of-passage 
for Summer, 1967. I never found out.
Not everyone knew that; only the
wise-guys, like my 'roommate' Andy,
who wasn't really. He was a localized
drug vendor; how long before me
he'd been doing it, I never knew, nor
where he stayed before he moved in
with me. He was - he said - from
California, where he'd lived a deep
life, though in deep-freeze, in L.A.,
growing up as a scoundrel. He blew
in with the hippie tide, but in reverse,
as it went. The end-goal for most
of the others was to get to California,
starting out from NYC. For him, it all
apparently went the other way. In
the very beginning of my time, he
did sort of save my butt by giving
me a space to sleep  -  after I'd met
him accidentally, at some crummy
job we had at the food joint next
to the Fillmore East. It was a small,
narrow dive, next to what once had
been some large cafeteria-style eaterie.
Now it was was a sludge-pot pushing
hamburgers and ice cream and soda
to the freaked out music-heads at the
'concerts' next door. Moby Grape, '8:05,
I guess I'm leaving soon....' That was
the big tune around, when I landed.
-
Looking back now, New York as
Paradise sucked. New York as a
dream also sucked. I never paid a
day's rent, except that first month,
after Andy came in and somehow
fund a way to pay the monthly rent
to the skeeter-headed pot-freak
Superintendent on the premises
in drugs. Cash was so passe.
-
It all made me bored and nervous,
but I never said much; just went on
my way, coming and going, not
frequenting much of the ways and
means that were flooding all around
me. Andy kept cowboy boots, filled
with change  -  one for quarters, one
for dimes, another for nickels, etc.
I never knew about paper money or
bills; where any of that went; the
entire world of such high finance 
(there's a pun for you!). Whenever
my girlfriend came to visit, Andy
was always happy to load her with
change for the subway. He kept me
flush too  -  except that quarters got
heavy. It was all a joke. There'd be
people dozing about, enough that
I'd have to step over them, heads,
arms, even naked torsos  -  those
stupid girls again I mentioned. It
was just a big grin to Andy. He
was about 6 or 8 years older than
me, I guessed, at my runt age of 18;
a wizened old man, he was, wiser
in the ways of filth and the world
than I'd ever be; so I just rolled off
and sort of let him run the show 
even though it was my apartment.
It was my name on the lease, not 
his. All that was OK, and I didn't
care because I'd moved out anyway
- living in the basement of the
Studio School instead. It was OK
until bad-shit started happening.
It just got worse. Real worse. I
leave it there, for now.
-
Other and better things took my
time and energy away. I managed
a sort of happiness. Whenever I
went back there, in the midst of
all else we'd been doing  -  running
draft-dodgers to Canada, formulating
strange protests and marches for the
anti-Vietnam factions, evading police
and vice-squad snoopers  -  the vibes
I felt were really bad. No one even
knew me anymore; as I'd go back to
MY apartment, to be questioned and
let in by new people I'd not know 
and who didn't know me. The kettle
was about to blow, and it had been
boiling bad shit too. When it all
went down  -  fortunately for me  -  I
wasn't there. Bodies and fumigation.
Police tape and a news story too!
Nobody knew me then, and I was
determined to keep it that way.
-
Years later I met the guy whose
father had been detective to the
investigation. He was dead by then,
and his son reflected  -  without
knowing who I was  -  how that
case and that era had irked his father,
never being able to get to the real
bottom of anything. It was OK with
me, and we left it at that. New York
City was sure a weird place.



Thursday, March 25, 2021

13,507. THE OLD ALUMINUM SHED

THE OLD ALUMINUM SHED
The only note that ever came
to me said I was missing in
action and my remains were
being sent home. Yes, you're
right  -  it all made no sense, 
to me either. I put the rifle's
barrel in your mouth, but all
that happened when I pulled
the trigger was that your dog
then clamped my leg. No big
deal, and it only hurt a little.
We marched across the lawn
to say some prayers for Father
Baxter, who too had not returned
from where he'd been. I wondered
if he also had received a letter.
-
A few days passed, and it seemed
the march was still on : we pranced
across a greensward outside Beckly.
Nice small towns like that ought
never be invaded, let alone see any
trace of war or cinders : Garages
and swing-sets, in a sort of perfect
order. I tried imagining an equal
life, but nothing like that ever
came to be. I already knew my
endings before they'd even
happened. Now the only sound
we hear is the deadened thud of
rain on the old, aluminum shed.


13,506. ELSEWISE

ELSEWISE
Edelweiss, and now this.
Small men, hunters with
outsize carbines shooting at 
rocks and declensions, or
reading Rimbaud at the edge
of the water. Drunken Boats,
indeed. Crocodiles will stop
at nothing to do honor to the
breed. Am I dreaming, or can
any of this be for real?
-
Maybe I should take a hammer 
to the Ferris Wheel? Maybe we
together should better down the
walls. Between this aching and
this waking : matter holds such
small adhesion to this world.
-
We can watch the President,
together, as he garbles his words
and utters snipe-talk for the now
ever-present camera-eye. How
does it go, now that every day
seems like Sunday to me?

13,505. CLIMBER'S INTENT

CLIMBER'S INTENT
I think the Sherpa guides still ask
at Everest what is the climber's
intent for the climb; as if all that
is paramount is that one has a
good reason. Not danger. Not 
clime. It was Edmund Hillary, 
I'm told, who said 'Because it's 
there'  -  something  to that effect. 
-
The joke goes that they fetched him
a bucket and said 'wretch in here.'
He asked them why, and they said,
'Because it's there...'

Wednesday, March 24, 2021

13,504. RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,157

RUDIMENTS, pt. 1,157 
(a humble dis-astonishment)
Making my way through
this increasingly obstructed
world has become more and
more torturous and/or difficult
for me  -  it now having reached
the point, I'll admit, where I
do avoid any social interactions
whenever I can. I do not usually
enter stores, and even attending
to a post-office visit causes me
consternation and anxiety. My
goodly wife, for her part, tends
to those sorts of usual chores 
for me. What a strange end-point
for me to have reached. This
form of reclusiveness, however,
has numerous good points. I
never need to dine out, restaurants
now being acceptably passe and
most other 'social' duties, except
perhaps answering to a routine
police pullover, can be successfully
shirked. I have fund that most of
the things people seem to think
MUST be done are, in actuality
done by choice and need NOT
actually ne needed at all. Yes!
The way it should be.
-
Malcolm Muggeridge, a British
writer from some time just past
the 1970's, as I recall, wrote
once of his life-long love of and
quest for nothing but 'the word.'
Writing : "Words were my metier.
There was nothing else I ever
wanted to do except use them:
no other accomplishment or
achievement I ever had the
slightest regard for, or desire
to, emulate. I have always
loved words, and still love 
them, for their own sake. For 
the power and beauty of them: 
for the wonderful things that 
can be done with them." Well, 
that sure summed up for me 
some part of the attributes of 
living that I'd begun adopting,
even in my seminary days. As
I've noted here before, it was
early on, once I'd gotten set
and established there, that I
realized little of that was really
for me at all and that the 
looming  threat over my head 
was of staying and thus being
forced to accede to something
that was not about me at all.
Ill-suited religiosity, of the sort
there peddled, would be ruinous
to my future life and days. It's
said that a wise person realizes
these things, and limitations,
intuitively, as he or she learns
to sense and read what's coming
in  -  the intuitive soul messages 
of self. I recognized mine right
off, and they were calling from
some far, other place; and they
were telling me 'Get off, get
off this boat now, and don't
look back.' The funny thing
was  -  in the manner of life
replicating itself and causing
its own realities  -  that I didn't
have to do a thing. All around
me whatever I needed fell into
place itself, bringing to me the
needed result. And I gauge the
remainder of my life from that
point.
-
It is also said that a wise person
commits suicide numerous times,
albeit in a symbolic sense. In that
vein as well, I ended, as dead and
buried, a few lives and a few versions
of myself that no longer fit me. This
sometimes caused, or causes, among
others, a consternation; a reaction
to me as being too changeable or
too fitfully inconsistent. I never
viewed it as that at all, and rather,
instead, prided myself on the
honesty of having and heeding 
a guiding self which (again)
intuitively led me on and towards
the paths and pastures where I
should be headed. It worked,
though never by worldly standards.
My own viewpoint of 'worldly'
standards anyway has never been
a good one, nor an accepted one.
To those, perhaps, who did
understand something of me  - 
like my friend Mary Kay of
long-ago previous mention, I
was always seen as a 'burn down
the mission' kind of character;
in equal parts talented and bizarre,
though often, as well, beyond
comprehension and unpredictable
too. Many wakes, attended by
many, varied people seeing me
out. I suppose somewhere out
there there will be a real one
awaiting me as well.
-
In Shakespeare's 'King Lear,' the
blind Gloucester says to Edgar, who
has just commiserated with him
on his blindness, 'I stumbled when
I saw.' There has always been a
fraught meaning there for me. Those
who have single sight, (my term),
are condemned to but see things 
one way, one time, over and over.
By such means is life itself turned
into a boring wreck. 'I stumbled
when I saw,' on the other hand, has
always denoted for me the idea
that  those considered otherwise
'blind' by the world  -  because of
a refusal to go along, conform,
assume  -  are actually the fner
characters, who can sense and
intuit, with higher means, the very
clarity of that which they are after,
or seek. This it has always been
for me, and by those ways I found
always my refuge in (what are
ignominiously called) 'words.'
-
Such a dumb word as 'words' 
does little justice to the otherwise 
transformative power of (perhaps
what should instead be called)
'grasp' : of Reality and of the
world. It was when I had sight
that I stumbled most often. Once
I became blind to all else, and 
stayed on my course of 'words'
that I could see most clearly
and no longer had obstacles to
avoid, nor steer around. I was
able to live the rest of my life
in a humble dis-astonishment
about the other foolish things that
drove those all around me onward.