A Brief Re-visit to the Land of True-Crime Drama
We can never be too careful or too kind...unless we are sometimes...or something???
Dear Car Burglar/Thief, Sorry to describe you in such demeaning terms, but if yer reading this, you’ve broken into our car and found the $30 to which this note is attached. Please take it (the 30 bucks) and go buy dope or food or booze or whatever it is you need bad enough that you’ve had to break into our car. The only other item of value is the car itself, but if you steal it I’ll tell the cops that our one-legged, blind, asthmatic epileptic son Timmy died this morning b/c the car was gone when we came out to rush him to the fuckin’ hospital. It’ll all be bullshit, of course, (In fact, we haven’t a fucked-up kid named Timmy) but yer public defender won’t know and/or give a shit — so you’ll get nailed for Murder 2 (Death Resulting From a Felonious Act) and Grand Theft Auto. I have to do this b/c of the incredible inconvenience and expense, the broken glass or messed-up door lock on my car is gonna cause me. So, again, take the $30 and piss-off and I mean that in a respectful way… sorta.”
If you have time…
…enough to take unfiltered pics of a perfect sky, let’s face it, you have time enough. Indeed, under a perfect sky you’ll have time enough because perfect, because sky.
Trying to Save a Spider Realizing I’ve failed, Finding Him Again, Giving-up & Flushing Him Down the Toilet...
Nothing else to say, except Sorry about that.
“Boom killed Banana”
I know it’s hard to believe but this is the actual plot of a true life murder program, where an alleged female drug dealer, nicknamed Banana” was killed by a maniacal sociopath, street-thug named “Boom.
He kilt da bitch dat’s… I mean that’s how it went.
At the end of the episode the investigating cops are able to close the case because Boom and his brother (Not named) had been found murdered and burnt up in the trunk of car in Atlanta. Thus did Boom receive in some measure justice for what he likely did to Banana. Lesson learned. Although just what lesson and by whom perhaps we should pause to consider.
You Know, of course, That What I/You Believe Doesn’t Matter, Right?
Life=God, God=Life
Life I believe that “life” actually means the same thing as “God” in most ways, and that for thousands of years men in thousands of languages, including words as dead as the humans who once spoke them, have tried to understand all this stuff. Life as God, works for me. Therefore, a prayer:
Dear Life, Thanks for letting me be here and join you for however much or little time I’m going to have. The small bird plucked from its nest and turned to food by a ravaging crow; an ant, unseen, stepped on as I hurry over a hot sidewalk; and me, thinking the most vulgar thoughts or the purest: fixated on a woman’s body one moment, contemplating The Noble 8-fold path the next, until I take a final breath and you, Life, move on. Dear Life, Thank you for letting me be here for a while, for feeling you in me, and for feeling myself as part of you. I needn’t anthropomorphize you into a big, strong daddy and grovel before you, pretending you’re listening. I needn’t give you magical powers, metaphorical at first but then turned into literal nonsense, in order to fully appreciate the breadth, width, and depth of your majesty and mysteries and to fully appreciate the gift you give us. Oh Life, I owe you big time and I know in my bones that once you’ve left me behind, when I am dead and gone, that you’ll go on. Still, thanks again for all of my life and for everything.”
Living forever
I won’t and can’t. What I DO want, What I demand of myself, Is to live today As if it IS forever And to remember, That every day, Every moment Is as close to forever As any of us will ever get. So, Let’s Live it.
Old
There comes a time, (a day or week or month) an hour or minute as you grow older when you realize you’re old. Trust me on this, that moment, whether in your face or sneaking-up behind you is fucked-up.
Irreverence
I’m thinking about this word and wondering how anybody with a working mind/brain can be anything but irreverent from time to time, or, you know, like ALWAYS.
Company Coming
Today at 1:59 p.m. they will arrive, for an overnight stay; right now it’s 10:29 a.m. Eisenhower had less to do, and no doubt less pressure and supervisory scrutiny for D-day, his Presidential Runs and the National Highway System — Which sets-up the 36 hours of their visit as a total escape from any hint of happiness, fun or relaxation. But hey, welcome!
An Inviolable Law And Preachy Poem
There are damn few advantages to getting old and cranky, one of them is getting old and cranky and not giving a shit!
1.
Don’t think of this as complicated don’t be tempted to make more of it than is right in front of you. Ready? This is one of the few Inviolable laws I know/understand/want to remember and cling to; the only person you can ever change is yourself. This sounds and seems pretty obvious until you face up to how often you allow the opinions/actions and your treatment at the hands of others as a major determining factor in your happiness. And how often you’ve tried to get them to behave differently towards you with a net result of zero changes in them. No one else is to blame for your failure to do the things you must do to be treated differently by someone else. The only person you can change/control is yourself. If this seems too obvious to you, good, because that likely means you’re already doing all you can to help yourself. I’m just an old fart still trying to figure everything out, but this one I’ve got down pretty pat. You wanna feel better? Find every nook and cranny of responsibility in yourself for whatever shit you’re wallowing in, and own it.
2.
I just wrote the preachiest fuckin Poem (see above). Seriously, it even makes me sick to hear myself sounding like some old Grandpa Wisdom Asshole, full of brilliant counsel and grand directives — So will you dumb fuckers just start using yer own heads please so that I can get back to slowing wandering towards my grave and leave you as alone as I would like to be?
If you start a statement
With “to be honest” it’s only natural for the person to whom you are speaking to wonder “As opposed to what exactly?”
What if Life...
Scotland, in ancient lands and places, a question about life is asked and answered...
What if life is a virus?
What if life actually IS just another virus, a big one?
Look at the ruins of an old stone building, the roof gone the window glass long gone, only the walls still partially there, crumbling, stones and dried-up mortar lying in dusty heaps on what was once the floor.
And now notice the green, weeds of various sizes and shapes, some looking like long grass, vine maple, and nettles ferns and scraggly withered twig-looking shit poking up and in through walls and gaping doorways like a plague of life:
uncontrolled, riotous, oblivious to this place where once human hands built dreams,
whether a home for hearth and fireplace or a small factory for widget building, whatever this structure’s one time purpose, someone once worked hard at it anxious to get it built.
It’s all lost now, lost forever to the viral infection we’ve named, ‘life’.
Two brief comments of Wisdom, in 2nd person:
Rule #1 of Learning
Stop saying how shitty you are At trying to understand something.
Impressing yourself…
…is harder to do than it might seem,after all, you know all the worst secrets.
It’s Easy to Praise Mozart
Genius comes with a great price and pays only in immortality
I.
Because there is that delicateness, that perfect delicate bravery, class, touch, taste, that even vulgarians like myself can’t help but hear and admire. But what he did and still does should never be shrunk to a ness. No, not a delicateness nor a daintiness (even when he’s being dainty), not a kindness, or narrow gentleness. Indeed, however, a greatness. Most of all he touches that rarest of all elements, human and otherwise, simple perfection. His sensibility unfettered, undefinable.
II.
He knew in ways few ever know the feel of clouds pressing upon us, of waves rolling in and about our bones covered in moss, earth, shallow, sandy dirt. Mozart dreams on and serial killers, flowers, rats and gentle mice and swans and seagulls and even one day, me and women and, yes, children and babies lie still in silence, dreaming or dead and Mozart plays on for those still briefly alive.
It’s easy to praise Mozart, although it’s never enough, enough, or enough.
ENOUGH!!!!
Things I Never Have to do again
The number of people I never have to see again or spend time with again, and the number of places I’ll never have to visit or revisit and the minutes and hours I’ll never have to feel easing or galloping away from me while I’m doing shit I don’t want to do, all of this feels like the increase, the rising up and leaving me finally, free. I always loved that line “freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose” and it turns out this is true, but more purely simple and glorious than you can ever understand before being free of the things you didn’t even realize were dragging you down.
Hitching a Lift to the End of All Dreams
Meeting some drivers can be fatal
I know why the hitchhiker rubbed his Buck knife still in its sheath and told the 16 yr. old girl in her parent’s Pontiac, who was quite wishing she’d never picked him up, to drive her to a deserted place.
And I know why, once there, the hitchhiker told the girl, whose tight little body heaved in fear, that it hadn’t been too smart of her to pick him up, being all alone like she was.
I also understand why he then got out of the car, never having touched her,
and said that in 15 years of hitching, he’d never been picked up by a little cutie like her, but that he’d had others like her a thousand times in his mind as he’d stood on gravel roadsides all over the world, watching them drive by, flipping him the finger occasionally, more often just ignoring him altogether.
Him standing all alone and cold, in the rain, them roaring off into the night.
And I think I understand why she won’t pick me up as she goes by and why that hitchhiker finally hung himself in a jail cell in Iowa and why people say “etc.” when they mean that certain dances go on and on, over and over.
Etc. and etc.
Photo by Atlas Green on Unsplash