New Year Where

On December 31, 2010 night we were closing the diamond exchange and one of the security guards asked of my New Year's plans. Big Dave's an ex-cop from Brooklyn. My neck of the city. Light black and the 300-pounder knows my hang-out, even though his favorite watering hole is Junior's on Flatbush.

"I'm going to Frank's Lounge, because I don't want to be with any whiteys. They are only trouble on New Year's Eve." Every time I go into a white bar someone starts saying something stupid. If I was deaf, I could ignore these slurs against race, religion, and women. Problem is that I'm only near-sighted.

A trio of white ex-cops were waiting for last-minute pick-ups in the exchange. They worked as couriers for the diamond Jews. Most of these couriers were Italian from Bensonhurst or Howard Beach. The three of them stared at me as if I were a race traitor.

"Only brothers at Frank's and the most beautiful Chinese bartender in the world. Damn, am I in love with that woman." Rosa Lee was a wetback from Mexico. The twenty-three year-old beauty had a good heart. Her boyfriends were losers. She deserved better and I would have been the best, if I were 30 years younger.

The Chinese ain't much higher of the race scale for these guidos. My son and daughter are mixed. Half-Thai/ Half-Farang. Ha-sip ha-sip.

"Ain't no way a white man can get in trouble at a black bar." I never have fought with a black. Not of the basketball courts, streets, or bars. "My Uncle Jack warned me once, fight any white guy you want, but never a black man. He'll come back and stab you to death."

Big Dave said nothing. He was black and easily read the hatred in his fellow officers' eyes. I couldn't have given a shit what they thought. None of them go to Frank's and wherever they're going I'm avoiding and going to be seen avoiding on New Year's Eve or any other night of the year. Race traitors know their place and mine will be Frank's Lounge with Homer, Andy, Tyrone, Roe, Charlee, Harriet, Claudia, Larry LA and the big man himself, Frank. It's my home away from home.

I'll be easy to find too, since I'll be the only man in his 50s wearing a tuxedo.

New Year's Resolutions 2020

Every January 1st millions of Americans vow to better their lives and the world. The Top Ten New Year's resolutions rarely differ from year to year, since most people give up their resolutions within a few days.

For 2020 I made no resolutions.

Not one.

At my age I've failed enough times to accept my habits with aplomb, but here are the perennial Top Ten;

1. Spend More Time with Family and friends
2. Exercise more
3. Lose weight
4. Stop Smoking
5. Enjoy Life
6. Quit Drinking
7. Get Out of Debt
8. Learn Something New
9. Help Others
10. Get Organized

After reading this list I figure I'm not so bad off.

There's some of them I do without the help of a resolution.

Hell, I must have quit drinking a hundred times in 2012 and I got out of debt by cutting up my credit cards in 2008. Two months of stress knocked off 15 pounds and I don't really smoke cigarettes, except when I drink at a bar.

I do feel good about life, especially when I'm with my kids.

Somehow I got to get over to Thailand more often.

The end of January is the next trip.

So don't worry too much about resolutions.

Most of them are unattainable, otherwise you wouldn't have to make them, so life for today.

It's the best resolution of all.

JOURNAL ENTRY - DECEMBER 30, 1978 - EAST VILLAGE

Dallas trumphed over Atlanta and the Steelers bettered the Brocnos to set up the two teams playing in SuperBowl XIII, as the NFL uses Roman numeral to classy up the most profitable Battle of Brawn of 1979.

Alice will return to New York after a long holiday in West Virginia. She telephoned last night with plans for the New Year Celebrations. I've always considered the celebration an amateur's night out and have opted to work at Hurrah, drinking with my friends and fellow punk rockers, as billions around the world welcome 1979, the last year of the 1970s, which started with Nixon and Vietnam and ends with Jimmy Carter as president and cocaine supplanting LSD as drug of choice for the disco crowd.

Morte, Morte, Morte.

DECEMBER 30, 2021 BROOKLYN

The NYU Transplant Unit has demanded that I have my blood tested weekly for drink and drugs. Tomorrow I will be five months straight. The longest sober stretch of my adult life with another six to go before the Surgeons will even consider an operation.

I want to live.

I want to see my children grow.

I want to write.

And I want to teach the young and old about life away from their cellphones.

Morte, Morte, Morte a gin/tonic.

Aegroto dum anima est, spes est ~ Erasamus - As long as there is life there is hope.

JOURNAL ENTRY DECEMBER 22, 1978

After the hurricane swept the island, I set off in a leaking sailboat across the trashed sea and landed on a large island peopled by two warring factions. I and my faceless friends were drafted into a guerrilla troop and were deployed in the forest to ambush an unknown enemy.

I was ordered to scout out a mile from the ambush spot. I hid in a rumblng factory and spied the oncoming attack forces. They were not amateurs and spread out to search the facotry for danger.

I noiselessly killed them one by one and then returned to the ambush location. I informed the officers on their strength. We had hidden three machine guns and a tank. These weapons combined with the element of surprise gave us a victory and after twenty seconds of slaughter our enemy surrendered, begging for mercy.

LATER

Andy was supposed to call me this afternoon, but he never called and after writing for two hours I heaed uptown for holiday shopping. I stopped into the Cornelia Street Cafe and spoke with Grant and Cyrena. Alice and I haven't had sex in months and I fucked the owner's wife in the bathroom. I had cheated on Alice and she had betrayed her husband. Her old man had two girls on the side and Alice was in West Virginia with her father and mother. I bought beer and went to my place at 256 East 10th Street to drink with Willem, who had already starred in a movie, and Joe Han, a Hong Kong filmmaker. They discussed their futures. I said nothing and drank beer, because at this point in my life, I had no future.

Joe Han disappeared back to China. I search film credits for his name. I have never seen it.

Willem has become a giant of cinema.

I remain nothing even more now than ever. There's no telling how much longer I have on the Earth. Two months. A year. Two years. Everything depends on getting a liver transplant. Friends ask if I am scared. Truthfully not at all. Not of pain. Not of death.

I've had a good life and I still have one.

Forever and a day.

JOURNAL ENTRY DECEMBER 27, 1978 - EAST VILLAGE

This morning I had driven Ande's father's car from Brookline to Route 3 onto 128 past the snowfields of the Blue Hills and then headed south to the great metropolis of New York City. Big Blue has a radio station atop its granite bald summit. The view from the tower encompassed Boston from Cape Ann to Nantasket. As a teen I had skied the short trails, but always revel in the dark blue of the Atlantic stretching east into the Atlantic. Boston had once been my hometown. My mother had called this morning and told me to take care of myself. My one goal was to make enough money to pay off their mortgage and then send them to Hawaii. Getting a regular job was the only way to achieve that wish, but 9 to 5s bored me shitless and I stepped on the Cutlass' gas.

Visiting my parents had been comforting as had seeing my brothers, sisters, and aunts and uncles and our next door neighbors, the Menconis for Christmas dinner. I loved my parents. My older brother was with Pattie, who was working for the CIA My sisters Pam and regina seemed happy, and Regina's beau was a good man from Hartford, if there is such a thing. My younger brother Patrick played guitar in the basement, while Michael, obviously wanted to tell everyone his secret. I had warned him that confessing you're gay was one sure way to ruin Christmas and he said, "Maybe this summer."

I felt bad about not having any gifts and even worse getting some. Andy was my only friend at the gathering. Every other friend from grammar and high school and college have vanished into the amnesia of the past. My old girlfriends are ghosts; Linda Imhoff, Hilde Hartnett, Janet Stetson, and Jackie Collins. I'm not sure if I abandoned them or they deserted me.

The Cutlass sped on I-95 through the marshlands of the Neponset River. The highway rose at Sharon onto a plateau all the way to Providence. The Interstate had destroyed miles of neighborhoods, but at least the engineers had banked the pavement and I hit 80 past the empty harbor.

Farther along the State Prison rises atop a high berm. Hundreds of convicts locked to serve sentence for their crimes or someone else's wrong. Snow topped the field of the pine barrens, until I reached New London and the nuclear sub bases of Groton. Within a half hour I crossed the Connecticut River, which I considered the southern boundary of New England.

At Christmas dinner my family asked, "Will you ever return to Boston?"

"I don't think so."

I love New England; Maine and the White Mountains, but I had taught English at South Boston High during the bussing riots. The city of my birth was filled with racists. My old friends called me a 'race traitor. I could fight them all. The day before Christmas I rode the trolley into Park Street. None of the women appealed to me.

I left the city in 1976. I adopted the sums of the East Village as home, even though my first friends had yet to come to New York. My good friend, Andy, was remained in Boston playing funk in an all-black band. Neil had left Staten Island to study Medicine in Dagupan City in the Philippines, Libby had flown to Paris to seek fame and fortune as a fashion model. I had new friends now, but I felt I would desert them at one point.

LATER

I'm trapped in Brooklyn. Covid has surged out of control, yet plenty of unmasked people wander the streets of Clinton Hill, as if they are immune to the virus, but many of my friends have been struck up by this variant despite having been vacced twice.

A road trip would be perfect except there's nowhere I can go, as I will have a series of tests at NYU Hospital to assess the health of my liver.

I've been invited to ski in Tahoe, sun in florida, and fly over to London to reside at Goodenough University. Mostly I want to see my families in Thailand, however Nu says that everything in Shut down in Pattaya and Mem is concerned about leaving the house.

Oh, for the world to be free again.

The Wasteland of TV

When I was a child of the 50s in Maine, Timbukto symbolized the most remote destination on this Earth, although Bob Hope and Bing Crosby never made a 'road movie' to there. One day during geography class my teacher at Pine Grove Primary School in Falmouth Foresides traced her finger across the world map to Africa.

"That's where Timbuktoo is." She pointed to the center of the Dark Continent. "It's on the edge of the Sahara, which is the world's largest desert.

Few of us would ever learn that the name meant 'place covered by small dunes" in Berber.

We were from Maine and the only reasons to leave the Pine Tree State were to sail the seas, war or attend a Red Sox game in Boston.

Until the 20th Century the only method of reaching the remote city was by foot or camel.

Europeans traveled across the wastelands to be the first white man to visit the gold and slave trading post. The British explorer Mungo Park died on his 1805 attempt. A shipwrecked American sailor had been taken there as a slave in 1811. The Paris-based Societe de Geographie offered a 10,000 franc prize to the first non-Muslim to reach the town. Rene Caillie won the prize in 1828, but few adventurers sought to repeat the journey.

For many westerners Timbuktoo existed as a myth, but in 2012 the legendary city has been seized by the Islamist rebel group Ansar Dine, who have introduced 'sharia' into the World Heritage site famed for its ancient mud mosques and last week these fanatics destroyed several structures with picks and axes on the grounds of idolatry and their connections to Sufism, whose sect is an anathema to the fundamentalists.

Within the week the sixteen mausoleums will be dust in the wind and they will only exist as a memory. The West had no response. Mali doesn't exist in the minds of Wall Street, although some of them would love to own one of the mosques. They are priceless.

I've never been to Timbuktoo, but the shrines will survive in my heads as they will in the dust.

Sic transit gloria mundi.

At sixty-nine I know that all glory is fleeting.

At seventy it will have fled for good.

KOSHER CHINESE FOOD by Peter Nolan Smith

After Valentine’s Day business on 47th Street slowed to a halt. The rich were vacationing in St. Barts and Palm Beach. Oil bills taxed normal New Yorkers to the bone and purchasing a diamond was the last thing on most people’s mind in a bad economy during the harshest winter in modern memory.

Hlove the store manager had succumbed to a cold and called in sick. Richie Boy phoned me to come in to open the safe. I was grateful for the day's work.

After setting up the counters and front window, the standard procedure was to plod through the repairs and pick-ups from the setters and polishers.

No one entered the diamond exchange.

At least no one with an honest intention of buying jewelry.

By noon Richie Boy and I were standing around the space heater discussing our lunch plans. We decided Chinese.

"You want anything, Manny?"

"Chinese?"

"Yeah."

"Not for me. I'm on a diet."

"Suit yourself." Manny, my boss and Richie Boy’s father, was unhappy with our obvious idleness.

“I might as well hired two brooms than you heroes.”

“What else should we do? Get down on our knees and pray for customers?” Richie Boy’s clientele came from his going out at night. None of them were getting out of bed before noon or out of work until after lunch.

“Maybe that would do us some good.” Manny pointed to me. “I got one goy. You must know some prayers for getting money. Who’s the patron saint for money?”

“St. Matthew is the patron saint of money managers. He doesn’t really count.” I had been an altar boy in my youth. “Saint Agatha is the patron saint of jewelers. She was martyred for refusing the sexual advances of a Roman. Her body is supposedly incorruptible.”

“Enough already.” The thought of a 2000 year-old virgin corpse disgusted Manny. “But say a little prayer to this Saint Agatha. It can't hurt.

“I’ve forgotten my prayers.” Some stuck with me. The nuns taught religion with the help of a ruler. My hands twitched in memory of the flat wood measuring stick striking my knuckles.

"Sa but my atheism wasn’t something I mentioned at work.

“Pray already. We need money.”

"I'll do my best." I rejected my atheism for ten seconds and begged the intercession of St. Agatha, but stopped before saying how much cash I wanted, because lunch had arrived from the Chinese take-out.

“Great, first I have a religious bullshitter and now I have loafers.”

“A man has to eat.” Richie Boy handed me my order of General Tso’s chicken. He was having the same thing.

“I loved the succulent meat covered with crunchy batter and the sweet tang of the sauce. Neither of us ever questioned the source of the meat until after whoever ordered the General Tso’s chicken had finished their meal. It was just good manners.

“What about me?” Manny asked from his desk, whose surface was cluttering with bills, invoices, and folded packets of loose diamonds.

“What did you order?” Richie Boy pulled out a plate of dim sum.

“Nothing.”

“Then you get nothing, fat boy.” Richie poked his father’s belly. A good three inches of fat hung over his belt. The eighty year-old liked his food.

“Great.” Manny threw down his pen. “I pay everyone to do nothing and I get to starve.”

“You’re not going to starve. We ordered you Moo Sho Pork.” Richie put Manny’s food on the counter.

“Eat here.”

“I’ll eat at my desk.” Manny started pushing his papers aside.

“No you won’t. Last time you did that you ate a diamond with a dumpling.”

“It was only a twenty-pointer.” Manny remembered everything that he had ever done with diamonds.

“And I found it two days later.”

“Don’t tell us where. We’re eating.” Richie Boy had a delicate stomach.

Manny put a paper towel under his collar. His tie was Armani.

I ate at my desk with a real fork and spoon. I hated plastic utensils.

Richie spoke on the phone with his wife, mumbling out apologies. He had had a late night last evening.

“Were you with my son last night?” Manny constructed a small crepe from the pancake accompanying the Moo Shu Pork.

“Only until midnight, then we both went home.” I had no idea what time he got home.

“You’re a good friend, but a bad liar.” Manny crammed the Moo Shu Pork into his mouth. The sauce dripped on the counter. Pork was tref to most Jews, but Manny, Richie Boy, and everyone from our partners’ firm were bacon Jews. They loved the taste of pork more than Yahweh.

“Manny, when you were a kid, did your mother let you eat pork?”

“I’m from Brownsville. We couldn’t afford pork. My mother covered everything in a gravy. I had no idea what we ate. It could have been cat same as that General Tso’s Chicken.”

“What makes you think a Chinaman is going to serve you cat?” I put down my fork.

“There are no cats in Chinatown,” Richie Boy shouted from his desk. “We had a store on Canal Street for twenty years and I never saw a single cat and the Italians in Little Italy never let their cats out of the house. Cat makes a very good General Tso’s Chicken.”

I examined a piece of fried chicken without figuring out what part of a chicken it came from.

""I have a question for you."

"What?" Manny asked daubing at a post of gravy on his shirt.

“Why do Jews like Chinese food so much?”

“Because it’s cheap.”

“It has nothing to do with the money. Chinese culture and Jewish culture go back thousands of years.”

I popped the crispy morsel in my mouth. It tasted like chicken.

Manny expounded on this theory.

“They know each other since Adam. Marco Polo found Jews in China. They weren’t there for their health. They probably came from one of the lost tribes.”

"Lost tribes? That's almost a good a legend as General Tsao Chicken being cat."

"My father told me ten tribes were deported from Israel by the Assyrians. They were scattered across the earth."

"Jake taught you that?" Richie Boy put down his phone.

"Whatever my father taught me stayed taught same as the nuns." Manny had dropped out of high school at the age of 15 and had started working on Canal Street at the age of 16. “My father said our family was a lost tribe in America."

"But then you were found?"

"No, but we discovered China in Brooklyn, because when I was a kid, there were Chinese restaurants on every corner and every Sunday the Chinese restaurants were crowded with Jewish families and the real reason Jews like Chinese is that they never mixed dairy with meat."

"I thought you said that jake didn't take you out to eat." Richie Boy remembered his family history from its one source.

Manny.

"We never ate at the restaurant. Jake hated giving tips." Manny's father had been a common laborer. He had worked into his nineties as a diamond schlepper for his son. A truck ran him over on Canal Street. Jake survived that and lived another three years with a slight limp. "Like I said we were poor, but sometimes my father would treat us to take-out. We ate on paper plates, which my mother would hide in the trash, so the neighbors wouldn’t know that we were so poor. Like she was fooling anyone.”

“So you went, because it was cheap.” Richie Boy wasn’t letting go of this bone, because Manny liked to save money. He wore the same shirt twice and to prevent his collars from getting dirty he placed a paper towel between his neck and his collar. We called it his ’sweat rag’.

“Sure, it was cheap and good, plus my brothers and I ate pork, because eating forbidden foods showed we were Americans. At the Chinese restaurant Jake wouldn’t even look at the menu. He’d order #3. Pork Chow Mein. The waiter would say, “#3." and never mention pork. They were respectful that way. The number two reason that jews eat Chinese is that they weren’t goys. At an Italian restaurant there was always a cross on the wall. How can a Jew eat at a restaurant with a Jew nailed to the wall? Feh. But Buddha, he always had a smile and we rubbed his stomach for good luck.”

“You said you didn’t eat at restaurants.” I thought I had caught Manny on this, but he shook his head.

“What you think we had telephones back then. Take-out meant you went to the restaurant, ordered, and brought the food home and another good thing about the Chinese was that we weren’t Jews to them. They thought all white people looked the same, so we were the same as everyone, because they couldn’t care less about anyone as long as you had money.”

“So you never ate in a Chinese restaurant as a kid?” Richie finished off his dumplings.

“I never said never. We went on Christmas, because they’d be no one there and afterwards we’d go to the movies. There was no one there too. My old man didn’t like waiting for nothing.” Manny made himself another crepe. “Stop looking at my food. If there’s anything I hate, it’s a schnorrer.”

“Your son is the worst in here.”

“Only because he studied with the best. You.” Manny bit into the pancake loaded with pork and pointed to the door. A man and woman were coming out of the cold.

My prayer to St. Agatha had hit its mark.

“Enough talk. Work.”

“You got it.” I put away my food before Richie Boy could get out of his chair,

I was hungry for money and ‘nimmt geld’ or take money was the first rule of 47th Street. My lunch could wait till later and Chinese food always tastes better with a little money in your pocket.

Even cold.

Journal Entry - December 25, 1977

Dec. 25, Boston.

Yesterday after dancing at the 1270 Kevin and I ate Monte Cristo sandwiches at Ken's Steak House on Boylston Street. The nineteen year-old played bass for the Mumps and like most young people he had with more future and less of a past than me, but we talked freely about punk and modern depravity. Kevin was pleased with his playing, but said, "My bass sucks, but not as bad as my amp."

At dawn I wished him a Merry Christmas and walked over to Copley Square to meet Andy and Therese. The blonde, go-go dancer had just finished working at a Combat Zone after-hours bars. They were headed down to Long Island to see his parents. We sat on his Firebird smoking a joint. I had gone out with Therese's younger sister, who lived with the rest of their clan in a chaotic family commune in Brookline. I hadn't seen Hilde in months.

The rising sun brightly lit the Boston Public library and the morning was unseasonably warm for late December.

My friend put out the joint and got inside his car. Therese lit a cigarette and asked, "What do you think about andy and I getting married?"

You won't like what I have to say."

"Why?" The ex-go go dancer dropped the cigarette and crushed it under a stiletto heel.

"One, I don't approve of your living with your family. Your mother and step-father are crazy and will interfere with your life."

"Like they did with my sister and you?"

"Hilde and I were different." Neither Joe nor her mother Kate said anything about us, probably knowing I had no future with a high school senior. "And secondly I don't think Andy is responsible enough for marriage."

Therese looked at Andy and raised a finger to wait another minute. He started the engine. She turned to me and pouted, as she said, "I can make him happy."

"That is true. You have my blessing."

She got in the Firebird and they drove away to the Mass Pike.

My family was waiting for me in the Blue Hills and I went to the trolley station, knowing that there was no evil in the pursuit of happiness, even if fearing disaster, but that was me and I was the king of disasters. Even on Christmas Day.

1 + 1 = 2 Circa 1972

The simple addition of 1 + 1 is the first math learned by children. Addition is followed by subtraction, division, and multiplication. The nuns at Our Lady of the Foothills believed in the power of rote education and each student was expected to memorize the math tables from 1 to 12. Fingers and toes aided the learning process. They were the only calculator available to students in the early 60s.

Progress was measured by perfection in reciting the math tables. Mistakes were rectified by a sharp rap of the knuckles to the boys. The girls were threatened with harsh words. Kyla Rolla and I competed for top honors from 6th to 8th grades. I won a scholarship to an all-boys high school run by brothers. My score in the diocesan math contest was 2nd best. Kyla was # 1, but she refused her reward.

Eight years of nuns had been more enough for her and she opted to attend the town high school. My request to join Kyla. was rejected by my mother. She had hopes that I might be a priest. My father didn’t care either way as long as I received a good education. He was an electrical engineer for New England Telephone and agreed with the United Negro College fund commercial that a mind was a terrible thing to waste.

My prowess in math seemed a fluke throughout high school. My grades in Algebra, Geometry, and Calculus were mediocre, but I surprised my teachers and parents with a high math mark in the SATs for college entrance. A Boston Catholic college granted me early acceptance as a math major. My classmates wore thick glasses. None of them played sports. I was cursed as a geek. Kyla Rolla knew better. She was the best cheerleader at the town school. We were going steady. To her I was never a geek.

Four years on top of six grammar school years had exhausted my tolerance for religious education. I had been an atheist since age eight. It was time to quit pretending to believe in God.

I didn’t feel ready for college and asked my mother to sign papers to join the Marines. I was a 17 year-old senior in April of 1970. She tore up my enlistment papers. Without her consent I was stuck in my hometown, which was even a worse fate than having to study math for the rest of my life.

If I wasn't going to be a priest, she was determined that I would be Isaac Newton. He had discovered gravity under an apple tree and she baked a great apple pie. Everything in the universe was linked by synchronicity.

"You're going to college.” My mother's edict was final. She chose the school. Kyla and I broke up after she heard about my next step into Catholic education. Her last words to me were 'momma’s boy'. Who was I to defy my mother? Not having a scholarship I supported myself as a taxi driver. My early Calculus classes started at 9. I finished driving at 2. There weren't enough hours from the time I fell asleep till the alarm clock rang at 8am for a proper night’s rest. My grades suffered from the exhaustion and pot smoking. I scrapped through freshman year with Cs. I wasn’t so lucky in 1971. My professor in Multivariable Algebra was a genius. The bald 45 year-old in a soiled suit calculated missile trajectories in his head. He had a permanent slouch from drawing formulae on a chalkboard. His shirt cuffs were covered with ink integers.

Air Force officers sat in his class. The young men in uniform were missile acolytes from SAC. They dreamed of nuclear war and Mutual All-Out Destruction. I was a hippie peacenik. We had nothing in common other than a desire for the professor’s daughter. The skinny brunette was cute for an egghead. We smoked pot together. The soldiers had no chance, but neither did I.

Renee was in love with abstract mathematics. Her parents expected her to transfer to MIT. Both colleges were close to home.

That autumn I devoted more time to driving taxi and demonstrating against the war than classes. My grades suffered across the board. After mid-terms I attended one math class. It was a recipe for failure and I showed up at the final with no knowledge of Linear Algebra.

"Where have you been, Mr. Smith?" The professor was surprised to see me.

"I’ve been busy.” The other students snickered at my appearance. I had no scholarship and was forced to work nights double behind the wheel of a Checker Cab. My eyes were as red as deviled ham.

"I thought you withdrew from the class.”

“Withdrew?" This was a new concept.

"Yes, when you feel challenged by a course, you withdraw, but it's a little too late for that. Have you even read the book?"

It had a blue cover. "A few times this week." The professor motioned for me to to approach him. "And you still want to take the test?" His voice was low. "I’ve seen your record. You're failing German."

"Ich weiss." My stutter had trouble with German and even more trouble with speaking with my superiors in English.

"Why do you insist on taking such difficult courses?"

"Ich weiss nichts." I mostly did what people wanted me to do.

"I don’t know isn’t an answer."

"I still want to take the test."

"Why?"

"To find out if my reading the book three times was enough to score a passing grade."

"That would be a miracle, because no one reads the book."

"Why not?" I had read it three times in the taxi. It had a plot about the mist of mathematical mystery. The ending was meant to be clarity. I still saw the fog.

"Because it's unreadable."

"No, it's poetry to decipher by segments Math is poetry. If you don’t hear the poetry, you don't hear the music." Bob Dylan was my first poet. GATES OF EDEN was on the flip side of LIKE A ROLLING STONE. Neither song mentioned math. "Let me take the test. I bet I can score a 50."

"That's still a failing grade and if you also fail German you'll be thrown out of college and drafted into the Army."

"I'll enlist in the Marines."

"The Marines." The professor looked over my shoulder at the Air Force officers. "Why?"

"Not to fight for my country or the flag or democracy, but just to get out of my hometown and see the world, even if bullets were my welcome to Viet-Nam."

"How bad can it be here?"

"You don't wanted to know." Boston was a racist city. I fought my old schoolmates constantly. They considered me a 'race traitor'.

I tell you what, if you get a 50, I'll give you a C+."

"It's a deal." I took a test book from the professor. His daughter smiled at me. The Air Force officers in the class sneered at me, as if they suspected I had a low draft status. They were right. My SSS # 96, which added up to 15 and then again 5, which had to be a lucky # somewhere in the world.

The exam lasted two hours. I answered every question from the shreds of my memory. I fabricated a formula proving the speed of light wasn't an absolute in a universe of infinite possibilities. The bell rang to terminate the test and I handed my paper to the professor. His daughter and I walked into the corridor. Hundreds of students filed from other classrooms.

"How you think you did?" Renee had a sweet voice. We had never kissed other than to shotgun a joint. She smelled of patchouli.

"As good as anyone who never attended class." I hoped my formula would save me from expulsion. Christmas was around the corner and while I didn't believe in God, I always hold a place in my heart for Santa Claus. "What about smoking some weed."

"All my tests are done." Renee shrugged with satisfaction. She was a straight A student.

"Mine too."

We left the college and boarded the trolly at Chestnut Hill. We got off in front of Concannon and Sennett's. The bar had pinball, Mexican food, quarter beers, and a bar painting of a naked woman riding a pink elephant. Most of my friends were celebrating the end of exams. I drank with Renee. She didn't comment about my expression. I felt like I had buried my puppy.

"Don't worry. Everything will be all right."

"Yes, tomorrow is another day." I ordered two more beers.

After seven 'Gansetts there was no more tomorrow, until I woke up in Renee’s bed. The covers were soft. Snow was falling outside the window. A cold draft was seeping through a gap. We were two warm bodies, but neither of us should have been naked.

I remembered her saying something about living with her parents. Teddy bears were lined against the wall. Posters of the Jefferson Airplane were nailed to the wall. This was no dorm. It was the professor's house. I poked Renee's arm.

"What?" She snuggled into me with a feline purr.

"Are we at your parents' house?"

"Yes, but they"re cool with me having friends over." Her breasts were soft as marshmallow.

"Are they downstairs?"

“Yes, and my mother will make you breakfast if you want.”

"That’s very cool, but I'm not that cool." I slipped out of bed and picked up my clothing. “Would you mind if I left by the window."

“It’s the third floor.”

“I was a long-jumper in high school.” 19 feet 3 inches had been my personal best, but that leap was horizontal and not a dead drop from 15 feet, then again I didn't believe in the absolutism of gravity. "I'll call you later. We can meet at Concannon's. This time we go to my place."

"Do what you want?" She was happy either way and I jumped from the window into the branches of a pine. They slowed my descent and I stuck the ground with my feet. I tasted copper in my teeth like someone had bastinadoed my toes.

"Nice landing."

"They are all are if you can walk away from them." I struggled to not limp through the snow. I ducked under the kitchen window. The professor was speaking with his wife. He yelled for Renee. I ran into the woods and caught a taxi to my cold-water apartment in Bug Village. There was no passing that exam or German. I was heading to boot camp at Camp Lejeune.

Results for the exam were posted a week before Christmas. Somehow I had passed German with a C+. The professor like my cosmic take on Kafka's DAS URTEIL and accusation that cockroaches were a secret word for Nazi.

Renee and I approached her father's office. The test results of Linear Algebra were tacked to a corkboard. Professor Rene stood at the door. His daughter squeezed my hand. Her score was at the top of the list. Mine was at the bottom.

15 was a long way from 50.

"Oh, oh."

"I'll speak to my father."

"Don't bother. My fate is my fate. I'll see you at my place."

She kissed me on the cheek. I was getting used to patchouli. The professor said, “Enter.”

I followed him inside and he sat at a desk piled with official papers. Each was marked TOP-SECRET. Renee’s father covered them with a book on Experimental Dimensionalism. I would not be reading it in Vietnam.

"Yes?"

"I just wanted to thank you for letting me take that test."

"Why so?"

"It proved that I don't belong in Math or college."

"You're only partially right about the first, but not the second. Your treatise of Einstein not taking into account hod rod speeders was very amusing as well as the premise that the speed of light only pertains to the speed of light."

"Infinity opens up the highway."

"If I gave you a passing grade in this course, would you drop your Math major?"

"Don't bother. My fate is my fate." "I never said anything about us. I'll see you at my place."

She kissed me on the cheek. I was getting used to patchouli. The professor said, “Enter.”

I followed him inside and he sat at a desk piled with official papers. Each was marked TOP-SECRET. Renee’s father covered them with a book on Experimental Dimensionalism. I would not be reading it in Vietnam.

"Yes?"

"I just wanted to thank you for letting me take that test."

"Why so?"

"It proved that I don't belong in Math or college."

"You're only partially right about the first, but not the second. Your treatise of Einstein not taking into account hod rod speeders was very amusing as well as the premise that the speed of light only pertains to the speed of light."

"Infinity opens up the highway."

"By the way that was quite a jump from Renee's window."

"The trees broken my fall."

"So if I gave you a passing grade in this course, would you drop your Math major?"

“In a heartbeat.” I shook his hand with elation pounding through my heart. Vietnam was on the other side of the world. Renee was waiting at my apartment. She was into me for the holidays. Next semester she transferred to MIT. I changed my major to economics and minored in history. My grades improved, but not enough to graduate with honors.

1972 was the end of my math career and I haven't opened a math book since then, although I have learned that western man didn’t come up with the concept of zero until well into the Second Millennium, while the Mayans always had zero or Pohp for their 20-based numeral system.

Still I don't have to use my fingers for long math and neither does man's best friend.

"If you think dogs can't count, try putting three dog biscuits in your pocket and then giving Fido only two of them." Phil Pastoret.

Arf Arf Arf equals three, especially when 1 + 1 = 2.

In the end everything is just simple math.

My First Film

My grandmother lived in an old farmhouse in Westbrook Maine.

She had served with the Royal Canadian Medical Expedition in the great war. My grandfather had been a doctor for the allies. Mementoes of their meeting in 1916 were scattered throughout the house.

Zeppelin debris was stashed in the desk drawers. Helmets, bayonets, and uniformed hung into the upstairs closet. A mural of a French landscape decorated in their bed room.

I never met my grandfather, a surgeon, who had died a year before my birth.

After two years' exposure to the horrors of war grandmother hated violence, but in 1960 my grandmother pulled me into the living room.

"What did I do wrong?" My older brother was out on the lawn playing with matches.

"Nothing, but I want you to watch this film." She turned on the TV. It was 3 on a Saturday afternoon in Westbrook. The men are the mill were working overtime. Boys were meant to be out of the house. "What is it?" I sat on the couch.

"THE SEVEN SAMURAI," she explained the story about seven Japanese protecting a peasant village from outlaws.

"That sounds like THE MAGNIFICENT SEVEN." I had seen the cowboy movie at the Cornwall Drive-In with my family. I loved Steve McQueen.

"Hollywood got the story from Japan." My grandmother sat down, as the opening credits appeared in Japanese.

"Japan?" Our one-time enemy only made transistor radios.

"Watch."

Horses rumbled across the screen through a small village. Wars were fought between samurais. I could read the subtitles.

"What are samurais?"

"These are ronin, knights without a king. They owe nothing to anyone other than honor. Watch."

I obeyed her command and my older brother came into the living room.

"Watch," my grandmother pointed to the sofa.

For the next three hours we were transported from a Maine paper mill town to rural Japan and I understood that the Japs were people just like anyone and that meant that everyone was like everyone. It was a great lesson for a young boy and even today. To View SHICHININ NO SAMURAI, please go to the following URL http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMTU4NjAzNTIw.html

A Lengthy Hiatus

I was born in 1952. The numbers add up to a Prime of 17 sandwiched between 13 and 19 and is the sum of four consecutive primes; 3, 5, 7, 9. Any other four prime would add up to a number divisible by 2 and thereby not prime.

For the most part 17 is considered a number of love, although the Latins regarded 17 as an unlucky number. One anagram of the Roman numeral XVII is VIXI, which in Latin translates as "I have lived", with the implication "My life is over" or "I'm dead".

This summer on August 1 I ran to the toilet into which I spewed a copious treacle of black blood.

I reckoned I vomited about a quart, a definite sign that something was seriously amiss within my body.

I took a taxi to NYU Langone on 1st Avenue. The ER said with a sense of urgency that I need to stay in the hospital for a four or five days of observation.

"I thought so."

I had brought CLAUDIUS GOD by Robert Graves.

The doctors had their way with me, but I survived the episode with the staunching of the weeping lesion within my stomach.

The test and treatment of the past four months had exhausted my body and soul. My movement is minimal and I am hit by bouts of listless limbo. I actually feel good. Not great, but and am ready to write again. Shit I have nothing else to do.

17 come my way again.

Simple Math

Simple Math is a strictly mathematical viewpoint.

What Makes 100%?

What does it mean to give MORE than 100%?

Ever wonder about those people who say they are giving more than 100%?

We have all been to those meetings where someone wants you to give over 100%.

How about achieving 103%?

What makes up 100% in life?

Here’s a little mathematical formula that might help you answer these questions:

If the letters A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

as represented as number:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26.

Then:

H-A-R-D-W-O-R-K

8+1+18+4+23+15+18+11 = 98%

and

K-N-O-W-L-E-D-G-E 11+14+15+23+12+5+4+7+5 = 96%

But,

A-T-T-I-T-U-D-E 1+20+20+9+20+21+4+5 = 100%

And,

B-U-L-L-S-H-I-T 2+21+12+12+19+8+9+20 = 103%

AND, look how far ass kissing will take you.

A-S-S-K-I-S-S-I-N-G

1+19+19+11+9+19+19+9+ 14+7 = 118%

So, one can conclude with mathematical certainty that while Hard work and Knowledge will get you close, and Attitude will get you there, but it’s the Bullshit and Ass Kissing that will put you over the top. “REMEMBER SOME PEOPLE ARE ALIVE SIMPLY BECAUSE IT IS ILLEGAL TO SHOOT THEM.”

This wisdowm was emailed from Big Al Harlow of Pattaya fame.

At best he's tough as nails.

Linear Algebra 101

Back in the 1960s most New Englanders' were loss at sea when asked to count beyond ten on their fingers. Multiplication and long division flummoxed college students. Calculus was the Black Plague, but I loved the intercourse between numbers and in 1966 I was awarded a scholarship to Xaverian Brothers High School on strength of my test score.

My father was an electrical engineer had been told by the Priests that they suspected that I might have cheated on the exam in which I scored an A+. Upon hearing my historical discourse on Ptolemy calculations, Archimedes' method of exhaustion, and Newton's errors on Gravity as well my problems with Einstein's Theory of Relativity my father was astounded by my knowledge, especially since I suffered from what was much later diagnosed as dyslexia.

"Why do you think Einstein was wrong?"

"Einstein calculated the speed of light as 186,000 MPS or miles per seconds. Do you drive 55 on the Expressway? No, so there is no speed limit. Not for your Oldsmobile or Light."

"Nothing?"

"Nothing, other than my love of Math."

Poetry was Math. This magic recreated time and shifted through a billion formalae seeking an ultimate truth.

E=MC squared equal 2.

That autumn I was placed in Xaverian's advanced Math program.

My grades hovered around B. My parents considered me an under-achiever. I strived to prove them wrong without success, yet I won a Math half-scholarship to a college based on my belief in Time, which saved me from tragic addition and subtraction of Vietnam.

Math as a major in college was a big mistake, since at night I drove taxi to finance my studies. I missed my 9am Multivariable Calculus class with regularity, however I aced my final and advanced to study Linear Algebra under Rene Marcus, a famed genius of telemetry, whom the Pentagon paid big money for his skill to mentally calculate missile attacks on Russia without a slide ruler.

NPR manufactured the first calculator in 1967. None existed in the marketplace until 1974, which then was sold by NPR for $170. Only the rich could afford that price.

On the first day of class I sat at my desk with a thin book for Linear Algebra, a pencil, and paper notebook. The text on flat differential geometry obtusely explaining the electromagnetic symmetries of space-time was as dense as Osmium. I read it in a day with Pene's daughter and invited her to the Phoenix Bar. As we played pinball, she asked,"Do you understand the importance of Linear Algebra."

"Only that it supports the Universe existence with lines, planes and rotations through complex functions."

"And you disagree?"

"I am not smart enough to argue its importance.

Rene's daughter had heard my beliefs on Time. She believed in Einstein's Theory of Relativity, while I argued that time wasn't not constrained by rules and I reiterated, "There are no speed limits on an empty highway."

"That means nothing."

"And nothing means much in Math and in life."

She laughed and said, "You are a fool."

"You are right about that."

That Fall I attended only four classes.

Four, which was two times two, the second prime number.

In December I arrived at the final and Professor Marcus pulled me to the side. The rest of the class stared at me as a stranger and the professor said, "You shouldn't be here. You might be my daughter's friend."

"Just friends."

"Either way that will not influence my grading you."

"I wouldn't expect anything else."

"You haven't been in class more than three times."

"Actually four times."

"Three or four. What the difference?"

"Three is a prime number."

"And what is the important of numbers."

"Numbers will never betray the ignorance, but will trap anyone else by their honesty."

"Do you really think you can pass this test?"

"Truthfully I suspect no is the right answer."

"Then what are you trying to achieve?"

"The impossible. Give me a test paper and let me place my hand on the textbook for ten seconds." I understood the value of a hand on a book.

"And this will help?" Mathematicians only believed in numbers.

"It can't hurt."

The professor held out the book. My hand touched the cover. My palm read nothing. I was fucked. If I failed this course, I might end up in Vietnam. I took the test. My score was 45. The whorls on my flesh were very sensitive. Rene was amazed by my idiot-savantism.

"I thought you'd get nothing right."

"I still failed."

"Yes, but if you drop out from Math, I'll give you a D+"

"It's a deal."I accepted his offer and dealt with my parents' disappointment.

"What will you study now?" asked my father.

"I don't know."

"Can't you plan for the future?"

"Not now."

"You fail next time and you'll end up in Vietnam."

"I know." The War was a meat grinder and I was no John Wayne. My new major was economics. I graduated sine laude or without praise in 1974. Nixon had pulled out most of our troops. I was safe and that summer I drove cross-country with my good friend AK to celebrate the end of my education.

It was a great trip and I haven't opened a math book since 1972, although I have learned that western man had no concept of zero until well until the end of the Middle Ages, while the Mayans always had zero or Pohp for their 20-based numeral system.

Presently I don't use my fingers for long math, but if you think you're smart just remember the words of Phil Pastoret.

"If you think dogs can't count, try putting three dog biscuits in your pocket and then giving Fido only two of them."

Arf Arf Arf equals three.

And three is a prime number

Bad Math 101

Americans are not very good in Math.

According to OECD 15 year-old US students are ranked # 37th in the world behind Hungary, Israel, Norway.

1 + 1 = 2 is a difficult concept to the Land of the Free.

And forget about 3-D grafts.

Dunce caps for most of the class.

And students favorite answer for Math is 'huh'.

Curves are equally troubling for students in square states like Kansas and Colorado, although educators are hoping for improvements thanks to the legalization of marijuana.

Everyone selling pot is good with Math.

Batman is always a good substitute for numbers or equations.

But no help for expanding equations.

But smudges are always applicable to answers on chaos.

Nothingness is even better, because in the end who cares if 1 + 1 = 2.

Not Jackie Gleason.

Brooklyn Tony ON MATH

Brooklyn Tony returns from school and says he got an F in arithmetic.

"Why?" asks the father.

The teacher asked ' How much is 2 x 3,' I said "6,'" replies TONY.

"But that's right!" says his dad.

"Yeah, but then she asked me ' How much is 3 x 2?'"

"What's the fucking difference ?" asks the father.

"That's what I said!"

Pearl Harbor Day Forever

"December 7th will live forever as a day of infamy." President Roosevelt predicted before Congress in his declaration of war on Japan.

Infamy in Thai is cheu sia and last year I asked several Thais about Pearl Harbor. My question stumped them all and I repeated the question to several British friends, "What does December 7th mean to you?"

"Is it your birthday?"

Roosevelt's Day of Infamy has been losing its power to the more modern 9/11.

Even 9/11 meant little to Thais.

"9/11 New 7/11?" The corporation had announced a price increase on over 500 products.

"No. Not new 9/11." I didn't bother to explain about kreung-bins crashing into the World Trade Towers or Japanese planes sinking the US Fleet. It was all so long ago and so much has happened in the meanwhile like the Red Shirt rebellion and Britney Spears getting divorced from K-Fed.

Pearl Harbor Day was not my birthday, but it was for my younger brother Michael and it always felt funny celebrating December 7th with a cake and candles. My baby brother Michael didn't care. "Makes it easy for people to remember my birthday."

12/7 will always be Michael Charlie Day for me.

Tora-Tora-Tora.

My mother loved that movie too.