Resistance # 4 - Anti-OMG

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2004 Allergy to Silence

2004

Pattaya

It's the start of the Songkran festival and the temple across the our house on Moo 9 in Pattaya has set up loudspeakers to harangue the city dwellers into not drinking too much during the holidays.

Debicel level 110.

24 hours a day.

Thankfully I can't understand a word they are saying and also that my relatives don't listen to their advice. Last night we drank five liters of palm wine. No hang-over in the morning other than the monks' droning. Finally someone pulled the plug and the world was serenaded by a chorus of birdsong for several minutes, until a Loso fan decided to play KAO MOTORSAI with the volume knob locked on 11.

Anyone who has lived in Thailand will notice almost immediately that the Thais are allergic to silence. The blare of TVs drown out quiet in every corner of the land. Loud music assualts the ears from every possible stereo device and they don't seem bothered by two TVs competing with a boombox in the same room. Any time I mention the cacophony the Thais stare at me as if I'm anti-sanuk or anti-fun.

Maybe I'm getting old, but years ago in New York I would have a day of silence on Sunday. No talking. No conversing with anyone. Only reading and later break the fast with THE SIMPSONS.

I even went so far as to unplug the telephone, although not many people called on Sunday, due to my friends suffering from life-threatening hang-overs. It was so peaceful.

Thais love noise. The more the better, although the world's noisiest people have to be the Taiwanese. Never heard anyone talk so loudly. Almost as if shouting is the only way to get someone to understand you. My father did the same with a Spanish foreign exchange student. He could speak Spanish, so he turned up the volume of his voice. The poor kid's grasp of enlgish was rudimentary and he thought my father was alays angry. I could hear him crying in his room after my father asked him if he wanted to go to the movies.

I shouted for him to shut up.

Muted sobs.

Some health authorities see no danger to the public from the incessant noise, however one irate Thai went next-door to his oblivious-to-noise neighbors, who thought they had the right to make as much noise as they wanted in the privacy of their own home. He shot the eight of them dead.

Now that's a health hazard.

April 16 is Noise Awareness Day, on which organizers want the world to share a minute of silence from 2:15pm to 2:16pm.

What's the hand of one hand clapping?

A click of the fingers.

Cool like beatnik.

Yes, I really am that old.

THE EXTERMINATING ANGEL OF PASSAICH - BET ON CRAZY by Peter Nolan Smith

When Cecil B. DeMille released THE TEN COMMANDMENTS in 1956 and it was an immediate box office success, earning the cinematic retelling of Exodus over $180 million dollars. In 1962 Paramount Pictures re-released the film for screenings at drive-ins across the nation and my father loaded my five brothers and sisters into our Ford station wagon to view the epic with a cast of thousands at the South Shore Drive-In in Braintree, Massachusetts.

After paying for our entry my father cruised the left-handed lane looking for a good vantage spot. He was an ace at parking. My mother spotted an open slot, but before my father turned and a rock struck our car.

My father's head spun to the left and he spotted a teenager scrambling up the grassy slope. He jammed the column shift into P and jumped out of the car. He had played football in college and caught the young man within seconds. The hillside was too dark to see if he had punched the stone-thrower, although my father returned to the station wagon rubbing his knuckles.

"Damned kids today."

"Watch that language." My mother considered swearing a sign of moral decay and had never used a bad word in her life.

"Sorry." My father loved my mother almost as much as he loved his six children.

After parking in the perfect spot, he gave my older brother and me money to buy popcorn from the concession stand. Frunk was eleven and I was ten. This was the first time that we hadn't worn wear pajamas to the drive-in and we walked over to the refreshment stand. Teens loitered under the neon lights. They looked so cool.

Returning to the station wagon my older brother and I handed the popcorn and soft drinks to our parents to divvie out to our siblings. We set up lawn chair before the family car and watched the movie in the warm summer air.

Moses heroically faced down the Pharaoh's magicians, yet the bald Yul Brenner refused to let the Hebrews leave his land.

Moses warned of plagues.

His childhood friend laughed in his face, then the Nile turned into blood, frogs overran the land, gnats infested the dead frogs, wild beasts were driven crazy by the gnats, livestock died from the diseased wild beasts, a pestilence of boils spread on the skin of the Egyptians, a hailstorm destroyed the remaining crops and locust clouded the sky.

The worst was saved for last.

A darkness fell over Egypt and the first-born of every Egyptian died with the passage of the Angel of Death.

Azrael or 'Help from God' was merciless in his mission. I had been a non-believer since the age of eight and this depiction of God's ruthlessness rehardened my heart against the faith of America.

"Why would God kill innocent babies?"

"God acts in strange ways." My older brother had possession of the popcorn. This wasn't the place for an argument about God. Charlton Heston was awed by the burning bush under the starry skies of the South Shore. Hundreds of tiny speakers echoed his voice across the drive-in and at the movie's end the Hebrews reached Canaan, although without Moses who doubted God's promise and insisted this land of milk and honey wasnt the final destination.

"God doesn't act in strange ways. He acts like a creep." My best friend Chaney had drowned in Lake Sebago and he had been a first born.

"Sssh, you want Mom to hear you?"

I shut up, since my youthful atheism would have deeply hurt my mother, but over the following years I questioned my Jewish friends about celebrating Passover's ancient decimation of the Egyptian young.

One year Passaich I wandered into 47th Street to pick up a diamond before everyone rushed home for the high holiday.

Richie Boy greeted me with a shrug.

"When are you leaving?"

Everyone else in the exchange was closing shop.

“Ask the old man.” Richie Boy pointed to my former boss.

I knew the answer.

His father planned on staying to the bitter end of the day and I said, “Manny, it’s Passover. Go home already.”

“And what’s that to you? You're a goy.” Manny shared my anti-religious beliefs. “When you pay my rent, then you can tell me what time I close my business.”

Manny’s desk was cluttered with the usual piles of paperwork. In all the years I had worked for their firm, the pyramid of papers rose and fell without ever disappearing in entirety.

“Close now and I’ll buy you a martini.”

“I’m busy.” This office was the octogenarian's home away from home.

“Manny thinks he might make a sale,” Hlove commented under his breath. The junkie had replaced me when I left for Thailand two years ago. He hadn't a good word for me. I had none for the snitch, who's main skill was brownnosing Richie.

"No one is buying nothing today That’s it. We’re going home." His son signaled his two employees to pack up the merchandise. Hlove and Deisy didn't have to be told twice.

This decision ignited a fight between father and son.

I went outside to wait for Richie Boy.

“Damien, you have something to give for Passiach?” Lenny the Bum shambled up to the window. His bloated face shined with sweat and strands of hair were plastered across
balding skull. He was dressed in his usual attire of a filthy tee shirt and shabby trousers.

“For you, I always have something.” I dug into my pocket for a dollar. “Where are you celebrating Passaich?”

“I’m working the street.” Lenny was a workaholic like Manny. “I have to get money to take care of my sister.”

“You’re a good brother, Lenny.”

“Plus I don’t really celebrate Passaich.” Lenny didn’t look healthy, but he had disproven many rumors of his demise.

“Why not?” Lenny was no atheist.

“What does Passaich celebrate?” Lenny leaned over to whisper what he had to say, as if it were a secret.

“Passover commemorates the Angel of God passing over the Jewish houses in Egypt, which is the Greek name for Kemet, but I agree with you. How can anyone in their right mind celebrate the death of innocents?"

"Damian, I didn't kill any Egyptians and I didn't kill Jesus either. I'm just a harmless Jew," Lenny whined with a shrug. "But the Pharaoh was a bad man."

"Or so the Bible says."

"Please." Lenny lifted both his hands in defense. He was a religious bum. His head was always covered by a yarmulke. "Don't think bad of us. We have had a hard time over the centuries. You know that there was no angel of death. The young probably died from infected food, since the first-born always got the food first. Who knows, but it was a sad scene when Yul Brenner carried his dead son in his palace."

"You know the Hebrews weren't slaves. No one working on the pyramids was a slave. They got paid for their labor."

"The Bible says different."

His Yahweh and the Father of the Nailed God of my rejected religion were cruel gods. Jehovah let his son die on a cross. As a father I could never sacrifice my son, but then I'm human and gods are divine. They get away with everything.

"You know I saw THE TEN COMMANDMENTS at the South Shore Drive-In."

“It was a good movie, but Charlton Heston was no Jew.” Lenny rocked back and forth on the heels of his busted shoes. "Plus there was nothing good about the Ten Plagues as you say. Especially the death of the first-born of all Egyptian humans and animals. Yahweh instructed the Hebrews to sprinkle lamb’s blood on this doors, so his spirit would skip their houses in his search for the first-born males of the Egyptians.”

“I was taught that God was all-knowing and all-seeing, so why couldn’t He see which houses were Jewish?”

“Damien, Yahweh moves in strange ways.”

“Most people think the killer of the male first-borns was an angel, but it was actually Yahweh blundering through the night killing young boys. Do you think there was any collateral damage like how smart bombs hit schools in Afghanistan and Iraq and Palestine?”

“How should I know? I wasn’t there, but enough of this narishkait, because Passaich is a celebration of death. Death of the guilty, but also the innocent. This I can not celebrate. Freedom, yes. Extermination, no.”

Several people had gathered around our discussion and a religious diamond dealer angrily demanded of Lenny, “You really think Yahweh was a murderer?”

“It wasn’t the first time.” Lenny depended on the kindness of this street to support his sister and didn't need this attention.

“Actually I think that the second-sons of Egypt plotted to kill all the first-borns to destroy the rules of primogeniture and then blamed the Hebrews.” I was talking nonsense to deflect the flak aimed at Lenny.

“Primogeniture?” The diamond dealer had a yeshiva education.

“Primogeniture is where the first born inherits everything from the father. Like Cain and Abel.”

“Cain killed Abel.” Lenny nodded in agreement.

“The second son plot."

“Es iz nit geshtoygen un nit gefloygen," the diamond dealer muttered in Yiddish.

“What’s that mean?”

“It never rose and it never flew.” Lenny smiled with the pleasure of hearing Yiddish, which had been abandoned by the Hassidim in favor of Hebrew. “In plain speaking ‘bullshit’.”

“It’s not foolishness,” I protested with the fervor of a devotee to the untruth. “Worshipping murder is an abomination. Be peaceful is better."

“God does not murder. He takes revenge.” The diamond dealer spoke with words with conviction. “And in this case it was his Killing Angel doing the killing.”

“Isn’t that the same name used by Josef Mengele?”

"Feh." The diamond dealer was feed up with us.

“That fucking Nazi was called the Angel of Death.” Lenny soured on the mention of his name. He had lost family in the camps. “Passaich was over 3500 years ago and the apotropaic rite actually predates Exodus."

"Apotropaic?" I had never heard the word.

"Something to ward off evil."

"Magic, feh." The diamond dealer spat the two words."

"Not magic, just a ritual of daubing the door lintel with a blood-soaked hyssop to prevent demonic forces from entering the house."

"Hyssop?"

"Yes, a mountain flower."

"Magic. Devils. Double feh." The diamond dealer looked at his Rolex watch and stormed down the sidewalk.

"I shouldn't be so smart. People don't like smart, especially when you challenge their religious beliefs and my people love a good book."

"The Torah?"

"It's the only book to them and they would be even more disapproving, if I told them that Passaich was a combination of a Canaanite and Mesopotamian rituals. The Exodus connection came later, but what do I know?"

"More than me."

"I'm still a bum."

"A smart one."

"That and $3 dollars and I can get a little bottle of brandy. You have something to give?"

"I already gave you, but what the hell." I handed over another two dollars.

“I love you Damian and pray you see your children soon.”

“And a Happy Bunny Day to you, Lenny.

The slumpy bum wandered off pestering another diamond dealer for a dollar. He was a hard worker.

“What was that all about?” Richie Boy exited from the exchange.

“The origins of Passaich.”

“Passover?” He looked into the exchange. His father was still at his papers. “You hungry?”

“Yeah.”

“Me too. What about getting something to eat at the Oyster Bar?”

Shellfish were very tref, but Richie Boy was a bacon Jew, “Sounds delightful.”

Richie Boy and I headed for Grand Central Terminal, passing Lenny.

“Happy Easter.” He offered us.

"I only celebrate the bunnies."

"And chocolate."

"I love chocolate."

I gave him another dollar.

"Enjoy." As a sinner I was willing to forgive almost everyone for everything, since to err is human, but to forgive is a divine trait.

Only forgetting is more human.

Just ask Lenny.

Until then I wish everyone had a good sedah.

Hag kasher vesame`ah, for the only exterminating angels I ever see are the bartenders at the 169 Lounge in Chinatown.

Dakota and Johnny know how to murder the next day, but I lived through this Passover.

After all I'm just a goy.

Man O Manischewitz 2012

In 2012 Fort Greene was a friendly neighborhood. People said hello to each other. I smiled greetings, glad to be here. It was a 'we' world, although I wished I was in Thailand with my family.

Across the street an elderly Trinidadian woman collected beer cans and bottles for the deposit money. I gave Jinny all my empties, at least ten a week. At five cents a can my annual contribution added up to $25.

One rainy afternoon I exited from the Fort Greene Observatory, Ginny was struggling to drag her cart loaded with plastic soda bottles onto the sidewalk. Her daily effort financed her yearly visit to the casino. She loves the slots.

"Wait there," I shouted and walked over to help maneuver her load out of the street.

"Thank you, sweetie." She smiled and scurried back to her basement apartment, "I have something for you. Watch my things."

"Sure." I estimated that she had collected over two hundred bottles this morning or $10 for her battle with the one-armed bandits of Aqueduct. Thirty seconds later she emerged from her flat with a plastic bag.

"This is for you." Ginny handed me a bottle of Manischewitz Concord Grape Wine, 100% kosher for Passover.

"Thank you." I accepted the bottle with gratitude. No one had given me a Christmas gift let alone a Passaich gift. I had first drunk the kosher wine at the age of twelve. 1964. it had been sweeter than Coke. "I'll drink a toast to you with my landlord AP."

"He is such a good man. And those children are lovely."

"Yes, they are." I pointed to her cart. "You need any help with that?"

"No, I'm going down to Pathway to redeem the money. I think I might go to the casino on New Years Day."

"Then I wish you luck." 2013 was a long way away.

I returned to AP's brownstone and showed my friend the bottle.

"Man O Manischewitz." AP made a face. His palate was used to more sophisticated wines.

"I can't remember the last time I drank it. It must have been back in the Zapple and Boone's Farm years." I examined the bottle for percentage of alcohol. "It says 11%. Care for a glass?"

"Not right now." He had just eaten pasta with clams for lunch, which calls for white wine and certainly not glatt kosher wine. Of course clams are tref, but AK loved his seafood and bacon too.

"Later?" I hated drinking alone.

"Much later."

I had no reason to wait and cracked open the bottle in the top-floor apartment. The bouquet was pure sweetness. I poured a glass and brought it to my lips. A simple sip renditioned me back to 1966.

Man O Manischewitz.

Some things in life never change.

"Here's to you, Ginny."

HELLBOUND by Peter Nolan Smith / Bet On Crazy -2011

TS Eliot wrote that April was the cruelest month of all in his epic poem THE WASTELAND, poetry's answer the Led Zeppelin STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN.

Those words rang harsh and true in 2011, as the combined holidays of Passover and Easter devastated business in the Diamond District. On Good Friday I waited for two customers to come back as promised. I had three Burma sapphires for an English broker and a quartet of GIA certified 2-carat diamonds for a Korean girl. Richie Boy insisted that I call the both.

"We needed the sales."

"No one is coming out today to celebrate a crucifixtion and a pogram against the first born's of Egypt, unless we have a special on Chocolate diamonds."

The Hassidim were celebrating the last days of Passaich.

"Can you do what I ask for once?" Richie Boy was pissed at my attitude.

"A raise in salary and a bump in my commission rate would elevate my resolve."

"Your raise this year is your job."

Times were tough after ten years of the Endless War.

"I'll call, but both these sales are dead issues," I complained and picked up the phone.

Neither customer answered the phone and I slumped at my desk.

Scratchy music itched the air.

My co-worker at the diamond exchange on West 47th Street was a born-again Christian and Ava was listening to Brazilian Jesus music at a low-volume. I didn't understand the lyrics, but the word 'Jesus' was repeated throughout the choruses. Ava fervently believed in the Messiah's Second Coming and that the Judgment Day was a tangible date in the near-future. I tapped her shoulder and Ava turned around to face me.

"Do you think I'm heading to heaven?" I was joking with her. I hadn't worshiped a God since the early 60s.

"No." Ava shook her head vehemently without condemnation. "You're not going to heaven?"

"I'm not?" My concept of the afterlife consisted of coming back as a skinny blonde go-go dancer, so I can control the destiny of men. Ava's version of heaven was the more traditional kneeling in prayer to the Lord, a boring forever without pain and suffering. Hell was lots of both and I said, "What if I repent at the last moment?"

"Then you are sent to Limbo after you die?" Ava's congregation believed more in black and white than the gray. It was either heaven or hell without a middle road.

"That's better than hell." The fiery pit was legendary for its lack of cold beer, although the only beverage in eternity were was limo's flagon of regrets and heaven's fountains spraying the ambrosia of God sweat.

"Only if you truly repent." Ava was asking a lot from an old reprobate.

"And who decides that?" I had a feeling that the arbiter of eternal salvation would not be fooled by my last-minute re-conversion to my old faith.

"God."

My old nemesis.

"He has to have too much on his plate than to bother with me."

"That attitude will send you to hell. God is all-caring."

"What about the Palestinians? He doesn't seem to care for them and they're living on the Promised Land."

"The damnation of your soul is no laughing matter." Ava harbored no sense of humor on this subject.

"Well, could you tell me when the Day of Judgment is coming?" My sins had broached the majority of the Ten Commandments, although I honored my parent and have never killed a soul, save my own, and none of my neighbors' wives are desirable.

"What is so important about when?" The Brazilian was puzzled by this question.

"So I can drink cold beer for a month before I go burn in Hell."

"Damned. You're damned, but I'll still pray for your soul."

"Thanks."

Ava was a good girl and a man like me needed a good girl to pray for his soul, because in Hell there will only be bad girls.

Go-Go girls, whores, sluts, trannys et al.

It will be a Hell of an Eternity and I will be in bad company.

But how bad can it be?

Passing Judgment Over Passover

Passover is the most important religious holiday on the Jewish Calendar, celebrating the Angel of Death passing over the first-borns of the Hebrew as Yahweh's Holy Annihilator murder the first-born of the Egyptians. This last plague of Moses freed the bonded Hebrews from the Land of the Pharaohs. The actual date is lost to time as is the name of the Pharaoh. Some religious historians date the Biblical tale to the rule of Rhamses II, although no historian from that time recorded the plagues and the story of Moses sounds a lot like the Neo-Assyrian version of the birth of the king Sargon of Akkad in the 24th century BC.

But if Passover is not plagiarism, how to explain the last plague.

The massacre of the first-born.

Possibly the first-born were first given food in the morning and the bread could have been poisoned by a toxin or else died from sleeping too close to the ground as was their privilege and breathed a toxic gas or more plausibly the children were poisoned by the slaves.

Every slave-owners feared that fate,except the Hebrews were never slaves, just workers trying to flee their debts.

Serves you right, but all part of the ruthless God of Israel.

"I'll fuck your eyes out." Exodus 12:11

And people ask why I'm an atheist.

Many reasons.

pleasebe peaceful, Azrael.

Out Of Work -2014

I haven't had a job since the New Year.

I have looked for work without success.

Men my age are viewed as refuges from the retirement roles.

I have retired many times in my life.

I have unretired as many times as well.

Yesterday I sought employment on 47th Street. I know diamonds. Everyone was crying the blues. Passover was a tough of year for selling jewelry, partially because April 15th is Tax Day.

I called the metal shop. Mr. Tem wasn't hiring until May.

I phoned several galleries.

Goose eggs.

It's a tough time, but not for the rich.

They never sing the blues.

Liege Lost

Luxembourg bound From Oxford The Ambassador behind the wheel A Porsche Boxer 140 kph Arrive Folkestone Late Well past Midnight___ Wait Board the car-train Chunnel To Pas De Calais Past 2am Night Northern France On the Autoroute___ The Ambassador behind the wheel 180kph Alice loves speed___ Moi Un passenger Le passage Flat Same as Belgium Jacques Brel's Le plat pays qui est a mienne___ Eyes shut Still seeing the flatness Safe on the Autoroute The ambassador behind the wheel France becomes Belgium Walloonia Luxembourg three hours away___ Sleep WakeWe are lost On a bleak urban street A dead end Not a soul in sight Nothing says where we are But I know__ Liege I've been here before With the ambassador Behind the wheel Lost before Lost now__ The ambassador says one word "Liege." Alice and I have been here before With the ambassador Behind the wheel Of this car Lost Same as before I say "Turn around." I have a good sense of direction Even in the dark__ Back on the Autoroute Luxembourg bound Lost in Liege Well past midnight

Skinny Skyscraper In The Wind

Today the UK Sun touted the quadraplex $100 million penthouse towering 1428 feet into the Manhattan skyline two blocks away from Central Park on Billionaire's Row. Marble adorns the bathroom and floor of One Above All Else. Actually Freedom Fries Tower downtown is taller than the Steinway Tower, so the four-story apartment should be renamed Second Above All.

In 1982 I had rented a top-floor studio on Mittelweg in Hamburg.

Like Second Above All the apsrtment had floor-to-ceiling windows. The solstice summer sun blared through the apartment. The only escape for the boreal light was the bathroom. The photos in the Sun's article feature shots of living rooms without any curtains. Sunglasses are a must.

In 2017 I worked at a jewelry store next door to Steinway Tower. Meyer my boss and friend thought we would make a killing from the ultra-rich tenants, who own the apartments, but not the air rights. In my six months there I made no sells from the building, because no one lived there. Every day a several people came and went, They typically jumped into taxis and disappeared into the city's wealth culture without ever stopping in our store stocked with high-end items. Billionaires shop retail. We were beneath them.

While sixty units have been sold, at night the lack of interior lights revealed the low occupancy rate. Most occupants come for a shopping trip a couple of times a year. There is no information about permanent owners.

Personally I don't like skyscrapers. Somehow I get the urge to jump off them. In 2001 I lived on the 23rd floor of a high-rise on Bangkok's Chao Phyra River. Wang Kaeo lay across the water. Not a single skyscraper rose from the verdant green forest. My apartment had a balcony. I rarely stepped foot on it.

Another feature of the steinway Tower is its pronounced sway in a stiff wind. On the top of the tower includes an 800-short-ton (710-long-ton; 730 t) tuned mass damper. Without it the tower would swing in the wind like a loose sheet of rope from a gallows.

The Sun's article is obviously paid advertisement.

None of it matters to me.

I can't afford there and I try never to include the blight in my vision.

I like buildings low.

Preferably one story, which is impossible in New York.

So be it.

Old Books Squeaky Floor

Yesterday
At the Antiquarian book fair
Park Avenue Armory
Inside
Old older and oldest books
Maps, and posters
A map of Florida
Spanish
1768
Florida
With no roads crossing the Everglades__
A tourist placard from 1883
Promoting an Arctic Whaling voyage
And comic books
In the early 1960s
I had the first Spiderman, Fantastic Four, and more
Bought with my paper route money
My father hated them
Tore them to pieces
He never said why
Or I never heard him___
They are now worth fortunes
All I have from then
My 5th Grade report card
All As and Bs
Perfect attendance
1964___
Now with books
Dating back centuries
The oldest book in the world
The Etruscan Gold Book
Solid gold
2400 years old
None older___
At home I have old books
Edgar Allan Poe,
Collected Works
TRUE GRIT, an illustrated Jules Verne
AROUND THE WORLD IN 80 DAYS
En francais__
Now waiting for Iggy
Seated on the left handed stairs
Listening to the squeak of the wooden floor
Beneath the feet of old book lovers
None walk silent
I am
I am not walking___

Foto - Klaus Nomi - 1978

In 1979 the photographer Anthony Scibelli and I conceived a photo-roman with Klaus Nomi, Clover Nolan, Cookie Mueller and I about a runaway blonde captured by a manic scientist ie Klaus.

The photos were featured in the 2017-2018 CLUB 57 exhibition at MoMA.

This one is of Klaus and I

The prints come in all sizes and are priced accordingly. Please inquired for prices on other sizes.

$150 for 8 by 10 inches:
$200 for 8.5 by 11 inches
$400 for 12 by 18 inches
$750 for 20 by 24 inches

Shipping is available

venmo @peter-smith-18

Tough Guy - Myrtle Avenue

One walking back
From buying a Newport loosie
On Myrtle across from the park
Smoking slow
Walking slower
A bald black man muscular
His fit dog dropped to his belly__ "I know how you feel."
I say to dog
His man
"Shut the fuck up, honky."
"I ain't the type to shut up,
Plus I wasn't talking to you.
Have a good day, dog."
Dog don't pay me no mind.
Don't get up
I know how he feels
I too ike a good sitdown___
Master says
"I should break your head "
"Damn, someone steal your Barbie doll."
"Cracker motherfucker."
"I ain't no Dixie son of a bitch. My people marched South from Maine to free the slaves . A honky yes. A cracker, hell, no. I hope you find your Barbie doll. See you dog "
Bald man throws a traffic cone
Ten feet into the avenue
I'm fifteen feet away
I pick up the cone and chuck it
Sixteen feet
Not at him
Onto the sidewalk___
He is just angry
I know angry
We all do these days___
"Damn, guess I won the traffic cone throwing contest. You and dog have a good day."
Dog got up and walked West___
Man followed, shouting over his shoulder.
"Have a nice day, honky."
It was a good goodbye___

Resistance # 2

How to resist

Steal time

When speaking with corporations. Act confused. Ask the same questions. Keep them on the phone

Address all suspect MAGA males as hump__

Not non - binary

All second sex MAGA as fump

Drive 10 mph slower when ahead of the police and big SUVs

Stop paying your taxes. Put a stash into the bank. Remember the banks takes your money for the government and do not pay you the interest on that money

Call up your credit card companies and ask if they can lower your debt.

Stop social media

Carry cash

Stop using plastic

We have to start somewhere.

NANA Emile Zola

From Wikipedia - Nana tells the story of Anna "Nana" Coupeau's rise from streetwalker to high-class prostitute during the last three years of the French Second Empire. Nana first appeared near the end of L'Assommoir (1877), Zola's earlier novel in the Rougon-Macquart series, where she is the daughter of an abusive drunk. At the conclusion of that novel, she is living in the streets and just beginning a life of prostitution.

Sex workers are frontline.

EC Member

Tired from the train back and forth. Three days of Winick Diamonds. Otherwise good. On my way to the Explorer Club to view some jewelry. This weekend Montaukees were talking about upscale clubs in the city. The EC put them in their place One man asked what had done. "What kinda and of exploring?" "Many members have been to Space, Climbed Everest. Spelunkers. scientists. Dangerous stuff. Just last year two members died in that Titanic dive." "So what have you done?" "I've hitchhiking from Lhasa to Kathmandu. Surfed Bali. Drove across the Andes. Many things, but I've also crossed to the other side. One more than one occasion. And each time back I had been reincarnated to this body. One more thing there is nothing on that side, so enjoy life and be a good person." It's the truth and I tell it as the truth. All there was? White light. The wives loved me The hobo poet. ps I paid my dues yesterday.

Writing THE END

Yesterday I typed THE END to ALMOST A DEAD MAN.

348 pages.

Then spell check.

Only seven typos

Then I hit search for God. Only seventeen times. No bad for an atheist.

I first wrote it in Ireland in 1997. I showed it to Shannon who read it in a single night. I sent the manuscript to a few publishers and then left the USA for Thailand where I wrote three more novels sending them overseas to the US. Nothing, but I kept writing.

I rewrote ALMOST A DEAD MAN in 2016, but was too broke to send it anywhere.

When my diamond job ended in Christmas I decided to clean up THE 2016 version. Two and a half months

348 pages

Now the hard part

Finding and agent or publisher

Next a synopsis and outline and talk about it all the time

Along with everything else

I'm hoping to fly to Bangkok and Hong Kong next month.

I start selling jewelry in Montauk this weekend.

It was a long wintah.

Mary Heaton Vorse reportedly said, "The art of writing is the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair.

Today

Recovering from post partem THE END. I woke this morning, thinking, "Are you mad?"

A novel about pimps and whores with XXX sex scenes, BDSM, and violence and love and redemption and a woman's revenge against man, and fairy tales.

Off the food stamps to see if I can get more.

I had told them months ago that I was homeless, because I feel homeless. Insecure. Adrift. Apart. Like always do I'm comfortable that way.

Wish me luck.

Since the jewelry store in Montauk closed for the winter I've been revising a novel I wrote in 1997

Opening paragraphs of ALMOST A DEAD MAN

Hamburg 192

The scurry of claws across the filthy floor startled the woman on the battered chair and she lifted her black stiletto heels in horror. Rats were the least of her problems. Over the phone her lover had suggested a nocturnal rendezvous on Kaiserkai. No one came to Hamburg’s harbor at night. The woman had driven down to the warehouse district alone for rough sex with her Willi. Instead two men had been waiting on the unlit dock and dragged her into an abandoned warehouse. Now in a damp basement she pleaded, “Please let me go, I haven’t done anything wrong?”

"Nothing wrong?” The black man in the spotless jogging suit circled the chair. Aviator sunglasses hid his eyes. He swatted the dusty 40-watt bulb dangling from the rafter, then tapped the woman’s gaunt face.

“Are you a saint?”

“No, I am far from a saint.” The expensive wig flopped onto a folded lap.

"Saints are only saints, because they are dead. You on the other hand are alive, because you are a sinner."

Cali is still with us.

Trump Shock Syndrome

It just doesn't stop. Every morning I open the news websites to discovered the MAGA leader has come up with another scheme to set the world on fire. Deportations of illegals to El Salvador, Elon Musk slicing jobs from the federal government with his DOGE mandate. Nothing is sacred. Jobs are cut in social services by AI. His minions are so proud of his work against the woke radicals. Applications are only male/female. His world-wide tarriffs has fractured the global economy.

We are at war.

I am in shock.

Tomorrow I'm going to a demonstration in Bryant Park against the fool.

Hundreds of said demos around the country.

I am sure Trump has sent out orders to PDs around the nation to not tolerate any dissent.

There is no waking up from this.

A Man Of Clay

I'm starting the hunt for publishers and agents. Writing is the easy part.

Woody Allen said, "Those that write write, those who don't write teach writing and those that can't write teach physical education."

As a vagabond poet I've had very little truck with either. They travel in different circles or see me and recognize trouble.

I rewrote ALMOST A DEAD MAN from a 2016 version. Yesterday I found a very clean copy from 2017. In 2016 I was working in a metal shop. Bronze, copper, and steel in my blood. Those elements and more affected my brain along with my heroic drinking.

I've been doing nude modeling for Jock Ireland a clay sculpture teacher at the the New York Studio School.

An attendee asked, ""Are you still sculpting"

"No."

"Because I suck "

Jock graduated from university the same year as me

1974.

I wanted to say, "Everyone sucks, but the effort to not suck, however illusive opens our eyes to the opinion that sucking doesn't matter "

As a nude model I held my sand. We are simply humans on a dais. To be rendered by hands from slabs the clay to how the sculptor envisions us.

I end up looking Jabba the Hut's cousin.

That does suck.

Guess there's no Greece hero left in me.

I'm awaiting the B54 bus to Clinton Hill.

Cheers.

April 1, 1980 Journal Entry East Village

April 1

My brother Frank's Birthday

April Fool's Day 1979

Yesterday Michael Selbach and I felt the urge for a short trip up the Hudson on his Kawasaki 650cc motorcycle. The day was sunny and I dressed in white denims; jacket and jeans, then rode the subway up to Times Square. The David's Pot Belly's cook waited on the corner of 42nd and Eighth. He handed me a Bell helmet and I climbed on the back.

"I never thought you'd be my bike bitch."

"Hey, this is only platonic."

He headed over to the semi-destructed West Side Highway and we cruised north along the Hudson.

"Shall we go to the Cloisters?" he shouted with his head slightly turned away from the wind.

"I went there two weeks ago. Have you ever been to West Point?" The famed military academy was about fifty miles away.

"No, I haven't."

"It's worth the ride, plus there's the Storm King Highway overlooking the Hudson. A must see." I had been there once with my family. Like me my father loved the road.

"Sounds good to me."

We crossed the Fiord on the GW Bridge to New Jersey and sped along the Palisades Parkway.

Far back in the Ice Age this falaise had guarded an extinct continent against the rising ocean, as the melt-off from the mile-high glacier carved through the tectonic plate to form the Hudson hundreds of feet below us. A fierce wind along the parkway buffered us from lane to lane. Thankfully traffic was light after the 9W exit and we soon sheltered by the bare branched trees.

The towns along the western bank were situated out of sight from the roadway. THe surrounding towns had outlived their original purpose to become suburbs for men and women commuting into Manhattan for work. We passed by the exit signs dentoing their existence without seeing their centers. After Nyack the land ruralized with farms spreading over the hills, until we reached a massive quarry shipping gravel to reconstruct New York City recovering slowly from the dereliction of the 1970s.

Michael topspeeded on the highway. 86 mph. Helmets restricted any conversation and I spoke within my mind to my minds.

After Haversack we entered the suburban sprawl of malls and little league fields. The station wagons were filled with young boys in baseball uniforms driven by well-coiffed mothers. The young boys studied our passage with a a sense of yearning. Some of them had to want to be us.

Michael and I had grown up in similar surroundings on the West and East Coasts. A life as a bum was preferable to their parents' enslavement to the 9 to 5. I had left behind the suburbs in 1974 and I harbored no urge of returning to the sprawl of my birth.

Lately Michael had been talking about moving to Hoboken, as if he was abandoning the city. I was bound to the East Village. I wasn't leaving until it was time to leave and today that felt like never.

Haverstack gave way to West Haversack without a struggle. George Washington might have retreated through these lands after the military debacle in New York over two centuries ago. The towns were replaced by farmland and then tenth-growth woodlands. Michael hit 80W for a few miles before we exited for West Point.

US 6 spanned the Hudson River on the Bear Mountain Bridge. In 1948 Jack Kerouac started his trip across America here. That trip inspired ON THE ROAD. I wanted Michael to stop, so I could stand where the Beat writer had stood thirty-two years ago. The bridge dated back to the 1930s. America really began here. I had last hitchhiked across the continent in the winter of 1975. I stood wishing I was on my way to the Coast, instead I sat back on the bike.

We descended into marshes. Railroad tracks were strapped to the western bank. A sign WEST POINT 10 MILES stood at attention by the roadside. My father had driven here on our Ford Station Wagon in 1966. I had been almost fourteen. My mother had wanted me to be a priest or a cadet.

Michael and I entered the academy by Thayer Gate. The graduates of the the 1960s and 1970s had served in Vietnam. The power of the world's strongest army. Defeated by rice farmers. Now five years after the Fall of Saigon the cadets of the 1980s in their dress uniforms showed no defeat. Their stiff posture marked their dreams of America's future glory. Vietnam wasn't their defeat, but it was our victory. Michael and I were both anti-war leather punks.

A sign announced NO PARADE TODAY.

"It's a good show." Back in my youth I had wanted to be a cadet. Anything to get out of my hometown on the South Shore of Boston. I would have looked good in the uniform.

We stopped at the military graveyard. Home eternal for thousands of officers. We stood at George Custer's grave.

"He's no hero."

"And neither are we."

We saddled up and the Kawasaki climbed the steep two-laner to the top of the Storm King Highway, 420 feet over the Hudson. We stopped at the precipitous vista point. The Hudson ran north between the Berkshires and Catskills. Both mountain ranges had been shorn of their height by the glaciers.

"You know I might have fallen in love with Vickie." Michael had been seeing the redheaded fashion student for a few months. I was still recovering from Lisa's desertion. My blonde girlfriend had disappeared into Europe to be a fashion model. I had seen her in a German lingerie ad. Michael had been a good friend. His wife had left him last summer.

That's a good thing for you."

"But not you?"

"It's was bound to happen. I'm happy you're in love. I know how to drink alone."

"Really?"

No, but better you than neither of us."

"What about you and Elizabeth?"

I had been seeing the lanky Virginian for a few months too. We had even met each other's parents.

"We're going nowhere."

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah I'm too haunted. I don't felt anything for anyone. Not even myself. It's better that I break up with her before I really hurt her."

"Or yourself." Michael straddled the Kawasaki. "Too bad, she's a great girl. By the way you should look at your jacket."

"Why?"

"Look."

I took off the Levi jacket. The back tire had thrown up a oily rooster tail to splatter the back of the white jacket.

"Damn. That ain't gonna come off."

"Your jeans match."

"Double damnit."

I got on the bike behind Michael. If I had a motorcycle, I wished we were bound for the West Coast and a sore ass, but we crossed the Hudson at Newburgh and drove south to New York and our lives.

April Fool's Day 2022

My older brother was born on April 1. His profession is the Law.

Five years ago he told my sister, also an attorney, that he would have no problem defending Satan or any other client as long as they paid his fees. My nephew was in an Ivy League. His tuition cost more than I earned last year. My brother needed clients and a lot of them, including the Brockton Police, who were more wicked than Satan.

This morning I phoned his office to wish him 'happy birthday, but couldn't resist playing a prank.

"Can I speak with one of the partners? My name is James Steele and I represent Phillip Morris."

No one is more evil than the tobacco companies, except the CIA torturer Jame Steele and the Catholic Church.

The secretary transferred the call and my brother came on the line.

"Your brother lost a court case against our firm. He didn't even bother to show up for the trial."

"Trial for what?"

"Copyright infringement." My brother had no idea about my business in Thailand. "The judgment was $550,000."

"What does this have to do with me?"

"Well, it's your birthday and I thought I'd give you a scare."

"Being my age is scary enough." My brother recognized my voice and cursed me out. "Happy fucking April Fools Day."

Actually some of that story was true as are the best lies.

A little true and a little not and you have an April Fools prank, of course no one in America can explain why 4/1 was a day for stupid pranks. Some people theorized that after the adoption of the Gregorian Calendar May 1 was the day designated for planting your crops. Anyone doing so before that date was an 'April Fool'.

April 1 had also been the first day of the year in France.

Back in the past people had to depend on kings and priests for the right dates.

And there was no trusting those higher-class types in the Dark Ages.

Not now either, which is why each year I mark the calendar for my brother's birthday.

He's a year older too.

Thirteen months to be exact, but who's counting.

Certainly not this Irish twin.