FIRST LAST THOUGHT

After my birth
I nothing
I possess nothing
I feel nothing
Not love
Food
Pissing
Shitting
Nor sleeping
Nothing touched my nothingness__
Then I awoke
Underwater
Lungs filled with water
Panic
Around me nothing
I look up
A hand
I reach up
Two hands seize mine
I am pulled to the surface
A woman on a raft hugs me
I know her smell___
I had known it for my forever
I had created her
Mother
The salty water
The beach
People
The woman beautiful
The woman my mother
We at a beach
Higgins Beach
Maine
1953
My mother slaps my back
I spew ocean
Alive
An escapee from the nothingness of infancy
My first thought as a child
I love this
Life
Same as now
Alive always alive
Forever to never
Again___

My Senior Prom 1970 - Horseneck Beach

1970
after my senior prom
I drove south
To Horseneck Beach With my date

Pattie Hopkins,
A Fontbonne Academy junior
A classmate of my sister.
I should have been with my girlfriend.
Kyla.
I had broken up with her
At Easter Mass.

I was not in the right state of mind.
But knew to stay with Kyla was to give up my life.

Pattie was pretty

Pure
Honey blonde

I thought she looked like Faye Dunaway.
My classmates were gathered in the dunes.
Pattie was uncomfortable with their drinking.
Mine too.
She was a good Catholic girl.
Saving herself for marriage.
I respected that wish
I held hands with a beer
Then another
Then another
She looked more and more like Faye Dunaway

Inspired by Steven McQueen
THE THOMAS CROWN AFFAIR
I partially deflated the VW's rear fires
Then sped along the beach.
Within fifteen seconds the wheels sunk into the high tide mark.
My attempts to drive the VW out of the sand.
Failure.
The waves ever closer.
Pattie looked more than worried.
I ordered her behind the wheel.
Stuck the stick in reverse
And tried to push the VW out of the sand
More failure
I shouldn't have drunk those beers with my classmates.

I spotted a tow truck
Outside a fishermen's bar
By the Gooseberry Causeway

I acted fast
I ran fast
Inside an old tar drank a 'gansett.
He offered to pull the VW free
$20

Twenty minutes later
I was driving north through the marshes
Pattie said nothing
She weas still a good girl.

We never went out again.

Ten years ago I found the prom picture.
Still looking like Faye Dunaway.
My sister said that she had become a doctor.
And had asked about me.

Horseneck Beach
I remember the water so warm.
On my ankles trying to free the VW.
My hands on the VW
And Pattie's smile went we were hauled free.
forever teenagers.

Saturday Afternoon 169 169 Bar East Broadway

Saturday afternoon
Summer.
Hot outside
Cool inside the 169 Bar
East Broadway
Jimmie Smith and his organ
On loud.
No one here,
But Cass and Vince.
Bartenders / friends
Cass serves a cranberry.soda.
In 1969 I raced my VW
Through the bogs west of Plymouth
On Quaaludes.
I ditched the Beetle in a pond.
The 'ludes hadn't lessen our teenage strength
My three friends and I lifted the front from the bog.
Free and high in the 70s
Cranberry bog
Cranberry juice and soda
The 169
An empty bar
Just me, Cass, and Vince
We are us.

The Freedom of Apostasy

Written 12/10/2010

My grades at Our Lady of the Foothills were better than good, but nothing extraordinary, so everyone in my town was shocked by my winning a scholarship to Xaverian Brothers High School. My parents were so proud. Their son had answered their prayers.

I lost the scholarship two years later for failing religion. My mother and father were astounded by my F grade until I informed them that my failure was the result of a declaration of non-belief.

“Non-belief in what?”

“I don’t believe in God.”

My mother was horrified by the rejection of her God. She saw me burning in Hell and my father backed her struggle to re-convert their son to the Womb of Jesus. All their attempts were thwarted by my apostasy. My high school girlfriend almost brought me back into the fold. Janet was a cheerleader. She had big breasts. Her virginity was the prize of my re-conversion. We attended a pilgrimage to a holy site in New England. My best friend brought Led Zeppelin's first album.

It was 1968.

The first power chords off Jimmie Page's guitar reconfirmed my lack of faith. Janet joined my crusade for a year, then wandered back into the fold.

Since then I’ve worshiped many idols, but only one has remained true.

The soul of man.

For better or for worse and in between.

A HERO OF THE ROAD BY PETER NOLAN SMITH -- ON SALE

HERO OF THE ROAD By Peter Nolan Smith Anybody can jump a motorcycle. The trouble begins when you try to land it. - Evel Knevel MANGOZEEN BOOKS 2023

no

In 1986 Hugh Mackie and Dmitri Turin opened the Sixth Street Specials, specializing in the repair of Triumph, Nortons, Royal Enfields, and various other English motorcycles. The blocks surrounding the shop had been burnt to the ground like Berlin after a bombing raid.

The bikers frequenting the Sixth Street Specials, looked down on my stripped down Yamaha 650 XS, but at the door of the Milk Bar I granted entrance to anyone who was a friend of Dmitri and Hugh. It was a good time to be riding bikes. The city was ours and Dmitri ruled the streets. There were few people like him. Not then. Not now.

Dmitri lives forever on the road.

As do all bikers from past, present, and future.

A HERO OF THE ROAD costs $10 plus $7 shipping Order via Venmo - peter smith @Peter-Smith-18 Order via Paypal - pascharay@hotmail.com

Before Alexander Graham Bell

The term telephone was adopted into the vocabulary of many languages. It is derived from the Greek: τῆλε, tēle, "far" and φωνή, phōnē, "voice", together meaning "distant voice" according to Wikipedia. Prior 10 March 1876 when Alexander Graham Bell called out over his invention, the liquid transmitter, to his assistant, "Mr. Watson, come here, I want to see you.", all dialogues between humans had been conducted within ear shot or shout.

Nowadays telephones permit same-time conversations across the globe. In Asia in the 1990s calling back to the States required placing orders at the local GPO through an overseas operator. Messages were delayed seconds. Interference and electronic feedback were accepted flaws in the system was normal.

Come the second decade of the 21st Century and in one day I speak with my wives in Thailand, my brother Mawee in Loitokitok, Kenya, old friends in Paris, London, and Rome as well as all parts of the Americas and Hawaii. At least until last Thursday when I stepped on my cellphone.

Crunch.

A drop on tile had previously spidered the screen.

My cellphone resisted all attempts to restore service.

For all purposes it was dead, although the flashlight worked fine.

TMobile offered the option of buying another phone and still have to pay for the damaged device. I tried to connect with old burners. No success and on Friday I opted to order another from my server's insurance company and the agent warned that delivery was scheduled for Monday or Tuesday at the latest.

Four to five days without calls, social media, or texting.

An eternity in the Age of Instant Gratification.

Wikipedia claimed that in 2002, only 10% of the world's population used mobile phones and by 2005 that percentage had risen to 46%. By the end of 2009, there were a total of nearly 6 billion mobile and fixed-line telephone subscribers worldwide. On July 28, 2023 I was not one of them. I existed outside the Matrix and I felt good. Actually I felt better than good. I felt free. My seconds, minutes, and hours were my own. This was my first time without a cellphone since the late 90s in Bangkok. I could still write emails and messages on my iPad, but that was it, almost as if Alexander Graham Bell had never said those words to Mr. Watson in 1876. Everyone else in the world were trapped in the present ticking second by second into a digital future by the Cell Towers of Babble.

Free at last. Free at last.

Allergy to Silence

2012

Last month I staying in bannok about sixty kilometers from Chai-nat. Every morning I was woken by the village loudspeakers. The announcer read off farming information to the locals. I couldn't understand a word that he was saying. 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 that the Thais are allergic to silence. The blare of TVs drown out quiet in every corner of the land. Loud music assaults 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 louder the better, although the world’s noisiest people have to be the Taiwanese. I never heard anyone talk so loudly, almost as if shouting is the only way to get another taiwanese to understand you.

Back in the early 70s my family invited a Spanish student to live with us, while my younger brother stayed at his house in Madrid. My father had a little French, but not Spanish, so he shouted at the young man, whose grasp of the English language was rudimentary. He thought that my father was always angry with him and on several occasions I heard him crying in his room after my father yelled a simple request like 'are you hungry' or 'why do you call soccer 'football'.

I said to my father that the young student mistook the loudness for anger.

"Well, that's plain stupid." And my father went to the Spanish boy's room to upbraid him for this misunderstanding.

Muted sobs.

Some health authorities see no danger to the public from the incessant noise bombarding the Thais, however one irate Thai complained to this next-door 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 8 of them dead.

Now that’s a health hazard.

What’s the hand of one hand clapping?

A click of the fingers.

Cool like beatnik.

Yes, I really am that old.