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Online Excerpts from the TRUE LIFE Memoirs: Title/Subject/Author
1) Inside Of Ridgewood I don’t know how I can answer that question? I mean, I feel enough shame- well, not shame per se, but a little embarrassment, about the whole series of events anyway. & I would prefer it if you did not use my real name- a pseudonym would be nice....
Those were the days, my friend, I thought they'd....
2) The Fly In The Funhouse Mirror Tom Marsh is dead! Tom Marsh is dead! Yesterday I got an email from an old friend detailing this grim turn of events. Not that Tom Marsh & I were particularly close- it's been a dozen or more years since I laid eyes on the grinning, blond-topped, weak-minded Leviathan. But do you really want to know more of him? I swear, there are other tales of far greater interest....
From grim to grin?
3) Mythmakers- Part 1 Arthur Durkee is a Renaissance Man. He’s also the co-host of an Internet Radio show I did in 2003 called Omniversica. I met him about 1997 when he started attending the Uptown Poetry Group I ran in the Twin Cities. Art is a hazily distant relation to the Durkees of spice fortune fame. So hazy as to not have shared in that wealth. He spent large portions his youth abroad & was inculcated into the Creationary world very early by parents who encouraged him....
What exactly is real?
4) Mythmakers- Part 2 The place in New Hampshire that would dominate my life for years to come was a nearby park beach on Forest Lake- a bit northeast of Littleton. It was here dad would take me, mom- & later Christine- on hikes through the woods & show us the different types of trees & the assorted types of squirrels & chipmunks. Doing this it became clear that dad was a man of 2 lands & eras....
Into the deep, dark woods....
5) Johns Things which are not were not strongly embedded in the mind of John Brown as they slipped the noose about his hairy neck. Were there regrets? Of course. But not related to those events which had led most directly to this moment....
Or Juans, in Spanglish!
6) Mythmakers- Part 3 Years would inflict upon me the belief that the very cave itself was a haven of evil, something that had stained me. I dreamt of returning as an adult & just blowing it up. That feeling passed, but some day I hope to return to Forest Lake....
End or not?
7) Centripetal Things tend toward the middle in my world. Ideas, memories, my own living. It is night. I open up a new book- perhaps it is a manuscript written by Jessica? Maybe it is a new novel, something some 1 has recommended to me. Little I read has any impact....
Trends & Ends.
8) Twitches Of Truths There is a pain that comes to me in the right inner elbow. It is a twitch- The Twitch- that forces me to tighten my arm to relieve it. My fingers clench & it is as if a part of me wants to strangle something. I must massage it to defeat it. It does not come often now, but I must acknowledge its dogging of me throughout my years. Although I was always aware of it on some level, I was not cognizant of its manifestation to others until this tic was pointed out to me in my mid 20s....
What aches.
9) The Essence Of Tyranny There: look at the me I want you to. Tall, thin, 20something. It is all so simple. I am at my peak, I think. I am sure. It is what I tell you. I am born on Candlemas/Groundhog’s Day/February 2 nd, 1965, to a single mother alone in a home for unwed mothers (how quaint!). Forget that. This is just what I have been told....
Gazing the gazer.
10) The Conduct Of One Hour Grandma Chin was a woman of great wisdom. She lived 2 doors south of my family on Stephen Street. She was a woman greatly admired & respected by the rest of the block. This was a bit odd if only because it was rare for the white people I know to hold in esteem anyone who was manifestly different....
Eggs- anything but sunny side up.
11) The Subterraneans- Part 1 As the ball ricocheted off & under the rim Jose & Malcolm leapt up above their world for it. Their fingertips slightly altered the ball’s direction to where a pair of lighter, thinner arms snatched away the rebound & fed a fast break down the other end of the basketball court. JAM!, went the ball through the other hoop....
Innocence begets....
12) The Subterraneans- Part 2 Not all problems were handled as smoothly & effectively as that with Abel K., however. Usually, this was because I was not involved in the planning. Paco’s biggest flaw was that his temper would get the better of him. In a sense he needed me, for I was always cool & calculating. If 1 were to compare our relationship to any 1 else’s I would say that I was Meyer Lansky to his Bugsy Siegel....
Not much else!
13) Where Goeth The Word Given my status as a writer, & practicing its highest form- poetry- at its highest level, I have often found the bastardization of language to be most troublesome. Worse is when that bastardization entails political ramifications. Such is the case with how the mass media in the 1980s distorted 1 of the ‘epidemics’ that was made to seem so rampant in urban America in that decade. That epidemic was the ‘crack epidemic’....
& Whence?
14) Random Thoughts The other day I was in a bookstore, thumbing through another book on how to get rich quickly, & was struck by the notion the real impetus to foist these scams upon people was not only ripping people off....
Rocks & girls.
15) Propinquities & Potencies I think of the nearness of things-both in time & space- & wonder the actual degree such a concept inflicts on the percipient- me. I think back & remember all of the time I spent fruitlessly pursuing Irene Bruno, the unrequited love of my life, in the mid-1980s. That was a distinct era- far removed from my earlier travails in high school, 4 or 5 years earlier, or my days growing up in Ridgewood , which was yet another decade earlier- about 15 years before Irene grew to dominate my thoughts....
The thing itself.
16) Big Bangs Think of me in 1976, in the new nabe of Glendale. I have lived there nearly 2 years- since 8/31/74. I have made new friends, at least what that term can define for a child: the fat girl, my age, next door- Stacy Steiner, 11- whose stringy, dirty blond hair rarely hides her lack of self-esteem; the short fat blond bespectacled kid, my age, who lives down the block....
Urchins Behaving Badly.
17) Midgets, Retards, & Other Funny Stuff As Maude Meese’s body lay in her house for the 4th day, her cat’s hunger got the best of it. What started out as a glint in its eye took over all memories of the past as it ripped its teeth into her cold, dry, decaying flesh. So what if the woman was once its mistress? Now, she was just food. Later that day, the mailman noticed the previous days’ mail was been picked up, & the house smelled ‘funny’. He rang the bell- no 1 answered. He informed his supervisor, who called the 104th Precinct. When the cops arrived neighbors on 79th Place gathered to ask what was wrong. Like most people, they gathered hoping something gruesome happened....
Toss a dwarf?
18) The Will To Believe If someone asked me what my favourite all-time movie was it wouldn't be the usual reply. While I love great films like Stanley Kubrick's trio of Dr. Strangelove, 2001: A Space Odyssey, and A Clockwork Orange, Orson Welles' films, great silent films like Metropolis and Nosferatu, and modern masterpieces like Martin Scorsese's Taxi Driver and Goodfellas, Woody Allen's Crimes And Misdemeanors, and Oliver Stone's JFK & Nixon, a part of me is the irredeemable pre-teen and teen....
Or not.
19) Angels & Gangsters- Part 1 Think of me....under the sculpted angel hovering above the back stairwell of St. John’s Lutheran School, in 4th grade. It’s lunch. We are told never to leave the schoolyard. I am walking with classmate Jesse Gordon, & his older brother Luke, up the block towards Forest Park....
Dreams....
20) Sonyas Dear Sonya, You may not remember me- my name is Dan Schneider. I was that goofy 4-eyed blond kid in 10th Grade- at Franklin K. Lane High School you didn’t like. Remember? We were in Mrs. Wexler’s Spanish class....
Memories- and babes!
21) Taking 5: Needing Something To Say There has been controversy over the film The Third Man, made in 1949 in the U.K., & released a year later in America. The controversy rests not with the film’s content (as many current movies use to market themselves) but its provenance....
Lime away?
22) Aloner Than A Girl: Postcards To Larissa We are all lost, Larissa, to some degree. The degree of foundness determines our successes. Don't be fearful- move out, make your mark. This is why you searched- no?....
What is is, or not?
23) Angels & Gangster- Part 2 Think of me if I were not what I claimed. The 5th gang was the Guardian Angels, & in decades since they’ve evolved into an international organization of ‘volunteers’ claiming to help poor besieged communities in many countries. Whether true or propaganda I cannot know, but I know for certain in the East New York of the early 1980s their image as protectors & Guardian Angels was total bullshit....
...that fail.
24) Hoods & Hostages 1 of the great myths of recent decades is the liberal media, probably the greatest of ‘urban legends’. The idea the media distorts reality for political gain is bunkum. That the media distorts is not in question- its distortions are biased towards sensationalizing everything. The best example of this sensational bias is hysteria concerning ‘the rise in crime’. The problem is since historic highs of the late 1960s-early 1970s all crime, including violent crime, has decreased dramatically, according to the FBI’s figures. Yet, because every little crime, especially those with white victims who are female or children, is blown way out of proportion the lazyminded buy crime is worse than it’s ever been....
Not a fictomemoem!
An Omniverse Of Thought!