reflecting on a Lifetime of Insomnia.........it's only 2:15.....there's a night ahead.....before dawn.......then....there's a beautiful day.....why sleep away so much of our lives? Even when I was ten, and everyone in the house was comatose.....I would put a towel under the door.....to conceal the light from my room.....and work on my many projects......then, after 4 hours of sleep, drag myself to the breakfast table for caffeine and carbs........And, to think, cats sleep away most of their short lives.......like most hairy beasts......Time's a wasting......Life is short......Don't sleep it away!

 

Listening to a NPR re-broadcast of a rather boring program about 'the importance of regular SLEEP HABITS', yesterday, I decided to hit the sack, early....for me.....9 pm.... Awakening, full of ideas, I drug out a drawing tablet to doodle and scribble for an hour....then, returned to horizontal positioning for another hour, awakening again....alert and 'ready to go'.....However, since I WAS, after all, trying to sleep 'straight through' the night, I felt rather frustrated by my insomnia and turned on the TV to watch Frank Pavich's documentary, "Jodorowsky's Dune", with H.R. Giger and Michel Seydoux......which led me to search the internet for a hard-bound copy of Jodorowsky's PROPOSAL for filming his Version of DUNE......then, on my phosphoresent watch dial: 3AM!.... so, rather than pursue some alert activity, I listened to some boringly relaxing recording of Tibetan singing bowls and raindrops on the Lake of Melancholia, eventually....returning to slumberland and the usual Lucid Dreaming.......Voila!....now, in the world of dreams, like Little Nemo, I could both 'sleep', 'rest' and have intellectually challenging experiences within cerebral cortex's electrical interchange......The subsequential DREAM was both uplifting, optimistic and charged with creative energies...and will be discharged, later, in an Update, from last night's shorthand notes on my 'scibblepad'.....I awakened.....bladder shouting for emptying.....thinking, it must be midnight!......but, the see-in-the-dark hands of my watch 'said' 8:30......Hungry, I thought, then, that I should make some dinner........Then, leaving my unlit cave with no windows, emerging into another room, lit by light from a large window....I was confused, wondering why, at 8:30 PM, during Winter, the Sun Was Up!......I was still asleep....and all this was but a Dream......as I stumbled, sleepwalking in the dark, over a pile of DVD's that I'd been sorting, earlier, yesterday, falling into a big plastic storage box, positioned under the hole in my roof, through which rainwater accumulated as it dripped/ran through a ripped out plaster wall.......Was I, still, asleep? Was this, too, part of my labyrinthin Dream? Guess 'NOT', as i showered, donned some dry pajamas and slippers and descended the stairs to microwave a coffee cup cheese omelet and pump some expresso........Certainly, now, I am 'actually' awake, and almost ready to write and illustrate last night's Dream....the part not mentioned 'here'....for one of my Blogs...about Dreaming......Lest all be forgotten as Time separates the instantaneous from the mundane repetions of ordinariness and the interiorized conceits from the far less metaphoric lineup of sequential proceedings between the markers of The Clock..... It's almost 9 AM! Times-a-wasting and the black India ink in my 000-tip pen has clogged its point....maybe, a dip into the last drop of expresso will get it 'running' ......

https://youtu.be/6epzmRZk6UU?si=N1xRNVamz-aeo6S3

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CHRISTMAS ABSTRACTIONS.........

 

ABSTRACTION OF 'ABSTRACTION' BY AMBIGUOUS CONNOTATION .....

The fragmented X'mas wrap on the bland ordinariness of a cold December morning....after a night of abstract dreams......that, too drowsy, upon awakening at 4am, I was lacking the energy, if not some mild enthusiasm, to document in one of my Blogs......And, now, although I thought, then, that I'd remember all the details, later, have vanished from Short Term Memory......Yet....the dreams, or some permutation of them, will surely resurface, if but subcutaneously vague and indistinctly.....Nothing is really Forgotten, is it? It is the Purpose of Art to Remember the lost fragments.....reconstructed, again and again........by notational transferrences from momentary to permanent stasis within the image library of reconstructions and associative subconscious reconnections.......

AFTER A YEAR OF FRIENDSHIP......THEN, SIX DECADES LATER........A BRIEF, NOSTALGIC RECONNECTION.....

I met Bernie Swanson in 1962, in Mrs. Gray's 12th Grade English Class, where we immediately became good friends, often cutting class and loafing in the balcony of HHS's Auditorium, chatting about poetry and music......Shortly before his death, I called him to 'catch up', since we'd not seen or heard from one another in so long.......We talked about Love and Death for a long time.....then....days later....he was kaput!

The Greatest Imagining

lost in clouds that change with whim and turning thought, and tripped by Maya's disconcerting words that ripen in tall trees, drooping from their growing weight and falling onto the jungle planes of thought and from there, gathered into the worlds of poets, the names for unknown things mock the image they suggest and conceal the many paths through the forest to the garden of forking paths which leads to the palace of wisdom. the answer is no, though yes is your prayer. "God" is Man's greatest imagining...

MY FIRST VISIT TO MICHAEL'S 'INVESTMENT PROPERTY', AN HOUR AND A HALF'S DRIVE FROM ATLANTA....WHICH IS A TRIP TO 'ANOTHER WORLD'......A CHURCH ON EVERY CORNER, GUNS MOUNTED ON WALLS AND IN CASES, 'VOTE TRUMP' SIGNS IN THE DEFORESTED ACRES, FILLED WITH DISPOSABLE, TEMPORARY HOUSES......

 The vacuum-master and his chatty advisor-superintendent......performing a dissicated bug clean-up in The Outer Limits of Civilization...over by BigFishHeads' Guide Service........near the 'other' Buckhead

FEELING SOME 'SEPARATION ANXIETY' TODAY, AFTER DISCOVERING THIS DISINTEGRATING PHOTO.........

This old photo of my 'ex-godson', Branton, was stuck to the wooden credenza, having been wet from a beverage spill, years ago......When I attempted to pick up the 3 1/2 decades old photo, the emulsion separated from its paper base.........The section of the photo that 'stuck' to the wood was of me.....ironically.....Branton and I have been estranged for a while, with little hopes for re-establishing any friendship...... 

PTSD AFTER THE FIRE-BOMBING OF TOKYO ......AFTER WHICH, UNCLE JOHN FOLLOWS HIS BROTHERS, R.C., CLYDE AND THEIR FATHER TO AN EARLY ALCOHOLISM-RELATED DEATH.........

 Photo, taken at Backstage, 151 Powell St., San Francisco....Aug. 8, 1945.......Of My Uncle John Savage and 'Friend', returning from their participation in the firebombing of Tokyo......in which, 100,000 Japanese civilians were incinerated by thousands of tons of incendiary bombs, hailed from American B-29's....just months before......The PTSD that resulted, after some 'thinking' about what had happened, finally 'got to' Uncle John, who became a hopeless alcoholic...dying young and disillusioned.....Upon their return 'from the War', as Gov't contracts with Redstone Arsenal were cancelled, whisky rations were doubled...... to permit two quarts per month in Huntsville, Alabama, for the newly unemployed and soldiers, now unemployable, due to emotional problems that resulted from their participation in The War......after which......the sales of shotgun shells and other 'ammo' doubled.........as people 'readied' themselves for the 'next war'....soon to come, in Korea.......

PRECOCIOUS SENILITY OR LINGERING PRE-ADOLESCENCE?

When my friend from 3rd grade asked "Are you going through your second childhood, Reed?", my response was: "I didn't know the first one was over yet, Blanche!"....... I was 'playing' antiques dealer/writer/artist/foodcritic/conceptualist....while Blanche spent 30 years behind a formica-topped enamelled steel desk, processing tax returns......what 'child' would want to do that?!

PLAYGROUND SAFETY AT WEST CLINTON ELEMENTARY SCHOOL.....SO MUCH FOR 'SAFETY PRECAUTIONS IN THE 1950'S'.....

 

POST INVOLUNTARY ONEIROPHRENIACAL DREAM SEGMENT RESEMBLAGEMENT...WITHOUT JUNGIAN INTERPRETATION OR DREAM ANALYSIS.......

 I awakened from several levels of Sleep, last night.....each awakening bringing evanescent associational REM-plateau semi-consciousness Tableaux that seemed to freeze frame, then coalesce with subsequential Mise-en-scènes.    Three 'episodes' were, momentarily, retained in short-term memory before being disassociativly re-submerged into the corridors and compartmentalizations of abandoned suppressions and indefensible rationalized and reassigned appurtenances; although, there were...surely....more, presently forgotten...completely... images, flashed for fractions of seconds, connecting, without will, other subterranean assemblages, too threatening to Ego, Identity and Confidence.....Even as I write these few words, so far, memory is being transformed, modified and re-integrated via Art Mindness, into a more edited, cinematic retention within the temporarily alloted grey matter that files, without processing or interpretation, these nightly fabrications  into synaptical pathways, within the electrical storm of Mind.....or imprisons them within locked arenas, for unconscious reinterpretation........

TABLEAU #1:   Giving my friend, now dead, Sonya Nickel, a ride home from a get-to-gether of old friends.....Sonya asks me to walk her to her door...which I do....then invites me 'in' for a Coke and a view of her rearranged armoire that has a tall mirror at its center.....A brief flash of a Scene from Cocteau's film, TESTAMENT OF ORPHEUS, flashes....interspersed with 'frames' .....in slow motion,,,,of the current dream sequence, as Sonya, bent over and suffering from some  undiagnosed malaise. steps into the mirror, then turns, facing me...from the other side......wearing some 'stuff' from the armoire's drawers and hangers.....a heavy  aubergine silk-crepe blouse with a long 'tie' collar, a mid-calf early 1950's full-circle skirt and a wide, tight belt with a monogram buckle, "SDN"........

I  AWAKEN, with a startle  response

TABLEAU #2:    I did not 'jot down'  any notes, after awakening...so, alas, any memory of this dream that was 'so clear' just fifteen minutes ago....has vanished.....completely......I hope that this will re-emerge from the Caverns, after whatever my brain is doing with the  dream detritus  ......

I  awaken, another time.....anxious that the dream is, already, escaping...like a fast-flying sparrow....carrying my primal being in its beak, as material for building its security nest.....and I am left, juggling thought balloons  on a thin trapeze wire, stretched between the moment before and the moment next.......Was 'this' the dream sequence of  TABLEAU #2, already edited and re-scripted?        

Must I type in  "PEMUAC"  to re-enter the Associative Dreamworld, even after discovering that my own dreams have become indistingishable from the tens of millions of images from 'Real Life' and tens of millions of  Movie frames....? 

FROM A BOX OF OLD "ARMED FORCES" METALS FROM VARIOUS FAMILY MEMBERS THAT "FOUGHT" FOR 'FREEDOM' DURING 20TH CENTURY WARS....

 I CERTAINLY HAVE MIXED FEELINGS ABOUT THESE 'AWARD MEDALS' THAT WERE DISPLAYED, 'PROUDLY', ON THOSE WHO SURVIVED OUR PERPETUAL WARRING....THIS ONE CLOSELY RESEMBLES THOSE THAT WERE AWARDED TO NAZI SOLDIERS, DOESN'T IT!  

"OPERATION PAPERCLIP"....ahem......make 'that' "OPERATION COVERUP"...... in the perpetual politics of Orwellian Manipulations of the minds of the Unthinking Masses........

Siegrid Debus Northcutt, aka Sigi Debus, sat an aisle away from me in 6th Grade at the new Blossomwood Elementary School's inaugural season.....A third of our Class were the children of German Scientists that were rounded up and either tried and imprisoned, or executed (or committed suicide) for 'war crimes' during the Nuremberg Trials that took place in 1945-46, after the Allied Defeat of Nazi Germany and Japan.....I, recently, looked through old 'class photos' from 1951-1963, that are in an old cigar box in my basement......and wondered 'what happened' to the German kids that came to America....especially to Huntsville.....who were unaware of their fathers/parents involvement in Nazi Germany.......Sigi, a beautiful young girl, always seemed sad and withdrawn when we were pre-adolescents....Later, after I became aware of 'The Factual, Real Story'.....I began to wonder about the unconscious aftermath of my schoolmates' having been 'raised' in the shadows of the Past......Later, studying Sociology and Psychology in High School and College, I would, often, churn memories....even 'looks' and 'actions' that I had not understood, during my naive Youth, which had been inculcated with the Propaganda Machine's Cover Stories that allowed for the 'as smoothly-as-possible' assimilation of once-criminals into the Pantheon of Great Scientists, World Leaders and Spokesmen for 'Democracy' and 'Freedom'......By '8th Grade', I wasn't 'buying' much of the bullshit....as I looked through the pages of The Weekly Reader and watched the Movietone Newsreels that were shown, every Saturday morning at the local intown movie theater, The Lyric.......Not much as changed, has it?   

SKINNING HOMO ERECTUS WITH THE CODE RAY

 One can now wear this 'skinless' body suit to an Uban Sophisticate party...I remember Heidi Klum's then-controversial 'skinless body suit'....however, put some "flesh" over it and it becomes 'indecent exposure'......So 'went' the Physical World of Man, evolving with the rag-tags of its History.....What about Ziggy Chen's motion-capture 'Collagemory', the virtual imaginings of Post-Pandemic Fashion, Multi-Sensory/Motion-Capture Couture, or of Tupac Martir's Satore Studio? Will these collaborations with Algorithms blur the Ancient Biblical Laws that determine what is 'presentable'? Intrigued by the Hi-Tech Production that was utilized for the Finale of World Of Dance....and State-of-the-Art Cinema, wherein the distinction between 'Reality' and "Imaginary Worlds" is becoming increasingly matrixed ......I am imagining that in the Software-fabricated Future, as it becomes....with the evolution of Silicon-Reality.....the evolved World, contained within vast, self-sustaining mega-computers, having long-replaced the Mess that was the Word of Homo Sapiens......."We're ready for your 'closeup' Miss. Johansson...." Put on your Helmets, it's time for "Fashion Week"......and it will be 'all in your heads'.....right, Alvin Toffler.....?

CHERYL, THEN 'BIRD'.....NOW, JOHNNY.........

 

I've not 'shown' this 2007 photograph of "Bird" Lowe, because she, grieving over the death of her only daughter, Cheryl, is not displaying a 'look' that her friends and family would like to 'remember' her by.....Now, that some time has passed, and the need for more ameliorative 'takes', I'm remembering how she replied, in an aside to me, as I held my then-ever-present camera a couple of feet away, as her good friend and neighbor commented, "You'll outlive us all, Katherine!"..... This 'look' says otherwise........She could tell 'the camera' how she felt, knowing this portraiture would outlive her laughter to please others.....We are but beings, briefly illuminated against the illusory permanence, by the light of Living......My morose thoughts this morning are fueled from having, late last night, turned 'on' the TV.....only to view the final moments of Death In Venice.... As, Gustav von Aschenbach, hair blackened with dye, expires on a beach chair as he gazes out at a metaphorical Tadzio, to the soundtrack of Mascia Predit's rendition of a Mussorgsky lullaby. Saddened, I touched an arbitrary button on the 'remote', only to be 'taken' to the final, lugubrious scene of another Bogarde film, in which Teddy "Bare", deliriously drives a coupe over a steep cliff.....and, yesterday, the first of her three sons, John Wharton Lowe III, hanged himself. Bird had anticipated this event, twenty years ago......

THE BRAIN IS MAINLY WATER, ANYWAY.........

THE BRAIN IS MAINLY WATER, ANYWAY

 How real does it have to be,  the window to the MIND?

Have we set the parameters already?

 

the portal in one observatory opens at 4

and closes at six.

so--if you're late for the show??

 

look, there's another lens out to there,

when's the next feature?

OH!,  i guess THEY'll show it again.

 

Do you think the part we missed

will be in the special features of 

the enhanced edition DVD?

 

No matter, there's a million important observatories.

Sadly, there's but a dozen eyes at the lenses.

 

Is this knob for mechanical focus, Klaathu?

SOMETIMES....PERHAPS 'ALWAYS'.....ONE HAS TO 'STEP OUT OF THE PICTURE' TO DISCOVER WHO THEY 'ARE'.......EVEN IT THAT LEAVES AN EMPTY SPACE WHERE THEY ONCE 'WERE'.......

 

"Smile...and don't look into the camera".......OLAN MILLS

 

as soon as i noticed the photographer's hand begin to squeeze the rubber bulb of the shutter release cable......I disobeyed.....'This', of course, was not the photo chosen for the Yearbook.....but another, with eyes looking off into 'nowhere' and my, then, crooked teeth in a forced 'smile' for the 'birdie'......

Yet.....if it were not for the innovations of Artists......We'd still be living in caves...with no wall decor.....tearing the flesh from animals with our bare teeth.........What soulful pleasures have been afforded from statisticians and politicians?

So, what would one expect from the "Singapore News Sourcing"? At least.....trade out the "social media manager" for the 'artist' positions! In America, statisticians and 'number-jumblers', graph-makers and 'incident managers' are, increasingly, the soullessly indifferent 'job-goal-positions'......only 80 years ago, Nazi's were burning 'ART' in the streets, as the 'Leaders' showed 'the People'....'the Numbers'...... "4 out of 5 Doctors can't be wrong", can they? The Hype.....the Hype!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gCMzjJjuxQI

A BUS RIDE INTO A BIGGER UNIVERSE

 

50 years ago, today, I stepped from a Greyhound Bus, walked to Washington Square with a new friend and future lover, Joe Kelly, whom I had just met during the bus ride from Atlanta, via Richmond, to NYC, not giving a '20-somethingish' thought about the events that were soon to make our 'play-pretend' 'Happenings' in Atlanta seem like 'minor' skirmishes, compared to what was to ensue on Christopher Street, just days away........The 'seed' had been planted, even before I was aware of what would germinate from it......in 1962-3, when, as a then-naive teenager, I had stepped from a Silver Eagle to the hot New York Pavement, quickly separating from my classmates ....on our 'Senior Class Trip'....and sought out the possibilities that there were 'people like me'....somewhere, outside French Art Films.........well, the two or three that I had watched, after walking backward through the exit door of the Lyric Theater..... Shirtless men in warpaint, bohemian 'artistes' wearing berets and sandals, crowded shops....full of counter-cultural paraphernalia, women in heavy eye make-up, drag queens & gender-challenging 'fags'.....challenged my preconceptions of 'normality'....as that very word came to represent the 'aliens' who posed as the representatives of what American Society had become before the windows were shattered, as our own burgeoning Police Gestapo desperately moved 'in' to establish Control and Conformity.......again......I brought a new set of eyes to the World that I had dwelt uncomfortably within, only weeks before......and drove to Lee Optical to get a pair of glasses to facilitate better focus on what I was 'seeing'...... For a while......no more technicolored, wide-screen MGM Versions.......only the coarse-grained Black and White countercultural 'stuff' was even 'believable', now..........I was afraid of American propaganda , not of Virginia Woolf's license! Now....for a good microscope, and the tools to dissect the cadaver that had posed as 'Reality'.......

MEMORABILIA FROM MOTHER'S 'HOPE CHEST'......AN EARLY 'SOCIAL SECURITY CARD'...and A PAGE OF INHERITANCES ..

 

more nostalgia from the crates and boxes in the basement......My mother's Social Security Card, from Oct 5, 1939.....issued when she and my Father opened a short-lived grocery store, in Huntsville..it was, still, in its original mailing envelope! [the first SSN was issued sometime in mid-November 1936. In any case, on whatever day the first card was issued, hundreds of thousands of SSNs were probably issued on that same day, so many people had Social Security cards issued on the very first day they became available.]

and...amother page of family nostalgia..................a list of 'inheritances' from a couple of centuries ago.....

I've not 'updated' the list of kids that I grew up with...but...have kicked the bucket....in a few years, now.....although there are at least 20 new members for the List Of The Dead Hunstvillians, currently.......

 Jim Lancaster, Sonny Laughmiller, Linda Marsh, Larry McBride, Eddie Monks, Fredna Mott, Wilfred "Bushy" Mrazek, Sandra Myers, Antje Neubert, Ellis “Pete” Overton, Thomas Payne, Hans Palaoro, Arlen “Buster” Petty, Jody Pilling, Paula Price, Miriam Reynolds, Mike Rothe, Dottie Sayers, Hartwig Schulze, Charles Shannon, Don York,

"Sparky” Sparks, Linda Spier, Wanda Stewart, Billy Stevens, Randy Sublett, Charles Taylor, Chloe Walling, Virginia Wilson, Craft Wood, Don York, Gerry Allen, Butch Anderson, George Apostolos, Jurgen Arndt, Lesley Ayers, Linda Barksdale, Larry Beach, Walter Bennett, Edwina Bibb, Cecil Bishop. Norman Bradley, Ronnie Bright, Dian Broadway, Janice Brown.........and even more, that had dropped 'off the radar".......kids that I grew up with, went to schools, summer camps, college, dance classes, took basket weaving with, skated on Saturday mornings with, 'made out' at the 'drive-in' with, ran, swam, played hop scotch, tennis and badminton with, kicked the flag and stole the banner with, and graduated from High School with......are all dead now!.......I just received yet another 'uplifting' list of 'the dead' from our High School Alumni Leader.......I was going to "X" out these 'kids' from the old Pierian High School Annual.....but thought better of that! How depressing! When we were 18, we all thought we would live forever.....alas, that was utter fantasy and denial, wasn't it? and....an addendum: Janice Brown, Lois Bruce, Yvonne Burgins, Jan Case, Gary Clark, Shelley Cotton, Linda Craver, Jane Crowson, Demeta Davis, Betty Dinwiddie, Mary Dogen, Pat Doster, Don Dudley, Patsy Emerson, Pat Engle, Lyndon Faulkenberry, Camille Fleming, Pete Fleming, Jerry Franklin, Larry Fretwell, Marsha Futch, Charmion Hanson, Burt Hanvey, Harmon Hastings, Carolyn Herring, Patsy Hill, Sally Hill, Harold Kaspareck, Russell Kennemer, John Kinzer, Katherine Krempl, Kenneth LaBorde and Bob Lada........ all 'Dead' too!.... Just a few tough old birds, like myself, that are still kicking around....or just walking, or 'wheeling', or 'crutching' around......

I'M WARY OF CONFORMIST CONSERVATIVES......AND, ESPECIALLY, WHEN THEY 'DRESS THE PART'......

Surrounded by at least 800 carefully "Brooksbrothered" classmates while in college, I gravitated...stylistically.....toward the Mod/Beatnik 'couture' fashionabiity....and, eventually, to the "who gives a fu&k'ness' of my half-century plus another quarter, or so Years....i.e. dress as you feel......To me....both of 'these' looks are pretty much the same exercises in conformity......to Fashionably stylish, confused meaninglessness of the Beckett Hareish Symboloids, or the Conservative programatic Conformity of the Nathaniel Elliot Worthington III's.....from the shape-shifting trend emulators to the politically-shifting fashion-masked congresses of lawyers ......

EASTER....AGAIN........AND YET MORE OPPORTUNITIES TO WATCH ALL THOSE 'JESUS, STREET MAGICIAN' MOVIES.......

 Easter is again upon us........The pageantry, The passion, The ism of "Theism".....has always seemed the spectacle of the streets, more than the musings from Palace towers.......As soon as my prefrontal cortex was operationally analytical, I cleaned house of the detritus of mass belief systems that had been earnestly posited, like an underground viral network, whose objective was my potential brainwashing........When I was old enough to write my feelings and thoughts on surfaces that persist in time, stacks of paper, decorated with inked language, began to flow and saturate pressed wood fiber.......and these youthfully skeptical poems entered my existentially exuberant expressivity, displacing the ancient scribbles in the carbon black of cave walls.......It was not until I was 19 or 20, and....reading of Diogenes Teufelsdröckh, then a book that ends in the middle of a sentence and begins in the middle of the same sentence, did I see the exit from the Cave.........

 "Brain Explosion and Facial Disintegration #2"..... 2017

Last in a series of oil, crayon and plastic 'stuff'......I thought I should end the series with this......

INFLUENCERS FROM MY CHILDHOOD....DURING THE SUMMERS OF 1955-1957

My parents were concerned that I was such an eccentric, peculiar, artsy boy.....  They made a decision to send me, during 3 summers of my formative pre-teens, to Camp Dunroamin, near Fayetteville, Tennessee, where my childhood and that of about 60 other boys could be 'shaped and formed' by a couple of ex vauldvillians,  Mr. Jimmy and Miss Havelon, who introduced us to lariat-making, basket-weaving, sand painting, badminton, croquet, archery, skating, swimmin & diving  and riflery.....then, popular activities for boys.....(and providing some summer time for their parents to 'go on vacations'...without the annoyance of driving long distances with cars full of hyper-active boys.....    I had been such a reclusive boy that Mother believed that this experience would lead to my being more sociable.....and 'like other kids'......This experience worked, well-enough, because...after 'camp'.....and now an archery expert and pretty good pottery painter and lariat-maker...and skater......my prestige, among those my age, was enhanced ....and I could better tolerate the company of 'kids my age', rather than seek out the company of Old People, with whom I felt much safer and sustained.........

 

DURING THIS THURSDAY OF FRUSTRATIONS AND TRIBULATIONS......LEAKING ROOF REPAIRS; WATER FLOODING FROM A TINY COPPER PIPE THAT ONCE FED THE WATER DISPENSER/ICEMAKER IN THE FRIDGE.......TOSSING OUT A WATER-DAMAGED ORIENTAL RUG.....MY NEIGHBOR'S CAT HAVING JUST BEEN RUN OVER BY THE ORKIN MAN.....

 THIS OLD GILT-BRONZE ASHTRAY SAYS IT ALL!    

1957.....THE YEAR THAT I ABANDONED RELIGIOUS BELIEFS, ALTOGETHER....AND BEGAN TO LOOK FOR THE SCIENCE BEHIND THE IMAGININGS AND THE TRICKERY THAT WAS UTILIZED TO MANIPULATE AND CONTROL THE 'TRUE BELIEVERS'.......

EVEN COMIC BOOKS LIKE 'TOMAHAWK' AND OTHER 'DC' AND 'MARVEL' AND 'CLASSICS ILLUSTRATED' MAGS OFFERED CONTRADICTIONS TO THE PROPAGANDA THAT WAS STILL, THEN, PROMULGATED IN THE PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEMS OF THE 1950'S.......FORTUNATELTY, SOME WRITERS/ARTISTS WERE ABLE TO GET PAST THE CENSORSHIP OF THAT TIME AND OFFER SOME TRUTHFULNESS TO THE NICKLE AND DIME READERSHIP OF THE SMALL TOWN NEWSTANDS......IN HUNTSVILLE, ALABAMA.....THAT WAS "THE GRAND NEWS STAND", DEAD CENTER BETWEEN THE LYRIC AND GRAND MOVIE THEATERS......THAT I FREQUENTED EVERY SATURDAY, BETWEEN 1955 AND 1962.......