Foreword; To Tomorrow

What have you been doing all these months? Re-tooling? Tell me more.

The following stories are true. And its time to be sharing them. Although there will be much more ‘a do’, without any more of it, I will begin.

About those stories: some of them are very true. Some are mostly true. Some are more or less true. You can decide. Philosophers have debated “Truth” from time immemorial. They’re no closer to the ‘true’ truth than when they began; when Homer was a little boy in knee pants, a little Greek, urn-ing the minimum wage of a drachma a millennium, slaving away… … …as it were.

Politicians have many of the same problems with the ‘true’ truth. Clinton said “I didn’t have sex with that woman!” Bush the Elder said, “I haven’t had sex with ANY woman”, nodding his head towards Barbara. Which gives one pause to consider what we really know about the genetic heritage of Bush the Younger!! And so it goes!!

All I know for sure (if anything can be known for sure) is that I created these stories by myself. I may have tried to make them ‘more interesting’. But that doesn’t necessarily make them any less ‘true’. Maybe I didn’t have to enough courage to tell them directly, so I implied them indirectly. After editing and re-editing, who can remember what was buried in the trash on the cutting room floor. If there WAS a cutting room. Or a floor. Some things may have been so lost that they disappeared from the entire space-time continuum. You’d have to go all the way to Britain to get answers about that, and last time I looked, Stephen Hawking isn’t speaking to me. Or anybody else. Heisenberg himself is uncertain. And Schrodinger’s cat has a hairball. As you can see, chaos abounds! You must give me great latitude. I’m only a man.

Of course there’s the slim possibility that these stories could have been written by some body else. Maybe my Guatemalan cleaning lady, Berta, who’s been cleaning house all these years, who’s unshaven leg hair is so long she uses it to knit sweaters for her grandchildren… … …maybe. Maybe she thought the stories were from her family in San Juan Sacatepéquez. I’ll never know for sure. Often, pain-killers cloud my memory. In any event, Berta doesn’t speak any English, even after 40 years in L.A., so it couldn’t be her. Could it?

It could be Lana, the thirty year old, blonde pony-tailed Ukrainian LVN with the lithe, runner’s build, from Sevastopol or Lvov, who bathes my feet… … …with bleach (no shit, Mr. Clean; you bald-headed ‘Yul Brenner’ wanna-be). And five times a week, no less. Lana, who speaks with such a heavy eastern European accent, I start wondering what she’s doing with all the ‘samples’, the vials of blood she drains from me… … …always inquiring about my ‘blooood wessels’, like the sexy vampires from those soft-porn romance novels where golden locks of ultra-fine hair encase the very willing victim to join in carnal ecstasy in the back seat of a ersatz Bat-mobile.

Oh well! One can dream.

Lana; who looks a bit like a Slavic Olivia Newton John, all ‘Greased’ up and ready for a go. Lana, who in my erotic meanderings, slips into view: my focal length increasing, the slow, electric buzz of the lenzzzz, the viewfinder alert to nuance, narrowing, narrowing as the shutter, finally, releases, slips, and relaxes, slides, deliciously, into submission… … …Lana, which transforms palindromically into anally to Lana anally into Lanaaaah… … ….until I forgot from where I was coming, sort of, and why. So here’s to Lana: “Keep on Trucking!!”

Where was I?

All things considered, its most likely true that I am the author of this trash. And if you were a detective, looking for clues, analyzing the entrails as it were, you’d notice some vague themes in the writing:

1 – Gemeinschaftt vs Gesellschaft. (bet you didn’t know I was from Brooklyn)

2 – The Good, The Bad, and The Guttural. (poetry, song, and the cultural arts)

3 – Tarot-Dog Reads The Tease Leafs. (mystical connections)

4 – Thoughts on Thought. (Neuroscience to Philosophy of Science to Science of Thought)

5 – Faith, Hope, & Charity. (The Karma Trifecta)

6 – Loose the Dogs of Politics. (Robert’s Rules of Disorder)

Looking through what I’ve just written, my initial response is this: “What a pretentious hunk of junk, what meaningless whack-a-doodle!!” I’ll cop to that. Its just a start. Most likely my words will amount to a seed-spill of sea foam. Washed away in the phosphate florescence. Residue. Garbage. So be it. It will take much effort for me to focus. Pain continually plagues me. Still, I joke. Then write. Then nap. Eat. Take my Vicodin. I live in four to six hours increments, with refills every ten days. My “pain management regimen”. My pace-maker battery needs replacement. Constant gout. Gallbladder prods me: fix me, fix me, fix me. My podiatrist thinks more pain is afoot. Smack me before I joke again. My internist needs a psychiatrist!!

From the tide pool that birthed me, to the end that awaits us all, I yearn for most, is meaning. Instead I find… … …hysterical laughter: “You, TD? Meaning? HaaaHaHa, Yaaahaha!!” All I see is distractions; women, song, idol (and idle) worship. Should I listen to their song?

At least for today, say “enough”, TD. Enough!

Write; Man!

Write.

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