Friends

I have only one friend to whom I say and write what I quite actually intuit as the future. I write here as sort of a tarnished Jeremiah...sometimes. And sometimes as a supercilious observer... And sometimes as a business man... and a lover... But I do prevaricate, at least in the sense that I do not set down the exact truth IN THE WAY you are used to seeing it put down before your eyes. I do put it all down. However, I do it in such a way that people think it is STYLE rather than foresight. It is my style to throw in some outrageous metaphor...he surely cannot literally mean what he has written here?! Case in point: In Port Desespoir where live my parents in the impenetrable gloom of the clouds blown in off Fox News, there is some land where I used to work. The last ten years of that life did not give rise to any pleasant memories. When I finally was quit of it, I said to someone that there was an ancient curse on the land there, laid on it by an aboriginal shaman centuries ago. Of course, people to whom I said this believed it was my style, a bit of an exaggeration for emphasis. Well, woe to them, then. Since that time, the benevolent and local rich institution that bought the land - a benevolent despotism that broadcast money hither and yon - has done some construction work there. The contractor involved in the site renovation and stabilization of the land lost his shirt. A YMCA has been built, and the construction manager chosen to head the project apparently took off with bundles of cash intended for the sub-contractors, causing severe problems for long established local institutions. The benevolent despot had no help to offer. ( I believe their sights are set on greater prey: a future casino. Being thus beguiled by riches of Persian splendor, how could the despot be involved in his neighbors' despair?) I said to the fellow who told me this...I said that I am not witty; I say what I mean. If you choose to think me a supercilious type, sort of a Lord Peter Whimsey of the present day, so be it. I do not think I am witty. If I were witty, why is it that when I converse with people, they often seem to develop that eye-in-the-headlight look of roadway deer? What I mean is, I seem to engender comatose states so often, that I think of a "fugue" state as if it were a wind instrument, and I the master of it: a Pied Piper of amnesiac states. I say what I mean. Period. Full stop. Pause.... whatever....