I don’t write in a journal everyday, but I have accumulated many entries over the past 50+ years beginning in 1966. Some items evolved into longer works. Among the leftovers little pieces survived. I thought a collection of these with a piece culled from the same date in a past year would make an interesting yearbook. The consistencies and inconsistencies of mind, skipping back and forth across time, provide varied perspectives. It is difficult to remember the context of the past we’ve lived; we also make suppositions about times that predate ourselves.

The few alterations from original drafts were to improve clarity. The worst of my work is not included. There remains enough mediocrity and immaturity to make me feel humble and you feel smart. There are also moments of accidental insight and incidental humor.

Author Stephen Crane referred to his little pieces as pills…apparently they were small and somewhat hard to swallow, but good for you.


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Thursday, November 10, 2016

When I used to be Catholic


November 10, 1980  (I was 35)

When I used to be Catholic
prayers earned indulgences
Years ago people saved S&H Green Stamps
On the west coast people saved Blue Chip Stamps
Maybe some people still do that
but I don’t know where the hell you get the stamps anymore
I haven’t seen a premium catalog in years
As you received them one for every dime spent
you’d paste them thirty to a page into thirty-paged redemption books
Sometimes you’d buy an electric fry pan and get pages at a time
More often you got a few buying a buck’s worth of gas
I remember a crazy car dealer once on TV
He offered stamps on the down payment for new cars
You had to go to a redemption center to redeem the books
You could get redeemed for anything
a TV or another electric fry pan or a dozen golf balls
The redeemers wore aprons and rubber fingers
They flipped through your pages
handled the spit and wages of your accomplishment
They gave you the reward you saved for
a little bit of heaven with every visit
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