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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Tuesday, November 10, 2020

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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