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, September 21, 2021

-from The Litanies of Mistrust

 

September 21, 2008  (I was 63)

 

         -from The Litanies of Mistrust

Never trust:

         Hansel to follow the crumbs home

         a dinner invitation from Mother Hubbard

         the Sprats to serve a salad

         a cow’s worth of beans

         Bo Peep to tend your sheep

         a ba-ba-black sheep to give you a ba-ba-bag of wool

         a little piggy who has none

         Johnny Flynn heading to the well with a sack

Never trust:

         the swan within your ugliness

         Mary to be more than contrary

         Pete’s wife to come out of her shell

         a puss in boots

         a woman with a whip who lives in a shoe

         a spider to scare every muffet away

         Eency Weency to stay out of your spout

Never trust:

         Jack Horner to keep his fingers out of the pie

         Charming Billy not to try the young thing’s mother

         Rapunzel to let down her hair

         Boy Blue to wake up and blow

         Spoon not to run away with your dish

         a courting frog to be unarmed

         a monkey to pop your weasel

          nimble Jack to clear the fire plug

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