FROM CHINA WITH LOVE

THERE ARE SO MANY SONGS THAT WILL NOT BE SUNG.

   I have been diagnosed as having Parkinsons Disease.  I am in denial and now I am near the anger stage of loss. My hands have at times an uncontrollable tremor.  It is difficult to use the keyboard.
   I do not know the outcome of this but I shall continue to post whatever and whenever I am able.  Probably photographs.
  I am still sober,thanks to God and AA.
...with each broken shoelace out of one hundred broken shoelaces, one man, one woman, one thing enters a madhouse.                                                                                                           Charles Bukowski

   I would like to thank all those who have read or will read my blog.  I hope that you enjoyed it.  I continue to always welcome feedback.
   The Shadow.

HEATHER

She left my life just as quickly as she had entered.  The last time I saw her she was sitting  on a mattress on the floor putting on her shirt.  The next day she took a flight back to LA, leaving her apartment and taking nothing with her.  
It was late spring when she appeared, letting out the apartment above mine.  We hung out together all that splendid summer. We ate, watched parades and went to the railroad museum.  I photographed her when we sat in the sun in the park.
I have the photo's now and a lot of good memories.  Occasionally I sit and wonder whatever happened to her. 

JACK DEMPSEY'S BAR & GRILL - NYC - Ca. 1944

THROWING HELICOPTERS OVERBOARD

I woke up on the sofa in the morning, hungover and bleary eyed.  After adjusting  the horizontal roll on the black and white television I slowly focused on a surreal sight.  Saigon had fallen during my hiatus.  Helicopters were flying out to  Navy ships off the coast of Vietnam.  There were people hanging onto the bottom of the choppers which were landing on an aircraft carrier.  As soon as the people cleared, a crew of sailors would push the aircraft into the drink.
I thought, Oh my God, they are pushing millions of dollars of aircraft into the Ocean.  What a waste.  Then I slowly realized that the mission of an aircraft carrier is to launch fighter planes.  This cannot be done with the decks cluttered up with helicopters.  All of a sudden it made sense; as much as war itself makes sense.
     Where am I going with this, you ask.  For the third time in my last two years I am facing the prospect of "downsizing".  The possibility of moving from my new apartment into a single room in assisted assisted living is depressing.  But this is what it may come to, remembering my mission and pushing my personal helicopters into the water. 
      I have had 40 years of happiness and tragedy since Saigon fell 40 years ago today.  I am sober now and much more able to take life's disappointments without drinking but I still wince when I think of all those helicopters at the bottom of the sea.  






 

OH LOOK!!! SEE OUR NEW LAMP.

Bourgeois

YE ASK ME IF I KNOW AMERICANS?

Let me tell you I know Americans.
The other night me old man sent me down to the corner pub
to buy a bucket o' beer and on me way I met an American.
Before you could say Trafalgar Square he'd upped me, downed me.
in'd me, out me, wiped 'is talleywacker on me petticoat,
drank me beer, pissed in me bucket and walked off whistling 
God save the King.
And ye ask me if I know Americans?

A ditty popular in England during World War II.