A Fox Hunt:

https://soundcloud.com/james-shirley-barnes/a-fox-hunt

During fall and harvests ripening all over the northern hemisphere,
a squirrel gathers nuts and berries on a forrest floor.

The squirrel is a half mile off from a fox,
who stops dead in its tracks at a wisp of wind
across its nose of a squirrel's scent on the forrest floor.

Winds whip overhead tree branches
and the fox stalks through undergrowth
upwind towards its scent of a squirrel on the forrest floor.

Suddenly, the fox crackles a twig within earshot of the squirrel
and for an instant: the forrest is still, save wind in pines.

The fox stops in its tracks amidst shrubs
while overhead branches whisper winds
and squirrels in treetops click their cheeks
warning the lone squirrel on the forrest floor
who is now alert to the fox.

Birds flutter from nestled branches overhead
as the fox bounds towards the squirrel on the forrest floor
and pounces, catching the squirrel by the tip of its tail.

The squirrel lets out a caterwaul of clicks
with its cheek while twisting out of grips
with the fox paw on its tail and swiping
at the fox's nose with its sharp claws.

Then, the squirrel bolts up a nearby tree
leaving its precious nuts on the ground
for the fox to forage, which the fox eats
after failing to fell the squirrel collecting
nuts on the forrest floor.

The squirrel that the fox almost catches
by the tail on the forrest floor
watches from overhead branches chagrined
and throwing empty nut shells
at the fox from its knot in a tree.

Squirrels from other trees
cross branch to branch
to gather on branches nearby
where the squirrel who had been on the forrest floor
has its knot in a tree.

Squirrels caterwaul with cheeky click sounds
throwing empty shells and berry refuse at the fox.

The fox scampers off through the forrest
in search of other territorial prey to feed
his family of foxes in a fox den about a mile off
from where the fox stalks the squirrel on the forrest floor.

The fox wanders the forrest floor and
through clearings along side fences in search of prey
sensing winter is soon to be upon it
and its den of little foxes
and a fox mate.

There is just so much time to scamper
before the fox has to eat.

Catching the odd mice in its late afternoon hunt
when the temperature drops,
the fox comes upon a barn and a chicken coop
to which the fox arrives through a notch in a fence
along side a clearing on the forrest's edges.

Chickens cluck loudly sensing the fox
and a dog barks from within a farm house.
A light switches on by a door as the fox is pawing
at the mesh wire fence around the coop.

Suddenly, a farmer bursts out of a door to the farm house
beside a window with a light in it during the dusk hour of day
and steps onto a dimly lit porch firing buckshot
into air pointing away from barn and house into clearings,
which stretch to forrest edges.

The farmer sees the fox's silhouette disappear
through a notch in a fence and bound towards
forrest edges while the farmer reloads buckshot
and fires again into the air towards the forrest edges.

The fox escapes the farmer's ire into the forrest
and meanders the mile through the forrest undergrowth
to his den with three fox pups and a fox mate waiting.

On the way through the forrest meandering
amidst undergrowth towards his den,
the fox happens upon a wounded bird
whose wing has left it stranded on the forrest floor
hopping from shrub to shrub so as to keep out of reach
and sight of what the bird senses as a fox stalking it.

The fox and the bird flurry
in a battle of hunter over prey
when the fox bites the bird at the neck
and the bird's red blood spills into the fox's mouth
and onto the forrest floor.

With its hunted prey of a bird in its mouth,
the fox carries the pheasant bird through the forrest
to its den of fox pups and a fox mate who greet the fox
with the felled pheasant in its mouth with yelps, yips and licks
to the fox's snout.

The fox drags the pheasant into the den on the forrest floor
for a foxes' feast of pheasant during fall around Thanksgiving
when the farmer and most families eat a bird as a feast.

Animal Cruelty is No Joking Matter:

Declared by the Almighty "stewards of the earth," humans have failed.

We are more interested in cheap Chinese toys with lead paint on them than Albatross eating out of a sea of plastic floating in Puller's toilet rendering Albatross chicks gutted by everything from plastic bags to plastic syringes.

What I do not understand is why the Albatross don't recognise sardines from plastic, or are the sardines eating plastic shards too thinking it undersea lichen?

I suppose that if I never saw a Coke bottle fall from the sky and land at my feet thrown by a pilot à la "The Gods Must Be Crazy," then I would walk to the ends of the earth to rid of it too.

Same principle applies to the Albatross not being able to distinguish plastic from fish.  The Pacific Ocean is littered with everything from toothbrushes washing up on Hawaii beaches to worn tires tossed into the ocean as well as syringes, medical waste, etc.

Why POTUS' don't deploy services and exercise their power to clean up the planet is beyond me!

At the rate that the planet spins on its axis every 24 hours revolving around the sun every 365 days, humans are spinning their wheels twice and three times as fast just to leave their mark on a one day overgrown tarmac with humans in extinction.

An Unofficial Super's Job is To Not Let It Bother You Too Much:

1. tenants have almost burned the place down resulting in my calling the fire department on one occasion: the 3rd floor apartment filling with smoke from a 2nd floor fire; 

2. tenant has opened all the windows in their apartment and put the heat on 90 degrees on 14 degree nights;

3. tenants have left mountains of trash behind numerous times;

4. tenants have had all night raging parties;

5. tenants have blamed me for going into their apartments and masturbating on the floor and stealing a pack of cigarettes;

6. tenants have blamed me for running into their vehicles;

7. tenants have short changed me on the CABLE TV and INTERNET apparatus here;

8. Tenants have sold to pill poppers out the front door.

9. Tenants have counted four 20's into a 100 saying they thought them 25 dollar bills when asked why they were short changing.

10. Tenants have had pets that shit all over the apartments, basement and yards for me to clean up or get cleaned up.

11. Tenant was paid 850 cash to just move out and never come back after he says to me that he is going to fuck me fuck my family and god is going to get me.

12. Tenants hijacked a cable account that I have paid 200/month for 12 years here with the cable company calling my apartment "illegal" refusing to reconnect me without proof from landlord that it is not illegal.

13. Tenants have clogged toilets in need of repair so that human shit needs to be cleaned while in a space suit with mask and toothbrush.

14. Corroded plumbing resulted in 100,000 flies on the property throughout the apartments until the plumber could come the next week.

15. Third floor apartment is a fire trap with tenants' objects in hallway exits.

16. Tenants don't want me clearing snow in the driveway after 12 years of clearing snow here.  Tenants said that they would call for someone else.

17. Tenants claim lease rights in parking during bans without regard to other tenant schedules and leases.

18. Tenants knock on the door complaining of the slightest overhead noise such as something dropping on the floor in the third floor apartment.

19. Tenants have accused me of "starting small fires" in the yard over my discarded filterless cigarettes burning out in grass or snow.

20. Tenants over 12 years have discarded mountains of non-biodegradable cigarette butts into the yard and in the garden that I clean up regularly.

21. Tenant complains of smoke in her apartment five minutes after I go upstairs from downstairs and find a filter cigarette butt on the front door mat that someone else smoked minutes beforehand.

22. Tenant accuses me of stealing heat when I live on the floor above and I have to explain to the tenant that "heat rises."

23. Tenant allows in strangers with keys to the door so that I have to write down license tag and report it. 

24. etc.

Sticking It:

"What about that needle in your pocket?"

"Needle?  What needle?  You mean like a syringe?"

The doctor nods.

"I don't have a needle in my pocket."

"OK.  You can go back on the ward," the doctor says closing a binder in front of him on a desk in a room off a ward hallway.

Richard stands up, opens the office door, walks down the hallway and enters a common room where other patients are seated in all of the cushioned seats while the TV murmurs approved watching.

He stands between the nurse station desk and the lounge area where all the other patients are seated without a seat available for himself and he notices one patient sit at a table alone with one chair pulled up to the table, slumped: head and shoulders on the table while seated.

(She had been out on a day pass the same day as Richard and they had flirted in the gymnasium of the hospital on break from treatment the previous week, while staff observed.  They had stretched on a basket ball court in the gymnasium while other patients shoot hoops).

"Wake up, Jen!" a nurse chimes from the nurse station desk.

"But, I told you.  I didn't do it," Jen says perking up off of the table on which she is slumped.

"Yes, you did.  Look at you!  You are here two more days and then going with them."

"No.  I told you.  Someone must've slipped the needle in my pocket."

"Then, why are you like that?"

Richard retreats to his room.  He leaves the florescent-lit, common room passing the office in a hallway on the ward where he had been interviewed by the weekend doctor upon reentering after a day pass: the same day that Jen takes for a pass and is back on the ward before Richard.

Make sure you get your own out of it:

Use 100% organic non-homogenised butter (if you have access to farm animals), mix Pancake Mix (Hungry Jack or Aunt Jemima. if you are particular: check price!)(brownie mix would do good too), add an egg, milk, tar sand oil, mix ingredients well in a bowl, preheat, bake paddy cakes on a pan with tin foil laid at 369º for one hour or until cooked through and through and edible.

Add a shot of 95 proof honey vodka to the mix or else a sliced habanero for a taste kick.

Chester Puller -a day in the life of a great one

Richard knows she urinates in the toilet just outside the shower.  It is one of her less endearing habits and he mentions it to her numerous times that it bothers him. Looking over the top rail of the shower, Richard glances down at her simultaneously noticing there is some soap scum build up on the top rail.

"Hey babe, couple of things; you know it drives me crazy when you do that....and it looks like this top rail could use a good scrubbing," Richard says to her taking his finger and running it across the soap scum and holding it up for her to see.

"Should I get you a scour pad since you're in there?"

"That's YOUR gig baby, that's what you do....you keep the place clean and I love you for that. You make this more than a place to live for us...you make this a home! It's what you bring to this relationship."

"And what do YOU bring to THIS relationship?" she asks, irked.

"Me?" Richard retorts looking incredulous, "I dunno, humour, excitement, brevity, logic, security and a HUGE cock! Okay maybe not that last one....Mad Oral Skills; wait I guess that's yours too."

"So my contribution is keeping a clean house and sucking cock?"

"We've all got play to our strong points, know what I mean?"

She storms out without flushing because she knows that it drives Richard crazy.

Richard sees who becomes his ex today at a grocers after seven years.  She is married with a kid and pregnant.  Richard is happy to see her.  He approaches her from behind standing by freezers.

"You shouldn't stand so close to the frozen foods."

"Why not?"

"You might melt all the stuff!"

"Oh.  Richard!  You always had a charm about you."

"How much for your children?  I want to buy your children.  Sell them to me."

"What!?"

"Your children.  I want to buy them."

"My children are not for sale, Richard!  Security!"

Out of the back of the grocers, two security guards approach the woman Richard presumes to know at the grocer and she points out Richard who is exiting the store looking over his shoulder and glimpsing his ex pointing him out to the two guards.

Disappearing to the far end of a lit parking lot at dusk towards his car, Richard loses the officers amidst crowds, parked cars and traffic.  However, the ex whom Richard sees at the grocer remembers Richard's address and calls police to inform them of it.

Now, Richard is in prison.

May Crabs of 1,000 Hookers Infest Your Pubic Hairs:

I date a girl in high school who tells me that when she is on a school bus once, she looks out of the bus window at a man in a car masturbating in his driver seat.  She says to me that she thinks it "disgusting." She goes to an all girls school and wears a kilt-like, Catholic school girl skirt.

All the girls at the school wear the skirt with a white button down, blouse-type shirt through which straps of bras can be seen, especially when a girl wears a dark coloured bra and is reprimanded as a result by school administrators.

My girlfriend and me are walking up 5th Ave across the street from Central Park on a sidewalk in front of swank apartment buildings and I am lifting her skirt from behind exposing what is grained in my memory banks as white, cotton underwear wedged between supple, freckled and dimpled ass cheeks with legs which extend so that I cannot even imagine the possibilities unto this day.

Another older, woman pedestrian walking some paces behind us on the block laughs as I pull up my girlfriend's skirt and the girlfriend slaps my hand down reaching behind her when we look back at the only other pedestrian laughing at us while my girlfriend hurries our pace.

Now, twenty-five years later: I have an urge to lift a woman's skirt every time I see an appealing woman in a skirt.  Also, my favourite position when engaged in sex (for all it's worth) is hoisting a skirt over the hips of a woman doggie style, with panties pulled aside.

When I go for a test at a hospital recently and the nurse asks me about how many partners I have engaged in sex, I answer:

"I don't know.  Hundreds?"

"Well, we only go up to fifty plus," the nurse retorts.

"OK.  Fifty plus," I say.

Luckily, the test is negative so the nurse doesn't contact anyone and I find myself with a charmed life full of lustful memories of past girlfriends: now married with yellow teeth and a chain smoking habit, the which might render a divorce.

I am not picky.  I am attracted to all sorts of women.  A woman in a business suit and skirt with sneakers on her way to or from work is the most arousing eye candy that I can imagine for me today.

Hey!  I'm married: not dead!  I purposely go out on nice days to ogle women over coffee, park with my wife and point women out to her saying:

"I'll think about her the next time I do you," etc.: keeping it fresh! 

Cracked

"Ten O four."
"You got the four?"
"Yeah.  But, no bag."
"Yeah.  That's fine.  Just stick the bag over your head."
"What you mean?"
"You got my ten?"
"Yeah."
"OK then."
"Get the fuck out!"
"What's the problem?"
"You rude.  That what.  Don't come back!"
"Bitch!"
"What you say, mofo!?"
"I called you a bitch."
"Oh.  That right.  How 'bout I call police?"
"Call 'em, bitch.  I'm leaving.  Not coming back."

Richard eyes the clerk reaching for a phone on a wall behind the counter as he exits the store on his way home with a six pack of beer.

He walks a half block up the boulevard to his parked car when he looks back and sees the clerk in front of the store talking to a police man.

Suddenly, the clerk shouts and Richard hears her over the din of traffic on the boulevard heading into Santa Rosa from outskirts and suburbs where Richard buys beer and lives a few blocks from the store.

"There he be, officer.  That cracker!  I get you yet."
"Sir!  Sir!"

The officer calls out to Richard who is opening his driver side door as the officer is at once striding up to Richard and speaking into a radio holstered on his uniformed shoulder.

"Sir.  The clerk at the convenience store says you stole beer."
"I paid her.  I didn't steal it."
"She says you owe her money."
"Yeah.  Four cents.  I gave her a ten.  It was ten O four."
"Alright.  Have a seat over there and we'll get this figured out."

Richard sits on a curb in front of his car behind another car parked on the side of a busy boulevard in Santa Rosa.

A second officer strides down the block to where Richard sits on a curb and the first officer awaits the second officer.

The two officers exchange words in hushed tones over traffic noise and Richard looks down the block towards the store from his seated position.

He sees in the distance down the block a third officer place handcuffs on the clerk who accuses him of stealing.

The second officer to arrive on scene struts up to Richard seated on a curb and says that he is free to go.

"What happened?"
"We had complaints about the store.  That's all.  You're not at fault."

Richard stands and as he stands up from the curb in between parked cars, he stumbles catching himself on his car's hood.

"Have you had anything to drink tonight?" the officer asks.
"Oh.  One or two," Richard retorts.
"Step over here, sir!"

Tips for Writing Stories:

Write depicted scenes and depicted dialogues: the which thread elements of a point "between lines" when reading, without explicitly "pointing out;" as in narrating a story.

Write implicitly as to a point by employing depicted scenes and depicted dialogue of character sets in writing to outline a "big picture" upon completion of reading a piece.

Write stories in present tense.

For example: 

The man slips his feet out from his slippers, sits down in an easy chair, reaches for a cigarette out of a pack on a table next to the chair, slides one out of the pack, lights it with a match retrieved from his vest pocket after fumbling around for a light and puffs easing back into his chair at home.

Followed by THIS narrative:

He says to his wife seated on a nearby love seat that he has had a long day when she questions him about reaching for a cigarette.  

Or,

Followed by THIS dialogue:

"Honey?  Why do you have to reach for a cigarette as soon as you sit down?" his wife asks from a nearby love seat in the dimly lit living space of their house on a winter's night.

"I've had a long day."

A Pane Less Clamour

The restaurant kitchen bustles with wait staff scraping plates into a waste bucket at the kitchen entrance to the dining room.  Staff retrieve prepared dishes from the cooks' line about shoulder high placed under heat lamps on a silver metallic shelf while three cooks tend to stoves, ovens and grills preparing food to place on the line under heat lamps for wait staff to collect. 

Florescent lighting overhead illumines the kitchen. 

Staff serve dishes entering and exiting the kitchen into a chitter chatter filled dining room, as seen by a new dishwasher to the restaurant at his station peering through a square, pane-less window in a wall beside the dish machine: opposite to the cooks' line in a square room.

Not five minutes into his second shift at the restaurant as a dishwasher and at the beginning of a dinner shift around 5PM, the new dishwasher follows some wait staff and other kitchen staff who had started shifts hours earlier out of the back door by the cooks' line to smoke cigarettes.

"Five minutes into your shift and you're already going for a smoke?" a cook who had stepped out with the group of five smokers asks the dishwasher.

"Yep.  Well, there are no dishes."

"Yuck!  Those are some nasty feet.  Do you ever clip your toe nails?" a waitress outside smoking asks.

"That's probably why I don't have a girlfriend."

"You wear sandals to work!?" another of the kitchen staff asks the dishwasher.

"Yeah.  Why not?"

"Look!  I have a pen with the name of a schizophrenia drug on it," the waitress who comments on the dishwasher's sandals says as she pulls a pen from her apron and passes it around to the others.

It is passed to the dishwasher who is known to have been diagnosed "schizophrenia" by random people around town due to previous mishaps which resulted in stigmatic insults and assaults on the dishwasher.

At least, the dishwasher assumes that the waitress knows that he, the dishwasher, is diagnosed with schizophrenia from gossip as he is passed the pen with the name of the drug "Zyprexa" on it.

"Richard?  I want you to come in here," the manager of the restaurant calls to the dishwasher from the screen door to the back entrance of the kitchen and then disappears into the kitchen again.

Richard rises from a stool and goes inside stubbing his roll your own cigarette into a coffee can for butts outside. 

Inside, Richard stands at the dishwashing station awaiting further instructions and recalls the previous shift's conversation in the kitchen on the previous night.

"He probably never worked in his life," the waitress who passes around the schizophrenia pen had said to the lead cook on the previous night.

"No.  Richard has a job.  He works at the university."

"He does!?"

"Yeah.  Richard?"

"Yeah."

"Don't you work at the university?"

"Yeah."

"What do you do there?"

"I'm a scanner operator."

"See?" the cook had said in retort to the waitress on the previous night after which Richard finished a shift of washing dishes.

Awaiting instruction or dishes with sandals, jeans and wearing a T-shirt, Richard leans against the dish machine with arms folded and legs crossed.  The waitress who had been outside smoking and handing around a pen with the name of a schizophrenia drug approaches Richard by the dish machine with the manager close behind at her heels.

"I'm sorry about what I said out there."

"Hey.  No skin off my back."

The waitress looks dumbfounded to Richard by his response and she shuffles off into the din of the dining room out of the kitchen and the manager approaches Richard who stands at the dish station with his back to the pane-less window frame view into the dining room.

"You can't wear sandals to work.  Here's twenty.  Go home and come back tomorrow."

"Thank you.  I'll be sure to come again," Richard says as he takes the twenty dollar bill and exits through the back door by the cooks' line after twenty minutes into his second shift as a dishwasher at the restaurant.

On the next day at about an hour before the dinner shift for which Richard had been scheduled, Richard phones in to the kitchen sick never to show up again.

Applying for a Yob:

Dear Madam:

I am applying to the ad posted for "female specimen handler."

My qualifications of handling female specimens include dating 50+ female specimens in my life so that I am now hitched to one of those female specimens.

At fifty years old, I endeavour to begin a career with your company as a "female specimen handler" putting my 35+ years of handling female specimens in the 100s (or, 50+ on a scale) to practice.

I am positive that I am the man for the position and my extensive experience in handling female specimens is expounded upon in my attached résumé.

Please feel free to review my résumé and contact me about the position of "female specimen handler" at any time.

Thank you,

-JB ESQUIRE-  

Depraved:

"She looked in and there he was just looking right back up at her."

- News Anchor about a peeping tom inside an Ossipee, NH camp ground toilet some years ago.

The man said he lost his wedding ring in the toilet and that was why he climbed into it.

A teenage girl used the toilet and looked into it after peeing only to see the man.

The man showed up to court in a urine-yellow, collared shirt with his obese wife and was let off with a slap on the wrist.

They pumped the toilet and did not find a wedding ring.

an ordered list of eight things I care about in life:

Personally:

1. dog
2. wife
3. family and friends
4. cat
5. creatures of the earth
6. plant kingdom
7. having an open mind
8. people in the world

Philanthropically, http://pswtdsco.blogspot.com/ donates to:

1. Animal Shelters and Animal Rehabilitation Facilities
2. Senior Retirement Communities
3. "Children Homes"
4. "Women's Shelters"
5. Organic Farms
6. Cultural Programs
7. Emerging Music Groups
8. Addiction/Disease Treatment Center(s)

"I am 'black,' but comely"

"Racism" is insidious, pervasive and prevalent in the world.

It is built into societal frame works of "popular thought" and almost unavoidable both on personal levels and in cultural environs, no matter if one identifies with perpetuating "racism" or not.

"Racism" exists as a psychological reaction to differences between not only peoples' perceptions of skin colour, but also varies in other perceived differences such as beliefs, handicaps, monetary worth, sexism, etc. ... all of which can be regarded as "stigmas" to societies.

As a result, "racism" is a figment of the imagination manifesting in judgemental actions based upon perceptions.

For example: as a white man in America, I cannot help but think that another person whom I see on a street is "black," if I perceive them with "black" skin.

If I act on what I perceive and say something derogatory about a person's skin colour, the thought manifests in action to what is known as "racism:" just as if I act and say something derogatory about women, it is "sexism;" and, just as if I act and say something derogatory about some peoples' lack of monetary worth, it is "elitism;" etc.

By the same token, a black man likely cannot help but think a person is "white" upon seeing someone who is perceived as "white" on a street along with a profound knowledge that a person has "black" skin due to facts of historic, segregated societies and resulting lack of opportunities because of skin colour.

Basically: "racism" exists because people choose to perpetuate racist "thoughts" in "judgemental actions," the which denigrate those perceived as different in skin colour.

One never knows what another person knows.  Even if a person thinks to know another person or something, yet do they not know that person or thing.

People and life is a bottomless well of knowledge, wisdom and experience from which any one person or mankind can only surmise the surface to understand at any one point in time, with life and lives constantly in a flux of metamorphosis, change and unfolding.

Lastly: people have freedom to "think anything," but "acting" on "thoughts" is when "racism" and other "perceived positive and/or negative psychologies" of societies manifest.

"I look forward to the day when humans shall have sloughed off the body and become a vortex of thought." - Harper's Weekly, 1960s

Music Reviews 51 cents for 4 reviews over 1 hour on SlicethePie::

A crescendo introduction from silence into riffs of guitars, drums, keyboards, etc. and a message of vocals calling for "holding on to those dreams" resounds solidly as an alternative, type of new wave music suitable for radio.

Echoes of a drum and voices as of in a wilderness culminate the piece in a thoughtful (as if in capella) (or, in a drum circle) original message of what this author understood as "finding one self," as if!

Overall: the riffs, tempo, vocals, lyrics and instrumentals created a melodic piece of new wave, alternative music that this author would not mind hearing for a second time, or, as a song on a radio perhaps performed live over mic, broadcast and with interviews of the band members.

--------

"Twang" riffs of guitars, drum beats, keyboards lead into a country genre love song, which begs the listener to feel nostalgic about a loved one to whom the artist apparently indicates in the song as "you," or, "I'm on my way back to you."

A reference to a "middle seat" during the song narrates the artists travels from someplace distant on a plane to someplace where home, love and familiarity abound for the artist.

However, the lyrics seem to relate the fact that the artist wrote the song with a kernel of real life relations in the artist's life: except the artist made listeners an object of the lyrics with "you."

Overall, the melody is ordinary in that the guitars were strummed too loudly over a raspy, male vocal: which may have sounded better if a coquette night club singer were singing the song.

This song might be a good song to play in a piano bar at a major chain hotel or else as a street or fair act, but of the country music that this author has listened to on the radio: this song is not suitable for air time as it is.

-----

A blues/R&B selection which begins with bass guitar riffs, drums and a vocal reminiscent of a Neville brother pitch, this song feeds through speakers like a baby rocked to sleep inducing nostalgic longing for a lost loved one to whom the lyrics are directed.

The piece continues into a melodic piece with tempo in instrumentals and vocals about the subject of the lyrics (a lost loved one) to a three string guitar note uptick after a lyric explains "everything begins with a spark" meaning life renews.

Overall, this author liked the piece very much for its genre in ilk of Stevie Ray Vaughn, Neville Brothers and other blues greats.  The bass guitar resounded with an undertone throughout the piece and carried the vocals to a crescendo finish on three guitar notes.

------

Echoing into the introduction of the vocals, the instrumentals of what sounds like guitars, keyboards and percussions engage in riffs accompanying the female vocalist singing lyrics about a loved one.

"I can feel your breath inside me even when you are not near" is a testament of the loss that the lyrics narrate throughout the riffs to what progresses as solid sound without an echo ending in instrumentals fading while the vocalist sings the lyric of "fading."

Overall, the piece is a contemporary music genre and does not incorporate any new theme of the lyrics from other artists.  The piece is not a distinguishable piece other than if played in a small club with an entrance fee.

Community radio stations may be a market for the song along with an interview of band members, but the melody of the song is too bland and heard previously by myself, the author, through other artists.

As a critic of the song, this author does not see a major label or the recording industry selling millions of single tracks: but, there is a market for it in networking and gigs.  

------

Piano, drums, percussion leading into vocals, this is a slow song suitable for a piano bar in a major hotel chain.

Once again: a song is about a love lost evoking forlorn, nostalgic feelings of people, places, families and education about the subject of the lyrics being a "natural woman" worthy of respect, but "lost."

The religious connotations of the melody resound at the mention of "God" about five minutes into the piece and the song is probably a suitable piece for the contemporary christian music market. 

Vignettes in which People Call Police

It is a clear, crisp, November day with a southern exposure and autumn leaves are strewn on the sidewalk and lawn in front of me and the dog as we sit on steps up to where I have lived for thirteen years.

The dog begins to bark as a passerby walks down the block of three story apartment houses and I say to the dog to "attack" releasing the dog's collar as the male passerby walks past where I am seated on steps up to the front door.

The dog leaps across the front walk to the sidewalk and begins to bark incessantly at the passerby's legs.

"What the hell!?" the man yells.

"Oh.  I'm sorry.  Toodles!  Toodles!"  I say standing up and calling my dog who stops barking at the passerby when I call him.

"You know some people are afraid of dogs.  You've been drinking too much beer.  I could call the police on you," the man yells at me noticing a beer in my hand as I wave my hands upended in the air saying "sorry, it was just a joke."

---

It is a clear, crisp, April day with a southern exposure over the bay from my car in a tight space on a Sunday.

I am about to go for a swim in the ocean.  I park between two, tightly spaced, white, parking lines next to a metallic blue mini van on the driver's side so that when I open the driver door to change into a swimsuit, my driver door taps the minivan side panel.

I notice the driver of the minivan sitting in the driver's seat and he notices my tapping of his van with my driver side door while changing.  I indicate through his passenger window to roll it down so that I could speak to him.

"Sorry about that.  It's just that these spaces are painted too tight."

"Well, don't do it.  You're not chipping the paint are you!?"

"No.  The paint isn't chipped.  I'll try not to, but it's tight."

The driver of the minivan rolls up his passenger window from a push button on the driver side door.

As I finish changing in a tight spot with my driver side door tapping the minivan with the driver in the seat, the driver of the minivan rounds the back of his van to inspect any damage.

"See.  There is no damage.  All I was doing was this," I say as I show him how hard my driver side door was tapping his minivan while I was changing.

"Well, I could call the police," the driver of the minivan says.

"Call the police.  Do you know what their number is?  Call 911."

"Oh.  I'm not going to call 911."

"Do you know what their number is?  It's 867-5309.  Call them."

"Oh.  I know what the number is ..."

"Good.  Call them!"

The man walks round his van again to enter the driver seat and I go swimming.

---

It is a clear, crisp, April 15th, 2013 morning dressed as a clown buying what I am told is a soda pop put into a brown, paper bag by a store clerk up the street from where I go to drink the "soda pop" on a stoop off a parking lot behind a coffee shop. 

A barista steps out of a back door to the coffee shop from the parking lot, sees me sitting on a stoop next door with a brown paper bag and "soda pop" while the barista throws trash into a dumpster and enters the backdoor to the coffee shop only to exit the coffee shop to throw more trash away into a dumpster and have a word with me drinking a "soda pop" from a brown paper bag on a stoop next door to the coffee shop in a parking lot on the day of the Boston Marathon Bombing.

"You can't be doing that there."

"What can't I be doing?"

"You know.  Drinking that!"

"Drinking what!?  It's a soda pop."

"Yeah right, it is.  Either you move or I'm calling the police."

"Call the police," I say looking dumbfounded at a barista of the coffee shop that I have frequented for fifteen years.

"OK.  I will.  You should be easy to find," the barista says and enters the backdoor to the coffee shop.

I swig my "soda pop," leave the bottle by the stoop where I had been sitting and round the block building to the front of the coffee shop where I enter, buy a coffee dressed as a clown and exit without being seen by the barista who is calling the police on me in the back of the coffee shop.

Rev. 22:

[1] And he shewed me a toxic sewer of excrement of humans, vile as cockroach swarms, proceeding out of the grates of streets and of the earth.
[2] In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the sewer, was there the tree of death, which bare thirteen manner of crap, and plugged her crap every month: and the crap of the tree were for the noxiousness of the nations.
[3] And there shall be no more blessing: but the sewage of streets and of the earth shall be in it; and each shall serve themselves:
[4] And they shall see crappy faces; and crappy faces shall be in their foreheads.
[5] And there shall be no day there; and they need no tissue, neither night of the moon; for the cholera giveth them dark: and crap shall reign for ever and ever.

Seven Rabies Shots:

I had seven rabies shots in the stomach as a kid administered by Dr. Bazzi in Freetown. 

I was bit by a dog.  I had told my friend not to go up a certain driveway because the dogs bite. 

So, I went up the driveway to show him that the dogs bite and I was bit.

By the seventh appointment for the series of rabies shots, Dr. Bazzi was sick of my screaming and let go of the syringe to pick his nose, I guess.

I have a vivid recollection of the long needle in my stomach extended from the syringe wobbling back and forth with my breathing and I stopped screaming for a minute or two.

Dejected:

I used to think of myself as creative with writing, until I didn't sell but one book to my uncle.

I thought that I knew about computers, but all I know is surfing the Internet: even though I type 50 words/minute with 100% accuracy and code at 100% accuracy.

I had three different part time jobs for eight years at a U., as a super and my whole health issue, which requires work keeping frequent, monthly appointments charged to insurance at $369/hr. according to billing.

Then, I hung myself due to seemingly irreconcilable differences even unto this day between myself and a broad spectrum of people in my life: relatives, acquaintances, co-workers to strangers in the community where I live.

Now, I sit at home all day, surf the Internet, pretend to write something of interest to others (but not judging from how many books I've sold), smoke, drink, sleep and eat going out of the house as seldom as possible.

I cannot think of one viable talent that I have which could earn a living wage or if it is possible for me to pry myself away from my pets and writing at home to work at anything else.

A list of jobs that I've been paid to do as of 40 years old is: painting, florist, demolition, construction, data tech, tutor, valet, super, dishwasher, landscaper, delivery, clown, mover, telemarketer, volunteer, driver and model.

"My eyes are rich, but my hands are poor; I've seen many variations, but I don't have any skills."

I have a broad base of general self education, the which I endeavor in writing having read for a period of years until surfeit with reading so that I now write, but ultimately: I have no skill set(s) in writing or anything else to earn a living within parameters of most organizations due to my limitations as a diagnosed schizophrenic and all that "schizophrenia" entails.

Somehow, I suspect a greater paradigm is at work against my success at anything due to my diagnosis of schizophrenia.  Schizophrenia and all that it entails robs me everyday of a slew of positivity replaced by negativity both within my thinking and popular culture thinking about "schizophrenia" and about people diagnosed with it.

It is as if I am expected to be an autonomous person in that nothing that others do or say affects my well being or outlook due to my diagnosis and anything can be said or done to me with impunity.

I can't be what ten people tell me to be, so I sit at home and write about woe is me with my pets as company while the Philharmonic plays a symphony aired over a frequency in my efficiency.

Can anyone blame me?  Is it my fault that I find myself here today at the keyboard?  Was I born to vegetate or cut a person off incurring curses or else did I wake up just today to be maligned, criticized and lambasted back to my efficiency as a conditioned recluse?

Epithets on an Epitaph

What I don't think that anybody I know understands about me (except my wife) is that every day for the last seventeen years since 1996, I have awoken to the same thought:

'Oh god!  Not another day with schizophrenia.'

The effects of that thought are deleterious to my psyche because of what all "schizophrenia" brings with it from obtuse commentary to outright home invasions and physical attacks on my person causing depression, low self esteem, anxiety, withdrawal, fear of my own shadow, not to mention fear of other people and circumstances, etc.

So, when I am told things like "it's all in your head," "zero credibility," "pathetic," "you hear voices," "motherfucker," "you have milked schizophrenia for long enough," "teatsucker," "chicken," "alkie who swills drinks with sperm," "schizo," etc.: it affects me in a psychological way by causing me to feel negatively about myself.

Peoples' words and actions effect affect of themselves and others.  "No man is an island unto himself."  People are not autonomous as individuals.  People need people and people tend to feel needed and wanted when a person is not put down over and over again by those a person is beholden to such as family, friends or societal causes, ad infinitum.

I cannot easily forget commentaries or physical attacks to my person as I awake everyday to everything that "schizophrenia" brings from appointments with quacks at least twice per month if not more often for the last seventeen years since 1996 to offering a $450/hr. legal job to a $700/hr. lawyer while telecommuting to New Jersey from my apartment earning $10/hr. to place the call and one hundred other calls to lawyers offering the same $450/hr. job.

With a climate of hysteria in media about "schizophrenia" in light of "schizophrenia" being mentioned as a reason for random gun violence, it is my "lot" diagnosed as "schizophrenia" to be outcast from most meaningful avenues in life: such as is available to people who are considered "functioning" in spite of "mental illness" manifest in myriad so called "functioning" individuals and on society as a whole, "the world being schizophrenic."

False beliefs due to misinformation in the public eye about "schizophrenia" and myriad other circumstances, people and events are symptoms of "schizophrenia" and manifest as "mental illness" from believing "Jesus is the Son of God" to animism beliefs or that Iraq had WMDs when none were found.  People believe what they are told to believe, not what is presented before them and deducing for themselves.

So, when I am called epithets due to my "lot" in life, "schizophrenia:" I write to try and understand from whence a person derives the obtuseness as to "pour salt on a wound" while devoid of the fact that "to understand a man, walk a mile in his shoes."  My personal motto is that one never really knows what another person knows no matter how well one person thinks to know another person, so don't be quick to judge. 

lawyer

I was telecommuting from my apartment to New Jersey recruiting lawyers for a 450/hr job when a lawyer says: "why would I do that?  I make 700/hr."

I replied "good for you. I make 10/hr calling you."

He hung up.

Writing Techniques:

I usually write a piece from a feeling of angst or a pit in my stomach about something, a certain sense of anxiousness that compels me to write.  What happens is I wisp a thought as to what I want to write and then how to begin a piece (like a catchy phrase) ... go from there.  

A Twitched Incarnate:

A shadow lurks in an arc-light from around a corner down the block, then darts into vapid air on a misty night as I hustle towards the corner on a security detail at a scrap yard.

Casting my cigarette butt into a warehouse district street drain, I peer around the corner into a lit, side street and see no one.

Hand in my vest pocket gripping a revolver: I pull it out, aim at the arc-light and fire a crack shot.

The arc-light illuminating the side street shatters and sprinkles shards of glass onto the below side street.  No vehicles are parked on the street and I pull out a flashlight to illumine sudden darkness.

A black cat squeals wretchedly while running across the street from dumpsters out of view into an abandoned warehouse through a notched fence with "caution" signs posted along chain link.

I trace the black cat's hurried scamper across the street, then its disappearance into a warehouse through a darkened fence notch.

"Nothin'."

I round the corner turning and amble towards the gate light a half block from the corner holstering my revolver and flashlight inside my vest pocket while reaching for a cigarette.

A shimmering pond under a full moon reflects in my eyes looking out of darkness beyond the gate light glare as I am clubbed from behind by a shadow I glimpse, pivoting too late.

An nth of a second passes and my brains ooze onto pavement as my soul leaves my epileptic body into ether with a flash of my former self lying prostrate on the sidewalk in front of the lit, scrap yard gate.

I see nothing else: but stars, outlying green pastures beyond still waters and seventy-two virgins lining a bungalow street paved with gold, presumably heaven.

Fireplaces burn in each of the bungalows where I am martyred to live an afterlife hurtling through space on board my jumbo planet called: "Earth."

Life on my jumbo planet is pleasant with gold embossed sheets, silk pajamas, seventy-two virgins, a billion cars in my garages around the world and replete labor to tend to it all.

I tend to more important matters in this life, such as literati jerk off about lying prostrate on a street in front of a lit gate made of gold with 72 virgins tending to my every carnal need.

"Into Darkness"

Coyote howls pierce and echo through dank morning air across a valley in woods where Bob and his wife camp.

Bob props himself up on one elbow awoken from a dream about headless crows shrieking at each other to eat his toes while he slept, glances out of his tent's flap into pitch black and sees the previous night's fire embers glowing when he realizes that it is coyotes howling in a nearby field through woods.

"Honey!?"

Bob gently shakes his wife's shoulder as she sleeps soundly in their tent at camp.  She rolls over in her sleeping bag, grunting to be left alone.

"Jeez!  That was a frightful sound," Bob exclaims to himself feeling goose pimples.

"Russ?" Bob says his dog's name into the dark.  He reaches towards his feet and searches mats in the tent.  Russ, the dog is not in the tent.  "Russ!?  Jeez, honey!  You gotta get up.  Russ is not here!"

"Huh ... huh?  What?"

"Russ is not here.  I just heard coyotes and he is not here."

"Where is he?" Bob's wife asks Bob propping herself onto an elbow on her mat in their tent.

"I don't know.  Russ!?  Russ!?" Bob shouts his dog's name into pitch black.

Coyotes howl again in a nearby field through woods.

"What is that!?" Bob's wife questions.

"I told you: coyotes."

"Get out there and find Russ!"

"I'm going.  Jeez!  What now, Russ!?" Bob exclaims while putting on shoes and a coat which lay beside his mat.  "Where is the flash light?"

"I have it.  Here."

The flashlight illumines the pitch black of "dead man's hour" and Bob stumbles over roots and branches to find his dog, Russ.

"Russ!?  Russ!?" he repeats.

Stumbling through the dark with a flashlight towards a nearby field through woods where Bob imagines his dog to have been eaten by coyotes, he steps into a wrought iron, bear trap which severs his foot.

Bleeding at the ankle, Bob screams in pain at loss of his foot when Russ, the dog appears in the flashlight beam, licks Bob on the face and runs into the direction of the tent.

"I hear you, Bob," Bob's wife screams through the darkness.  "But, I don't have the flashlight."

"Help me!  Help me!" Bob screams.

"I can't find you, Bob.  It's too dark.  I'm coming.  I'm coming."

"Call an ambulance!"

Russ, the dog appears out of the nestle of bushes on a leash with wife holding the tether of the leash.

"Oh Jeez!" his wife exclaims as she strips her coat, stoops down to one knee and ties a tourniquet with her coat as Bob clasps the butt end of the flashlight in his teeth to illumine his wife's nursing skills.

"I taught you well, didn't I?" Bob questions, fainting suddenly.

"Oh Bob!  Don't faint!  I'm going to call an ambulance."

Russ, the dog stays with Bob licking his face and wound alternately when Bob's wife emerges from woods into nestled bushes where Bob lies dead.

"The World is Schizoid:"

"To pillory" (in the figurative sense) means "to expose to public ridicule, scorn and abuse," or more generally to humiliate before witnesses: as is wont of general, public perception and, hence, public opinion and resulting pillory or stigma directed at schizophrenia and individuals diagnosed with it by varied members of communities in which people live.

Definitions of schizophrenia are obfuscated in medical and layman jargon with no clear definition of what schizophrenia isand is not, from varied opinions to varied opinions about definitions of itby anybody and everybody (in my opinion as a person diagnosed with schizophrenia when a twenty-three year old male in 1996 and having sought treatment for it since diagnosed).

Community perceptions of schizophrenia are, in part, formulated by media about schizophrenia.   

Media about schizophrenia can incur upon an individual diagnosed with schizophrenia to be pilloried or to be stigmatized by opinion and action on the part of various members in communities with a mind to stigmatize and to pillory people diagnosed with it because of how it, schizophrenia, is portrayed in media and then perceived by members of communities attune to what so-called experts report in media and elsewhere about schizophrenia.  

So: media helps formulate opinions about schizophrenia in varied communities, which usually results in pillory or stigma by varied people in communities directed at individuals experiencing symptoms of schizophrenia or else, labeled with a diagnosis of it. 

For example, media correlates schizophrenia with bad, violent or eventful, criminal acts in 77% of media generated schizophrenia portrayals(cross-genre and cross-format), whereas the statistic of bad, violent or eventful, criminal acts committed by the schizophrenia population of approximately two million people diagnosed with it in America is less than 3%: a figure that reflects the general population statistic of perpetrated bad, violent or eventful, criminal acts.

As cited by Dr. E. Fuller Torrey on a Diane Ream Show Episode of National Public Radio following the December 14, 2012 event at Sandy Hook School in Connecticut amidst prevalent reports in media of the perpetrator at Sandy Hook being handicapped with autism, perpetrators of gun violence in America are split 50/50 between people with reported mental health issues (schizophrenia or otherwise) and people from general populations without prior known mental health issues: cognizance of subjects reflected as "competence" in judicial and/or in medical settings.

Other statistics are that one in five people of the American population are diagnosed with a major mental health diagnosis at some point in life and an estimated half of the American population experiences at least one episode related to mental health at some point in life, the prevalence of diagnoses increasing with successive years of population dynamics and changes in psychiatry as a medical science in treating mental health since its inception to medical sciences to treat mental health during the 1800's. 

As a side note: the term "disgruntled worker" was coined by a judge and reported by media to describe a person who turned a gun on co-workers from a case during the 1990's.

The so-called "disgruntled worker" at one time was a tax paying worker or valued member of society (economics recognized as a general measure of human worth to society) who then rampages with gun on objects of hate being co-workers (as a case may present) to become termed a "disgruntled worker" by a judge.

From a productive member of society measured by economic worth in taxes paid through gainful employment to becoming termed as "a disgruntled worker" led to tongue in cheek jokes about such people as people who "go postal" (being that it was a postal worker who was dubbed "a disgruntled worker" by a judge and reported as "a disgruntled worker" in media of the event).

The term "disgruntled worker" is now commonly known verb-age amongst some, as is "go postal," (though the origin of the terms is not widely known by those bantering them other than the terms meaning someone who turns a gun on one time co-workers and the terms "disgruntled worker" and "go postal" being quirky descriptions of a person who commits a horrific act for which the person in question received multiple murder charges, a significant judgement and notoriety coined in terms by a judge, the public and reported in media of the event).

"Though you think to know it, yet do you not know it." -KJV

"Reading without reflecting is like eating without digesting." -Edmund Burke

"There are more things in heaven and earth than dreamed of in your philosophies." -Hamlet 

Communicative modality, such as gestures and voices, transmit thoughts.

Complexities of the term "voices" (as defined in psychiatric criteria for diagnosis of a mental illness such as schizophrenia) are perplexing in that the term "voices" is not defined as "thoughts" in diagnostic criteria nor in opinions of psychiatrists by whom I have been interviewed, though there is no other definite source for what is termed "voices" other than "voices" originating in brains wherein "thoughts" are thought to originate: there being no (to date) scientific evidence for origins of thoughts, just theories that "thoughts" occur due to brain chemistry.

As conjecture: the term "voices" and what it connotes is likely akin to dream cycles in which a subject sleeping "holds conversations" in dream cycles or "in a brain as dreams" and remembers conversations in dreams initially upon waking as if conversations occurred, then realizing it a dream in a conscious state, (if a given person ever realizes that "life is but a dream" and, hence, "voices" as a psychiatric term, in a sense, is phenomenon experienced by everybody with "a brain to dream").

As a supposition: "voices" are "thoughts" which originate in brains like remembered conversations in dream cycles (for those with a brain to dream), but manifest in subjects with mental illness and/or in subjects who reportedly "hear voices" when subjects are seemingly conscious.   

Further: "voices" and what the term connotes may be related to sleep disorder symptoms, (if there is such a thing termed "voices" other than poor vocabulary choice by probable illiterate people on wards describing symptoms to medical staff with the words "I hear voices," the term "voices" then coined in psychiatric diagnostic manuals like the term "disgruntled worker" coined by a judge about the one time, tax-paying, postal worker who turns a gun on co-workers), except that a subject is seemingly conscious when it is determined by medical staff and/or others that a subject reportedly "hears voices."

Who is it or what is it that does not have a mind to dream in infinite arrays spread across the living Universe(s) other than dullards who would purport to know, knowing nothing of anything: much less 3% of the Universe, knowing 0% of infinity about anybody or anything other than what amounts to hyperbola in communication as infinite in knowing as can be defined at the same time defining knowing as infinitesimal, as if knowledge can be defined it, knowledge, being infinitesimal and infinite concomitantly!?

So, as a motto by which to live: "be a good savage," bearing in mind that life is but a dream, fiction and illusion; or else, "we would be as gods" as opposed to mortals with no control over bowels ingesting five laxatives and taking a five mile hike as proof of no control over bowels and no control over innumerable events experienced by myriad lives from weather events to opinionated pillory and stigma directed at what amounts to "objects of scorn," such as people diagnosed with schizophrenia or other people who find themselves as "objects of scorn" due to false beliefs formulated from false information by whatever means in communities of people.

Hence: pillory and stigma are results of false beliefs formulated from false information, such as reported in media and other sources about schizophrenia or otherwiseand ingested as infallible (but false) beliefs about schizophrenia or otherwise by varied members of communities resulting in pillory and stigma by varied members of communities directed at individuals with schizophrenia or otherwise: people diagnosed with schizophrenia being but one group of people in communities worldwide who experience pillory and stigma by varied members of communities due to false information incurring false beliefs about schizophrenia or otherwise pilloried and stigmatized groups of people in, what amounts to, apparent diversity differences of people in communities and simply, "singling out."

Irony would have it that though a diagnosis of schizophrenia requires so-called false beliefs to manifest in a subject through communication of what is deemed by medical staff and others as false beliefs (among other supposed criteria for a diagnosis): false information reported in media and other sources leads to false beliefs about any number of things and people (not just schizophrenia and people diagnosed with it), which lends to thoughts of whether "the World" (as humankind) mirrors schizophrenia symptoms with "false beliefs" and other diagnostic criteria of schizophrenia.

It's a 'Forrest Gump' Life:

"How did you two meet and how long have you known each other?" 

"We met on a bench at the university in 2003.  We've been hanging around each other since 2006.  We had a mutual friend who was his neighbor.  I was coming out of his house one day and Forrest called down from the window."

"Yeah.  I wrote my name and number in her French book, but she never called.  Between 2003 and 2006, we saw each other around town going in and out of the coffee shop."

"So, seven years?  That's a long time.  Well, we have something in couples therapy called irreversible disputes, which are problems that you two will just have to live with each other.  Have you been living together?"

"Yes, we've pretty much been living together the entire seven years we've known each other."

"Her mother won't let her go live with her anymore.  Not after last weekend."

"Well, it was the weekend before."

"Go ahead!  You tell her what happened, Jenny."

"No.  You tell her."

"Well she disappeared the Saturday after Boston was on lock down to go panhandle in Boston with her friend on her way to Mississippi.  White people are on meth in Mississippi and black people are on crack there.  They only made it as far as Connecticut.  Worried the hell out of everybody.  She quit a full time job to do it."

"I just had to get away from him.  He was talking about how he would kill himself and he's always shouting at me."

"Yeah.  I had a bad week that week with my emotional cycles.  One time the police showed up on June 26, 2012 and like I told the cop when he asked if I was being boisterous, I said no, that I was being vociferous.  He said 'well, there's no law against that!'  They thought I was beating her up.  I've been stopped thirty-two times in fifteen years.  I was stopped for sitting in my Crazy Creek Chair waiting for my truck to be serviced.  I was diagnosed schizophrenia and she was diagnosed bi-polar.  I think it's profiling because I was advertised in the Casco Bay Jerkly back in 2000 as having schizophrenia."

"Schizophrenia?  What is that like?  You hear voices?"

"Ask me how I tolerate stupid questions ..."

"Well ... schizophrenia is a pretty major deal ... and, you're bi-polar?"

"Yes."

"And you are applying for social security because he told you to ...?"

"Yes ..."

"Well ... she has been through twenty to twenty-five jobs since I have known her ... Tell her a little about it, Jenny ..."

"Well ... I don't like waitressing jobs and those jobs are the only jobs I am qualified for."

"Like when I go to the coffee shop, it is one seventy-seven for me and three fifty-four for her.  The first few years I knew her, it was five dollar coffees for her and mine cost a buck.  I had more money then.  I was working at the university then for eight years.  The longest job she ever had was at the hospital pushing food carts for eight months and of course: the hospital doesn't feed her ... so ... she would come home hungry and I'd have to shill out twenty dollars a night for pizza when she came home."

"So ... it's about money ...?"

"Not all about money."

"And you are on disability?"

"Yes."

"When were you diagnosed 'schizophrenia?'"

"1996."

"How long have you been on disability?"

"Since 1996."

"So ... you're trying to live on disability and she has no income?  Jenny: what do you want to do for a job?"

"Dietary Technician."

"Seems kind of odd you would quit the hospital job in food.  Does that make sense?"

"Well ... it was pushing trays and I couldn't push those heavy carts.  Dietary Technicians tell people what to eat."

"I see ..."

"I went to vocational rehab on Monday and I have an appointment on Friday."

"Well ... you know at the hospital they have something called tuition reimbursement ..."

"But, I don't work at the hospital anymore."

"Well ... there might be some time before the financial aspect is cleared up between you two if you are applying for disability.  It could be a long wait."

"Hell!  They approved me the next day ..."

"Well, they would you with your diagnosis ..."

"Well, I've had all the diagnoses in the book.  I've been diagnosed bi-polar, schizophrenia, schizoaffective ..."

"Is your schizophrenia treated?  Is it under control with meds?"

"I see doctor McGeachey downstairs.  We both saved each others lives.  First, she saved mine and then I saved hers."

"So, it is treated? ... How did she save your life, Forrest?"

"I hung myself.  She got me cut down.  I was angry about a few things and was on the phone to my mother when she said the inevitable as to what she always says that it is 'all in my head.'  I am so sick of that.  Everybody and my neighbor asks if I have had my meds adjusted or if my head is screwed on tight as soon as they hear that I have schizophrenia.  I am me: not a label!"

"I see.  And, how did he save your life, Jenny?"

"I was having an episode and stole my mother's car and ran into a parked car.  I left the scene of an accident and ran to his house.  He took me back to the scene and told the cops not to arrest me that it was a mental issue.  They let him take me home to my mother who waited for my uncle and they took me to the hospital."

"Well, so you both obviously want to spend time with each other even after seven years.  What happens after seven years is a couple will have recurring disputes, going over the same old arguments.  What are some of the problems that you have had with him, Jenny?"

"Uh ... mostly household chores.  He won't clean up after himself.  I do all the laundry, all the dishes, the sweeping, the mopping, the cooking ... he won't do anything.  Recently, he has had a cleaning woman come in and help, but he won't do it.  He'd rather pay someone to do it."

"Well ... it sounds like you need a job.  Why doesn't he pay you to do it instead of the cleaning woman?"

"I did pay her and do pay her, but she doesn't want to do it anymore.  Now, she just gets money from me without doing anything ..."

"I see ..."

"And then she comes up with these grandiose ideas like just this morning she says to me that she has a job idea, a new one.  I say, 'oh boy!' and leave to go get in the truck.  She comes down to the truck and I ask her what's this new job idea?  She says MLS, Master of Library Science.  The closest school is in Boston, she says.  It's just not practical!  It's not doable for her to do that.  She might as well do engineering.  I can name countless ideas that she has had over the years that just don't make any sense at all.  I mean just the other day she was expressing her fears of going on disability and not having anything to do with her days.  Well, I can understand that!  Sucks not having anything to do.  So, I am all for her going to the community college for the Dietary Technician.  Give her something to do.  But the ideas she gets are crazy ..."

"And what do you do Forrest?"

"Well, he writes all day.  He likes to write.  He spends his days on the computer."

"What do you write, Forrest?"

"Well, I have portlandmainepoliceblogspotcom.  portlandmainecityhallblogspotcom.  And, I used to have McgeacheyHallblogspotcom, but I changed the name to MentalMaineblogspotcom.  I write in a Hemingway voice.  It is what I have developed my writing voice to be.  I studied Hemingway in community college.  Do you know Hemingway's '49 Short Stories? ... How about 'Hills Like White Elephants?'  Or, how about 'A Clean Well-Lit Place?  Do you remember those stories?  I write short stories like that."

"I read a lot, but I don't remember a lot of what I read.  So, you just write all day?  You have blogs?"

"He tries to make money off of them with ads."

"You try to make money off of them with ads?  What are you selling?"

"He's not selling anything ..."

"It's Adsense, but nobody clicks the ads."

"So, you just give this stuff away for free on the Internet?"

"Yes.  Pretty much."

"And, what are these stories about?  What do you write about?"

"I write about things that happen to me."

"Like what?  Give me an example."

"Well, she didn't read my chapbook, but I write about things that happen to me.  Oh wait!  You read the one story about the hospital patient, didn't you?"

Jenny nods.

"What was that story about?  Tell me about it."

"Well, I get up at three sometimes and go out and one morning a few weeks ago I was at the seven eleven drinking coffee, listening to the news and a hospital patient from the hospital had just been released.  He walked up to the seven eleven with a white hospital issue blanket and wearing a T-shirt on a cold morning when it was cold a few weeks ago.  I knew he was a hospital patient from the white blanket.  Well, I left and drove down to the smoke shop waiting for it to open in front when the patient whose name was Nicholas McCarley as it turns out comes down the block in his white blanket trying to stay warm and yells across the street at me in my truck.  He asks me to take him to the hospital.  I say hospital?  why?  He says he is cutting.  I say what you mean cutting?  He says he means he doesn't want to live anymore.  So, I end up buying him a pack of smokes, a soda and giving him my coat with some change in it.  I tell him he doesn't want to go to the hospital because just look at how he was treated there sending him out on a cold morning like that in a T-shirt.  I write things that happen to me."

"I see.  So you write about things that happen to you.  And, that happened?"

"Yes.  Pretty much.  I am kind of an Internet troll and unemployable."

"What does an Internet troll do?  Do you take a political stance?"

"No.  I take no stance.  A true troll takes no issue with anything on the Internet or any kind of position."

"I see.  So, you take no political stance ...?"

"No.  I write about things that happen to me.  I can find anything on the Internet.  I sent an email to Charles Polk.  I found his email on the hospital Web site.  They since erased all emails off the site when that happened.  I was pissed about something with him when I sent that email."

"Oh.  You did?  Well, drop him a line for me, won't you?"

"OK.  I will.  I'll tell him you told me to email him."

"Alright.  You do that! ... Wait!  Who do you mean!?  You mean my boss: Charles Polk!?"

"Yes.  Your boss ..."

"No.  Don't email him about me!"

"No.  I'm going to email him about you ... tell him you told me to email him ..."

"No.  Don't do that.  I thought you were talking about the Marx Brothers ... I bet you were wondering what I was talking about ...!?"

"Well, yes.  I was wondering."

"Hmmm ... OK."

"I'm really not as crazy as I am made out to be ... there is method to my madness."

"Uh-huh.  Do you see a counselor, Jenny?"

"Yes.  I have been seeing a counselor."

"And you Forrest?"

"No, not currently, but I have seen a counselor before.  I saw Bill White next door, I believe a number of years ago for a time."

"Oh.  Bill White retired."

"Oh.  Really?  Much more walking time on the Eastern Prom for him."

"Oh?  You see him there?"

"Yes.  Sometimes.  At 6am."

"I see.  And, you smoke?"

"Yes, I smoke a lot."

"Do you smoke, Jenny?"

"Yes, but not as much as him.  I smoke about a pack a day and he smokes one hundred cigarettes a day.  I want to quit."

"Wow!  Really!?  Hmmm ... Well, you know you might not be able to get him to quit.  He might smoke for the rest of his life and never quit.  Do you drink, Forrest?"

"I drink, but I try to keep it to just beer."

"He's an alcoholic."

"Yes.  I'm an alcoholic.  I've been diagnosed alcoholic."

"How does that affect you, Jenny?  Do you mind it?"

"Well, he goes back and forth.  He spends time sober and drunk.  He does AA for a time and drinks at other times."

"Yeah.  I go back and forth.  Just today I was thinking I'd do seventeen days without drinking or smoking."

"We're getting married at the end of this month."

"You are!?"

"Yes."

"Well, the thing about couples counseling and working things out for the long term is what's called the five to one rule, which is scientifically proven.  It's where you stress five positive things about each other to every one negative thing.  The psychologist who came up with it worked out of the University of Washington on a study with many couples and charted that it takes five positive things to every one negative thing for a successful couple.  I am going to give you two some reading material to go home with as a little homework.  What do you like about Jenny, Forrest?"

"I like that she always comes back.  All my other girlfriends ran away.  I yearn for Jenny.  Like when she went out this morning and said she was going to the dollar store, she was gone two hours.  I wanted her to come back.  I was looking for her.  She went to Goodwill.  When she comes home, I always go yay and the dog starts barking hysterically.  I like her because she always comes back.  It's a Forrest Gump life."

"I see.  And Jenny?  How do feel about Forrest?"

"I feel the same.  I think he is my soul mate.  He's always there for me."

"Yeah.  I've got the ring on now.  It doesn't come off.  Look see.  I'm not taking it off either.  If she goes, she can always come back."

"So, you like him because he is steady?"

Jenny nods.

"Alright.  Here is the paper work for your homework.  This is just a chapter out of a book.  This one has some questions on it to ask each other about to see how well you know each other.  Go ahead, Forrest.  Ask a question."

"Uh.  OK.  Let's see.  'What is my favorite song?'"

"Oh.  I don't know.  You have many favorite songs."

"Call Jenny!  867-5309 ..."

"Oh yeah!  That!"

"Alright.  You two.  When do we make the next appointment?  Two weeks?  One week?"

"How about three weeks?"

"No.  Not three weeks."

"OK.  Two weeks?"

"Yes.  OK.  Two weeks."

"OK.  Two weeks it is.  Just take this to reception and make your next appointment."

"OK.  Thank you."

"Thanks."