AD's Journal 2024

    “Life is what happens to you when you’re busy making other plans,” says a paraphrase of a John Lennon song, who stole the saying from a poet whose name I have forgotten. This is never so true as to the events going on with the federal government these days as the new administration makes massive cuts to funding of not-for-profits and other organizations. Just when you think life is secure, when you have all your ducks in a row (as the old cliché goes), something mucks up the works (another cliché) and you end up scrambling to put your life back together, but don’t quite yet know how.   Although correct in theory, the idea of reducing the work force has an unexpected impact on the people involved. People make plans; they assume they can get on with their lives securely. They believe that if they had put enough time into their careers, they will be rewarded, and perhaps get on pursuing their own interest, dreams they had since childhood for the first time poss...

   Puffin’s dead. She was one of three kittens we brought in at our old house in Jersey City. So standoffish, we could not get her adopted the way we did her overly affection brother Muffin. A tiger striped short-haired domestic, she remained unaffectionate towards humans right up to the point when we were forced to put her down yesterday. She liked cats more than humans in particular our eldest cat, Ginger, who she cuddled up to frequently. She was not particularly close to her sister, Onion, although there were times when she got Onion wrapped up in her plots against us. They had their own secret language and when we heard them talking together, we had to watch out. Puffin did not have a happy life. We managed to get her into a vet as a young kitten for her initial shots, but could not catch her to get her fixed, which became a problem when we brought in Junior, who we found abandoned on the street a block away from our current house. While we got Junior his ...

  “It’s all or nothing,” my childhood friend once told me in describing how he gambles, at the race track, in Atlantic City casinos, or for that matter, life itself. “Why hold back when you really have nothing to lose.” By this he meant if he couldn’t get what he wanted, couldn’t win the jackpot, then he’s already lost and keeping something in reserve seemed stupid to him. Sop was the idea of settling for something less than what he wanted in the first place. “What’s the point?” he told me. “If you don’t go for it all; you won’t get it all. I asked him what if he ended up getting nothing at the end of the game. He just shrugged. “We’re all going to end up in the same place eventually,” he said. “Then it won’t matter if you’ve won or lost, rich or poor. Part of the fun is knowing you might break out at any moment, get something you want, and if you lose it again, who cares? At least, you tried, and maybe got it once, on your own terms.” How all this panned out for him ...

  My one-time best friend and co-editor of our underground literary magazine from back in the 1980s once claimed some artists do not come into their own until after the age of 40 (or 50), while others get their glory while young, often dying young or burning out later. He might have come up with this theory because he had plunged into his 30s and still had not yet made a dent in the literary world, despite betting accolades throughout his early life, teachers in elementary school singing his praises, teachers in high school claiming he would become the next great poet. Despite my skepticism, he may be right about some of it. Some people simply find happiness later in life that had eluded them when they were young. Perhaps the joy is greater for having been forced to wait for it for so long. I would not know since I’ve not achieved greatness when young or when old. I miss the struggle from back when I assumed I would achieve something, those days when I lived in a cold water...

We’re between storms – if that’s what we’ve been getting, snow turning to rain, followed by a chill. Someone filed a complaint about my backup Facebook account, causing them to shut it down for a whole day while they investigated whether or not I violated community standards (whatever that means). Since that site only has four followers and I use it only if I have an issue with my main account (I lost access to my original main account), it puzzles me as to who would want to complain and cause such havoc. (I suspect I know but it’s pointless to go on about it here) Not a problem since the investigation proved nothing wrong. Took a stroll down Bergenline Avenue this morning after sending off my stories for work, narrow sidewalk, thick with people, but hardly the same place Hank and I used to visit during its dirty heyday of the 1970s, no more strip clubs, no Transfer Station, no band Blondie. Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show also started out here, the guitarist of which has si...

More snow turned to rain, which is just fine with me, even if it spoils Friday’s Magical Mystery Tour to Point Pleasant. I know it sounds stupid to go to a shore town in winter, but summer trips are worse. Point Pleasant has a lot of history for me, especially when my uncle moved there and became the manager of a marina there in 1977. But our gang made a couple of trips there prior to that, especially after I bought the 1960 Chevy Impala in 1975 and Pauly convinced me to visit our friend, Alf, who was managing some bungalows there, and had invited a girl we all knew years earlier from Little Falls. Naturally, Pauly absconded with the girl, locking Alf out of his own room for a little monkey business. Normally, our Friday trips take us west or north, but with the snow, we dare not risk a trip in either direction until spring. Most likely, we’ll be heading up to Woodstock once the weather gets better to visit some abandoned hotel we read about. Until then, we’ll go to closer ...