MY GREATEST FEAR

I would hate hate hate to have blond hair and a black beard. Morever, I would hate being beat up because of my blond hair and black beard. That happens, you know. Hey Blondy! They say, and commence to fisticuffs. The black beard, at that time, is of course implicit in the “Blondy”.

Sometimes I wonder if Blackbeard, a truly ferocious pirate who hailed from, I believe, Virginia, Philadelphia or Jamaica, had blond hair.

FUN FACT: people with blond hair and black beards fight terrifically well.

ADDITIONAL FUN FACT: people with white hair and black eyebrows sing in a lusty baritone, songs like, for example, “Ringo” by Lorne Greene.

A SADNESS: As I begin to gather in my mind’s eye the wisps of silver that grace my temples, I fall into a deep melancholia. It is too late in life to even imagine that someday I will, by nature’s hand, sport blond hair.

MORE GOOD NEWS: truthfully, though, the melancholia is pretty light. It just seems deep. Melancholia definitely gets better with age!

SPENCER TRACY

looked so much
like his father
that I suddenly
realized that
Spencer Tracy
was his father!

It seems crazy,
but there’s an
easy explanation:

Spencer Tracy
never existed!

His father does,
though, and he

is a hard working

man — a good man —
a sad man —

He is lonely and
would like a son

He can’t decide

what he would
name him

He can’t imagine
what he would
look like

He picks up a
cigar, lights it

wonders about
his life, about love,

about
Spencer
Tracy

about all
these things,

and more–

that’s Spencer Tracy’s father

LATELY I HAVE ACQUIRED THE HABIT OF MAKING MYSELF A LITTLE PLATE OF CHEESE AND CRACKERS

sitting down on one of the chairs that originally was from the dining room set in Maine

God I miss Maine

It was so beautiful in the winter

It was so warm and lovely in the summer

In the autumn there would be a fine mist

You knew that winter was coming, but that was just more loveliness, only different and snowy

I think I liked almost every moment I ever spent in Maine other than the two or three weeks between seasons in April

Maine doesn’t have a spring, really, although cherry trees did blossom there in May

April could be a problem, though, but hardly worth mentioning

In fact when you are a kid they always say that you will grow up and fall in love and get married and be happy, but I really think that if

you grew up in Maine your heart is already broken because you can never love anyone else other than Maine, the tempestuous, Latin Lover of your youth, distant and beautiful and smoking a cigarillo

Even that tiny little period in April doesn’t matter anymore

The red delicious apples of October, and they are delicious, more than compensate for the slender few days of lonely silence in April where you have no tempestuous Latin Lover smoking a cigarillo, just rain

like now, when I sit down on one of the chairs that was originally from the dining room set in Maine where upon I enjoy eating my crackers and cheese and when I do

I generally watch an old TV show, preferably The Andy Griffith Show

I think it is my favorite show in the world

One thing I really love about it, and there are a lot of things to love about The Andy Griffith Show

for example no one says a mean thing to anyone hardly ever

even though there is some teasing once in a while and lots of shennanagins

the barber is crazy and I wouldn’t want him to shave me

the deputy constantly locks himself in jail by mistake and everyone has a good chuckle at that

nobody seems to ever be married to anybody else

people travel a long way for a fancy chop suey dinner

there is only one drunk as far as we know

and only one bully

it never rains

and there are a lot of fresh biscuits and no dentists

lunch comes in baskets

and there is pie after dinner

and there is strumming on the guitar

after dinner

and lots of trout fishing which is more fun to do than to eat

and when there are apples, they are just used for throwing, at heads

and all of these things are wonderful things

but the one thing I like best of all, better than apples,

better than anything in the whole world

is that everyone loves to talk, and they always talk a lot

but hardly anyone ever says anything, anything, anything

about Maine