it won't change your life, but it won't hold you up long, either.
Not many things sadder than an abandoned thong on the road.
Such things always remind me of my beloved friend and author Richard Brautigan.
An abandoned...anything in the road...always reminds me of his book, 'Sombrero Fallout'.
Someone leaves a sombrero in the middle of the intersection of a busy street, and everybody in town loses their fuckin' minds over it. It almost ends in a nuclear catastrophe...all over a Sombrero in the middle of the road. Do check it out one time, won't you; I got to spend some time in Brautigan territory...he lived in San Fran at one time, & Monterey, Carmel, etc...
I love his book, 'Confederate General from Big Sur'...it was the first Brautigan I ever read.
I loved Big Sur. Carmel. All round there.
& the lovely people.
Brautigan was a lovely man...apparently...when he wasn't drunk. The demon booze had him in it's clutches...like a lot of other writers/artists.
Poor fellow murdered himself in cold blood as a result of the desperation his addiction drove him to, dwindling sales of his books (possibly related to his sporadic output due to his alcoholism) &...
he just wasn't made to be a regular human.
It always gets the sensitive ones.
They fried his brains when he was a young man in the mental hospital. I don't think he was mental...his family say he was just 'highly strung'.
I'm not sure that is a 'madness' thing.
Please read his daughters book about her father, and how him blowing his brains out with a shotty affected her as a little girl...& pretty much forever.
It's called, 'You Can't Catch Death' by Ianthe Brautigan.
Very touching...very insightful.
& she's right...you can't catch death.
But it will catch you. Eventually.
Try to make it later, rather than sooner...& let it be death's idea...not yours.
Get your 'five goddamned minutes', as Buke put it.
Thank you for coming, Richard.
I guess you were a handful...but I am certainly a better man for having known you.
Peace...
JWA
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