Dear John,
No need to have my rotary-dial replaced by a touch-tone.
In house slippers and stay-pressed twill work uniform I putter. First order
of business: satisfy my priapic urges. Get that out of the way. Next,
break my fast. Violently if necessary. Soon the paperboy will make his
delivery. If I time my day around this, it's not in a sordid way. I feel
the need to stay informed.
Great chartings of indicators, by colored pencil, after the old-fashion.
From erstwhile shoebox my table-top calculator, tallying gains and losses,
losses overshadowed by splits, splits my boon.
A bit of research into fundamentals going a long way. Wizards with big iron
doing not much better, according to elves. Embarrassing, sometimes. But I
try to stay humble. CFOs like that. My folksy routine.
After an enema of the soul (my mother advised me to call it that) I check in
with some people on the phone. No matter the vicissitudes, commerce never
halts.
I define my bounds, chart my moves, define the urgency. Once or twice this
one fellow (Karl Seagrist, if you want to know) has let down his guard, all
fear and loathing. But I shied away from revealing my true self to him. To
do so would be disastrous in this business. I simply talk to people, let
them know my concerns. Generally they cater to me pretty well. If I need
to I call overseas, feeling foolish all the while: the boffins' English is
better than mine! But one must do for oneself, discomfort be damned.
I re-use envelopes from junk mail. Greedily, adroitly, I open them,
spilling the contents on my well-worn oak table, with plasticized place
settings. They wipe clean. The re-usable portions of the envelopes I
separate.
Material comforts count as nothing. There is a point of no return. I have
a cassette player in which I play tapes of various nature-sounds.
Rock and roll also has been a great boon. The paperboy was stupified when
he saw my haircut. That, my friend, is rock and roll, I said. I did get
into some interesting situations, on several occasions. As I had hoped.
That was the whole point, at that point. It no longer is.
My expensive snakebite-proof boots have a lot of wear in them. I'm getting
rid of some of my tattoos. You don't want to know what it's going to cost.
And the great, evil joke for me about my car is that it most assuredly will
not pass its next inspection. Hi-ho. Oh, I am wicked!
Karl Seagrist said to hold off on dashing my brains out for at least another
quarter, as he's doing so handsomely by me, and it would be a personal
tragedy for him, due to the fact that he's stretched pretty thin. The
sychophant. I despise it when people take undue advantage of someone's
misfortune, or personal difficulties. But out of consideration (I don't
know why), or for old times sake maybe, I'll just linger over my orange
juice, fold and refold my orange rag, filled with little numbers, tallying
the misery of some and bliss of others, feeling altogether an American fool,
keeping as best I can the circulation flowing between testicles and brain.
Yours,
Mark
jya quoth:
>I don't fully trust Mark Chello, as a rich artist, you know, miserable.
>I do believe he's a gladiator. For that I'd pay full price, and a surcharge
>to restore the Original coliseum.
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