AD.

 foto by smith

experiment – sit down, take pulse, drink cup coffee, take pulse, drink second cup coffee, take pulse.  14 days without coffee is enough.  going to see if 2 cups a day is feasible.  my heart is much better now, but still arrhythmic. when i go too long without eating or sit around too long doing nothing, it gets down to the 5&skip or 15&skip range – but the skipped beats are after 30, 50, or 100 beats normally.  it likes exercise, so why not moderate coffee.  i’ve a secret suspicion it misses weed.  grass increases your heart rate and blood pressure. up until august 1st, 2006, i smoked daily for most the last 30 years… i think my heart’s used to the extra push and has gotten a little lazy.  in 4 weeks my 1st toke will have been 40 years ago – that’s 2/3’s of my life.  tho, i’m now in my 8th week of involuntary abstinance – that’s longer than any period since 1970. my heart misses its helpweed.

foto by smith

when i worked for the lawyers last year as a computer programmer analyst, in one meeting my 2 bosses announced anyone working on a certain bank’s accounts had to pass a drug test.  i said well that leaves me out cuz i’ve been smoking grass daily for decades.  boss1 looked at boss2 and said “we didn’t hear that.”

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1 cup of coffee, i can feel its power moving thru me.  steady pulse.  coffee is definitely a strong drug.  cup 2.  more power.  still steady.  with this much power within, i can rule the world… bru-ha-ha-ha-haaaaaaa.

foto by smith

fixed the tooth today i broke 11 days ago. my filling and kathy’s cleaning totaled $53 usd.  since i seem to be breaking down, it’s cheaper fixing me behind the ex iron curtain than in that old capital of capitalism the u.s.of.a.

foto by smith

finished the 3rd volume of lawrence durrell’s alexandria quartet. it’s taken me 8 weeks to read 3 short novels.  normally would finish 3 this size in a week, but i’ve read 3-6 other books during each volume just to keep my brain awake.  when the 4 novels came out, the critics said “demands comparison with the very best novels of the century” (justine – 1957), “durrell is moving up to the highest levels of the novelist’s art” (balthazar – 1958), “one of the most interesting and memorable novels of this generation” (mountolive – 1959), “one of the most important works of our time” (clea – 1960).  i think this quartet was the last gasp of the flowery overwritten overwrought self indulgent look-how-smart-i-am novel, a style overthrown by the more immediate down to earth honest writing of on the road and one flew over the cuckoo’s nest which came out of the drug use of the beats and the hippies from 1945-1960.  there are marvelous bits of brilliance in each of the 3 i’ve read, but they’re smothered by endless pages of description, travelogue, adjectives, misused metaphors, stilted similes, quotes in foreign languages – books for the elite and effete.  the only 3 characters interesting are the adulteress justine, the male poet / novelist pursewarden, and the lady painter clea – all 3 have sparks of fire, but hardly appear… it’s mostly justine’s boring bland wimp of a lover in the 1st two, and the lackluster british foreign officer in #3 – both obsessively introspective even though they’ve little within.  i do have hopes for #4 because it should be about clea.  i have a hate-like-hate relationship with durrell’s quartet. each volume has some excellent plotlines and passages – seems the 4 books would make a fine single volume if all the dreck, dross and padding were removed. tho must admit i love the way he’s telling the same story in the first 3 volumes, with each book showing the previous book’s story to be a lie. rather like life.  and i spose the dreary big bits between all the delicious little bits is a bit like life as well.

foto by smith

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