30 Years Ago

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i fled the west village & my soho writer girlfriend, escaped, not so much the place or the person, but rather my futon (not really mine), my part-time bookstore job, my raisin bagel with a hard boiled egg breakfasts, i was done, with having no money, done with the cacophony of 2am drunken shouts rising from west 4th street below, as i tried to dream about characters in an isaac bashevis singer novel, done with the flood of tourists who swarmed sidewalks every weekend, so i got on a train to dc, new york city chapter closed.

Maine March Golfing

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the course is empty, except for large patches of slick glistening ice/snow, alone in gray wind, 7-iron in hand shivering, this is not my sport, but colby college requires me to take a wellness credit, i’m not well, double bogeyed the last hole, but no one is watching, then, on the horizon i see his steel shopping cart, like a wheeled sled, he pushes it through the freezing brownish/green fairway, pragmatic mainer, who needs a golf bag in march?

Capitalist Reborn

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Can two San Francisco teachers (husband & wife) raise two children, pay a mortgage, property taxes, & save money for college? Um, no. Would I love to live a life of teaching, meditation, contemplation, & poetry writing? Sure. Can I afford to not be a capitalist? No. Therefore, I’ve gone back to the summer of 1991, when I was a baseball card hustler, hitting up leads, buying & selling cards wherever I could. After that humid teenage July, I never aspired to join the “rat race,” never had an interest in entrepreneurship or corporate America. My junior year of college, I even did a finance internship in Santiago, Chile, just to make sure that I truly hated international business. But the world turns, idealism dies, & it turns out that my love of baseball history & a mildly photographic memory can create profit. So Adam Smith, I’m back.

Playing Centipede

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I recently went to the Musee Mecanique in San Francisco with my son. The place is built for nostalgia. Everyone I knew in the 1980’s had at least one video arcade game where they could dominate. After spending many quarters up and down the Rehoboth Beach Boardwalk, Centipede became my game (along with Galaga/Galaxian & Zaxxon). You see the DAN in the photo? The kid can still do his thing!