-Before the Memory Mine's played out-

Some of our readers have asked about the missing period of time between posts. These individuals want to know how I was occupying my time between the months of March and July.

The answer, I'm afraid, is that I do not know. Before the July resurgence, when it became habit to post (at least) weekly, the site was far more primitive in design, and contained less featured links.

Even the color scheme was inappropriate.

While all of that may have played a part in my lack of interest back then, I sense foul play. Might my memory have been tampered with as part of some anti-Monk activity? Fearing the loss of other memories, I have opened up the shaker armoir with all of the used sheets of foolscap paper.

Determining which passages belong in the March-June sabbatical will require more judicious use of a finding aid, but I'm pleased to say the effort had an unexpected bonus: I've found some scribblings from the Twin Cities years, almost forgotten beneath yellowed news articles and contact sheets. Some are worth sharing, and I hope to add a special Twin Cities library to the sidebar soon.

In the meantime, I hope this unedited letter pleases all of you as much as it did me.

==>Nero's playing second fiddle while Rome burns

I don't know if I ever mentioned my technique in attracting women, although I believe I alluded to it in some of our past conversations. Very succinctly:
Since I am not into the trendy clothes, trendy odors, or of the broad shoulders set, (Judy Garland had broad shoulders, look where it got her) I aim for the look of the disinterested, anti-social academic. Pens and notebooks are much cheaper than chasing seasonal fashions and bartering my soul to the demons of good taste. However, I will admit that a notebook in a bar can be dangerous, since the place takes on an eerie, Orwellian antipathy for the appearance of intelligentsia. Uttering that last sentence aloud in most bars alone would be grounds for a shotglass-fueled stoning.

Rest assured, I take some writing materials in every time. I'm ready for martyrdom, just like those academic fools on both sides of the line in the holy land. Unlike them, I have a good and noble cause: Bringing wit to the land of watered-down beer.

Most amusing, I confess, is the angry looks I get from dates/co-workers/bartenders/designated drivers and the like when a curious female briefly abandons her party to ask me: "What the F@#% are you writing?"

My heart swells, for I know with those sweet words that I have found a lighthearted nymph who is interested in exploring the cadences of her mother-tongue, this beautiful, bastard language English that has brought me so much fortune all my life.

But of course, I can't SAY this to her, she's still hiding behind the trappings of modern social etiquette, which demands that she display verbal sparring techniques commonly associated with a K-mart flyswatter. But I look in those red-rimmed, unfocused orbs and see...
A hunger for knowledge.
So I respond by cupping my hands over my mouth and shouting, just over the din:
"What?"
She lurches forward, knocking over my beer in a cunningly executed parody of inebriation, catching my shoulder with one small hand, and the tap spigot with the other. Her locks shoot skyward as she lurches forward, and her forehead drives into my nose. She giggles into my adam's apple and pulls back a micron - eye for bleary eye, wit for wit, we face each other. We're close, close enough for a sweet embrace, a cosmic event among the bacardi whispers and cigarettes dots.
She speaks!
"I wanted… to know… what you were… writing."

Literary angels whisper in my ear: Truman Capote, William Burroughs, Dorothy Parker, etc. The journalist contingent is the loudest, and I'm more than a little bit worried. Newshounds aren't slick with women, it's far better to use the poets. Unfortunately, the moody H.L. Mencken seized the reins. The worst ghost on the lot gleefully steered my chariot into the ground.

"It's a news story about this bar. We want to know why the patrons are all pissing blue. If you can give me a good quote, I'll buy you a beer."

Lord Byron would have been smoother.