Places you might not ever expect to be, or .... the heat of the moment

Here we have "looking left" to discover "Volume II" of "Still Life of Dust." I hope you know I am making fun of you -- teasing, sort of, for the most part. "Looking right" made its appearance on January 9. If you are puzzled, ask questions. Beyond that, what we have here are some odds and ends, again, left over, for the most part, from 2016. The dialogue quoted is from the 1962 rendition of a film entitled, "The Manchurian Candidate." Figure it out, why it is here, if you are able. I may as well mention the music which is here now, too. Music comes and music goes .... as do we. I learned a while ago through a post on another blog -- that of Daliana -- that Greg Lake had died. Most would associate him with the bands Emerson, Lake & Palmer or King Crimson, but Asia enters my mind when I hear his name. Cancer caught him on December 7. A self-inflicted bullet caught Keith Emerson of ELP last March 11. The first offering of music is a concert by Asia with Lake as the front man at the Budokan in 1983. I rolled through the Kodokan once upon a time, but never rocked through the Budokan. Get it? Never mind. I watch Lake perform here, and I see the physical image of a thousand "frat" boys I knew in college .... but, this guy had real talent and I appreciate having moved through life at the same time he was on stage. The second piece of music is, "Drive," performed by the Cars. When you read the post (or, should I say, if you read the post ??) you might understand why that song is here.

Just wrapping up a few loose ends

A bit of dialogue between

Colonel Milt and Major Ben Marco
in the 1962 film version
of "The Manchurian Candidate"
from a novel by Richard Condon

Major Ben Marco: Colonel!

Colonel Milt: Ben. May I come in for a minute?

Major Marco: Oh, please do. Of course. Come on in. May I ask the Colonel: (a) is this an official visit? And (b) may I mix you a drink?

Colonel Milt: (a) Yes, it is, and (b) you certainly may.

Major Marco: Scotch all right?

Colonel Milt: Fine. My God, where'd ya get all the books?

Major Marco: I ... I got a guy picks 'em out for me at random. Water all right?

 

Colonel Milt: Fine.

Major Marco: He's in, uh ... San Francisco. A little bookstore out there. And, uh... he ships 'em to me, wherever I happen to be stationed.

Colonel Milt: Have you read them all?

Major Marco: Yeah. They'd also make great insulation against an enemy attack. But the truth of the matter is that I'm just interested, you know, in principles of modern banking ... and the history of piracy ... the paintings of Orozco ... modern French theatre ... the jurisprudential factor of the Mafia administration ... diseases of horses ... and the novels of Joyce Cary ... and ethnic choices of the Arabs. Things like that.

Colonel Milt: Ben.

Major Marco: Sir.

Colonel Milt: The army's got a lot of things wrong with it, but it does take care of its own people, which is why I'm here. As a public relations officer, you're a disaster.

Major Marco: I never wanted the job.

The Apocalypse .... or Ragnarok .... or ....

Me, either. I never wanted the job. Most of them. Some of them I did, I guess. But, mostly, I like to move around and hang out here and there. Life does catch up to you at times, though, and sometimes a bit of work is required for a bit of money (honey) or, more simply, a necessity to maintain self-discipline and to accomplish a goal or two or .... you know ....

Since I was a junior in high school -- sometime during the months when I moved from age sixteen to age seventeen -- the number seventeen became unlucky for me. Laugh if you wish. I am superstitious. Fine for you if you are not.

So, I assume you have noticed .... this year is 2017. You might imagine what is on my mind. One thing has been thinking back about how many times I could have been dead or should have been dead -- remembering the past and wondering if this year of 2017 will be like running a gauntlet.

I will not go into the litany of why it is the way it is about the number seventeen, suffice to say more than a few bad things have occurred in my life which I identify with the calendar date or some person, place or thing in which the number seventeen has had a role. No litany, but a few isolated examples without details of the dreaded number of seventeen:

When I was seventeen, I went through the ice on a lake three times in one week. Twice, I was near enough to the shoreline so that the water was only four or five feet deep. No big deal. The third time I was in the middle of the lake while taking a "short cut" home after hunting and where, I knew from having swum across the lake twice during past summer months and periodically diving to the bottom to learn the various depths, the water was about twelve feet deep.

Sometime, I might explain why I still am here and not at the bottom of that lake, but in the interest of brevity -- I am laughing again -- I will pass over that segment of the story for now, as well as any mention of other times in other years of feeling the ice collapse beneath me ....

I was sort of a wild one as a teenager and "liked" to tempt or to dare fate. (Please, do not tell my mother.) There was a "game" called a "chickie run" -- which, as you might guess, had nothing to do with "chicks." Two guys (I am not aware of any girls who did it) would separate by about a mile on an isolated road and drive their cars at each other as fast as the cars would run. Whoever would turn away at the last moment was a chicken.

Die or be a chicken. Crazy, hah? Yeh, so is life. We did it -- I did it twice as a driver and once as a passenger, all while I was seventeen -- even though seven who we knew in two cars had been killed doing it when neither driver swerved. They all were in high school (and, probably, mostly, if not all, age seventeen).

We will skip over the Marine Corps and its relationship to the number seventeen for this exercise, although I do have four good stories including an "Alamo" tale I could tell you if you had your own "bona fides" (no punks allowed) and got me drinking heavy some night -- or morning .... or afternoon ....

Well, anyway baby/honey/sweetie or whoever you think you are, I trust you follow my drift. (If you think you are all three -- baby/honey/sweetie -- wrapped up in one, give me a call !!)

Yes .... back on point .... we are about to enter 2017, and superstitious me is looking over my shoulder as I walk along through an entire year whose name is seventeen. Without more details about how the number seventeen factors into all these events, its "bad luck significance" is not sharply defined -- but, trust me, it is there, lurking in the background.

It seems everything I write these days is long, long, long, so I will try to begin to wrap this up: I plan on keeping a low profile for a while (laugh, if you must). My current existence, which includes the sea of blogs, does not hold my fascination any longer. Specifically regarding the blogs, they do not seem to serve a purpose for me as they once did.

 (To be continued .... at least, that is the plan ....)