KILLING YOUR INNER TEENAGER

is a new column that I am starting this morning (I wonder if anyone has ever wondered, besides me? which I doubt? will I be going back one day to all these entries where I have announced new columns are starting and actually write columns? I can?t answer that. There are too many variables in the equation for a 2 + 2 solution; entirely depends on a mix of mood and chemicals of which I am not altogether in control of). I am hoping this new column (or word slop, if you will), will take the pain of my adolescence and place all that shit in a memory bag that smells like Chanel numero 5? Or just aide me as I play a game of pretending into a world beyond the touch of death and depression, and go back and find myself at ten and take myself by the shoulders and stare into my eyes and tell me something stupid (you know I suck), like ?Live the hell of every moment, but never live one as if it were your last?it won?t be, and you owe it to some future self of yours not to fuck up the whole mess in ?one bad move? (a line which Lyle Levitt made immortal on Joshua Judges Ruth, one great broken-hearted album filled with surprisingly joyous black south choirs ? he wrote most of this right after losing Julia Roberts, his young blush bride, to the next actor on her next movie),

No, on second or nine thought, or something?. I would tell my younger self, ?It?s okay, you were right, most of this that they are telling you is bullshit that will not matter in your later life, and when you are the adult, you will find your semblance of peace. Until then, get fucked up a lot, because the writing will need those ponies well broken before you are ever going to ride.?

I don?t expect myself to understand, really. I just want the words to ?itch at my ears,? as Whitman wrote.

I probably should also add? ?Don?t accept their cells, no matter how nice the furnishings or the bunk mate, because you will, sooner or later, come to hate the bars, and end up a Japanese stock broker with a lay off notice and a .45, slipping into a park downtown and finding a quiet, hidden place, where you can put the barrel into your temple and prove for all the world that you lived in a romantically addled drama world all of your own? By cells, I mean mentalities; cosmologies and the natural juices all together in one huge glass.?

This could probably happen, I think.