"I am not a man who knows. I have been a man who searches and still am; but I no longer look in the stars or in books, I begin to listen to the teaching my blood murmurs in me.
My story is not pleasant, it is not smooth or harmonious like made up stories; it tastes like folly and madness, and dreamy. Like the life of all men who don't want to lie to themselves more."
- Herman Hesse
“If you haven’t died by an age thought predetermined through the timing of your abuses and excesses, then what else is left but to begin another diary?”
​Jim Carroll
'Life is about finding a cliff worth jumping off of.  Nothing feels better than going home, and nothing feels better than leaving home — the bittersweet curse." 
- Bourdain​
"Women:
​I liked the colors of their clothes, their way of walking, the cruelty of some faces, from time to time the almost pure beauty of a face, totally and delightfully feminine. They were above us, planned better and organized better. While men watched football or drank beer or bowling, they women were thinking about us, concentrating, studying, deciding whether to accept us, reject us, change us, kill us or simply abandon us. In the end it didn't matter, they did what they did, we ended up crazy and alone. "
- Charles Bukowski
Like a bird on the wire
Like a drunk in a midnight choir
I have tried in my way to be free
Like a worm on a hook
Like a knight from some old fashioned book
I have saved all my ribbons for thee
If I, if I have been unkind
I hope that you can just let it go by
If I, if I have been untrue
I hope you know it was never to you
Oh, like a baby, stillborn
Like a beast with his horn
I have torn everyone who reached out for me
But I swear by this song
And by all that I have done wrong
I will make it all up to thee
I saw a beggar leaning on his wooden crutch
He said to me, "You must not ask for so much"
And a pretty woman leaning in her darkened door
She cried to me, "Hey, why not ask for more?"
Oh, like a bird on the wire
Like a drunk in a midnight choir
I have tried in my way to be free

Leonard Cohen​​
It is easy to mourn the lives we aren’t living. Easy to wish we’d developed other talents, said yes to different offers. Easy to wish we’d worked harder, loved better, handled our finances more astutely, been more popular, stayed in the band, gone to Australia, said yes to the coffee or done more bloody yoga.
It takes no effort to miss the friends we didn’t make and the work we didn’t do and the people we didn’t marry and the children we didn’t have. It is not difficult to see yourself through the lens of other people, and to wish you were all the different kaleidoscopic versions of you they wanted you to be. It is easy to regret, and keep regretting, ad infinitum, until our time runs out.
But it is not the lives we regret not living that are the real problem. It is the regret itself. It’s the regret that makes us shrivel and wither and feel like our own and other people’s worst enemy.
We can’t tell if any of those other versions would have been better or worse. Those lives are happening, it is true, but you are happening as well, and that is the happening we have to focus on.

​​~Matt Haig 
... life is to be used, not just held in the hand like a box of bonbons that nobody eats.
* John Dos Passos, Three Soldiers
Ernest Hemingway ​
You're not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You're by no means alone on that score. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You'll learn from them—if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It's a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn't education. It's history. It's poetry. ~J.D. Salinger 
California sober - Billy Strings
​
​Cashin' in my chips for forgiveness
Trading in my shame for perspective

It doesn't have to mean the growin' part is over
No, it ain't black or white, it's all of the colors

A beautiful and magical beginning, 
No, it ain't black or white, it's all of the colors

Trading judgment for freedom
Found somethin' new to believe in
Somethin' inside of me screaming
"Don't be so hard on yourself"
Look up, somethin' has shifted
My heavy spirit is lifted


If you fear suffering, you already suffer from what you fear

Michel de Montaigne​​​
1533 - 1592​
We are all alone, born alone, die alone, and—in spite of True Romance magazines—we shall all someday look back on our lives and see that, in spite of our company, we were alone the whole way. I do not say lonely—at least, not all the time—but essentially, and finally, alone. This is what makes your self-respect so important, and I don't see how you can respect yourself if you must look in the hearts and minds of others for your happiness. ~Hunter Thompson
“I have not always chosen the safest path. I've made my mistakes, plenty of them. I sometimes jump too soon and fail to appreciate the consequences. But I've learned something important along the way: I've learned to heed the call of my heart. I've learned that the safest path is not always the best path and I've learned that the voice of fear is not always to be trusted.”
Steve Goodier
"A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing." — George Bernard Shaw
“You will lose someone you can’t live without,and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of your beloved. But this is also the good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesn’t seal back up. And you come through. It’s like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly—that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with the limp.”
Anne Lamott
Lyda Borelli, 1910
Whether I'm right or whether I'm wrong
Whether I find a place in this world or never belong
I gotta be me, I've gotta be me
What else can I be but what I am
I want to live, not merely survive
And I won't give up this dream
Of life that keeps me alive
I gotta be me, I gotta be me
The dream that I see makes me what I am

I'll go it alone, that's how it must be
I can't be right for somebody else
If I'm not right for me
I gotta be free, I've gotta be free
Daring to try, to do it or die
I've gotta be me
I'll go it alone, that's how it must be
I can't be right for somebody else
If I'm not right for me
I gotta be free, I just gotta be free
Daring to try, to do it or die
I gotta be me
​
Songwriter: Walter Marks
Men are babies and women lie to themselves (and to you).
​Just accept it.
...  Biff Hooper​​
"Duels and Hostile Encounters"
Code Duello: ​The Rules of Dueling
“It is the duty of a gentleman to know how to ride, to shoot, to fence, to box, to swim, to row and to dance. He should be graceful. If attacked by ruffians, a man should be able to defend himself, and also to defend women from their insults.”
(​SPM vs taxi driver, Monday just after midnight March 17, 2008)

The phrase "to hang fire" has come to mean a delay in progressing...

Tap, rack, bang (TRB)...is jargon for the response to a failure to fire in a firearm with a removable magazine.

​​​​

​​1777 Irish Code Duello​

Hang fires, ​​​

Rule #25​​

Once both parties were at the location ... the option was there for them to exchange shots themselves at the same time as the initial duelers (Rule #25).​​

Rule 20
​In all cases, a miss-fire is equivalent to a shot...​​


Rule 2 of Galway Articles:
​ None can either advance or retreat, if the ground be measured; if no ground be measured, either party may advance at his pleasure, even to touch muzzles; but neither can advance on his adversary after the fire, unless the adversary steps forward on him. Note: The seconds on both sides stand responsible for this last rule being strictly observed; bad cases having accrued from neglecting of it.​​​


Rule 20. In all cases, a miss-fire is equivalent to a shot, and a snap or a non-cock is to be considered as a miss-fire.​​
“I still have enough gas in my tank to thoroughly disappoint my critics, and I intend to do so with all the enthusiasm with which they’ve become accustomed,”... Mitch McConnel
​


In March 2008, Saputo Inc. launched three defamation lawsuits against the owners of three Canadian newspapers over stories that were published in December 2007 alluding to Lino Saputo being linked to organized crime. Saputo sued CTVGlobemedia, the publisher of the Globe and Mail, Quebecor Inc., which owns the Sun Media Group of Papers, and Gesca Ltd, the owner of Montreal's La Presse newspaper. Company CEO Lino Saputo Jr. claimed the articles contained false allegations against Lino Saputo and Saputo Inc. An Italian weekly magazine, L'Espresso, was also being sued for articles that ran in November of the same year.[4] Links between Lino Saputo and American mobster Joe Bonanno have been evidenced between 1964 and 1979.[5][3]

Someone doth protested a bit too much.  Joe Bonanno had a hidden financial interest in Saputo Cheese, which was discovered through piecing together torn up notes found in his garbage. The judge found that Lino Saputo made false and deceitful statements about a secret meeting with Bonanno, which was recorded by the FBI.​​  

cbc.ca

​​https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/montreal/quebec-dairy-mogul-lino-saputo-had-secret-past-dealings-with-u-s-mobster-joe-bonanno-then-lied-about-it-1.5428629​

Joseph Bonanno has had significant economic and transactional involvement over a substantial period of years with several Canadian cheese companies owned by the members of the Saputo family and by Lino Saputo in particular​​​

Along with testimony from U.S. law enforcement officials, the 1,500 pages of evidence detailed how Saputo disguised interactions and financial dealings with Bonanno between 1964 and 1979. "They seemed to interact very smoothly with each other," Ehmann said of Saputo and Bonanno. "They just had a relationship, and it was a longtime one."

Police found lawyers' letters, financial statements and investment scenarios that linked Bonanno to Saputo and his businesses.​

​​

https://agri007.blogspot.com/2011/11/saputo-and-mafia.html​

Saputo and the Mafia

A new book, Mafia Inc., has some interesting information about links between the Saputos and the Bonnano family of New York.

Sensing an all-out war was near, Bonanno decided to drop out of sight for a while and travel. In his autobiography, he tells of how a businessman, John DiBella, persuaded him to partner in the Grande Cheese Company of Fond du Lac, Wisconsin. “The cheese plant had been the source of contention between rival groups in Chicago,” he wrote. “These people played rough, and fighting broke out.” DiBella had sought and obtained Bonanno’s protection”. 
“When my business associate John DiBella of the Grande Cheese Co. found out about my upcoming travels, he asked me to make Montreal my first stop. Mr. DiBella had a close friend from his hometown in Sicily, Joseph Saputo, who was also in the cheese business. Because of immigration quotas, Mr. Saputo and his family hadn’t been able to enter the United States. As the next best thing, Mr. Saputo immigrated to Montreal, Canada, where he established the Saputo Cheese Co. He was now looking for investors to expand operations.
Fay (Bonanno’s wife) and I went to Canada, expecting to be there but a short time.
At the cheese plant, Mr. Saputo and I agreed to a deal. Mr. Saputo signed a letter of intent, stating that once I made payment, I would own twenty per cent of the business.”
---There follows an explanation of how notorious Bonanno had become in the U.S. ---
“Canadian immigration officers, understandably curious as to what he was doing in the country and what business he had in Montreal, decided to ask him a few questions. Bonanno went to meet them at the appointed hour and place.
“I repeated my intentions of investing in a Canadian business for the purpose of expanding a cheese plant and hiring people. I was helping Canada reduce unemployment. To back up my statement, I brought the letter of intent signed by Joseph Saputo.”

Bonanno continues:
“I didn’t want to be deported. If Canada deported me as a persona non grata, I would lose my rights to invest in the Saputo Cheese Co. Also, now that it was obvious the United States was behind my predicament, I knew that once I was deported back to the United States, the FBI would be waiting for me. “
Bonanno was immediately incarcerated at Bordeaux Prison in Montreal. It was his first time behind bars.

During his lengthy testimony, Mr. Cotroni admitted that he knew, in some cases intimately, several individuals publicly named by various commissions of inquiry and police forces, including the FBI and the RCMP, as members of La Cosa Nostra. He explained that in 1966, at the home of a friend, Giuseppe Saputo – owners of the Saputo and Figli Ltd. cheese plant in Saint-Michel – he had met with a group of New Yorkers.”
That group comprised Salvatore (Bill) Bonanno and his associates: Vito De Filippo and his son Patrick, Peter Magaddino, Peter Notaro and Carlo Simari.

And later the book continues to say police surveillance followed five of the people from the meeting and then:

The quintet headed for a pay phone. Couture (the cop) saw Cotroni, Violi, Giuseppe Saputo and Joe Bonanno speak on the phone in turn. The officer asked for backup; there were too many cars to follow. He was told to stick with Saputo​​

​​​​​​​​​​​​​


​​​​​
PLAYBOY MAGAZINE: Mistake or not, what made you decide to go the rock 'n' roll route?
​
DYLAN: Carelessness. I lost my one true love. I started drinking. The first thing I know, I'm in a card game. Then I'm in a crap game. I wake up in a pool hall. Then this big Mexican lady drags me off the table, takes me to Philadelphia. She leaves me alone in her house, and it burns down. I wind up in Phoenix. I get a job as a Chinaman. I start working in a dime store, and move in with a old girl. Then this big Mexican lady from Philadelphia comes in and burns the house down. I go down to Dallas. I get a job as a "before" in a Charles Atlas "before and after" ad. I move in with a delivery boy who can cook fantastic chili and hot dogs. Then this girl from Phoenix comes and burns the house down. The delivery boy - he ain't so mild: He gives her the knife, and the next thing I know I'm in Omaha. It's so cold there, by this time I'm robbing my own bicycles and frying my own fish.

​​I stumble onto some luck and get a job as a carburetor out at the hot-rod races every Thursday night. I move in with a high school teacher who also does a little plumbing on the side, who ain't much to look at, but who's built a special kind of refrigerator that can turn newspaper into lettuce. Everything's going good until that delivery boy shows up and tries to knife me. Needless to say, he burned the house down, and I hit the road. The first guy that picked me up asked me if I wanted to be a star. What could I say?
​
PLAYBOY: And that's how you became a rock 'n' roll singer?
DYLAN: No, that's how I got tuberculosis.
​
From the Bob Dylan 1966 Playboy interview
“If you're going to try, go all the way. Otherwise, don't even start. This could mean losing girlfriends, wives, relatives and maybe even your mind. It could mean not eating for three or four days. It could mean freezing on a park bench. It could mean jail. It could mean derision. It could mean mockery--isolation. Isolation is the gift. All the others are a test of your endurance, of how much you really want to do it. And, you'll do it, despite rejection and the worst odds. And it will be better than anything else you can imagine. If you're going to try, go all the way. There is no other feeling like that. You will be alone with the gods, and the nights will flame with fire. You will ride life straight to perfect laughter. It's the only good fight there is.”
Charles Bukowski
The real damage is done by those millions who want to ‘survive.’ The honest men who just want to be left in peace. Those who don’t want their little lives disturbed by anything bigger than themselves. Those with no sides and no causes. Those who won’t take measure of their own strength, for fear of antagonizing their own weakness. Those who don’t like to make waves—or enemies. Those for whom freedom, honour, truth, and principles are only literature. Those who live small, mate small, die small. It’s the reductionist approach to life: if you keep it small, you’ll keep it under control. If you don’t make any noise, the bogeyman won’t find you. But it’s all an illusion, because they die too, those people who roll up their spirits into tiny little balls so as to be safe. Safe?! From what? Life is always on the edge of death; narrow streets lead to the same place as wide avenues, and a little candle burns itself out just like a flaming torch does. ​I choose my own way to burn. ~Sophie Scholl
I choose my own way to burn.
​~Sophie Scholl
"The secret of life is knowing when to stop"  
Alan Wilson Watts​
you wonder about the time when
you ran through women like an open-field maniac
with this total disregard for panties, dish towels, photos
and all the other accoutrements-
like the tangling of souls.
what were you trying to do?
trying to catch up with?
it was like a hunt.
how many could you bag?
move onto?
names, shoes, dresses, sheets, bathrooms
bedrooms, kitchens, back rooms
cafes, pets, names of pets
names of children,
middle names
last names
made-up names
you proved it was easy.
you proved it could be done again and again,
those legs held high
behind most of you.
or they were on top
or you were behind
or both sideways
plus other inventions
songs on radios.
parked cars.
telephone voices.
the pouring of drinks.
the senseless conversations.
now you know
you were nothing but a fucking dog,
a snail wrapped around a snail—
sticky shells in the sunlight, or in the misty evenings, or in the dark dark.
you were nature's idiot,
not proving but being proved.
not a man
but a plan unfolding
not thrusting
but being pierced
now you know.
then
you thought you were such a clever devil
such a cad
such a man-bull
such a bad boy
smiling over your wine
planning your next move
what a waste of time you were
you great rider
you Attila of the springs and elsewhere
you could have slept through it all
and you would never have been missed
never would have been missed
at all.
~ Charles Bukowski
Cause it's a bittersweet symphony, that's life
Trying to make ends meet, you're a slave to money then you die

​No change, I can change

I am here in my mold
But I'm a million different people
From one day to the next
I can't change my mold


There is another future
Waiting there for you
​I saw it different, I must admit
I caught a glimpse, I'm going after it
They say people never change, but that′s bullshit

K. Parker​​

I'm not telling you to make the world better, because I don't think that progress is necessarily part of the package. I'm just telling you to live in it. Not just to endure it, not just to suffer it, not just to pass through it, but to live in it. To look at it. To try to get the picture. To live recklessly. To take chances. To make your own work and take pride in it. To seize the moment. And if you ask me why you should bother to do that, I could tell you that the grave's a fine and private place, but none I think do there embrace. Nor do they sing there, or write, or argue, or see the tidal bore on the Amazon, or touch their children. And that's what there is to do and get it while you can and good luck at it.
​~Joan Didion
"Maybe that's enlightenment enough: to know that there is no final resting place of the mind; no moment of smug clarity. Perhaps wisdom...is realizing how small I am, and unwise, and how far I have yet to go."
~Anthony Bourdain
I would rather be ashes than dust! I would rather that my spark should burn out in a brilliant blaze than it should be stifled by dry-rot. The function of man is to live, not to exist. I shall not waste my days trying to prolong them. 
 ~Jack London
“Memories were not the cause of that depression. During the course of my life, there have been some wonderful women. And it was not that I could not find love, but that I could not accept love, because I did not know how. Perhaps the breakup (with Marianne) was an element in that depression, but I really never knew where my depressive condition came from., but it had to do with an isolation of myself. It has been the force, the determinant mechanism that made me adapt this attitude in life. I lived trying to avoid it, to escape it, to understand it, to handle it. It made me turn to drink, it pushed me to drugs, and it led me to Zen “
- From “An Intimate Conversation with Leonard Cohen” by Elena Pita, El Mundo (Spain), September 26, 2001
“He who despairs of the human condition is a coward, but he who has hope for it is a fool.”
— Albert Camus
“A person of good intelligence and sensitivity cannot exist in this society very long without having some anger about the inequality - and it's not just a bleeding-heart, knee-jerk, liberal kind of a thing - it is just a normal human reaction to a nonsensical set of values where we have cinnamon flavored dental floss and there are people sleeping in the street.”
~George Carlin
"I watched a snail crawl along the edge of a straight razor. This is my dream; this is my nightmare. Crawling, slithering, along the edge of a straight razor, and surviving."

Marlon Brando
"The human obsession with purpose is merely a distraction from the absurdity of existence."
​— Nikolai Gogol
"My only regret is that I didn't drink every pub dry and sleep with every woman on the planet."
Oliver Reed.
Breaking it apart so you can let it go
Wait another year that's not original
Alright, let's go now
When all your dreams are gone
And you're still holding on
You waited far too long
Don't say
I know, you know it's over
Play it cool

,I know, you know it's over
Don't think that my love is gone

​alright, let's go now

​Casio​
ad libitum...
"People settle for a level of despair they can tolerate and call it happiness." — Søren Kierkegaard
"No More Games. No More bombs. No More Walking. No More Fun. No More Swimming. 67. That is 17 years past 50. 17 more than I needed or wanted. Boring. I am always bitchy. No Fun -- for anybody. 67. You are getting Greedy. Act your old age. Relax -- This won't hurt."
"If you ask me, something sinister lurks in men who avoid wine, games, the company of lovely women, and dinnertime conversation. Such people are either gravely ill or secretly detest everyone around them.”
― Mikhail Bulgakov
“People are always angry at anyone who chooses very individual standards for his life.”
— Nietzsche
“Was that wrong? Should I not have done that? Because I’ve got to tell you, I’ve worked in a lot of offices, and that kind of thing comes up all the time. If anyone had told me when I started here that it was frowned upon…”
- G. Costanza​
"Jack London drinking his life away while
writing of strange and heroic men.
Eugene O’Neill drinking himself oblivious
while writing his dark and poetic
works.
now our moderns
lecture at universities
in tie and suit,
the little boys soberly studious,
the little girls with glazed eyes
looking up,
the lawns so green, the books so dull,
the life so dying of thirst."
~ Charles Bukowski
If you can fall in love again and again, if you can forgive your parents for the crime of bringing you into the world, if you are content to get nowhere, just take each day as it comes, if you can forgive as well as forget, if you can keep from going sour, surly, bitter and cynical, man you've got it half licked.
​~Henry Miller
I'm all out of hope
One more bad break could bring a fall

Now I close my eyes
And I wonder why I don't despise
Now all I can do
Is love what was once so alive and new
But it's gone from your eyes
I'd better realise

And now it's getting worse​​​​​​​​

- B Idol​​
“Have you lived? What have you got to show for it? Stocks and bonds, and houses and servants–pouf! Heart and arteries and a steady hand–is that all? Have you lived merely to live? Were you afraid to die? I’d rather sing one wild song and burst my heart with it, than live a thousand years watching my digestion and being afraid of the wet.”
~ Jack London
senescence...
"I'm glad it was me, not you."
Anton Cermak​
If you ask me...
“The point is there ain't no point.”
― Cormac McCarthy
“How does a man decide in what order to abandon his life?”
― Cormac McCarthy
Let's go
We're all excited
But we don't know why
Maybe it's 'cause
We're all gonna die
And when we do 
​What's it all for 
You better live now
Before the grim reaper come knocking on your door


“He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.”

You must become the person you are

No one can build you the bridge on which you must cross the river of life.​​​​

You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, it does not exist.

The higher we soar, the smaller we appear to those who cannot fly.

​​​​​​You must be ready to burn yourself in your own flame.

All truly great thoughts are conceived while walking.

​​​​He who despises himself still respects himself as one who despises.

​​
“Dreamlessly” by Charles Bukowski
Old, grey-haired waitresses
in cafes at night
have given it up,
and as I walk down sidewalks of
light and look into windows
of nursing homes
I can see that it is no longer
with them.
I see people sitting on park benches
and I can see by the way they
sit and look
that it is gone.
I see people driving cars
and I see by the way
they drive their cars
that they neither love nor are
loved -
nor do they consider
sex. It is all forgotten
like an old movie.
I see people in department stores and
supermarkets
walking down aisles
buying things
and I can see by the way their clothing
fits them and by the way they walk
and by their faces and their eyes
that they care for nothing
and that nothing cares
for them.
I see a hundred people a day
who have given up
entirely.
If I go to the racetrack
or a sporting event
I can see thousands
that feel for nothing or
no one
and get no feeling
back.
Everywhere I see those who
crave nothing but
food, shelter, and
clothing; they concentrate
on that,
dreamlessly
I do not understand why these people do not
vanish
I do not understand why these people do not
expire
why the clouds
do not murder them
or why the dogs
do not murder them
or why the flowers and the children
do not murder them,
I do not understand.
I suppose they are murdered
yet I can’t adjust to the
fact of them
because they are so many.
Each day,
each night,
there are more of them
in the subways and
in the buildings and
in the parks
they feel no terror
at not loving
or at not
being loved
so many many many
of my fellow
creatures
Hey, what's the point of this
Oh, hey, what's your favorite song
Maybe we could hum along
Well, I think you're smart
You sweet thing
Tell me your name
I'm dying here
Hey, maybe just a smile
Oh, hey, did you know that I can't dance
Could we talk for a while
Well, I think you're smart​​
Ah-ooh, got you where I want you, oh yeah
"You have to be able to look back at your own life and say, 'Yeah, that was fun.' The only person I ever hurt was myself and even that I did to the minimum. If you can do that and you're still functioning, you're the luckiest person in the world."
Sammy Davis Jr.​
Theia Mania, Divine Madness of The Gods