Been Down So Long

Personal Shit

There's a world of questions the curious might ask in a curious world such as this, among them: Why Is Shit Gooey? Or are you one of those people who just declares, Why Not? Being desperate for a topic today, I too dismiss the petty details and say, Why not?

Imitation Of Health

I just know I've been going along for 15 years now with my health getting worse, my internal and external conditions slower, my comfort less, my personal turds smaller, shorter, and more insubstantial in general. I've ignored the mystery of that, just tried to avoid wondering about it—hell, who could you talk to about it, doctors would just recommend a dietician or offer some exploratory surgery in which they'd cut me up like a frog in high school biology! If I didn't die, well, I'd be all right, wouldn't I? Well, recently those colon conditions changed again. Suddenly, with no improvement in my health or my feelings, I'm back to squeezing out the healthy turds of my youth, except extra gooey! How could this be? What does it mean?!

Objects Of Brown Repose

Now, don't get me wrong, they're still not the kind of prize releases that would compete with those legendary ones in Richard Fariña's book Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me. Those infamous objects of brown repose that Gnossos Pappadopoulis eased out without a thought and that (when they wouldn't flush) his friends so admired that they embarrassed him about it. They informed him they wanted to have one bronzed! Posterity called for it, they felt, because it was—well, magnificent. I don't remember if every character in that scene was stoned or not. I do remember I laughed like a hyena. Of course, I was young and crude then—not the staid and dignified gentlemen you all know me to be. I would never joke about excrement these days!

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I haven't read this book in 30 years, so if I've rememered it poorly, excuse me. Corrections will be welcome. It'd be humiliating to find I was remembering a story from some other book! When I find a copy of the book, I think I'll read it again.

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