METAPHOR ALLEGORY WHAT'S THE WORD?

293. METAPHOR ALLEGORY WHAT'S THE WORD? (Clarkson and the Crazy Man):

It was cold out and finally and it always seemed that once the cold really set in well then it was in to stay - two weeks straight of 15-degree days freezing one's poor ass off trying to keep warm get warm looking for somewhere to be and at that point words never mattered because whatever you said or meant to say couldn't change the reality of you're just being cold and a hopeless sight at that - dangerously thin again and close to some form of rotten freezing death a death not fit for rats since even they get scraps and garbage to pick through first but that was my situation that one time long ago and the only friends I had were the ones who'd offer me something and I often tried to show appreciation but what can you do what can you show when you've nothing to give or show for : blatant miserable down and out caterwauling poverty straight from Hell - a Hell of choice and abandonment - one had to figure (as I did) that I'd done this to myself) and I've always thought that if you're going to say something you might as well say it bold and not without a certain stance and if you really do have an opinion about something you should just get it out there for the world itself is already quite tired of the same old shrinking types who just go along and if you've managed already to meet your 'double' and come to terms with that other half than in order to facilitate your more complete personality you should - by rights - engage the world in what you're thinking or saying or doing and I know it's not always the way to make friends or meet people but what the hell who cares anyway and what does any of it matter - but all that's a luxury of those with something those who already have a life and if you don't what difference does it make ? nobody wants to hear from you there's never any sense in the sensible and everything else should be put aside in the dedicated pursuit of what it is you've SELECTED to do - so one day to keep warm I'm sitting around paging carefully through a bunch of John Ashbery stuff in that old crusty bookstore - essays about other people Self Portrait in a Convex Mirror Donald Duck in Hollywood on and on - and I was rather enjoying it all too as someone sidled right up to me and introduced himself as Wayne Waddle (pronounced Wad-del) and said that he was glad to finally meet me and that he was currently a friend of a D. E. Steward who was once a friend of mine and who still lived in Princeton thereabouts somewhere and said hello too but this fellow begins saying that in my last letter to Steward (was there really a letter?) he'd found me to be in error about a 'Clarkson' fellow who laid out the university and all the rest but he did think there was a 'Clarkson' College somewhere and of course a Clarkson Street in Manhattan and that maybe I was confused over them or perhaps there really was some connection between them and if so did I know - all these obscure things which I've found to be quite the rule when people whom one does not 'know' come up to you because of who you are to them and who or what you represent and begin peppering you with obscurities or in fact psychoses over this or that tiny little matter which seems then to hinge so largely on their lives but the fact of the matter here was that I didn't know this fool from Adam and was just listening in to see if there was anything I could get and I remember another time with some other fellow whose name right now I don't recall but I do recall his visit unannounced to my basement hovel and I still know where his place was and all the rest but the most astonishing visit it turned out to be as he completely turned on me to my face as 'false prophet' bad messiah and all that evidently being under his own impression of something I was to do for him in my guise as poet-leader-guru-guide-sage to him and evidently it certainly didn't pan out although it all was unknown to me but he came forth with a vengeance in his judgment of me by it and in much the same way I had to have him leave bitter and disappointed (if his name recurs to me I'll be sure to drop it in these pages) and this new fellow referencing D. E. Steward and referencing my reference of Clarkson was sort of appearing to me like that too - on the edge and making me wary of his next move - and by this I've always known what it must be like to be a 'public' figure upon whom so many hinge their wishes and desires for it is impossible to fulfill all of them or even many of them and the edge of betrayal and bitterness is always there and that can lead to so many other things (just think Judas Iscariot to Christ - speaking of betrayal and bitterness - Judas expecting the imminent worldly Kingdom and a political revolution with Christ as leader and when none of that started materializing and he began to see differently well then BETRAYAL was immediate and imminent and that same betrayal was unavoidable according to the already written storyline - if one was to believe all those nutcase religious types) HOWEVER the fact of all this lunacy was that this guy was crazy as all get out and maybe knew me from not knowing me at all - just imagining for some moment that he could arrest me with his visage but all of this makes you want to say 'HEY! I never said anything like that ! you're reading your own wishes into it!' and these people are very dependent and actually quite weak in their stark raving madness about demands and desires they have of you as a figure of their imagining but it all can quickly get pretty messed up and very confusing so right here and now I advise you (reader) that if any of this ever occurs to you don't say you weren't warned - and Clarkson whether or not it's incorrect or correct or something I've completely made up is my choice and my selection and I stand by it all.