Carnivaless

A person's maturity consists in having found again the seriousness one had as a child in play.

Friedrich Nietzsche
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Hello Val
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"Watchman, tell us of the night."
The night may be quiet again someday.
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Well, the carnival has shut down and left. No one showed up to accompany me, to be my better eyes (and my better self, no doubt). So I didn't get to eat the pizza, the sausage, the funnel cake, snow cone or cotton candy. I didn't get to ride on the Ferris wheel, the swinging gondola or the merry go round. But I got to hear the Bingo numbers on a loud speaker, the loud scraping metal of the rides and the loud screaming children. I vow to myself that when I return to New York I will go to Coney Island and some of the other amusement parks around there for certainly a ride on a roller coaster, because I am just a loud screaming kid at heart.

Soon it will be September 9th and that will mark the anniversary of my moving to Bristol. I moved here 11 years ago, and I still have no friends here. I did have one friend for a few years who I trusted, but she turned out to be dishonest, devious, deceiving and linked to her own narcotic needs. So now there is no one in Bristol.

There are two good reasons to return to New York. I have old friends there I know can trust and I'm a performing artist who for the past 11 years hasn't been able to do any of it. I yearn to go back on stage. I can also return to the Art Students League and learn more about painting. I can be with the other artists I have known and admired and reach a higher level in my own art and my writing. And, best of all, in New York City the carnival never shuts down.

Dana Bate - The Vagabond
Never Give Up
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