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Speaker 1: Some days I glance at the front page and see

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the name Rump in three or four places, So I

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flip back to the lifestyle section, maybe read a wine review.

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Fresh and vivations with chewy tannins and bursts of flowers

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and fruits. The deranged man with cognitive problems is a

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passing phenomenon, but bursts of flowers and fruits have been

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with us forever, and even in the winter. Here in

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Manhattan one can find shops to walk into and feel

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flowers bursting around you, and markets where you inhale the

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freshness of mounds of apples and pears and oranges. The

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old King who goes mad is a character out of Shakespeare.

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He has no place in America. You walk out of

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a performance of King Leir and by a bouquet of

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tulips and a bag of apples, and your back to reality.

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When van Go admitted himself to the Asylum for the

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Insane at Saint Remi de Provence, he spent the last

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years of his life painting the gardens and woods, the

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trees and flowers, paintings that were the finest of his life.

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He could have been destructive, set fires, broken windows, preyed

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on the weak and helpless, but he did not. He

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found solace in painting. This is the difference between an

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artist and a creep. I am not insane, insensitive, yes,

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perhaps maybe slightly autistic, lacking in social skills due to

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my sanctified upbringing that taught me to shun onbelievers. But

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I found ways to work around this and to engage

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with people, starting with my discovery of the limerick. Other

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kids were writing haiku like the Blackbird descends overhead in

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the darkness and shrieks at the Moon, which I didn't

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understand compared to the simple construction of a five line limerick.

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I do not like camping at all, not winter, spring, summer,

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or fall. I hate snakes and owls, and I can't

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move my bowels except in a warm toilet stall. It

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isn't Van Goes the Starry Night or is painting irises,

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but it makes people laugh or at least smile, and

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it is easily replicated. You don't need to go to

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New York or LA to see it. From the limerick.

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I worked my way up to writing essays and stories,

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and eventually wound up on a stage with a microphone

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and there, Thank the Lord I was able to be

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the warm, friendly, good humored soul. I found it hard

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to be in real life. As a writer, you spend

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a good deal of time looking at the wall, or

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you lie on the floor and gaze at the ceiling,

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neither of which is conducive to becoming a charming person.

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But as I have proved, one can work around one's

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deficientgencies to achieve adequacy. My life has been a series

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of trips on sinking ships. I went to high school

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and college before there were cell phones, when students looked

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at the teacher and took notes in Longhand I grew

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up among the sanctified brethren, who were so devoted to

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God's word they sat through two hour Bible study sessions

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with a brief hymn singing intermission, and I sat in

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their midst and surreptitiously wrote limericks. Our Savior, the Lord

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Jesus Christ was for our sins sacrificed, was raised from

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the dead to become living bread ever fresh, whole wheat

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and unsliced. I wrote for my hometown paper when it

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was set in hot lead on a line of type

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typesetter by a printer named Yentz, smoking a lucky cigarette

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and drinking coffee laced with bourbon, and the paper was

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printed on a flatbed press that was inked with rollers

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and delivered fresh to people's doorsteps by boys on bicycles,

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which now is ancient history, along with the Aztecs and

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the passenger pigeon and magnetic recording tape. I necked with

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a girl in the front seat of a car when

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the front seat was a bench seat and the gearshift

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was on the steering wheel before it was installed between

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the two bucket seats, and made necking awkward at best,

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so that the front seat couple had to listen to

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the cries of pleasure from the back seat couple, who

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went on to a happy marriage. The front seaters lacked

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the social skills needed to establish satisfying relationships, but people

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still go to theaters and clubs to see a person

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stand at a microphone and try to amuse them, and

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as long as they do, I am prepared to be

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that person. I do not talk about mad Kings in

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my performance. I am not a psychiatrist, and I found

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king Lear boring when I was forced to read it

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in college. King Lear died, and I say good riddance.