The Last Book: Revised Edition

By Richard Wesley Clough

At the beginning of the morning, one’s life often feels relaxed until the daily drag of life negates even the former birds singing, where one is often forced into some other way of living and thinking—the way I’ve done just for the prospect of freedom to ruin the second life after freedom. Nevertheless, I can still for a short time revel in my deliberations and creations that reflect the incorporation of the lost life, the same way a DVD player reflects some intricacies of science to someone as starved and appreciative as we might create a DVD-like creativity. For this writer who is also the hero, my job must show how what one seemingly honored in life but disappeared by the dynamics of life was real. So real that others scoffed at my essential feelings, defying my relative paltriness in relation to those former illusory, illustrious lives facing the end of times—the apex—where much is lost by everyone’s anxiety that even excludes my alchemical process. A process created by someone so possessed by his former grandeur he must reconcile his worth by the laws of the reverse and the inverse. So we begin my last book the way James Fenimore Cooper couldn’t with The Deerslayer by using myself as the model for my hero who finds redemption by discovering himself through his living travail and Spartan tenacity. A hero whose only redeeming trait is the freedom that he radiates by some mystic connection to the birds singing just before doomsday’s eerie rings.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Aug 26, 2019
• ISBN: 9781796054064

Richard Wesley Clough

N/A

Book preview

Copyright © 2019 by Richard Wesley Clough.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2019912285

ISBN:                Hardcover               978-1-7960-5408-8

                          Softcover                978-1-7960-5407-1

                          eBook                     978-1-7960-5406-4

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, names, incidents, organizations, and dialogue in this novel are either the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.

Rev. date: 08/26/2019

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The Last books

OUTLINE AND CHARACTERS OF THE LAST BOOK

The last book is a further development from the past three books from 2017: the revised Maryland Prize, the Apex of time, and the Speed and the Simplicity. The last book like the others was partially in existence from around 2011 until the greater insights grew into a greater meaning.

Basically the books surround Ricky’s birth in Phoenix, Arizona in 1955 and following him from growing up in Santa Monica to the start of his ten summers in Maryland at age five where he’d meet a whole motley group of people from horse riding Mary Clare, his Uncles living with his so called black hole president Grandpa Casper, the former great but disowned ball player, his wife, the famous religious Grandma behind the church Bethany in Price, a place Ricky endowed with such great meaning it eliminated his sports career despite a brilliance he needed to overcome the facetious good schooling, Ricky believed if it wasn’t for Maryland he would have married the enticing Bongo drums splayed legs of his early childhood Norma Smith but was deterred by some higher powers at play that let him see the thought provoking storms driving him in the direction of a idyllic vision that was to collide with reality in the form of next door neighbor Dale and his cousin Lynette who imbued him with the burgeoning frustration and paranoia towards women as if there was something wrong which he kind of knew meant death, a unmovable entity Ricky hated and thwarted constantly in making his story memorable and drawing in all kinds of elements into this unique vortex, something he tried endlessly to express beginning in high school in a kind of stupid way that made people think him retarded because there should have been so much more, there was in the form of the pretty teacher Mrs. Metzler living next door on Steiner a woman he admired in a romantic way that smelled of eventual tragedy but in the eyes of those miscreants ruling society I was considered mentally ill because men aren’t supposed to manifest this kind of arrogance when the mores of society worked against it, all of which left him in the throes of minimum wage jobs that futilely tried to resist the so called black tide just as he unwittingly carried a plethora of female actresses capitalizing on this insanity much to his almost blind disposition for his role as the great minimum wage actor no sane girl could love just leaving him to wallow in the mire that he hoped could get better while the rest of the world dissolved, this being the Phantom prison below the Rim of the World at age 25 in the stolidly hot desert whose facility had a magic elixir effect that would possess him off and on for the next forty years with limited stints at a place in San Fernando valley called Foothill that made him resolve the mysterious last survivors, both of which had their females beguile him from rock and roll Dawn, Ann Donnelly, the funny lady from Barcelona, Laurie Boxer, and esp. Andrea Bienstock my sweet girl who broke me out of my shackles upon arrival at Foothill who was the progenitor of my vampire theory and nine of that kind of wives etc.. that gave him a respite from the turmoil that brought him there. A fact that creates many divergent meanings. A place his mysterious father held him above as a baby in the nearby mountains before leaving him just to mysteriously appear in the Air force at a time Ricky’s persona was becoming infamous in connecting with what he’d later call the cybersphere. A entity people might not believe even though it was true in the manner of the outer limits and twilight zone. Things that were far different then other times beyond the apex or before it. A point in time where everything is replayed like a game in determining the future of the human race either human or ape. His mystic being seems directly inter related to music, books, and movies in a way that validates what otherwise would be meaningless as if like the Matrix he must be the ‘one’. In the end he concludes after forty years there was some alien purpose for him being here like a hybrid super soldier from Stalingrad in 1943 which explains how he couldn’t stoop to the normal level and desires of a male since his intuition is guided by the aliens which Ricky says is a Goddess or the French girl, Pat, he knew on Berkeley in seventh grade which from there he went to Steiner, the general of Stalingrads hardheads, to live in the idyllic luster of Marine Park and Peter and the kings of the night. All overseen by the twentieth century Fox executive Mr. Fox who lived strangely in the back yards quest house painting bluebirds. It was after Steiner and his high school graduation Ricky lived for a spell on a visionary hill that would turn his life into the classic struggle for someone who inherently didn’t believe life was this way. Ricky was a control freak who never believed in the famous weather story he first published with Vantage Press in New York City while in the Air force in 1977. In fact it seemed to trigger all his problems from then on as if a calling card representing the aliens. In the interim Ricky came up with various answers to let’s say the ark of the covenant and the greater and lesser God. The chapters that follow aren’t sequential but address in slices all these themes with the freedom of poetry to highlight the escape from numerous deaths. This is the last book of the first three since 2017.

CONTENTS

OUTLINE AND CHARACTERS OF THE LAST BOOK

THE LAST BOOK

YMCA

AUGUST

THE LAST DAYS OF NEVER-NEVER LAND

IS IT DEATH?

THE LITTLE GIANT

BEAU

THE PERFECT REASON

THE END OF THE MALL

MY XLIBRIS

THE PRESENT PEDESTAL

MENTAL ANALYSIS

VITALS

THE INVERSE

VICTIMS

COURT

PURE DANGER

FREEDOM

EARTHQUAKE WATCH

A REAL MAN

THE BLACK HOLE AGENT

POETRY TO END THE WORLD

SIMILARITY

ONE END FOR THE FUTURE BEGUN

THE PLAN AND ITS FOUNDATION

MOMENTARY

THE LAST INSIGHTS

AROUND THE TIME OF THE LAST BOOK

THE FEMALE COSTARS

KINGS OF THE NIGHT

FROM THE PAGES OF THE YELLOW BOOKS

THE IDES OF MARCH

SPIRIT AND PHYSICAL REALITY

THE SPIRIT OF THE BEACH

SANDS OF THE BEACH

THE RAINBOW TRAIL

FOR THE LOVE OF A BOXER TURNED POET

A HERO

GREAT POETRY NO MORE

EVANGELICAL

THE SPECIAL PROGRAM

FOR ETERNITY

THE DAISYS ARE RED

TIME TRAVEL

THE REAL ZOMBIES

CHESAPEAKE

ENIGMA

LATELY FROM THE BLACK BOOK

THE FINAL FACTS

THE SIMPLICITY AND THE COMPLEXITY

THINGS BEGIN IN THREES

STALINGRAD

THE RED BOOKS AND THE YELLOW BOOKS

ASTOUNDING TO THINK

WISDOM

THE LAST BOOK

At the beginning of the morning, one’s life often feels relaxed until the daily drag of life negates even the former birds singing, where one is often forced into some other way of living and thinking—the way I’ve done just for the prospect of freedom to ruin the second life after freedom. Nevertheless, I can still for a short time revel in my deliberations and creations that reflect the incorporation of the lost life, the same way a DVD player reflects some intricacies of science to someone as starved and appreciative as we might create a DVD-like creativity. For this writer who is also the hero, my job must show how what one seemingly honored in life but disappeared by the dynamics of life was real. So real that others scoffed at my essential feelings, defying my relative paltriness in relation to those former illusory, illustrious lives facing the end of times—the apex—where much is lost by everyone’s anxiety that even excludes my alchemical process. A process created by someone so possessed by his former grandeur he must reconcile his worth by the laws of the reverse and the inverse. So we begin my last book the way James Fenimore Cooper couldn’t with The Deerslayer by using myself as the model for my hero who finds redemption by discovering himself through his living travail and Spartan tenacity. A hero whose only redeeming trait is the freedom that he radiates by some mystic connection to the birds singing just before doomsday’s eerie rings.

YMCA

When I said in the November event I embarked on an ambitious weight lifting and running program following my discharge from the air force, I failed to mention it happened at Santa Monica’s YMCA, located close to the palisades in downtown SM. Like everything, it seemed too late, but if one saw behind my magnanimous declaration of all I endured in school, leading it to being called the good schooling, one would know my schooling was something that could have killed anyone. It barely left me little time other than just to dream. In fact, it was the kind of schooling Dickens might lambaste, which no one would expect in America where school seems to be the cream. Of course, in time, I’d find out how bad my seemingly stupid tolerance of it was for my life since the less baggage, the better is the rule now. But then in line with some foresight into my precognition, one knows any corrective action doesn’t change the facts creating the action, just punishes the gifted more. Of course, it was some of those corrective actions, like in the dangerous girl and mysterious girl, that now have girded me into this greater day one of all day ones. A fact that in itself is an impediment as well, or else plummet into the murky declivity from which my life first began.

This would all be found out by some crazy process of jettisoning the reality that possesses me to be shacked up with a woman by the past inhibiting experiences with those women, who could only be worse for my fragile state and purpose of existence. A way of thinking very vulnerably when one knows the power of men and women in the community is like the hum of a beehive. It was more than a hum but a sound of madness in direct opposition to anything we might believe in. It was the power that made me seem mentally ill, in the same way I could go insane if I wasn’t a part of its power. It tapped into you—damned if you do or don’t—and my pillow-fucking immunity almost correlated with Sigourney Weaver’s Alien picture by my peculiar ability to exist outside everyone else’s religion. Theirs was such a great power that everything was basically subordinate to it. Sure, we worked and played, but it all boiled down to being absorbed by the sexual nature of a woman that was different from their outward appearance in society. It was one of those glaring facts of God’s that could kill you for seeing it. In fact, I saw its impact right away in school buddies whose demeanor greatly changed in a hostile way, all proving women were a great obstacle to males understanding one another to the point that such friendship was really an illusion and proved how I transitioned gradually into this stultifying labyrinth, whose unacceptable specter to others made me seem mentally ill as well as their enzymatic cog. It was both a curse and panacea.

Apart of that great transition to be amenable to what was horrible to most people was looking at the inmates in my phantom prison as endearing, following a spell of morbid feelings where their apparent docile state changed into being hostile and only ameliorated by my manifesting a jeepers creepers personality and power.

It was when my separation from the male-female psych was established that I began discovering great insights into things, like the YMCA, for what little value of glory it held other than make some starstruck man—at the time it might have happened in the 1970s—say to his girlfriend What a fool, which my precognition had precluded by the purchase of a Colt revolver. Of course, once I’m back in Santa Monica in the next life, my remembered light of this glory would let them say it without a Colt revolver and, possibly, the true recognition that made me mistakenly omit it. Because in this world, as great as I think I am, the sad truth is there is nothing but emptiness. Of course, it’s the general rule of a juggernaut to always profit off what once was so smart by avoiding that action. An action which, as successful as it might have seemed, nevertheless only prolonged the eventual agony in accord with the dynamics espoused in irresistible impulse.

Another example of my Colt .357 revolver was my mother’s dour aspect, knowing I had one—or was it just the evasiveness of the zombie mind? When her other man friend Ralph came over after the air force, she told him to leave the house without saying hello to me. Ralph was the one who sponsored my intellectual odyssey by building shelves into my rooms at Steiner and lending an intelligent presence. A person so intelligent he simply worked with his hands instead of his mind in engineering. But I had my trepidation in regard to him, the same way I’d later feel about Karl, who entered my mother’s life upon us leaving Steiner. But then they were just reflective of the guards of the president’s daughter who, I’d later understand, were absent at a crucial time in the future for the about-to-be-divulged reason.

My mother was a painful memory, who wrote me in my marathon stay at Offutt—without leave—that some woman was yelling at her in a store and people were acting strange. It was like a zombie movie I might have seen where she knew she was