Proof of Life Volume 2: Flashes from the Heart

By Jack Sparacino

The author of this book took a very deep breath after writing hundreds of articles and several books over many years. It requires only a modest leap of faith by the reader. Specifically, one needs to go far beyond the narrow, legal definition of proof of life. While crucially important, it usually only provides some evidence that the person in question is still alive. In this book, I chose to go well beyond this definition and consider lives that are lead with life itself. We're talking about people who don't simply go through the motions and pay their bills. They pour their hearts, adrenaline, imagination, and a search for excitement on the table. So, dear reader, are you alive or really alive?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fulton Books, Inc.
• Release date: Aug 10, 2023
• ISBN: 9798887318738

Book preview

Table of Contents

Title

Copyright

Preface

1: Cheese Platter Blues

2: The Sheriff of Nuttingham

3: For Mary, A Meandering but Highly Excellent Note

4: Random Observations

5: Poetry Means Life

6: A Friend Indeed

7: Sarah

8: Man on the Street Social Psychologist Strikes Again

9: Watermelon Woman and Her Friends

10: A Little Rain Must Fall

11: Larry the Loser

12: P. T. Barnum Was (Mostly) Right

13: In Search of Owls

14: What Do Teenage Girls Really Think About?

15: Making Great Friends for Life Isn't That Hard

16: La Di Da

17: Happiness: A User's Guide

18: The Southern Ladies Mafia Stands Tall

19: Let 'Er Rip!

20: Life Is Tough, Like Seriously

21: Watchtower Blues: Mental Illness Rages in America

22: Monkey Girl

23: Up and Down

24: Work on It

25: Dance to the Music

26: The Southern Ladies Mafia Adds Up Their Lives

27: Ride with It

28: State Your Case

29: Monkey Nuts

30: Staring Up a Rope

31: Board Stiff

32: Wisdom

33: Burned Out

34: Frozen Easter Blood

35: Quincy in December

36: If All Else Fails

About the Author

cover.jpg

Proof of Life Volume 2

Flashes from the Heart

Jack Sparacino

Copyright © 2023 Jack Sparacino

All rights reserved

First Edition

Fulton Books

Meadville, PA

Published by Fulton Books 2023

ISBN 979-8-88731-872-1 (paperback)

ISBN 979-8-88731-873-8 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

This book is dedicated to my amazing parents, Robert Bob R. and Marge Sparacino. From my dad, I got my academic focus and interest in science. From my mom, a successful painter, I inherited a sense of color, light, and context. Here's to the greatest partnership to have ever arisen in Queens, New York.

Preface

This book took shape over several years of writing but really reflects a lifetime of reflection on the notion of not just life itself but really feeling alive. The style of the individual chapters ranges from poetry and lighthearted musings, including many actual events to more academically and data-oriented essays. You will find my life experiences woven to each section, along with flights of fictional and sometimes graphic fantasy.

Full disclosure: Unlike some of the criminal elements lurking in the short stories, I have never murdered anyone. That I recall. And here's to my wonderful and ever supportive friends and family, may their and all your lives be lived to the richest and fullest.

One more thing…the photos herein were taken by me and not edited in most cases. Feel free to reproduce any of them.

Cheers and happy reading.

1

Cheese Platter Blues

It was a picture-book, mid-July day in North Quincy on Boston Harbor. My buddy Landy and I were fishing, seated about six feet apart. High puffy clouds shuffled overhead on a gentle breeze. The temperature was a lavish eighty degrees. There were sailboats in the harbor, Jet Skis blasting by, even somebody paddling a kayak and trolling for striped bass. I remembered watching a guy trolling with his kayak and actually hooking and landing a decent-sized striper last year. Life was tough.

Then along came four young ladies, late teens or very early twenties, so let's just call them girls, dressed in party clothes and looking for action. They walked all the way out to the end of the dock where we were fishing. Then they beckoned to alert two young men in a motorboat to pick them up with their cheese platter. I refused to let the guy in the boat cut our lines. He asked us to reel in our lines. I suppressed my inner diplomat and suggested that he go f——k himself and go somewhere else. The young captain responded in kind but apparently got my drift. They eventually motored over to the next dock.

The four girls, with their cheese platter in tow, proceeded to go all the way back off our fishing dock. They walked down to the next dock and stopped cold because of a seven-foot gate standing sentinel in their way. It was locked. Eventually, the girls started climbing over the fence one at a time. With a seven-foot fence in their path, they worked like monkeys clambering over as we watched these cute Keystone Cops.

Not gonna miss you getting in our way but good show, girls. Bravo!

2

The Sheriff of Nuttingham

I was sitting outside recently, exactly where I often went to take a break, when my friend and neighbor Katie stopped by to chat while walking her doodle dog Whiskey. We were talking away about all manner of things but mostly about how life had changed so dramatically since we were younger. The decline in basic civility was high on our list. I guess we figured that the technology changes in communication, for example, were just too obvious to bother with.

As she stood and I sat in deference to my severe spinal stenosis, a guy in an F-150 pickup truck pulled up to the stop sign near us and rolled down his window.

Hi there, young lady, nice dog you got there. I'm the new sheriff for the county. Or at least I will be right after the election coming up. I'm gonna tell you, nobody here in this county knows more about what's going on and where the real scumbags are. I hope you'll be voting for me so we can kick some ass, excuse my goddamn French.

He offered his name as Buck Diddly, told us we could call him Buck or Diddly. How convenient. We found that most helpful. There was no bumper sticker on the truck or any other evidence that he was anything other than full of it. We decided to give him the benefit of the doubt anyway and let him proceed.

I've lived in these parts a long time, and I know where all the bad guys are. I plan to line 'em up against that wall over there and mow down the bastards with my AK-47. I know what you're thinking. This could make a mess—the wall, the sidewalk, all the screaming pedestrians, not to mention the potential threat to my career. Donchu worry none about me though. I got me some real good connections up the line, if you know what I mean.

At this point, it was all Katie and I could do to resist bursting out laughing. He finally got around to asking our names and then apparently decided that there were no further opportunities to be had with us and quietly pulled away down the street. We spent the next five minutes speculating on what that guy was really all about. The only thing that might have made it any sillier (or heck, maybe even helped us learn his true identity) was if he had a stack of cheese platters in the truck with him or if he had an uncle Bo.

3

For Mary, A Meandering but Highly Excellent Note

I'm sitting here on the end of the dock with two lines out baited with squid for striped bass, waiting for Landy. It's another spectacular day, albeit warmer than some people would prefer. Nothing but cumulus clouds, the feels-like temperature is maybe eighty-seven degrees right now. Lots of sailboats out as you can imagine. Beyond them is Boston itself. I can see the Prudential building, the John Hancock, UMass—all clear as an airport-gift-shop postcard.

Anyway, aside from the fact that my back is just not any better after that procedure on Thursday, I feel good overall. We can try the procedure again, and if absolutely necessary, he may want to refer me to a surgeon, not exactly a picnic nor is it the end of the world.

I hope you guys are getting some of this marvelous summer weather. I was born for this, and some of my friends try to stay out of the sun. How I pity them.

Whaddya gonna do, Doc(k)?

Back to the homeless, like from last week as I recall. Bazillionaire Elon Musk—who incidentally has Asperger's, a mild form of autism—recently pointed to the logic of converting Twitter's headquarters in San Francisco into a homeless shelter. As he noted, No one shows up [to work there] anyway. As Twitter's largest shareholder and now owner, he carries considerable clout. But don't just take my word for it. As he himself noted on national TV, "I don't always have a lot of intonation or variation in how I speak…which I'm told makes for great comedy. I'm actually making history tonight as the first person with Asperger's to host SNL… So I won't make a lot of eye contact with the cast tonight. But don't worry, I'm pretty good at running ‘human' in emulation mode."

Just six hours after he posted a poll on the subject, the verdict was in. Some 91 percent of the 912,867 votes were cast Y for repurposing Twitter headquarters. He is well aware of the fact that Twitter encourages remote work, and over five thousand people in wealthy San Francisco are homeless. (Nationally, the figure is estimated at over 550,000 or seventeen people per ten thousand in the general population.)

Recently, I went with a friend to super-discount-store Primark in Boston. It lies across the street from much more upscale Macy's. Within a few minutes, I found a couple T-shirts and a pair of sandals. Total bill was about twenty-five bucks. I handed my finds to my friend and went outside to people watch. All manner of humanity passed by, including many mixed-race couples, and most people looked well enough. Sitting on the ledge outside Citizen's Bank were two old homeless fellows, passing a cigarette back and forth until they ran it down to the filter. The guy on the left, I'll call him Harry, babbled incoherently in a low, raspy voice taken right from a cement mixer needing an oil change.

Along came a little boy bouncing a soccer ball. Harry shouted out to him put it in the basket, put it in the basket! The kid seemed to ignore him, as did his father and just about everyone else. Except me. After a few minutes and forgoing the opportunity to visit the smoke shop there, I went back into Primark to meet my friend. We paid for our things and drove back to my place in cushy Marina Bay in Quincy. No homeless people here, but the downtown images, and especially Harry and his buddy, stuck in my mind. Where would they sleep tonight (or thereafter)? What would they find to eat or drink? My friend saw them and thought they were drunk. Well, I said, You can sleep off alcohol but not mental illness and perfect poverty. She had to mull that over a bit.

Signed,