After All That, Thanks & Credits to the following:

• Reznor photo by Kevin Mazur from Rolling Stone.

• Grappelli photo by Abby Hoffer Enterprises, from Stephane Grappelli Meets The Rhythm Section.

• And don't they look nice together?

• Trick pitch drawings from The Hurlers, World of Baseball Series, Redefinition Press, and I have more of these so don't get too comfortable.

• Walker Percy quote handed me unknowingly by Shelle Lichtenwalter-Barron. We gotta talk.

• DNA spiral graphic from Charles Yanofsky's "Gene Structure and Protein Structure," (Scientific American, May '67) reprinted in The Chemical Basis of Life, 1973, W. H. Freeman & Co.

• Rome's Pantheon dome and the elegant chambered nautilus from Steve M. Slaby's "Geometry in Applied Science and Engineering," in Hypergraphics: Visualizing Complex Relationships in Art, Science, and Technology, Don Brisson, Ed., 1978.

• Rope graphic from "The Theory of Knots," by Lee Neuwirth, Scientific American, June '79.

• Sean Morgan provided NIN peripheral. Thank you sir may I have another?

• For NIN confirmation and reinforcement, thanks to Trent Reznor and the boys for the splendid January 9th to-do at the CSU Convocation Center in Cleveland. Also to Lon Sherman, Joe Popp, and my dame, for enjoying it so much with me—and Davey Blaetz, who wanted to but couldn't, for his good responses and enormous ears. Next time, my friend.

• From time-back-way-back on page 13: Syringe rendering by the beloved Johnny "Blackheart" Vahanian. Header photo is Jim Northrup drilling a grand salami home run in the 6th game of the '68 Series, card #167 from Topps Card Co. in '69, severely cropped.

• The "pattern which connects" profound-bite which first raises its inspiring head in the essay on pharmaceuticals is from Gregory Bateson. Go Greg.

From Ray Gotto's Cotton Woods, 5/26/56.

Coming in the Next Batch of Pages:

The 1994 Birkmire Trucking Co. Team of the Glenwood League.
A Greek Tragedy in Twenty-Two Acts.

• Without subtext, there is no life.

• "I hate quotations. Tell me what you know." —Ralph Waldo Emerson, Journals, May, 1849.

• "LOOM 66" / Loyal Order of the Moose Lodge 66. Thank you very much. Help comes from all over.

• Not a newsletter.

• The SOD is down. We have carpet.

• Have I mentioned my cats?

• Line-up change / Coming in to play second base: the woman on page nine.
  (Since, as my wife points out, she also appears ready.)

• If you don't want a new drug, just say "no."

• "...so that all of these things are the parts that I think I have right, and what is coming is the synthesis of all these bit-mapped mental convulsions into a..."

• I have always credited my mother for my overactive brain, my creative edge, and my love of books and such... but now this!?! (revelation/revelations from a late-night stint on the parallel bars.)

• Sing it: "I'm bringin' home a baby bumblebee..."

• A few general influences. The way that this might be perceived to fit together owes much to, among others: Marcel Duchamp; Michael Ondaatje, and Max Frisch; and also to Ed Myers—for putting in my head ways of gathering the diversity and rearranging it so that it paints or writes or performs my picture. I honestly can't help myself.

• Is this a cross-indexing nightmare?

• Or dream?

• Altered State Highway #683 starts down there by Robert Pete Williams, heads West to Captain Beefheart, runs undersea to Ornette Coleman in Stockholm '65, swings back for some Tackhead folk doing the "Ambient Dub Blues Project" Little Axe, settles down through G. Love and Special Sauce and ends up by candlelight with Helen Merrill and Bill Evans. Unprintable maps, the cartographers going mad.

• Perhaps someday I'll do a "key" to this.

• Check the garage. Opening day, 1993, a gorgeous April afternoon, between games in the backyard where you could actually hit away. Accompanied by a Dear Mad Irish Catholic Bosox Fan, my wifey, and my boy, who from 380 feet away put a dark signature dink into the white paint of the two-car, which we inscribed for the generations with a Sharpie. Is it still there? Is anything still there? (In April '94, it snowed, is still snowing.)

• Coming onto April '95 and my son has shipped to Norway, of all places. Quick someone lend me an atlas.

• "...my guts in a pile sliding into the grave..."

• "Gee ain't that somethin'? She's the kinda girl I've always dreamed about... Wouldn't it be wonderful to be married to a girl who played baseball?... Gee..." —Frank Sinatra, Take Me Out to the Ball Game.

• What with my prehensile brain, it takes me a long time to extricate myself from my swamps.

• Today's lesson: Never leave home without a ball. Ever.

• Quiet Dialogue from a Down-State Antique Shop While Looking for Baseball Stuff:
  
  "Are you interested in war?" she said.
  "Most men are..." she said.
  "They come in looking for guns and war items..." she said.
  "Hmmm..." I said.
  

• There are those so lost they are even incapable of being humiliated.

• Up the res, by increments.

• The Ziggurat of Samarra?!?!?

• "Wake up! Wake up! This is your last chance... I can't play kick the can alone!"
  —Ernest Truex, late great character actor, The Twilight Zone, February 9, '62.

• I will not allow my movements to be inhibited in any way by your expectations. It's my ass.

• Red hot peanuts, getcher red hot peanuts here!

• "Or some other trouble." Sammy ends his song like that, that's how Sammy ends his song.

• Thanks for coming.

Photo from Pafko at the Wall, a novella by Don DeLillo.