AD Sullivan journal 2013

  Sometimes the greatest clarity in your life comes when you wake up early in the morning, in those terrible moments when your conscious mind can no longer deceive you, casting down barriers that you put up during other times of day that keep you from the ugly truth. Three a.m. is sometimes called the download time, when the spirituality is awake and aware and received information from other levels of the universes. This may be the result of lack of distractions. But often it is because at that time of day, pre-dawn, when your natural defenses stripped away. This is partly what she is talking about in the poem she posted today, about being awake and aware in those early morning hours when other people are generally not awake, a strange time when the hours are stretched or contracted, either lasting too long (that hamster wheel of worry) or shortened when the mind is on the brink of some great inspiration, a dreary moment that churns out a certain kind of thinking. Like some...

   No news is good news, but I don’t trust the resounding silence coming out of the RR camp, especially in this era of conspiracies, conspiracy theories, calculation, and perhaps in this case, miscalculation. RR wants something, but nobody knows exactly what – or more precisely, everybody has a different theory, no two theories adding up to anything logical. Perhaps she, RR and their close associates talk about amongst themselves, and RR may even want to use her to get it, urging her on by feeding her ambition, even though it is even less clear what she ultimately wants. Although it is pretty clear to me, what he wants is his badge back, proof of he is not crazy or corrupt and if he is made a cop again people might forget entirely what got him fired in the first place or that he was a dirty cop who got caught and then to save himself turned on his own friends. Fired and unable to get his old job back, RR became an avenger, searching out and prosecuting what he consid...

  It is tragic what will happen next – the next step into the political big leagues where players when they tag you out, they make sure you don’t get up after knocking you out. Freeholder R confirmed that RR wants to be sheriff and has been pressuring the Neighboring Mayor to put him on the ticket – the same mayor she went after, the same mayor she called corrupt, the same mayor she claimed had knocked up a 16-year-old and had her stashed in a housing authority apartment – these accusations possibly made by her on RR’s behalf. Now, he wants the neighboring mayor to endorse him for the second highest law enforcement post in the county. The Neighboring Mayor could bring RR as many as 10,000 votes, this before the opposition even has RR on its radar. Yet the whole thing has the same feel as a deer caught in the headlights of an oncoming car and falls under the category of beware of what you wish for. It is difficult to know if she is still tied up with RR or is aware of just h...

   My best guess about yesterday’s poem may not be enough. It is possible that she is suspects that she’s in a no-win situation, and that she is biased when it comes to dealing with those she’s involved with. But there she is getting something out of it, attention, affection. She clearly believes that she had done the right and proper things and is perhaps a bit overwhelmed by the conflicts she engaged in, and really has no place else to go or anyone else she can count on. RR is still in the mix although I’m not sure he’s the center piece. His marriage has fallen apart because he can’t stop cheating, even though his wife recently bore him a second child. Does the poem reflect any of this? I keep thinking of the poem she wrote over the summer about looking at an infant and wonder if she was looking at his kid, and whether she somehow feels culpability for the destruction of his marriage? This brings me back to the central question of whether or not she as naïve as s...

   In her first poem posted in more than two weeks, she seemed to confirm the sense of confusion going on behind the scenes. The poem ought to have surprise me coming at a time she ought to appreciate landing on her feet after what might seem like a national disaster being forced to resign her job with us. Considering the insecurity of her situation and her inability to rely on anyone to protect her, she again seems to find herself drifting, and is seeking something to set it right. Like many of her other poems, this one appears to be a self-reflection, the speaker of the poem telling herself what options she has. The point of the poem is to explain those options, to point out what she has relied on in the past to get through such situations. There is a strong sense of melancholy in it, resounding with a sense of loss. There are three stanzas. In the first, she is saying that turning herself in the right direction may be the first step. She uses words like “pro...

    These people are constantly scheming. But what good does it get them? I had a long talk with our former temporary boss and told him I had a conflict of interest covering any campaign in which she is involved with. I cannot be unbiased when it comes to RR and informed him about the story RR tried to plant with us, using her. Our former temporary boss told me her replacement D would have to deal with it and with her on his own terms. Then, I spoke to the Small Man and told him that she has been ordered to use her political connections to gather those who oppose him, the congressman and others, possibly trying to get the Small Man to support RR to become sheriff in the June primary, or even for mayor if and when the Virgin Mayor steps down. “What political connections?” the Small Man asked. “She doesn’t know any political people in my town. All she ever wrote about here were artists.” This isn’t exactly true. She often worked in mysterious ways, often using a netw...

  The situation is a bit clearer today if only because I have a better sense of what she is up to. It appears her duty is to find dirt of Freeholder M, perhaps to blackmail him into dropping the charges against the Virgin Mayor. “RR is using her as a conduit to reach out to all the people who are anti (Freeholder M,” One of the political gurus of Hometown told me yesterday. Mr. C, who ran against Freeholder M, was never really after Freeholder M, but on the same track as RR, trying to destroy the Small Man and the Congressman (perhaps on orders from the State Senator, who had bought Mr. C off with a job, something he would jeopardize if he really wanted to bring down Freeholder M, also an ally of the Senator. The Small Man is the reason Mr. C ran against Freeholder M, an enemy of an enemy so to speak. The Senator must have spoken to Mr. C about it, which is why Mr. C would like to destroy the Small Man, which may explain why she is hooked up with him (if she is) since M...

  I’m still getting conflicting accounts about whether or not the Small Man told our boss about her which forced her to quit. Some insiders in the political scene said the Small Man did have the talk with our owner, and that it was our owner who read her the riot act. I’m not about to ask our owner about it, though it would explain why he continues to find petty things to criticize me on, building his case to eventually removing me. But if he knows why she quit, then he knows he can’t bring her back, and if he doesn’t know, then my asking about it will become one more nail in my coffin, an additional reason to get rid of me instead. I think he doesn’t know. I think the only conversation that took place was between the Small Man and her, and it rattled her enough for her to “do the right thing.” Although I suspect the Small Man said something else, perhaps made some other threat that inspired her to quit. Whatever else was said, the Small Man wouldn’t say. I have to wond...

    So, what happens if the Virgin Mayor is forced to resign? I’m told the Small Man and the Congressman have already made arrangements to replace him in the special election. This means she and RR will be out of luck after their failed coup to bring down the congressman. Other sources tell me she’s already made arrangements to work for Mr. C, an ally of the Virgin Mayor, who ran unsuccessfully against Mr. M for freeholder. Mr. C hates the Small Man and claims Mr. M, who filed the charges of hacking against the Virgin Mayor, is the Small Man’s political puppet. To complicate matters, Mr. C just got a political no-show job, given to him by the State Senator who hates the Neighboring Mayor – another Virgin Mayor ally. This puts Mr. C in league with the Private Eye and the other scum bags who hire prostitutes and such to blackmail their political opponents. More importantly, the State Senator is behind Mr. M, and if Mr. C continues to plot to unseat Mr. M, Mr. C cou...

  Best guess looking at it from the outside is that RR wants a piece of the Virgin Mayor’s money. But then, the whole crew around the mayor seems bent on getting their fair share, from Joey D and his developer brother to the crew that came in from the former Newark mayor’s campaign, one looking to cash in on the town’s insurance, while others eye other slices of the political pie. RR seems like a free agent (or as the Small Man told me), operating for his own motives, not always in league with the rat pack led by Joey D. So, it is possible the others didn’t know about the scheme to use our office and may not have known about her role in it. Yet, from what the Chief Adversary and his campaign crew told me about her wanting to create a paper she could write in their behalf, I suspect more than RR was involved, even when it came to what she wrote for us. The deception is just too similar. How far back all of this goes, I can’t say. Most likely from when the Virgin Mayor pull...

    I’m not being paranoid. Normally, I don’t subscribe to conspiracy theories. But I’ve watched the owner go through this routine often enough with other people to recognize when he is pulling the same routine on me. It’s called reaching the tipping point. The owner builds a case against you by emphasizing a lot of small things, adding them up until he can make it seem like there is too much against you for him to keep in his employ. When you see this happening, the best thing to do is move on before the ax falls. The question is: why is he doing this to me? And is it already too late for me to do anything about it? Does it have anything to do with her? Is he blaming me for making her resign? I believe I might have provoked her by posting photos of the main office and claiming I was finally free to return there again. I wasn’t gloating, but it might have seemed that way to her. Gloating is always a mistake because it always inspires retribution. Although...

   Her taking the job with the Virgin Mayor raises a lot of question and a lot of eyebrows. According to the Chief Adversary and his Chief of Staff, they met with her for several hours, laying out their strategy for their campaign against the Virgin Mayor. “She said she wanted to write for us, and we believed her,” the Chief of Staff said. This largely proved her right about how stupid they were after her writing stories for us that were designed to humility the Chief Adversary. Didn’t they get the drift from that? The Small Man believes her sole allegiance is to RR. “Where RR goes, she goes,” the Small Man told me. But I’m not sure of even that. RR seems like a marriage of convenience, a strong man who can help her take the next step. Some believe she may have even tried to get behind the Neighboring Mayor, and perhaps even the Private Eye, forced to settle for RR. Her fraudulent attempt to work for Chief Adversary is thick with political intrigue and may we...

   Rumor has it she wants to come back to the office. If she is coming back, I don’t want to be here when she does. This is partly inspired by the gossips who claim the owner has no confidence on her replacement D--. He doesn’t think D—can handle the beat. The owner doesn’t yet know why she quit in the first place and might feel differently if he knew the truth. I’m keeping mum about what I know, in part because the owner doesn’t particularly like me either. He has been picking up on my small mistakes in an attempt to build a case against me and give him the excuse to get rid of me as well. I think the rumor of her return, however, is bogus, since she removed our office from her job description on Facebook two days ago and replaced it with her new title as the Virgin Mayor’s personal assistant, pretty much putting her in firmly in the political realm. It’s hard to come back to this side of The Force when you’ve stepped over into the Dark Side. “Her guardian is ...

      They aren’t through with her yet; they just might not how to make use of her next. The anti-neighboring mayor remark on her Facebook page offering a hint of her new duties, or perhaps just a message to say, “I’m still here and useful.” All this makes me wonder about their relationship and how she might feel as spurned by the neighboring mayor as all of his current enemies are, tissue paper to be disposed of when done. Everything with the neighboring mayor is personal, as are all of his political enemies, so, why not her as well? Maybe even more personal. He may have promised her something he never delivered, turning her against him. I do not believe she crossed over to the dark side to help the mayor’s arch enemy, the State Senator, nor is she part of the State Senator’s nefarious plots – such as those employed in another town where the town administrator hired a prostitute to seduce a political enemy, then used it as black mail to make the administrator...

   This is the day that John Lennon died – now 33 years ago. Hank and I had a theory of numbers based on some of The Beatles out takes and Christmas fan club recordings, where like Number 9, 33 and 44 had some significance I can’t make heads or tails of all these years later. Maybe it is the Christ-like concept of double threes – Three is a sacred number in mythology. At the time of Lennon’s death, I was seated before my typewriter in my cold water flat in Passaic , trying to finish my daily dose of writing before retiring. I had WNEW-FM on in the background when the announcer interrupted the music to say that John had been shot – and within moments, verified his death. The details didn’t emerge until the next day. But that moment like the shooting of Kennedy, and the attacks on 9/11 left an indelible memory in my mind, of where I was, what I was doing, and how I felt. The DJ put on John’s “Working Class Hero” and didn’t bother to edit out the “fucks,” suggesting v...

    It like going home again, back to that converted barn called the Red Baron where we used to play most weekends and sometimes Wednesday nights, a dive to end all dives where nothing counted for nothing except what we scored between sets in the parking lot with the girls who came to see us, and sometimes, not even then. All these years later, and I found it again in the back room of a veterans’ post in Bayonne and a pickup band that included one very famous guitarists, a local piano man, a very promising but shy woman singer, a steady young bass player and a drummer who ran the post. They were tight most of the time, but they had heart, the guitarist, George Cummings, from a historic novelty band I hadn’t heard of since the 1970s when my best friend and I wandered through the landscape looking for a farm to build a commune on, and our band played David Bowie, Stones and other down and dirty music in that other dive to end all dives. I found out about the pick up band...

   Still hungry for rock music after being spoiled by a club in Cape May, we went in search of it back here in good old Hudson County . But short of dipping our toes in Hoboken where parking is harder to find than gold nuggets on a place misnamed The Gold Coast, we followed a trail of rumored music in Bayonne and a mythical bar called The Venice – only a block from the office I work in five days a week. Since traffic from my house in The Heights of Jersey City makes the most direct route to Bayonne impossible during the week, I figured on Saturday night we could get there with no problem. I didn’t account for the fact that in reconstructing the circle that connects Route 7 with 1 & 9 (something that happened after the death of a family some years ago – the state always expends millions in a knee jerk reaction to accidents that are really reckless driving in disguise) I mistakenly thought the state would put up road signs that made it clear which of the multiple...