1st sentence of the 1st book

The 1st book on my Kerouac bookshelf is Jack Kerouac's Good Blonde & Others (Grey Fox, 1993), and the 1st sentence (in honor of today being the 1st day of the month) is:

This old Greek reminded me of my Uncle Nick in Brooklyn who'd spent 50 years of his life there after being born in Crete, and wandered down the gray streets of Wolfe Brooklyn, short, gray suit, with a gray hat, gray face, going to his various jobs as elevator operator and apartment janitor summer winter and fall, and was a plain old ordinary man talking about politics but with a Greek accent, and when he died it seemed to me Brooklyn hadn't changed and would never change, there would always be a strange sad Greek going down the gray streets. (p. 5)

And there you have it -- all 31 days of March (we started on March 2 so today was actually the 31st entry) accounted for in our numerology project to align books, sentences, and days of the month. All that remains is to pull all 31 entries into one post, which should* happen tomorrow. That's going to take some cutting-and-pasting, but it's pretty do-able. Then we can read the whole set of sentences quickly in order and see what it all means (if anything).

Thank God it's almost over . . . .

Oh, and Happy Birthday to my son, who turns 39 today! Wow.



*This word is responsible for more human mental suffering than perhaps any other single word. It is part of the kind of distorted thinking that cognitive behavior therapy addresses. To rephrase, let me say "it would be nice if it happened tomorrow, but unforeseen events may cause a delay."