Flirting with Misadventures

{from the Author’s Foreword & introduction

[reproduced in part on the back cover]}

The material represents a due diligence attempt to chronicle, via a series of seemingly random and incidental episodes narrated in the first-person, the evolutionary journey of my consciousness from the edge of the wilds of Mindanao* (Philippines) to the rough and tumble of the streets of Manhattan (New York City), with all the tedious yet not the least thrilling detours in-between.  Random in the sense that I had to single out and focus on specific and discrete pivotal decision points which ushered in a definitely recognizable qualitative change in my perception of my unique attributes as an individual, on leaving such decision bifurcations.

. . .

In a broader context the three parts of the book represent three distinct non-sequential evolutionary phases of my consciousness.  The Narratives represent the aspirational age of ambition, when the drive to transcend . . . reigned supreme. The Poetry I deem to represent the seemingly unquenchable deliberative age of simultaneous inspiration, enlightenment, and illusion.  It was at this stage that you pushed the envelope of the imagination in quest for a reason to go on, to latch on to a sustainable justification for being.

 The Essays represent the age of rational resignation, or better yet, resigned rationalization, when you give in to the impulsive reflex to explain away the developments which you know affect your physical and spiritual well-being but they unfold far beyond your sphere of influence.  You are effectively out of the arena.  Your mission is no longer to do or die but simply to reason why, as an inconsequential observer of, to paraphrase Robert F. Kennedy, both the “things that are” then ask why, and the “things that are not” then ask why not?

. . .

Undoubtedly, some who were familiar with the events narrated herein and inclined to look deeper enough into the substance of the narratives are bound to find crimes of omission which may be hidden in the gaps and void interstices of the story.  To them I pledge my intent to flesh those out into a coherent legible whole.  Whether or not they will eventually see the light of day in print only time will tell.  It all depends on the free emotional and intellectual energy at my disposal, not to mention the material wherewithal necessary to midwife their incarnation into prime time existence. 

Ergo, if there is any financier out there ready willing and eager to underwrite the project, I implore you to contact my publisher post haste so we can get to work. I enjoin you therefore to look over whatever is offered here with guarded leisure. There might be more to follow.  This might be the last of its breed.  The most important thing is, may you have half as much fun reading it as I have had both living and writing about it.