Well, needless to say, those hallowed grounds needn't worry about the likes of me treading anywhere near 'em today, locked up as I remain in solitary confinement.
     Forever imprisoned by the four walls of my Me....

     I'd expected things to be different by now.
     I'd just always assumed that surely I would have achieved at least one of my life goals by the 55th anniversary of the liberation of Iwo Jima and the 150th anniversary of the publication of Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter, but no.
     The harsh truth is that not only does it look like I'll never get to wallow in the mud of hallowed ground, it also appears as if even the simplest of my goals will remain forever  beyond my grasp....

     Consider:

• I have yet to learn how to play air guitar - and I don't even know of anyone who gives lessons
• I have made absolutely no progress towards achieving my boyhood dream of getting the world to use the word singstress instead of chanteuse
• Instead of levitating the Pentagon, as I once promised myself I would do by the time I was 30, I plea bargained my ambition down to a simple levitation of a drum majorette by the time I was 40 - and then I didn't even manage that
• Despite the promise I made to my grandmother on her death bed, I still haven't written a letter to Jimmy Walker thanking him for that "Dyn-O-MITE!" catch-phrase of his that gave her a reason to go on after grandpa died and it looked like the jury might not buy her alibi  
• I failed utterly and completely in my attempts to get Charles Schulz to admit and go public with the "special relationship" I had with Woodstock... and now he's dead...  leaving me to wonder if maybe the pen or the phone would have been a better alternative to all those years of attempted telepathy...  just like Krazy Kat kept trying to tell me....

     Consider:

• I've been really afraid this year that the federal government was gonna run me out of business by dipping into its strategic blather reserves and flooding the market with blather too cheap to meter.  I hoped and I wished and I hoped and I wished and I HOPED and I WISHED and  - surprise!  It worked!  The government kept its spigots shut tight to everyone except elected officials needing material for their next public pronouncement.  But guess what?  It hasn't mattered!  People everywhere are getting better and better at making their own!  And what they can't make they get from their local school boards.  It's enough to make me doubt the powers of wishing and hoping, let me tell ya....
• A long time ago, T.S. Eliot taught me that there's no better way for folks like myself to spend their time than by measuring out their lives in little teaspoons.  So for years and years, that's what I've done every spare moment that I could find - I've measured out my life in little teaspoons.  I even measured them twice before contemplating them once, just like they taught me on This Old Existentialist.  Now, just today, I get a notice from the people at the European Common Market telling me that if I want my results to be Certified Believable, I have to go back and re-measure every little bit of my life using an officially calibrated cubic centimeter scoop.  Excuse me?!  Can someone please show me exactly how I ended up in a place where unelected Flemish bureaucrats have supplanted the inspired poets despite doing everything I thought was required of me??  Next thing you know some representative from the U.N. will be at my door telling me my pit isn't deep enough and my pendulum has swayed itself a bit raw.  ENOUGH!  

     But time I got back to that teaspoon, I think.
     I mean, cubic centimeter scoop.
     Hope they at least didn't misspell your cell block's name when they engraved yours.

     *Sigh*