Henry Moses is a friend of mine.
I've known Henry, oh say, almost 30 years. Yet in those 30 years I've never seen him sit still in a city or town or village longer than two whole weeks, which means we catch up only now and then.
Through the years I've gotten many letters and postcards from Henry, from places as far away as Bangkok, Hertfordshire, Dawson City, Tangiers and even Sydney, Australia. Henry likes to see the world every year. How he gets the money... well, I don't ask and he doesn't tell.
But he does tell stories - most of them real, some of the made up (I suspect), some of them apocryphal. He even talks in his sleep. One time in Montreal he slept on my couch and I heard him tell an entire bawdy version of a Canterbury tale, with his little invectives thrown in to make it his own. I taped half of it with a little Phillips tape recorder I kept beside my bed that I used to record my dreams onto as soon as I woke up. I wanted to do my own version of Jack Kerouac's Book Of Dreams, but my dreams paled in comparison to what I was hearing, year after year, coming out of Henry's mouth.
So I started writing these things down. Anecdotes, stories, lies, outbursts, random sentences he emits when he's stewing over a full mug of Foster's beer and in some sort of Proustian trance. Henry will visit (or write), completely impinge on my life and lifestyle for a week or two, and then be gone with the next mode of transport leaving town.
I have Henry's permission, finally, after years of haranguing, to publish these strange pearls of wisdom. Some are esoteric, some are direct warnings, even of violence, but all were deemed worthy by myself to either jot down in an old yellow notebook, record after the fact into my trusty Phillips EL 3302A, or in more recent years into my iPhone.
I don't feel it's necessary for long-winded backstory or history lesson on who Henry Moses is or where he came from. You may learn as you go along what the real story, and I'll drop in from time to time to explain or give context to the strange messages you are reading.
This is it. This is Henry Moses in his own words. I can offer nothing more than his truth.
Jeremy Milks
January 2024.