Something in the Clouds

1/2/96

I have to remember to elaborate a scene for the movie I'm going to make about the life of the Guatemalan Insanity Pepper some day, of him hammered and walking into the wrong house and falling into a closet and trying to get away with a little dog nipping on his pantcuff as he tries to get out.

Today was the first day of school after our two month break. There were only eighteen kids today. Most of them are in Mexico, still, and will come straggling back in over the next few weeks. We wrote about and illustrated our favorite memories of 1995. I drew a picture of Land's End down in Cabo. Then I did an impromptu math lesson with everything I could think to do with the number 1,996. We looked up our new vocabulary words. When I told the kids that I look for words in the dictionary that I've never heard of and then write sentences with them, they broke out into spontaneous applause. !?

There was something in the clouds this morning, a brilliance so indescribable, the word that came to mind was God--There seemed to be an author, an artist, a creator behind that sunrise.

There was something else I wanted to remember, but I can't.

There are many things to worry about in the coming months, mainly my portfolio for the credential exit interview and the test for the BCLAD. I don't even know what BCLAD stands for. I keep asking, and the answer doesn't stick. There's a lot of other crap I have to do, but I can't think of what it is right now. I've got three letters I need to write. I should call my grandmother.

The Fiesta Bowl is tonight. #1 Nebraska vs. #2 Florida for the undisputed National Collegiate Football Championship Goooooood stuff. I think I'll get some beer for the game. And some Old Maid cards. For a seating arrangement game I want to do with the kids tomorrow.
I'm going to warm up some spaghetti for dinner.
I have a lot of reading to do this week. Two shorts, part 1 of Chez Chance, Ch. 2 of the Ultimate Baseball Book.
I told Andres about the Miracle Mile story. He seemed enthused. Just last night I was thinking I didn't know anyone with artistic interests, but Andres has.
"Artistic" seems like such a fa--oty word. "Fa--oty" is funny adjective. ha ha
Oh well bo bell hell tiddy swell "He wants you to put down the cameras," Esa said. "He's Yaqui, a us spiritual--how you say? A sorceror."

Another Lap Around the Sun

1/1/96

Here we go again. Another round of drivel, another lap around the sun. It feels pretty pointless today. I have to remember that this is just exercise and no matter how lame what I write here is, at least I am not so lazy or hopeless to abandon the effort. I definitely do not want to have to sort out any confusing thoughts, or delve too deeply into my psyche, though. I'm only interested in getting the three pages done, much less so with what I actually say. After thinking about funny shit that happened last year, I hit a brief little high and quickly crashed. I became a ghost at the New Years Party at the Hollywood Athletic Club. No one could see me and I could not alert anyone to my presence except by moving objects around, like my beer bottle or my chair. I left well before midnight and spent the evening in a maudlin mood, alone, listening to a spooky wind shake the house that seemed to portend ill for the new year.

Today I think I can finish the story.

So it's 1996. Whoop tee doo. I'm not a clever guy/I don't even want to try/I don't care/So there

Could I be any more petulant?

I'm drinking grape juice this morning. Tennessee and Ohio State are tied at fourteen in the Citrus Bowl. Northwestern and SC clash in the Grandaddy of 'Em All in a little while. NW grad Charleton Heston reprised his role as Moses long enough to part the Red Sea--dyed purple--for the Wildcats as a pep stunt on the backlot at Universal. They'll need a miracle.

When I finish this I'll strum my geetar. I'm already way behind schedule even though I got up on time. I read the paper and did the crossword; I'm such a junkie. It's time-consuming and I don't and won't do anything until I scanned every damn word including the classifieds. Jeez. It took more than two hours today. Muffhugger. Wait--I spent an hour watching Batman cartoons this morning--naughty boy.
I was supposed to ride my bike to the Miller's Outpost on Pico and take back those lame shoes, but I drove. I can see this journal turning into a compendium of things I should've done, meant to do, was planning on, wanted--and didn't do.
But I'm writing! Gotta take pleasure in that. Who else is writing this morning? How many people in the world are writing at this exact same minute? Whoever you are, we've got dedication!
Back to school tomorrow. Ugh arg agh.

Calvin and Hobbes died today. Very, very sad. How could Watterson have done it? Won't he miss them? What will he do with his energy? Sigh.

12/31/95

I began the year hammered at a blackjack table in South Lake Tahoe. Shell, Tom, Big Mac, and I boomed up 395 through the cold and snowy Sierras in the silver Mustang with the souped up engine. I won $775, not counting a twenty-five dollar chip I found in my pants a couple of days after we got home. I came home with most of it, minus the hundred dollars or so that Shirelle and my brother, seemed to feel they were entitled to. Everytime I turned around one of them was hitting me up for another twenty bucks. They were already blind drunk, and they were just throwing it away on bad double downs, and longshot wheel of fortune spins. As my generosity ebbed they started calling me a cheap bastard and such. I tried to get Shrill out of the casino and took her into a people-packed elevator upstairs looking for a place to hide from my brother's insatiable appetite for handouts so we could dance or something. When I stepped off the elevator, Shirelle wasn't looking. There was this brief moment when I could have grabbed her hand or said something, and in the time I hesitated the door closed and away she went. Oh my God! I was free on New Years Eve! Devils tickled my belly. I plunged into the madness of revelers crowding the halls. Someone put a hat on my head and gave me a horn to blow and I was swept out into the river of people pushing through the streets. As midnight approached, girls were kissing everybody and then wham! I began to worry about Shirelle, I went to our motel room, a jacked up little place off the strip, empty pool littered with broken champagne bottles. I was afraid Shirelle wouldn't be able to find her way back. She probably hadn't even paid attention to the name of the place to ask directions or try to call. She was out there wandering the night.  No doubt she'd already met some dudes who were willing to let her spend the night. Then what? She'd have to wander town in daylight trying to recognize the motel. Maybe she'd have to call home and have someone wire her some money to get back.
Around three or so she fell in through the door retarded and pissed, cursing, and I pretended to be passed out.

In February I lost all that money I had won in a lame weekend in Vegas with my my mom and aunt and uncle and cousins and grandma. Hanging out with them was cool, but the tables were killing me. What's the record for losing blackjack hands in a row? We were at Circus Circumcise, and I played ten bucks and lost and played ten bucks and lost and played ten bucks and lost and played twenty bucks and then doubled down and got twenty and the dealer got a twenty-one so I lost. So I went to the ATM for another hundred bucks and played ten and lost and played another ten and lost. Impossible! I bet a hundred. No one can lose this many hands in a row. I hit eleven and got three and stayed and the dealer won with sixteen. It's against the Law of Averages! I had to win eventually. I bet another hundred. I got two kings the dealer flipped over a queen and an ace. This is how it went for three days. When I couldn't get anymore money from the ATM until midnight on the last day, I took my cousins to the rollercoaster park behind the casino with my last twenty bucks. As soon as we passed through the doors into the park, we ran into a chick in a leotard and a top hat with one of those trays suspended from her shoulders that they use to sell cigars and cigarettes, only she used hers as a platform to do card tricks, pulling aces out of her ass and so on on, kind of a three card monte routine, where she she has you pick a card and it's a three and she puts it on the table and taps it, and now it's the fucking ace of spades or jack of offs. Every dealer in Vegas must now how to do this! I have not, and will not, play blackjack ever again.

Later that month I stood in a blizzard around a Manhattan city block drinking malt liquor and waiting to go into Saint Patrick's Catherdral and read for the part of Dean Moriarty to Francis Ford Coppola. I flew out at the urging of Johnny Bayles, ("You're perfect, man.") not knowing it was a cattle call of immense proportions. The temperatures hung in the thirties and the precipitation couldn't make up its mind between rain and snow, but the wind blew steadily and the gutters were full of sleet a yard out from the curb and you couldn't cross anywhere without submerging your feet in slush up to the ankle. My feet were near frost-bit by the time I had my audience with Coppola, whose ego flooded the cathedral, and who was only accepting resumes and auditon tapes near a box, by then. I hit the bastard up for an autograph for Mrs. Feeny back home. You could see his distaste battling with his ego, apparently some part of him still basked in the adulation. Rode the train back to Morristown and slept in my friend's mom's moldy basement, woke up choking in the night lungs filled with slush and spores, my inhaler back in California. Dumbass! In the middle of the night we talked a pharmacist into not letting me die.

Before I went home we rode the train to Coney Island and took pictures of the amusement park deserted and sunk in snow.

In March, the pretty latinas I work with in Pacoima talked me into going to El Presidente with them for a drink. I only had fifteen dollars; how much trouble could I get in? I don't know who was paying, but tequila shot after tequila shot passed my lips despite my weak protests. On the way home it was raining and the Z hydroplaned on the 118/5 interchange and slammed into the dividing wall. The police came. I blew a 0.16. Doh! Officer Beaver took me in, commenting on how lucid I seemed notwithstanding my Blood Alcohol Content and the bloody gash in my temple. They stitched my head up in the Van Nuys jail and Shirelle and the Insanity Pepper posted bail and picked me up the next morning. When I went to court, the San Fernando City attorney had no paperwork, and the case was dismissed. Go figure. The DMV had its way with me, though.

Silky's dad racked up his third DUI this year. When they let him out, he went home and shot himself in the head in the backyard.

I went North in the Toyota in June. Stopped in Humboldt or Eureka maybe and had some microbrews and watched the Dodgers Giants and got into a conversation with a guy about fifty who turned out to be the lead investigator of the Unibomber. We drank all night and he invited me out with some of his agents to go dancing, and paid for my beers and kept telling me that he was married but would I dance with whoever he pointed out so he could live vicariously through me, and I obliged. Later I met an honest to God Humboldt stoner, and we went back to his place and puffed and I slept on his couch, and he gave me a few joints for the road when I left in the morning.

I crossed into Canada with some crack in my truck. I drove up the coast. Stopped in Portland, got wasted on Ash Street. I was in a titty bar trying to buy weed or acid or shrooms or something, but all they had was crack, so I got that. When I pulled up to the border, I was a sweaty mess. It was Canada, though, I figured I'd just get waved through. I mean I've crossed the Mexican border twenty-five times and never been stopped coming or going. At the little kiosk, the guy with the clipboard asked questions. Did I have weapons, knives, guns, drugs, medicines, alcohol, syringes? "No, no, no," I said. I wasn't really thinking about the case of Miller Lite in the back of the truck under the camper shell, syringes (for inflating bait) in my tackle box, a hunting knife, asthma medicine, an ashtray full of half smoked marijuana joints, and a toilet paper tube with a bag of crack packed into it with snotty tissue. The dude with clipboard looked in through the window of the camper shell. "Is that beer?" "Oh, yeah. I forgot about that." He gave me a slip of paper and told me to park in stall number so and so. I actually thought they were just going to give me some pamphlets or something, but a guy and a gal in Customs Officer's uniforms came out, pulled on latex gloves, and told me to stand on an x on the asphalt a few feet from the car. Now, my screwed up mind started to vaguely wonder what all I had in there. When I got to the roaches and crack, the sweat really started pouring out of me. The officers spent many minutes going through the car. They were both young. Then they called me over. "Mr. Zurn, enjoy your visit to Canada."
Wha? Hoh? "Uh...thank you." Drove out of there flabbergasted.
I dipped a cigarette in the crack in the bathroom of a bar in Vancouver somewhere. Didn't feel a thing. I hired a boat the next day and struck out trawling for salmon in Horseshoe Bay. Saw a one-eyed seal. Visted the Capilano Bridge.

On the way back I slept with the wapiti and sasquatch in Olympia, and capsized my kayak at at Orcas Island. Back in San Francisco I picked up a copy of the Chronicle, and there on the front page was the picture of the FBI guy I had met in Eureka the week before, at a news conference because the Unibomber had released his manifesto.

And there was that whole Cabo thing this year. Uh, whoa.

Shirelle moved in, moved out, and moved in again. Glen the Wonder Boy stayed with us for a few weeks.

I'm having an early cocktail at the Hollywood Athletic Club. Blah tiddly bla blah.

The top fifty albums of the year are counting down on the radio. Folks scurry about preparing the balloons for midnight. I'm all scatterbrains, recalling all at once--It's hard to believe. The whole year gone! Should I quit smoking in '96? Of course, I should. A lady on the radio says grimly that every man's conscience is vile and depraved. I disagree.

Champagne and Coffee

12/30/95

There's nothing to say today. The Bills beat the Dolphins in their Wild Card game, and Philly is now trouncing Detroit. I went to Miller's Outpost and bought two new pairs of pants, but I didn't try them on until I got home, and man, are they snug. So I put an English muffin in the toaster. I just heard it pop up.
Ate it with jelly and some vegetable oil masquerading as butter. So should I take the pants back or drop five pounds?
I bought some new shoes, too, but now that I'm home they look dorky, toes rounded like clown shoes and too much heel, like I wished I was taller.

I had a burst of creative energy last night. I'm on the last page of my story. I crushed some ephidrine tablets and snorted them, and drank half a bottle of wine, and a few puffs.

I read up to scene eight in Streetcar. It gets more and more complex. Not your typical soapy drama. The characters alternately tug at and repugn our sympathies. I can't decide if I detest Blanche or feel sorry for her, and where I once aligned myself with Stanley, I now distrust him. If sorrow brings sincerity, Blanche, both flouts and flaunts that notion.

The sky out the window is that flat uniform gray that deadens the senses.

What'll I do with myself tonight? I'm scheduled to see that 12 Monkeys movie at four today with Tom and Liz. The tickets have been bought. Of course, now I don't want to go.

Shrill just brought in a bottle of Brut.

I've got to change into clothes suitable for venturing out to the cinema in this steely cold. I better hurry and finish writing these three pages.

I wonder what her IQ is? I'm drinking coffee and champagne, alternating sips. I feel like a mean sitcom character.

Yesterday, after golf, that son of a bitch, Carne brought up images bestial and pedophiliac on his computer that have stained my soul. I fled the room. Why I didn't kick the shit out of him and call the police and hold him until the police came is my shame. If I see him again, that's what I'll do, so help me God.

Ugh.

So so so say say say Be bop do diddly wop wa wa wa Hi Hi Hi I wish that cheerleader on the tv whas here in my living room smiling like that. yeah yeah yeah This is like one of those awkward silences on the phone with your girlfriend who you don't like anymore.

On the Can

12/29/95

Should old (or auld?) acquaintance be forgot...I don't know that song. ...and never brought to mind? Is that it? What the hell does lang syne mean? I remember when I was a fun loving guy. I seem to have gotten stonier-hearted in my auld age, and have become much less subject to revelry and sentimental cameraderie. Why is that?

It's taking me forever to finish this last page and half of the Miracle Mile story. I'm going golfing today at Montebello with Mariachi and Carne. I think I'll abandon work today and just drink and talk and pick up the storyline fresh in a couple days. --Not like I've been working on it at a feverish pace, but I've been putting in the time and making progress.

I had forgotten that I was to play golf when I agreed yesterday to get cinema tickets for this afternoon with Shirelle, and she had her usual bitchfit when I told her.

I should be nicer. She's moved in again and rearranged the furniture and wall hangings, and it's all very foreboding. We are not a good couple. I am so damn critical, and she can't even spell my name.

What else? I'm writing this on the can. (Happy face)

Now I'm not. Why do I spend so much time with those with whom I have little in common? I need to find some friends who like to write. Your friends are your friends, though. You don't choose them by their resumes. You fall in love with your friends through shared experiences. You don't calculate, or I don't, with whom that bond is going to happen. Maybe since we put up with so much family b.s., we become conditioned to tolerating friends who are demanding and unsupportive.

The Stones are on the radio, "Gimme Shelter." Great song.

She is jumpy, constantly, irrationally, irritatinly jumpy. Thoughtful, as far as considerate (or is she?), but thoughtlessas far as logical, a hustler, she is. Really it's all wrong. So why do I keep it up? Why do birds sing so gay? Why do fools fall in love? Why must I be a teenager in love?

(scribbles)

I'm venomous. I'm at the end of my rope. I think I know why, but I'm too feckless to deal with it. Shit! Hell! I don't care growl at fuck Ahgr.

Love and Pain

You cannot waste time if you are engaged in creation, no?
Tennessee said something like that.

12/28/95

After this I'll write letters to Uncle T, and Cousin Carman Back East. Then a fifteen minute guitar pluck and we're off to the Satanic Temple in Century City where we'll enter the noxious catacoombs in an unholy search for a parking space before wandering the labyrinth on foot in search of an affordable meal, and make a sacrifice in hopes of reaching our movie before it sells out.

Getoff called to invite us to Pasadena for a beerfest at the Stuft Sandwich, but I've really got to get that old man off the mastodon and introduce the resident genius. Then I've got a harlan Ellison story on tap, from the Best Short Fiction of '93 anthology, and after that Act 1 of Streetcar Named Desire; so I should be pretty busy.

Who's gayer me or Tennesee?

It occurs to me that I allot a lot (heh) of time to the practice of writing while letting other forms of expression wither. I should plan blocks of time for talking to people the way I do with writing. I'm a lousy conversationalist; I need practice. I guess that's why I like writing in here, because it doesn't matter if what I say sucks. No one will see it, and I don't have to worry about making an ass out of myself.

I'd like to draw more, too. One drawing a week is a good goal.

It's good to sort out your time and what you want to do specifically. Everything becomes more achievable. You feel more in control of your destiny. No more guessing what next.

Yeah, right. I hate being pinned down.


Yesterday I bought a '96 Writer's Market, and that '93 edition of the year's Best Short Fiction, and a book called Chez Chance that I read about in the Times Book Review and got because its premise is similar to my Jim Crack story, what with the drugs and Disneyland. Shittily uncanny: I thought that was going to be my original idea, and this bastard has already got it in print. And he went to Irvine. I remember seeing his sourpuss mug in the the pub, with that sad sack please-love-me look--you could see it, in retrospect, now that I know he wrote a book that he craved recognition without wanting to appear to be craving recognition. Must be all unsung writers look like that. I'm just jealous he wrote a book.

I wrote something that turned out to be kind of a poem on the matter of being my father's son. It's interesting and pathetic.

Like "Leaving Las Vegas." How's all the patheticism in that garnering so much critical acclaim? Love amid the misery of alcoholism and prostitution--is it gimmicky?

Great line, though: "Maybe you should quit drinking."
"Maybe I should quit breathing."

Love and pain: you can't have one without the other.

Go Ask Alice

12/27

Dear Diary,

I read Go Ask Alice, the anonymous diary of a girl who gets "strung out on drugs" in the late 60's. There's more continuity in this fifteen-year-old girl's diary entries than anything I've done at the ripe old age of twenty-seven. The girl frankly and clearly recounts her drug experiences; you have to wonder how much of it was edited. I thought I smelled some manure between the lines, some covert political didactism. Did Anonymous really exist? Or is she the invention of some fifty-year-old Nixonian drug-hater?
It was disheartening to read an editor's note, a mere blurb at the end, that--after "Alice" had seemingly kicked drugs for good, had seemed happy with her life and her family, and had found a too-hard-to belive, church-going Prince Charming of guy of whom her parents approved, and after she had suddenly and inexplicably put down in her last entry that she was no longer going to write in her diary--Alice had OD'd. You know, once you fall under the evil spell of DRUGS, you'll never escape their destructive power.
I felt bad for her, existent or not. It seemed to me that it wasn't the drugs that destroyed her, but the narrow-minded reactions of the people around her. She was bright and sensitive girl, and she describes a wonderful sense of exploring her mind through her drug experiences, but she was met with constant disapproval from the ignorant and fearful dullards that claimed to love her. The guilt they bombarded her with destroyed her. Had she been able to experiment openly, and discuss her curiosity and discovery without fear, she'd never have had to run off to the streets and been subjected to the kinds of scum she had to deal with.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. The German Shepard left a paw print on my NO Fear shirt. How can anyone as uncommunicative as me want to write so much? Actually it makes perfect sense, since I loathe talking to people, here's where I say whatever it is I don't have to say. Duh. Duh. Duh. I need to go for a run. I'll begin a new regimen of exercise and healthy grub, fish and veggies--when school recommences. Til then, though, it'll be sloth and gluttony for me.
I'm listening to Rismky-Korsakov's "Sheherezade". I started reading "A Streetcar Named Desire".

Peace, Love, and Hope--

12/26/95

I rose before the sun yesterday. The sky in the East was already spiked golden out the kitchen window. I sat at the little table there, dismayed by the boring complexity of life or my life. I went back to bed. The sky had been beautiful, but it didn't matter.

I just need to make myself write and keep it up. I'm tired. I don't know why. Drained. When you say that life is torment, people think you're being dramatic, but the truth is that life is torment. Talking about it is for pussies, though.

Shirelle's moving in again. I'm afraid that's a big mistake. Weird how it's going to happen no matter what I think. That's a definition of life.

I feel like kicking the shit out of someone. I hate this feeling. This hatred behind my eyes. Nothing is as it should be. It's so many lies and contradictions and bullshit. You feel like rending flesh with your teeth,
Peace, love and hope--The big lies. The big untruths.

Enough of this negative bullshit. Let's just finish these three pages. It's only exercise to warm up. There was this thing about Carlos Casteneda in the paper today, synchronatic, as Castaneda inspired a character in the story I'm working on, since the man on the mastodon at the tarpits is sort of a Juan Matus Yaqui shaman, Chac Mool, never allows a photograph, or tape recording of his voice becuse it would fix him in time and place, and he wouldn't be able to go invisible; Stagancy is the antithesis to sorcery.

-What else? Saw the Yamashita's yesterday.
-What else? One of the orange caps for the mouthpiece of my inhaler is here on the desk. Maybe I ought to remember to replace it to its proper place. Great sentence.

-She and I don't relax well together.

There's the guitar tuner, the pocket knife, the big calendar, the inhaler, lighter, foil pipe, an entry tag from the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the story from nine months ago about the trip to San Felipe, on which the instructor for my LAUSD writing class wrote:

"Exceeds standards...Firstly allow me to express how astonished I am at your incredible, prolific writing capabilities. I sat with my mouth open the entire time you were recounting your Mexican adventures. I was there! I was there! But I must say your 'f--king beaners' comment, though it was in jest, though you were all drunk and just having fun, I would not make a decision to submit that comment in a paper. Particularly to a person of color. I'm glad we got your final
draft in the anthology."

Paige Kendrix wrote that. I'm not sure she knows what prolific means.

A Worldwide Multiple Orgasm

If you want to give me shit because you think I'm doing something wrong, just get in line, and your complaint will be answered in the order it was received.

12/24

Just ignore the sadness.

Sadness is such an impotent word. Haha.

In Exodus, Book 4, God tells Moses that he and the Jews enslaved in Egypt are His people. Whose people then, are the Egyptians? Did God not create them, too? Maybe He meant that because the Egyptians did not claim Him, He would not claim them. Could God have been involved in some kind of power struggle with other beliefs, other gods; were He and Osiris waging an immortal political campaign for the souls of the people? There's something totalitarian about it, as if behind the scenes these divine spirits were performing Stalinist purges of their idealogical opponents.
The Old Testament God is not the loving God that so many people talk about today. I suppose Jesus Christ is the difference. With Jesus, God seems to promise to end His use of humanity as pawns in His holy power struggle. He put Jesus, His son, His love, on Earth, knowing Jesus's jeopardy here among us brutes, to show us that God's own flesh and blood was willing to endure the pain we all endure in this world He created. Where does the pain come from?
And what about God's choices for proving His existence to Moses and the Egyptians, turning Moses's staff into a serpent? The same form Satan used to deceive Adam and Eve! What's with that? Then He turns Moses' skin to leprosy. Aren't these pretty negative demonstrations of His power? Then He says He'll turn water to blood. He turns the Nile into a river of blood. Gruesome parlor tricks Then God says He made the deaf, and the dumb and the blind. Is this a good thing? I guess these are the things that get the attention of us brutes, since we were taking the flowers and the water and all those good things for granted, as if fear is more effective than say an act of beauty or pleasure. I don't know, maybe he should have tried a worldwide multiple orgasm or something, and then Pharoah might have been more receptive to His divinity.

And what's this about Zipporah circumcising her son to spite her husband? It's like a marking of your belief in the Hebrew God--a separation from the pagan state.

-------

First ever Christmas away from my father. It feels like a sin. I feel like part of an inevitable repeating of the past