The Razor's Edge

4-11-96

The lowering sun shines directly onto these pages through the window at this writing. I saw Mr. Rockwood today. He was my journalism instructor the semester I wrote for the school paper. I miss having a writing assignment and a public forum every month. I empahsized humor then. I enjoyed the compliments I got from teachers and students. Now it's all done in a vaccuum.

I drove to my class today. I forgot that there's no class this week since some teachers are on spring break. And of course I got stuck in a traffic jam on the way home and my car over-heated.

I finished The Razor's Edge today. I don't know what to say about it. It wasn't boring, but the only thing compelling was to see how Larry's quest for God would come out, as pretentious as that might seem to be. The other characters, Elliot, Isabel, et al, are unaccoutnable bores, superfluous to the central them of Larry's quest. On the first page, Maughm says the book is about Larry, but it's more about the people he knew. I suppose this is realistic and worthwhile, but unsatisfactory in its lack of conflict.
It's interesting that Maughm himself is in the novel. The narrator is the author.
I remember having had this feeling of the Knowledge of God which Larry describes near the end, atop his peak in India, when I was first getting high in college, this encompassing of the absolute. The feeling seemed real and definite at the time, and I've had glimpses of it since in certain travels and bedtime thoughts and childhood memories, but now lately, this memory is more like a postcard I send myself from the past. In this day and age, the pursuit of God is a luxury few can afford.

What else?

Peter Lee came over the other night. We went over to Dimona's and Oliver's and met Shirelle and smoke and drank and played seven card stud well into the night. I walked the six miles home.

I took Glory and David and Jimmy to the Dodger game last night. They enjoyed themselves and so did I. The Dodgers beat the World Champion Braves nine to two.

I whapped a wasp's nest with a broom today and smashed it good and killed them all.

Be squee karee pee

The teacher next door is driving me nuts.

I wonder if any of that nasty wine is left in the fridge.

Random Observations

4-10-96

I'm taking three kids from my class up to the Dodger game tonight.

I wish the Razor's Edge had given a more detailed description of larry's quest for God in India and less of his Paris social life. Sie la vie.

I'm in my classroom. The kids are gone. The leaves are coming in green on the sycamore out the window. A pair of sparrows is building a nest in the bird house we put up. The sky is gray metal. My head is utterly empty.

The Riverside sherrifs beat up on two illegal aliens from Mexico who were not resisting arrest. They had been in a truck with twenty-one others who ran away from the police and spent an hour and a half swiping other vehicles until they rolled to a stop near a nursery and they all jumped out and scurried away except the two who did not flee and were beaten with batons by a gang of cops.

I think smoking pot will stoke my imagination.

Every morning after the kids write in their journals I call on a few to read their latest entry. Once they asked me to read from mine, but I couldn't because the contents are so profane and pathetic and illegal. What kind of message am I giving them that they have to read from theirs but I won''t?

One time my brother and I were fighting at Knott's Berry Farm and he started crying. A lady walked by while my brother's face was contorted by sobs. "Isn't he ugly when he cries," I said to the lady.
She said, "No, but I think you're very mean."
This makes me feel so sad now. I don't know why we were fighting.

My mom called me to go up to Yosemite with her and Karen and John in a few weeks.

Que mas?

Nothing. There's nothing else to say. How 'bout another memory? In kindergarten there were taped x's on the floor where we were supposed to sit.
There was a Linus run on the floor of my bedroom. Happiness is a warm blanket.

Jesus Alfaro, the custodian, just came in. We talk baseball...Someone was throwing away some Naitonal Geographics from the 40's. he took them home. The conversation turns to the mistakes of Neville Chamberlain's appeasement of Hitler before WWII.

"The Second Coming of Jesus...The signs of His coming," Jesus says, "Eathquakes, Famine, AIDS, Ebola, Mad Cow Disease..."
I nod pretending like I know what he's talking about.

Nothing Important

Tuesday April 9
Preheating the oven to bake some tater tots for an after school snack. This is my life. It was sunny and cool today. I heard that old Saturday morning cartoon classic School House Rock song "Conjunction Junction" today and now I can't get it out of my head, but I don't know the words. "Conjunction junction what's your function? Hooking up phrases and clauses that sound right--Is that how it goes?

Need to organize my desk.

I don't know what people think of me Especially at my teacher classes. They must all think I'm a weirdo.
I have to work on that portfolio. And on Jim. Or maybe just one or the other. I'm taking three of my fourth graders to the Dodger game tomorrow night. It occurs to me that baseball is an inane pursuit. Maybe that's what's so cool about it. That and it kind of keeps me out of trouble since I try not to party so much on Saturday when I have a game on Sunday. The words "kind of" and "try" being huge variables.

Adam must have thought Jim was a jackass?

Dan's brother wandered around cracked. There was a big search for him in southwest Hacienda Heights. They said he said he was Jesus Christ and pulled a knife on his sister. They sent him to a hospital to be commited. Tom chose not to be Mormon. He did have a hollowed-out look.

A few of his capillaries got twisted.

I popped those tots in. They should be ready in about seventeen minutes. It's 2:33 now.

My guitar sounded ok a few times last week.

Think I'll take my pole out to Lake Perris, drop in to see my grandparents after.

Talked with Ko about going up to Alaska this summer. I need to walk up to AAA and get a map and a tour book. That's a lot of miles on my truck. Tax time is coming. I haven't been able to find the state form anywhere.

Daylight Savings Time began last weekend. I always used to like the longer days because I was allowed to go out and play after dinner, but lately I don't notice that much difference. I wish I had the nuts to go to the park and get into a basketball game. Playing after dinner.

I turned off the oven

What else? Nothing seems important. Maybe I'll finish Razor's Edge.

Finished it.

Mike saw Lawrence's Son's and Lover's on my bookshelf. "I don't even want to know what that is," he said.

Jeopardy is looking for young professionals Evening auditions for those with hectic schedules.

Nothing Here

April Easter Midnight

We went bowling tonight, Thing, Getoff, and I. We were the only white guys there. We couldn't figure out how to operate the computerized scoring. I won the first game

Shirelle stayed in. She's upset about her broken curling iron, and she is in bed now sniffling about being fat.

Mon April 8

Having a hard time with this lately. Its unrealistic to think you'll always be able to just sit down and write and have ideas come out of you that a worth recording. I don't know if I've ever had any. I do it anyway. Maybe my mind's blank from too many drugs and hanging out with illiterates all the time. Nobody I know likes to read. Walter reads all those self-help books and the Thing sticks to screenplays. I should join a book club. Maybe there's one full of hot chicks. I know one in the Valley. Around here, there's no creative drive, no depth of thought--Ugh. Listen to me. How can a dork be so arrogant? Whatever. Shirelle and I drove through amateur hour traffic to my mom's in Orange County. We BBQ'd. My step sister is beginning to show. Kare Bear hid plastic eggs with quarters in them around the yard. I was quiet. My stepfather told me to smile.
My brother, the Thing, Peachtree, and I are going to Opening Day at Dodger Stadium today.

Shirelle's mom and brother visited the other day. I rode my bike to Larchmont to pick up my inhaler, and I sat at a table in front of Louise's and drank iced tea and ate focaccia bread and read over the newspaper.

One day I'll own a Winnebago. Right now, though, I'm about fifteen grand or so in debt.

I really need to get cracking on my novel. I need to fill out the character of Adam Smith or whatever the guy's name is who walked into the room where Jim is. Adam will tell him about going to Utah. I need some illustration for Adam's desire to get out, some low-life thing that makes him want out of California. A 16-year-old on the beach? Fired? Aaron says, Did you hear about Dan?"

Bizarre Celebration

April 4

I remember once my dad's blazing arctic eyes as he primed the lawnmower outside the window of my bedroom. I had been sentenced there for some infraction I no longer remember and I was saying in my furious little boy's voice that I hated him. I hate you! I was spitting it, hissing it. I hate you! Then I heard the noise out the open window and pulled the curtain aside and there were my father's eyes hard and hurt. In Cerritos so forgettably long ago, third grade or earlier. He was wearing that gray Mickey Mouse T-shirt and his American flag shorts.

-

She comes out. She says, "J, you gotta flush the toilet when you're done."

What else? Writing neatly. I don't have the muscular dexterity for that. The dog out back whines as if pained, and my teste begins to ache.

Nervous] I ought to let the kids assign me homework.

Scattered remembrances An A to a C

Go! God bless our souls. Laugh.

Dude who never looks at a person when he talks to them.

Easter approaches - rebirth -resurrection -

Tomorrow is Good Friday. It's morbid and bizarre to me this celebration of the crucifixion. I can see the nobility of Jesus's martyrdom, but it's strange nonetheless. You can see where some of Jesus' claims could be annoying to someone who hadn't witnessed any of his miracles.

Glimpses of Lives

April Third

Another one of those blank days. Nothing occurs. It dissuades you from writing. I do it anyway. Larry, in the Razor's Edge, pains me in his will to do what he pleases without succumbing to the guilt of disappointing the desires others have for him. It gets boring though when the narration deals with his social life in Paris.
Blech. On the way home I drove through the Del Taco on Santa Monica and Highland. Two punks were making out behind the restaurant. Pure Santa Monica Boulevard. One was a flabby shirtless skinhead, covered with tatoos. The uniformed security guard turned his back. Whatever. I ate half my burrito and threw it away.

I enjoy walking in the early evening, admiring the variety of residential architecture in LA, Spanish, Victorian, Modern, Gothic, Craftsman, Cape Cod--I love the ones with big balconies, some have second story decks that run all the way around the house, even the first floor porches look like great places to have a lemonade and read and write. I like looking through the windows as I walk by and catching glimpses of peoples' lives, the art on their walls, the arrangements of furniture, what's on TV, smelling the food cooking, the BBQ, the stir fry.

April Fool's Day

April Fool's Day

NL
W--LA, SD, COL, SF C--HOU, STL, CHI, CIN, PIT E--ATL, NY, FL, MON, PHI
AL
W--CAL, TEX, SEA, OAK C--CLE, CHI, KC, MIL, MIN E--BAL, NY, BOS, DET, TOR

______________________________________________________________________

No weed today. Watching first televised Dodger game of regular season. Umpire John McSherry collapsed in the first inning of the Cincinnati/Montreal game and died on the field. He weighed 320 pounds.
There was a double cheeseburger from McDonald's in the fridge when I got home. I nuked it and ate it. I also ate two biscuits with peanut butter on them and half a chicken and some carrots and broccoli. Before school today I got a patty melt and hash browns from Jack in the Box. At lunch I had an itty bitty leg and thigh from the cafeteria and an apple and a roll and some green beans.
Now I've put this Netscape software on my computer which supposed to be a better, faster, cheaper way to access the internet, but it doesn't work.

Boring

March 31, 1996

Hey tomorrow's the day of the year to celebrate myself.

I had an idea for Derb. A comic book character called "The Fluke"

"I could go into it, but I don't feel like."
"Oh."
"Fuck the web."
She groaned. He had noticed a definite difference between her moans and her groans.
"You need to walk."
Why didn't he want to? She walked into the kitchen
Mrs. Mausku is a juggernaut.
But let's not speak of that just now, nor that I bent low and put my folded hands between my legs and told Carlos, "You're lucky I'm not allowed to hit the children."
Frank Thomas was talking to himself in the dugout.
Jim Crack is adopted?
I read an article in the Times Sunday Book Review about lifelong correspondence between Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams, even while Pound was an expatriate overseas broadcasting Axis propaganda in Italy and Williams was in Jersey delivering babies.

I almost quit The Razor's Edge because the first hundred pages have been so fay. Even now that the narrator has gone from concerns about Larry's engagement to Isabel in Chicago to working in a coal mine in France.  I find it elitist.

So let's jam through the rest of this. I paid some bills yesterday. The phone is maroon. The Mariners and Whitesox are tied 2-2 in the tenth. Johnson struck out 14 in 7 innings and Thomas has homered in an Opening Day gem.

Hearsay and Heresy

Sat March 30

Eeks, there's so much to do like I've got to pay these bills. Saturday in the park I think it was the 4th of July. Still lagging way soft on exercise. My belly flabs as do my arms and tits. With clothes on I'm ok, though. I ate a fresh toasted bagel with cream cheese this morning at school (yes, school on Saturday) and a few little cookies and a little blueberry muffin here in the kitchen that Shirelle made. Just got off the phone with my mom. She wants us to come over for Easter. The celebration of the resurrection is something to trip on for a bit. It's all hearsay. Funny how hearsay and heresy are similar words.
It's hard to think knowing I have to pay those bills. It seems like if I weren't so dumb that would be a little bit of almost mindless paperwork I could rip out in a small fragment of my day.

Last night we drove down to Orange County in stop-and-go rush hour traffic, smoked cigars on the way to see the first game of the annual Dodger/Angel Freeways series and the GIP pulled out the tickets for the game in the parking lot there at the entrance after the 1 and 1/2 hour drive, and they were tickets to next month's Rod Stewart show.

Looks like I'm going to a party this afternoon with Peach and Thing and Shirelle up in Laurel Canyon.