Zen is Another Word for Nothing

May 30 Thurs.
It was supposed to be a contemplative, meditative, zen experience to visit the Zhi Garden paintings of Zhang Hong and the Japanese prints in the Japanese Pavilion at LACMA, but the museum was closing, and I toured and sketched at a breakneck speed. While my eyes are serene, the rest of me is wiped out. Now I need some time in the Zhi Garden just to unwind. No such luck for my ass. I would've liked to have seen more. Maybe another time. If I hadn't have stopped for those three beers at the Casting Call bar by the Credit Union on Cahuenga and Barham to read the paper...
I'm sitting at the cafe across from the Japanese Pavilion. A security guard informed me that it's time to vacate the premises. I've got a three mile walk down Wilshire to get home. Listen to some baseball, watch some hockey, read, write, think.

Quicksand of Couch

May 29, 1996 Thursday--no, Wednesday
What? Cobwebs and nothing. A softball game tonight with my brother. Tomorrow he graduates from Cal State Northridge. He's having a big party Saturday night.
There's a bruise on my thigh. Probably got it drunk last weekend. Is my brain void of cells? I don't have a single thought or opinion.
Reading JC, though, I was marginally pleased with its development, but it has stalled now after he has gotten high and watched the porno. I need to consider the significance of these two acts. They're not sins, really, are they? But they are improper, aren't they? Is there a point in this?
Should he leave before anyone finds him. What are his thoughts here? What's his through-line? He doesn't want to go anywhere. THE QUICKSAND OF COUCH Find that one passage in last month's journal, soliloquoy the state of affairs. Don't speak with Adam until after he gets fired. Not caught masturbating. Interrupted by thoughts of mom teaching prayers - A growl for dinner over the sound of the TV interrupts.
Where does he go home to? Who's there? I need a fuckin' cabin. I need to be able to spread out my papers and absorb myself in this stuff without interruption. Maybe that Arizona Fellowship. I wish there was no softball today. Today and tomorrow are already used up. I won't be left alone on Friday.
I could go for a bong hit. Mrs. Camus' class is learning a dance for the Neil Simon tune "Coming to American" to perfrom in the Multicultural Festival here at school next week. I'm alone in a room adjoining the uninhabited teacher's lounge after school. The dance class sounds coming in from the auditorium ease the lonliness of the the refrigerator's hum.
Tom Robbins sees life and metaphor in everything.
The kids made fart noises while we watched "Jumanji" There's a dead gnat here on the table where I'm writing. I signed up for a fiction class at UCLA $185. I wrote a letter to Lisa S. in Chicago and sent her a story and one to a short story contest. I treadmilled last night and watched the Penguins outduel the Panthers in the Stanley Cup Finals while I listened to the Dodgers lose Piazza, and the game, on the radio.
What else? I'll read here a little before I head to Mike's. Maybe he's got a little puff. So o o. Gotta go see you tomorrow.

More Belly-Button Meditations

Tuesday May 28

I left this journal locked here in room 29 over Memorial Day weekend. I definitely suffered some separation anxiety. Wrote instead in the blurb journal the incidents of the weekend. It has been a mostly unremarkable 24 hours to comment on since the last entry that I did in that journal, the blurb journal. My mind and pencil are free to wander.

I'd like to go to lunch now, but I'll wait until I get home. There's a little tin can here decorated with 10 cent stamps from 1974-75: Monticello, Currier and Ives, Bunker Hill Bicentennial by Trumbo, the Pioneer spacecraft Mercury and Venus Explorations. I remember these stamps. September of '75 I started second grade.

Could really go for a puff today. I'm still embarrassed I told a girl I wanted my writing to be "gut-wrenching". Ugh. Today I call UCLA Extension, write to Lisa Sheffield and pick up the bong I left at the party in Westwood. I'm hungry. My thoughts keep turning to my belly. We played softball at school today. Some of the girls can really swing the stick. Moving write along through Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas. I'm enjoying it, it's fun to read, but I feel like I might have outgrown my appreciation of Robbins philosphy in this one.

Okay, truly, go, go, go 40 minutes without stopping today, Jim's conversation with Adam about moving to Utah and why. I wish I could puff, though. I'm so broke. I got paid Friday. I wrote checks for my bills and the money is all gone.

There seems to be nothing to think about or write about for that matter. I feel very shallow. This, I;m afraid will be one of those pages I'll cringe at reading years from now. I read about Joseph Wambaugh in the paper today. He said he didn't believe he had experience or maturity to even begin writing until he was thirty.

What I menat by "gut-wrenching" is that I want to work on feelings of my reader that are so emotional and visceral, that when I bring them to the climax, it jolts their souls. Like when Geroge kills Lenny. That's my wish, but at this point I'm willing to settle for just a little undeniable epiphany.

In twenty more minutes I'll be on my way home to type, type, type, and make some important phone calls and rehook up to the fucking net.

Until then, ciao, baby and always remember who loves ya. Amen. Farewell for now.

P.O.V

Fri. May 24

Payday! It's all accounted for though [upside down exclamation point] [sad face]. No plans for Memorial Day weekend. I have to go to that gay art class tonight and tomorrow. Went to the Folwer Museum at UCLA yesterday to see that Haitian exhibit. Took 3 pages of notes that I hope to use for a story some day, but I felt like I was just distracting myself from J. C. That class isn't til 4:00. I'll have an hour to catch up on some reading somewhere. I had lunch and three beers and a bourbon and read the paper in the Rainbow Room on Sunset yesterday on the way from the Credit Union to the museum.

Break up description with action and dialog

Jim's reflection in the shop
windows


Floating point of view or viewpoint
the head behind the eyes of the character, close-camera advantage of 1st person, but the action as happening before the viewpoint character's--and the readers--eyes, and so not being narrated after the fact...Shift this P.O.V from behind the eyes, to over the shoulder, to some distance away, including the character viewed within the scene

Notes on Visit to Fowler Museum for Haiti/Voodoo Exhibit

UCLA may 23, 1996

1) History
Aristide is known as "Titid"
U.S. Marines invaded in 1915. Why? Also in 1994.
'57 '86 Papa and Baby Doc B. Doc's sex?
"Bizarre religuous appropriations" of Dulaliers
'35, '41-'42 - Catholic, U.S. Army 'anti-superstition raids'
'15-'34 Charlemagne Peralte led 15,000 Cacos against U.S. Marines, Peralte was captured and killed--now hero.
Haitian Independence 1-1-1804 White ripped from French flag; the tittied tree; 3-headed negro ghost
Cermony at Bois Caiman (wood of crocs
Taino Indian before Columbus; slaves/birth of Creole
1697 - French got sugar, coffee, cotton
Slave poulation grew from few thou to 1/2 mil
Runaway slaves in 1791 - 1st act of Revolution; 13 yrs later, rebels drove off French; Haiti 1801 - First ever slave revolt to create a nation, only free equal in New World
World's first black republic - only one in Hemisphere - all citizens free; scorn and fear from Europe
Creole born
ruled by whip - runaway slaves called maroons

2)Spirits (Iwa)
Religion of tolerance? Land of Mountains
Woman in Blue- holy
Snake erupts from mouth in woman's chest w/rat-head, pig sacrifice
Papa Legba - invoked at beginnings of all ceremonies
Marasa - spirit of freaky kids
Lasiren - mermaid - seductress -lures offenders, rewards servants
Ezili Danto smokes unfiltered Camels - Madonna
Bosou - three-horned bull - body guard
Gran Bwa - Lord of deep forest healing, initiation
Ogou - St. Jacques - justice, hot temper, dominion over iron

Azaka - farming Ague- Sailors
Ezili Freda - goddess of love and luxury, flirtations, light-skinned, adores jewels, perfume, lace, love
she seeks, is forever unrequited, causes her to weep - heart pierced knife, sweet syrupy drinks,
grenadine, cinamon milk, fried bananas, Virginia Slims
Ayido Wedo- Rainbow wife Danbala=St. Patrick

Gede & Baron - family of raucous spirtis - personify dead, sexual regeneration, dress in black & purple, Masonic garb, graveyard imagery, sunglasses, shameless trixter, loves kids, Fri. & Mon. Days of Dead

3)Artifacts

Parade - Lead colorful iron cross, dagger cross w/ hands
Funky drums w/ faces peering out to summon spirit repositories

Veve - cosmographic signs

Fon, Kongo } Kingdoms in Central Africa
The crossroads=crucifix Kongo philosophy
Bottles w/ dolls Twins=sacred
Drawing Vere on sidewalk
sequined flags
Djab= Devil, Bizango - dark hand of magic

Masonry
Iron
Doll-head construct
Pig dogs tossing
Vodou temple [division sing circled] peristyle bodies
Ounfo eyes slexe
Drums/chants hands nailed
poto milan - central pillar - divining rod to walls
oungan - priest manbo- priestess
offering liquor, jewelry vpdevrouing cigs
face paint altars full of art, soap, stuff
Bizango - intimates
[a drawing of a black hat over glasses with one black lens ans one clear] -gede [a drawing of a skull and crossbones]