The Destruction of Tenochtitlan

Wednesday June 19,1996
I subbed for Mrs. Gueler's class. They're so good. I finished the whole paper plus the crossword puzzle before lunch and I read William Carlos Williams' imagining of the destruction of Tenochtitlan. Williams offers a sort of archetypal psychology for Cortez and Colombus, as if they were not the architects of their fates, but puppets of it.
One of the girls in this class stroked my arm. I told her to go to lunch.
My car is very dirty. My mom wrote in the filthy film on the window, "Mom loves you." My sister wrote, "Happy Farter's Day."
The kids are writing sentences with adjectives. I'm not going to softball again today. I probably won't type, either. I'll take a nap when I get home and fix a garden burger, maybe wash my truck when it cools down, then read a short story and send "Miracle Mile" somewhere.
School will be over in half hour. After I wash the car, I'll treadmill for an hour, burn off the half a chocolate cookie I ate today. I wish I had some pot. I get paid Friday. I have to get an exhaust leak on my car fixed so I can pass my smog test and get my truck registered. Quino could probably get it passed despite the leak, but it might be part of the reason I can't breathe. I'd like to take my car to Tom Graves on Pietro Drive to get Freon for the air conditioning, but that's the street my dad lives on.
I've still got to straighten out my desk.
What else?
Mayra is labeling a map of the US with velcro letters.
I want to find a new school to work at. I'll probably watch pornos and jack off today.
Dina called last night to talk about Shirelle's stupidity.
Nabokov knows. So does Sting.
My nose is peeling. If you finished your work today, then you're all done. No homework. What else? I'll finish this when I get home.

6-18-96 Tues
Yesterday was washed out again by the fucking idiot I live with. Let's not go into it. I just want to get these three pages done and then I've got to get to my desk and straighten it out and see where I'm at, but my confidence for working on Jim has once again been thwarted by a fucking cunt. I guess I'm just a weakling.
I'm going to walk up to the Four Star Revival Theater on Wilshire to see the movie "Searching For Bobby Fisher" for five dollars. After, I'll walk to Dizzy Debby and have a ginger ale and a conversation. I read the paper today and watched the Dodgers split their double header in a golden light at Wrigley on WGN. I also read an essay by David Denby in which he takes on the issue of the established literary cannon's revelance in a multi-cultural society. It is called "Does Homer Have Legs?" Denby went back to Columbia to re-take the Hum Lit courses. He ends up defending the cannon and works such as the Iliad as relevant across time and culture regardless of their underrepresentation of women and other cultures. I need to think about this. We need to begin at the beginning, right? The Iliad is the beginning. It's older than the Bible. Once women began contributing, they were studied, Woolf and Dickinson, for example. The same with other cultures ike Dubois, Wright, Morrison, Angelou, etc. There you have it. What's the problem? The people whining about the cannon are shitheads.
I've just come out of that rundown old theatre. Bobby Fisher was a good film. A fresh take on "Winning Isn't Everything". I'm at a sushi place down the sidewalk now. No one that works here speaks English. I love LA. I really do. I just wanted a hot tea while I wrote, but I felt silly not ordering anything else, so I asked for a salad, too. It came with crispy salmon skins. Should I order some sake? A couple of winged creatures stroll aimlessly on my table top.
I had a dream there was a Lake Geneva near downtown. It was a sparkling day. A band played on the patio of a cool club looking over the lake. Beneath the club was a huge two-level used book store. Heaven.
I've got Chandler's High Window here with me. I'm going to read In the American Grain by W. C. Williams first, though. Should I go to Dizzy Debby tonight? I should come home and write.
I'm empty again, though. I blame it all on yesterday. I came home from camping feeling good and ready to go, and the treacherous bitch destroyed it.
High Window is Chandler's third novel. Written in 1942.
Where do I go from here? The Cheshire cat knows. I miss dope, but I suspect it changes nothing except for the amount of money in my pocket. I feel like it'll ease my soul, but that's a lie. Isn't it? An attractive chocolate-skinned girl sits across the way. The pretty Japanese girls here have the requisite porcelain-smooth skin.

Light Years and the Palomar Plunge

June 16 Sun 11:59
Why does God always punish his people? In Numbers they understandably get sick of eating nothing but manna day after day, and they pine for a little meat. The punishment for this infraction? Death by plague. Cool God.

I guess he'll become kinder after the birth of Jesus.

The middle school kids were a good group. Howlin' like wolves in the brush, having sword fights with old tree limbs, squealing at bugs. Dan is the same. He had an effective reign over the kids. I got a fire going and grilled a couple of catfish fillets and ears of corn and heated up a can of vegetables. I told an edited version of the Baja 3000. We talked about UFOs and stuff around the campfire. The next morning we hiked the trail up to the observatory at the top of Palomar. They say the 200 inch Hale Telescope has doubled the size of the known universe since 1948. There is a simple museum displaying photographs of different galaxies and nebulae discovered from the top of that mountain with the Hale Telescope. It is MIND BOGGLING the distances covered by these telescopes. Light travels 186,000 miles per second. The distance light travels in one year. How many seconds are in a year? 60 x 60 x24 x 356 x 186,000 is the number of miles in a light year, (so it is both a unit of time and distance)--and they have pictures of glaxies that are billions of light years away, and millions of light years across! Incredible. I regret that I talked myself out of buying a poster of the horsehead nebula. A Cal Tech geek gave us an uninspired tour of the inside of the observatory. After that, we took "The Palomar Plunge", a fifteen mile, 5,000 foot drop from the top of the mountain to the bottom on moutain bikes. It was even more dangerous that I had hoped and way cool.
I slept at my mom's on the way back to LA. Today I golfed with John at Brea. We were paired with an old trucker with hula girls and dice and panthers tattooed on his forearm, and his son. After golf, we went to my cunado's for a BBQ and to watch the Sonics blow their chance to upset the mighty Bulls. The Dodgers won today and are now tied for first with the fading Padres. Tomorrow I'll read and write and see a movie and get a haircut and maybe wash my car. Definitely have to add a few more sentences to Jim. Without a doubt. Tomorrow. Until then...!

Palomar Crappie

June 14, Friday
Klesko just homered for the Braves, Ross Porter infroms over a radio frequency shared with an impassioned Latina singing in Spanish. I'm waiting for Dan and his class to meet me here at Observatory Campground on Mt. Palomar. At Lake Henshaw, I had a strike in the first minute my line was in the water, a little catfish, too little to keep, his whiskers and down-turned mouth seemed to convey his pissed-offedness at having been hooked. Fish were flopping out of the water all over the lake; it looked like the makings of a banner day. They jumped over my line. I dropped mealworms on their noses. They danced around my bobber. All I caught was a sunburn and two measly, unkeepable bluegill.
Another guy there reeled in a nice string of crappie. I went over to see what I was doing wrong. I ascertained that I really wasn't watching my bobber close enough. Any kind of dip or unusual ripple and you snap your wrist and hook the fish. He told me about some Vietnamese that had been there yesterday. He said it looked like Vietnam there yesterday. "Look at the mess," they left," he said indicating some litter on the shore. "Them and the blacks," he said, "always leave behind their trash." He didn't know I had just taken a sloppy shit on the shore and used one of those brown paper bags to wipe my ass. I saw crows were into my bait and so I excused myself.

Here comes a blue van. Maybe it's Dan. I'm getting ready to grill some catfish I bought at the store yesterday. And some corn on the cob. I'll roll a cigarette first, though, even if I wheezed all last night. I think my mildewed sleeping bag added to my repiratory woes. The blue van was not Dan. I think I last saw him in Utah in '92.
I can't think of anything else to write. When I get home, though, I think I'll be able to proceed on a paragraph or so into Jim Crack. When?
Sunday night? Definietly Monday. If Shirelle's not around. I'm doomed. My lips are chapped. There are a lot of ferns around here. A ranger gave me directions to San Luis Rey Creek where I can swim or fish if I want to and have time. Here comes a blue Suburban or something. Maybe it's Dan. It is not, though. I'll be able to read when I'm done here. Dan's bringing a bunch of kids from his middle school.

The Sole Soul

Thurs. June 13

The sole soul!

I'm waiting on a bench in front of school or I was, rather, but now I'm in a tent on top of Palomar Mountain, not a soul here but mine, and perhaps those of the operators of the vehicles I can hear passing back out on the road. Sound really carries in silence such as this.
A toad greeted me upon my arrival. I bent to look at him real close. He was a cutey.
I bought some rolling tobacco at the general store at the bottom of the mountain, more as a prop for my camp than anything else. "You got any Drum tobacco?" The proprietor didn't know, but indicated a shelf of tobacco. There was the Drum. The pouches were coated with a fine layer of dust. "Looks like it's been here a while," I said. A beat skipped as I handed it over to be rung up at the register. "Oh, no," said the proprietor. "We are so close to the highway; It gets very dusty in here." "All that dust blows in off the highway." I believed him.
Tomorrow maybe I can catch a bass or a cat at Lake Henshaw. If I don't get abducted by any of these stars. So many it's frightening to be all alone with them. Tomorrow will be a mob of squeeling adolescents. I may as well enjoy the solitude tonight. Finished Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas. It sucked.
Have to read Bible verses that I never got to on Sunday. I was too depressed.
My mom called today worried about my future cuz of what Shell did.
Bless us all. May my bait be alluring. Buenos noches. May the birds wake me at the right hour with a little zippity doodah. Don't let the tent bugs bite.

No More Thinking Aloud Allowed

Wed June 12
The pain in the ass has arrived. No more thinking aloud allowed. You think you can come in here and just lay down some food and all's well?" Moses told Aaron.
The Padres lead the Reds 3-2 from Jack. Seattle staved off elimination by a Bulls team that badly wanted a sweep to bolster their credentials as the best team in NBA history.
I should hit the treadmill my heart hurts can't think no urge to go on but the one like grampa Z has to always move on or move back or get out of his seat or go home or move between homes still need to read bible and schedule for the week I haven't even brushed my teeth today. I haven't seen a newspaper since Sunday. The hinges squeek, I shudder to think...The front door opens and closes dreadfully: the roommate has returned. I didn't care to get my haircut or car washed today. There's some sitcom on about teachers with Meredith Baxter Birney. It's mostly set in a faculty lounge. It's a unsettling to see Baxter Birney in a role other than the mother on Family Ties. The boy who's only fond memory of family is that of laughing at the TV... Nah.

Tues. June 11
I got another DUI Sunday night.
in your closet. Why not unpack them along the wall for display, a library on the floor until we can build some shelves.
And that weed was in my bag.

Sat. June 8, 1996

Shirelle, Peachtree, and I are waiting a the bar in the Islands restaurant in Burbank for a table. We've got a 2 hour wait until our movie starts. ~~ The lights just dimmed in here. The movie we're going to see is another one of this summer's boffo blockbusters" "The Rock" with Sean Connery, Nic Cage, and Ed Harris commandoing around Alcatraz. ~~ We know a place in San Diego called Dick's Last Resort where it's mandatory that all waitresses be big, loud, and burly. ~~ Now Peach is at the candy store. He bought some gummiworms, some malted balls and some other kind of balls. Now hiring.

The movie was ridiculous, much noise. ~~ Peach cursed weed at dinner-

Dude while I was searching your room for evidence that you had perpetrated credit card fraud against my person, I discovered boxes of books