I'm So Not Cool

Sat August 10
Hey, this is a new pencil. It's an EF Eberhard Faber American 2 HB. My mother just called. The power is out at her house. Apparently, it is so throughout much of the Western U.S. My mom was excited and worried about the power outage. It reminded her of one Back East in '65. Isn't that amazing, that primal elation we feel when we lose our electricity? It throws us back to the dark ages, freeing us from our modern schedules.
Things flying through your head: words, pictures, voices, ideas; concepts, but then they go away. What is that? Just random static. I spent $228.00 at the Virgin Megastore yesterday. The LucasArts MacIntosh Archives VOL. 1 CDROM set, yeah, and a buncha other shit, why bother listing it all? I'm listening to the "Dead Man Walking" soundtrack. I smoke pot from the guitar fiend bong.
I drew a picture of it: A little ceramic demon water pipe with its tongue hanging out, playing a guitar with its claws, the guitar is a pipe.

Carlos just showed up. He and Thing and I are supposed to be going down to Manhattan Beach. Shirelle called and said that she heard on the news that the National Guard was being call out and the public was being advised to stay in. I haven't had three pages worth of crap to say for quite a while. Harry Youtt's daughter sat next to me in the upper left corner by the door and said some nice things to me at the break about the paragraph I wrote about the boy skipping naked through the park.
One of the CDROMs I got is "Starry Night" with text and images from Van Gogh's paintings and letters. I've started reading The Lady in the Lake by Raymond Chandler. Yesterday, Mariachi and Un Real, and Gracias picked me up after school in Pacoima, and we stopped in Burbank to see "Escape From LA". It was hokey fun, dumb and clever. Out at the car after the movie, Mariachi opened the door and pulled the seat forward and motioned me to get in back. "I don't fit back there, I know from riding up, why don't you get in the back?" "C'mon, Zurn, quit fucking around. Get in." Gracias was walking around the parking garage trying to get better reception on his phone. "I rode back there on the way here. I don't fit. You're shorter than I am. Besides the first person to get to the car door should save everybody's time and climb in back instead of waiting there like a short little 5' 9" fuck and get in the back seat!" If only you knew Mariachi. He wouldn't budge. I said," Fuck it. I'll take a taxi." I walked off, downstairs, dickhead calling after.

I Move and I Shake, but I'm No Mover and Shaker

August 8, Thurs-
I've got four or five minutes while the noodles boil. Tonight from 9 to 10 I'll treadmill. It's hard to think while noodles are boiling. This evening by the window with the TV, computer, computer, and radio on, there still ain't nothing to say. The noodles cool. I'll return Ron's Van Gogh book. The guitar looks fall over leaning on the couch.
I move and I shake, but I'm no mover and shaker. Strands hanging from mouth all gone now.
Jeopardy starts in 18 minutes by the yellow framed circle clock's brass axle.
Got to wash the pan first. Stones are on.\
it fell into my hands
plants to live
People read for information
What about fiction?
Lyin' so fast barely keep up.

checking my schizophrenia

Wednesday August 7
Van Gogh has shot himself in the gut and bled to death.
What .
Girl asked me to talk in a deep voice checking
my schizophrenia The screen blanks off again
What else to think.
confess swear scruff
He looked unkempt
I got a catch a freaking bus in the morning
sure enough the hinges squeal
An inch on my scalp
- All you ever wanted to be.
Sometimes Evil economics
May as well just finish up these three pages
I was thinking how at school power struggle

He was unkempt, grubby
and neglected-looking. His skin had the appearance
loose flaky topsoil

Blabber

Tuesday August 6

Here we are in room 1278 of the Public Policy building in UCLA. Betsy is blabbering about a number of subjects ranging from gays at Mardi Gras to killer whales of Palos Verdes.
I had a big ol' nasty sauteed musroom burger with cheddar and muenster cheese and sour cream and dipped my fries in mayo. Read the paper. Walked up here and got the crossword done before Betsy began blabbering.
oh there was the softest light betwee two fog-shrouded San Fernando mountains, like a painting, far off it was, mystic, yes.
This Sweish woman just told the most beautiful story of an old sculptor repairing a statue of the Madonna and thinking back on his family.

August 6
There's that sinking sensation again, not quite like clockwork, but maybe Pavlov's dogs. Shirelle took me to work. I got some letters from the DMV.
The Dodgers are a young team trying to live up to expectations.
There's a poem here called "Constantly Risking Absurdity" a Ferlinghetti circus poem.
Who am I writing to?
Who am I writing for? That I can answer.
Me.
but to I don't know.
-
Fear is a prudent thing.
You don't help a person grow by putting them down." Tink Mary said.
-
Maybe if I got on the treadmill.
That's your black magic knocking shit over, all that stomping your do.
Tomorrow I got to be facilitator at the meeting. What about Family Math?
-Class tomorrow night,
I feel like a numbskull dimwit, like maybe I should have gone to AA today.
-I should rent "Searching For Bobby Fisher". Start a chess club at school. Collect chess games so there are enough for the whole class.
I smoked.
-I used to like his Freedy Johnston but now I think his voice is sissy and the music weak.
-
Shucks I cant think of anything to write.
-There's a humming in my bones. The computer hums in my bones.
I read some about Gaugin. How he seems to have so readily contributed to Van Gogh's breakdown and of his 13-year-old brides in Tahiti.
-The GIP said the $500 he paid for bail has finally been returned.
-Mrs. Kaplan said she would drop me by UCLA on her way home tomorrow.
_I'm becoming interested in painting.
I've got nothing to say today. There aint nothing to say nothing to say today. Didn't have anything to say the other night either. I'm stuffed. I need some oranges.
I want to paint.
This album sucks.
My foot shakes like the tail of a rattlesnake.
The tape went off.
I've been dropping a lot of stuff. Fumbling and jerking silverware and disks and things to the floor like I've got Lou Gherig's disease.

Like a Centaur

Sun. August 4
I'm listening to a tape from one of those mini recorders I kept in my breast pocket when I was a doorman at the pub at UCI, the crowd talking, people enthusiastic to see me (They want to get in free), me rousting a passed out guy ("Come on, Bud, one foot in front of the other"). It's interspersed with my novice guitar playing where I must have taped over it. It doesn't sound that bad. And there are some stoner comments driving my car up to Vancouver, and some from riding my bike around LA on acid, ("I'm like a centaur"). I was cleaning my desk while I listened to U2's "Boy" album on besides the mini tape. Thing and I went to the Dodger game against the Braves. The Dodgers lost a weak effort. After they gave up two errors for the Braves go-ahead runs in the ninth, we headed out to Thing's truck and went down Figueroa as far as we could before it became a maze of one-way streets. We found our way to the 73-year-old Pantry on 3rd. The check says the 71-year-old Pantry, but our waiter informed us that it was actually 73. He also told us that it was owned by Mayor Riordan. An old lady tripped on the carpet in there. I wonder if she supports the mayor, or if she's going to sue him.
Got pot (Happy face). It's already 10, though. I need to go to bed and read my Bible pages. Moses is going over the law again. It's Dueteronomy, though, so he's on his last legs. Forty days on the Temple Mount, 40 days and 40 nights Noah was at sea, 40 years the Israelites roamed the wilderness; I picked 40 as one of the numbers in the 53 million Super lotto the other day. Didn't win.
I need to learn to get by on 6 hrs sleep. This 8 hours of sleep every night is killing me. My guitar playing is interesting. Rough, crude, but interesting, I think, distinctive.
All this time I thought this little tape player was busted, even tried to return it, but there's just a little speed switch on the side that needed to be set. duh

Not the Kind of Image You Want Bouncing Around Your Head

Sat. August 3
At Ellsworth's in Manhattan Beach with Kimbu Shay and Getoff and Jeff. We've just walked back along the strand from Hillary's Hole. My sister and Getoff's brother lagged behind; there seems to be some romance in the air tonight, for some anyway
Paul and Sanyo took me to the Norton Simon Museum today. I love that girl. I can tell because the sight of her, the thought of her gives me butterflies.
Geteoff's trying to get a porno going. I told them how Shirelle had borrowed one from the Insanity Pepper downstairs, and I popped it in, and it was two guys doing a girl, and then, before I could do anything about it, one of the guys started sucking the other guy's dick. I couldn't shut it off fast enough. That's not the kind of image a guy wants bouncing around in his head.
Getoff just took Kimbu downstairs, but Jen and Eric were already there.
I sketched Van Gogh's "Peasant" today and some other stuff.
I wish I had some pot. What else?
Adam Smith's lament -
Chix just want to be attractive, and that's their foremost measure of themselves.

Such poignancy tonight, the crowd in the bar was so carefree and animated; one girl sat on her boyfriend's knee riding it like a horse.