A Deep Down Fear Someone's Going to Shoot Him in the Head

Friday October eighteenth
Ahright Ahright. Where we at? Home here on Kensiton, at my desk which I've just straightened out; threw away the envelopes the bills came in and the junk mail, and the old ATM receipts and changed the month on the calendar: tore off September and tucked it behind the rest of the year. Stacked past journals in the corner. Typed a page from a lovesick 92 journal.
The newly born Phoenix Coyotes are on the ice now against the Flyers. Hockey in the desert. What hath man wrought? Hell is air-conditioned by now. The radio plays eighties tunes. I'm worried about my youngest sister. Address the ideal of staying married for a lifetime and raising a family, and being from a failed marriage. What makes brothers and sisters? I looked up the words brother and sister and parent in the big dictionary over there that has a whole table to itself. There is a distinction between sister, and sistergerman which is a sister of the same parents.
I have to write a two-page character study tonight. I need to stick with Jim Crack, though lately I've been wanting to write Zane. Zane is introverted compared to Jim.  Jim I think has fewer compunctions. Jim's channel keeps changing. Life happens to him.
There is another story I have to write using a Swiss Army knife ad from a magazine listing a hundred and some uses. And I have to read the next four chapters of Judith Hearne, plus five to seven more first lines. And for Rob Roberge a story tying together three disparate objects, one of which, is from a photo. I'll have to do that one on Tuesday and Wednesday.
I went to the super market. It was oddly uncrowded. It was easy to drive across San Vicente and Pico, and it was easy to park. I bought to bottles of chardonnay Maule Valley Barefoot chard.
Hole is coming through the speakers now; I popped in the casette.
"I've got a big ego, but I don't want to step on anyone's toes," he told him.
I think prayer is the first step. Prayer equals hope. How does prayer affect Jim. He certainly has a memory of his mother teaching him to pray.

The Thing said, "I wonder when that guy's going to get into politics," when JFK, Jr. appeared on the television. I said, "Never. He's probably got a deep down fear someone's going to shoot him in the head."

Be Beating Still My Heart

Thursday October seventeenth
I had a good streak of three pages until I became venomously depressed. I don't want to exert the effort to figure out why. Couldn't it just be a chemical reaction brought on by the chilling of the new season? October, I think, has always been a trouble to my psyche. It goes back thousands of years, I'll wager. I'm at the Tony Roma's here at Universal Citywalk. I drank one bourbon. The barmaid asked me if I was ready for another. I said I wanted to chew the ice of the first one first. I might have gone to a movie, but I preferred to have a bourbon. The President is here somewhere in Universal City. I asked the barmaid if she knew where. She said, "Down there, in the park," and pointed out the door.
What is there? The shiver from bourbon verges on orgasm. Maybe I'll order a baked potato. There are writers in my class who are better than I am. The one at campus is more academic and less hip than this one here at Universal, like the distinction between literary and popular fiction, maybe. I feel nearly competent at the hip class, at the academic class somewhat inadequate. We'll see.
Ordered that potato. Here it is. Shredded cheddar cheese, bacon, sour cream, butter, chives, be still beating my heart. I'll be back in a few minutes.

So, guess what? Braves and Cards Game Seven--Who's going to the Series?
I'm still hungry. Chicken wings for 4our bucks? Muffhugger. I wrote an A to Z story that turned out to be about a family that was an odd amalgam of conservative American and Fundamentalist Islamic values that was putting Grandma to death because Grandpa had violated her. I leave that violation to the audience's imagination. It's
This place is crawling with state troopers because the President is around.
I wish my A to Z story wasn't so terrible. The violation-- oh, let's leave it off the menu.
Roberge is gonna think I'm a homo.
I'm fascinated by the "F" word.
-I'm a godam weakass can't last twenty minutes without a beer before class.
-Guy down the bar argues the Alomar-spitting-in-the-face-of-the-umpire incident.
-Woe is me.

Don't Mean to Be Derogatory

Wednesday October 16
I walked down the stairs to sit on the porch stoop. The GIP came home. Last night a firetruck and ambulance lit up the the front yard where they were parked in front of out house. McGee is on first. An old chink lives next door. I don't mean to be derogatory. I guess I've been too much of a jerk to find out if they're Korean or Chinese or Japanese or German-Irish. Sometimes you hear a pained moan from that house. In the mornings when I go to work a man in a gray sweatshirt and tinted sunglasses who also lives there is often walking and we talk on the way from the house to my car. His name is Richard. He says he has to walk, the doctors say so. He tapped his chest. What can I say? Smile. Say good-bye. Get in the car.
An elderly woman lives there, too. I don't know if she's Richard's mother or wife or what. She has severe-looking eyebrows penciled beneath a brow that appears knitted by suspicion and anger. Even though she looks old, her skin is tight on her face except for two long frown lines etched down the sides of her mouth. One time she gave me a bag of apricots. Lorilee, the actress from down the street was on her stoop talking to her and called me over to say hello. I was just my usual banal selfish self, and I just wanted to go upstairs rather than try to think of polite things to say. The whole prowler thing was going on. Another man lives there, her son, he told me once, while he was watering the lawn in his japflaps. From the kitchen window in the mornings, when I'm having my cereal, I sometimes catch glimpses of an even older man in the