Anonymous Immortality

Th 2-26
What's there to say? I stopped at a nasty liquor store on my way back from downtown. The word fLesh was sloppily grafittied aside a door of iron bars before a stairway leading to darkness. I tarried there not. I eenie-meenied between twelve packs of Bud and Miller Lite and ended on the Miller. I slid my fingers through the cardboard handle and took a couple steps toward the counter and froze. What about those Ranier tall cans? I went back and switched. At the counter, a Pacific Asian Islander said, "Seven dollars" and nothing else. I handed him a twenty, and he gave me change. There were a bunch of cheap little children's toys on the wall, I don't even know what they were, but they made a little something somewhere in me want to cry for the poor kid that got such crap.
Joyce from Salary Allocation just called. They had relocated my salary status file that they couldn't find while I was in there today. Turns out I don't actually have enough salary units to move up the pay scale like I thought after they convert quarter units to semester units.
I just got off the phone with a guy named Marco who teaches a class called Guitar for Teachers worth two salary points. It's just down the street.
Shirelle's gone. There's nothing left of her here but the wound. I'll treat it as superficial, no stitches, let it scab over and heal, leave a faint scar.
Jehovah's Witnesses just rang the bell.
I ate a bacon cheeseburger just like I said I would. The meat was a little crunchy. Soon I'll check out that one Mexican place on La Brea across from the tea joint.
The Wallace Stevens book is called The Necessary Angel. So far he's talking about the noble and ignoble chariots with winged horses that Plato describes in Phaedrus. It was about fruity.
Kate and Jules and I need to send each other's work out.
What else? Got Charlie Parker on again. What will I eat? I'll watch "Jeopardy" at seven. I can play guitar for twenty minutes tonight. I started Linda's book. I read Neruda's "Machu Pichu". It was cool. He is forever lifted from the baseness of his life which he describes early in the poem by the experience of Machu Pichu. You can see how a poet would be affected by the anonymous immortality of a place like that. Maybe I'll call the Pepper and see if he wants to go out for a few drinks tonight. Maybe that's him calling now.

Feb. 5, 1997 Wed.
I haven't written for a few days. It's been a disheartening while. I don't really want to go into it. What will I write about? I was reading journals from six years ago. I can't believe I have been writing that long. Six years ago it was mad sporadic stuff. I sort of enjoyed reading it compared to this plodding (plotting?) I do now.
Bird's sax sings in the back. I need a special blessing this year, but what is it, and is it fair for me to ask for it? The hair drier is on in the bathroom. I'll covet my bitterness. I'll miss the big dictionary. There goes a phone. It's not mine. Now a pager is going off. Shirelle is moving out. She moved her furniture somewhere. It's a pretty sordid story. Save our souls. How to handle flaming hearts? Start passing out your e-mail address. What else? I still can't get my driver's license. I thought I noticed a progression in the old journal. An utter falling apart. Now I'm in trouble. There's a Lakers/Bulls game on the tube. Shaq aint playing, though. I caught a lively cricket. I threw him out the window. Chick says Jack Nicholson was in "Star Wars". What the heck is he talking about? I don't trust her expenditures. I've got the treademill to set up. Shouldn't I finish these three pages first. I opened a collection of essays by Wallace Stevens. I nosed through R.L. Stevenson's On Travel Writing. It started out all about Edinburgh. You know, but maybe I'm easily irritated and prone to exaggeration.
All right. Half time. I shouldn't trivialize this ritual between halves of a basketball game. Trivia. Trivia vs. Knowledge. Buncha crap. Just keep writing. There's something good in me somewhere if I only had the patience to find it. I drove through Jack in the Box this morning and had an Ultimate Cheeseburger. I had a cafeteria bean burrito for lunch. Alex shared a lot of choclate chip cookies today. I had a conference with his parents after school. I think I'll make some peanut butter and jelly sandwich. Maybe tomorrow on the way to work I'll dirve through Burger King and have a Double Western Bacon Cheeseburger with Mayonaise. Maybe I'll just put a few bullets in me. Now she wants to talk. Make that Carl's Jr. I read the Times today. She's going for Chinese. There was a glowing read blob on top of the old Bekin building on Pico and Crenshaw. I wished I had my camera. Kathleen called. I'm reduced to listing events. Is that a reduction? I'll tread when the game has ten minutes to go. Then I can shower without mising any game. I asked Pam about paying teachers to attend training. The game is on again already. I've got my fifteen minutes to do still. I've got some Neruda to read. I took an Elkin story off the shelf.

Stoned in Hollywood

Sun Feb. 2
I was too depressed to write here yesterday, although if I would have brought this book to the bar Checca in Q-town on Santa Monica where I went with Ball I would have filled these pages. There were pictures I wanted to take, too: the wraith-like smoke where it passed through the light, the muted sky. In the morning I walked to Ralph's and got a paper and some juice and a couple gallons of water and a fifth of vodka. I drank the vodka in my juice, alternating with coffee and read the paper at the little table under the kitchen window. I sketched Pablo Neruda. Then Getoff came and we went to the bar. I was restlesss among all the pop nerds in their pop nerd thrift shop clothing. After a couple beers and some chicken dumplings, I walked to Cahuenga and Vine, past the seedy houses and HBT Headquarters to the reggae shop. I pressed the doorbell button and was buzzed in. I handed twenty bucks over the steel mesh door and a hand handed back over a bag of weed. I walked down to the Spotlight Club and grabbed a book of matches off the bar. I walked to the back of the room. Hollywood lowlifes lined the walls. I walked back down the street. I wanted to photograph the red painted wooden general store on Selma. There was a park where I thought I could smoke and write in a little book, but the gates were locked to keep out we drug abusers. There was a black jacket there, but I didn't look through the pocketes. I loaded my pipe as I walked down the sidewalk and stopped long enough to light a match to it. I walked the miles stoned. The fags on Santa Monica and Highland hooted at me. I felt conspicuous to the passing cars, a tall redbeard striding down the street in a tacky Hawaiian shirt. South of Melrose, the street turns residential. An antique man, bent eighty degrees over his cane, scuttled like a crab under his fedora. He looked out of his dusty flesh with clear intelligent eyes, rarer out there than I was. I walked past him and instantly regretted having said nothing. Further downt the street strolled two Orthodox Jews. When I got home I ate a sandwich and leftover Thai pad thay and watched tv. Ball came and left. Mark and Getoff and Erik and Christina and May and Shirelle came and left. I just watched tv. Then I went to bed. Shirelle came home around two. I didn't talk to her. The guys came back a little later. They rang the phone and pounded on the door and squirted the window with a hose and played their guitars and sang. I thought of getting up and writing, but I didn't. I'm in a bad state. I really don't care about anything. When I'm done here I think I'll walk up to the video store with my camera. I already read the news today. I read about Amnon's and Absalom's treachery. What else? What the fuck else? I'll get that film developed for Craig. Tomorrow Loosey is coming to observe a lesson. I've got to go to the DMV. If they give me back my driver's license, it will cost one hundred dollars. It looks like I'll have to pay taxes this year instead of get a refund.

Fri. Jan 31
It's getting dark out. My lungs are full of crap again. I stopped at the stone library on Olympic on the way home from school. The inside is a let-down compared to the statliness of the outside. Yah. They've got a so-so collection of fiction, good biographies, though. I checked out Linda Ashour's book, Sweet Remedy.
I read some more Neruda poems. They haven't been leaving much of an impression. It's more my fault than his. The ones I read today are about the Spanish Revolution. Bloody poems. Visceral. The anguish is real.
I'm hungry. I want Thai, but I need someone to split the bill with me, and no one is around. I have a hankering to visit the bud shop. Mark and Terry will be at the Improv on Melrose tonight. The Thai place I want to go to is on Melrose. I'll want some wine, though, and then what? I'll have to find a place to leave my car where it won't get towed, and then take a cab. It could turn into a hundred dollar night. Maybe Carlin will want to go. The GIP called, but he said his dad is bringing back Taco Bell, so he dunt wanna go for any Thai.
What else? Damn. The month is already over. There were some things I meant to do and didn't. Write Howrad. Cal Boushay for example. I'll probably just wind up eating peanut butter and jelly. I haven't any inclination to work on Jim.
Carlin got home. She'll go. If she drives, I'll buy. What the God damn motherfuck else? I'm gunther drink wine. No cigarettes tonight. I'll bring my pipe and notebook, though. Stevie Ray Vaughn is on the radio. "If the house is a rockin' don't bother knockin', come on in. My writing sucks. I should have worked at being an actor. I should have gone into the military. I should sit at my desk all fucking night. Sanyo rattled me in a dream.
AAAAAHGH! Fuck Fuck Help. Give me something. I need to pray to God. I didn't pray last night, and that's how I got this way. Just one more stinking line------------------

Putting Names on the Happy Face, His Dad Passage Away

Thurs. Jan. 30
I was trying to type for fifteen minutes but the phone rang. I smoked a little dope, and now I feel like one. The New England Journal of Medicine came out against the U.S. policy of classifying marijuana as a schedule one drug. Shire says her ex-boyfriend invited her up to San Francisco. He wants to smoke pot with her. She says, at least she never got fat. She's telling someone on the phone she can't go to Monterey. She would love to go, but she has to ask her boyfriend (me), and he said no. I didn't. To everyone who asked me how I was doing today, I said, "I'm feeling pretty good." It was true. They would ask and I would check my sensors and it would be true. Now I'm sitting here and the word 'shitty' appears. What's so shitty? I wonder. No one answers. There's more champagne in the house. Shirelle brought it back with her cigarettes. I didn't take any pictures today. I went to the post office and got tax forms. I didn't mail that package to Jancy, though. I got in line and thought Thing might have mailed it from Lightstorm for me if I had thought to ask. Yesterday--It seems like today, but it was yesterday, Danny said Carlos wouldn't be at school because his dad was in the hospital. It's serious, he said, and pointed to his heart. I tried to put him at ease. I wasn't listening that well. It was the first thing in the morning. The kids were all saying things. I was writing the date on the board and putting names under the happy face. I said to Danny that sometimes people have to go to the hospital with chest pains and stay there a few days. I said it was from eating too much cholesterol, and I explained how arteries get clogged. Danny said, No, that wasn't it exactly. I said, Oh, is he having surgery? Danny said, "He drinks," and he held out his hands and demonstrated the shakes. This is a nine-year-old kid. "Oh," I said. That afternoon, at PE, he said, Mr. Zurn, Carlos' dad died." I was a bit non-plussed. "He didn't want me to tell you," Danny said.
Carlos came to school the next day with a note excusing him because "His dad passage away and for the funerals on Friday."

You Can Feel It On Your Finger For Days After

Wed Jan 29
I just got off the treadmill all sweaty which I did while watching the gang's adventures on the subway in "Seinfeld". I finished. I finished BIRD BY BIRD. Anne Lamott is funny and supportive. You feel like she's your aunt full of good advice. I laid on the couch with my head under the cracked-open-an-inch window and after a chapter, everything when black, like I was dead, until about three hours later. I opened my eyes and the room was dark. Peachtree called. We talked about how the first time you ever touch pussy, you can feel it on your finger for days after. I remember driving home from Catholine Ebbetsfield's house feeling it. Then I told Peach about the time she and I were making out on the couch in front of the tv with the lights off. Her parents were in bed down the hall. I took of her shirt and bra. Her dad came into the room. "What's going on out here?" he said. "Dad!" she said. He said, "Oh, sorry," and went back down the hall. I didn't go back there for a while. Shirelle went to a party at director John Woo's house in Bel Air this afternoon. Actors Nick Cage and John Travolta were there. Woo woo. What else? Winds gusted today. The day was pretty uneventful. We had another basketball game. Every day, kids cry hurt and resentful about something in the game. I wonder if it has anything to do with me playing. Conferences are next week. There's all kinds of shit to do. I called National Health, but could only leave a message about sending me a copy of my contract, because the offices close at 4:30 central. I've got to use up the film in my camera so I can develop the picturess I took of Craig's Chinese, hand-painted, hollow eggs. I haven't eaten since lunch. It's already nine now. I'm not really hungry. For lunch I had salad, a chicken breast, a cup of chili with crackers, cornbread, and a few spoonfuls of chocolate pudding with whipped cream. Shirelle went to McDonald's. I gues I'll check my email and do my fifteen minutes, and there's got to be one sentence I can give Jim and Adam. I really need to give them more time.