7-14 M 12:40 PM
Things are going well today.  I'm done with the newspaper.  Did the whole crossword puzzle in under ten minutes.  I'm skipping lunch without any major hunger pangs.  I wrote for an hour before class.  I'm not tired.  The only drawback is I'm dressed like a dork.  My pants don't fit and my shoes are goofy.  I don't know if I'll be able to get the exercise I need dressed the way I am.       After school, I'll finally call Jacquie Fane.  Then I'll write for two hours.  Then I'll pring thirty or so pages to bring to Sharon at LACAS.  We'll go over pronouns, the alphabet, and verbs in the present tense.  After class I'll type a page and bring my books to Shirelle's house.  She made fried chicken.  Oh, I'll have to eat before I call Jackie Phain.  I have a leftover Sonoran enchilada from El Cholo. I'm out of jelly.  I need to go to the store for a new jar of jelly.  Maybe I should make a sauce for my noodles. or eat that leftover shrimp.  The Dodgers are on against the Rockies in Denver at six tonight, but I'll be at class teaching. Five days until payday.  I'm not sure what kind of check I'll be getting.  About two thousand dollars, I guess.  I'll totally pay off my Sears card this month.       What else?     I ate corn bran cereal for breakfast.  When teh kids come back from lunch, they'll do self portraits.  I'll get into another chapter of Bonnie Friedman's sharing of her experience with the writer's struggle.  Ugh.  What else?  Jesus and Luis are playing a game on the computer. I wonder how much longer I'll be subbing for this class.  There's nothing to draw around here.     I was leafing through an illustrated dictionary, and some fucked-up tripper penned bathing suits onto the illustrations of the human body in every one of these dictionaries.  What is it they're afraid of?  What do they think they're protecting the kids from?  Crazy.  The bell has rung, and I'm not done.  I'll go a while, let the kids get lined up.  Let the traffic ja of students moving to class dissapate. I'm going to have this journal filled in under a month.  Crap!  What else?  What else?  What else?  What the fuck else?  Give me something else.  Agh.

7-13 Su 5:50 PM
Carlin and I are at El Cholo on Western.  She asks, "Do you believe in God?"
I say, "I don't know what you mean?"  "DO YOU BE-LIEVE IN GOD?" she asked again, enunciating each syllable like I was old or deaf or dumb or didn't understand English.
"No one can really know what anyone else means when they use the word "God".  No one knows what God means, and the people that claim to are the least believable of all, so your question is impossible to answer.  If you're talking about the God in the Bible, no, I don't really believe in that literally, though I don't a hundred percent rule it out.  But if were talking about something that those stories are trying to symbolize, I'm inclined to believe there may be something."
That seemed to satisfy her.  Or maybe the food came.  Anyway, now I'm in bed.  I put half a page to Jim and Aaron tonight, but not as much as I should have.  I won't have everything ready for Sharon tomorrow.  I've got KCRW on the clock radio.  They're playing Irish music--haunting stuff.       Dennis Reyes won his debut for the Dodgers against the Giants today. The Giants were throwing their ace, Shawn Estes, too.  What else?  Aaron wants to know why Jim is asking so many sex questions.  Why ask about the fingerbang and not the fuck?  What's Jim's response?  I read about the measurements and talents of gold in Solomon's Temple today. 

[Here is drawn the compass and right angle and captial G (what's that for?) of the Masonic logo).  It's all about bringing structure and order out of chaos, isn't it?  My camera needs a new battery.  It will have to wait until after I get paid Friday.  Tomorrow I must call Jackie Fane.  Jim says, "I don't know. It's fascinating, isn't it?  Sex controls us. We're taught to resist, but we can't, and that's a good thing or no one would ever be born.  Why's there so much hokey religious voodoo tied up with it? I used to ask people to tell me about when they lost their virginity, but it's usually just some half-drunken teenage "and then I put it in" story.  The touching before that is more amazing I guess, cuz it generally happens at a younger age, before the mystery is weakened."
I photographed my dresser today.  I'm going to read more essays on Imagination and Reality after this.  More Friedmann, too.  I have time before lights out.
What else?  I didn't write yesterday.  During the day, what did I do?  I woke up.  I read the paper.  I ate cereal. What else?  Shirelle tow truck incident. Or was that Friday? I really don't care.  I just want to be done with this and I don't care what it says.  Blah blah blither blather.  I saw Mars and the Big Dipper last night.  Was jealous of Steve's house, wife, life.  I played a little guitar today.

7-10 Th 1:12 PM
Ug.  I'm not feeling so well today.  I still can't get past this tired feeling.  I've got a sore throat and stomach cramps.  I forgot to call Jackie Fane yesterday.  I'll have to do it today.  Too bad I have to teach tonight.  There is much to do for Jim and Aaron.  My students are doing independent reading while I write.  We read a story about Patrick Henry.  Sounds like he was kind of a drunk.  Luis gave me a peach this morning.  What else?  All I can think about is how tired I am.  I drank a mug of day-old coffee and took ephidrine tablets and a vitamin with a small glass of orange juice.  I ate a bran muffin at ten forty-five.  I have no money, but my grandparents sent a money order for two hundred dollars because they wanted to pay for my plane ticket.  What else?  Nothing.  Ninety minutes until I can go home.  This school sucks.  Classes go an hour later than at Sharp, but I don't get paid any more for it.  I did the whole newspaper.  After this, I'll read some of the Bonnie Friedman pep-talk book, if there's time, and I can keep my eyes open.  Then we'll go play softball.  I haven't played guitar for a while.  The kids are all het up to play a game on an old Apple IIE.  Jonathon just showed me a picture of Michelangelo's David he saw in a book.  Stephanie wants me to give her some math problems.  I have to remember to drop off my reg forms at the LACAS office on my way home from school tomorrow.     What the hell else?  There's nothing to draw in here.  I don't have the eye for it today anyway.  Oh, God.  What else?  Give me something to write on, man.  Ease my suffering.  Jessica wants to change her seat because Gilbert says too many bad words.  Getoff and Peach left messages, but I didn't call them back.  Aaron thought he peed.  What else!!!  Fuck shit fick fack fuck fuck shit.  Once there was a moo cow.  It is not good that man should be alone.

W 7-9 12:25 PM
I'm at the desk in bungalow thirty-three at Leo Politi school again.  When I'm done here, I'm going for the BLT I signed up for in the cafeteria, even though Petra, one of my adult school students remarked last night that I was "gordo."  Shirelle said she would make dinner for me tonight.  I have work to do on Jim and Aaron, which is great.  By the end of the week, I may get up to page thirty-five.  I really have made progress in the last year, really have sharpened my focus and increased my output. 
      Yesterday while we were playing basketball, Mayra nailed me in the face with the ball and broke my sunglasses off my head while I turned to two kids who had found a pack of Zigzag rolling papers which they turned over to me.  My nose still hurts.       What else?  I have to call Jamsey Fane today when I get home.  What else?  Maybe if I go get my BLT and come back, I'll have something else.  We sang the Star-Spangled Banner. 

[Here is drawn a picture of Old Glory in pencil, hanging limp at a forty-five-degree angle with the top flapped gently down across the middle].  Today I learned that the melody is derived from an old English drinking song.  Dang!  What else?  After I call Jamsey Fane, Amber is going to sit on Aaron's lap, nude.  Mr. Smith will walk in.  Melanie's family moves to St. George.  Amber runs away from home.  Aaron is counseled.  The remark of ruination. 

[Here is drawn the cartoon ox head on the Elmer's Glue logo].  Jim's comment about fingerbanging.  What else?  Some girls are in the room now hiding from boys looking through the window.  I just finished my BLT.  I have a little bit of a sore throat.  I'll read some more Writing Through Darkness when I'm done  Wallace Stevens, whose poems I like so well, writes stilted pompous, dated, boring essays about the relationship between poetry and philosophy.  I've been reading it in bed, the last thing I do before turning off the lamp.  The bell rang.  I have to go out to the playground and pick up the students.  Hopefully we can have some silent reading.  A tall slender palm shoots up out of the blacktop.  I can't see its fronds out the window it's so tall.

7-8-97 Tu 12:15 PM
Lunch time at Leo Politi.  I had a bran muffin at recess.  I think I can make it to after school without eating.  Maybe I'll go get an iced tea, though, when I'm done.  Or maybe I'll take a nap.  There's a kid named Luis staring at me while I write this.  Or maybe I should find a Taco Bell.  No.  No.  Night school.  Can I do 'ninety-two when I get home or will I have to nap?  My breathing sucks lately.  They're having BBQ chicken fillet sandwiches in the cafeteria.  I'm fatter than I've ever been.  I'm going to have diabetes.  If I don't eat lunch, I can read Writing Through Dark.  What else?  Crap.  I haven't even finished page one.  What can I write here?  The breeze sways sickly oleander.  We learned the Star Spangled Banner and the Battle of Fort McHenry today.  We also read a Chinese story about a brass pot which doubles whatever you put in it.  The couple that found it kept doubling their money.  Then one day, the wife fell in.  It was kind of a pointless story.  What else?           Cookies baking...ordered onto a chair with a toy gun...What else?  Ugh.  I'm too tired to think.  I had shitty asthma last night.  Tonight is the All-Star game, but I have to teach.  Last night, I was met with quite a few blank faces.  They just want to magically know English.  If I close my eyes, I'm gone.  What else?  Twenty-five more minutes and lunch is over.  I have no money and no time.  Chronos said if I'm not dead, I'm a big turd for missing Mao's wedding.  I've got to call Jamesy Fain when I get home.  What else?  Friday, I'll go to the lithograph display at LACMA and sit on the patio and drink wine and listen to jazz and write and draw.  What else?  I should have asked for dictionaries or a key to the cabinet.  -  What else?  This entry sucks.  It's cuz I'm so tired.  My asthma is killing me.  I hope I live to be at least eighty and nothing keeps me from writing.