In Children's Stories

I just finished a chapter of The Naked and the Dead.  Hearn, the Harvard Leiutenant, has been taken into a philosophical discussion of war with General Cummings; something about it being the nature of women to cheat, and it hurt me to read it.  I still have to type a page into the one-page file.  I ate some grapes and a quesadilla for dinner.  At lunch, I typed up the grant request to get a thousand dollars for books from the Riordan Fund. 
At school, we read a story about a grandfather and his grandaughter who participate in a bike race to follow a balloon until it lands.  Whoever reaches the balloon first gets a free balloon ride.  They studied the town and learned all the shortcuts.  They would have been the first to reach the balloon when it came down in a pasture but had to abort because of the presence of a bull.  The balloon's pilot's parrot flew off from there, and Gina and her grandpa lost the race in order to bring the parrot back to the pilot.  To show his gratitude, the pilot gave them a free ride.  You see?  Good deeds are rewarded.  In children's stories.  We saw "Sleeping Beauty".  Good triumphed over evil.  We did a lesson on estimation.  The kids are asked to estimate how many pockets we have on our clothes all together.  Then we put a unifix cube in each pocket and take them out and connect them in groups of ten and add them up to check our estimates.  Then we estimated how many children would stretch fingertip to fingertip across the class.  Then we estimated how many steps from our seats to the front door.  Then we checked them as we lined up for lunch.  Then we estimated how many steps from the door to the lunch area.  I roared at Damnesia to get in her seat when she had ticked me off for the hundredth time by chasing Marlin around the room when she should have been in her seat recording her estimation.  Whatever.  Sarong, one of the Special Ed Teachers next door, asked me if I was all right when I went over to ask what the school's address was for the grant.  I pretended I didn't know what she meant.  She said, "Well, we were sitting here about forty-five minutes ago when we heard..." She trailed off.  I said, "Oh, you mean my little attention-getter?" and smiled.  She did not smile back.

Chunks of the Future Hang in the Balance

Mon. 10-13 11:45 AM
Looks like I'm skipping lunch today.  After school I have to hustle over to Borders to try and fill out this grant for books from the Riordan Foundation.  What else?  I have to teach tonight.  No newspaper so far today.  Haven't worked on Jim.  Haven't done 15 minutes or one page.  Haven't read Mailer stuff.  Almost done with the journal from '92-'93.  I woke filled with bitter hatred this morning.  When I got to work, my room had been broken into.  Ms. Washington told me a neighbor had seen the break-in and called the police.  They busted the transom and emptied some drawers and pulled down the clock before they were arrested.  I guess I'm lucky. 
"Hey, look!  I found a food stamp!"  Marlin yelled excitedly, holding his find in the air for all the lunch line to see. 
"Are you alone?" the hostess at Bob's asked.  I winced a little.  No matter which way it is, I want it the other way. 
They're going to discuss Catcher in the Rye, October 27, at Borders in Westwood.  I have to work, though. 
What's it about?  I have to be able to answer this question.  It's about that stage between teens and actual adulthood.  I think I may have to drop the Vegas bit.  I don't know.  I'm hungry.  I'll have to wait.  I think I can broil some garlic and herb fish fillets and boil up some honeybutter carrot coins and toss a salad for dinner.  I might have some fries I can oven-bake, too.  I have a pinch of weed Al let me have yesterday while I was at Steve's watching the baseball games.  "Serpico" was on TV last night.  I watched about half of it.  I called Shirelle and got her machine.  I didn't leave a message.  Sometimes big chunks of the future hang in the balance like that.  Twenty minutes of lunch left.  I'll see how recon is doing on Anopopei.  What else?  I drove to school today.  John Denver died when his plane crashed into Monterey Bay.

"Back where?" she asked archly...

10-10 8:15 AM Friday Eating a plum at my desk.  There goes the bell.  1:53 PM  Craving alcohol thanks to descriptions of Norman Mailer's parties and bar gatherings in New York.  Maybe I'll get a couple of short ones at the Bounty before Julia comes.  Or maybe I should just write for an hour or so until then.  I don't what I'll share tonight.  My plot is all fractured and disjointed and Siamese.  I once thought it was about being young and economically powerless.  Then I thought it was about a search for a home.  Then it was about sex and drugs.  Sin.  Loss of innocence.  Loss of organs.  5:08 1/2  Marlins/Braves on NBC.  Costas is telling us the lineups.  Smoltz vs. young guy named Saunders, who has only four wins, three of which were against the Braves.  A perturbed wind rattles the leaves.  Printed up a bunch of shit.  Going to Borders to hear some Harvard guy read from his novel.  Wish I had another beer.  I drank up the three that were here in the fridge when I got home. 
10-11 11:40  PM Sa
The Red Setter Restaurant and Pub on Wilshire in Santa Monica.  The Gip and I first went to a place called Renee's.  It was packed with beautiful women.  Naturally the Gip wanted to do the opposite of what any man in his right mind would do, so we left there after one beer to come to this fucking lonely hearts club.  Does what I want even exist?  Am I facing another period of years of loneliness?  Someone sat down next to me here at the bar.  I figured it was the Gip who had gone to look in the pool room.  Without looking up, I said, "So what's going on back there?"  Then I looked up, and it was a good-looking woman with flowing strawberry-blond locks.  "Back where?" she asked archly, as if I were perhaps inquiring about her hindquarters, and then we both laughed.  I said, "I thought you were my bald, fat Guatemalan friend," and we both laughed again.  She said, "I was just reading your diary."  "Oh," I said, and then I didn't know what else to say while wondering what she had read and not at all too sure this could have been a beneficial development.  She asked me if I could change her four quarters for a dollar.  "Sure," I said and gave her the change.  She stood there a moment.  I didn't say anything.  "Well, thanks," she said and walked away.  I thought about punching my thigh, but didn't.  The TV in this Irish bar is showing a Spanish-language Home Shopping Network.  I hate myself.  The Gip comes walking up.  "Looks like Cantinflas," he says of the sales-host of the shopping show in his yellow-green suit.  "Maybe that's why there's no one in here," I said wryly.   

10-9 9:36 AM Th
Writing three pages a day in here is becoming increasingly difficult.  How did I do it before when I had more of a commute every day?  I'm going to Tam's Garden for lunch today.  I'm really looking forward to it. I'm going to treadmill tonight, but I also have to do a plot summary for group tomorrow night.  What else?  I watched the end of "Ridicule" last night. It was OK.  I haven't done any drawing for a while.  My kids gave me some stickers even though I've been ripping on them all morning.  What else?  No Shirelle last night.  These kids are so lacking in initiative.  When I was in third grade, I'd have been scolded if I was lazy or willfully stupid.  I remember Ms. Hirayama being tough on me if I allowed myself to be distracted (My dad remarried the night before I started third grade).  She didn't mince words or use nurturing tones.  She told me if I didn't shape up, she'd tell my dad to take off my baseball team.  And if that happened, I knew my dad would give me a fearful whacking.  Could the lack of corporal punishment these days be the reason for these students' lack of motivation?  I have to inspire them, but it would be a lot less frustrating if they would try to meet me part way.  I can feel anger and curse words jumping into my head and I squelch it, but I think this emboldens the kids to be even lazier.  My teeth ache.  I'm exhausted behind the eyes.  Have to teach tonight, too.  Will miss Oriole/Indian championship game.  Trying to get deep sea fishing trip going for next month.  Have a lot of writing to do still.  Allyson Schwartz said, "It's almost Friday."  I said, "Thank God."  Then I said, "Why?  What's up Friday?"  She said, "We don't have to work, duh," like I was clueless.  I was hoping she'd invite me out for a drink and some sex.  
The soldiers are weathering a typhoon.  It's lunch time now.  I'm going to drag my ass to Tam's now.  I hope five dollars and change is enough to eat with. Dijonia's mom needs to talk to her about not flashing crotch shots.  [a Batman logo in a Riddler's question mark]

She Started Crying. Again.

10-7 1:50 PM Tu
The kids are playing heads-up-seven-up.  Carlos is complaining how bored he is.  I can't blame him, but I said if you think this boring wait until you have to stay after school.  Skipped lunch.  Walked to school.  Had frosted mini-wheats for breakfast.  Was windy this morning.  Dry air today.  Stayed up until one watching 1940 Hitchcock best picture "Rebecca".  Will watch end today.  Another staff meeting.
10-8 8:45 AM W
Still feel negative as shit.  I wish there was something else to focus on.  More Shirelle troubles.  She showed up to harass me last night and again this morning.  It's too tedious to recount.  I didn't write as much last night as I was supposed to; didn't have he heart after the vampire left.  I watched the first half of the French film "Ridicule", a fine exploration of the importance of wit in the court at Versailles.  I'll watch the rest after class tonight.  Then I'll have to bring the video back.  I read a few pages of The Naked and the Dead.  He[???]s despising the officers in the mess tent.  A chapter about Mailer's political affectations in the bio.  What else?  I'll have junk food for lunch to ease/further my depression.  I told Shirelle that I was afraid she was going to destroy me.  She said, "I love you."  I said, "Yeah, but it's this fucked-up, twisted kind of love where you only think about what YOU need, and you don't respect or listen to the one you purport to love."  She started crying.  Again.

10-5 11:55 AM M
The Monday dreads were upon me like a pack of heavy rats gnawing my flesh, impossible to shake off because of their size and number.  My life is not mine. Maybe after Christmas break I can try to take off a semester of night school.  I'm in the shitter now in the faculty bathroom.  I just now walked across the playground from my room to get here. Two of my students, Ashley and Dijonia spotted me.  Now they are waiting outside the door while I work out this crap.  I told them if they were still there when I got out I would put them under the sad face. I can still hear them calling each other stupid out there, though. Someone just slid a key in the lock. The girls screamed, "Somebody's in there!"  I heard a woman's voice say, "Okay, okay," and the key slid back out. The deadbolt was locked, anyway. Yesterday's buffalo wings seem reluctant to part my person.  I feel a little sting of hot sauce on asshole.  I'll make tacos for lunch after school when I get home.  I'm going to miss the deciding game of the Cleveland/NY series.  The Pats and Broncos are on tonight, too.  I've got to try to add to Jim tonight.  Finish the two flashbacks.  I'm getting a lot of negative commentary on the randomness of my narrative.  People want things tightly packed up and easy to follow, like a half-hour tv show.  Life is not like that. Neither need be literature.       What do I know?    I'm really beginning to see it as a total waste of time.  I had a diet drink for breakfast and an apple for lunch.

"You Shot Your Own Ass in the Foot"

Sat 10-4 Roger, Oveur.  What's your vector, Victor?  4:11 PM On the Captain Kirk Star Command Enterprise bridge control chair.  Panels with buttons arrayed before me.  Seventy-one buttons in all.  All for the TV.  Guess I ought to put that Tylenol in the medicine cabinet.  Except we don't have a medicine cabinet.  I ought to put it somewhere safe, though. With all the hangovers around here, it's a valuable commodity.       Carlin Ferris was telling me that the journal of mine she was reading was clear.  I wondered if she meant in comparison to my novel writing.  She said I should just publish that journal.   There's enough other experimental avant-garde bullshit out there.  She started looking through this one then, got bored, and quickly put it down.  "You didn't write about me," she said.
   I started thinking about the necessity of plot.  I almost said pot.  I've got Dizzy Gillespie on.  He's carrying the place.  Even with that Latino brass blast at the wedding reception across the street.  I wish I could go over there.  It looks like the wedding scene at the beginning of The Godgfather.  I can see a big white tent from here.  I smelled a girl's perfume blow in on a little gust through the open window, all the way up here on the second floor.  Kind of a thrill really.  They're all gorgeous creatures.  I feel their thrill and happiness today.  The ice cream truck adds its chimes to the mix. 

Su 10-5 6:40 PM
Vicious piss and venom outlook.  Steve said, "John, do you like living here?"  I said, "The question is, do I like living."  I have to gear up my psyche for working this week.  I finished Nehemiah today.  I didn't work at all on Jim.  I hardly read the paper.  No Mailer.  Al and Steve came over.  We drank beer and ate pizza and spicy wings and threw beer cans out the window until neighbor Carlin was upset.  Shirelle called in dramatic tears because I wouldn't see her until tonight.  Fuck!