9:18 AM 10-23-98 F
The kids are so great today.  We've just come from the library, and they're all quietly enthralled in their new books.  I was thinking a couple of truths, it seemed, on the way to school this morning.  Where are they now?  I had a tiny puff last thing before I walked out the door.  I had to go back up the step for the spare house key because I left mine at Pio Pico last night.  Duh.  What was it I thought?
A mob of kids surrounded me as I walked across the playground.  "You look like a kid!" Caylica said with joy. 
"Yeah!" added Antwon, equally joyfully. 
"I'm not wearing a tie today.  Could that be why?"
"You're wearing a kid's shirt."
I hadn't tucked in my pullover.  "Well," was all I could think.  "I'll see you again when the bell rings.
That wasn't the truth I was thinking, though.  Anyway...
I have to knock off some LASSM/SOLOM/ELD forms-- a bunch of mumbo jumbo acronyms to classify, judge, and label kids' second-language acquisition. 
What else?  I wish I could remember those truths.  I wonder if it had to do with my sister's attitude.  Oh, God bless her.  "Victim!  Victim!  Victim!  I'm such a victim!"  My mind keeps drifting along superficial currents this morning.  Is it ever thus?  The only things I want to write are the mundane.  Myshay is staring out the door.  Now, she's pulling her cheeks ghoulishly down from her eyeballs.  She's got a husky voice for a skinny little third-grade girl.  She seems wary, but also tolerant.  Well, the spell is broken.  The kids are all up and talking now.  Ten minutes to recess.  Ten minutes to recess.  Antwon is reading to me some youngster football novel at the same time Caylica gives a lengthy recount of some monster and a spider and a chicken waiting for a bus and a hungry fox who wanted to eat her.  She seems to be making it up as she goes along, and she and Antwon keep raising their voices to be heard over the other.  Melissa wants my attention.  "Mr. Zurn."  She waits.  "Mr. Zurn."  Now Yadira says, "Mr. Zurn."  Now Antwon says it.  Here comes Eric.  "This monster woke up from his nap," he says.  Now Antwon is pointing to his name here in this book while I write about him.  Yadira's looking at what I write, too.  Antwon is reading what I write as I write it.  Nyad said, Mr. Zurn, I had a dream that my brother and me were shooting up Ms. Steindinner' (the principal).  We defeated her."
"With guns?" I ask.
"With lasers," she corrects me.
"Why?"
"Because she was throwing bombs at us."
"Why?"
"I don't know.  We had to get her before the elevator, and then we had to run and jump out the building."

10-20-98 Tu 8:15 AM
The bell is going to ring any minute now.  Antwon, Kayleco, Vincent, and two kids I don't know are "playing computers."  I just read that I cannot transfer my trip.  Maybe~~~~~Antwon is playing a word game where it gives a definition, and you have to guess the right word by shooting it down.  "Oh, Mr. Zurn, this is you: 'to speak in a gruff, angry voice.'" Humph.  The answer was 'growl.'  OK.  Anyway, as I was saying maybe I ought to walk up to H&R Block and ask about some tax consultations  9:10 AM What else?  Now the kids are working on a practice test.  They're mostly good kids, but none too bright.  A couple of 'em...Anyhow...  Hmmm.  It's kind of hard to think in here.  Our new assistant principal, Mr. Herschel, seemed cool until he referred to himself in the third person repeatedly--though maybe since it's his first day, he was only trying to get his name across.  What else?  Clear blue sky out the window.  Extra dry October air.  High pressure system.  I have to arrange for airfare to Spokane, departing LA 12-23 and returning 12-26.  I should mark up some student work.  Daniel, who was hit in the head with a stray bullet, and Rick, who was born without a left ear, are two of the best students in the class.  What else?  I'm struggling for inspiration.  Maybe I should take up smoking again.  What else?  I have to correct these dumb tests.  I'd like to eat.  12:30 PM  Ugh  Went to KFC.  I'm bloated.  Anna Senorvilla.  Whatever.  Nevermind.  The kids are reading the scary stories book.  They eat that stuff up. 
10-21-98 W
10-22-98 Th 5:55 PM
One little puff and things on the way to work seemed interesting.  I'd been concentrating on the facts for so long, and it occurred to me what slippery things they are, and that concentrating on them is to overlook the random and the disordered, prompting a kind of inobservance in which in learning too much, you learn less. 
At the time I could have gone on for pages and pages, but now it will all be mere summary.  At any rate, I thought of my father, in whose mind facts are always indisputable things, true or false only, one way or the other, with no in-between, the only way to achieve and maintain honor.  But I am a warbler. My mantra became a realization that "cool" is a degree of malleability.  Ugh.  When I get home I have to call my sister who was an emotional wreck at the prospect of paying airfare to see our father.  I have until eleven to confirm reservations or not.

Mon 10-19-98 10:58 AM
I didn't get a chance to type this morning.  I've got to rededicate myself to writing this weekend.  I vow to add a page to Jim.  I have about four more months of night school left to teach.  Then my credential should expire.  Then what?  Master's?  Administrative credential?  Adult Ed credential?   Full-time writing?  After school today, I have to go to LA High and pick up my attendance sheet, and I'll have to get a sub for tomorrow since I have to be at Wilshire Hill for Back-to-School Night.  Maybe I'll get to see the end of tomorrow night's World Series game.  Should I go to Taco Bell for lunch today?  Do I have enough dough?  I have seven dollars and nineteen cents.  After I get home, I'll type fifteen minutes, then do a third-person page.  I bet that third-person page will be hard because I haven't done one in so long.  I'll just have to lower my standards, if that's possible.  I've got to do the stereo and the roller blades.  "Beloved" was uneven.  Oprah hamming it up.  The story doesn't work well as a movie.  It bummed me out that it takes away from the power of the book.  12:15 PM  Ate Taco Bell, like a geek.  Took Shirelle to Nuena's last night.  Dropped $200 this weekend.  Didn't shave this morning.  When's Daylight Savings begin or end or whatever?  I need to write to my grandparents.  I have to make these air reservations to Spokane.  I've got to call Mac.  I'm on the pot right now.  Not the kind you smoke.  I haven't done that in ages.  Could that be why I'm writing so little?   There's the bell.  Got to go do our silent reading.  We have to write Back-to-School Night invitations and do an anti-tobacco lesson.  What else?  I'm not going to read the newspaper.  I'm writing with a pencil off which some kid has broken off the eraser to sharpen both ends.  It's a two-headed pencil, a Siamese pencil.  I'll have to call Ricardo Flowers today.  I'm not breathing too good again.  I need a cup of coffee.  I'm not breathing so good again today.  I should go see the doctor soon.  How do I see a doctor who's closer than the one in Whittier?  Maybe I should wait until after February when I won't be teaching nights anymore.  What else?  What more?  What else?  Here's Brenda.  She wanted to know what "said" means.  My lips are chapped.  How can I be tired?  I went to bed early.  I dreamed of Laurie Sunnyfield last night.  I think because Shirelle wanted to know what they asked me on Jeopardy (She was searching for some reference to herself), and I said they asked me about Maine.  Laurie was the main reason I went out there.  In the dream, it was a competitive environment, like at a summer camp or something.  I desperately wanted to win a basketball game.  The girl on the train last week reminded me of her a little, too.  Whatever.  What else?  I was thinking of Harry Willis and the basketball brawl TV blackout.  I'll read a few pages of Independence Day next.

One-Way Round Trip

10-18-98 Su11:26 AM
On the rail back to LA.  A little hottie in the seat across from me plays with her long curls and looks out the window.  I overhear that she wants to spend eleven dollars to upgrade to the next car.  Ouch.  "What's in the next car?" I ask her. 
"No kids," she says.
I got on the train without a ticket.  On the way down here, I bought a ticket, but no one checked it.  I thought I might be in trouble.  I showed the conductor the ticket from the way down.  He didn't say anything.
 Hottie is right:  These kids are freaking noisy.  I said, "I see what you mean," when she looked at me while two kids shrieked.
Shirelle wanted me to bring her something, but I never was anywhere to get her anything.  My golf game sucked yesterday.  I wore a Yankee hat to the links, and heard shit all day long from Padres fans.  "Sweep," I'd say.  Peach got even with me, though.  He put my hat in the toilet, and in the middle of the night I went in and pissed all over it in the dark.  As soon as I was done pissing, I turned on the light to try to understand hearing a patter when there should have been a spatter, and there was my cap; he'd placed the brim under the seat so that it was suspended above the water.  I had to hand it to him; it was a brilliant trick.  I washed the cap in the sink with soap and water.  Piss/sweat: what's the diff?  I put it in the oven to dry. 
"Ha ha," I said the next morning.  "We'll see who gets the last laugh when the Yanks sweep you bitches."  Padres fans are not cool about their sorry team getting to the World Series.  "Try to remember you've been there before," I kept saying to all these keyed up geeks trying to give me the business about my NY cap. 
Surfers dot the waves out there.  A layer of smog smudges the horizon, but it's otherwise clear and sunny and the water is a tropical aquamarine, not the deep blue I'm used to seeing.  We're pulling into San Juan Capistrano.  Cacti wait like passengers in a garden along the rails leading into the station.  A lizard clings to a fence.  What does he think of us on this train?  A lot of people are getting off here.  The train station has that old Mission architecture.  What else?  Shirelle wants to see "Beloved" today. 
"Board!" calls the coachman. 
I'm not sure she should see it.  It will probably give her bad dreams.  Goddam Oprah Winfrey.  Anyway, I've got to read my Bible today.  I'll be starting Ezekiel.  Saw the wheel.  Project Blue Book.  What else?  Probably have to skip the paper.  Game Two is on tonight at five.  The power went out back in Carlsbad while we were shooting pool in a bar.  This pen is pissing me off.  We'll be to Irvine soon.  I ought to knock off another chapter of Independence Day.  What else?  Do these trains burn diesel?  I could go for a bone.  What else?  We just watched the game at Peach's house, sent out for pizza.  UCLA won a wild one against a potent Oregon team.  This fucking pen won't