1-8-99 F 5:24 PM
The kitchen table window at dusk, trippin' as usual but not as usual.  Mr. Martinez and I ate the fruit off the tree in the backyard that neither of us could identify and it was good.  Sweet like a date but off nothing like a palm tree.  The whole day turned into something like that:  looking out the window at the trees and the birds and the wind.  Dropped a couple of nice little poetic lines.  I looked at the words in this book, and felt apart from whoever's concerns they were.     Whatever.     The city glow illumines the layer of dust kicked up by the wind today as if the sun were going down in the east.  Purple is not a good enough word.  I see it through my reflection.  Did I bring this wind? [crude line drawing of rooftops, highwires, and palms]  Can't say no for sure.  ~~~~~ Not feed the machine fuck it I'll walk," I told my dad on the phone today.  I talked to my mom, too.  Brought a wee tear to my eye.  She had been worried about going to Vegas and leaving Karen home alone, but the girls went out to Vegas to see her!  My mom thought she had lost her glasses and was in a panic leaving the Bellagio.  John had lost a couple hundred over the course of the weekend and had one last twenty-five-dollar chip left.  He took it to the roulette table and put it on I don't know and the man spun the wheel and THEY wanted him to walk away saying good things to the rubes back home so they stopped the wheel on his number and he won five hundred dollars.  And he had found my mom's glasses wherever she left them, so as she was going one way down the hall in a blind panic, he was coming the other.  "Looking for these?" he said and held up her glasses and she was so relieved.  "And," he handed her five hundreds, "I just hit on the roulette wheel."  My mom was so happy.  She said she was going to get a new drier.  Said she didn't know how the old one still dried clothes it was so old.  Why do you want to get rid of it then, I didn't ask, because I knew it wouldn't make any sense.  ~~~~~I have to call Shirelle.  What else?  I'm a fool.  And what else?  Haven't rode my bike yet today.  Are my shrooms done?

What Political Freaks Believe

1-7-98 Th 11:11 AM
I'm at Johnny's Fat Boy coffee shop on Wilshire and Fairfax.  I stopped at LACMA to see if I could get tickets to the upcoming Van Gogh exhibition because I couldn't get through on the phone, but they wouldn't be open until eleven.  I woke up at seven this morning and read the paper and typed for fifteen minutes.  I was going to meet But at her Wilshire office, but she called it off because she has to meet her boss at the airport at 11:50.  So I hopped on my bike and headed this way.  No black Civic sat at Wilshire Crest, but the plant manager, Jerry Cubensis, so I rode around the gate to rap with him for a while.  He asked if I been partying.  I told him I was on the wagon, partly out of embarrassment over my drunkenness at the faculty party.  He said I shouldn't worry about it because everyone was drunk.  That comforted me a bit.  So I rode from there to the Royal Market on La Brea and Olympic and picked up a New Times so I can try to submit the Johnny Bayles story.  I was I was riding past the post office, I passed a couple political freaks who believe Al Gore is behind the impeachment proceedings in a "Hitlerian putsch" to bring back the Confederacy.  Ha ha.  Freaks are everywhere.  So now what?  Should I get something to eat here?  All I ate yesterday was a celery stick with cottage cheese for breakfast, skipped lunch, and had two eggs and cheese, four slices of bacon, two sausage and half a dozen grilled shrimp, but no carbohydrates.  I should have left off the bacon.  Should I eat now?       I'll watch that "Akira" when I get home.  Then I'll do my third-person page.  Then I'll put another page on Jim.  Then I'll do some more of the Bayles story.  I have to finish that by Monday.  I wonder how many carbs are in a gyro.  I read another chapter of Mohicans this morning.  It gets ridiculouser and ridiculouser.  Could the Indians have really been that dumb?  Look who's talking.  I've got to call Florelle.  I've got letters to write to Pennsylvania, two to Idaho, one to Wales.

1-6-99 W 4:46 PM
I'm at the Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf on Larchmont.  I'm sitting at a table on the sidewalk.  I just finished reading the Times.  Nothing new about Bayless.  The crossword pixxed me off.  I rode my bike here.  First I went to Staples and got a new desk calendar.  It was a little hard to ride and carry the calendar under one arm.  I rode past school.  No black Honda was parked by room 45.   I thought of going into the office to ask Betty or Felicia for Villsenora's phone number, but I chickened out, figuring I didn't need to call any more embarrassing attenion on myself than I already have.  I asked about the original Pinocchio at Chevalier's.  It's by a guy named Collodi?  Colloddi?  Sh!t I forgot already.  They didn't have it.  The woman said it was a hard volume to come by, but she's going to try to order it for me.  I got a Disney version to give to Anna's class as a present.  ~~~~What else?  Pete's supposed to be coming by my house in a couple of hours.  I typed fifteen minutes this morning.  I watched "It Happened One Night."  Fun movie, inflaming my delusions.  All I've eaten today is a celery stalk with cottage cheese.  About 4 grams of carbohydrates.  I worked on my weight bench a little.  Still have to get a ladder, write letters, work on Jim.  I'll make shrimp and eggs for dinner.  What else?  That's it.  That's everything.  Now my mind is blank.  Jim would find himself meditating on a garbage can.  What can a kitchen conversation lead to?  What great theme of humanity can be touched on in there?  I need help.  I wonder if the library is open until five o'cock.  What else?  Ugh.  After this, I'll ride back to my house, do my third-person page, pray for help.  What will Shrill want tonight?  She's prepping for a break-up.  I can feel it.  Pinocchio's nose grows.  I'll do some more curls when I get home.  I wonder if my disordered workouts do any good.  Calories must get burned, but am I doing it long enough to burn fat, build muscle?  Ugh.  What else?  I read a chapter of Mohicans.  Magua entreating the Delaware to aid him in the capture of our protagonists.  A couple of pigeons hide out under a car.  A woman is explaining to the meter demon that the meter is malfunctioning.  Plenty of fine a$$ parades up and down the sidewalk.  One more line and now I go.

Tu 1-5-99 2:48 PM
I walked up to K-Mart and bought a bike.  It cost only eighty-nine dollars.  I bought a fifteen-dollar lock, too.  Whoop-te-doo.  I don't really want to do this, but I don't know what else to do; "Nothing" was getting pretty old, so I guess I may as well fill these stupid-ass three pages with their stupid-ass boring nonsense.  I'm no Pepys.  Maybe I should read that stuff.  While I was riding my new bike down Third, I came to an old book shop.  A bunch of books in the window caught my eye:  An H.G. Wells Illustrated Common History of the World--20 Volumes--Each to Be Read in a Fortnight--I didn't even ask the price on that.  There was a first edition Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail 1972 with a red, white and blue skull with swastika eyes on the jacket cover.  There was a book about mystic mushrooms, another about Josephine Baker with one of her topless Paris poses on the cover, a Timothy Leary bio--or was it Norman Lear--?  James Joyce's World was another.  I went in.  It smelled like cigarettes.  The old woman proprietress had a persistent cough.  I found A History of Mexico by a Parkes, which at $4.95 I couldn't resist.  I paid the lady and stuffed it in my backpack and rode to Border's.  I looked for Pinocchio, but I couldn't find one.  There was a collection of Robert Frost's first three books of poetry for only $5.99, so I bought that, too, and I found an Atkins carbohydrate counter and got that.  No I'm on the patio on Marie Callendar's by the Tar Pits.  I've got a cup of coffee and the waiter brought cornbread which I love and is, naturally off-the-charts high in carbohydrates.  I'm going to go to the salad bar.  I read Mohicans while I walked to K-Mart.  I have my new bike, but I can't read and ride the way I can read and walk.  While I was crossing Wilshire a horn honked.  It was Shirelle.  Funny.  Was it a sign?  I had walked up to Wilshire Hill with bated breath.  Would there be a black Honda parked near room 45?  The gates were open.  I felt a little dread in my stomach.  Room 45 came into view.  There was no black Honda.  I saw Lunchstein's Lexus, though, and was reminded of what a jackass I am.  Meg Ryan kept seeing "signs" which prompted her to leave her fiance for virtual stranger Tom Hanks on "Sleepless in Seattle" last night on TV.  It was sort of a punch in the stomach.  But what was that dread nearing Wilshire Hill and why did God put Shrill on Wilshire?

More on Whoredoms

1-4-99 M 10:27 AM
Beautiful sunny day.  I've been on the phone this morning trying to get some guys together for a basketball game in the backyard.  I think Ralph and Rodney and Dwayne and Elmer are going to come, and I left messages for Glen and Nattaz, and my brother might come.  I would like to go for a walk somewhere and buy a bike today.  I also want to get a book for the Atkins protein diet I've been hearing so much about.  I might like to try to find a book of the original Pinocchio as a gift for someone.  A kind of inside joke.  Get the Disney version for that someone's kids.  Yesterday, waiting in line at the market, Shirelle was questioning my enthusiasm for matrimony.  She said maybe there's someone like me who's more into books and writing that I might be happier with.  I'm not going to tell you what I said--was it discretionary or cowardly?  We saw an awful movie last night called "The Thin Red Line."  A three-hour waste of life, and excruciating waste of time.  Who cares?  What else?  I typed my fifteen minutes this morning.  Wrote about my baseball game yesterday.  I've got to read the last of The Last of the Mohicans this week.  I've got about a hundred and fifty pages to go.  After this I'll check the phone book for bike shops around here.  There's probably not enough time to walk up to Border's and back before those guys show up for hoops.  I have to brush my teeth.  I ate some chicken meat for breakfast.  I'll skip lunch.  Maybe I'll have a puff later.  I've still got mushrooms left.  I'll save them for Friday afternoon.  What else?  What more?  I started the book of Hosea yesterday morning.  More on whoredoms.  It was weird because it seemed to me that God was orchestrating the whoredoms while condemning the Israelites for it, but maybe I read it wrong.  Weird, too, that I found a scrap of Revelations in my pants pocket about Satan being bound and thrown into the Lake of Fire, I guess it was.  I'll probably just be getting to that part as Christian doomsayers reach a fever pitch at the turn of the millennium.  When will I do my third-person page?  When will I put another page on stupid Jim?     That last sentence stopped me for about ten minutes.  Ugh.  What else?  No alcohol for me for a while.  Shall I try for forty-one days?  More?  That's going to suck.  Maybe not.