12-1-00 F 12:57 PM

I have a headache. I’ve had a voracious appetite lately. I keep eating and eating. Maybe my ursine genes are gearing up for winter. Maybe those genes are why I’m tired all the time. I’ve been to Taco Bell, McDonald’s, Lucy’s, Jack in the Box, and Tam’s this week. Ugh. I started putting a post card collage on Rochelle’s closet door. I finished the newspaper at lunch. The market nosedived again yesterday. Mortgage rates hit a seventeen-month low, though. The Yankees signed Mike Mussina. Unreal. Florelle talked about heading out after school for a while. I don’t think I can hack it. I was thinking, even if the baby only costs me an hour of sleep a night, over a week, that’s one full night of sleep. Urg. The kids wrote book reports this morning. We went to the library. I have to make copies and mail in the insurance papers for Ada before I go home today. I’ve got to try to finish the introduction to that Penguin Classics edition of Leaves of Grass. Use Vein of Gold for another third-person page. We’re going to play football for PE today. What else? My mom is going to tea at the Bel Air Hotel today with Lynn Grzckch, and then they’re coming to the house around five. I have to get home before then so Rochelle can go to the market. I guess we’ll end up sitting around the house, drinking and play board games after that. Maybe we’ll watch the end of “Something Wicked” tonight after they leave. Tomorrow, we’ll go to the Museum of Miniatures. Maybe I’ll try [photo of my kids in portable public pool in Pacoima] to do some Christmas shopping. I wonder how much Stan paid for Millie’s ring. What else? It has been ghost-skies all day. I found a 1940 penny in my pocket. Andele! Andele! Mama ii aa oh ohhhh.

 11-30-00 Th 1:53 PM

Ugh. I typed eleven minutes this morning. Even cutting it short, I still didn't sign in on time at work this morning. I didn't sign in at all. I went to pick up a newspaper. Ugh. Sometimes, I don't even have the basic writing skills of a high school dropout. We completed a phonics lesson and talked about dreams. We went to music. The newspaper was meaningless. We studied rounding to the nearest ten. I had a bagel and some leftover Thanksgiving ham and green beans for lunch. Then the kids butchered their review questions about the Pacific Northwest, and now I'm irritated and consumed with loathing and still have half hour before I'll be paroled for the day. I stopped at Chevalier's yesterday and muddled over four different copies of Leaves of Grass, I finally bought "the original 1855 edition," edited by Malcom McCowry (?). How can it be original and edited by Malcom McCowry--oh, if he was the original editor. It's said that Whitman suppressed and censored later copies. That didn't quite add up, though, because this so-called original version was the thinnest (and cheapest). I didn't really want to get mixed up in hundreds of extra pages of homoerotic poetry. No hatred--just a matter of personal taste. Anyway, I'll read some when I'm done here. Then, I've got to get home and type another third-person page. I'll use suggestions from Vein of Gold. I could really go for a bachelor getaway. A drunk-in-public. Ugh. Got to go to work tonight. Maybe I'll take Rochelle and Ada to the Museum of Miniatures on Saturday. It will be closing its doors soon. Sunday, we have to go Orange County to celebrate Millie's birthday. Ugh. Then, we've got to go to the old folks' home where Rochelle's grandmother is drooling away. I can't complain; at least it ain't Idaho. At least her sister hasn't borrowed hundreds of dollars we'll never get back. Then, we're supposed to go to my mom's so Dotty and Andy can see the baby. I don't think I'll be reading my newspaper or the Koran. Then, the work week starts all over again. I've had to piss for about two hours now. What else? I slammed my fist on my desk and groan-growled at the kids who were goofing around, and now they're maintaining the appearance of working diligently to write thorough and accurate answers to their review questions like I asked.

 

“…demented with the mania of owning things.” 11/29/00-1/16/01 #52

11-29-00 2:02 PM W

Here we go again. I think this is number fifty-one or fifty-two. I’ll have to check the last one to make sure. I’m at school. We have conferences today. Mine are done. It seems I say nearly the same thing to each parent: variations on “So-and-so is making progress but can do better with a little effort and self-discipline.” Blah blah blah. I typed fifteen minutes this morning. Ate some watermelon and an English muffin with margarine and jelly. Drove the Olds to school. Got a paper. We studied the Kwakiutls’ use of sea and forest this morning. Checked our phonics. Read our biographies. I ate a little rice and banana at lunch. I’ve been reading the paper between conferences: the ongoing drama of who won Florida. I’m ready to eat something substantial, like a burger, but maybe I should wait until I get home and make something out of the fridge. This is my life. These are my concerns. Maybe I’ll check out a Blockbuster on Larchmont to see if they have “Something Wicked This Way Comes.” Maybe I’ll buy a new copy of Leaves of Grass. I think I’ll do a Vein of Gold exercise as a third-person page. Then I’ve got to mine my notes for the monsters on the wall. Jim is a chaotic jumble. I just need to finish it and sort it editorially later. Whatever. I think I’ll try to take Rochelle and Ada to the Museum of Miniatures this weekend. Have to work tonight. Work on Jim. Christmas shopping. Rings. Ugh. What else? Tomorrow is a regular day. I have no conferences scheduled, but I have to call three parents who did not come. We should go to Knott’s Berry Farm soon. What else? Maybe I can meet Thing at the Bounty on Thursday. Who knows? I’ll put a photograph here, a bad amateurish, over-dark, photograph. [Underexposed photo of wife on the ferry from Punta Arenas, on the Gulf of Nicoya, to the Nicoya Peninsula, Costa Rica]

 

11-28-00 Tu 2:36 PM

I’m waiting for Abigail Ayala’s mom so I can get conferences over for the day. It’ sunny today. The sky is blue except for the horizon, where it’s the color of an old sweat sock. Brown leaves. I read the newspaper. Gore’s suing to overturn Florida’s vote certification. I’m increasingly distressed about my writing. I’m not doing a good job. I have a fundamental lack of talent and and and balls. That’s what it is. I don’t have the nuts to truly devote myself. Because the glaring truth is, I know I would be a failure. So I spend most of my time making money instead of writing. Now, I don’t even have a choice. Who cares? I’ll just keep prattling along. But I look at Cheever or Josh Hayden. They’re a hundred percent committed to what they do. I’m like a pie chart. A small wedge is writing. I big wedge is worker/wannabe. Whatever. So, I'll read some Bradbury, and I’ll go home, and I’ll try to concentrate on moving Jim along, but I’ll just write mundane shit about the dog and the carpet. It’s hard to reconcile myself as a writer with my role as a family man. A write needs to live in semi-tortured, semi-solitude. A family man can be neither sole nor tortured. He must maintain the happiness of his dependents. There’s a sticky dryness where my mouth, throat, and sinuses meet. It’s not looking like Abigail’s mom is going to make it. Bryan was supposed to have a conference, too. He didn’t even come to school. I need a drink. I need to go out to bars. I need some creative energy. Ugh. I ate lunch at Taco Bell. Have to teach tonight. Something with Jim. The snot thin, I guess. It’s just a desperate move that has nothing to do with the theme or plot, neither of which do I have any grasp of anymore, if I ever did. Maybe I’ll rent “Notorious.” Maybe I’ll have a smoke today. [photograph of children working in a classroom]

 

11-22-00 W 6:06 PM

Waiting for the bus at Fairfax and Sunset, “Spare a cigarette, Bro?” guy with a beard walking a dog asks. A camouflage bus went by the other way. It looked like place where nothing wass happening but obviously trillions of things were happening. The bus came. He stood in it, scribbling, ass in someone’s face, probably wished he’d just sit down. He could feel the warmth of the people next to him. Felt like a sardine, but it wasn’t a bad thing: humble and lucky. The driver honked pedestrians off the sidewalk back to the grass as she zoomed in. He wrote walking in the dark from Wilshire and La Brea all the way home the opposite of nothing, like finding missing jokes.

Sun 11-26-00 7:37 AM

The phone rang. By the time I got out of bed, no one was there. The baby wailed like a banshee all night—heart-rending screams, as if she now realizes, two weeks after she arrived so peacefully, that existence bears as much or more misery as it does contentment. It pains you as a father to think maybe your poor, beautiful little baby might rather not have been born—that we have brought her here against her wishes and our better judgement.

She’s sleeping happily now upon her mother’s breast.

Yesterday, we put her in the stroller and and rode down to Olvera Street on the subway. She slept through a serenade of “Del Fondo Del Mi Alma.” She slept through everything. We went down to Pershing Square to see the ice skaters. It’s a distant second cousin, once removed, from Rockefeller Plaza. Cheap, cheesy, and way too small. We ate tortillas and beans and rice and split a beer at La Placita and strolled through Union Station. The wife just brought the baby out to me. She’s lying in my lap with her head on my knees and her feet on my belly. She’s content this morning.

 

11-18-00 9:55 PM Sa

What? What? What? We’re at home. “E.T.” is on T.V. The babe’s asleep on her momma’s lap. I’m lying on the floor writing this. My back aches. The Mariachis came over. Thing and Carlin, too. We watched “Toy Story 2.” Florida State beat Florida. Washington will meet Purdue in the Rose Bowl. I typed fifteen minutes. Read the newspaper. I’ve done a few loads of laundry. We ordered pizza. Still have to write to the grandmas. I walked the dog down to Sav-On with me to drop off a roll of film. The dog got loose at the shopping center and sprinted around like a retard on speed. Got to go to OSH tomorrow and try to put up that other shelf. Have to transfer the video. The Rawlers are coming tomorrow at one. I haven’t read any Something Wicked yet today. [photo of you children at a table around a cake with seven candles in it] Here’s a picture of me in at my birthday party in the early 70s. It’s confusing because there are seven candles on the cake, and it’s our house and my birthday party, but none of us are old enough for me to be seven in that photo. Note the Flintstones party decorations. I was a big Flintstones guy back then. That girl around the corner from me is named Monica. Hers was the first pussy I ever saw. One of those I’ll-show-you-mine-if-you-show-me-yours things. She initiated it. We went around the side of the house and took turns looking down into each other’s underwear. My dad busted us, but no one got in trouble. Next to her is Russ Yamamoto. He was a few years older and could be a bit of a bully sometimes. One time we were having a dirt clod war, and I threw one high into the air and it came down on Russ’s head, and he cried. Next to him is Paul, Monica’s brother. Don’t remember much about him. No, wait. That’s got to be Danny Sherlock. He and Tom Jordan would one day soon throw my little brother onto a cactus. Next to Danny is Keith Yamamoto. Once he and I were looking though a basket of National Geographics alongside his living room couch and got focused on photos of some tribal women’s breasts. We had both gotten erections and were talking about them in our limited vocabulary, and guess what? We ended up taking looks down each other’s underwear. His mom caught us, and I went and hid under my bed, but it was more of a fact-finding mission than any kind of latent home thing. No one shamed us about it, but I think there’s an instinctual shame about our own genitals, that I think, in men anyway, must be a genetic trait evolved to protect those vulnerable out organs. Then comes Monica’s brother, Paul, and my brother in the highchair looking like he has only turned three two months earlier.