Easterday

Easterday
And guess who rose from the daid. No, former neighbor Eric B. I know he wasn't dead but he might as well have been. He might as well still be, because I'm not sure it was old drunken writer Eric. He didn't say Hi. So I didn't have to say small world.
People like that (& so many people are like that*) leave me with a feeling of irritation & distaste, or irk & guck.
*i.e., oblivious

The sun is like a magic egg in an occident of bunny fur. With a magic ring—24º out (I'd guess). We know what that means. That means it didn't rain today, so all the celebrants should be happy (in their Easter bonnets). Maybe I should write about an 11 year old girl looking back on her innocent youth. (Annie from The Blessing?) If she could find the right friend (Charlotte Iverson?). Where does that leave Dave? And what's in that shoebox? Shoes? Red velvet slippers with sequins. There should be something else. Something of Julia or everything of Julia. Other people get tipsy & make up dances. What happened on that dig? Where Dave falls under the spell of the drunken Mary Leakey figure. Something everybody else noticed. Such that afterwards he was out of control & Julia was – gone. Then maybe he didn't quit drinking until she moved out. I'd have to go back & pick that up. She left to get away from Alan—but when did he get sick? Right after she left?

Good cat hunting last night. I even saw Tomas peering at me through a gap in the blind. He kept a feline or a cat repose. Cold but not cruel. They don't make foolish gestures. They aren't like us.
15th Ave Starbs 4/15/01

I Decide to Stand Firm (& Twist & 1 & 2 &)
I have been to the doctor & aside from the attack of nerves, everything went well. Even the attack of nerves was nothing special, and there was nothing wrong. My nodule is mythical—or almost. So what's wrong with my neck? Maybe asymmetry. The funny side is the unatrophied side? My muscle bound contralateral (right) side is constricting my elan vital.
On the whole (as I like to say), I think the thing to do is go to the acupunctist because I think blocked Qi (chi) is as good a diagnosis as capsulitis.
And if I keep moving....maybe I won't stop.

This absence of bad news cheers me. An absence of bad news can be a substitute for a presence of good news—in a good news drought. (Analogue to heavy dew).
I'm going to work for 5 days. 3/weekend/2 & hope to sell a nice piece of writing the same week, one of those weeks. That would just suit me.
Eavesdropping: "I've heard the Thousand Islands are...." "How many hours?"
Got a letter off to Fritz, so now I'm owed.
B'way Starbucks 4/17/01

The Pain Filter
When you have an acute pain, even if it's "only" musculoskeletal, all the beauties of a perfect spring day won't give you the raptures. Pain makes a screen & the pleasure bugs can't get through. I can see them buzzing just outside.

Much has not happened. Three days of computer pointclick has left me vulnerable & determined not to be beaten by this (ha ha ha ha). I've pushed up the stretching & little exercises & managed to make the neck muscle (trapezius?) left rear really sore. So I took an aspirin & ate my dinner & walked out to suffer a lovely April day. Cats with heart-shaped beauty spots on their kitty-whiskered muzzles.
I do, I do, I do nothing. Read a silly book by silly Western (male) Buddhists & wished for a better O religion. Syncretist. Well, then I have to admit that, given my temperamenta, Kwan-In Buddhism is probably as good as it's going to get. With all cat deities. Naturally.

There is a couple over on my left—big nosed white guy, brown-haired Japanese woman—both into their Christian religion. And talking-talking about the Spirit. Talking about "burning passion" & "gifts of the Spirit" & such all. I could see it—being given something beyond materialism, emotions or art. To talk about. Her shirt is wet along the cuffs & bottom…? They don't seem quite on the same wavelength but they are listening to each other and they have the enjoyment of finding out together.
BM Starbucks 4/21/01

Mitten Weather Again
After a temperature in the 60's yesterday (& I couldn't enjoy it because my neck hurt so much), today is freezing cold & rainy. All right, 40's isn't freezing, but I went out bare-handed & was sorry.
My neck hurts only a little now but last night my shoulder ached badly. At one point I felt it & it was cold to the touch. I held it with my hand & went back to sleep. And today my shoulder blade feels rickety. I crackle. This makes me mad.

I wrote 1/2 page of sure-to-be-cut on Dave's story & posted a note on the genealogy website about Sebra Inlay's Children.
It rained & I writhed with suppressed riot. Where does all that go, when there's no outlet for it?
Some part of me thinks that if I'd eat lentils & meditate, then the sun would shine every day & I'd have excellent wind & I would sing & dance & amaze my friends. I'd learn to play the guitar. I'd write poems. Good ones.
15th Ave Starb's 4/22/01

Turn Around

Turn Around
Monday I froze. Yesterday it got up to 60 or so & Liz & I celebrated by walking along the waterfront & eating fishenchips. Eating fish always makes me smack of virtue in an unlovely way. Yes, even deep fried fish. Even with chips.
Then Frank at Personnel came in & offered me more work. I winced, then agreed to come back if I could take today off. And I think it must be 70°—full rampant florescence (the floral tribute). I walked around & felt fat. I picked up 1967 & shook it. The sediment did not settle. Hmm, I said to myself.
And now it's almost over; but I got everything done that I wanted (it helps if you make a list of 2 items). I saw wonders (ooh, is that another dead mouse or just a hunk of smashed felt?).
And I read a nice quote by a Frog about how if his house was on fire & he could only save one thing, he'd run in & save the fire. Ha ha, but who was it, Barzun? Brel? Jean Cocteau. Right, that's who I meant.
Lee said that cats rule. Or maybe I did. We agreed. Today I saw a tomcat. Balls & all.
Broadway Starbs 4/24/01

I'll Teach Them
I'll teach them to bill me for large amounts. I'll cancel my appointments & refuse treatment & die of spite.
Curséd spite.
The sun shines on a cold & windy & cloud-proud day. Afternoon. Rain mad pelt at 1 p.m. & then (must be the Jet Stream) the sun came out & shone white light in every droplet dotting my window. Hmm, I said, that's an interesting effect & got up to see how they did it.
They did it upside down! Yes, each drop had the bright sky concentrated in the bottom & the dark of the earth up top. Oh, each one is a lens.

Then I got a bill for my thyroid consult. $285. Hey, I'm supposed to be a charity case, I said.
There's a # to call. I'll call it. But just to be on the solvent side (on the way to dissolution?), I called & cancelled my ultrasound scan. It's not going to show anything anyway, nothing I want to see.

I'm having hot spells again, just as summer beckons.
I'm back to crunching my neck & thinking (w/ incredulous outrage), "nobody should have to spend their life doing that" - meaning the job of pointclick.
And as for writing.... those women.... why do they stand there with their arms folded over their big bosoms? Why?
How many like me? Over aeons? Many.
Many.
BM Starb's 4/28/01

Dreams that Seem to Mean
For 3 nights I had the kind of dreams that seem to mean more than just brain static lighting up patterns across the net.
1) The first. I flew in the dark & arrived at a place – a camp (?), a summer camp maybe in the Sierras. Or a school. Both. Term was over & the students/campers were absent. I found Jean Op. in a cabin with her husband, a short, sturdy, "down-home" kind of guy. They had a child, a toddler. I left & came back, flying about 20 feet up. There was some question about whether I was visible or not. Was very glad to see Jean again.
2) Next night I dreamed I was in bed with Fred, curled up like spoons. I was v. content until I woke up. It was a work morning.
3) I was in a house, a big old one, where I lived with roommates (?). The house was in bad repair or was being remodeled. Fred was there with his wife & somehow I was in the basement right under their bedroom & could hear them making love. I heard him telling her to "spread em." I was embarrassed, angry, jealous. Then they came into the main rooms & the woman told me, rather smugly, that "Fred has a uterus." I said, (sarcastically?), "Yeah, in his brain" & she agreed—not recognizing my sarcasm. Then I woke. Glad that dream was over. It was 6 a.m. & the all the birds were singing.
Then last night I dreamed nothing, no #s, no visits or visitations. I woke up a lot at odd times. Foot stomps at midnight. The radio and/or the neighbors at 4 a.m. (I think "the radio" may have been hypnopompic voices in the whoosh of the fan.) My arm hurt. It was Saturday, but I took no real pleasure in it. A little work done. The sun coming out ....with this employment stint, I'm thrown back on my need for a reason to hope because I can't get the satisfaction from having the work move, that is, making progress. I take no satisfaction in earning my $100 a day.

On the whole, I wish I could draw. Significant what? Lime? Lemon. Or maybe I should content myself w/ word pictures. Old sweaty cheeks there with his skate board.
BM Starbs 5/5/01

Symbolic Infirmities
The Left Hand of weakness. Malàgauche pain. Sinister afflictions.
If the left side is the irrational, the (ahem) feminine, the wordless—then what am I (is it) expressing?
That I missed death by inches in 1973—& I've missed it ever since.
Evening's ephebe (saw I this evening), or was I —almost a palindrome.
I run into CG walking out with garish red hair—in a style a bit too much like mine. She sees me not. Lee tells me she comes in every weekend & complains about everything. I said, "Oh, like me?" He says no—she really complains & she's not funny. When I imitate her in my "Jana" voice, he says, "My god, that's what she really sounds like.

I cleared my desk today, went for a walk & felt unfriendly to my flesh. I feel my old fire's sparks & I want to tell all. Contact. That's all my old fire is. Desire. But out in the afternoon down 18th to Interlaken where the road slowly surrenders to gravity. Perfect spring day. Many cats, but I could handle even more.
BM Starbucks 5/6/01

S.... Orbs Floral

S.... Orbs Floral
Rose pink balls, frilled, on the rhody outside the window.
The attractive couple who practice ASL ignore the wildly crawling brownhaired baby, and the baby ignores them in return, but beams when Mom or Dad comes to lift him up. I watch them all with equal fascination.
I like the symbolic gestures best...or is that (flip flip) redundant?
I started to write "spheres" up there for a title but the sf sound lacks sforza.
Ooh, how the small folk express displeasure with their whole bodies. Something we adults never get to do. Well, hardly ever. Would it do, to get it out? I run instead. Or maybe there's a dance there—primitive indeed. No, savages are not children. But children are savages.
I'm reading about DH Lawrence. Apparently there is no price too excess to pay for genius. That is, if you're too good, nothing bad is bad enough, much less too bad. Sauvage.

I saw Jack in Volunteer Park last night. "Jackie," I yelled. "You can't hide." He must be 6'6". He gave me a hug. He has an earring through his auricular cartilage (otic).

What do people who can draw wish? That they could sing? That they could lose weight? Pay their bills!
BM Starbucks 5/9/01

I Wish
The phrase was buoyant (or at least puffed up) with meaning when I wrote it—“I wish"—last Wednesday, and now...maybe something about human uniqueness? We are the only creatures that daydream. Or are we?
I wish I didn't have to ever go back to the vile, mind-numbing, neck-cricking job. Or—to go in Monday to tell them goodbye & get my shoes. Ugly shoes that they are, I could just leave them. My cup then.
The job: Where the only entertainment is to wait for the next annoying remark from Jane.

What we wish: clarity & expansion, instead of murk & constriction. My neck/throat is feeling weird again & I'm having hot flashes. Maybe, I tell myself, maybe I'll die. Esp. it seems likely at night, in bed. And I half wish it—why not? Painless, please. Unlabored. Yes, maybe, but maybe I'll get what I get. Once I'm up & around I don't mind being alive. It's rather attractive, in fact, when the sun comes out & I wish I could draw it. Not the sun, the beauty, the lovely Isness of it all.
There's my wish. To draw, to sing, to lose weight, to sign, to go to Paris, to amuse, to be amused.
And to have some really nice clothes. That's all.
BM Starb 5/12/01

Tox i City
Lee leaves me to go talk to John. I've met J. before but don't remember because of the glasses (his) or hormonal toxicity (mine). C. G. goes out & I give her a big toothy smile & she smiles surprise back. "Oh, you do that well," Lee says. "She really is a bitch," he adds. I don't get the joke about Sizzler, but at his insistence, I write it down.
Better his life than mine—since mine is dingy apartment & needles in my shoulder blades.
Someone is getting married & John is doing the flowers.
I'm going to call the Clinic again for HRT, as I believe that might sweeten my disposition. Personalities—well, there they are, what do you do with them?
Looking out the door at the gum-chewing boy in camouflage pants listening to his Walkman—the impression he gives is of being very stupid. And beyond him the hilltop market, streetlights, cars, a skyline of downtown highrises. I remember the view from my 1985 window on Mercer—recall that Tomas lived there too. And have a pang to go with my needles.
BM Starbucks 5/12/01

Spring Light
By the middle of May the silver light falls gently down like the quality of mercy—unstrained.
No, I mean it sifts like mist, only dry.
I just had a hate-encounter with a short swarthy IT guy fucking with the computer at the Henry Library. Oh, was he rude. I wanted to smack him upside the head with an unabridged dictionary.
What is worse I have a sore throat & it hurts much much when I swallow. Also my Eustachian tubes hurt whenever I think about them.

Life falls all over itself with annoyance. I think it was the 6th billion person. I don't have dealings with many, but even the few I do—all of them piss me off. CD Clinic won't prescribe HRT unless I come in (& pay for the visit, of course). Be damned. So I'm getting J's extra—her doctor nags her to take it until she does, but only the month before her next appointment. (HRT is his religion.)

Tonight I want a piano & to feel better & to finish my novel.
Bway Starbs 6/15/01

Cos Cob — Heart's Desire
I was at Harvey W's in Auburn. We were getting married, Harvey & I. He looked just like he did in 1963, not a bit different. Wasn't I pleased? Auburn was a village with charming Victorian cottages. Harvey had gone out (he was in sales I think), but a bunch of his friends had come over & they were all intelligent & cultured. After the wedding we were moving to Cos Cob & I was going to write & edit a newspaper. I was going to be acclaimed for it.
God, I was happy.

The next night I dreamed that Ginny Anderson & I were palling around like girlfriends—& there were lots of cats.

Since one very bad night—coughing & pained in the shoulder & throat—I've slept pretty well. Though I have a touch of cold or hay fever, I don't feel too bad. But you know, I want to write. I also want to get away.
My rent will be raised as of 7/1 to $710 a month. So is now not a good time to go? Indeed it tis. At the end of the month, after I've paid rent, I'll have $950 — or about $700 if I buy a pistol.
Where should I go?
Looks like rain.
BM Starbucks 5/19/01

The Dark Underbelly of a Perfect Spring day

The Dark Underbelly of a Perfect Spring day
Is the fact that there is nothing I can do that will measure up to its perfection. Rhody bushes watermelon pink & big as the Parthenon. Some folks picnic in the park with egg & watercress sandwiches—but I don't even check my email.
I do take a long walk, though not long enough to reduce the size of my hemispherical stomach. And by the time I get to the cafe, Lee is nowhere in sight.
Daniel sits outside smoking in eavesdrop on some bike policemen. They are not interesting, he tells me. Even their tattoos are dull. (Do I seem to know a lot of refuges from the Midwest or do I?—well, 4 counting Spike.)
There's no place I want to go, though I may buy a bus pass &—ride. End of the line. You know, for the pleasure of looking out the window.
There is something criminal about lovely summer days to be endured. It's because no one loves me. Odd, when I am so very loveable. But people are looking somewhat alien. That peroxide blond in the pink shirt, for instance. Either the hair or the shirt (it's striped), or the sunburn. We-ird.
I must ask Danny if he's going home to Minneapolis for the fly festival. Now, he's disappeared. Like everybody else.
BM Starb's 5/20/01

Global Worming
On hot Wednesday (Mercredi Chaud), I find Daniel outside drinking a large iced beverage & looking like Starbuck's #1 Disgruntled Employee. Turns out the air conditioning went on the blink. Oh, but it's back now, so I don't have to go outside, or suffer the ignominy of dripping sweat, as I did in the Henry library mere minutes before. I came out today in sweatpants. I must be crazy.
Well, yes & no.
However, now the West is filling with electric blue-gray clouds folding themselves into highest heaven. And a little bit of breeze is blowing too. So maybe tomorrow (a day I was supposed to have off, but will not) (dang), it will be cool & breezy. I have to come up with something cool to wear. I have to go shopping for summer clothes. Sandals too. I'm sick of big hot shoes. But I also need a file cabinet. Luggage. A "cool" blanket. Round Trip tickets to Paris.
BM Starbs 5/23/01

What pleases me
What pleases me about the end of May/beginning of June (besides the growth of flowers, mild weather, summer clouds, birdies of all kinds hopping, singing, fucking, flying—esp. always the swallows—& the long pearly dusks) is the way people come out in costume. For didn't I just see a couple hop out of their VW in front of the B&O, he wearing a white suit with orchid boutonniere & she in a handkerchief-dress (fine linen or cambric) with a flattened Stargazer lily on her head. That's what it looked like anyway. And isn't that nice? I wonder where they're going. To a wedding? A garden party? The ball?
I also like seeing kids on their way to the Prom or graduation, or even the senior tea. Did we have a senior tea? If so, where? And why don't I remember? We had some constrained & ladylike festivities that even then I knew were second rate. Mother-daughter banquet. (That actually sounds like it could be fun—but not if the church [patriarchal] runs it.) I mean at least you know who you're with....or on second thought, maybe it's not always obvious who you mother is. And think how you'd feel to find out all your life you'd believed a lie. Or imagine finding your birth mother only to discover that your father was her father. It happens. Or that you were the product of a rape. Would you be grateful that she's had you?

Ha, all this from Mother-daughter banquets? Oh, the bad food. And oh, the entertainment. (Who had charge of those things—The Circle? Mesdames Leraas & Hanson? Must ask Janet. Or Mom!)
BM Starbs 5/27/01

Gathering Hints
Even the obnoxious decadent people have some appeal when I can contemplate them, over by the window, washed with light, & consider drawing. The goddish is-ness of illuminated objects (or subjects). Lux aeterna! (Glory Hallelujah.)

I don't draw—leave that for Lee. I ask Monsieur Blond where he's buying his summer wardrobe & he tells me he got a great deal at—Urban Outfitters!
Funny, all I ever found there was ugly retro stuff that I thought was ugly in 1974. They tell me there's a secret upstarts part with not-so-ugly stuff On Sale.
For some reason, I think I need sandals first. For the pleasure of cool feet.
Third day off, 2nd day back on "Dave" (slow going—slower than Dave runs)....but even when I get him to the End of the Trail (soon, really, 2 pages at most), nothing will be complete until I bring Meta into it. I mean to tell her version ("the real" story).

A wonderful day. Those charcoal gray clouds & pelting rain: it starts with one silver streak down my window. Poured for 15 minutes, tapered off & little blue patches appeared. Then the whole process repeated & immediately thereafter I went for a walk/run. I only ran for 2 or 3 blocks—but that's more than I've done for months & months. And my shoulder's better.
Dan Savage was quoted in the NYT saying that Seattle sucks. So it's not just me. I must make some profit from this awfulness. It wouldn't take much exaggeration. And then I'll take off for—umm—Cos Cob.
BM Starbs 5/28/01

Dazzled

Dazzled
Down John Olive Way with the sun in my face, almost run over by boy on bike Nice 18 year old boy on bike. I stood dead still like a jacklit deer (doe). He pedaled up the hill calling "sah-ry," Oh,
you & me both, sonny.

This after walking up & down Broadway & buying—nothing. Not a haircut or a pair of sandals or even ice cream.
However, I'm going back for ice cream.
I want a hike but I may settle for a walk over to the U. District. And new underpants. But, as far as a goal in life, is this quite It? No, but I have Dave minutes away from death.
I'm almost ready for a swim.
Now, can I go to California? Try to slip into Grass Valley where the black-outs roll. (With my luck, I'd run straight into Roger—about whom I dreamed the other night, BTW. Old goat. OK, OK, I'm the one who dreamed it. Nothing consummated, nothing gained.)
They keep playing Frank Sinatra. People liked him. Imagine. L(eaves)M(e)C(old).
Tomorrow—more literature, more joy. More of the same. More of better, please.
Oh, like now—Clyde McPhatter. Worth half a swoon.
BM Starbucks 5/29/01

Notice Things
The on-line quiz bundles items together so that all the answers are wrong. Yes, I feel dull-witted, but my perceptions are just fine, thanks.
Like Green Fingernails
Then Kay comes in & tells me that her cat has cancer of the tongue & a kidney stone plus being HIV+. So even though she can be an annoying, over-serious schlump, I feel for her.
The quiz with all wrong answers was an on-line menopause quiz that proved you needed hormones no matter what you said.
But, though I feel dull-witted (compared to my previous sharp-witted self) & often can't think of a word (with all the words in there, no wonder), still I'm as perceptive as god. So I see that guy with green nail polish (he doesn't look too crazy, but crazy, yes. Kathy can tell) saying "wuz happening" to the little blonde homeless woman. I've got a half-notion to pay her a buck to hear what life on the street is like, a dollar's worth.
But she wouldn't tell me.
I suspect she & her vulpine-faced husband are methamphetamine addicts.
And I also notice the ugly tattoos & big plug-holes in earlobes & ugly clown boots (black suede platform boots) worn seriously by women who don't look stupid. Facial expressions I mean.

Then with the May-June sunlight filling my apartment like eau de vie, all scintillae & significant shadows, I keep thinking, why don't I draw? It's all so beautiful.
Broadway *bucks 5/31/01

Got 2 got 2 got 2
Got 2 get away. Here on a Saturday in the rain. The silver-white rain of June and everybody ducks for the doorways. Save those who don't, who pay no attention. I have come to the Broadway cafe where I sat last Wednesday & was so hot that I took off my workshirt & threw away my keys.

And now I can think of nothing better to do than...talk to visitors? I refrain from picking up the conversational baton (or hankie) from the Jimmy Baldwin look-alike. His hotel is downtown. I don't say, "Oh, are you a visitor?" (He was talking to Mattias in deutsch. Cruising?) In the rain everyone looks sullen & furtive, & yet much better than they do in hot weather, with all the ugly flab and tattooed skin showing. Oh the fatties—where do they spend their weekdays? Oh, the fatties in purple & gold windbreakers. What is it about fans?
I'm always shocked (& saddened) by the scientific types who claim fanhood, esp. of baseball. But that's guys—they are often AAB (all-Am-boys) until they escape the herding effects. With girls, it is different. (Isn't it?)
Bway *Bux 6/2/01

Nature Writing
At the tiny Broadway Starbucks on Sunday. Family group: two terminally unhip middle-agers (probably my age but I don't feel as old as they look, or look that bad. Do I??). Then the dysfunctional guy waiting for his refill, singing:
"If you see me walking down the street
And each time we meet/ I start to cry..."
(i.e., wrong)
I do not ask him if he knows he sounds Just Like Dionne Warwick, because I don't want to start something I won't want to finish.
Then the police walk in & Mr. Dysfunction walks out. The police are just here for coffee; they probably have an ancestral memory from when this was a Winchell's do-nuts. Besides them—all the random variable heuristic-stochastic Broadway crowd: Asian mom with 2 kids & the little girl's hair looks like mine ought to but never will, no matter how much I spend on clippers. Then a couple with all their cartilage pierced & cool-as-me in big RayBans. Then a shaven-pate and his alter ego. More Asians. People of indefinable lineage (it's always smart to have thick hair &—unless you live up where the sun don't never shine—just enough melanin).

Variable June day. The sun stands over silverward & all the leaves fresh & sinuous & rustling in the breeze.
I dreamed I won a thousand dollars on a scratch ticket. I got up lonely (?) & bored & suicidal. After breakfast & leftover papers (but feeling fat because I hadn't gone out for a paper), I wrote a page or 2 on Meta which would have left me pleased, if I hadn't taken a peek at the beginning of Dave, and found it inert & smelling. Maybe, before I try to liven it up, I'll rewrite Part I.
Otherwise...out into the bright evening. (I could always get the gun & go—that would improve the prospect of the season, at least for a while.)
B'way *Bux 6/3/01

Travelogue - Day 1

Travelogue — Day 1
These overcast June days are like no others—oh, all right, except the overcast May days. And sometimes April.
The world has gone all green & coiled & leafy. I see a cement wall disappearing behind a floral cascade or a reaching blackberry vine. But it's not just blackberries. The grass is up & going to seed like a sea of green. The folks at 16th & Thomas don't cut anything & the fire hydrant has disappeared.

I walked over to the U. District through caves & corridors of green. Overcast sky cool to warm (as I walked & emoted) & on campus, all these kids. I know I've said this before, but college students these days are all 12 years old. I was surprised at how many ugly ones there were—well, girls anyway—you'd think, being that young, it'd be easy to be fair—but then, it is the last of finals week, so maybe the effect was due to dirty hair & lack of sleep. Of course, when I was a girl, we were more of us plain than not. (I'm pretty ugly in my fat phase, at whatever age.)
Then on the Ave., I saw Adam who said Hi & Carole G. who did not. In fact, she looked tormented. But maybe she was thinking.
Whenever I see a girl with big hair, I wonder if she's really a boy in a wig. They are chasing me out w/ Frank Sinatra. ( I'm glad he's dead.)
BM *bux 6/4/01

Over the Hill — Day 2
Reflection: If I didn't have disagreeable reflections, I'd have nothing, and would that be preferable?
Nowhere is where I am, but since there's nowhere to go, I'm there already. Cloudy. Daylight is a thousand needles touched to the juncture of each circuit. No where. No one. Nothing. Whatever it wasn't, it will soon be gone. I nod in recognition & respect at the ancient fir dying in the middle of the parking lot.
Nomen est omen, and take the part for the whole.
Parkland: monkey trees. God, could I do Parkland? The mountain & the water tower. "The hill." A way of life that has disappeared. Only it hasn't—it's still out there, and it's worse. At age 7 or 8 or 9, you cannot extract the landscape, the environment, from your child's emotions. I had typical child's emotions— ogreous-big. Bigger than me. Big as the landscape. Walking along A Street in my dreams. Dark, isn't it?

I want to go to the Nisqually Delta, and the north Cascades. Also the ocean. I had $600. I still intend to buy a pair of shorts or Capri's or both, and a cool shirt.

If I had neat clothes, I'd be a knockout (another harmless delusion?). I know things & then I forget them. I may have to find my way back to that flat green field lit by a low & livid/lurid sun. The purple of storm clouds at evening is as weird as any of the LSD-scapes that have staggered me.
Tantra — open your eyes.

The people who crossed the plains in wagon understood the landscape. Knew the land.
Now, what were John & I discussing when he so rudely flew off to Croatia? Willa Cather. Now, she knew a bit about the prairie.
Broadway *Bux 6/5/01

Down in the Dumps. Day 3
Portrait or landscape. Where do they come from, these exhibitionists & who looks more artful, that sculpted face guy of mahogany brown with the short spike bleached platinum blond hair, or the Japanese kid with the reddish-tipped Harpo-curly hair?
I went not up hill nor down dump. Or over the lake or to the end of the line. All that might be possible, but you can't see the landscape for the improvements—except maybe on a bicycle. River valleys? Watersheds? Down where I grew up, water stood in marshes & the creeks always overflowed their banks—planes/plains of glacial till topped with an inch of loam.
That's not home—they ("my" people) just set down there arbitrarily. It's hard to put down roots in soil like that.
The women in my family (extended) like to travel more than the men. It's that spirit of dissatisfaction again.
I'm just looking for my people. My real people. (Sukey? Is that what she'll find? The scepter & the orb? The people who understand your language.)

The crazies all have a family resemblance. The beards. The mixed plaids & prints. The unwashed hair. The shambling, stumbling gait. Fat or thin. Disordered. Be funny. Sing. The Supremes. There is a comic side.
BM Starbucks 6/6/01

Ich muss
Ändern? That is what summer teaches me and always has: time for a change. Why won't I learn? It isn't that I don't know. I'm prepared, I mean mentally. I'm more than prepared.
Give me the fucking money!
Or the place to stay.
I can't do it if it's hard. I don't have the wherewithal. I do have $600 though, and $200 coming. I could go buy the wherewithal.
And be done with.
I was looking at my old journal, when I got back in touch w/ Fred in 1990. That was the closest I came to having a life here. We went places. Places I've never been except with Fred (& sometimes he wasn't much fun, believe you me). And never will visit again. Then there are places I went, almost by accident—Vashon Island (hey, look at all the folks) (ooh, a fat tattooed guy with a parrot on his shoulder, not piratical, just—prole with parrot).

Otherwise I stay home. I haven't even been on a bus, and I'm always telling myself how I love riding buses, trains: public transports. Maybe I'm lying. Maybe I just need speed.

Oh, there goes boot-woman, the one with the falling (dysfunctional) pompadour & slash of crimson lipstick. But without her fat son. Maybe he grew up? If I had a fat son, I'd reject him. I hate fat kids. It's an aesthetic thing. Good thing I didn't have any.

Last night I visited Fred at his high-rise. Brand new. Two sets of elevators, like in the Key Tower & I missed him the first time (?) but I got out on the transfer floor & there he was. And he took me to his suite (it was sort of a residence for the young), brand new but cheesey. Reminded me of the cookie-cutter apartments at Faneuil Hall. Only there were all these bright-colored, modern-in-1965 touches.
And then his wife came charging in. "Surprise!" She was small & dark-haired & confident, the peppery type. She said her name was Tyger. It was like they had invited me over just to humiliate & depress me.
The nice part was that I woke up & was so glad to be done dreaming that I got up & it was only 8:20.
I'm feeling lumpy & lumpish. It's partly my clothes but mostly my lumps.
Broadway *B's 6/7/01

Gentil Parfit Snit

Gentil Parfit Snit
My summer snit (my birthday snit) but I'm prepared to let it go. Whether it will go or not remains to be seen. My snits are more faithful than dogs. What kind of dogs? Awful little wiener dogs that will not run away. No, more like big mangy hounds.

One drop of rain on a day of a month of a year in which nothing happens. I put on my new shorts & shake my head (my jowls) more in outrage than in sorrow at the sorrowful flab on my legs. You've heard of fleshly desires? I don't have them any more. If I had any, I'd have flabby desires. The shoes don't help, big ugly things that they are, but really it's not the shoes, it's the flab.
So I put on my deep-cut shirt to distract people from my flabby legs to my speckled bosom. But, you know, nobody looks at me at all, legs or bosom. Not on this hill, not in this outfit.

I want to go—away from here. Not to somewhere but just away from here. I would pilot a flying tabby. Yes, winged cats.

You know why I don't succumb to horror.
Let's try that again...
You know why I have no desire to expose myself to horror or suspense? Why I don't like scary stories? I overcame the essential angst & horror of existence by an effort of will, by intellectual analysis, and I'm not about to give it over now.

Lee is ignoring me & my cleavage too. I could just absent myself...that's what I want to do anyway. Absum.

Otherwise I want to fill my pages with pictures. Starting with the silver light of midsummer.
I also want a hammer. To hammer the dwarfs. Of course.
BM *bux 6/8/01

Chéri, I said
But he flashed his CD player at me (the one with G protection), saying, "It has long-life batteries" and with that he was gone. That was Lee. It was 6 p.m. & he said he was going Straight Home.

I have a dream. In my dream I find out Tomas lives. He's been alive all the time, wherever it happens to be, & I realize—with chagrin of a depth impossible to describe—that he's been alive for 10 years & I haven't fed him. What's more, I don't have any cat food with me. Last night, as usual, he didn't seem starved. So I pushed my chagrin aside.
When I wake up these lovely days with nothing to do but write, I sincerely wish that I had died during the night, or that I will die within the next hour.
I never do.
And the writing stinks. It seems like such a good idea from a distance, but when I get up close enough to hear my characters' thoughts, they're banal. The mots are not juste. It's like my idea that the Nisqually Delta is a power spot. It is as long as I do not go there, but only drive past on the freeway. What is that magic in my regard?? Tantra??
Maybe the magic is still there if it is properly approached. I have no tutelage in approaching power spots or comprehending/apprehending those—what are they?—places where force (let's call it erg because that has no connotations, unlike "power" or "force”) is concentrated. Junctures, cleavage planes.
I'm not sure that we don't have senses...I mean beyond the 5. I suspect we have the ability to sense much more than we usually do in the day-to-day grind. Paying attention, understanding what those quivers & intuitions mean is the hard part. For instance the ick I felt that day at Lake Berryessa. The ick I felt hiking by Crystal Springs (?) Reservoir with Roger.
Or how I always felt uncomfortable in my apartment in Faneuil Hall.
Magic places tend to lie off at a distance. Maybe I should be a landscape painter? Remember, the death rate approaches 100% if you wait long enough.
The sign I've been looking for? I'm quiet. But I may write something about my high school adventures with Victoria. She was fat and I was a pointy-head. What did we do downtown? Shop? Oh dear, well, it was something to do on a Saturday. What else could we do? Visit the massacre site?
Buy souvenirs!
BM *Bux 6/9/01

Next to Nature, Us
She doesn't like us & she never did. She plays no favorites: what you can carve out or steal, you can keep. For a while.
The guy at the Broadway Non-7-11 asks me if I feel lucky. "Haw haw," I say, "the only time I feel lucky is when the hormones make me stupid." So, the expression "get lucky" for getting laid actually makes sense. We learn to distrust those euphorias even as we enjoy them. It's fun, it doesn't mean anything—neither good fortune nor eternal damnation.

I like it best when good things sneak up on me at a time when I'm feeling no particular way. I usually feel pretty bad/bored or simply content to have outrun an evil mood.

Or, take flagstones. Take the only enjoyable dinner conversation I ever remember at our home table. The Nelsons were having dinner with us & they were wildly funny, Ronnie & Denny. Uncle Cliff turned pink, he laughed so hard.

Last night I was in SF (?) with Anne Cavender & had Tomas with me. I was concerned because we were touring the city (I may have been taking her around, I think it was, Telegraph Hill) & I didn't have a carrier, and though Tomas was old & frail (like the Kitty Dixie-Cup whom I'd petted the day before), once we got off the bus, he was likely to run away. Oh dear. Anne was, as ever, cheerful.

Today I ran out between squalls (early June weather) to take my stroll along 19th & crossed the street so I wouldn't rear-end the young couple walking the white Scottie (Glenfiddich). The woman turned around as I crossed & yelled. It was Amy Ebersole with that new longer red hair, walking with a guy named Jonas. Hey, what's with her? I thought she was Gay. I do like that girl. I wonder if she thought I looked like a...
Maybe I should just get a job. Maybe I should write about getting Drunk. ASC's & pursuit of the transcendent.
BM *Bux 6/10/01

North of the Jet Stream

North of the Jet Stream
Low pressure is what it's called, but it looks just like winter to me. The Jet Stream is flowing up the Columbia River—like a jet ski. It rains & the drain backs up in front of my door. I'm pulling loose. It makes me happy to write that—I hope it's true.
I start up with (Monty) pythonisms but they die back again—I confounded Library Kate with The Bread Also Rises (where Jake Barnes punches Ruth Reichl in the nose—or says he does—“Hey, do I have hair on my chest, or what?")
I should pull down my sweats. "Hey, do I have fat on my belly or what?"

For some reason the rain makes all the college kids talk on their cell phones, those that aren't busy tapping their laptops. What are they doing here? It's almost the middle of June—why don't they go home?

I had somebody else's terrible dream last night. It was a crime drama about Indians & ended with them catching the guy raping the little girl in the back of the truck (in the trunk?) & so drunk that he kept pumping away as they pulled him off & one of the police (they were there for the [gang-related] stabbings]) shot him. Glad to wake up from that one.
The dream was shot in that edgy digital style too. How do I do that? Channeling? Maybe it is possible to use your brain like a radio/TV receiver.
BM *Bx 6/11/01

Do the Voices
OK, the brothers gonna boycott Starbucks because they don't like Pete's hair cut. Sean comes up confused about bombing abortion clinics. I explain: It's because babies are cute & grown-ups ugly & that makes it okay. (Course, I personally don't think fetuses are very darn cute.) Sean has a retainer.
*
Now, Ray Davies' new book: Ray may only have 4 strings to his guitar, but he plays a pretty clever set of songs on those 4 strings. I'd like to run into him in an elevator, so I could say, "Les Mulligan, innit? Or maybe Les Ismore?" And then, "It could be worse, mate, you could be Bryan Ferry."


It comes on sometimes. Or comes over, like a herd of wiener dogs, galloping along the ground at the ends of their tiny leashes. They've certain gotten popular, wiener dogs, at least in town. Fashions in dog boom & bust.
Yeah, research tools.
What I want to know is always some obscure & soon outdated (& meaningless) fact. The weirder the better. Should be able to make something of that. Nnn?
Guess how many strings I have on my piano. Right. Wrong. On my mop. On my string theory.
BM *bux 6/12/01

Beheaded
Make straight in this desert a freeway. The doings of my life are bumping along a donkey trail in a handcart & now the damn cart won't go. Not to hell nor nowhere. What somebody (Megan or Cosmic Annie) would explain with: Jupiter's in retrograde.

That means for 2 days the computer is down so I can't print. And nobody sends me email except people who want me to send them money (fat chance) (and whence comes that expression?), and no mail except for the invisible Mr. Holloway. I've gotten annoyed enough with this phantom to put his mail back in the box direct. But as far as progress—another day older. I did get a weak smile out of Jessica, QFC's Queen of Customer Disservice. I wrote a page or 2 on Meta's part of Matryoshka, decided to have her go down into the underworld—& then realized I did that in OD&D. Well, darn, or maybe like Inanna, we could have her dried & hung on a peg. Or maybe we'll drop Part IV.
(But what happened to Julia?)
Anyway, some events "happened" after I wrote & so I'll have some finish for the party & then—I don't know.

Writing is the worst life of all. Of the arts lives, I mean. —Or maybe not, maybe I'm just unsuited for it. (But dance, while it had a nicer rhythm & more interesting scenery, was exhausting.)

What to do? What to do.
Something to use me up.

Frank has started singing again. Time to go.
BM *Bux 6/13/01

Making Donkey Ears in Vain

Making Donkey Ears in Vain
Couples meet at 6 in the cafe. Sorry, I'm late, say some. Others embrace. The two in front of me make smacky step-love while the old biddy scowls. (I'm the old biddy.)
The bottom sinks but doesn't fall out. Like a cardboard box that's been sitting in a damp basement. Did you hear about the woman who took the elevator down to the basement parking garage to get her car but the garage was flooded & she drowned. We don't like to think about it...I mean if she had time to scream, did she have time to hope there might be a trapped air bubble. Too much time to think.

Well, T.G., they quit sucking faces & left.
I kept my sour mouth...having a small dip on the graph of my joie de vivre.

I wish I could "think through" topics to completion, but the topics, thought about whole & shiny & amorphous like salmon at the bottom of the pool...never surface. Don't shed their scales, much less climb up on the platter.
It requires words. Sentences. It requires that I put a knife between my teeth & dive in. Or put on my wet suit & flippers & air tank & hop in.

If I am going to think thoughts never thought before, if I am going to be truly original, I am sure to be mis- or not understood. I don't think I want that. Anyway, after 30,000 years go by, how likely? So, I have to take some seldom seen ideas & bring them to the party dressed up in such splendid costume, that people will say, "Are those Abos? I had no idea they could be so...affecting. But what does it mean?"
And if we explore those ideas, what will that mean?
1) People do not want too much abstraction
2) Any meaning is better than none.
3) Beauty is its own reward.
So many people meeting for coffee. Gorgeous hair is better than a great dress. But a great dress is better than nothing, especially if you're fat.

Maybe I could come up on the ideas slantwise.
—Vicki & me. Idealized.
BM *Bux 6/14/01

Seas
And also seize (the day). Six heures à point. Cease (& that's what I want). Six Toes the cat. Sees & C's.
Cease is what I want mostly when I wake up: Oh no...
And when I get no mail. Like today.
When the writing doesn't flow (like most days). Or when it goes off in some weird direction & stops at last where the track ends in the middle of a bunch of scotch broom. (like today) (and yesterday)

You know, I know they're all in there. One leaps now & then, though by the time I look, there's only the spreading circle, but then a splash off in another direction, and so on. Maybe sleep deprivation? Coming back to day though, always seems hateful to me—and why? Is this the result of learning (50 years of frequent if intermittent thwart) (& 10 years of absolute despair) or is it hormonal? I used to have my ups & downs. Now I just have my downs.
All the coffee in Arabia would not wash this darkness bright.
I don't, BTW, believe that bit about getting stupid from lack of estrogen. I was never quite such a dunce as when full of heat. Smart, but stupid too, if you know what I mean.
And I mean really, what difference does it make if it's Korsakoff's syndrome or Reinecke's disease? But the fear of it will certainly get us girls running — to the doctor.
And I look like hell too. But still, there are others out there who look worse. Lots. That could make me feel better...
But it doesn't. I mean, I have to look at them.
So would you rather go blind or deaf?
So would you rather love in vain or be loved by someone repulsive or mean?
Rather have ALS where you body decays around an intact mind or
Alzheimer's where it's vice to versa.
Would you like some more bad choices?
Remember I didn't abandon Tomas until 5 minutes from the end. If I have to spend 5 minutes in hell for that—I think I already have. So there.
But I may be mistaken.
BM *Bucks 6/15/01

C's & D Cyst
I'm sure Ned Rorem could tell me why his songs are good, but I wouldn't believe him. He says all sorts of silly things in his journal too, yet was always forgiven because of his rare beea-uu-ty. No, really, why did they—and much more importantly, why is it nobody has ever recognized my 1) genius; 2) rare beauty. Too rare, I guess. Or maybe I was deluded. Mrs. Reynolds led me astray by praising my mediocre Christmas poem simply because, unlike the other 8th graders, I didn't try to rhyme.
I don't think I ever wrote another thing. I mean, I didn't think we were allowed to make it up. (Did ? I didn't think much...for myself anyway...that was frowned on too.) Originality was frowned on.
What was not frowned on? Playing piano. Singing if it was church music. Getting good grades. correct spelling & accurate math. Telling the truth.

I loved to draw & though never satisfied with the results (to this day) could amuse myself for hours. Most of all, I always liked getting the right answer.
Don't know what I could have done differently. The properties of light or vision or...if only someone could have told me it didn't have to be this/that way. But that's what no one ever tells children, in so many words. That's what education must lead you to, step by step. Or experience. Travel. Other people. TV? Maybe I should be grateful to TV for its window on the world.

The best thing in Greek history was the Spartan boy with his stolen fox. There's an Aesop story for you.

Yesterday, the beautiful girl with the great mahogany hair came by to ask me what I'm doing...we discussed those Hobson-style choices (burned at the stake or the death of 1000 cuts?) Her name is Liz. Today young Daniel is back, his beauty unimpaired after his bout of scarlet fever, but his bank account soon to be sadly depleted. He didn't have insurance! "Daniel," I say. "Don't pay."
BM Starbux 6/16/01

Her Middle Name is
Her middle name is damn. That's Ms. Perfect Day. My m.n. is Futile (yes, but what is it?).
At the end of this perfect day, I come to the Starbucks & find it's the Invasion of the Irksome clients. A dozen barricaded behind tables full of condiments. It seems to be a Meeting.

I woke up this morning alone, isolate & futile. But I didn't have to work & I took comfort in that and thought, if I have a means, I don't need the rent. I'm ugly beyond recounting these middle age mornings but I only look at my face in the mirror one eye at a time & it looks flat like a picture (of futility) & I don't take it personal.
It was only when I walked out at five to five that I found out it was a perfect day. I assisted (midwife manner) by walking down Interlaken in late afternoon solstitial sunshine. And this is what I saw: carpets of green, cascades of green, explosions of green, clouds of green & strange green stuff here & there. Also reddish-green repeating patterns with punctuations of color, some the same, some different: even the same ones were different, once you looked close. All the gaps were filled in with more beauty, as if the spirit of perfect form (Eida) could yodel forever without taking a break (& I'm sure she can).
I smiled as I walked & approved wholeheartedly everything I saw.
I'm sure a million pollen particles wafted through my sinuses, but I did not sneeze even once. All this after reading many pages of Simon Schama's history of the Frog Revolution. When men start talking, what strange things they say, and when they set to talking loudly at length, what strange things happen.
Down the hill (Olive Way) comes striding an upright old lady, wearing cotton pants & a blue work shirt. Reminds me of me.

I need to change direction. I need to change.
How can that be?
BM Starbucks 6/17/01

Birds of a Feather, or the Air

Birds of a Feather, or the Air
For Tuesday, the bird motif. Drying my hair out in the sun, I see a swallow drop a white feather & loop back (they fly like gravity-defying boomerangs) & catch it again. Why? Nest material? Then it sat up on the uh portico, the frieze, the umbril, the cornice top. It sat & it smirked. Yes, birds can smirk.
Then walking over to the Starbucks on another boringly perfect day (all I need to make me swell is a lively conversation), I almost got run off the sidewalk by a quartet of dumpy white boys in gap-pants & T-shirts. Eeek, I shrieked, holding my Munch in my paws. Wa Wa Wat izzit? Four fat guys. Techies, I'd bet.

I'd like to add something about spring lapsing/surging into summer. It falls like a wave. Roses fragrant in the heat & the mock orange, my favorite. Afternoon (4:30) sun shining through a high curtain of chestnut leaves. Yes, paint of emeralds.
And then: I feel good. I phone Liz C. I even phone for a job. I dare hope & I send a query after a story. I get mad at the bloodsucking speculators....and that's tonic. I'm so happy, I want to buy clothes. Yes, even to go shop.

I also want, in absence of a magic carpet to the ocean, a trip to the Nisqually delta.
BM Starbucks 6/19/01

I Should Tell JHY
I should tell JHY about the sex-maddened sparrows flying heedless into the Henry library & knocking themselves cold against the windows. And the benign little dwarf (Crazy) who took the latest one up oh so gently, took her outside & set her loose to fornicate another day. So natural selection is sometimes thwarted, sometimes helped by the forces of wha, or stochasm.
Therefore, why not other dimensions. Where Tomas went, I could go. Unless he's ducked back in here already.
Be my luck to miss him.
I do miss him.
You know I'd replace him, but the signs all say: No. Go home. You git.

I run into pudgy librarian Rachel schlepping her bags of groceries up the street. No work today? I'm drunk on the light, I tell her. Isn't if fine, she says.
I want something & I don't know what it is. I want some other thing & I do know what it is. And the cat too.
Make it.
BM *Bux 6/20/01

Two O'Clock
Two o'clock is the time I'm sure to feel okay, if not better than okay. Sometimes well-being sets in with the coffee, but I've been flailing through my weed-field Creative Imagination for the last weeks & getting nowhere, which makes euphoria a bit more elusive. I've picked up plenty of foxtails in my cuffs though.
And today I saw what happened to Julia. Maybe. All I've written may turn out to be otiose & nugatory.
On the other hand, my solution may be a cheap rip-off of Don Juan. (Hey, why not?) But Julia would/will have disappeared. Meta will say so. Mallory is dead of course — he drew his shadow (re-/suppressed side) to him. Julia was open.
But what about the lost parents? Father or mother? I need a dream. (She needed a dream). Dead or missing. Missing has more power because it gives the imagination a canvas to paint and paint again. Julia goes missing—like __________(the woman Dave hears about or Jackie from UCSF).

Meta goes down after her? Julia went after— ? Whoever is in that flat in Paris. Addicted to or abusing drugs, and—pressed against the membrane. Then maybe I’ll figure out what part is the scaffold & take it down.
Maybe the scaffold is the best part.
BM *Bux 6/21/01

They Gave Me a Stone
I asked for blood.
I asked for blood sausage
I asked for a bun & mustard...
I asked for a loan
I asked to be left a loan
I asked to be left the family history
I threw the stone back at em.

Journals? I want to be a feuilletoniste at least. (Ned Rorem can do it, why not I? I can't write songs either.)
The young women walk by with plump shelves fore & aft (ass). I have ironed out those...not the wrinkles—no, not hardly. My backside as flat as an ironing board, while the wrinkles are in my cheeks. Bring the iron.

Hey, all that blood stuff is over. What shall I do now? So much possible. Too much? I think most people are double-whelmed; people in the U.S. anyway. How much gives full return? I don't know—but I'm not like everybody else. Of course, they aren't like everybody else either. Some people like toys (children & men, f'rinstance). Some people like games. Sex. Romance. Children. Women like cootchie.
And many like improving on nature, one way or another.

I got no message last night—or not one I could make use of. Some guy with a violent book—maybe about the Terror (French Rev.), but something alien to me. I didn't know him & I don't think I knew what he was doing in my dream.
But I slept well. No noise all night.

I finished Part III of Matryoshka (Meta's) but never did place her in her day. Vivify her—I don’t know that I will. I actually left her consulting with a she-shaman to find out what happened to Julia. I don't know...if Ju has become one. Well... I hate too much coincidence, but I've just got her to Port Moresby. Or somewhere in the East Indies. We’ll see.

It cooled off & got cloudy. But the sun is burning laser holes in the fluff. I approve of that too
BM *Bux 6/22//01

Where, Where?
Where do they come from, the slender boys with ripples of long blond hair in 3 or 4 shades from dirty sand to clean sea foam. Did they get their genes from a Swede? A German? Someone from North of the Alps. And more important, where is that particular boy going? Yoo hoo, honey!
Actually, old sort-of boyfriend Lee Eide was almost that blond...moony color. And in truth, that lad with the tresses, loping along, slightly sway-backed, is a bit alien to me. Now that the heat has left me. I see everyone as at least a bit alien. No. All alien, only some aliens are friendly (Lee B.). Enough.

I need a word for priestess. Also for goddess. Any time you have to take a [male] word & add a Fem. suffix, you've already lost. What then, borrow? Devi – or one deva. Sisters. Nuns? Aunties? All right...
Is Julia going to come back Meta? Later?

I meant to go to Golden Gardens for a loooow tide. Hoping to find the water out halfway to Bainbridge & the fish flopping around. I didn't make it. I never do. Maybe I will tomorrow.
Instead I went to the U. Distract on foot, wandered down the Ave noting the empty stores—Pier 1 gone—& the changes. Buffalo Xchange where Wildflowers used to be (where sang the nice man who killed himself). And that eating-place with the gyros, was that there? And all around skinny little baby derelicts throwing each other across the sidewalk. Then I went to the U. Library & got a virus in my disk, I do believe.

A woman sings (T.G., they ditched the Frank Sinatra CD's) & I tell Deanna that if I could sing like that, I'd never complain about another thing. I'd sing!
BM *Bux 6/23/01

Receding Into the Distance

Receding Into the Distance
All far-fetched hopes I might have for making it to next month, much less buying (or renting) a nice little house. In other words, my prospects. Get it? Pro spects.
Far-fetched & farther fleeing.
I've decided to believe that it's not a mirage but Grandma's oasis, and with Grandma's help I can get there.
On the other hand, tomorrow I really ought to go buy a pistol.
And today, the day I intended to ride the 48 bus to the end of the line—it rained & I didn't do anything except hang around. Oh, I talked to Mom & I rewrote Woman as Will & Idea but that's no way to burn calories. I sat & looked out at the rain & wished the movie would end.
I got down on my knees & prayed last night. So far no answer. (Grandma will do it when she has time.) And I hurt my bad knee, but I slept perfectly well.

And bi-N-bi the rain settled down to a dull spit & I went for a walk anyway. Golden Gardens may have to wait until another lifetime.
The rain that fell was misty & I ignored it as I walked down 19th & then down by the wild ravine, as if I were going to the U. District, but I turned left on Boyer & walked all the way back via the nice little houses (mostly) and jungley hillsides to Delmar & then 10th East.
For a while I could hear rock music from Volunteer Park—v. loud as I was almost a mile away. But it sounded good & drove my pace & then it stopped; and I don't know where all the gay folks went. There were a number of people, male & female, walking around with the red plastic cups that mean "drunken party" but not very many & they didn't look very gay.

I have $9 and need to buy: soda water. deli meat? olives? lettuce? I can do it.
BM *Bux 6/24/01

Happy Something
I walked up Broadway behind Carole G. admiring her aubergine hair—I'd never dare—but not her earrings which looked like fishing lures.
As I walked the block between Harrison & Thomas I tried to think of a name for it: the Junky Strip, Next Stop Detox. Even a cellist playing Bach can't save that block, not even a beautiful, dark haired cellist.
I took $200 out of my bank account leaving me short of rent by that much. Time (Kathy-Time or Kairos) stopped dead & I didn't realize it—until I stepped into the library. Server down. No Internet. No printing. Can't request books. So I made a list on the computer—& it put a worm in my file. I went down to the Internet cafe & cleaned it for fifty cents. I'm getting nowhere fast.
No mail either.
But I did two little bouts of writing and I saw two guys so studly I almost fell down trying not to gawk—especially at the one in the black leather shorts with his buns hanging out the bottom: And excellent buns they were too. That was on Broadway. (I should say; not looking where I was going, I almost tripped over a derelict.)
The other one was a big shirtless Marlboro-Man type with a tattoo on his bulgy bicep posing up at the reservoir overlook in Volunteer Park.
No cats, but I haven't finished looking.
I don't need to throw the bones.
*Bux 6/25/01

Title Fatigue
I have passed or surpassed the 10,000 mark on the title tally—without once repeating myself. Well, maybe once.
Anyway, I've run out of ideas, as anyone flipping though this book could see. "Happy Something"?
I've been feeling worse & worse about my prospects (from bad to very bad), so that I can't quite get myself to do downtown & buy the gun I need.
This immediately frees up maybe $200 for more appealing purchases, but it will not solve my problem. If I don't sell some writing in the next 2 or 3 or 4 days, I'm gonna have to...
But what, how? Obliteration is the only thing I would sacrifice for. But we don't get promises, and I scare myself sometimes.
Or it may not be fear, those weird oscillations of the physiology...they could be the result of estrogen plummets...whatever they are, I could do nicely without.
And man, I've been waking up ever more unwilling—you wouldn't believe it possible, no, nor can I. No sweetie, no cat to cuddle—all I want is to Not-Be. Go back where I wasn't just a second ago. I want to go back.
It takes some doing—breakfast & tea & a brisk walk—to make me willing to commit myself to this world, one more time.
And then—after the coffee, or after 2 or after someone talks to me or laughs at my joke—or after, as today, I look at one of my piles of paper & see some stuff that isn't so very bad. Pretty good, some of it. and so on.
And then I start thinking I must live. I must win through. No matter what. Then I wonder if that's what I get from praying to Grandma. Tenacity of life. As if she has Tomas & therefore I need not distress myself. I'll get there in time.
And I want to go to the Nisqually Delta, to see its reality.
*Bux 6/27?/02

Lip-Reading: Bibulous, Labile
Yes, my lips turn this way & that, but my bib is strictly the book kind. Oh yes, well. Ice water. I don't get...but I can get that yakky way when I encounter a friendly ear. Like Marcus today. Didn’t I flap my mouth at him (you getting lippy with me?) about DH Lawrence, about Australia, about email. Poor Marcus kept trying to interrupt.
Poor Lawrence too — it's enough to make you think the world hates genius. Lawrence didn't give up, now, did he, not till it killed him.
So what should I do? I do not wish to beg more money. I do not wish to buy a gun.
—Well, my dear, you don't wish a lot of things, do you?
So what I do is suspend myself by a filament – yes, magical thinking – above the abyss. Whee!

I realized today why I'm single & always will be. Because whenever anybody comes on to me, I hate it & hate them. Hm—frosty in here, isn't it? I want to do the coming on...but that doesn't work either.
I'm sitting here talking to Lee about everything, and Ginny Anderson walks in. Wo.
BM *Bux 6/28/01

Vacation

Vacation
That's what I need, I say to myself. To vacate my old life. That woman over there with the hairdo like mine suddenly says, as if goaded beyond all endurance: “I am not going to Paris." Well, okay. I am.

I got no mail. I only won $1 on my scratcher & I'm telling myself I'm a jerk for not going shopping. The essay I went over didn't seem as good as last time I looked at it — and so on. And then I walk into Starbucks & find a little roll of green stuff on the floor by the food case. Quick as quick, it's in my pocket. I go sit down & sneak it back out — $11. A ten & a one. Thank you, Grandma (or/and Tomas). I think I'll invest $6.
Lee sits down & I tell him about it — he tells me he has found $100 bills twice. "Oh get out of here," I say.
It doesn't take much to cheer me up – that's how you know you don't have endogenous depression. Or if you can still appreciate sunsets. I'm reactive, as reactive as can be.
It's too bad, a person like myself — well, who's stolid enough to resist war, flight, famine, pestilence — or the myriad small disappointments of everyday life?
How did Grandma stand being blamed for her baby brother's death? I think she put walls around her heart — but I think she also punished herself... I would have, she seems accident prone with all those broken pairs of glasses. Probably trying extra hard and succeeding with everyone but mom (but who else's opinion mattered as much). And how do I know? Am I not her flesh & blood?
BM *Bux 6/30/01

European-Looking Guy
The foreign gentleman crossing Broadway in the expensive suit & nice braided shoes looked me over. Alas, he was clutching a plastic Safeway bag in his right hand. No matter what was in the bag, his Euro-credibility crumbled.
New rule, you are only as classy as your tackiest element. Unless you are so transcendent that you can make tacky cool. Well, yes, most of us think we can. If you're beautiful or rich—that's what LA is about. Beautiful or rich and vulgar.

Sick - no. Tired - no. Sick & Tired - Yes.
Oddly, once I get to sleep—once the neighbors have stopped slamming gates, sanding the floor, tap-dancing, singing doo-wop—I've only been waking up at pee-time (1 to 2 a.m.) & then not again until 6 or 7. That's the good part of getting over the acute phase (of life) — no, of my bad shoulder. Only I am quite off-kilter now. No wonder my neck feels weird. It’s the muscles that help lift my arm behind my back. The ones I don't use any mo.

So the sun came out & nothing happened except I got Julia to dinner. Will I get her to the village in the jungle? Even imaginary life can surprise you.
I didn't win the lotto but I did take a nice long walk. Along 19th Ave E., down Interlaken & around the winding forest road, up through the old neighborhood & over to that street fronting the freeway where the sun was too hot, then down smelling the Fragaria-smell of hot blackberry vines till I got to the bottom of one of the hillside stairways. I walked up & it almost killed me. Not quite, unfortunately.
So I came over Broadway, agog as ever at how very ugly so many people are. I cleaned my disk for a dollar & then came to Starbucks where Liz wouldn't take my money. Those sweetie guys. Lee was already gone & it's the first of July, and I think it's time for me to go too. Not sick, not tired.
I never liked to linger over dinner either.
BM *Bux 7/1/01

Wheeling & Dealing With It
Today I almost went downtown to the gun store, but didn't quite, and (sort of) accepted the fact that I'm too — wimpy.
This does not eliminate the problem or even much postpone it. That means I'm left with 3 or 4 unappealing alternatives, including life. Life? A life sentence might not be so bad — somewhere else. But the sun was out & I wrote on Matryoshka (Julia) & fixed little things on PofV which became "Wealth & Riches."
Then I got an email from J. telling me that some journal took the last poem she sent me. Well, thanks for rubbing it in, bitch. —No, I didn't say that, only thought it. Then, I went to the library & found out the computer hasn't been fixed since Saturday, and Raye hinted that I infected it, since I've reported it twice. She may have been kidding.
Anyway, all that—obviously it's not a day when the road is open to me. I wonder where Grandma is, or if I'm just immune to influences. I mean she did lead me to $11, didn't she?
Didn't she?
Or maybe she misses me & wants me to join her & Tomas. That's a nice thought.
But I don't believe that either.
Belief & knowledge. Minds are — funny. Why, for all my excursions into fantasy, did I get the mind of a scientist? And then I wonder what percentage of the population truly believes? I suppose it makes a difference if you're exposed to lots of ideas versus living in a closed society where you only get your brain washed with the official version(s). But I suspect the "cast of mind" — fanatic, empiricist, devout, conformist, sensualist, mystic, etc. is distributed the same in all human populations. Says, K. the Schizotype.
BM *bux 7/2/01

Quickly to Montlake & Back
Pulled it out of the ah, ah, not fire, no, not trash. The toilet. I pulled today out of the toilet & washed it off. That doesn't make it new or fresh or triumphant, but at least it's not still in the toilet. I mean, no mail, but I got the pages of "Riches & Wealth" (PofV) printed & everything else I needed.
The Montlake Library seems like a well-kept secret.

I deny well enough in the afternoon & evening but these mornings are bad. Sleep is a wall I have to push through, a wall of holly bushes. So it's a hedge? It's a hedge. I resent being awake. I resent the people who wake me up. (I hate the neighbors.)
And I hate holidays. Tomorrow is just another day when I haven't paid my rent.

I keep working on the novel. In fact, I'm starting to type Dave (Part II) while I write Julia (IV). I don't know why I can't let go in the writing. Slow & painful. Any excuse to stop — as if I don't want anything to happen to Julia, because I don't know what her fate is going to be — any more than I can see my own future. Isn't that odd? Mallory is doomed though, I think
Grandma is all quiet. Probably my fault, if "weakness" of faith is a fault. Well, it is to the creed-mongers. If I could will it....
We discuss Earthquakes & androids.
Broadway *Bux 7/3/01

Forth — Glorious
113/68, pulse 94. Ninety-four? I was hot & sweaty from the long walk, after writing, and all the usual thing. Kleenex please & a BP. (Cruel machine.)
The breeze stopped as I walked down the hill to the cafe. Hot & bright & one more person with the Sunburn.

Liz stops to tell me she has a stalker. Oh, I wouldn't be young for...well, maybe for that: $10 thou & a medical plan.

I called Grandma in last night & slept well & dreamed—but nothing other-worldly. No numbers either. But I woke up feeling good. Still stuck though, and still conflicted about living vs. dying.
Nothing new about that.
Oh, look, the po-lice. And with their weapons too. Gee, I wonder if...

Well, I have two days to sell writing. Or at least write my will.
Ha ha ha ha ha. I have no one to leave things to. Write my won't. Anyway, I've said quite enough.

I want to fly. Especially when the sky is summer afternoon blue with those drifts of gossamer. Or at night when it is white until 10 p.m.
And tonight they'll be blowing things up, and it'll be hot so I probably won't be able to sleep & I don't care about that either.
BM *Bux 7/4/01

You Got Problems?

You Got Problems?
They blew things up—loud things—until 1 a.m. & I didn't care. I slept after that & dreamed nothing memorable: interesting always, fascinating even, but seldom memorable. I hope for quiet tonight, hope that Angie upstairs will be Out.
Mail today? The only mail I get is from people who want to sell me things. No.
I start off most inert, but it gets better by degrees. Steps & stages. The footsteps up to 15th for the paper. The tea stage. The ice cream & coffee & writing a novel stage. I say, all I lack is a cat. A cheering section.
Some fucking help.
I still haven't told Jeff the bad news—& I still haven't bought the much needed pistol. And the days are so perfect—summer sunny & still green & flowers abloom—that they gleam! I so enjoy: the silly boastful robins with their puffed out breasts (well, they're red), the tiny scimitars (boomerangs?) the swallows pretend to be, the wildly chirpy greenfinches. I even like the cracks in the walls & the tilted sidewalks—which I hope are worse from the earthquake.
I don't expect redemption.
I don't even expect help. And whether I can attain obliteration somehow—and/or if I should, or if I should hold on just…one…more… one more what!! I want the world to read my stuff, to love it, to pay me to write more. I've done this for almost 30 years.
If I could do music ("do?") (ray?), I would. Or work full time like all those crazy people.
Broadway *Bux 7/5/01

Sweepin Lee
I see him sweeping over where Grandma left me the cash & when I ask if he ever sweeps up money, he whips out a George folded into a little square. "O, Grandma must like you too," I say.
And to think I blew my windfall on nothin — losing lotto #s. But at least I had a shot. And I would have spent it anyway.

I was really bad this morning. Death thoughts are evil thoughts, and the living organism wants none of it. No, I'm not my body. As if there were any doubt. My body is named Sid & he is loud & selfish, a lout.
That's a lie. My body is named Lily Lillian—she's sweet but she doesn't listen.

I talked to Jeff the Manager about the rent (he doesn't care & he thinks that what with the building being sold, Dale K. at the Company won't much care either). He said I should write a check for some of it to show my wallet’s in the right place.
I don't think I have the balls to kill myself. Hemingway did. Virginia Woolf did. I could do it with pills if I could get the right pills.

It's odd that I could start off so retro that I want to stay in bed until I rot, and by 10 I'm ready to write. Well, that's because I have something to write. What I'm producing is awful garbage, but I'm not agonizing. Maybe because I'm not agonizing.

Bright sun & I find I don't hate everybody in Seattle after all. In fact, there are some I even like: Sweepin Lee, for instance.
BM *Bux 7/6/01

Why Lorrie Colwin & Not Me
And she was "only" forty-something...and she wanted to live.
All right, so do I, a lot of the time, and I smoke & I have lipids up the ass. (Well, no, not literally), but why would Lorrie C. die of a heart attack so young? Unless it was a lie & she died of, say, cocaine or velvet cords (what?). And here am I, yet again.
Mornings are morbid, if not mortal. I don't know what it is about falling asleep that makes waking up so very unappealing. No, it's that sleeping makes reality seem unfaceable.
Is this hormonal? Is this depression? Or is this the way you feel when life is hard & nobody wants to help? When your cat dies & your lover splits & everyone says, "oh, no, I don't think so." My problem is overgeneralization. Well, one of my problems. I begin to think no one wants me, just because hundreds of thousands don't.

Taste is a funny thing, Vincent, and tasteless just goes on and on.

The boys are making plans for the rest of the year, poking their palm pilots like stylomaniacs. How nice to be a man and gadget happy. How assured to have dinners scheduled till the end of the year. "Dim Sum," says one. "But they have a nice big parking lot," says another. "Get it into the newsletter," says the third. How sticky to be in an organization.

It is a perfect summer day, hot & sunny & yet with a fresh breeze playing up the west side of Capitol Hill. I have $2 in my wallet, $310 in the bank & $10 in my quarter jar. I gave up on Grandma & all them. I think they too want me — dead. But She/They wants(s) everybody dead sooner or later. Grow, replicate & then get outta the way.
That's what Grandma says.
BM *Bux 7/7/01

That's who we are: Hunter Gatherers
What is shopping all about anyway? No, I don't want to bake my own bread. I want to know the difference between hummus & falafel. Babaganouj is the eggplant one.
I eat cake. I know more than enough about cake. (I think the question all readers want to ask Ruth Reichl is: Do you purge? How otherwise could she not be fat? But then Ruth can make hanging around food people sound fun. I don't think I could do that.)

There is a blue 6 p.m. shadow outside and Paul-Pablo stops on his way out to pick up some litter. Isn't he good? (Clean litter, he's sensible too.) The shadows are gray if you look straight at them, but blue if you don't. The cafe is peopled but not packed.
Sunday. I feel ugly & antsy-bored. I want to take a trip—into the past, though I might feel bored & antsy there too. How about the future? Don't make me laugh.
I did some rewriting. Am almost to the end of Part II & I won $10 on a scratch ticket & sold my old typewriter for $5 & asked Mom for $300. She doesn't like me either but she'll loan me the money.
Of course I still won't have enough to live on unless I sell some writing. And I still don't have a job, and what's my problem anyway?

All I did was walk down to the new temporary library, which I didn't like. Well, I wouldn’t, would I? I have to make new maps in my head & my head doesn't make new maps so easily any more....and folding them—impossible!
All problems solvable? No, but many problems are postponable & some you can vault over. The ones you can't, well, you can't.
7/8/01

Foo on the Other Shoet

Foo on the Other Shoet
This title calls me "Mama"—I think I've used it before. It's overheard over head. (I sit by the cream & sugar counter). Got to cafe early because the Henry computer is fixed & all I had to do was print. It's only 6 o'clock. Clouds over the sky in bands, like wooly scarves & some breeze blowing. Next minute they've gone where the summer clouds go (to the mountains). I keep breaking loose, in my (i)magic—nation & flying with the pelicans, no the hummingbirds, no the russet-vested swallows.
But that's all pretend. So's the picture I made of the dark woman sitting motionless in her car with a Rembrandt glow on her décolletage. Collarbone. What was she listening to? Thinking about? NPR? Her grocery list.

Save it. Not worried except when I panic. Bunches of things lead to panic. Thoughts of possible bad job. Eviction. More begging.
The rigors of escape. Because I want...
Always want something. Want to finish Matryoshka. Want to remove all the mud & the crud, to expose—what you get when you wash away the mud & crud. Ancient coins with emperor's profiles & potshards, intaglios & fibulae.
All the lost when I finally find it. (Who's keeping it? Alan Basbaum!)

I wonder if my sense of crowdedness is based on the fact that the world is crowded—or do I just know that there is too much to know. So many levels of ignorance. (The layer-cake of unknowing.)
BM *Bux 7/10/01

Picked Through Like Stitching
I looked up from my titling activities & saw Kay R. over in the corner holding a newspaper in front of her face. I went & said, "Hem" like an actor in a Shakespeare play. Then she comes over & tells me she's okay & her sister's okay, except for her child abuse. Kay blames everything on that, even her daydreaming. I think, "Rubbish" but say nothing.
Nobody sends me mail, ni yesterday, ni today. I panic & then I forget.
Meanwhile, I keep writing. Only in the morning when I wake to the irrefutable argument that I still live, do I despair. It's hot, or I am. Should I get up at 7 when the truck driver toots his air horn, the woman honks her car horn & yells "how ya doin?" Jeff trundles bins noisily up & down the basement stairs & doors slam. But I don't get up & often get right down to that liquid or gel state that we humans love & sometimes take noxious drugs to attain.
*
I'm finding bus passes & drivers licenses but no more major money. Numbers tantalize me, birds amuse me, people do various things to me, and the clouds & breeze satisfy me—after a very hot summer day. I have bought no raspberries, for money is tight. Grandma gave me some excellent numbers but the Washington lotto was a little off, and I only matched 3.
Deception Pass or the hibachi. I really want the ocean but I think Ocean has left me far behind. Out, out upon it—the evening, that is.
BM *Bux 7/12/01

Can't Count on the Weather
There is so much you can't count on...some things it's better not to imagine. (Many?) And good luck to you.
Flurry of cafe activity at 6:40 & I ought to get up to see if Grandma has picked anyone else's pocket.
News today - none. Job - none. Mail - rejection from Stranger, NBD. Email - none. Work done - some little pages on Matr. &1 p. of corrections on "Woman as Will & Idea."
Now I know the names of all the crew except one girl, the talkative blonde. I expected Lee but he's not here. The musician canceled, I think. Paul/Pablo tells me the guy has so much equipment, it takes him an hour to set up & then he plays for 15 minutes & it takes him another hour to pull down. "What does he play?" I ask.
"Oh, guitar—it sounds like." We both start laughing. "It could be anything."

Tonight noisy little queers yelling to their friends in that exhibitionist way (not a queer thing, a youth thing. Obnoxious. Like we're all the audience. —No, I'd never do that.).
The redhead from the Safeway told me they sell the best scratch tickets at stores in poor neighborhoods. We agree it's all fixed & then she talks me into buying a daily game. Once, I said, if I don't win, never more. She laughed at that.
Okay, I want to read more anthropology & write some escalating effects (stepladder to the heights). Careful, don't fall off.
I think I'm getting a cataract.
BM *Bux 7/13/01

The Smart Thing
The smart thing for me to do about these notebooks is to give them away or burn them. Or hide them, about half anyway. Otherwise, we have too many: the market is glutted. I suppose I could spread them around the countryside, like the squirrels do their treasures.

I am fascinated listening to that woman's long painful story of her debacular love affair. She is Vietnamese & a nurse & he is Chinese & a medical resident. What she has put up with! "You mean you live here, you've never been to Tacoma?" She knocked herself out trying to win his heart, and now she's trying to win her listeners' sympathy.

The sky clouds out & over. I have to leave—the woman has lost my sympathy, and that of her friends, I suspect too. They tell her what she should have said. The woman sounds desperate. Her friend says, "But Chinese people are like that." And the Asian woman straight across from me looks at them sideways. The thwarted lover says she can't pretend any more.
In a love affair, you shouldn't pretend. And you shouldn't let anything offensive go without saying something.
Her talk is — maddening.
BM *Bux 7/14/01

Hey, Pectin Head
Here's Lee & there he goes to smoke the cigarette he had behind his ear. He went dining, drinking & dancing on his birthday & to Portland just after.
Nothing much has happened to me. I dreamed cinematically last night after several nights of blank screen. All the dreams involved frustration. There were no numbers.
Then today it rained.
I coat my hair with fruit gel that dries it firmly in place & attracts flies. (One hovers in my face even now.) The cool drizzle satisfies my overheated soul. I am not crazy. I am not committed to life or death, but turn turn turn like a weather vane.

The only time I feel grown up is when I finish writing.
I hate all editors.
I ignore that weirdness in my throat. (Did someone say lump? No one said lump.)

In the misty afternoon, I attempted a walk due west to Lake Washington but discovered a forested ridge in the way. Hey, what's that? I don't remember a forested ridge –or do I? The only time I've been that way was with F. all those years ago—and as many times as we went that way...it was all foreign territory. So, is that Madrona? And down at the bottom of the ridge is another road. Some trodden grass. A bunch of ducks & even more geese.
BM *Bucks 7/15/01

Hey, Fruit Pate, Lemon Skull
This isn't funny. Well, in some ways it is—I suppose it depends (as Reny used to say, screwing up his face) on how you look at it.

When I think about the only men I could ever (have) love(d) (e.g., Gene Musser), they were the ones who made me laugh. But they didn't want to make me laugh, or they didn't care if they made me laugh or not, they were just funny—and went home to their wives. And the only one I ever wrote about was Alan Gevins.
Gee, I wish the Sun would buy that essay, even if it is incoherent.
I'm going to stop praying. I don't believe, I can barely suspend my disbelief long enough to say Amen, and besides, my ancestors all, male & female all the way back, hate me, and want me dead.
Well, dig this ancestors, I want you dead too, and I get my wish because you are dead. ha ha ha ha ha.
This excepts parents who can stick around till they've had enough. I don't want any part of that.
Tomorrow I curse God.
Today, it is cloudy & coll. Coool. Again, I got sprinkled on, but I didn't mind because it was just sprinkles & I'm a girl of nature.
That was as I walked to the Montlake library where I printed my pages & had no email. Then I walked home—no I walked over here—& got hot walking but didn't care & decided that praying is not my métier.
Now I'll go to the Henry library & pick up my books. I have $80 left & tomorrow is the anniverse of Tomas's death. I wonder if those 4 coffee-drinking policemen are paying attention.
BM Starb's 7/16/01

Still Cool. Cool as a Corpse

Still Cool. Cool as a Corpse
I can't see further than Friday or Saturday, though none of my likely alternatives appeals.
It's tiresome—let's talk about something else.
There is nothing else—a biography of Bruce Chatwin or Elizabeth Bishop. Cool weather. No mail.
I'm putting Meta on disk. "Field Notes"/Julia is stalled...
I told all my ancestors to go sit on a tack, and felt much better. A little better. Less like a child. I'd rather be the captain of my fate, even if it's a lousy fate. I don't recall ever being/feeling protected as a child. Only constrained. Hemmed in.
So, off into the blaze of noon for $15? Miserable day.
BM *bucks 7/17/01

Believing
In God. In good. In goldfish.
In fate. In fat.
In luck or lack or lock.
In justice. In just ice.
In time. Just in time.
In death or dearth.
In love. In liver. In a levé.
In cats. Cuts. Acute. Eyes & absence.

I don't know, on the whole I'd say every thing I have ever believed turned out to be a crock.
Except decay. And maybe reconstitution.
None of it personal. We are personal. Heaven is, I suppose, impersonal.
In doom. In dim, on a dim. Damn dumb.

I reeled in my suspension (of disbelief) cord. It was a sort of trapeze or swing. Which carries (or leads) us toward the apple tree. Oh, don't go there....
BM *Bucks 7/18/01

Humorous or Comical
I'm trying to see the humorous side of my plight. Broke & bored & too chicken to fix it. ha ha ha, what a riot.
Well, that's life.
I'd settle for having some perspective, but when I think of that, I think of what may be a missing line for "Simplicity" (poor Virginia) (poor Kathy). Unfortunately, when I get perspective, it involves seeing myself from a long way off. Very small. Not important. Wishes—not important. Emotions—ditto. All always changing into something else. And when you're dead, you don't have any emotions at all.
That must be restful.
On the utter ham, all my memories remain somehow—valuable. Even the trivial ones. Silly little things involving songs? 1975-6 when I lived w/ Jimmy L. & Jean Op. (and Tomas!) The Brandenburgs, Bonnie Raitt. And the sun-whipped wind, the wind whipped fog tossing the heads of the palm trees growing in the middle of Dolores.
I don't think I ever "remembered" Jimmy L. (& Regina) properly. Ty would be, what, 18 by now—I wonder if they have more kids & live in suburbia. Maybe the kids but not in suburbia, not them. I bet Jimmy's bald & Reg looks just the same.
BM *Bucks 7/19/01

I Know the Difference

I Know the Difference
Between many indistinguishable things. Fine versus define: all words. In the real world, I can usually tell foolishness from true foolishness—for all the good that it does me.
Today: warm with hot flashes. I see many stick-skinny young girls in little skimpy dresses. (Maybe that's the look Jana's going for?) The storky legs do not appeal (to me) but I have to admit those girls look cool. Maybe if I got skinny, I'd look cool. Pfah! I've tried that. Nothing ever gets as thin as my face & neck. (I suppose I am my Grandma's E’s girl, in this respect.)

I won nothing, I sold nothing. I have no job. I have $29. I continue to oscillate. Or vacillate. (I don't know the difference, but I'll go home & find out.)
None of my options appeals to me. I'm already thinking—well, would I rather have to talk to Mom about this, or would I rather die? Easy answer, under the circumstances, but I don't think dying is necessarily that easy. Not as easy as falling off the bike...I don't think I could do something that elegant on purpose.

Wonderful warm weather & rain clouds out there over the water. How I crave—flight.
BM *Bux 7/20/01

Image #2 (or 3)
Paper crumbs – confetti, cool, dark summer afternoon & a sign. Well, I took it as a sign.
I was walking along 11th Avenue minding my own negative thoughts, when I heard a cry. I looked down & there beneath a bush was— a 'Mas cat. A big fat lovable ‘Mas cat with doo on his butt. I didn't pick him up, well, I wouldn't, but I petted him good & thorough. And I thought, oh, that's nice & I didn't expect it.

But then I didn't find money & I've got $12 plus my bureau savings—about another $12. A fifth of cheap vodka costs $7.85. I don't think a pint would render me well & truly unconscious. I'd still like to die outside. And I'd still like to live 20 or 30 years with cats & a house by the sea & 5 discerning fans. And some funny friends. Here's the short list of good people I've met here: Lee. Mitsu. David W. – & the rest of the library gang (Angela, Kate, John & Steve).
But the City—oh, Anne W. Well, there. Liz C. from before.
All right, then whose fault is that? Yes, mine for having standards. Lower them? No.
Image: iris, tulip, frog, dollar bill.
Bumble bee.
Fat blonde smoking a cigarette.
A plane, a train, a boat, a bus.
My two big feet.
Nice flamenco pouring down from Starbucks' ceiling. And castanets. When I was a girl, I wanted to play the castanets. I still do.
BM*Bux 7/21/01

Too Hot – no problem
At the end of the path, the heat matters only as much as the mosquitoes, yes annoying but what happened to the trail? Ooh, remember "To Build a Fire"? That may have been the best/worst thing we ever read in school. Right, a boys' stories. Maybe I should have...well, I tried with the Bear (or what? Yeti?) story. Path or patho.

I talked to Mom & it was okay. She said the fact that I hadn't worked was worrisome. I didn't ask for anything. (It's not worrisome, it's fatal.)

I'm not hurrying, though I am finding with anxiety I get more hot flashes. I have $8 plus bureau cash—& all I need is a scratch ticket. Tuesday I'll give up. Hope. Eternal spring. Fatal. Fate.
Luck??
Sundays are nothing much for the single. Esp. the aggressively single, the solitary. At least I can walk down 19th to Interlaken & observe the second growth—convolvulus seems to be the big winner this year.
I've almost finished Meta's section & almost finished Bruce Chatwin's life. (It went to his head.)
Am I jealous—yes, AIDs & all, I am. He didn't end up sitting in Seattle, bored & ignored. Too old by half & catless. What's the damn point. None in Seattle. It's hot. Too hot.
BM *Bucks (7/22/01)

What's in There?
What lessons did I learn way back that told me if at first you don't succeed, try again, and then if you don't succeed, kill yourself?
I wish I'd met some manic people early on. I wish I had met some cultured people before I got to college because by then it was too late.
It was all those books I read. There’s nothing else to do but repeat the pleasure. There's nothing else to do but send it on to others. And if others don't want it, you're SOL.
I'm SOL.

David tells me I should become a librarian. But I think I should have been a madcap heiress. Nothing for that but dreams. I will go quietly, I think, but I won't go until there's nothing else. In fact, I think I'm going to go to the food bank. Prolong the agony, more the fool.
(But do they have cookies?)
Lone rejection today. But polka-dot clouds at 6 p.m. & a breeze blowing up Capitol Hill. So, there are compensations. At night I have a nice book to transport me to Paris—and pianos!

There was a small (4-ish) earthquake yesterday about 8 a.m. & I missed it. Oh, but maybe the next one—maybe tomorrow. Maybe tonight.
BM *Bucks 7/23/01

Relief

Relief
Temporary, but I'm going to enjoy it. Respite, actually. I ran entirely out of money, and ate the refried beans of humiliation for five days. I had two cents & then I found a nickel & had seven. Ran out of everything except tea & coffee (sweet-pea Lee gave me some). I was stealing t.p. from the community center, stuffing a wad in my pocket & then taking it home. I haven't had a cigarette since Friday, but I don't feel any better—only when I go to bed I don't pulsate & thrum—I just feel like the bed is floating.
But waking up to no money is hell. And the Mexicans were out back yakking at 8 a.m. on Sunday & then chipping cement.

I couldn’t stand it. The only mail I got was a complimentary rejection of "Diet." I called Liz's work # at the PSRC & left a message asking if she could loan me $20. I figured if she wasn't around, I'd wait for the mail & — fire up the hibachi. (Can I? All these unattractive alternatives....)
But Liz called me at 9 & I walked down & met her at Westlake & she loaned me $40. Bless her heart. We walked around a bit & talked & then I walked back up the hill. For breakfast I'd had Food Bank bread (3 seed) toasted with mayo on it. Well, she said defensively, it's like eggs, isn't it?
I walked back up the hill & bought my t.p. & peaches (on sale!) & ice cream (on sale!). Now I've been to cafe, the best use of money I know... Now will I buy yogurt or cheese? Cookies? Gum? Will I buy smokes? And read about depression? (No, doctor, depression's not my problem. Discouragement & despair, those are my problems. Failure. Destitution. The artist's lot.)
BM *Bux 7/30/01

Such a Small Thing
Having as opposed to not having money. After Such a Lovely Day yesterday, I'm back to staring Rune-Nation in the grim visage. I admit it, I flinched.

So you know I didn't get any good news in the mail. God, I'm sick of drudgery. I'm sick of my apartment. It backs on those dysfunctional basement people. And even when they aren't round, I'm tired of the same old smell & the light &...I want a change. And nothing's not the change I want.
Still, nothing's a lot better than starvation (or even rice 'n' beans) & homelessness.
Out of self-defense, I'm concentrating on luck & reversals. Hanging on. But once the seed of reckoning is planted, it crowds out all the strange flowers that ordinarily (!) bloom in my amphitheater. (Flowers in an amphitheater?—well, yes, like the ruins of the Coliseum. They have cats there too, I hear. And Roman fever in the night air.)
B.M. Starbux 7/31/01

Sure, I Can Appreciate
I can almost appreciate the perfection of a perfectly awful day. Except today was just evil in the usual tiny ways. (I don't exist!) No mail. My email had a note from Monica at the Fire Dept. saying, Oh, didn't you get a letter? We filled that job in April (which is when I emailed her before). (Assholes)
I wrote-ran-over 1967 & printed it. I spent a dollar on a can of chili. Now a cup of coffee. A candy bar for tomorrow. Is that all? Will that be all?
The weather is cool & that pleases me. My walks are not amusing. It's all the same. I got an email from Guy wanting to meet for coffee—will I be "available" next week?
The boredom of my life here. Tedium to the nth & no amusement. Though walking around Westlake with Liz was rather enjoyable. (Ooh, looka the bums. Looka the tourists.) The phone doesn't ring. My bells don't ring. I'm reading a book about depression & feeling like Julie Andrews.

I'm not going to be broke again. But I think I'd like to come in here tomorrow to say hello/goodbye to Lee.

Back to smoking at night (only 5) – & when I lie down to sleep, I thrum.
BM *Bux 8/1/01

Ambi
If ever person was of two minds, we were. Yes, then no. Improve. No, chuck. One more day. One more day. Always one more day.
Today I got a birthday greeting from my dentist, and then they called to get me to schedule a cleaning.
A cleaning, right. Won't be needing a cleaning where I'm going.

I try not to let it get to me, but of course it gets right to me.
How much help do I need? More than I can expect. Part of me wants it over, and part of me wants to talk to everybody I ever knew. Part of me wishes I'd left long ago.

I looked up my two gardening mags—and see how far beyond long shot they are. One says answers in 6 months. The other likes 750 word articles. Oh.

I would have, I could have...If a job had offered itself, and gained time, but then...

And alas, I owe Elizabeth $40 & won't be able to pay her back. But if I start to beat myself up, I'll never stop.

Ooh where are those policemen? Never around when you need them.
B.M. Starbucks 8/2/01