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
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
posted by K. E. Ellingson at 4:06 PM
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