Another Wasted Day

Another Wasted Day

Late May holiday weekend overcast & I spent today reading a bad book, instead of writing a 4 (?) page summary of Dave & Alan’s undergrad days. The book argued that Leonard Woolf was a shit (probably true) & that Ginny wasn’t crazy (ha ha ha). Badly argued, full of silly jumps & misinterpretations & the chopping of logic. Even I wanted to come to Leonard’s defense. I don’t mind the author’s stridency. (Heck, we girls have to be strident just to be heard), but her intellectual dishonesty I hate. And the mistakes (like Eddy Sackville-West being Vita’s brother).

So why did I keep reading it?

Because I didn’t want to float a fancy.

& To get to the end.

*

I just ate a big piece of cake w/ chartreuse icing. (another why in my life).

And no mail, and only jokes in my email and I’m down to $1500. So I wasted $5 on the lotto.

My luck.

Typing up all that journalizing & notes about Dad has taken the wind out of my memoir-writing sails. Notebooks are better than journals. Maybe the impulse will return.

Also—I really want to be done with Dave.

15^th Ave «s 5/2904

Giving — up in over out

Saturday I read a bad book instead of writing & yesterday I think I wrote 2 lines & then ran (walked) down to the library where I talked to Steve Kiesow—his dad, age 92, fell. The library is still full of people. More yesterday than Thursday. Checking out books, too.

Then today all I did was shuffle papers and get ready to—I think my frst (draft) impulse was right—to stint those undergrad years… can I do it? Yes, but I wish someone else would. I sat in my apt. on a pseudo-Sunday (Mem. day) & felt hateful. Reading books & feeling no sympathy. (Ima Crabbe)

Then I won $ gambling & went for a walk in the rain & thought: I wonder what Van Gogh would do with this landscape & climate. Ans: Take off for Provence.

So, what am I going to do with it? I’ve already done it. Isn’t it enough?

Pains when I tried to go to sleep. All the usual come & go. Some on the top of my head. Some in my chest. Why at night? Why at all?

Jes because? I’ve theorized enough.

15^th Ave «B’s 5/31/04

Kill It

I got myself up to the computer, wrote 1+ page & went to save it while I fixed my lunch & it dumped. Computer fault in the file or disk something & such a big warning sign I couldn’t copy what I’d written off the screen—so I said, That wasn’t what I meant anyway.

Now I have to try to get the other docs off the disk because the library computers can’t read it. The Dave 1 & 2 (Part II of Matr.) are backed up—but not the more recent insomnia flashback. Well, it’s too f**cking long & I have the hard copy and…

See why I’m philosophical.

But I don’t want to write about Dave’s undergrad days—OK. 3 pages to say how if Alan hadn’t fetched up in Wellington, they wouldn’t have been more than a memory, etc. etc.

3 pages

*

But I’m getting depressed about money, lack of, & prospects, double ditto, & I don’t want to work/write at all. I’m into my last $800 & I want a haircut. Trip to Lofoten, nice apartment, cat—& all the rest.

—And I need a new computer. Also a typewriter. Ah shit. And maybe a gun.

15^th Ave «B’s 6/1/04

Overdetermined

Walking out on a perfect day & trying in an idle way to decide in what the perfection most resides. Sweetness of air, lightness of breeze, warmth (not heat) of sun—weather that suits my shorts. The sun resting brightly on the yardarm & silvering the green leaves. If only I had the wings of a dove, I’d fly up to the roofbeam & out-warble the robin (a thrush).

And then I consider fetishes & all the weird sex-trips people get into, and I think: “like so much that pertains to life, it’s prolongation and/or propagation, sexuality is overdetermined.” By which I mean nature has nothing to lose by our making pigs of ourselves, something like that. She delights in excess.

Then I wonder if that’s what “overdetermined” means or if I’m misdefining….so I have a moment of hesitating (you know how I hate to be wrong) & then decide to put it down & look it up later.

Reading about Diana Manners & her friends. My problem is I’m English.

15th Ave «B 6/2/04

The Kind (of Surprises) We Like

I got down to 17^th & Mercer, the house next door to where I saw those 2 longhairs a week ago & reflexively I began going pss pss pss & looked over the fence & there was the longhair Mas cat who came running over, jumped up on the fence & let me bury my face in its flank (shoulder flank, after all, we just met). I stayed until a guy was approaching with a dog, then I dropped the Mas cat gently on the safe side & went on. Under the trees in the next block, two butter flies came fluttering at me, face high, veering off to the right at the last minute—as I saw they weren’t butterflies but hummingbirds. Hot damn! I yelled (to myself) & went on to the corner of 16^th & Prospect, the two more or less Mas cats locale & there was the more Mas. So I was better than happy: I felt Blessed Outta Nowhere.

And it pretty much made up for an unenjoyable visit to Tacky-oma. (I’m never going there again.) That was Sunday.

Then yesterday I had hassles w/ Dave, but today I rescued the last 30 pages from my bad disk & got them onto the good disk, so I don’t have to re-do those corrections.

Now all I need is money & lots of it.

Sunny, warm afternoon & we (patrons) huddle at the shady tables at the

15^th Ave «B’s 6/8/04

I Absolutely Don’t Know

what I’m going to do. How I’m going to do it. And why I continue in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary to believe that things might be all right.

Because while there’s spiro, there’s spero & I’m not broke yet. So, why should I (what me?) worry?

Because I’m doomed.

Ah honey, we’re all doomed. You’ll find the door when it’s time and waltz on through.

*

Today I walked to & from the library & got so hot I dripped w/ sweat. Got 3 bad books that will probably go right back. (It was [& is] a lovely day, & I felt like levity ambulant [quarkness risible] as I tripped lightly down de hill.)

Last night the young berks were out yodeling at 1 to 2 a.m. & then 4-ish my heart burst into flame. I had to get up & drink ice water & then put down an extra pillow, so I was propped—that’s what I get for taking half-a-aspirin yesterday. And I won nothing, and got neither phone call, US Snail or email. But the draft of Dave is done. I should send a copy to Jana. Hard to make plans. Want some magic. (Sometimes I get some.) But it’s the nature of magic to bushwhack you with a small sloppy kiss & then to prance away sniggering as you run your hands over your donkey-face in wonder.

(And my Bottom is changed too!)

15^th Ave «B’s 6/9/04

Looking Like

It’s looking more & more like I’m going to buzz off out of here with a sharp sting. Short shock. See? It doesn’t mean anything to me. On my terms. I suppose it was my mistake setting my terms out there on the long axis of the galaxy, but I did, and There It Is. The odd thing is to know that however much I want to go/be out there, I’m not going: not an option. In fact, the options are this mad sound stage or sparkling darkness. I’ve started getting panic/terror fits. Which I hate (hate so much, I’d die to escape them). Hate begging too. Lots of hate.

And today I shuffled my schedule so I could take a submission to the p.o. & it was closed for a national day of morning. For R. Reagan. Oh gag me, I shrieked & ran down Broadway looking for mournful Republicans to kick. Saw none.

15^th Ave «B’s 6/11/04

Making It Rain

The weather happens when I write it down, so late on Saturday in June the white sky goes gray & sprinkles begin…to sprinkle. I have my umbrella & though this is likely to curtail my walk, I don’t mind.

Unplaceable guys (I can’t tell—the young all look so unwholesome) smoke cigarettes out at the tables under the awning. The short-haired, baseball-capped weather-beaten (but not old) guy picks up all his butts from the sidewalks & tosses them. His companion, with a hideous face tattooed on the back of his neck, gets into an SUV & drives off.

Well, shu, I have scabs on the back of my neck. Itchy things I picked. Right, skin cancer probably.

Today nothing good happened—I mean no acceptances. [My social security statement—Ha!—instead!] But I went over Part I of Matryoshka & made it better. Read Cynthia Asquith’s diaries. Got a nice email from Sonja. Tomorrow I’ll talk to mom & either she’ll ask & I’ll tell her, or she won’t & I won’t. My only other plan is to—

Hey did I tell you about the cute golden retriever being walked by 2 cute little girls, & when the dog winsomely pressed a friendly nose against my bare leg (warm day, I was wearing shorts), the girls winsomely apologized. It was almost as good as the hummingbirds. And there seem to be upwards of 20 swallows that live/work at my corner hawthorn. Also nice. I have grace. I’m wanting luck.

15^th Ave «B’s 6/12/04

World of

It’s a world of form. I don’t think we ever know the content. I guess the content is primal stuff, or the why. Yeah, mind stuff. And outside the windows, on the avenue, everybody going somewhere, walking or driving. People always like to go somewhere else (I know I do). The black man working the word puzzle has cords in his neck like mine, tendons or veins. Puzzles to be worked.

Why we are here. Why are we here?

So that so that so that…

Mind-filtered Is = Maya.

15^th Ave «B’s 6/14/04