lately: ideas for stories, and yet, no writing.  can't blame it on an input-output phase.  hate it when people ask me "how the writing's coming."  it's not something that happens constantly.  idiots.  it's not like i AM a writer, so that i can be constantly expected to have updates for you.  james is a photographer - it's what he does.  he takes pictures, always wishes he had his camera on him.  gets up, goes places, takes pictures.  you can ask him how his photography is coming.  not me.  but then, photos are more immediate.  writing ... not so much.

"destrudo, or, destrado" is the title of a book that _____ _______ is working on.  it is about a boy who, when lucid dreaming, commits suicide - nightly.  

meanwhile

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had a dream i lost my job and that the propeller on my laptop stopped working.

it was one of those horrible sequences of events where your whole life changes and it's all because you fucked up.

.... i think i'm going to lay low this week-end.

dreams about my father.  what is he doing sending these increasingly psychotic postcards, signed Papa?  what is this metaphor he keeps referencing about the Scarecrow?

i jump up & down on the bed to see if there's a fire in the woods, behind our house, or if it's the sun setting.  it's the latter - for once.  

feels like an airport novel.  pre-kidnapping.  chapter one.  dread in my throat.  when he shows up, he is ghastly.  tears make a mess of his face.  there is no roof on the house.  i remember no wind, and no stars, but the smell of burning. 

"destrudo, or, destrado"

shadrach + meshach

fog on the streets.  the forecast on the weather channel says TODAY: N/A.  the icon depicts a small, monochrome sun with the same letters inside of it.  

i am working on a new idea for a novel.  november is swift approaching.  just found a great book that i hope to be inspired by on ebay.  

also, david foster wallace is dead.

they said they had a 30-min conversation regarding my taste.  he said it was "uncanny" how my recommendations were always spot-on.  i feel strange about this.  like i should be both proud and humiliated by it.  it's what i've always strived for.  to hear that kind of feedback.   now that i have it, i wish i didnt.

i'm not always right, you know.

watching movies from childhood.

notes:

"super mario bros."

+ not as awesome as it should have been.  but damn.  fascist Koopa.  right out of kafka.

+ god, john leguizamo. your accent is awful.

+


"little monsters"

+ fred savage, strutting down the hall, casually disaffected, reminds me of a very young john cusack, who was, at the time of this movie, starring in "say anything."

+ howie mandel, i wish i could time-travel. tell you not to make the deal. and while we're at it: did the character of maurice inspire any of johnny depp's jack sparrow?

+ howie mandel pulls down fred savage's pants with rubber arms! then the fat polka-dotted monster behind him says "nice ass!"

+ wow, with those sunglasses, fred savage.

dreams: the cat being tugged upward by a huge spider in an enormous web.  

being threatened by a gun in someone else's house.

can we come back from identity politics?  is it possible?

called her a starfucker & she gave me this little smile. it was supposed to say "i have a secret" but instead it looked like she was going to vomit. she was drunk, so was i. we smoked weed in the tiny bathroom of the bar, tried to cover up the obvious smell by exhaling into paper towels. we were unsuccessful, and fled, giggling, out onto the street.

this is the wind from the hurricane. she makes a comment that touches on how everything is related and she forgets sometimes that this is so. i don't say much but nod wisely, like i know. thankfully this goes unnoticed. she rambles about the boys she's fucked, and that's how she says it: fucked. it's a litany of the upper echelon, boys whose names anyone would recognize from posters on telephone poles, from reviews in the local paper. she is proud of it. i find myself a little disgusted but don't let on. i am a terrible liar, even through omission, and my ears turn red. she is suspicious. we flick our cigarettes into the street and barge inside for another shot. this is when, post-tequila, i call her a starfucker & she smiles.

she is set upon by a gaggle of her friends, all martini-ed & immaculately dressed. i give her the slip while she is busy exclaiming! at her hot friends. this is the wind from the hurricane. down the street, a young fat guy is cradling his cell phone in his hands and staring at it with candor and love. the width of his pupils in the streetlight cause me to conclude mushrooms. when the phone rings suddenly, sharply, he starts and smashes it to bits on the sidewalk. he is a zoetrope of emotion at that moment, all regret, remorse, ecstasy, and emancipation exploding on his chubby face.

beyond that, the night is uneventful. there will be other starfuckers whom i won't be intoxicated enough to care to speak to. there will be other idiots crashing around with their mouths blaring, staggering like the noisy undead, filling the streets with their obscenity. i will shrug on the jacket of indifference & feel slight nausea at the superiority it grants me. i navigate towards home. i slip through the cigarette burns & slide off-screen. being the antagonist, this is available to me. the harsh, gaudy exit is unnecessary. belongs to someone else. the real hero of the story. the one she goes home with. who plays the guitar and never says he loves her.

the more i think about it, the more i feel that thought is a curse.

my ideal night: sitting in the kitchen drinking a good local brew and listening to these new albums i just got.  with stan.

my night: stoned & watching trash television, broke & feeling stupid.

i am fairly sure i have an eating disorder.

those idiots.  and that idiot girl, with the sad madonna smile.  her slurred speech.  the eventual inertia of last call, standing outside the bar in a clot of people who also have nowhere else to go.  it's been like this since time began: "and on the eighth day, God created the bar."  and all the animals and all the humans wormed their way out of the sea and up the hill on their bellies towards the bar. 

billions of years later.  same scene, though we have all forgotten where we came from.  however, the book prophesies that one day, all of us will lift our bottles and our glasses at the precise same time, and the sound will be so loud as to remind us of the sea.  chagrined, we will slide onto our bellies again and head east into the Atlantic.

that sad, sad girl who wears happiness like a cellophane mask.  she is sure she's been cursed, somehow, but she isn't sure who - or why.  she asks me with her lips and eyes to lift the curse.  i give her a cigarette & say something stupid about rain.

i remorselessly cop lines from television & movies in my daily conversation.  i wonder often what would happen if someone happened to be channel-surfing & recognized the source.  some of them are less than reputable.

this is a fact i am slightly ashamed of.