I’ve been having assorted sadistic daydreams that this SARS thing is going to be a global killer virus, something like in the movie 12 Monkeys and I, somehow genetically mutated through decades of psycological drug use and abuse, manage to survive. I had a similar dream when I was a child and suffering from a continual 104-degree fever; it’s one of my earliest memories. Except in this one, everyone was bursting into flame. At first it was isolated, but then it got to the point where you would be watching TV and an anchorman on CBS would suddenly immolate on camera. By the very end, the surface of the earth looked like the moon, and a giant voice laughed, like the end of a Vincent Price movie or something. Heavy shit for a 4-year-old, and with my newfound ability in precognitive dream prediction (see last entry), maybe it will all go down.

I’m going to see Twisted Sister tonight. I’m actually more excited at the thought of going to IHOP for dinner first, but it will be good to get out of the house, and a bit better now that there’s this no-smoking ban in New York. It’s gotten to the point that I have a second leather jacket I wear to clubs because the smoke is so bad. I do feel like going home and sleeping for a decade, but I’ll drink some Coke and jump around a little and try to get alive in the next two hours before I leave.

Not much else going on. It’s rainy and cold out here. I’ve been outlining the next book, picking at the timeline and the characters. I still don’t have a name for it, but you’ll be the first to hear.

It’s time to battle the subways and get home.

I had two books (or more) on the stove at the same time for five years. Then I had one really hard book on the front burner for another two years. And for the last year, I haven’t had anything going on, and it has been driving me apeshit. I’ve started lots of projects that fell flat, and I’ve felt overwhelmingly depressed, examining short stories and pieces of outlines letter-by-letter, wondering why things didn’t work and how they needed to happen.

Last night, I came up with an idea for a book. It’s actually one that I kicked around a while ago, but dismissed as too hard or too far off. Then I found a way to frame it, a way to put it together, and a way to get it to work. And now, it’s all in my head, and I’m very scared about planning it and laying down, but I think I can. And I think it will work. And I think it will be everything I wanted Summer Rain to be, but I get to start all over, from a blank slate. And I’m very excited to have a project, to have a mission, to have something that just might work.

Of course, I can’t tell you shit about it on here. And I might stop posting for a while as I get started with it. Just a warning.

I had a super fucking bizarre nightmare last night about someone who shall remain nameless (who has already been told about this, so nobody else needs to worry that it was you) and I can’t really explain it, but it was this thing where I was eternally in love with some girl, and then she left, and I went to see this friend and confide in her, and somehow she was less than corodial about the whole thing, and even in the dream the depression and angst were so heavy and piercing. I stopped going to work and drove around Portland with my car in first gear, trying to hit something but only going a mile an hour. Then I showed up at work and this guy Mike was installing a rack mount with a bunch of new gear. It looked cool, and he was all excited, and when he switched it on, it burst into flames.

I woke up from this dream totalled, thinking somehow I’d subliminally hurt this person in real life, or lost my friendship with her forever, or some other bullshit you’d think before you get out of the comfortable womb of your bed and into the shower. So I went to work and told the fire part of the dream to Mike, who really was installing a new rack to hold an IBM xSeries blade enclosure and something like eight new blades.

About an hour later, I went to see what Mike was working on in the NOC, and THE FUCKING BLADE ENCLOSURE WAS POURING OUT SMOKE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!