Category: general

I think I’m starting to calm down after my week of everything gone wrong. I planned on getting a bunch of writing done, but spent the day doing laundry and leafing through a generic history of philosophy book, a sort of cliff notes-esque thing that wasn’t that detailed, but contained such a wide overview that I got pretty lost in it, in the good way. And I continue to work on a contract job that will probably be done by the 20th or so. But no real work on Rumored, just a few dozen words.

I guess I’m still lost; I thought about that a bit more today. A catalog for the New School came in the mail and I wondered if $400-something on a night class in fiction would be a waste of money or not. The timing is bad right now – a fall class would really butcher my time with Rumored, and this week has demonstrated that I’d really need to work to fit anything else in my schedule. Even though I spent most of my day doing nothing, that nothing provides me with the lack of structure I need for the bursts of work that eventually add up to great things. It’s something that’s impossible to fathom when you’ve spent years doing things according to tightly planned schedules. I can’t force myself to write x pages a day, especially if I want them to be creative and unique. All I can do is provide myself with a comfortable situation – plenty of food, plenty of sleep, something good in the CD player, and the words will eventually come.

I was reading about Sartre and his book Nausea today. The main character, during a bunch of research, withdraws and gains the ability to recognize that things and events in life are not categorizable, and contain no intrinsic meaning. What he discovers is that cultural and social efforts enforce or impose an order or meaning onto things. When those systems are ignored, the bare existence of things, or their facticity, is revealed. And once you see that, you realize that any meaning of events is supplied by your own free will, and you are what you choose to be.

It sounds simple, but Sartre also goes into the extreme difficulty of comprehending the extreme freedom and the extreme responsibility that comes with this realization. The freedom is in a sense a trap, because one you experience it, there’s no way you can go back the the straight-man, 9 to 5 world and expect to deal with it on any level. Also well-said by Bon Scott in the first line of Highway to Hell: “It ain’t easy living free.”

What the hell does this mean? I don’t know, I need to sit down and read Nausea when I have some time. But I do know the difficulty of dealing with this much freedom. A lot of options also means a lot of confusion. Sometimes I wish writing books was more like a 9 to 5 job at a corporation, where I went in and wrote fucked up stuff every day, and knew what was wanted from me. That’s not really true – I’ve already mentioned that I can’t write in those conditions, and I don’t think I would want to. But the problems with comprehending this whole thing that Sartre talked about is something that comes and goes for me. Sometimes, I’ll be walking down Broadway and I’ll think that none of this makes sense, the way people are controlled like slaves by religion and corporations. I don’t know why anyone would do something like run a fruit stand for their whole life when they could write or pick up a guitar or learn HTML or SOMETHING. It sounds elitist, but… I don’t know, maybe I’ll explain it all later someday.

With that, I should try to get some sleep…

Hello from Virginia. I’m at Larry’s, waiting for him to take a shower so we can go eat. It’s been a cool trip so far, and I’ll need to write up the whole thing at some later point.

On Friday, I spent all day at Air and Space, checking out the planes. They have the best collection in the world: The Wright Brothers’ first plane, Apollo 11, a lunar lander, the X1, the Spirit of St Louis, and tons others. A slew of space stuff too, like a Skylab backup that you can walk through, capsules from all of the three early programs, Russian stuff, space suits, moon rocks, and a lot more. I spent most of the day there, looking at all of this stuff in awe, and shooting lots of film. Later, I went to the American history part of the Smithsonian and saw more stuff, including Old Glory and the restoration of the Star Spangled Banner.

Saturday was a huge roadtrip in Larry’s van. I’d need to look at a map to describe it, but it involved driving to West Virginia, and then making a huge circle through Virginia and eventually going to Richmond to drink with the college students. We also went to VMI, Washington and Lee, and saw a barn that George Washington allegedly stayed in. A dude was dressed in Washington garb as part of some local publicity stunt or something, and I thought about giving him a bunch of shit (Do you grow pot? Are those teeth wood? Are you a freemason?) but I didn’t.

OK Larry is done and it’s time to eat. More later.

I’m passively getting ready for my short trip, which begins tomorrow. I usually have these things more planned out than an Apollo space mission, but this time I’m probably going to end up throwing everything in a gym bag before I leave. I haven’t done any research on museums or anything else, so I’ll probably buy a map at the bus station and go from there.

It’s been very unproductive lately. I think I did about a line of writing for Rumored today, and that’s it. I spent the whole day digging through old mail messages, wishing I had more complete archives for the time I was in Bloomington. I kept mail messages from some people, but I also botched it up and accidentally deleted all of my mail from an ex-girlfriend, a very vital point in my history. I found out about the mistake when I was still in Bloomington, but it was far too late to get a backup from tape. I wish I had kept more outgoing mail, and more stuff from 1992 and 1993. But I didn’t. It’s too nostalgic to read the stuff I do have anyway.

The whole thing relates to this weird part of my disorder or makeup or whatever where I look back at the past a lot. It’s not like I used to play football and date cheerleaders and I want it to be the summer of 69 again. It’s a much more complicated nostalgia-related depression, where I think of myself in a different era. I wrote Summer Rain because of my feelings for myself in 1992, how much different I was and how I have so many vivid thoughts of those times. I can still see myself in the fall of 1992 like it was yesterday, like I’m really on some kind of vacation and I’ll return there again and pick up at some point on my old timeline. It’s like some kind of confusing time travel book, which is fitting because I’ve already started to write a confusing time travel book just so I can figure this stuff out.

So I dug through old mail. And it reminded me of 1993, 1995, different people and things I should have done and things that I miss. I don’t know if my thoughts are normal, somehow exaggerated, or psychotic. I’m guessing it isn’t too abnormal, as I’m pretty much able to function in society. I mean, I’m not blowing up computer companies because they will create machines that will someday destroy the world. Just reading a lot of old email.

I’ve got to record a few MiniDiscs and pack up some camera gear before bed. I probably won’t update this while I’m gone, so look for a full report when I return.

I haven’t updated for a while, because the shit hit the fan right after my last update on Tuesday the 6th. Where do I start?

Okay, on Tuesday, I left the house to eat in an air-conditioned restaurant, ride the AC-equipped subway downtown, and sit in a frigid movie theater, watching movie after movie until I ran out of money. I got all ready, hiked to the subway station, and found chaos. The escalators were broken, and I couldn’t get to a train. I live at 181st, which is the highest point of Manhattan, which means the trains are far underground instead of just a flight of stairs from the street. So I couldn’t just climb down a bunch of stairs and get to the track level. Oh well, I hoped I would be able to walk to the 1 train instead of the A and still make it down south without problems.

I went to the corner cafe, a dive I regularly frequent. The night before, Marie and I spent some time basking in their air conditioning. The place isn’t clean or a four-star restaurant, but it’s a good place to catch a quick meal. I got there, and the AC was dead. So was the soda fountain, but they luckily had some canned drinks. I ate a quick grilled cheese that could’ve cooked itself in the afternoon heat, and headed out.

There are two 181st street subway stops for the A, a couple of blocks apart, so I walked to the other one. No dice there either – the elevator was out, and some old-timer was saying it was a power outage. I figured that a capacitor or a transformer blew from the heat, and the station would be out for a few hours. A biggie, but not insurmountable. I walked to the 1 station, which is a few blocks away, also on 181st. This station just got closed for construction, and on that day it was all fucked up with moving trucks and reels of cable and jackhammers and the precursor to much more major repairs. Although it was supposed to be open, it wasn’t that day. It looked like the same damn problem – a power outage. Fuck it, I thought, I’ll just walk south until I get to an open station.

That wasn’t the wisest idea in the world. It was almost noon, and above 100 degrees, with a rapidly climbing humidity. With my medication, I dehydrate easily, and within a few blocks, I felt like I was 18 miles into a marathon. Luckily, I found a vending machine and bought a drink, and kept at it. I walked from 181st to 168th, descended into the hotter than hell station, and after a few minutes, got a crisp, new A train that just started its day with us. It was about 40 degrees cooler inside, and my body must’ve lost a quart of water weight in sweat almost instantly.

I went to 14th and switched to the L train, to go to Union Square. There, I got tickets to the new Adam Sandler film (it was either that or Star Wars again) and then wandered Circuit City and Virgin a bit. It felt excellent to sit through the movie, even if it was just a mediocre comedy with a predicable script and a few sort of-funny lines. The movie wasn’t worth $10, but the AC was.

I thought about staying to see The Red Violin, but it was about 4:00 and I knew I’d have to fight rush hour traffic home. So I got in a train, stood the whole way back, and got to the house.

It was hotter than FUCK at home. Our AC wasn’t doing much anymore, and even taking a shower didn’t help. Then, we had a serious brown-out that cut out and reset all of the appliances except my computer. I took that as a sign and powered down everything non-essential. Then I waited. Minutes ticked away like hours, and I counted them, hoping they would eventually lead us to January and sub-zero temps. I didn’t know how I’d ever sleep without our window AC pushing cold air into the room. So I waited, kept the TV off because of the brownouts, and hoped for the best. That didn’t happen.

At about 10:00, I was in the kitchen with the lights off, enjoying a very faint breeze that would come through the window every 10 minutes or so. It wasn’t enough to keep me cool, but it was better than nothing. As I looked out the window over Washington Heights, I saw the lights of the apartments, the projects, the streets and stores. And then I saw all of them go out in one fell swoop. The entire neighborhood screamed like something out of a jet crash. EVERYTHING went black – stores, hospitals, streetlights, everything as far as I could see. Actually, I saw a few things on the horizon, probably buildings way into the Bronx, but it looked like all of Manhattan had lost power at once.

We were fucked. We tried the tap water, and it was just spurting. We had maybe 3 liters of water in the fridge, and our fridge had also been on the blink. Marie found some candles, and got on her walkman to listen to the radio for any news. The apartment, now without any fans, quickly heated up well beyond the 100 degrees on the street six floors below, while we tried to figure out what the hell to do. We knew the power wasn’t going to click back on in ten minutes, and it would mean suffering through the night. Marie got a news broadcast that said ConEdison wouldn’t get things back online until the next evening.

We both sat in the living room, Marie on the floor and me on the couch, looking outside and trying not to move. We were both horribly scared for the cats – they were both terribly overheated, and even panting because of the temperature. Seeing a cat pant is a rare occurence, and looks terribly demonic. We hoped that the temp would drop a few degrees now that it was after nightfall, and that the four of us would make it until the morning.

I had a secret weapon of sorts: I didn’t take my medication all day. I forgot it in the morning, and I decided not to take it that night. I knew that I could go for 4 or 5 days without any serious problems, and the lack of lithium would help me survive the heat. And it did – I felt less of a desire to drink water, and the heat didn’t completely wipe me out. But it had me fucked – I was sweating buckets, and couldn’t do anything except struggle through it.

I watched outside for a while, looking at the bizarre landscape. There’s always noise in New York City, but then it was absolutely quiet. The only lights were the police riot wagons making slow, methodical sweeps of each block. Oh, and choppers were circling with their spotlights. It pissed me off that the police were more concerned about their anti-looting position than they were about actually helping people, handing out water and ice, or whatever. If anyone ever tells you that cops are there to serve and protect, they are leaving out part of the proverb – cops are there to serve and protect themselves.

I tried to sleep, but it was one of those nights where you look at your watch every hour. I sweated until I was covered in liquid, and I also had problems with the too-short futon couch. I guess I’ve had to sleep through worse, but this one was in the top ten. I think I sneaked in 3 or 4 hours, but I was up by seven or so when Marie got up. She was supposed to stay home to bitch at a refrigerator repair guy that was coming over, but with no power, that wasn’t going to happen. She went in to work, and I woke up and tried to think of a plan.

The power was down from 150th or so on up to the northern tip of Manhattan, which is 220th. The subways were running, but not in the blackout area. According to the news, MTA was running a bunch of shuttle busses to get people to their stops. So I decided to get the hell out again, and go to Jersey City for the day. The plumbing was back, so I got a cold shower, brushed my teeth, and felt somewhat better. I walked down to 168th street again, and it actually felt almost okay on the street. There was a little breeze, and the temp was closer to 90, so I made it without getting completely totalled. The bus shuttle situation was a mess, but I managed to get downtown and on a PATH train to Jersey without trouble.

The trip to Jersey City only takes a few minutes, but it felt like going through time to me. New York is all about big buildings and tiny stores and a totally different paradigm than what I got used to in the Midwest. But the Newport mall is more like what I’m used to: grassy strips along institutional boulevards, lots of parking, lots of standalone buildings in the middle of asphalt seas, and a few hundred stores in one giant building, with a food court and concourses and everything else that reminds me of Alderwood Mall in Lynnwood, Washington.

And I was three doses behind on my medicine. This wasn’t enough to throw me into a full-blown psychotic attack, but it meant any edge on my depression was gone, and I really felt like sitting around and listening to Pink Floyd. I’ve been taking this shit for almost ten years, and for the most part, I have no complaints. But this was the first time since 1990 that I’ve missed more than two doses, and I could feel the difference. I was dealing with a lack of sleep, lack of food (that grilled cheese was the last thing I ate in 24 hours) plus the lack of medicine, so it could’ve been that, too. But nostalgia hit me like a runaway train, and everything reminded me of some other period. The walk through the mall concourse reminded me of fall 88, summer 93, seattle 98, portland 97, and so on. The mall vaguely reminded me of this place in Portland that I used to visit with Karena, but all of the stores reminded me of Alderwood in Seattle, And the whole PATH station smelled like my mom’s old car that I drove in the summer of 93, some kind of powder-fresh air deodorizer. The whole thing freaked the fuck out of me, even more than those things usually do, and it simultaneously got me thinking of like a dozen people that I used to love and would never see again, enough to really make it difficult to go in a Spencer’s and make fun of all of the Wild Wild West bullshit.

So I went to Burger King, for an uneventful solo meal and more recurring thoughts about my life. I decided it would be good for me to see the South Park movie again, so I bought a ticket, went in early, and listened to my MiniDisc while the stupid commercials played before the show. They played, and played, and played… and played. For 45 minutes, me and about 10 other people waited for the fucking movie to start. Finally, someone showed up with a handful of vouchers and announced that the projectionist didn’t make it. Great. At least I got a free pass to another movie, and I could use it at any Loew’s or Sony.

I tried to find something else to do, but the depression trip was laying on strong, and I didn’t know what the hell to do about it. I made a lap through the concourse, and then headed back to New York, vowing to take the lithium the second I got there. I did, and I made a couple of phone calls, since that still worked. Right after 5:00PM, all of the lights and fans and everything else bounced into action, and the entire neighborhood cheered like Sammy Sosa got traded to the Yankees or something. Everything was normal.

Actually, it wasn’t – I was so far off base with medicine, food, and sleep that it took me days to get straight. I’m still a little off, but I am doing a lot better. Today’s the first day I wrote on Rumored in I don’t know how long, though, so there’s a lot of missed time in there. The fridge got fixed, the cats are back to normal, and it’s so cool out tonight that I think I’m going to have to dig out a blanket before I go to bed. So how’s that for a happy ending?

I’m going to DC on Thursday, BTW – I got my tickets and I’m ready to roll. It’s a 4-hour bus ride, and then I’ll be at Larry’s, going to 7-Eleven and driving around aimlessly. I still need to do some quick research and figure out what I’ll be doing, but I will be gone until the 20th. Maybe I’ll update from there, he has a computer. Who knows.

For now, I need to get some shit done and then get some sleep…

Ignore all of my previous statements about how hot it is here – today it is relentlessly motherfucking hot. And it has been for days. Yesterday was a new record high, something like 103 and the humidity was at 99% all day. It didn’t let up much after the sun went down, either. I took 6 or 7 showers yesterday, and even with the air conditioner in our bedroom, it felt very uncomfortable indoors. The rest of the apartment felt like when you turn the oven on all the way for a few hours and it turns your kitchen into a kiln. Today isn’t supposed to be any better – I think on wednesday, the temps will drop to the low 80s, but they will go back up by the weekend. I’m thinking of stealing a car and driving as far north as possible, until I get to some Canadian glacier I can lay on for a while.

Really, I am planning a trip to DC in two weeks. My old friend Larry Falli is working an internship at the EPA (he is in law school, which is slightly ironic) and I’m trying to figure out the bus situation to get down there for a 4-day weekend. I’ve got the time and the money, so I figure I’ll greyhound down there, spend a day wandering around while he’s at work. There are still a ton of details to work out, but I’m excited to check out a new city and hang out with Larry again.

It’s way too hot to be here – I think I’m going to go to the movies or something.

If I knew how to play an instrument with any proficiency, I would start a Grand Funk Railroad tribute band. I don’t know why, other than the fact that there are too many Kiss tribute bands, and it seemed like a logical next step for me.

If you’ve ever suffered from heatstroke, please email me so I can figure out if I need medical attention or not. Actually, I’m not too bad today, but I’ve been pretty fucked up all weekend from the heat. I know that everywhere in the world it’s a cliche joke to mention how hot or cold it is, and then support the statement with a bunch of wild exaggerations about frying eggs on the sidewalk or whatever. I’ll spare this to be perfectly clear. Luckily I spent the whole day today on my ass, with a fan pointed right at me and drinking tons of water.

I spent all day Friday exploiting the MTA one-day unlimited ride pass, trying to find various bookstores and Beat landmarks like Chumley’s (MIA) and the White Horse (there, but somewhat yuppified.) There’s no story to tell except that I managed to leave the house and blow the whole day, most of it in air-conditioned subway cars. I brought a notebook and wrote, but this wasn’t a work day. It was a day of exploration and sort of a test to see how well I could find disparate points on a map of Manhattan and navigate between them with the subway. So, I did okay.

Marie’s birthday was Saturday, and we went out for dinner on Friday, to some place I don’t remember. I do remember we ate on a nice patio, and I ordered some pretty incredible bluefish. We also walked to Incommunicado Press a new publisher Michael mentioned that’s on the lower east side. If you’re into new and out there fiction, you should check out their site. We left with an armful of books.

I spent all day Saturday at Coney Island, my first time. It’s hard to describe without getting all stupid, but it was everything I expected: lots of people, lots of rides, lots of food. I liked everything, but suffered from some tremendous heat problems that completely fucked with my head on and off. Despite that, we rode the Cyclone, the log flume, a couple of the throw-you-around-in-a-little-car-until-you-puke rides, and the big car that crawls up a tower and gives you a panaromic view of the whole beach.

We also went on the boardwalk, and saw the ocean. It was actually the first time I’d seen the Atlantic, so we went up to the water and got our feet wet. It reminded me of the first time I really saw the Pacific a few years ago, in Oregon. Beaches in general remind me of Lake Michigan and the Michigan dunes, where my dad used to take us when we were kids. There were a lot of small lakes in Edwardsburg, but Lake Michigan was the first huge, nothing-on-the-horizon lake where we used to swim.

Dammit, I had this huge thought I needed to convey, and then I started reading something else for like an hour. You’re going to have to figure the rest of this out.

There are days when nothing happens, nothing eventful, and I can’t say “I went to the mall” or “I went to the movies” or whatever. And oddly enough, those times seem to happen more frequently when I’m working on Rumored to Exist. I think it’s because when I work on Summer Rain, I actually write for 8 hours straight sometimes, interrupted only by breaks for food, drink, the restroom, or a CD change. So when I do that, there seems to be a greater sense of accomplishment. But when I work on Rumored, there’s a lot of dead space, a lot of looking at books and watching parts of movies and doing web searches and just fucking around in general. Because with Rumored, it could take me all day to pull together 30 lines of writing, 18 of which suck and need to be re-written. It’s satisfying to finally read something that has come together after a lot of work, but it’s also very frustrating to feel like I’m wasting away my time.

I haven’t been reading, and it’s a dangerous situation. I feel like I need to get buried in some books to guide me and reinforce that I’m supposed to be writing a book right now. But I feel like I’ll start ripping off somebody else’s stuff if I do start reading. I tore through some Leyner recently, and it got me started on how cool I could make things, but it also embedded a lot of references in my mind that I don’t want to rip off. None of his books really remind me of Rumored in their structure; the old stuff is much more experimental, and the newer stuff is more linear and plot-constructed. I thought about getting into some Burroughs, but it’s the same problem, and I don’t want to invest all of my creative energy into working through Nova Express or something. I need to start reading obscure technical manuals, almanacs, history texts, cancer handbooks, power tool instruction manuals, and other crap that will get my mind churned up enough to work on new ideas.

I started cataloging new ideas in a leatherbound journal that Marie got me a few months ago. It’s a little unlined book that’s perfect for me to brainstorm a few pages of idiotic ideas while I’m watching TV or whatever. I’m not doing a good job in general with the 87 different formats of journal I’m keeping, but I figure this will be an interesting experience.

IHOP has a $3 milkshake, which is a great shake, but I’m not sure if it’s worth $3. There’s an IHOP in the Bronx (take the 1 train to 231st) and it’s one of the few portals to my previous life. Everything in Manhattan is different, but every IHOP is almost exactly the same. This one is a little weird – no peaked churchlike ceiling – but it’s still a fucking IHOP. Four syrups, big pot of coffee, bizarre blue and wood color scheme – it’s all there. I think we’ve eaten there almost every week since my arrival. There’s no Denny’s, no 7-Eleven, no giant malls with parking lots and air-conditioned concourses. I guess I can get used to that (although I miss Slurpees) but it’s cool to go to the old, familiar International House of Pancakes and eat about 2000 calories of junk.

That’s all.

My email is dead, but I can still update my stuff here. I think it’s some kind of networking problem, and it’s stupid that all of my email sits on a machine in Seattle when I live in New York, but you’re talking about a person who still has all of his money in a Seafirst checking account.

I think I am starting to calm down about the major panic attack I was having w/r/t Rumored to Exist. I’m slowly getting back into it, but I’m not writing any great amounts yet. I’ve set a schedule that takes me to the end of the book around Halloween or so, and I’m ahead of schedule, but then I built a certain amount of slack into it so I could get back up to speed.

I’m listening to a Century Media compliation disc that was included in the last issue of Metal Curse and a bunch of Century Media releases a year or two ago. It’s a fairly diverse sampler of new death metal, and a decent CD to listen to if you’re as out of touch with the metal community as I am. It’s strange, because this disc reminds me so much of a year or so ago, when I lived in Seattle. I didn’t think I would be that nostalgic about Seattle, and it seems stupid to reminisce about the summer of 97 or 98, but I guess I do sometimes.

I’ve often thought that my next big project would be a novel about Seattle, going from when I left Indiana to when I left for New York. On the drive out, I outlined the whole thing, making it work like Bukowski’s book Post Office. I don’t know if I could write it or not, but it’s an interesting composition, the way everything is lined up and everything. I’ve got too many other things to worry about now, and I’m not sure I could write another strictly autobiographical book, but it’s always a thought.

My email is back. One thing from a Guns N Roses mailing list, two pieces of junk mail.

I’ve been very tired. Sick, tired, a lot of small things bugging me which cumulatively make me feel like I’m a car on its last legs, ready for abandonment on the side of an Indiana highway. It’s nothing major, and sleep seems to help, so maybe I’ll spend the week in bed, like one of my cats.

Summer Rain is done, or at least as done as it will be for a while. I read through it enough that I can’t read another paragraph. I’ve zipped up everything, and it’s all sitting on my hard drive, awaiting to be discovered in 50 years.

I’m supposed to be working on Rumored to Exist, but I’ve hit a major wall. I can’t even put together a string of words into a sentence anymore. I am over-analyzing everything and wondering how pieces of writing become good or bad and wondering how thoughts become words and paragraphs and pages and books. It’s like when you pick a random word and say it 10000 times and then wonder why the fuck they picked that phonetic disaster to be the word for zipper or jello or whatever. But on a larger scale. Maybe I just need to sleep more, I don’t know.

I didn’t write all day today. I slept. And I called banks. And I watched DVDs, mostly From the Earth to the Moon. I should’ve read, but I didn’t.

I thought I had a lot more to say when I got on here, but I guess I don’t.