I’ve been obsessed with the image of someone eating a bunch of nutmeg, screaming “I got the fear!” and then jumping out of my window.

Dream last night - I was at my ex-step-grandparents’ house. (i.e. the parents of my mom’s second and now ex-husband) It was a tense situation, and they offered me a drink. Like Bukowski, I asked for a vodka-7. I’ve never had one in real life, so when I knocked it back, I was amazed at what it tasted like.

Still working on Naked Lunch. I think I’m at the halfway point now. It’s nice when I hit a little piece that’s on one of his CDs because I can hear his voice reading it to me. I guess there’s a NL book on tape - maybe I should find a copy.

I feel like I’m getting back into Rumored to Exist mode, even though the wordcount isn’t climbing at this time. I’ve been moving a few things around, and it’s starting to make more sense to me now. I still wish I was writing 2000 words a night - it seems like I’m averaging 200.

Speaking of which - supposed to meet vlore tonight and rent a movie, so I should be writing a bit now…

More vivid dreams last night, but nothing directly related to the book. When I fall asleep and see my characters, then I’ll know I’m fully immersed in this thing. I’m getting more done each day, but it’s still slow.

The reading of Naked Lunch has been smooth, my best attempt yet. Although I’m into all of this beat generation posturing, I’ve never read Naked Lunch all the way through. I love the movie, and I’ve read other WSB stuff. And I love On the Road - I manage to re-read it every year. But I always seem to get stuck partway through NL. It’s a hard book to read - you need to take it slow, and really pay attention. It’s not 100% linear, so you have to be prepared when it throws you by talking about a character that hasn’t been introduced yet. But it’s making more sense now, and giving me ideas.

Nothing else.

06/17/98 22

Sometimes, when I pull into my parking spot just as the song on tape is ending, I wonder if this is all choreographed. But, you can drive yourself nuts trying to figure that one out. You’ll end up putting your hand into a radial arm saw and shouting “I bet that wasn’t planned!”

The original soundtrack/score from the movie Naked Lunch is one of my most prized CDs. And I didn’t even buy it - Ray Miller gave it to me when he was in Seattle in 1995. Howard Shore in front of the London Phil, with a lot of horn work from Ornette Coleman. It’s simply incredible, laid-back, eerie stuff. It has this eerie jazz/bop feel, like you’re wandering the dark streets of New York circa 1948, but other tracks have the slightly Tangiers feel of Interzone. A lot of people slag the movie for its variance from the book (not me - I love it) but this music is unmistakably incredible. I was reading the book last night, and I put in the CD - it really hit the spot.

Every once in a while, Michael Stutz sends me something in the mail that makes me think we should find a third writer and start our own beat generation. He could be Al Ginsberg (he’s met him like a million times) and I could get a little more weirded out and be Bill Burroughs. Now all we need is a Kerouac, and maybe a Cassady for kicks. Anyway, Micheal wrote a highly indugent, first-person novel called Sunclipse, that reminds me a lot of Summer Rain. Even more than that, I think we both went through a similar process in writing - the need to get the feelings down, to capture the past, and the inability to turn anyone else on to such a plottless journey. Today he sent me a story he wrote after finishing Sunclipse, that talked about why he wrote it, and reminded me a lot of the writing I did on the third book, about why I wanted to work on Summer Rain. It makes me realize I’m not alone in the work I did on SR, even though I feel alone in that few people have read it or understood what was going on.

I ate at Jack in the Box for the first time tonight. I know, it’s a death sentence, “we cook the shit out of our burgers”, etc. It’s a weird little place because they offer so much on their menu - weird stuff like fish and chips, tacos, breakfast, pita bowls, and more - it’s not just burgers, burgers, and one fish sandwich. I was going to get an antenna ball for my office or something, but I didn’t for some reason. The food’s okay, but I really shouldn’t be eating hamburgers.

I was listening to the track “Welcome to Annexia”, and someone outside honked their horn in almost perfect time with one part, so it sounded like it belonged on CD. As Bill would say, nothing is true; everything is permitted.

I woke up at 7

, almost full rested, after some weird dreams about playing golf inside a Kroger store and taking a shower in a 2’x2’ stall in the back of a 7-11 while on vacation in New York. I ate a bunch of nachos and salsa right before bed, so blame them.

Nothing else is going on. I’m going to work on my book now.

06/16/98 21

The desire to buy a drum set for my office fades as I get into the book. I managed to get a few lines down during lunch, and I’m thinking about it more. I need to let this take over, like a virus, until I can’t talk about anything but time travel and multiple storylines and the whole deal. I hope this happens soon. To help it along, I’m rereading Naked Lunch, getting into Burroughs. His writing seems to get stuck in my head. The last time I read NL was on a plane on the way to Boston. When I got there, I hooked up with some people and went on a massive pubcrawl in Harvard Square. It was the Saturday before Halloween, and people in costumes were roaming the streets. After a few drinks, it all became Interzone to me.

Speaking of, some of Kerouac’s journals from 1948-1950 are in the newest issue of New Yorker. It was $4 and there are only a few pages’ worth, but I really dug it. This was on the tail end of The Town and the City, his first book, but it was the period that was chronicled in On the Road. It’s great, but it makes me wish I had a couple of writing friends here in Seattle, a tight-(or not so tight) knit group of writers and weirdos that end up in all of my stories. My friend Michael Stutz is looking for the same thing, but he’s out in Ohio. Maybe with a few more enlightened souls, we’ll create some kind of online beat generation possee that swaps manuscripts on the web, and takes the occassional roadtrip to meet the others. It’s a thought.

I’m listening to Burroughs’ Spare Ass Annie. More specifically, “The Junky’s Christmas.” I’m probably not going to be home this year, and I’m not going to be with Karena, either. So I guess Christmas will be a few phone calls, a junk food binge, some sleeping in, a few xmas albums, and this track. Sure beats spending 12 hours in an airport, I guess.

Time to get working…

Monday. Raining. Dark. Cold. Pass the Robitussen.

I have an overwhelming urge to buy a drum set. If you’ve ever seen my apartment, you’d see the humor in this statement. I’d have better luck putting it in my office.

One of the editors at Mad magazine has a drum set in his office.

I’ve been listening to the same Jawbreaker CD all weekend.

I almost got in a car wreck last night. The guy in front of me stopped on the bridge on I-5, and I had to lock the brakes at 65, in the rain. I was 100% certain I was going to hit. I stopped so close, I don’t think you could’ve put a sheet of paper between the bumpers.

I think it stopped raining, but it still looks ugly.

I haven’t started writing yet tonight, if that tells you anything about how fucked up my schedule is this weekend.

I spent part of the day at Andrea Milor’s, getting a bunch of photos scanned. It was cool to hang out there - I’ve never spent any time in Redmond before, and it’s good to know I can almost find my way around the east side sometime.

I also paid the ailing VW a visit while picking up some videos at Karena’s. It’s definitely the water pump - I can move the pulley back and forth with my hand, it is wet around the spindle, and the radiator is low. I am going to attempt the repair myself next weekend. I did move the new amp and adjust the gain, and it sounds a lot better than before. I didn’t test it with a MiniDisc, but with a tape, it doesn’t distort as much. It’s hard to really know until you’re driving down the road with the music running.

I thought I was broke all weekend, but it turns out I got paid. So I went to the CD store and picked up some stuff - a CD of Captain Janks prank phone calls, a Jawbreaker album that I really dig, and a KMFDM CD. I don’t know much about them, but the whole German industrial artist thing is pretty cool. It makes me wish I was creating some art instead of sitting on my ass. It also makes me think about painting my whole apartment black, and then tig-welding a bunch of dead machinery, old car parts, and other hunks of metal all over the walls and ceiling until the place looks like the set to a Tool video.

I’ve been doing tiny amount of incremental organizing and rearranging around the apartment, and I’m trying to figure out how to build new bookshelves to replace some of the old ones, in an order to squeeze in a few more books. It’s a real horrorshow when a cleaning operation involves buying hundreds of dollars of Craftsman power tools and raw lumber. I will, of course, paint the new shelves black.

I guess I screwed up and didn’t really write anything on Saturday, since it’s technically Sunday. I’m sure the journal police will find me and beat the living shit out of me later.