New glasses are strange. I always worry if they’re crooked or not, since the lackeys at the optical store adjust the frames like I adjust an aluminum can before I chuck it in the trash. I mean recycling bin - if recycling is such a big hit around here, why isn’t aluminum any cheaper? Why don’t they reprogram some of those GM welding robots to pull cans and paper out of garbage so we don’t have to separate things? Instead of throwing all that stuff in landfills, they should get some joint venture going between the scrap dealers and the landfills. When the trucks show up, they dump everything in a waiting area. Then the salvagers can pick through it for free, and send the rest down the line.

I always wanted to open a salvage shop, one of the kinds that goes through buildings before they are destroyed, and takes the sinks and toilets and rare tile and whatnot, and then resells them. It’d cost some money up front, but you could make a killing. A character in a book did that, but I forget what book. They went after the big stuff, like boilers and furnaces, and sold them at el cheapo rates to scummy apartment buildings. I wish I could remember the name of that book…

There are a few books that haunt me, the details show up in my everyday life without warning. Deja vu is worst when you feel like something in a story or a movie instead of your own life. The Five Gates of Hell by Rupert Thomson is a book with plenty of scenery that reappears in my life periodically. And anytime I’m on the ocean, I still see the setting for this book I read as a kid, maybe 20 years ago, called The Haunted Cove. When I was on the Oregon coast, I thought I was IN that book. Even though I hadn’t touched it in decades, I could see the little cottages, sand-swept roads, and breaks in the water along the shoreline. I dug my copy of the book, a book club hardcover now faded by a quarter century in my mom’s basement, and it turns out it was written by a woman, Elizabeth Baldwin Hazelton, who lived on the Oregon coast also. Pretty freaky stuff.

More doctor-like stuff today, that I don’t want to talk about. Nothing disastrous, just not publically consumable.

In the waiting room, I spent a while reading the John Gardner book, The Art of Fiction. What a pompous asshole. He goes on about Shakespeare all the time, like everybody’s read the complete works and memorized them. I’m sure some of you bastards out there have read more of the Bard’s stuff than me - that isn’t the point. Getting through the plots is one thing; comparing every frigging metaphor in your life to parts of his work is just plain annoying. Of course, Gardner’s book does have some good points and it does have some kick-ass exercises in the back. I’ve done some of them before, but I’m thinking its time to repeat them.

I got my new glasses, and it’s time to go pick them up. Another short day of writing on here… I hope my paper journal does better.

I haven’t eaten “real” food in a few days now, and although I feel a little tired, there’s a strange clear-headedness about it. I can’t remember things as well, but I thought it would be a lot worse. I’m feeling somewhat better, and maybe this round of stomach problems is over, but I don’t want to go from a diet of cup-a-soup right into a gyro sandwich from the mall or something.

I’ve probably said this before, but I wish writing were a more collaborative effort, like music. I’ve been listening to some jazz lately: Charlie Parker, Miles Davis, Chick Corea, John Coltrane, and I’ve been reading up on these guys. It’s incredible how the jazz scene in New York and really all over the place was so strong back in the 50s, when bop was spreading like a plague everywhere. It links to the whole Kerouac-Burroughs-Ginsberg thing. I guess if I ever get any writing done and then die, everyone will think that me, Ray and Larry were an inseperable group in the same way.

Anyway - jazz - it’s music I like. It’s the kind of music that makes me wish I played an instrument or had an old secondhand sax in my apartment so I could teach myself. Before the day of the guitar hero, these guys were king. I’m listening to Coltrane now, and wishing I had a hundred more CDs in my collection. I’ve been looking to find some genre of music to replace the now-defunct death metal collection. It’s good laid-back music, but I’m not sure it can do everything. It does support a community though, in the sense that there’s so much history and folklore and audience. So maybe I’ll spend more time in the jazz section of the record store. I don’t think I’ll be spending any cash on a sax, though.

Ever have one of those days where you have some free time, some cash in your pocket, more in the bank, and you just want to go out and do something by yourself like buy a whole stack of books or look at CDs for 6 hours or try on new leather coats or something like that? I’m still feeling sick, or else I would.

Dream from last night: I sold my Escort and bought a Ferarri convertible. I was nervous about calling my insurance company because I was sure they’d drop my policy. I went to a high school reunion and saw a girl I used to like named Christi. She was with some guy, and she asked me what I’d been doing. I told her I just bought a new Ferarri and she got all pissed, because she had a beat up Honda and it just broke down that week.

Food: mix two cup-a-soup packets in a mug: one cream of chicken, one chicken broth with noodles. Add a cup of hot water and mix. I’m still sick, still not eating solids. I tried to eat at Subway yesterday and it almost fucking killed me.

I went to Gameworks last night with Bill. Because of all the hype surrounding the opening, and because it is right by a Planet Hollywood, I thought it would be a trendy place full of assholes, overpriced, etc. It wasn’t too bad - sunday night has a special where you can play everything from 9-11pm for $10. They had the 360 degree jet game I played at Disney, and I got another run on that. Most of the games were newer, and there were only a handful of old 80s games, all of them Atari units like Missile Command and Centipede. I was hoping for Smash TV or Star Wars - oh well. There was a driving game that I liked a lot, and a networked tank game that kicked ass. One shoot-em-up game had a big Rambo-like machine gun that you had to hold with two hands that shook as you blasted the hell out of everything in your path. I loved not having to worry about money - they gave you a smart card with an infinite balance, which was nice for those $1.75 games.

I somehow got signed up to the Apple Developer List, and someone just dropped off a stack of CDs for me. I think I’m going to go install a bunch of junk on my Mac…

I need to start working on a book again. This morning in the shower, I decided I need to pick up the Rumored to Exist draft and start working on it full time, until the end of the year. Last night, I thought about Summer Rain more, but I decided I’m not in the right mood to work on that book anymore. Maybe in a while, but I think those memories are fading and the events are becoming more insignificant to my life (although they were the most significant events I’ve had - nothing has replaced them, but they’ve faded with time).

I still don’t know my direction with selling this book or printing it myself or whatever. I’m mostly concerned with writing the damn thing. I want to make my next cut of the manuscript much longer, maybe twice as long, and I want each piece to blend into the next one somehow. Plus I’m hoping the new stuff will be as strange as the last third of the current draft - all of the stuff I wrote in late 96 and this year. It’ll take some work, but I need a new project.

I’m not as sick today, but I’m still having problems. It feels like fall out today - clouds and cold, but breaks of real sun flirting through the occasional rain. It feels alone - reminds of me being in Bloomington about four years ago, walking alone on a sunday and feeling the wind tear through my leather jacket. I don’t know how I could miss walking in the rain every day, but sometimes I do…