Tag Archives: 2013

After thinking for a couple days in the last couple weeks that I needed to be aware of being alive, etc., I realized that it’s actually kind of a beautiful thing to not take that so seriously. It’s beautiful to not be “aware of being alive,” to not feel you have to be self-conscious, but that you can just go through life being engaged in your writing, and your other engaging activities. You don’t have to think so much about being alive, and you don’t have to try to figure out what it’s like to be alive, though that’s still an interesting question for me.

And what else? … M said she was having a little pity-party for herself, feeling jealous of the others’ money and of their energy. I just listened and told the cat he should be supportive, too.

Don’t sign into Google Chrome here at home. It’ll sync all your viewing history with other Google accounts—yikes, I don’t need that. I updated Chrome though so’s I could access my Google accounts—though not last night, too tired.

[From journal of Thurs., 22 Aug. 2013, Journal 183, page 76]

… but I don’t need to modify the post from last night. It’s done, move on. Say something else next time.

Oh, made my first “Mr. Hagemann and his Teachings” last night—well, 9th hour—and gave it to D____ 10th hour. He said he’d keep it. I said he didn’t have to, but give it back to me rather than throw it away. I said my goal is to become famous so that he could sell that book for a million bucks many years from now. I’m partly ironic, maybe partly not, there.

How I kinda like the rawness of Thoreau’s journal compared to Walden, the edited journals. I haven’t read all that much of the journals, but then I haven’t read all of Walden either. A__’s contest makes a big deal—a sign of accomplishment—out of completing the reading of an entire book. But I don’t want to read all of Thoreau’s journals, or even all of a selection of them—just like I don’t want to read all of my own journals!

M said Justice is too sincere for the club. (We were singing “Ladies leave your cat at home.”) I said he’s not sincere. M: “He’s sincere—in his hatred.”

“The cat just put himself to bed in my sock drawer” and slept there all night, M said now.

[From journal of Sat., 2 Feb./33 Jan. 2013, Journal 170, page 38-9]

So yesterday I started a blog post about stuff that’s interesting—but after I snarked about J.C. Oates and Jon Franzen (and called them that)

(Had dream I worked in some huge McDonald’s—huge kitchen—a dozen oil vats, maybe—and, yes, I had done McD before but I didn’t recall the details and it was in a city or near a college campus, maybe—and manager told me to push—wherever there was a clot, push—but I didn’t engage, didn’t want to get in the way—so I found this outside area—maybe there were video screens? With political type messages, or maybe arts messages?

New Yorker (1 July? issue) article about Ed Ruscha (ROO-SHAY)  and how he’s not a good self-promoter but somehow he still does get paid.

Anyway, yeah, about noon went to get keys for the Ed Jones office. M asked for the furniture they weren’t moving and couldn’t sell, apparently. And thick—inch and a half of particle board, heavy shit. N__ & L__ helped, brought a truck to help us move. Two trips, plus we carried some stuff in my car. Got it to M’s. I had felt a bit low-bloodsugar while at Ed Jones (in the building across from Costa’s) and went for some sugary snacks at the gas station thereby—(“by there”=”thereby”?) and then started to reassemble it at M’s office.

[From journal of Thurs. 1 August 2013, Journal 182, page 89]

I read a thing in New Yorker about how some Lyme illnesses are hard to treat— there are multiple possible illnesses from the bite of the black-legged (not “deer”?) tick. And yeah, and no—chronic pain—yikes. M said it didn’t used to be spouses who’d automatically make the pull-the-plug decisions.

Headed to court this morning—well, McCourt. Saw Beardy yesterday—M wonders how often he eats there. She said I should ask him. That seems rude, I said, and that he’s better as a character anyway. I’m sure he’s not actually all that interesting to talk to.

So, all the the time, well, so much of the time, I spend thinking that my writing in journals and in pocket pages is interesting (and, you know, I don’t always want to write intense texts like yesterday’s posting). (Dog came in and he’s drinking—did he just drink out of smaller water dish, then bigger one?) My rice is done—I could eat my breakfast before going to McD.

Notes on my hand from last night, pre-bed:

— the text I wrote yesterday about getting beyond abstraction—it, in a way, furthers my interests in the comic I wrote last fall about the non-sensory abstraction—I do feel I was hewing deeper into the good wood, cutting away the slack. I mean, I don’t know where my goal is, but the hewing is the focus. Well, that’s the openness I try to stay close to (like painting near the ceiling tiles? I gotta be there, close—eh, these metaphors suck).

Anyway, yeah, so, I felt last night apparently like, as good as that writing session felt, it would be wrong to privilege that as more real than other parts of life (as that Hard Core Zen book says), but what a funny thing: how better to not be engaged than to start worrying about what my engagement means—blerg.

At diner yesterday, some notes:

There were two soups, chicken noodle and beef barley (or, if not much meat in it, “beef barely”—har). But then I wondered about what we call soup, and we don’t name all the ingredients: what if there were “just barley” soup—barley & water? Or beef & water—or two meats, beef & chicken (with or without other ingredients). Most soups seem centered around the meat—but I guess I could try making some minimalist soups as a cook—what about (as an idea) beef burley– beef & tobacco soup (though nicotine is a poison).

[From journal of Thurs., 27 June 2013, Journal 179, page 61-2]

We don’t get much help with childraising in this country. I could use that as an excuse for why we don’t have kids (I think I just heard some adult male voice say,”Behave yourself”—might have been Beardy to Dale, or vice versa.). But then, this is just an excuse. Policy didn’t hold us back—not having gotten pregnant did.

5:09—got a call—3 hours later! of writing

Yeah, all stories are interpretations!

Evening: 

—Interesting products of a mind.

—What interests me may interest you.

—What interests me now may not later, etc.

—My past journals may interest me more than interesting others

—Distinctions—adjectives: one implies the other. Tall implies short. My personal opinion implies impersonal opinion?

—I don’t need to think all the time—just when writing! (but it’s not like I try to think—ideas come, write down, let go)

At 5th Alarm last night, B__ (our waitress at diner) said her son, learning to ride bike, “lost his focus on ‘I’m gonna crash and die; I’m gonna crash and die'” and on the ice cream for their meal: “he didn’t eat it and I didn’t need it.”

[From journal of Friday, 24 May 2013, Journal 176, page 118]