Monday 11/18/24
I wrote four stories this morning. I'm afraid they are rather dark. But there is life in them. The burning light of life. They're short. Word count-wise. Life-wise, no, art-wise, no. One is, word count-wise, probably the shortest story ever written.
I walked three miles yesterday and did five circuits of stairs in the Monument. I've been stretching. I had some tightness in my right hamstring but it seems to be getting better. Yesterday marked 3052 days, or 436 weeks, without a drink.
Four things I try to do every day:
Create the best art there is.
Run stairs.
Eat an apple.
Listen to a version of the Grateful Dead's "Dark Star."
That's right now during this very hard time but the same could go for the best and happiest time.
The most recent version of "Dark Star" that I listened to was the one from the Monterey Performing Arts Center on 6/14/69. This was one of those high-energy 1969 affairs, like the 4/26 show from Chicago's Electric Theater.
I mentioned a homework assignment having to do with pine cones from fourth grade the other day and that made me think about what I was reading at the time. I read lots of books about the Revolutionary War, the Ramona Quimby series, the Little House on the Prairie books (I'd read several of them before I read Farmer Boy, and I remember thinking at first I didn't like it as much probably because it wasn't as much like the other books with the people I expected to find in them, but then I liked it more and more and it made me think about not just how important it was to work hard, but the value in working hard both in terms of what you want to get done and the intrinsic value--the value to you personally--that comes with working hard), Peanuts cartoons, all kinds of sports books, Jack London, horror film histories, and Three Investigators novels. The sports books usually had to do with sports history. (But that's generally true, I think, of nonfiction sports books.) So in fourth grade I knew quite a bit about "Pistol" Pete Reiser, for instance, and how he ran into a lot of outfield walls.
People don't read. But they don't have a reason to read with what is currently put out by the publishing industry. I don't read any of this bad writing. Why would you? If you want to read something worthwhile, you have to go back in time for it. People aren't going to do that. They wouldn't know where to start, and then you have these discrepancies--often, anyway--in the mores of language. It wouldn't occur to most of them to look back in the past. Or just to look. They need to told about what they will partake of. Encounter it because it's being experienced by people generally. That's how they come into contact with anything. It really has to come to them and be there practically up against them.
What if people had something worth reading now? I'm much more interested in seeing what would happen then.
The industry is a huge problem. We know that. We see it again and again. But an even bigger problem is that there's no one who can write great works. If you wanted to do that, you would have gone to this given set of schools, then for an MFA, you'd be around these people, you'd be in their system, you'd be seeking their favor, you'd be one of them, and no good writing--it's none; that's not some exaggeration--can come from being that way, writing that way, and that system. So if you had ability, you'd have to go against the grain of everything, on your own, and develop and hone and stick to your vision essentially entirely on your own. Which means you'd need all of these other things, like a strength people don't have.
So who else is going to be like that to any real degree? That leaves me. This would be much easier if there were 400 people who wrote really well and had works that were actually worth reading and they were being held back by a system. But the people who aren't being supported or sent on their way via this system are interchangeable with the people in the system. They just weren't connected or what have you. The Beatles had all of these other bands with them, in essence, ready to go, once the door became a non-issue. They weren't as good, but there were many worth hearing. Whereas with this, there's just me. There aren't ranks. It's just me. So even if the doors were non-issues, you'd just have me. Can you have a one-person revitalization? Which would be more like a vitalization. Can you have a one-person revolution? Which, when you get down to it, is what I'm trying to bring about.
Was looking at a debate that stretched back some twelve years on a baseball history forum about who is the third best hitter of all-time. People who have much in the way of a clue generally understand Babe Ruth and Ted Williams to be the top two. I'd have Williams first. A number of people said Barry Bonds, but there were lots of hitters--dozens--better than pre-steroids Bonds. That's what I go by with him.
I think it comes down to three players: Ty Cobb, Rogers Hornsby, and Lou Gehrig. For me it would be Cobb. With Hornsby you're looking at peak. Obviously Hank Aaron had more career value as a hitter than Hornsby, but I don't think he reached the same heights.
Read a little Shirley Jackson and some of Franz Kafka's letters on Saturday. Listened to a bit of Little Willie John. Downloaded the Green Day American Idiot and Talking Heads '77 box sets and My Bloody Valentine's and the MC5's studio catalogues.
Most of these music-gathering efforts have nothing to do with now and maybe nothing to do with anything. I don't sit and enjoy anything. This worse-than-hell existence precludes it. As does the living situation--this actual space I'm in. It would be for later if I got my house back. I'll do that now in down times such as I have them, as if this is also my way of showing myself that I've not given up completely yet, or else why would I care about having certain things available for when I am in the situation I wish to be in and it's a Saturday night and I've written work that day that I know will get to the world where it can do amazing things and I want to read and enjoy what I'm reading in peace or select something from the most comprehensive music collection in the world and listen to it with nothing else to intrude upon that experience up there in Rockport or out on the Cape.
But in my life right now there is just what this is, and that's this totality of something that is worse than hell--I put it that way for a reason--and worse than any nightmare. I actually go around now and I have that sensation--if not those actual words sounding in my brain--of "wake up, wake up, please wake up," that you do when having a nightmare. That's my every-second reality.
Haven't looked at "Go and Come Back" in a number of days. What I want to see at this juncture when I read it back is not so much as a comma to change. I don't know where it will slot in There Is No Doubt: Story Girls, but I know it's an amazing addition to an amazing book that because of what it is, its quality, the truth it contains, and who wrote it, is as radical an act and as radically political an act in our world as any. I'll get into that separately.
I think there are many people who would have an issue that a man wrote this book and it's as good and true it is. It does things that many people would believe are impossible and they wouldn't be able to believe that anymore.
What if the best, truest, most powerful book about women and girls was written by a man?
I watched The House on Sorority Row (1982). Not as bad as perhaps its title suggests. Owes much to Diabolique.
I also saw Jeepers Creepers. I didn't really understand it. I mean, I understood it. I didn't understand what it wanted to be. Most of it didn't add up, and not because it was supposed to be open ended or open to interpretation. The song? What did that have to do with anything, other than they could get a title out of it? The film is kind of light-hearted but it has the grim and miserable ending. What's with the psychic?
Regarding M.R. James's "Casting the Runes": I wonder if Edward Dunning and Henry Harrington became friends after everything that happened. It sounds like they did--the narrator leaves us with an anecdote about a conversation the two had--or didn't quite have--"after a judicious interval." That's really a great story.
Kids think that the beginning of The Wizard of Oz is in black and white but it isn't. But for that matter, many adults think the same thing.
B.J. on M*A*S*H is a comforting character.
I was at Trader Joe's on Saturday and I almost walked right into a display of hot chocolate. I have nothing, really, to look forward to, no small bits of happiness in my life right now, and I would have liked to get some hot chocolate--just typing this makes me feel the sadness and how total that sadness is for me at this stage--but I have to tend to my heart. For my heart to be able to withstand and endure everything it must right now. The stress, the pain, the fear, the hopelessness, the evil. The sadness. I got some candy cane-flavored green tea and wintery coffee as an alternative.
The Boston College men's hockey team, which was ranked second in the country, lost 5-4 at home to UConn on Saturday night after taking two games from a good Maine squad up in Orono--a hard place to play--last weekend. BC allowed 46 shots in the UConn game. That's a lot of rubber. Not sure what happened there.
The football team put in a respectable showing in a loss to SMU Saturday afternoon. Their chance to win was at the end of the first half, when they had first and goal, threw a pick, and then surrendered field goal. Basically a ten-point swing in those closing moments of the half. Wins and losses come down to such things, especially in upset bids. That was the game, really, so far as it went for the Eagles.
The Chiefs lost last night, ending their bid for an undefeated season. In Mahomes I see a quarterback who has slipped. Is he top five right now? But I've been noting this slippage for a bit now in these pages. Careers do have dips and then rises. Brady slipped some. Look at his 2013. Then he rose again.
The Celtics needed a heave from Jayson Tatum at the buzzer to beat a poor Toronto Raptors team at home the other night. What is up with these Celtics? They were 3-2 at home going into that game and nearly became 3-3. This is a team, with that roster, playing in that building, shouldn't lose more than two, three, four games at home all year. They could be 3-3 right now and they shouldn't be 4-2. That's underachieving.
I went to the Museum of Fine Arts on Saturday. Most of my time was spent with paintings by Gauguin, Van Gogh, Degas, and Sisley.
Read some of Cotton Mather's letters while checking out the tail end of the Patriots game--a loss to the Rams--yesterday. Maye threw another interception to end the game, but if his receiver had been looking the right way, that might have been the key play in a win. Either way, I like how Maye is coming along.
Amelia has these cut-out letters of her initials on the wall above her bed. ALW. The other day I said, let me guess what the W is for...then I exclaimed, "Weber!" She goes, "Wrong! It's for Winnie," her friend. Then I guessed the L, which is Lee. That was my late sister Kerrin's middle name. Next I mixed it up. I said let me guess...A is for...buddy! I switched it up on her.
There are plumbing issues. Big issues stemming from Friday. I don't have hot water in the shower. Running the shower is causing water to accumulate on the ground of the utility cabinet. I need an entire new set-up. The gas water heater I have is not made anymore so I need an entire new set-up to an electric heater, which means an electrician and the plumber. I
On Friday, the gas company was here switching the meters in the basement which has to be done every seven years. It took a long time to get the pilot of the gas water heater relit. Had they gas company not been able to relight it, the building would have paid for a new heater. So because they got it relit and left and then it wasn't working, it sounds like the building doesn't have to pay.
I left the plumber a voicemail on Saturday and spoke to him yesterday and he won't be able to come for at least two weeks. After running the stairs I jumped in and out of the shower with the water at room temperature at best. I'll need to get through the next couple of weeks at least like this. I was fast so as to minimize the water coming out of the pipe, of which there are two. These pipes are positioned above a drain. I took a photo of them and asked the plumber if I would be okay because I don't want to cause a leak into the unit below. He said he thought so but he didn't know where the drain went so he couldn't say 100%. It seems unlikely it would drain into another unit. Hopefully it doesn't get worse. I don't know what I'll do then.
I really have to grip hard right now. I'm never not thinking about death at this point. Even as I create so much life. Or so much work filled with so much life. The writing on the wall has become the writing inside every part of me. Inside my eyes, my heart, my head. I don't see any way out in this world. I'm scared all the time. I a sense, I'm in a corner, in the deepest dark, trying to pull my feet under my body, crying.
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