by j-a
Sep-Oct, 2002
9-6-2For some strange reason I got ambitious yesterday and went out and finished painting the south side of my house. I'd begun painting it about four or five years ago and abandoned the project when I'd discovered that I'd inadvertently opened the wrong can of paint on the second day of painting and finished it with 'beige sand' after having started it with 'cool cream,' two colors that were very close to each other and hardly noticeable until you stepped back and viewed it from a distance. I didn't have the motivation, back then, to go over the second half of the house with a second coat of the more yellow color. So my house has been two tone on that side since, which wasn't too bad, because it's hardly viewable from the street, being behind an apple tree. But I would notice it from time to time and curse my inattention.
So, anyway, I finally corrected the problem. And the colors match, despite the new paint having an undercoat of beige and the old paint having weathered for years. It feels like such an accomplishment, and it only took me two and a half hours. I experience this all the time, finishing a project that I've been putting off for years and realizing that it wasn't so big a deal as I'd made it out to be in my mind. But it's not any given project that's the problem. The problem is that there are so many of them. Which one do I choose, when I feel motivated? Actually, the real problem is that the overwhelming number of projects gets me down and demotivates me.I dreamed that Robert DeNiro and several of his outlaw buddies were attacking the house, trying to get in to kill me, and I was effectively fighting them off. At one point, I swung the baseball bat I keep beside my bed, smashing it directly into DeNiro's face as he was coming in through the window. This dream is a direct result of having watched Cape Fear and Judgment Night last night.
Recently, I dreamed that I met Joey Lauren Adams and she liked me a lot. She was having back problems and so she lay on a sofa and I gave her a back massage while sitting on her rump. We became great friends. She was dressed in a nurse's uniform. This was a result of having watched Beautiful the night before. I watch too many movies.On a whim, late last night, I opened a half gallon of wine that's been in a fermenter bottle, unbottled, since I made it in 1991, one of the last batches I made from my homegrown grapes before I stopped making wine and cut the grape vines down, because I wasn't drinking any more and didn't want to maintain the vines.
Anyway, this is the first wine I've had in many many years. And the stuff was great. Beautiful, rich, dark color. Heavy, heady taste (Concord grapes). Magnificent aroma. Definitely the best wine I've made. I got less than a bottle yield (that was a very small batch made from end of the season grapes), so I can't bottle it (unless I find some small bottles somewhere), and I don't really want to drink it all, because I'm afraid it will affect my heart (atrial fibrillation tendencies). So what do I do with it? Maybe I'll drink it in small sips, a quarter of a glass per day. Maybe.
I have one batch left (a gallon), still in the fermenter. (I have a lot of bottled wine from old batches racked under the table next to my washing machine in the kitchen.) Maybe I'll bottle that last gallon. Hey, maybe I could combine this batch I just opened with that stuff and bottle it all. That's an idea.October, for me, is a manic month, a coming out of the doldrums of summer, which tends to lead toward paranoia as the fall deepens and winter threatens. Spontaneous decisions (always) are not necessarily correct, and when they are not, I react by withdrawing and deciding that I need to simplify my life, get rid of the irrelevant and superfluous, detach myself from any tenuous involvement I may have unwisely undertaken. I do not mean to imply that this is a necessarily wise direction in which I head. But it seems to be dictated by the season.I forced myself to go out this afternoon, even though all I had wanted to do was sit in front of the computer and work, sedate, but feeling productive. But I forced myself to do physical labor, hauling the wood in the driveway around to the back of the house so that I can get it cut, split, and stored away in the wood shed before winter. I managed to move almost half of it up onto the lawn and haul three full wheelbarrows to the back.
While I was doing this, Steve and Terry came home from work. Steve came over and talked for a while, and then, a few minutes later, he came out of his house with a dozen Krispy Kreme doughnuts and asked me if I wanted them. Despite my sincere attempts recently to avoid carbs in the hope of losing the two pounds I've gained, I said sure. I have a hard time turning down free food. Steve explained that Terry is working nights for Krispy Kreme and gets the doughnuts for free.
So after I got back inside, I spent some time watching tv and eating doughnuts. Then I went back to work for a while. Then I went back to the tv and spent two hours watching Predator 2 on AMC and eating more doughnuts. I ate ten in all. There are two left in the box. I am such a fucking pig. Now, I'm back at the computer again developing a headache from a failing sugar high. Time to drink massive amounts of water, take four aspirins and go to bed.I worked at the computer all night and morning, and in the afternoon I didn't feel like going outside to move the rest of the wood. So I lay down in bed and watched tv for a while, but I began to feel guilty, so I got up and went out, intending to get it done. But as I was getting the mail, it began to rain. So I guess that was a message that I didn't have to do it yet. I took a long nap and when I awoke it was still raining. Providence takes a hand.
Worked all night again and into the morning and was just about to fall asleep watching tv when I saw an ad on the TV Guide channel for a Starz free preview weekend. This precipitated a difficult mental event.
I've been struggling with the old idea of cancelling the cable. Should I or shouldn't I? I really need to simplify my life even further than it already is, I know. But I'm so addicted to television news and movies.
So, as a result of lack of sleep (four hours yesterday, six the day before), I began to get depressed. I really needed to crash, but I didn't have any blank tapes to record the Starz movies. I got the Starz schedule from the Internet and saw that there were numerous movies I wanted to see. So, I forced myself to get dressed and run up to Big Lots to buy some blank tapes. On the way, in the neighborhood at the top the hill that I have to pass through on the back way to the shopping center, I saw my mail person out walking, delivering mail. In my neighborhood, she delivers the mail via truck to curbside mailboxes, but up there she delivers it to mailboxes at the door ala the old-style traditional walking mailman. I wonder why front door mail delivery is permitted up here whereas in most other places in the township it is not? I could have assumed that it's because this is an older neighborhood, but it's not. You'd think the Post Office would want to modernize for efficiency and require everyone to have curbside mailboxes wherever possible.
My mail person didn't notice me as I drove by, which disappointed me greatly and fed into my growing disenchantment.
When I got to Big Lots, the tapes weren't in their usual place, so I thought they were sold out, and since I knew that Ames is also sold out, having looked there when I went there the other day, and since Phar Mor is already out of business, I couldn't imagine where I could get them, certainly not anywhere nearby, and definitely not for a buck apiece. But I found them at the front of the store, and felt greatly relieved that I would not have to do any further shopping around this day.
Back at home, I programmed the VCR and prepared to get some sleep. But I'd grown restless. I'd pushed myself far beyond that point where normal consciousness left off. I knew I desperately needed sleep, but I couldn't force myself to lay down and let myself crash. I felt like I was speeding. Flashbacks began. I don't like this feeling, whereas in my youth I cherished it and sometimes would intentionally not sleep for days to induce and continue it, even without the aid of stimulants (other than caffeine, which I ingested continuously all day long).
I began to feel depressed. I doubted my work (which is a usual symptom of this state). I thought that I might want to delete my website from the Internet and remain completely incognito for the rest of my life. Thoughts of further simplification returned. I'd like to sit at home doing nothing but meditating, reading, and watching old tapes, without working at all, cut off from the immediacy of the world as it presents itself to me via the media. Even going out shopping any more is getting old and boring. I've said before that although I've thought I might be suffering from depression, I never felt depressed. Well, now I'm beginning to see how I might be feeling it unconsciously, when in moments like this, putting myself under systems' stress, it rises to the surface. But, again, if it's unconscious, can it really be called depression? Isn't it depression only when it rises to the surface, when you actually feel it? I know that clinical psychologists would say definitely not. But what do they know? I'm not talking about clinical definitions here. I'm talking about my state of mind. Lots of people are lots of things unconsciously. If we allowed definitions of unconscious maladies into our daily operational lives, we'd really be a fucked up race of beings. Well, I guess I just answered my own question there, because we certainly are that. What I'm fighting here, what's coming to the fore as I am letting my guard down under systems' stress, is not depression so much (which must be always with me), but the effects of a decreased inability to repress it.
Well, now that I've managed to get some sleep (six hours) and get that all out and down in pixels, I guess it's time to reconstruct the defenses. Maybe I'm not depressed at all, except in minor episodes like the one that I've just documented. How's that for a denial?When I was in high school and college, I never paid any attention to the news. Now, I'm totally immersed in it. What if I would go back to that former state of existence now? What difference could it make, really, if I didn't know a thing about what's going on in the world? I miss those old times, living in my own world. I live in my own world now, but it's a world I don't like very much, because it's colored by real world events, whereas before I liked my own private world a lot. It's like I'm living a nightmare, dreaming up a world that doesn't have to exist and being caught up in it, unable to get free. I'd much rather go along oblivious to it all, but I feel like I have an obligation to the 'reality' of the present. It never used to be my reality, all of this insanity. I want to become sane again, like back when everyone thought I was crazy.
On the other hand, if I go back to living oblivious to the news, I could suffer from not knowing, about a pending catastrophe, such as a spreading virus that I didn't protect myself against. But if I live the "right" way, I wouldn't have to worry (any more than I'd have to worry anyway) would I? Bad things will happen whether or not you worry about them.
The logic for cancelling the cable tv: I can spend more time reading at night and, doing so, I might get more sleep. (I tend to fall asleep when I read when tired.) I can watch the more than six hundred movies I have recorded and catch up. If I decide that I really do want the cable back, I can reconnect. Paying the reconnection fee will be a lot cheaper than having paid for the cable for even one month. I can spend more time on the Internet, watching streaming news and following up on all of the news sites' links that I tend to let slip by because I think I have to better use my time. In this sense, I wouldn't be oblivious to the news at all. I can read newsmagazines to get the news, which I don't do now, and they pile up, unread. Yeah. I think I'll go ahead and do it. What have I got to lose? Just a little bit of news.I got ambitious this morning. (Actually, it was more like I'd had enough of my laziness and forced myself to act.) I went out and cut the grass, trimmed the hedges, put away all the back porch furniture, cleaned off the front porch and put everything away, put away the hoses, turned off the outside water, and, in general, cleaned up the outside of the house in preparation for the winter. This is one aspect of the approaching winter that I like: the outside of the house is clean and clear. No clutter necessary. Everything bare and Spartan.
After I was done outside, I came back inside and, since I got my weight back down to 178, I baked two of my famous crustless pumpkin pies and ate one of them in bed before I fell asleep watching the news about the sharpshooter killer in Maryland. Now, it's three in the morning and I'm thinking about that other pumpkin pie. I've got to go and weigh myself and see if I'm going to allow myself to eat it. But, really, I know I will. I'm just fooling myself. I'll lose the weight later if I gain more than I should.This is all getting so stale. I never want to do it any more. Yet I'm compelled (obsession-compulsion neurosis) to process everything I write in my journals into something semi-worthwhile. So I've decided after some moody reverie to change my pastiche format, to combine the monthly journal process with what I used to do, the fiction stuff, because I miss that format so much. This may work, or it may not. My life, my house, and my computer is filled with false starts and abandoned projects.
I've come to this conclusion after reading an interview with Can Xue. I'd forgotten how satisfying it was to write selfishly (i.e., for my own pleasure and nothing else). I've become caught up in this 'mirror of the world' idea and have been focused exclusively outward (to the degree that I am able, ever, to leave my narcissistic self). But reading about Can Xue's focus on her art brings me back to my old way of doing things. I want to be idiosyncratic again. I want to render my own personal inner vision.
This is the way I am, anyway: I'm never really concerned with the world, which is a foreign element in my psyche, an imposition. This sidetrack I've been on for over a year is not so much I as the world. I could begin this new phase with the cancellation of cable tv. I don't want to abandon the news and all my other worldly-oriented work, necessarily. I just want to change my orientation to it (and sources of knowing of it) and make it secondary to this new/old purpose. I want to write obtuse, distinctive fiction again.combination of the old Dss method
with the newer pastiche method:
I want to write, not necessarily literature, but of the individual. Like Can Xue, I am also not interested in the external world, that is, not so much. But it does insinuate itself into me in a way that I cannot ignore. But my purpose is, has always been, to minimize it's influence and keep it in its place (outside myself). My (internal) world is also "more important than the realistic world." My world is a parallel universe, a microcosm of the real world, but a very different place, and very "much bigger and deeper." I too "write from the unconscious." I don't know that people "take offense to my irrational style," but I do know that sometimes people take offense at me, at what I am, most often irrationally, although they will not recognize their unreasonable affect and will mistake their denials and projections for logic. I don't necessarily mean that I am not the things they accuse me of, at least to some small degree, but they are these things too and seek to blame me for what they are themselves, unseen. But that's all beside the point. Or is it?
I guess not. In fact, it's exactly the individual, irrational, personal vision side of my new method, something I used to do exclusively with a lot of satisfaction until I got sidetracked onto this later method of pastiche, modeled after the work of Kathy Acker. So, in pieces created via my combined method, the aspects that are Can Xue-like are the stuff based on the old Dss method and the aspects that are Acker-like are the newsy and political stuff and the personal historical stuff. I hope I can successfully integrate these two aspects. I want to get back to the old style, but I don't want to lose the advances I've made with the Acker-like pastiche. As it is so far, I feel like there is a conflict that I must resolve. When I write pastiches, I want to integrate the 'real-world' stuff I've written into them, but I want them to have the flavor of the old style, the idiosyncratic 'personal world' feel of a piece of strange fiction. The resolution of the conflict will be to sufficiently fictionalize the new style to make it similar to the old one.
My third major influence, and one of my original ones, was Donald Barthelme. That aspect may be seen in the psychological 'insights' of the old style, the intrusions into the story line of the narrator's interpretations, most of which are translated into ongoing text very similar to the story itself, but which create a kind of parallel narrative, as if there are at least two stories operating simultaneously, the literal one and the one the narrator is interjecting as if it were a part of the same story. In addition, there are other levels, which are attributable to the dream-like nature of the imagery, making the story a multi-layered symbol system, ala Barthelme.Flipped over into manic mode early this afternoon. It's about time. (Actually, looking back, I can see it had been coming on gradually for several days without my notice.) It started with my taking care of a phone bill problem immediately upon the bill's arrival. I've got to be careful. Going on these kinds of spontaneous unplanned phone adventures can be dangerous to my psychic health, when I run into roadblock after roadblock as non-cooperative people, who think they are being so helpful in their bureaucratic ways, transfer me from department to department because it's easier for them if someone else takes the responsibility.
But that's AT&T for you. They didn't help me out at all (except for promising to return a payment I erroneously paid to the wrong division when they changed their system over without any kind of notification to the customers), but I managed to glean enough indirect information from our conversations to be able decide what to do on my own. And that's the purpose of communication in the first place, isn't it, to determine what it is you have to do independently, on your on initiative? Funny, but it seems to me that people assume that you communicate in order to solicit others' help and coordinate activity. But it seldom seems to go that way with me. I guess that's a personal flaw.
On the heels of that minor success, I next began to organize the house. I arranged all the videotapes in the living room and cleaned the kitchen. Then I went to the post office to mail the phone bill. I needed stamps. I had a lot of old 33 cent ones (left over from before I began paying my bills via the Internet) and some one cent ones for when the postal rate went up to 34 cents; but it went up to 37 cents before I could use them up, so I had to get some three cent stamps. I hope I can use them up before the rates go up again or my mail is going to be covered with a lot of odd denominations.
Next, I stopped at the bank to deposit a check. And finally, I went to Big Lots to buy a power adapter for my portable cassette recorder, because I'm tired of having to play around with the defective power cord on the old one in order to find the exact position where it will work.
While I was at Big Lots, I saw some bed sheets that were cheap, so I had to buy them. And I found fluorescent bulb replacements for incandescent lights for half price, so I had to buy them too. All in all an expensive day, but a good one. Lots of pending plans accomplished. I hope I stay this way for a while. I got a lot of things that need to be done that I've been putting off, waiting for this mood.Today we celebrate the anniversary of that great victory over Yankee imperialism, Little Big Horn (1876). Usually, we don't think of Manifest Destiny as imperialism. Operating from a current perspective, we want to think we've always been here, or that we were destined to come and Native Americans were just waiting around yearning to be incorporated into this great experiment. Not.
Joyce called this evening. She asks me if I remember the old High School Quiz on WQED (the local PBS station). I say, no, I don't remember it. She says it's the program that Ricky Wertz hosted. Although I maybe remember something about it, and even if I don't, I know the concept, I'm feeling a little bit ornery, so I tell her, no I don't know what she's talking about. So she says, well, anyway, Jay is going to be on a new version of it at KDKA studios and she wants to know if I want to go along. I immediately answer yes, and my whole mood changes, because anything that has to do with tv production interests me and here's a chance to see local tv first hand.
Next, she asks me if I knew that Jim broke his arm.
No. How?
She's says, wait, I better let him tell you, and she puts Jim on the phone. I ask him how he broke his arm. He says that he and Jay were messing around and he got knocked up against a wall and broke it in four places.
"Messing around how?" I asked.
He said, "We had a disagreement."
I asked him if Jay was mad when he did it. He said, yeah and he indicated--I forget the exact words he used--that he had been aggravating Jay and Jay got pissed and threw him against the wall.
This is not the first time that something like this has happened. Once before when Jim was shouting at Jay (Jim can sometimes get irrationally out of control verbally toward members of his immediate family), Jay attacked him and threw him to the floor in a typical wrestling fashion. Jay is sixteen and very large and muscular for his age.
So, anyway, Jim arranged to pick me up at eleven-thirty tomorrow. We're going to catch a bus at Boyce campus at noon to travel into the city to KDKA studios. I had thought, by the way she was talking, that it was Joyce that I would be going with, so it came as a pleasant surprise that Jim was going instead. I'd rather it be Jim. He's easier to tolerate.I go up to Big Lots this morning before Jim arrives to get Danny a birthday present. They have glass chess sets for sale in their flyer for $14.99 and I remember when I was up there on Wednesday I happened to glance at them in passing and intended to go back and look at them after I got what I was going after, but I forgot. So, as I'm looking at their sales flyer on Friday, it suddenly occurred to me that it'd make a great birthday gift for Danny. So I go up to get them before they officially go on sale on Sunday, reasoning that if they're cheaper starting Sunday, I'll go back again, but it'd be better to get it on Saturday before all the people who see the sales flyer rush to the store when it first opens on Sunday morning to buy up everything, because this is what they tend to do at that store, although I doubt if all that many people would be rushing out early Sunday morning to buy glass chess sets, but you never know. Anyway, when I get there, I am delighted to discover that they cost, not $14.99 as advertised, but $7.99.
While I'm there, I also get five more fluorescent bulb replacements for incandescent light bulbs. And I get room deodorizers (3) for 88¢ each and carpet deodorizers for 79¢ each. (I noticed yesterday when I came home from shopping that the house had a peculiar musty odor. You tend not to notice these things when you don't go out. Your olfactory ability adapts to your local environment, making unusual odors unrecognizable.)
Jim arrives at about 11:45, late as usual. But, as we will discover later, the guy in charge of the KDKA adventure pads the times so that no one will be late. He's a nerdy, but handsome biology teacher who calls himself a professor, even though he teaches at the high school level, because Jay's high school is actually Boyce Campus Middle College, an alternative education program for "gifted" students at the Boyce Campus of Allegheny County Community College.
On the way to the campus, Jim says that they're going to Virginia on vacation next Friday. He asks me if I want to go along. I tell him I'll think about it. I felt like I might want to go, but it would be a departure from my daily routine, which I know would be good for me, but still, I have to think about it. He says that they banked their time share condo in Orlando two years ago and the two year limit was about to run out, so it was use it or lose it. And he mentions that there are three bedrooms.
At the school, while we wait for the departure, we take a brief self-guided tour of the empty building. Jim graduated from here with an Associate degree before transferring to The University of Pittsburgh, where he dropped out. After our tour, as we wait around a bit more in the hallway, two high school girls independently flirt with me. Then we are off, on a yellow school bus that seems not to have any shock absorbers.
One of the girls from the hallway sits in front of me with a short wiry little guy who I thought was her boyfriend, although it turns out that he is not, but probably wants to be. He's far more physically friendly than she wants him to be. The girl is tall, extremely thin, but statuesquely curvaceous, in that lanky teenage early Goldie Hawn-like way, but probably even thinner, if you even can imagine that. She's very attractive, but not by any conventional adult standard. She has braces that, when she smiles, detract from her appearance.
The other girl, who sits across the aisle from this couple, is of a more standard build with exceptionally straight teeth, perfect white complexion, and shoulder-length gelled hair pulled back behind her head. She has a soft and thin but fleshy face that curves around the mouth in an unusual way that makes her smile beguiling.
On the trip into the city, Jim and I talk about the news. We compare notes on our favorite reporters, both agreeing that we tend to like conservative news show hosts better than liberals, even though we hate their politics. Jim says that he likes to do things like taking this short trip because it's a break from the boring daily routine. I agree. He says that being on the bus feels like he's back in high school.
Jim says that going on vacation to Virginia is such a break from the boring routine. I don't catch it at the time, but later I realize that he's pitching the vacation to me. He'd already asked Jay when we were in the van on the way to the school if he was going along, and Jay said no. And he'd mentioned at that time that Jimmie wasn't going either, and he mentions again, now, that there are three bedrooms. I guess he feels he needs company, someone to act as a buffer against Joyce.
I feel like I used to feel with him when we went on adventures in the past, like we had some kind of a bond, brothers, more than merely family. I'd lost that feeling some time ago, or maybe it was he who lost it. I always wanted to feel it and never really lost consciousness of the loss, so maybe it was he. I told him I'd go along on vacation, and I found myself suddenly looking forward to it. His pitch worked.
Because of the hard, bumpy ride, the trip seems longer than necessary. The city, when we finally arrive, is far more built-up that when I was last there some eight or nine years ago. (And I only live ten miles out. Times seem to change more quickly when you stay at home a lot.)
On the way into the studio, Jim reads aloud a plaque about KDKA being the first commercial broadcaster in the country, being formed on Nov 2, 1920. Since we have to wait around a while, we go for a walk and end up at the Hilton, where we use the facilities and watch some of the Pitt game on a big screen tv in the lobby.
We head back to the studio, but before we enter, we congregate at a fountain outside with some of our group. The kid who was overly asserting himself toward the skinny girl on the bus continues his activities, teasing her as she sits on the concrete edge of the pool, touching her, putting his arm around her shoulder, threatening to dump her into the pool. The girl, who hadn't been previously all that unwelcoming of his advances, is beginning to get irritated with him. The biology teacher takes him aside and privately corrects him. An instant analysis pops into my head: hyperactive.
Back inside the lobby, still waiting, Jim tells me that Jay had an appointment at Western Psych last Monday, and that he had had an appointment last Wednesday, after not having been there for quite a while. I had been wondering ever since the phone call on Friday, if they realized how serious the situation was. I mean, it's not every day that a son, in anger, breaks his father's arm. I'd thought, at that time, of asking Joyce when I saw her if she understood the import and complexities of the problem, because I suspected that Jim might be in denial about it, because he seemed to be playing down his role in it while, at the same time, blaming himself for the incident and letting Jay off the hook (which is actually a balanced view of the matter, but maybe an exactly reversed balance, that maybe he should be seeing the problem as being Jay's inappropriate response of escalating verbal abuse to physical violence while understanding his own behavior as inappropriate but not responsible for Jay's response).
But, after what Jim says in the lobby about Joyce's reaction, needing medication herself, and how he thought that Jay's problem might have been inherited from Joyce, I begin to think that maybe he's projecting the blame onto her, out of a paternal instinct to absolve Jay. I'd noticed this same instinct, a maternal one, in Joyce previously, that she looked for somewhere other than Jay to lay the responsibility. I doubted Jim's theory of Jay having inherited the problem from Joyce, because I knew Joyce, and I although I could understand how she could be negatively affected by the circumstances to the point of needing medication, I couldn't see how Jay's and her problems were in any way similar. Jay has been diagnosed as depressive, and I couldn't see how Joyce is that in any way.
Then Jim said that the doctors said that this was the case, that Jay could have inherited this tendency from Joyce, and they explained to Jay that this may be something he has to deal with for the rest of his life. But I begin to wonder who it was that told Jim this, if he had heard it first hand from the doctor or if he had heard it as a secondhand report from Joyce, which would be a more typical occurrence. I can imagine the kind of report Jim would get in that latter case, colored by Joyce's agendas, maternal instinct and otherwise.
Jim ends the topic by stating that Jay got a new psychologist, who said, or so it is reported, that his previous psychologist should never have taken him off his medication and discontinued his therapy so abruptly.
Once we are admitted into the studio, while the contestants are prepped for the show, we (a group of about fifty people) are taken on a tour of the news facility by Shane somebody, a young, unfairly handsome newscaster. (I think I may have seen him on tv, I'm not sure.) Nothing on the tour surprises me, everything is as I expect it to be. Jim says he feels like he's on a field trip. I'm surprised that there are not a whole lot of employees around, probably because it's Saturday, but those who are there seem awfully young. Probably, they are mostly interns, which is a way that corporations have of taking advantage of people by giving them jobs without pay. Actually, I was kind of hoping I'd meet Patrice King Brown, an attractive veteran local newsperson, although I knew it was unlikely that she'd be in on a weekend.
In the studio, while we are being seated, the cute little blond teenager who had been cautiously and uncertainly flirting with me all the while we stood in the lobby waiting for the festivities to begin, has taken a seat in the top row of three bleacher-like seats. Others behind her begin filling in lower seats, so the floor manager instructs us to fill in the top row first and tells people to slide down to make room for incoming people. The girlfriend of the blond slides down, but the blond hesitates. So I hesitate to climb up next to her because I think she wants to slide down. But she motions to her girlfriend to never mind. I make a motion to her to go ahead if she wants to, but she declines, and so I climb up and sit next to her, which is what I wanted to do in the first place, but thought that I should not, but allow her to make up her own mind. While everyone else is seated, the blond and her girlfriend communicate with each other across the short row of intervening people, i.e. Danny, Jim, and me, the girl friend questioning why she didn't move and the blond blaming it on us wanting to be seated.
The floor manager prepares us for the show by showing us hand signals that mean "clap," "clap more and make some noise," shut up," etc. Ken Rice, a local tv dignitary, comes in and warms the audience up with a trivia game, rewarding those who get the correct answers with free pencils and water bottles with KDKA logos on them.
The show is pretty boring stuff as tv shows go, especially for the Boyce team, which losses, 280 to 420, to 440. (There are three teams.) During the commercial breaks we play more trivia. It surprises me that commercial breaks are built into the format. I kind of thought they'd edit them in later. Early on in the trivia, I raised my hand to answer one of the questions that no one seemed to know the answer to, but Ken Rice had just turned his back to me at the time and didn't see me, and he gave the answer away because he thought that no one knew it.
Having raised my hand and been ignored kind of intimidates me for the rest of the show. I adopt the attitude that I am too cool to be waving my hand around in the air answering stupid questions, even though I know the answer to most of them. But I get a little bit jealous when Jim answers two questions in a row that I know the answers to. (One of them was in what year was KDKA founded, which Jim had read aloud from the plaque outside before we had entered.) He wins two pencils and two water bottles. Danny takes the first pencil and water bottle, and Jim gives the second set to me to hold, because he can't hold them himself with his broken arm.
All through the show, the girl next to me keeps subtlety, actually very expertly for someone her age, touching my knee and leg with her hand as she starts and stops clapping and with her knee as she moves herself about in her seat. In between these episodes, she bounces her leg rapidly and acts as if she's anxious/excited. And I can see in my periphery that she keeps looking over at me. Although I enjoy the attention, I kept thinking about our age difference and how I should act appropriately, as if I am unaware of what's going on.
But just before the end of the show, I notice that the cameraman to my left has turned and is scanning the audience. Now, despite the fact that we have been told not to look at the camera when it pans toward us, and although I have managed to avoid that behavior on several instance when the woman down on the floor with the handheld breezed on past, I look straight into the lens as it passes on by. And then, as I lower my eyes, I stare straight into the eyes of the girl next to me, huge deep pools of intense wide-pupiled infinity, and she smiles, and automatically, I smile back. I couldn't have stopped that smile if I had been aware ahead of time and wanted to, which I didn't. The rest of the time in the studio, I resist with every ounce of resolve I have in me not to look at her again. But God, do I want to.
Danny confiscates all of the booty, the two water bottles, the two pencils, a t-shirt that they gave to Jay that was too small for him, and he parades out of the studio toward the bus, stating several times that he has five souvenirs. I correct him, telling him he has six, because earlier they had given us key chains. Then he walks along stating that he has six souvenirs.
Back on the bus, the blond sits in the seat in front of me and listens to eminem on the CD player of the guy who was harassing the other girl earlier. She borrowed it from him on the trip down and had been absorbed with it. The guy sits with a different girl, one of the contestants. She's a big, plain girl, but very attractive, personality-wise, very outgoing and personable. I see them several times with their heads on each other's shoulders. Maybe he's going to score, after all. The skinny girl sits alone in the back of the bus, and I suddenly feel very sorry for her. I wish I could cheer her up. She looks very sad. But maybe it's just my imagination.
The kid at one point turns back to us and, appropriate to the conversation that's occurring generally, asks in a good-humored way why all the old people won all the prizes in trivia game. I tell him it's because we're smarter. He says something about older people watching the news all the time. I realize that he'd overheard the conversation Jim and I had on the way into the city about all the news people.
Jim says to me, "I guess we're officially old people now."
I say, "I've thought that for a long time."
Near the end of the trip, the blond makes a cell phone call to arrange to be picked up at the school. When the bus takes a different exit off the parkway than the one expected, she suddenly pulls off her headphones and wants to know from her friends across the aisle if we're going the wrong way. She says she'd just called her sister to pick her up at the school. They assured her that all is okay. During this exchange, her name is used. Sonya. Cute.
The kid in the seat in front of her asks her if he can have a ride home. Apparently, he lives near her. I envy him. She arranges with the guy across the aisle to buy the eminem CD for five bucks. At first, I think she's bought the CD player, and I think she got a great deal. But a little later, she asks the guy if he has the case. He says he'll bring it to school on Monday. I think they mean the case to the CD player, but when she removes the CD and gives the player back to him, I knew she'd meant the CD case.
When the bus arrives at the school, as we're standing up, the kid across the aisle reaches over and touches the blond. She says "Don't touch me! I don't touch you on the thigh, so you don't touch me there." Then, immediately thereafter, she looks around at me into my eyes one last time, as if to say goodbye and prove to me that she's a worthy woman. It makes me feel sad that certain social stereotypes exist, but I know very well what the reason for them are. I would have liked to have become her friend, I think she has a whole lot going for her, in the way she comports herself, in the stances she takes, in the way she holds herself, strong and steady, the almost male-like, almost macho body language that she use, without making herself seem at all unfeminine. I appreciate these traits. But I don't think she'd understand the necessity for avoiding physical contact with certain people whom she felt attracted to and simpatico with, even though I'm certain I could have managed it. Suddenly, I feel simpatico with attractive male high school teachers. I look on the positive side of this experience and take it as a confirmation that I am still somewhat vibrant and sexually attractive and not so much the old person that Jim defines us as. I am a contradiction, an older person with the mind of a youth. In other words, I'm still, after all these years, having problems growing up. I hope I never solve this problem, because that is when I really will be old.
On the way home, Jay drives. Jim tells him to go via Old William Penn Highway because he doesn't want him driving on the Parkway yet. Jim is obviously nervous and frequently corrects Jay, telling him he's too close to the edge of the road and to slow down. I too feel Jay is going too fast. Jim's behavior reminds me of Dad teaching me to drive. I felt, when I was learning, that I never drove too fast. I felt that I was in complete control. When you're young, you feel that way. And maybe you are. As you age, you slow down, physically and physiologically, and so then you perceive speed as being faster.
Jim tells Jay that he has to be extra careful on this road, that someone was killed here the other day. I wonder if it's just something he's making up to scare Jay into being careful. Then, a minute later, we pass an impromptu memorial on the side of the road. Two guys and a girl placing flowers where others have placed them before. One of the girls hugs the guy as we pass. A convenient object lesson. Thanks, God.I like it when I have something objective to write about, like when I report on my physical activities and social life. I get kind of lost when I go for long periods of time in a non-social mode and end up reporting on my state of mind, mental activities, and psychology--my reflection of the world. My actual, interactive, life (what little of it there is) focuses me.
However, when I used to be totally socially engaged, when I used to work ten to twelve hours a day and come home, exhausted, and try to write about it, I was never so fulfilled, because I always felt like I was never caught up (actually, I never was) and creating a lot of (paper) journal entries that were relatively worthless because I never looked at them again (still yet), never had the time even to edit them, let alone make something out of them.
There must be a happy medium here somewhere. Sometimes I think I'd like to go out and experience things just so that I could return home to write about them, like Thomas Woolf at the end of You Can't Go Home Again, except that my experiences would be a bit more tame, or at least less alternative lifestyle--well, maybe not so non-alternative at that, but at least I wouldn't be visiting seedy Manhattan public restrooms in the middle of the night.
A happy medium might be to go out for a day, experience some things (other than grocery shopping and forays into monocultural chain stores), and return home to write of them and assimilate the experience. As it is, I wait for things to happen to me, and when they don't, I turn inward. Maybe I should abandon my philosophy of fateful waiting and make things happen. Nah.Worked with Jim today. My arms and legs are exhausted from not having done this kind of work for a while. Afterwards, I went on the grand shopping tour of Home Depot (looking for a wire rack for my kitchen closet, which I couldn't find; but I found some cheap rat poison for the homesteaders in the shed), Office Max (still no wire rack), K-Mart (still no wire rack), Petco (got some vacation fish food), traffic jam in Monroeville (had to wait fifteen minutes at one backed up intersection), Entenmann's Bakery Outlet (4 loaves of Brownberry Oven bread for $4), Sheetz (cool place; got a free order of garlic fries with a coupon), returned home via Pitcairn (I like that town).
I kind of miss being out every day, but when I was, I was too stressed out to appreciate and enjoy it. Now I can't afford it. But if I'd go back to work full time, I might fall back into the same old pattern. And I can't afford to work part time, because I can't afford the insurance I should have if I'm going out every day to a job that doesn't provide it, nor can I afford transportation costs on a part time job. Is there no happy medium? Probably not. This is not a part time economy/ country. Part timers here are losers. It's all or nothing: work full time or be able to afford not to. I choose the latter. Maybe if I lived in the city where jobs were easily accessible from an apartment. But apartments cost too much there. You can't win. They got it stacked against you. You've either got to be fully committed to their system or else stay completely out of it. They don't like kibitzers who choose not to play the game.Jim called and said that I should drive over to his place tomorrow and leave my car there while we go on vacation. That way we can pick up Danny at school and get on the turnpike at New Ken. I don't tell him this, but I don't like this idea, not because I don't think my car will be safe there, but because I don't want it sitting out in the weather.
with the newer pastiche method:
- Old Dss:
- rewrite dreams, adding to them as 'associations' make themselves known
- characters are 'not-me' but 'fictive' (unlike current pastiches)
- (but they are all me, symbolically, and the protagonist is ego-me)
- New Pastiche:
- write transitions between postings chosen from current journal, making them flow into each other.
- the writer is the real me, a choice I made semi-consciously since I was concerned at the time with not presenting a fictional self on my website, preferring instead to expose the real me.
- Combined method:
- each of the above items.
- Now, I'm beginning to see the advantage of the old Dmethod of a fictionalized self, as it resembles the protagonists in works by Can Xue, Barthelme, Acker, etc., whose work it was based on in the first place. I want my method to be a combination of both of these, my real self and a fictionalized version (which in fact is what my website has been about, but in a stumbling manner). Maybe this new combined method can make it a more graceful effort, or at least it can accomplish this goal within the pieces generated by the new combined method.
- I need a new label for this process. How about Dastiche? Dollage? It should be something I should use in the website menu and should indicate to readers that this is a work of fiction, even if it is not, so much, so that a distinction is made between pastiches ("literal" truth) and this format, which is not quite a story, but more personal (Like Can Xue, Acker, Barthleme).
- There are two separate strains of construction in this combined method: the old one, associations, and the new one, transitions. In a sense, transitions is a kind of association, but it differs from it in that, on one hand, it is far more sophisticated, enabling a flow of thought into completely disparate material, whereas association includes new material within the context of the original. So, they come at the inclusion method from opposite sides: association uses the original unity of the piece to include material that is similar in theme/content, whereas transition uses the creation of new material to provide an apparent unity where even similarity may not have existed.
- New techniques to be integrated:
- Frame: adding a qualifier to the beginning (and end?) of a story or sequence of scenes that serves to distance the protagonist (esp. if it is "I") from my real self (such as Acker does in my mother: demonology when she introduces the book as being the story of her mother, a protagonist representing the author).
- Using 3rd person protagonist to achieve this distance.
- Incorporating dream images and scenes (esp. short ones) as dialogue that, perhaps, runs askew of the more ordinary story line (Can Xue), off the wall remarks made by characters that maybe relate symbolically or thematically, but not logically, to the story. In this way, maybe, I can include author asides and dream/vision oddities w/o making the main story line seem too illogical.
- New pastiche (only) method:
- change pastiche style to reflect the appropriative nature of the format. In other words, these are not necessarily my own ideas, but are adoptive of ideas in the Zeitgeist. OR
- add this to the new/old combination, thus eliminating the new pastiche style altogether and making the old/new combo the new pastiche style.
- In very deep layers, all of my works are autobiographical.
- I'm not as interested in the external world. I expel all outside forces in my works.
- Through Yellow Mud Street, I realized my real purpose to write literature of the individual.
- I show my young readers a beautiful soul world that is much more important than the realistic world.
- There is another world parallel to this harsh reality, and this dream world is much bigger and deeper.
- The most important thing is that I write from the unconscious.
- Most men and some women writers take offense to my irrational style.
excerpts from a Laura McCandlish interview with Can Xue