------ ENTRY ------ Date: 2014-03-25 Words: 237 Minutes: 0 I think I should do this in the morning. So that I can just sit here and veg tonight. My day is over. I've had to act natural and even somewhat extraverted and that's always a drain on the old battery. So yeah. So yeah. So um yeah. I don't know if I have a disease, a disorder, a flaw, maybe I'm a feeb in the frontal lobe department, the hell knows. It kind of doesn't matter. I just want to take pictures. Write sometimes. Talk to some kids sometimes and learn from them. Talk to adults sometimes and learn from them. Get enough money to not feel totally naked and vulnerable, the street and its attendant garbage only a plywood flat away. There is always so much garbage when the snow melts. The fuck is wrong with us? We really think the garbage is going to disappear if we throw it in the snow? It's like mistaking a perfect time capsule for an oubliette. We are always pretending to forget ourselves. The secret to good spaghetti sauce is wine and no basil. And some store-bought jarred spaghetti sauce. And some wine. The the I don't even drink the the except on special occasions. And I don't drink to get actually drunk anymore. I'm just so tired and so done with that. God. Puke. Whatever. I really really think I should just do this in the morning. ------ ENTRY ------ Date: 2014-03-26 Words: 784 Minutes: 15 you're sypposed to do it all at once but i was going to get up at five but instead i snoozed the ghostly carillon and then i was supposed to get up at five oh nine but instead i swiped the haunting bells of gloom and then i was supposed to get up at five eighteen but at five seventeen i stirred, shifted my body and my leg got a little cold from going closer to the window and i pulled the great mass of the blankets up and that coldness made the rest of me so deliciously warm that i just had to poke and prod the tiny slab and make it so i would get up at five thirty after all which meant no time for groggy eyed wording, no sleepy gritty tap tap tap in the translucent pre-moon light of the kitchen for me today, even though it had as always seemed like such a good idea. Once you start you cannot stop the brain keeps spouting like a bathtub gone awry with tiles about to fall and grout and mold and paint escaping from the ceiling think don't think you think you don't think you're supposed to be a teacher what if you didn't stop what if you were a teacher what if you couldn't what if you didn't have an excuse what if you didn't have a disease what if there is nothing wrong with you what if chris was wrong when he said, Laziness is just a description of behavior. It is not itself a trait. What if it is, and what if you have it? Well I guess if it's like blue eyes there's nothing you can do about it. Why are the easiest things the hardest to motivate yourself to do? What if you did this sloppy slapdash sludge and then you were like exactly fifteen million and one other blue eyed boys of a certain era just trying not to let themselves realize they're trying not to look like they're waiting for someone to disavow their self-effacements? Look at this, one of them says, I mean don't look at it because it's just (here's where it starts to get really gross) the spewings of my mind, it's not supposed to be "art" or "good" or anything (he pauses, barely perceptibly) and I just put it up here *for me,* you know, it's just *this is my place to do this* and so *feel free* (as if we didn't!) to just you know, *ignore me,* which is his halting shamefaced stiff-pronged way of saying, please, i'll do anything, please, i'm only pretending to not pretend to be a genius because i'm so, i'm so, i'm so alone and nobody, no nobody, no nobody anywhere can ever be allowed to care. and so he goes back to work if he is "lucky" and back to bending brownly over the open engine of his nineteen seventy five dingy nondescript four wheeled vehicle of fairground dreams bad hair and hats if he's *extra* lucky, and he works all day at this transparency, this bowed-back intransigence, this dime store transcendence, this brown box that is his home his head his humble shack, his man shack, his garage. Someone across the street takes a picture. But he never knows it. Meanwhile he's still afraid to post his stupid thoughts. His thoughts are like food. They spoil quickly, we don't like leftovers, we just go to aldi's and get some new ones as long as we still have money on the card. How long can we live this way? I guess we're going to find out, because laziness, my boys, this great big bird of pseudo-paradise you have called laziness, see it standing there in the middle of the road with its great gross beak, this laziness, this thing is real, it is inherent, and it is a trait. If you are born with it, or somehow come down with it or catch it from a cursed mosquito from another country you, yes you, marshmallow eyes with the blessings of a half a handful of generations of successful peasantry behind you, even you, the one the angry have called "priveleged," even you will surely fail. For failure is this rabid ornithopter's only squawk. It's not a disease, so you can't go to the doctor. Your insurance won't cover it. Unless..... hey wait, maybe you can get some powerful drugs for that. Already tried it, you say? No matter. It doesn't count unless it has the suited wrinkled man's imprimateur of sophistry. Get a prescription. Then you'll have a good new story to tell. About the same old same old same old shit ------ ENTRY ------ Date: 2014-03-27 Words: 822 Minutes: 53 It's an Olympus oh em dee ee em ten. And it means I am a real slug. Not a notional tomato or the imagination of a rainblob. I click. Therefore you ham. I could wonder what if the anymore can't speak of spaghetti anything at you can't the steam on the window the steam outside rising off the lake as soon as mister principal man said "I've heard good things" there went your plan to just keep relaxing, now god dammit you have something to live up to, can't totally slack off because he very slyly like a cunning underminer fucking administrator did not say WHERE HE HEARD THE THINGS FROM, or what ANY OF THE THINGS EXACTLY WERE so now you're left with above all this message: YOU'RE BEING MONITORED. Spies could be anywhere. Could be students. COuld be teachers. Maybe they're just waiting for you to fuck up. Maybe just waiting for you to have one too many "work days" in a week where you just really don't have anything planned. Maybe waiting to see if you always just talk to them, share a few examples with them, ask a couple of questions and then tell them to work on something and walk around, really? that's it? That's all you know how to do? Are you freaking kidding me? I mean shit. If that's teaching, what's your damn problem? Ah yes, the grading. You're going to have to actually analyze all these damn stories. Aren't you going to come up with any ingenious games or pair share jigsaw dance monkey student centered socratic manipulable kinesthetic transcendent ultra student buy-in self-guided collaborative engagement instruments? Aren't you going to even play like Jeopardy or something? What are you, a freaking college perfesser from the fifties? What do you think this is? What about the oh my god, won't somebody think of the DIFFERENTIATION ?What if your so called relaxed so called method or stance or just kind of showing up and talking, what if that totally doesn't work for so and so who sits invisbly in the back row looking dorky. You know, maybe he's a some kind a genius and you just don't notice him because he doesn't act out. Remember when you said, find the ugliest kid in class and love them first? That was a good one. I have to say, I'm pretty proud of you for that one. Ugly has run the gamut from yellow teeth all the way to rabid, foaming white supremacism. Weird, eh? But you can handle it. Just don't let the shifty subtextual rules of the game get you all riled up. You know what you are doing. Just like you know what you are doing as a parent, even though you AND EVERY OTHER PARENT are a complete failure at that as well. Good enough is good enough, as the wise lady said. She looked a little older yesterday, even though I've seen her only about a month ago. But she looked a little older. Two fifty to go out the magic seven fifty. Almost time for class I gotta go. But I'll be back. No. yes yes yes no no no no no no magic bubbler i went down this long aching hall with the warbly lights and the russet lockers along either side there was a man a long way away down the hall toward the other end by the big windows that arch overhead outside the windows it was rain and lurid clouds and the big windows like a big big hi tech ship made everyone feel safe for a time i overheard some boys saying every pretty much every day is garbage. you get a third of friday, and saturday. even sunday kind of blows because, it's a school night. so you get about one and a half good days and the rest. are pretty much garbage. i hadda smile but you know it's kinda true what about the big wide open windows i don't think it's just about being rich and powerful or maybe powerful is the right word, but the popular notion of what is power is a little messed up lightning is powerful rain is powerful a beaded lens of crystal clear raindrop on a blade of grass is powerful ruby my neighbor is powerful even as the pink in her hair fades out like a a slomo supernova gone forgotten she walks up the street as i'm getting my mail trash cans and trash dot the ruts between the driveways she smiles and we say hi and she is saying something else as she walks away up the street i'm going to see if i still feel like saying hi neighbor when i see her in class today we are all so powerful we don't know what to do with ourselves so we come in here, in this friendly factory and play school every day ------ ENTRY ------ Date: 2014-03-29 Words: 776 Minutes: 62 Katy and the new York city of the other day and then you have a few days of this message in the new year. Does that make sure you are the way to the other day?I can't tell you how to see if you have a few months of this message. Wait you mean literally all I have to do to satisfy this requirement is just stick out my chin and put anything ANYTHING AT ALL down on the thing? Yes. Oh. That's so easy it's hard. Why is that? Because I am a true perfectionist. Because I can't let stuff be that easy. If it's easy it must not be legitimate somehow? Something like that. So like, I can't blow off something that is supposed to be blown off, but then I berate myself for backing myself into a corner and blowing off stuff that I think I'm supposed to really put a lot of care and professionalism and planning into. Maybe I just have it all backwards. Relax. It's all about relaxing. Play. You don't have to put extra salt in your food, even though you do need salt to live. Weird. Count the distractions and force yourself not to be judgmental. You like to judge yourself like an old hotel judges the swimming pool. The swimming pool is outside behind a wrought-iron fence, i mean there's the old cream colored stone of the old old hotel building itself, tall and grand and fading fast like a relic from a prohibition desperate time of grim optimism and the vestiges of westward expansion. A skyscraper, stubby by today's standards, squat, anachronistic, little bars of soap on every sink and you can see the pipes. Grand. And then laid out in front of this like a well-placed table setting is this formal but un-fancy courtyard, with some deep greenery, some tough shrubs that survive all seasons of a nation's exhibitionism. There's green bushes, yellow chaise longues, concrete, and a bright blue oblong shining against the disappearing summer. Then there's another slim strip of concrete, a few more wind-worn bushes to distract the gaze, the fence, and then there's nothing but the city out there. It's so close. You can almost touch it. You can lean up against the fence, dripping in your vulnerability, young, dripping with sun and youth, and dangle your arms between the iron bars, and stare at the city not staring back at you. Or maybe it is staring back. Would you ever know? Chances are, when you were on the airplane coming over here, someone on the ground was staring up. You didn't know they were. You could have abstracted out the possibility, maybe you even did that, but still. It's not the same. These invisible connections, infinity made visible only by intention, like the line that leads from your cue to the cueball and beyond, showing you where the bounce is going to go, the angle of incidence, the practical geometry, pure music, platonic with perfection in a den of grit, drinking, leather, women, and perfumed smoke. You stare. And the city stares back. ears ringing with distraction, bacon, teeth slowly sagging out of gums, hair slowly retreating into mouse holes of imagination, you're not young, you still look fairly handsome, more than acceptable perhaps, by a little bit yet, you are old enough not to cry too hard about your lingering memories of being a jubilant piece of meat. Remember when you could go into any bar, at least the ones in that certain special neighborhood, along that certain special strip, sandwiched in between the taquerias and the paint store and the warehouses, down by the green gurgle of the river of secrets, the secret sludge, the gurgle and glop of everything we pretend to forget, how the river insinuates, how it almost glows with darkness, how we crisscross it with bridges, pretend to forget, clang-CLANG roll over it and over it every day, it grows turgid, it grows tumescent, it broods, it forgets for us, it absolves nothing, it lurks, it waits it's the part of the perfect picture we've all agreed to not give credit it's the girl at school who's just a little too unskinny, broad-faced, whose underwater music gives us pause; sign up through silence for the suicide pact; it's not you it's her; she's your sacrifice; she gives your body bread, your spirit nitrogen; breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out, involuntary, steady, you don't have to think about it anymore, you're breathing, she goes down by the river at night, she's gone, remember remember remember until you don't have to remember her anymore ------ ENTRY ------ Date: 2014-03-30 Words: 76 Minutes: 0 I didn't do any schoolwork today. I didn't write seven hundred and fifty words. I didn't do anything really, except spend time with the girls, but even then I was kind if bitsy and I ended up spending a lot of money. There has got to be SOME way dammit, SOME way to get even just an hour out of a weekend. One goddamn thing a day Something . anything. Dude. What. The holy living fuck. ------ ENTRY ------ Date: 2014-03-31 Words: 937 Minutes: 132 I can't believe i just saw peggy riley's name on the people who wrote today thing. That's so cool. I mean, come on, it has to be her. Even though it said finished at 11:37, but maybe she just has her time zone set wrong, whatever. But if it is her, that makes me feel kinda good, because like I told her about this thing. So now all I want to do is go back to sleep, partly because I'm tired. I'm so so so so tired but thats not it really, is it. It's also because I'm cold. And my robe is open slightly and though it's technically spring my heart is still exposed. And it's also because I dread the seniors. They act like they don't really care about anything but they're judging me all the time. They act like they think I'm cute but my little shtick doesn't really work on them. I act like I don't care but I feel like a shit for failing to meet their expectations. I have these stacks of papers, and I'm supposed to help them be better writers, but I just I just I just and it's cold and I wonder what she wrote about, man I'd really like to see that for some reason; So yeah, going back to school to be lame again, here I really thought it was going to be different this time. And maybe it is. Maybe it is, but it's so close to not different that it is genuinely depressing. Is it any wonder I drank this weekend, and spent excessive money on entertaining the girls, acting like I was just doing it for them but and of course for millie's birthday, yeah I can see that, that was appropriate, but then the rest, pizza shuttle and what not, all that felt a little contrived to me, i don't know if it did to them i get stressed then i spend money to self-soothe then i get mad at the girls for dumb stuff because i feel guilty for having spent money and they have failed to absolve me of my guilt. They prove not to be the product that I supposedly paid for, and so I get mad. I can't believe I yelled at Celi for stepping in that water. I mean what the fuck do you think she's going to do. Theres mud and water everywhere, you jackass. And you yelled at her and then you have the nerve to get mad at her for not acting right around her sisters. Did you ever wonder how you got started doing this self-castigation routine? It must make you think it's going to help something. Or maybe it's like a catholic saying confession. Flagellating yourself is easier than making an actual change. So you inflict this pseudo-punishment so you can say you did it, you loathe yourself to pay your debt to the backlog of guilt, so you can get on with your day. Yes sir, I am a horrible person but at least I hate myself! See? I gotta go take a shower. It's getting late and I'm not succeeding in pretending I don't have to go to work. I have this twirly knot up in my stomach because there are expectations of me at work. I have to do more than show up. I have to make the decisions and provide my own motivation. Even though there are people at this school that are very helpful, nevertheless, things just haven't changed that much. There's nobody that can MAKE me sit down and do my homework. I feel like crying, curling up into a little ball. But I can't. I'm going to take a shower and get dressed and wish the sand could get out of my eyes. well this is ridiculous going in under a thunderstorm of soft anxiety woke up in the bathtub last night washed by a sudden wave of sadness; for some reason i had suddenly imagined megan being gone, like moved out, off to college or whatever, and there was this big ache mil & lib & cel & i were left to pick up our lives with a totally changed rhythm, dynamic, purpose; like me after cj left only harder, because there's so much uncertainty i'm sending them out with so little protection; saying fly! fly! and sending them down the launch tube with barely any weapons or no that's not it exactly i mean i'm afraid i'm not giving them much of a future tired of being a bum as tae said but it's still so hard to motivate myself to do the work because the reward for the work is so deferred and not even guaranteed. if i could never get away with fudging it, that might help if there was a one to one relationship of work to pay & future pay, more like at a traditional JOB job like the print shop kind of was, that might help but to go on faith, this do a good job and it will probably get better sometime, this is really fucking hard for me. A little voice says, "But not impossible. Get up, get out of bed, give in to the coffee but stay away from the alcohol, and break just enough of the rules to make it possible." "But how do I know which rules to break?" I ask. "Necessity will tell you most of the time," says the voice, not at all peevish. "But I'm going to give you one, right off the top. Break this one: