1995
1/2/95: 1) Has anyone CONNECTED "Power corrupts, absolute power corrupts absolutely" to GOD? Hierarchy: God, Hitler, Capo, Sgt., local bully. 2) In my play, I make a note, A=READER'S name, B=READER'S name, which STAYS thus, even AFTER A and B SWITCH, to produce implied questions of IDENTITY. 3) Note to Kevin: add notations for half-hour segments: 4 or 6 to names who want ALL evening, 2 or 3 for an hour, and 1 or 2 to smallest sections (whether a half-hour or twenty minutes) of time, and think to write some of my play and read it in an idle section SOON.
1/3/95: Notes from 1994 Twilight Zone marathon, starting 8PM 12/30 for 3 hours, 24 hours on 12/31, and to 6AM 1/1/94, for 33 hours for 66 episodes, of which 34 (more than half!) of 1993's 44 were repeated, so I WATCHED 32, for 16 hours, and spent more time monitoring repeats, for a total of 76 seen, and Pope from his book says there are about 153 non-color 1959-1964 episodes.
1.Where Is Everybody (Earl Holliman) 2.5-week isolation produces lonely hallucinations. Pope: First AIRED episode on 10/2/59.
2.The Long Morrow (episode number from NOTEBOOK pages 8-9: 1993 list: 22)
3.Monsters on Maple Street (5)
4.To Serve Man (42)
5.The Little People (38)
6.A Game of Pool (7)
7.The Dummy (4)
8.The Fever (25)
9.Last Night of the Jockey (29)
10.Shadow Play (26)
11.You Can't Go Home(?) (Gig Young) Goes back to hometown as it was when he was a boy. His father says he has to leave: "Try looking ahead."
12.A Stop in Willoughby (15)
13.Title?? (Keenan Wynn/Phyllis Kirk) Husband "creates" beautiful secretary, and wife, TOO, and new "loving" wife who had been his secretary.
14.The Silence (24)
15.The Shelter (Jack Albertson) Neighbors invade shelter; UFOs FRIENDLY planes, and now "We're all animals."
16.Young Man's Fancy (Phyllis Thaxter/Alex Nicol) Husband's dead mother's house reclaims him as 12-year-old for "ghost" mother.
17.The Grave (Lee Marvin) Marvin's knife-in-grave pinions coat: dies of fright.
18.Self-Improvement of Salvadore Ross (Don Gordon) Girl's father sells thug his compassion, then he shoots him so he won't marry his daughter.
19.Five Characters in Search of an Exit Five people in hole; dolls in barrel.
20.Cavender is Coming (Carol Burnett) Angel makes her rich; she was happy poor.
21.A Thing About Machines (21)
22.Mr. Dingle the Strong (Burgess Meredith/Don Rickles) Aliens give strength; remove it; then make him a mental giant.
23.Caesar and Me (Jackie Cooper) Dummy tells master to steal, then clams up and goes with ratty girl.
24.I Sing the Body Electric (Bradbury) Automated grandma brings love: too good.
25.The Jungle (John Dehner) African-well driller believes in voodoo and is attacked by lion.
26.The Chaser (Collier story)(George Grizzard) Loves madly, goes to "A. Daemon" for love potion, then death potion, then can't kill pregnant wife.
27.A Piano in the House (Barry Morse) Player piano compels truth: happiness, hate, Greg's love, and his angry child.
28.The Lateness of the Hour (35)
29.Nothing in the Dark (11)
30.#12 Looks Just Like You (34)
31.It's A Good Life (12)
32.Steel (36)
33.Living Doll (39)
34.Third from the Sun (Fritz Weaver) Family leaves doomed planet for EARTH
35.The Masks (6)
36.The Howling Man (13)
37.Nightmare at 20,000 Feet (33)
38.Two (2)
39.Mirror Image (8)
40.The Lonely (43)
41.All the Time in the World (1)
42.People Are Alike All Over (40)
43.Nick of Time (27)
44.Will the Real Martians Please Stand Up? (20)
45.Odyssey of Flight 33 To prehistory after going FAST; to NYC in 1939.
46.The Fear (Mark Richman/Hazel Court) Giant alien's balloon and footprint constructed by TINY frightened saucer aliens.
47.The Invaders (44)
48.A Penny For Your Thoughts (41)
49.The Hitchhiker (32)
50.The Mind and the Matter (Shelley Berman) Banishes ALL people by concentration, makes all like him, and with relief back to normal.
51.In Praise of Pip (Jack Klugman) Pip, his son, is dying in Vietnam, and comes back as 11-year-old in park; he dies so son can live and return to park.
52.Midnight Sun (30)
53.After Hours (31)
54.Eye of the Beholder (3)
All the following are in color from the 1988 season, not in Pope's book.
55.The Call Guy calls statue, becomes one, for love.
56.Shatterday (Bruce Willis/Ellison story/Dir: Wes Craven) Guy phones HIMSELF, his shadow becomes strongest, the fading self dies.
57.The World Next Door (George Wendt) 2 lives 100 years apart right next door.
58.Monsters (Ralph Bellamy) Vampire speaks of REAL beasts who kill HIM at home.
59.Shelter Skelter (Joe Mantegna/Joan Allen) He builds shelter, Air-Force bomb goes off, he's buried forever under memorial site.
60.The Beacon (Martin Landau) Lighthouse keeper's ghost kills with beacon; saving doctor killed by townspeople.
61.Button Button (Mare Willingham/Brad Davis) She pushes button, killing "someone you don't know." Guy takes it to give to "someone you don't know"!
62.The Trunk (Bud Cort) Wishing trunk finds him and her true love at last.
63.A Little Peace and Quiet (Melinda Dillon/Greg Mullavey)(Dir: Wes Craven) She stops time (basis of Baker's Fermata?) and stops missile: cliff-hanger!
64.20/20 Vision (Michael Moriarty) Broken glasses cause bank loaner to see "right" and be fired and love secretary.
65.What Are Friends For? (Tom Skerritt/Fred Savage/Lukas Haas) Father's made-up friend reappears to his son, and then vanishes when father asks him to.
66.There Was an Old Woman (Colleen Dewhurst) A storyteller gives a kid a book; kid dies and comes back with "friends" to be read to forever.
NEW NOTATION 12:30PM: WHERE AM I NOW? Seems there's just ONE phase after another: indexes, entertainment, reading, visitors, television, as most recent week: Paul C.'s here, then I finish last index, get a cold, catch up on Ustinov television tapes JUST before the 66-episode Twilight Zone marathon over New Year's Eve, which I finished watching yesterday, FINALLY having a WONDERFUL jerk-off, for the first since the WEEK-AGO mutual jerk with Paul on Tuesday just before he left (just after he came), and then the last few days have been FULL of dreams, and I still have the play that I want to start that I described in a semi-fever dream, and look forward to getting into the year-end catch-up: transcribing calendar into LIFELIST, sorting and printing lists, sorting receipts for tax-time, figuring tax-burden to see how much I have to scrape together by April 15 AGAIN, still lots of things I want to do with the computer that I "sublimate" by playing games, which are NOT far removed from "Flow" yet not exactly CREATIVE. Then the "glitch" of seeing at Cadman Towers how much my waiting-list time would be LENGTHENED if I changed to a TWO-BEDROOM apartment for Mom and me, since Mom seems to be going downhill (as does Dennis, and I really don't want to LOOK at it!---selfishly don't want to be BOTHERED with it!!). But since I'm coming out of my cold for the first time today, I made TWO reservations in ONE WEEK at January end for the Beard Foundation, want to get to the Met this week before some exhibit leaves, and DO seem to be looking forward, finally, to an index-less time which I hope is SHORTER than it was last year. And then Pope phones and talks for about half an hour, and I get out stuff for 6PM Playwrights meeting and day is almost GONE!
1/12/95: 8AM: Notebook EXPLOSION:
1) If there's arteriosclerosis, is there NEUROSCLEROSIS? Alzheimer's of the BODY, as well as mind: neuro-knots/tangles as artery-plaque?
2) My ACTUALISM-start is ABOUT the time of AIDS-start: did the universe balance MY good with this world-BAD? How Messianic a thought that IS!
3) If magnetic monopoles are created ONLY at first instant of universe, WHERE are they NOW? At EDGE? WHERE is the edge? Balloon "knot-tie"? Everywhere? In the fourth dimension? Include ALL this in my play WITHOUT being talky-preachy-teachy? Like Stoppard on "light" in Hapgood? Like Vonnegut on "enlightenment" we-are-always-everywhere in Slaughterhouse-5 last night?
8:20AM: PLAY explosion: GLAD-SHOUTING FIRE
Two guys have sex, first sound is their unison orgasm-shout as Big-Bang. First words: "Big bang." "What?" That's what we just HAD---the big bang. But it IS the beginning of body and mind, with ALL starting as an ORGASM of the universe, and all the play BUILDS UP to a big bang at the END---ALL phenomena as "its own" big bang!
EVERYTHING---thinking, science, books, politics, as CONTRAST to all-present, all-pervading, all-orgasmic WOW of CONSTANT ORGASM. Video-stills, porno, taste-organ a la Huysmanns, smell-organ patterned on the same, creation, child-birthing, ALL books and plays and writings.
8:28AM: Play LINKS (talks of) ALL:
a) EB circle of KNOWLEDGE: 1) Matter and energy, 2) Earth, 3) Life on earth, 4) Human life, 5) Human society, 6) Art, 7) Technology, 8) Religion, 9) History of mankind, 10) Branches of knowledge [My level 3 page expands].
b) All books, fiction, biography, science, philosophy, as PEAKS LEADING OFF:
Quoting "apotheoses" from WORD-plays. LIGHT-climaxes from 2001, Close Encounters, Ghost, and others VISUALLY. MUSIC climaxes [could this all be SAID to be done via COMPUTER, with CD-ROM and television digital projection equipment?] from Mahler's Second and Wagner's Liebestod and Berlioz' Te Deum and Beethoven's "Ode to Joy." Videos of PAINTINGS, A-bombs, flowers blooming, and Zardoz.
Kubrick as sex-genius: a) clip of Texan riding A-bomb-cock to sex-nuclear explosion at end of Doctor Strangelove, and b) rocket-sperm-orgasm visual in 2001.
ALL LIFE is cosmic orgasm---all LITERATURE (books, movies, plays) AS orgasm.
LIKE THE UNIVERSE IS!
1/14/95: "The Cry of the Earth," which I thought was a rebroadcast of some exciting ecological pictorialization of the earth's wonders on Channel 13, makes me so SAD when I skim through it: a collection of representatives of American Indian tribes and nations (among them the Mi-Kmaq, which must be THEIR spelling of the tribe Bill H. told me about in Maine: the Micmacs) had gathered somewhere and had two (at first I thought it was just one, back in the audience and relentlessly frontal, until there was a quick cut of a profile of an endless Indian-language incantator) cameras to record every moment of the proceedings. I skimmed through the introduction, and stopped to see WHAT was being done with a drum for SUCH a long time, and it was a monotonous chant of three or four syllables repeated over and over and over and over and over. Then some representative of Boutros Boutros-Galli read a speech, and in the fast-forward mode his head became ludicrous in its quick repetitions of reading down from his text and throwing up (yes, indeed) to glance at random at the audience, trying to include them in an exercise that obviously he and probably they were finding too tedious to bear without dying inside. Then there were more talking heads: talking in Indian so that another could translate him into English. There was talk of a Circle of Light, and The Last Chance, and "tourists fouling the waters with gasoline from their motorboats," which were undoubtedly true, heartfelt, and absolutely pathetic, except that this would NEVER have ANY kind of chance in prime time, with ANY appreciative audience, and it took me to my various "dreams of fame" by playing Ben, the grandfather in Broadway Bound as Kevin had asked me, except that it's such a LONG part that I'd have to spend HOURS memorizing it, let alone the trips down to Kingsborough College, or wherever they're putting it on, for rehearsals, and a probable recurrence of the "lost my cue" dreams that have stopped recently. At least I have the wisdom to know that nothing would come from THAT, just as nothing came from my reading of the father in Eric's play, or the first performance of Facades at the Gay Center, and as nothing has come of Dennis's many acting and play-reading endeavors. AND it brought me to the idea for my play: what parts of IT will be pretentious, boring, unintelligible, and not worth spending the time on? But then, saving the time by NOT being in Broadway Bound, and HAVING the idea for Glad-Shouting Fire, I've done NOTHING on it for the past two days except record the ideas that I had. Obviously I thought it a priority to go through my videotapes and watch "The Cry of the Earth," which only coalesced my feelings of unproductivity, good intentions mishandled, and frustration. Clearly the people connected with TCOTE were sincere and striving for the best results, and here I speed through without listening to most of the words, compounding the too-fast syndrome of making the most beautiful ballet look like a demented marionette-show with the kill-the-words error of divorcing a less-than-compelling visual from whatever benefits the actual words which are the core of the experience would have conveyed. The blind "shaman" rolled his white-crescented blue eyes hideously about over his thick lips and speech near-impediment; the handsome Laconte brother read tonelessly from a screed someone else probably wrote, to judge from his uninterested delivery, and all I could think about was the possibility of waking his body to homoerotic action under my teasingly caressing fingers; and the "Keeper of the Wampum Belts" MAY have been endowed with heroic wisdom, but nothing in his downcast eyes or in his feather-dusting of the silver effigies on the belt induced me to play the sound to hear what he was saying, possibly in his native dialect. I didn't want ANY of these ideas to escape, so I stopped the tape in the middle and did this before returning to finish my scan. The Huichols, though colorful, look so UNCOMFORTABLE, as do all the OTHER speakers. At least their Spanish was translated, however haltingly, into English. It was actually held at the United Nations by the Crescentia Foundation in 1993. Now the taping has been gone through, and will only affect my life when I reread this, whenever it may be, however many years in the future, for whatever effect.
Note from 1/12/95: 9:30AM: Seeking to escape the clomping from upstairs I turn on GREAT WQXR music: Elgar's "In the South” Overture/Alessia, Opus 50, followed by Smetana's Richard III. I've GOT to get back into MUSIC!
1/19/95: WHERE AM I NOW? At 3:20PM, rushing for the gym. More, obviously, later.
1/20/95: WHERE AM I NOW? I'd set up YESTERDAY'S heading about noon, thinking to summarize my feelings, but then, in the spirit of cleaning things out, I went down to Dennis's to drop off two New Yorks, and came back with 6-7 New Yorkers and a ton of my dog-eared clippings which occupied me for the rest of the time before having to go to the gym. This is a GREAT time for getting things done (if I can just stay AWAY from the computer games!). Caught up with the last two indexes to be delivered on 1/18, sorted through the "this week" stack in the calendar to get rid of dross, got my blood tested on 1/18 so that I could call Dr. C. today for the results, which I'm now waiting to be phoned back on (Dennis said, in my response to telling him about my reading yesterday about testosterone as an adjunct to hGH for increased weight and appetite in HIV positive or AIDS patients, that he'd been given a PRESCRIPTION for an intramuscular injection of testosterone yesterday, but then left without GETTING HIS T-cell counts, so I said they COULDN'T have been a DISASTER!), and JUST got the call: cholesterol 262, triglycerides 145! Got tickets and tours out of the way, watched a lot of television tapes, though I still have 4-5 hours to go, and returned the BHL library books so that I wouldn't be tempted to check out MORE before further lowering my "to-be-read shelf" from the current 30 books. Just squashed a tiny SPIDER in my top desk drawer! Doing lots of LITTLE catch-up things like clipping back the rose-plant, taking out the laundry, washing dishes, making index-disks, so that I can get to the BIG things like 1) writing the play, 2) editing the South Africa video, 3) streamlining the computer-directories-files, 4) taping the movies and throwing out all the movie stuff, 5) uploading various books and files onto Internet, 6) clearing out the desk-drawer for 1995 filing, 7) getting odd films from Evergreen Video and other places, 8) catching up on museums like Brooklyn and Met and Forbes and American Indian, 9) getting MORE into the computer (have to find LAST January's "12 things to do this year on the computer" and see what I actually DID and STILL HAVE TO DO), 10) getting more indexes so that I can pay off the $8000 for Keogh and IRA by 4/15 without having to borrow TOO much money from Shelley or my various one-month check-delay plastic, 11) actually going OUT to movies or baths or bars or other cruising places, and 12) one OTHER thing that might come up to make THIS another "12 things to do this year" list to see how far I'll get on it by January 1996. Find it was NOTEBOOK:12/18/93, and I still haven't finished learning Internet, Cindex 6.0b, Ami-Pro, fax-modem, OCR, CD-ROM, and slide-video computerization. Buzzer goes for more index-pages for a book that won't be finished until APRIL, but maybe I can do a partial billing to help the situation I just computed: NOW have $5835 (which of course I couldn't put ALL in ANYWAY) of the $8000 I'll need by 4/15 for Keogh and IRA. But there DO look to be a FEW indexes in February, and many more in March, so maybe I CAN finesse it THIS year, and THEN start paying off MOM, which will make BOTH of us feel better. Go through the mail and AGAIN get a small stack for Dennis on my table, but other things away nicely and I'm ready to get groceries for lunch, pleased that I did the gym yesterday without the AWFUL feeling that I'd have to cut BACK before ever considering building up, and maybe I should start thinking of taking testosterone shots. Told Mildred to PUT my name on the waiting list for the Caves tour in September, telling Bernice that IF it comes through, I'm "fated" to go, and if not, not. But I really SHOULD pay more attention to the playwriting, which will be coming to the top quickly, after getting rid of this page, printing it out, going out before it starts raining again and hope that it SNOWS SOON this warmish year.
2/15/95: WHERE AM I NOW? Well, it's 26 days after my last entry here, and I've actually done a FEW MORE indexes and REALLY DID get into Cindex 6.0b! Great breakthrough on Birnbaum indexes yesterday by putting the sports-list and the "shell" into WP, rather than hassling Cindex in a nonproductive way. But lots of small items have been ADDED to my "stack of things to do," like 1) changing the Monopoly rules and getting them back to Carolyn, 2) seeing the Cole and other exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum, 3) complaining to Charles that he HASN'T a) come up with the upstate-hotel name, b) didn't get to me for a day at the Dog Show at Madison Square Garden, c) didn't get me an evening at the play that he wanted to see at the Ohio Theater, d) didn't even bother to call to say that he HADN'T gotten to any of them yet---I'm TIRED of doing all the work for our seeing things, 4) watch the 8 videotapes I bought for the "scrap" value at the Gay Center on 1/31, 5) get the dirty sheets out to the laundry (didn't I start getting a series of infections LAST winter which I thought I traced to too-long-between-laundering sheets?), 6) restart at the gym now that I'm on the last Amoxicillin tablet of the tooth-infection prescription, 7) send another letter upstairs asking if they've gotten fired from some job to cause them to be around during the DAY as well as every single evening, a) squeaking the floor with CONSTANT walking, b) scraping the floor with CONSTANT furniture moving, and c) even starting more loud radio-listening, 8) mail the updated PKUNZIP disk to Bob B., 9) answer the New York ad, 10) finish the Eastern Europe index, 11) free the indexing shelf, and 12) one other thing to make THIS a dozen, and again flash onto Amy's complaint about the need for MAINTENANCE, which today, I hope, includes a haircut, Xeroxing things, returning a library book, and getting groceries. And putting more emphasis on Amipro, faxing, a new 10-hour AOL trial, and I haven't even checked MY bulletin boards for 17 days! (But at least I haven't played computer games for the last five days!) Then I wanted to record my sadness about the way Dennis seems to be getting weaker and shakier, refusing to work on the repagination-index for me; my happiness about finding that Cindex DID remedy some of its earlier lacks, but seems to have added a few MORE, like not accurately handling the blank-line {TXB2} for Birnbaum, though I still have some pages to read, and want now to make up a SHFT-ALT-CTRL chart for all the special key-strokes that makes its use so PARTICULAR and USEFUL. But I did manage to make a place for the broiler now that it doesn't fit atop the new refrigerator without blocking constant-access shelves, did manage to get the book-shelf down to a non-jammed-in 28, and THAT after having added TEN to the original stack of 32! And now that it DID snow, and the snow STAYED on the ground for a couple of weeks, it feels like we've HAD winter, and now it's time to look forward to the beginning of warmer days, the slow coming of spring---and the impetus of tax-time to figure how much I DO need for 4/15! But I DID update the restaurant list for the first time in two years, AM managing with the larger humidifier, DID do the first and second attempt at the Monopoly rules, as well as have two games with it, DID get to Jerry and Ernies for the first set of photos and am ready to contact them for the second, DID phone Maxime's, though he has to get BACK to me, and HAVE managed to keep the "do stack" down, though I've added lots to the SECONDARY stacks which have been pleasant to get to, including a stack of addresses in downtown which are NO LONGER on my do-list---most of them having CLOSED. Though this is almost TOTALLY delaying anything with the playwriting, though I'm tempted to see the interior of the Princeton Club next Wednesday for the National Renaissance League's kickoff in the Tiger Bar! Another Springer-Verlag index due in today, too, and I MUST start thinking about getting back to the gym! Even have the start of a complete ALT-chart for WP5.1---hope it'll still be a number of months before I begin to feel COMPELLED to update that to some version of 6! Started expanding onto the bookshelf-behind-the-TV, still haven't gotten Arcadia tickets, and will enjoy looking over THIS list in a few months to see how well IT'S been done!
2/19/95: WHERE AM I NOW? Got through lots from the previous page, even found that Bob B. assumed I WASN'T going to send him a diskette of PKUNZIP (except he JUST calls to say that HIS PKUNZIP is dated 1990, so I SHOULD send him a copy of my 1992), and left word for Carolyn that I need to answer her questions before I can finish updating the Multinational Monopoly rules. Awful "KLUNKS" last week: my utter abashedness being asked my age by the HIP triage nurse and NOT KNOWING! "Uh, 55?" I thought, "No, that's not right, but I'm not 60 yet, so is it 59? No, that's next month, isn't it? 1936 to 1995 is 59 years, but I'm not 59 yet, so I must be 58!" Then: "Your home phone?" I described it on the phone later as turning the page of a book, expecting printing, and seeing A BLANK PAGE. NADA! I make burbling sounds of embarrassed apology, at least KNOWING that I didn't have to give her "718", but then figured I could only start from scratch, as I'd LEFT my phone number a few times THAT VERY DAY: "718"---ah, 522----05---wait a minute, ARE there two fives? Was it 822? No, 522-0591. WHEW, but what a KLUNK. Then finding that my lungs, though they FELT bad, weren't really congested at all, but he gave me two prescriptions which I filled the next day, checking that Ceclor prohibits drinking alcohol, so that affects my Grenouille and Beard dinners on Thursday and Friday, even though Friday WILL be the last day, so I SHOULD have taken the first one on Friday evening rather than waiting until Saturday to get the prescription. Finished with the stack of stuff on the table, and then with the Sunday Times, after finishing the REGULAR VCR backlog, but not feeling lazy ENOUGH to go the 8-Gay Center ones---well, not THEN, but maybe NOW!
3/15/95: CATCH-UP on little slips:
Note from 2/7/95: To Penn Station (in FREEZING cold) at 12:13AM, and home at 1:33, after walking FROM East Side TO West Side and getting shuttled BACK to east!
Note from 2/12/95: Mom's NEW burial plot, NOT in Holy Cross, NOT buried in ground, is at Rose Hill Mausoleum, building 5, section 5A, #30, level 1. The Zolnerzaks: Grandma, Dad, Grandpa, are there, too.
Note from 2/20/95: ANOTHER stab at LIFE categorizations---KNOWLEDGE---EBOUTLINE 1-4-45pp
---WRITING - Table of Contents (30 pages of CONTENTS of books)
---INTERNET - "Start 2/20," which I didn't even YET.
---COMPUTER: Internal - Directory hierarchy, which I didn't do yet.
---COMPUTER: External - One-sheet listing to folders and files.
---ACTIVITY-SHEET: Computer-Do, Home-Do, Out-Do, Writing-Do, Misc:Mail/Ltr/Cr /Misc.
---FILES-CARD: Insur, Restrnt, Actlsm,Recipes, Indexes, IRS, Health, more.
---STUFF: Books, Audiotapes, Videotapes, Stamps, Records, more
---MAINTENANCE: Groc, Laund, Gym, Tel, NOTEBOOK, DREAMS, Pills, Mail: Bills, Mail, Junk
But the 3/13/95 list seems to organize this better. See below.
Note from 2/21/95: Decide to look up O.s in phonebook, see "A" and "Joyce" and one other. Read New Yorker article about Jamaica Kincaid and THERE'S "Joyce at Early Halloween"! MUST phone, so phone the number for "Joyce" and ART answers "Early Halloween"!! He was in Europe (Berlin and Hamburg and Vienna and London) for THREE YEARS, gave up the 42nd Street apartment, "kept the Connecticut storehouse," moved Early Halloween to a bigger loft on the 11th floor of some building on 22nd St or thereabouts, and is going BACK to Europe for 8 days on 3/8 for the Alley Palley: Alexander Palace antiques sale, every three months, will be back from 3/16 to end of April, has a London flat that he sublets when he's not there: South Kensington, Old Brompton Road and Glaston Rd., looking out over some notable spot; they still have the country place in North Salem but a lightning stroke put out ALL his electrical equipment recently, and TODAY happens to be Joyce's BIRTHDAY and he was only idiosyncratically working in the store to get my call. Tell Spart to call; not.
Note from 3/13/95: New try at MASTER LIST
1. Final 2. Typed 3. 4. Current MAJOR 5. Always
C
1. Book(LoveInTime) 1. Books U M| 1. Africa tape 1. "Stack"
2. Movie(WayOfFlsh) 2. Movies R I| 2. Cindex code-list 2. THIS lst
3. Travel(AngelFls) 3. Restaurants R N| 3. Write play 3. TravlPile
4. Lover (Who?) 4. "WhereAmINow?" E O| 4. Schwab-invest 4. Cruising
5. Book PUBLISHED 5. Computer N R| 5. Letter upstairs? 5. Maintance
T
Also on 3/15/95: Successfully faxed to Larry G.! Hope I get the job! Then finish this at 12:10 and got to be off for lunch with Vicki at 12:30!!
Also on 3/15/95: COMPUTER-LIST START: 1. Internet; 2. CD-Rom; 3. Ami-Pro; 4. Fax-test; 5. Upload books; 6. "Free tries" of Internet; 7. WP5.1 alt-list
3/20/95: WHERE AM I NOW? Having vacuumed today for the first time since 12/20, which only makes it 90 days, as opposed to the 110 days since the PREVIOUS vacuuming on 8/31/94, and that had been on my MIND (but, notice, NO list!) for a couple of weeks, it clears things away except for the tapes I've got to return to the Lincoln Center Library tomorrow, the J&R OCR that I want to test sometime this week just to SEE how it works, the Christie's object-price day on Thursday that I hope Charles will be willing to accompany me to after dinner tonight at the Beard, and I've got the start of the enormous 1724-page Pediatric Infectious Diseases index to start even though I don't have the final pages yet: AND I've already billed them $2000 and have been paid $1000 already! But the other things have been done and put away, including 202# of Playbills from Spartacus that I have only to take the scraps down to the garbage over the next few weeks. And maybe Mom ISN'T coming to NYC this year, since I've phoned her once in February and just Saturday to see "when she's coming," and she insists she ISN'T. Have been putting hours into Internet, which makes reading the special Spring issue of Time much more interesting, and even know how to repeatedly get 10 free hours from American Online, where I should try some of the "home pages" mentioned in the articles. Now at 5:45PM it's only 3½ hours to spring (vacuumed to prepare for winter on the last day of August, now vacuumed as my "spring cleaning"?), and I'm looking forward to spending more time OUT, even in a car on weekends with Suzie and Charles, although we may have a snow-sprinkle a bit later this week, reports say. Have caught up on videotape watching, and don't quite yet want to get back to Two Bridges video. Book-reading is going well (with LOTS of current references to Plato's level of ideal form as I'm reading his Republic!), with space on shelves for new and just-read books. Even being given $7000 at my doorstep Wednesday morning by Shelley to take care of this year's Keogh and IRA total of $9508, which will bring my TOTAL worth within spitting distance of $100,000, except for the over-$30,000 which I still owe Mom and will owe Shelley. Have yet to expand my "computer-do" list, and of course I've done NOTHING on playwriting or Africa-taping with all these other things to catch up with, nor have I REALLY done anything about getting a book published (or even uploaded, though I AM getting nearer to THAT) or finding a lover. Dennis is worrying me: he sounded confused on the telephone, and then said he had to go. Young Black insisted he take the Senior Citizen's rate at the movies last week and Pope said he looks old. I guess that's going to just get sadder. Also hope to get home-care insurance before getting yearly exam which might find something wrong which would prevent it. And getting pills soon, and more indexes, and more money, and maybe even thinking of doing more travel if the Altamira/Lascaux trip opens up for September. Anyway, now it's 5:55PM and next on my list is the Beard at 7PM, so maybe I can even do a couple of games waiting for the time to pass, to block out the noise of the clunky people overhead, who seem working LESS!
4/1/95: Susan H., a MAC teacher, called a couple of weeks ago to say that she wants to tell her friend Bill B. to phone me about indexing, having been given my name by Joan P., who's working from home now also teaching NLP to AMA management. I say the indexing business sucks and he never phones.
My first load of programs from Spartacus was 50#, the next, with which I RESTED on the way over, was 55#, and then next, which was even heavier and I rested 5-6 times, weighed in at 29+33=62! But the tail-end last was only 12+23 for 35, for a total of 202#, of which I save 40#---does that mean that if the NEXT person saves 1/5 they only need to save eight pounds?
John buzzes yesterday and says he saw Dennis PANTING as he came up the stairs from his basement apartment, and have I volunteered to get him anything from the grocery store. I say that when I ventured to suggest he sounded spacey, he glared and me and said, "OK, I sound spacey!" John said I should NEVER volunteer anything, only when he asks. I told him about Dennis's "losing" his keys (after he misplaced his wallet), and how he had to sit down when he came up my three flights, and then afterward said something on the phone about my bringing something down, "So I won't have to do that again." He said I should phone his doctor at Cornell to find out how to help him. I entreated John to stay while I looked in the phone for Cornell Medical, which said see New York Hospital, and I call the general number, referred to Research and Counseling, who says I should phone the Center for Special Studies at (212)746-4180, which CANNOT give me information, call GMHC at 1-800-872-2777, which is sponsored by New York State only Monday-Friday 2-8PM, but call the NYS HIV/AIDS information service hotline at 1-800-541-2437 Mon-Fri 8-8, Sat-Sun 10-6, and THEY say I should call the Brooklyn AIDS Task Force at 783-0883 (which Susan says is an excellent organization, now that GMHC has been taken over by Black former addicts), and they first recommend me to Sheila C. at the SUNY Downstate Friends and Family Support Group at 270-2758, but I ask for anything closer and they mention the Department of Health on Flatbush Avenue Extension, but then he mentions Cadman Plaza, which is at 797-0937, ask for Carmen W., which I do, and THEY say they have support groups on Wednesdays at 11AM and Fridays at 1PM, but I should come in at 1PM on Wednesday for an appointment at 165 Cadman Plaza East, off Tillary, Room 310. Susan also recommends the Friends' Church on Schermerhorn: dinners.
Also on 4/1/95: WHERE AM I NOW? Managed to do only 10 hours, 22 minutes "this month" on Intercom, and though I'd intended last night to work from 10PM through to 2AM to see "where the month ends," I was so tired after returning from the gym and watching TV tapes until 1AM that I just flopped into bed. Woke up this morning after a dream-fragment of tugging on someone's thick semi-erection, and sucking another full-pole around the side, at 8:15 and jerked off nicely with a LONG after-tingle which was gratifying. Dozed again until 9:45 and then decided to have breakfast NOW, rather than at 1PM, as I did yesterday, conscious that everything NOW is an hour AHEAD, as will happen officially tomorrow. Also gratified about finishing the huge Pediatric Infection index (biggest since 9/93), and the tiny Alice in Quantumland last night, and probably Chemistry today, along with videotapes. Got to the Cole exhibit for 80 wonderful paintings at the Brooklyn Museum, and spent about an hour looking at BLOOMING Japanese purple azalea, brown-purple hellebore, chartreuse-blossoming Cornelian cherries, unnamed tiny blue stars amid the narcissus-named daffodils, a redbud bursting hot pink, and a frost-browned barely open couple of magnolias, not nearly so far advanced as they were a week ago in Philadelphia. Other white-bell cascades unnamed, and I forget what the flame-candles on pine-ends were called: Protea? In the greenhouses, many of the cacti were phallicly extended, an orange tree was over-laden with lemon-colored fruit, and a few water-lilies braved the spring.
4/14/95: WHERE AM I NOW? Still mostly caught up, with LOTS of indexes to do, and started uploading the Indexing Handbook, culminating last night in a NEW level of astonishment about the FTP process for only ONE university (uiuc, though I DID try a second, uio.no, which is the University of OSLO, in Norway!) with at LEAST a gigabyte of reports and write-ups and texts, and there are probably at LEAST a thousand of these, for a TERAbyte of data out there added to my "range of knowledge" just with an evening's FTP trials! Talked to Dennis last Friday: he's weak in the legs from what he calls "neuropathy," started taking Zerit, which is Stavudine, the fifth in the line of AZT, ddI, ddC, and C4t(?), about which I give Dennis an article and he has to decide 1) to continue to take what he'd previously decided would be a sort of death warrant, or 2) to discontinue taking the prescription which "might help or might even hurt" his condition. I strongly suggested he phone his friend at the Gay Center, or Jose, to ask about public assistance so that he won't spend ALL of his $2000 from his indexes or his $5000 cashed-in annuity now that he's decided he doesn't want to WORK anymore, and he agreed that I could come with him to his doctor's appointment next month---though when I talked to him YESTERDAY, he hadn't even phoned anyone about public assistance. THEN wanted to record: it's been a ROUGH spring: Sherryl coughs out her late-spring PNEUMONIA bout, Susan is sure she's just had the FLU, and Pope is still shaky about his auto accident leaving Coney Island last Saturday which lacerated his head, bruised his elbow, stiffened his neck, and made him paranoid about permanent damage. My arthritis is getting worse: I can now feel it in my thumb-bases almost each time I work at the computer, and this morning my shit-wipe middle-right finger seemed to be weakening, and what is my alternative? And my teeth seem to be coated more readily, so I should brush more often, but THAT gets harder and harder on my hands. And now I have the problem that the health-premium tax-deduction has been approved but I've ALREADY given PRE-deduction levels of Keogh fill-up to Schwab, so what do I do NOW? Probably TAKE the deduction and IGNORE the Schwab overfill! So the IRS has to be added to my "do now" stack on the table, along with searching my Intercom libraries for HTML documentation that's unzippable, as my download of htmldocs.zip from uiuc last night is NOT. Now 10:25AM, START DAY!
5/5/95: WHERE AM I NOW? Even better than 4/14 above: went with Dennis to his doctor's to get things straightened out in my mind, and he might even "want" to add ddC or ddI to his Zerit for more progress: his legs feel better, he has more energy, and he's gained five pounds. Though he's STILL not applied for SSI. Add to rough spring: Shelley's doctor hospitalized her for possible ENDOCARDITIS for her fevers and heart murmurs, and after a week in NYU-Cornell (which she LOVES), they STILL don't know what's wrong, other than an extremely enlarged liver (with no fatty tissue in it) of about 40 pounds pushing all her OTHER organs out to make her LOOK fat when in fact she ISN'T! My tooth maintenance eased when I dropped my Perio-Aid.1 into the toilet and searched for a week for a) the NAME of it and b) a REPLACEMENT for it, and finally phoned M., getting his secretary, who had just moved down from Dr. L. on the 29th floor at Hanson Place, who told me to call THAT dentist, whose secretary sent me TWO Perio-Aid.2 implements, which only needs the toothpick SCREWED (though the screw-mechanism loosens halfway through my thorough procedure) into it, so it IS easier on my hands. And the Keogh deduction is simplified because it's taken BEFORE the health-premium tax-deduction is calculated, so there was NO overfill! And I FOUND the same HTML document that was UNzippable on MAS! AND this morning, lazing in bed after DREAM [DREAMS:5/5/95], I figured I WOULD splurge the $400 for the Olympics opening and closing: 1) it WAS a once-in-a-lifetime event for me, 2) it's not THAT much more than two super-special dinners which I'm more than willing to spend for, 3) I wouldn't be seeing more than two or three other events (like weightlifting or diving or body-building, if there is any), and I could rent a car and drive down and get to the amusement park near Atlanta---and then maybe I COULD rent a car (maybe with Charles?) and drive to Akron and see Mom and Marion and Helen and Jimmy and Cedar Point---and NOW recall that Charles said he had to GO to Akron in a month or so, and I think about maybe SHARING the car-rental cost with him, not to mention hotel-costs and restaurant sharings, and amusement park sharings, and places on the way there and the way back to make the trips more entertaining, and phone him to a busy signal. Maybe for 5-6 days? If he's agreeable? And there's not so much work at the present time scheduled to come in? And early June would be pleasant? And I DO have some spare cash (in fact, with $3753 in checking, $6130 due in, and more than DOUBLE $120 in cash, I have marginally over $10,000!). AND just call C. to find that my blood counts were fine EXCEPT for "bad" LDL at 180, which should be down at 130, he says to "cut down on MEAT," and try that diet for three months, and if that's not better he'll prescribe something BESIDE Lopid. AND he says I can pick up a chest x-ray slip from the receptionist and take it downstairs. AND I think it's time to make a list of Michelin 3-star restaurants!
5/11/95: WHERE AM I NOW? After sifting through "tired" and "reminiscent" and "reflective," I settle on feeling SAD. Listening to Pope's interminable hassles with medications, lawsuits, disabilities, needs, frustrations, and minor triumphs; worrying about Shelley's diagnosis other than endocarditis and hepatomegaly; saddened by John's revelation of pointlessness and joblessness and directionlessness; aghast with Susan at the possibility of Rick's kleptomaniacal son staying in their apartment while Susan's babysitting Melissa for fourteen 120° days in Fort Yuma, Arizona; depressed about Dennis's decline; sorry about Ken's immanent departure for Atlanta; frustrated about delays in "getting the Indexing Handbook onto Internet"; not wanting to start the interminable name-page allocations of Vander Zanden's Sociology; almost blissed-out over the ten-hours' sleep last night; concerned whether Alvin S. understood my telephone message about my possibly not understanding his request that I read (rather than memorize) his plummy part for me as a Bishop in his one-act; hassled by telephone calls to the telephone company, La Grenouille, Stephanie, Sherryl, and Charles; logy enough to be satisfied typing this page rather than getting down to something directly useful; at least ruefully happy that I stopped my 14-stretch of viewed videotape-movies for time more productively spent: I finish this rite.
5/13/95: 6:02AM!: at 4:30AM decide to have John TRANSCRIBE our round-the-world trip and Russia-China trip to SEE how "cost-effective" and "buggy" the process IS---starting TODAY. And I even debate having him do data-input to Cindex for Vander Zanden name index, but decide my page-number entering is too POOR to trust his working with them. But I guess I COULD ask his OPINION about his capability to do it? That last is a NEW thought at 4:35AM! AND I brought up to Charles yesterday the idea of our renting a car to visit Akron, and he'll telephone today to see whether he'll be staying WITH his mother in Talmadge OR be sharing a hotel room with me, possibly, and I've sure got LOTS of things brewing at the present moment, with HUGELY long-range possibilities starting, like journal-transcription, car trips, and recording OTHER thoughts: primarily (based on the rather negative "Only Worst Thing You Could Have Told Me" last night) crystallizing my thoughts (with which Charles surprisingly AGREED): 1) the male gay movement REALLY SHOULDN'T be making such an effort to have women and transvestites and transsexuals and cross-gendered people joining them in playwriting OR in political actions, but then came up with the comparison that BOSNIA is being torn apart by internecine warfare now that THEIR top-suppression has ended, and it would be sad for the GAY movement to be torn apart by trying to separate out gender-fucks, Blacks, Latinos, Serbo-Croatians, and little-pinky-nail-growers from the mainstream all-inclusive embrace of the "forward-looking" all-enveloping pantheisms.
6/5/95: Type more notes:
Note from 9/13/94: Marj recommends the Dramatists' Guild, which has a monthly newsletter. Its dues are 1% of active income, it negotiates all contracts. Associate membership is $75/year. It's in library. Has directory to theaters, including regional theaters, producers, agents, contacts, and grants. It declares that a manuscript needs a letter of inquiry, synopsis, 10 pages of script, and resume. Marj also says it's probably at the Library of Performing Arts; that the Theater Communications Group publishes a BOOK, about 300 pages, like Literary Marketplace. On 3/7/95 I look at copies in the library: its office is at 234 W. 44th Street, NYC 10036, phone (212)398-9366. The last in the library was 11/93, volume 16 #3, and there are 8/year: 9,10,11,12,2,3,4,5. In EACH there are 1) events in NYC and USA, 2) Guild news and gossip, 3) articles on business affairs, tax, royalties, 4) announcements of conferences, contests, fellowships, scripts wanted, groups, and 5) ads for computer services, productions, publications, typing services, and workshops. It's OK, but not CRUCIAL to me now. Nothing at Performing Arts Library about the Purple Circle. They had the Dramatists Guild QUARTERLY from Spring 1994, which had monologues, essays and theater productions: Broadway, off-Broadway, off-off, regional, abroad, other, and books. It was really too magazine-y.
Note from 4/17/95: Good BARGAIN day: From BARNEYS I got $4.49 calcium for $4 when I complained that the prices always went UP, and from PAGEANT BOOKS I didn't have to pay about $2.50 in taxes when I offered $30 CASH rather than VISA.
Note from 4/19/95: Blair W. called and wanted me to COUNT the number of FIGURES in 1029 text pages, and I said I was ALREADY behind and COULDN'T spare time.
Note from 4/24/95: CT dishes: 1) 3/30/95: foie gras, ravioli, snapper, beef, and parts of baked Alaska, flourless chocolate cake, and passion-fruit crepe.
2) 4/3/95: black and blue tuna (NOT the best), ravioli, scallops in shell, squab (NOT the best); poire, poires, poivre (SENSATIONAL DESSERT!). Susan has the foie gras, ravioli, snapper, venison, and passion-fruit crepe, some duplicates.
3) 4/24/95: cepaze (watercress mousse, my LAST appetizer), ravioli, cod/yam crepe, beef, and "special flourless chocolate tart and armagnac ice cream and dark chocolate because I'd had his other specials." Paul C. has foie gras, ravioli, snapper, beef, and poire/poivre, and it's JAMAICAN pepper!
4) 5/31/95: First anniversary, father's bland cheese, good talk, and menu!
Note from 4/25/95: Simon Boccanegra: Act I: Fiesco, kill me, not my wife. Act II: People, kill me, not Genoa. Act III: Adorno, kill me, don't marry my daughter. He's in a RUT. And PAOLO kills him, but he didn't ASK him to!
Note from 5/6/95: Check on Two Bridges Video cards: I've finished SEVEN memberships, in SEVEN years, for 365 weeks, and have 84 membership films and 23 cards plus 4 on my new card for 280 more films, for 364 FILMS: AVERAGE ONE FILM PER WEEK!
Note from 5/14/95: Dad was born 11/29/09 and died 1/13/69, or 59 years and 45 days, which means that on THIS DAY I'm as old as dad was when he died, and the day was spent on the YMHA tour to Longwood Gardens (in rain) and hardly NOTICED!
Note from 5/19/95: After 3 days, John types 46,389 words of DIARY 2207-2222, which 116 pages makes 56 pages in WP, in 17.5 hours, or 44.18 words per minute, and each input page has almost exactly 400 words, 16 five-letter words=80 chars!
Note from 5/26/95: YUGOS: Toaster, shooting gallery, mousetrap, toilet, confessional, piano, telephone, fireplace, kid-ride, theater, putting green, cigarette lighter, mailbox, subway car, submarine, accordion, arcade game, moai, news, shower, slot machine, football game, photo shop, lottery-baller, tennis-ball shooter, fireplace, diner, beware of dog (only tire and steering wheel). FUN!
6/17/95: 10:20AM: WHERE AM I NOW? On the VERGE of "putting it all together"! With the BENEFITS of 1) having cleaned the apartment before going to Akron, 2) having no IMMEDIATE index to concentrate on, 3) having STARTED the task of finding the money to pay off Mom completely, 4) having DONE my "be, do, have" system, 5) having STARTED Intercom's Netscape program, I am READY TO START!!: A: An idea for a new play, The Audition, noted and ready to be worked on.
B: "The stack" of uncertain doing can be APPORTIONED to home/computer/out-do. C: IMMENSE FUTURE book/magazine/movie/video holdings EVENTUALLY on computer. D: HYPERTEXT as the tool to "format" IH, NOTEBOOK, DREAMS, COMPCHRO, et al.!! E: SUMMER here (again!) to enjoy outdoors and travel, and I call Suzie to set up possible dinner with Joe and dates for a trip to Great Adventure, and Marion (talking to Greg) about Mom's car insurance situation, and Charles. 1:15PM: THEN talk to CAROLYN, who tells me an INCREDIBLE story: about 20 years ago she was going to college in Newburgh, taking classes, playing tennis in steamy summery August, feeling worse and worse, until she almost collapsed at her doctor's before he ambulance could come: at first he thought she had an infected bladder, then he turned to a diagnosis of "interstitial pneumonia," with temperatures up to 106°, that included pulmonary edema, then cerebral edema, which almost caused her to DIE except that she was "too mean." Her mind went completely, she was in the hospital for over 45 days, had to have a tracheotomy in order to breathe, and all nine doctors agreed that she'd die. But she FOUGHT: when a nurse did what she didn't like, she punched her in the throat, causing her to be tied to the bed. That wasn't the first time, either. "I was taken to the basement, where I was cold, and they put me on the floor and the doctor STEPPED with his HEEL on my THROAT, and then stuck something down my throat and TWISTED it. When I came to, I RIPPED out my tracheotomy tube, tearing the tube and the stitches---there was blood spurting all over the place---and they had to call the doctor back across the river---he lived in Beacon---to do the same operation all over again. My 13-year-old son, Woody, finally looked me in the eyes and said, 'Mom, that never happened, and as long as you hold onto that, you'll never be right in your mind.'" As she put it, "How he said it exactly, I don't remember, but it was like a slap in the face, and I think he put me in the right direction, otherwise I might have remained crazy for the rest of my life." (I didn't interject, "Who says you didn't??") I forget many of the details: how the doctor rushed her to the ICU, which she hardly remembers, but how when she was transferred to a regular room she was actually afraid to look in the mirror, and when she finally did, her hair had turned completely gray ("It was dirty blond before"), her face was wrinkled beyond her years, her eyes were sunken in her head, she'd lost about 45 pounds, she thought they'd put her arms and legs in a closet to store them away, but she was ALIVE and thought, "I can live with the rest of it, just so I'm still here." She went through instant menopause then, having no further periods after that time, AND got adult-onset diabetes at that time, "so obviously my hormones were all sucked out." She talks about screaming all the way down the corridor to the operating room, being paranoid about what they were going to do to her, all because of "water on my brain; they thought I was going to be a vegetable: my brother said he'd take care of me, but then he realized that I probably wouldn't be ME, that he'd have no one to argue with or have quarrelsome conversations with." When her lips were chapped and the nurse wouldn't give her water, she screamed to her sister, Izzy, "Gimme a pad of paper so I can take notes; we're gonna mark down everything these bastards do wrong. Don't let them shut you out." And she continued to write about two inches of legal-pad notes, which she later grabbed from a friend who didn't want to let her have them back, and destroyed them. We agreed it would be interesting to see what she'd write NOW about the experience, because it was obviously a life-changing, attitude-setting primal happening.
Also from 6/17/95: 1:30PM: Transcription of note taken when I woke at 9AM this morning: The Audition: Actor (with the SAME name as actor) reads director's script to audition for his play, getting into:
1) purpose of theater
2) attractions of sex
3) control versus power
4) reading versus memorizing
5) not all gay men bug
6) new essay-play form
7) pretention versus reality