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1998

1/10/98: 1:40PM: VAGUELY getting caught up: from the page before I also finished the LAST index on deck: the Java Tutorial which started the year with a bang with $3300. Re-inked ribbons too much again, but managed to print out LIFELIST 1997 to "de-ink" for printing the Java index, actually getting LIGHT in spots toward the end, having inked UNEVENLY! Put THAT away and trying to "de-ink" another for comparison. No more showers from above, and DID transcribe the 1997 LIFELIST easily enough, though I haven't printed out the SORTED pages for interspersing. No more books from the library reserves, and only $3000 from the first TWO, but not last, Spectrum bills. Took care of the plants on Monday, got the newspapers out last week, and neither Owen nor Matt could help me with my slow downloading: Owen says he'll bring HIS external modem to see if it works better than MINE! LOTS of FreeCell recently, along with renewed Mahjongg and Minesweeper, just to pass time AFTER I finished the last index and BEFORE I start in on year-end tasks. JUST cleared my desk from the last index, and will print this before typing out the LAST index-list from 1997. Let's hope the ribbon will permit the page to be READABLE!

1/15/98: 12:13PM: Tony called THE DAY I figured I should get in touch with him, and he talks of his New Year's in the Poconos with his bereaved sister. Then I guess the phone rang, because I never finished that paragraph.

1/26/98: 11:13AM: Still playing WAY too much FreeCell, but it's so INGRATIATING! Indexes CONTINUE to come in: started American History yestereve to see what it's like, and it goes SO fast I'm not worried about finishing it. Started Change of Life Sunday morning, and it started so well I phoned Marj to see if she could attend: she will if she can. FINISHED it this morning out to ten pages (just barely, but I might even TAKE criticism to REVISE it if it goes well tomorrow evening), so well that I phoned and left word with Sherryl to check her calendar for tomorrow night. Even re-phoned Marj NOW to say that it finished well and "We'd both enjoy it if she could manage to show up." And can't help noticing that the right margin has been aligned for ever-so-long!! But shouldn't make it a fetish, as I do everything else. Stack of to-do on the table is dwindling: another library book, leaving only one---so I should put in requests for more---I have to pick up by tomorrow, groceries to replace my salad that I haven't had for three or four days now, and being mailed ANOTHER index before January-end, and I SHOULD telephone the Polymers guy, which I just DID, AND phoned Vicki to tell her about my play! Now 11:30AM and I'm EVEN thinking of finishing this page and VACUUMING: the kitchen floor being in the worst state it's EVER been in: more spotted than a leopard's pelt. Quicken didn't work this morning: must I choose between blaming Microsoft's sabotage and some year-start change-date? Concerned that SOME checks are now VERY late, but figure they MUST arrive soon so I shouldn't bother them by calling AGAIN to confirm when checks will arrive. Enigmatic statement from State of New York saying that $23 was "Refunds, credits or offsets of Unincorporated Business Tax," which IMPLIES that they PAID it to me, which they DIDN'T. Coincidental that I got it JUST after sending a letter to the same department saying they MUST credit 1997's tax-due with my 1996 overpayment. WHY does everything have to be SO COMPLICATED!!?? Re-inked ribbons seem to become spotty VERY fast on re-use. Actually wearing out? STILL a load of stuff to be allocated from the near-desk shelf of things to do. CONTENT with ordering 7 BAM dates and 4 NYC Ballet dates to go with the 4-remaining Met Opera tickets. AND finding an EXTRA Audience Extras card when I phoned to say they HADN'T included one last June. Soon to get to more videos from Marty, more books from Strand, more visits to the Met Museum, other gallery exhibits to clear out before March, and get to the Italian Tourist Office BEFORE I leave on the trip. AND the video-library to update for the first time since 1991! Then, at long last, get to throwing out books and making space for the stuff totally out of place on the shelves and under the dining-room table. Sift through National Geographics?

2/12/98: (Continued from DREAMS:2/12/98) Wake and immediately think of the "Touch Me"s that John and I handed out on our trip around the world in 1970 (and wondered if any of them remained blackened among our souvenirs), and THEN think of the incredible CONCEPT of such a dream which I'd just had (and had to make sure to document), all contained in the "three-pound bloody sponge or dog's breakfast" as Vonnegut so many times described the brain in Timequake. AGAIN I thought of the image of my experiencing all the books and meals and relationships as a TRANSMITTER of these experiences to aliens eager for sensation on a remote world who can understand and REMEMBER the books that I index and can't even BEGIN to comprehend, or books like Relativity that I'd DETERMINED to read even though I really understood only a small fraction of what my eyes ran over on the pages. And then those 23 "gooseberries" reminded me of the "universe-marbles" plopped into a bag at the end of the psychedelic outward-bound trip at the end of Men in Black, and thought of the BRAINS and encapsulated EXPERIENCES of everyone as being similar to these gooseberries: tiny but incredibly RICH and VARIED and heart-breakingly EMOTIONAL, which must benefit MORE THAN ONE individual, since the idea of ALL these trips and meals and people benefiting ONLY ME seems like such a WASTE! Which might be encoded worthlessness on my part, or fear of my memory deserting me and the hope that it would desert me for SOMEPLACE MORE RETENTIVE, and again I think of WRITING something like this: as yesterday I was bound for the Metropolitan Opera House for Tales of Hoffman with an international cast, concerned with Pope's possible stay in a hospital, looking to find a replacement for Mildred's dinner at the Beard tonight, reconfirming with people I talked with my Tibet slide-show tomorrow night, I suddenly think that I'm OUT of my dream-page [DREAMS:2/12/98] and INTO my notebook-page, so I'll finish off this page and then COPY the END of this page as the START of the notebook page and get BOTH of them printed before breakfast, which, now at 11:52AM, will certainly come AFTER noon, but I'll have time for lunch before the Beard with Sherryl this evening, and will have completed TWO printed pages by then! Print the dream-page and duplicate HALF this page here, and I'm OUT OF STEAM. To capture the thought: those GOOSEBERRIES, and each person's BRAINFUL OF EXPERIENCE, and that alien's MARBLES IN A BAG were all UNITS OF EXPERIENCE comprising incredibly rich sequences of thoughts, sights, tastes, smells, memories, beauties, sadnesses, and fabulous riches. How UNUTTERABLY complex and rewarding and intricate and basically INCOMMUNICABLE all these units are! The STAGGERING complexity of the sets of experience ISOLATED IN EACH INDIVIDUAL! Begging the question to be asked of "WHY?" Too enormous to be dismissed with "Why NOT?" It seems there would HAVE to be some "super" being that RECEIVED all these riches and USED them, which of course assumes that WE are not "super" enough to deserve them OURSELVES, and that the actual EXPERIENCING isn't the fullest possible USE of the components of the experiences. At a "simple" Beard dinner: the richnesses of the food and the anecdotes each course provides the table; the complexity of the relationships developing among the total strangers meeting at each of the eleven tables; the stupefying (that’s a meaningful CODE WORD!) backgrounds each individual brings to the table to be experienced by all the others at the table---not to mention the idea that such tables exist in the MILLIONS throughout the world today and in UNCOUNTABLE MULTIPLICITIES on the other worlds that undoubtedly pump ever-richer experiences into the Pleroma. But, at basics, life exists to be LIVED, and experiences exist to BE experienced, and persons ARE the richnesses that I find too rich for any individual to APPRECIATE or COMMUNICATE or even, paradoxically, to EXPERIENCE. To clarify: each EXPERIENCE is received ONLY A FRACTION, and passed on A FRACTION OF THAT FRACTION, and received A FRACTION OF THAT FRACTION. If the physical interconnections of the brain are inconceivably complex, by what enormous factor GREATER are the facets of the experiences partially contained in those interconnections!! The whole amassment is so incomprehensibly vast that this page cannot contain it, and at 12:09PM I must set this to printing and go have breakfast. EXPERIENCE!

2/17/98: 9AM: Tired from trying to move waking-time earlier for the Florence trip THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW! Yesterday was BAD day: constant dread/looking ahead. Sorted out all the stuff I'd piled up to clear the room before showing the Tibet slides on Friday, but only got to the mid-month checks this morning, when I woke at 7AM STILL feeling tired, though I got to bed at 10:30PM (admittedly lying awake probably more than half an hour), had breakfast early, and retyped the VCR and Book-Want Lists, so doing this to get the pages freed from the printer. Even discarding the Omni back-issues became impossible after going through just over half of them. All day at P.S.1 on Sunday, and the museum-day of Tenement Museum and Leonardo exhibit set with Charles starting at noon today will take my mind off the trip, I hope. Keep thinking: a week from today will be my LAST full day ON the trip! Doesn't help with TODAY, however. Not even interested in any of THIS, thumb hurting with arthritis, vague need to shit, worrying about maybe getting a cold, DEPRESSED!

2/18/98: 2:45PM: Feel slightly feverish: am I getting a cold or am I just in agonies about the upcoming trip? TIRED most of the last two days: Managed to get through the Tenement Museum and the Used Book Cafe and the Leonardo exhibit without thinking of the trip, but then got BACK to Brooklyn at 8:15 before it dawned on me I had to RETURN to the rainy city to return the play scripts! Back into town and get SOAKED, Paul N. saying that the play Amends, which I liked, had been clearly the female full-length, and then he added, "I know which one I want for the male full-length play, but I can't control it." I just hope he means MINE! Back exhausted and drop into bed at 9:30PM but can't sleep, finally dozing off and waking at 2:15AM to pee and drink more, then up at 5AM, feeling fairly decent until I finish breakfast and do the few things on tap for me to do, and then the doldrums and tiredness set in. Start MY\GIFTALIE, have lunch at 9:30AM, an almost possible 3:30PM in Italy (though breakfast at 11AM isn't very good), and phone Lina and Pope, and Spartacus calls about Everest on Audience Extras at 6:30, so I figure I can do THAT and get to bed maybe 8PM and up at 4AM Thursday which would make a 10PM sleep on the plane much to be desired. Read my notes from May, 1962, 16 tour-hours in Florence on the Escoffier Tour, where I saw all the Michaelangelos, the Uffizi, Pitti, Boboli, and climbed the bell-tower and dome. I liked the town a lot, but it's probably changed quite a bit from when I paid 800 lire for a stairway room at the Grand Hotel de Cavour in the hot May 36 years ago when I was 26. Got a shitload of mail and John says he phones Joel B. to take our keys, so I can ask him to empty my mailbox once on Monday and let the exterminator in on Saturday. Start with the rudiments of packing, put "gym" on the list to do tomorrow before the trip (won't be anything ELSE to do!) and I tell Pope it's better when I'm BUSY with WORK before a trip because then I don't FRET so much about the trip. But at this time next week I'll almost be BACK HOME!!! Have to pick up Everest ticket by 6PM so I should leave here about 5:15, just to be sure, but that's more than two hours from now and what do I do UNTIL then (trying not to think of just passing the time playing FreeCell). Can't even think how to get to the bottom of the page. Threw out old indexes, clipped my toenails, sorted trip-info to be taken, going to MINIMIZE clothes hoping to get everything into ONE bag in which is packed my shoulder bag. Debated NOT taking video camera, but I bet if I DON'T I'll wish I DID, so I'd BETTER. Hope it's not TOO cold there! Taking only sweaters and a jacket, like Tibet. Forgot Paul's recommended aspirin starting Monday, but hope Tuesday will prevent embolism as well. And remind myself to take some for the Rohypnol on the way BACK, in case I decide to try to sleep then. Can always get back to continue with page 3 of GIFTALIE---which transforms into "Gift-a-Lie" as I look at it!! Then in June comes the CHICAGO trip for a week! November-February: 3.5 months, March-June 3.5 months. Now 3:05PM and don't feel like dinner QUITE yet. No real impetus to get back to discarding Omnis. Gray day: hope weather is better for takeoff tomorrow night! Last line, don't even need to finish it to type out entire page 75.

2/19/98: 11AM: Napped from 7:15-9:30AM when John rings and we clarify that the plane leaves at 9:40PM and we plan to leave here 6:30 for the subway to the bus to the plane. Record sexy dream on DREAMS:2/19/98. Just don't feel like DOING anything: like I'm waiting in the airport ALREADY. Wonder if the Rohypnol I took last night has a hangover. REALLY felt almost feverish yesterday, so I bought Coldeze that Abbe told me about on Sunday, took one, then made the mistake of telling Kit that, and she paranoically moved away from me in the showing of Everest at IMAX last night. Felt good enough during THAT so that I feel OK about my energy levels for the upcoming trip, but when I tried to sleep at 8:30PM last night and couldn't, coughing once, I took Nyquil and Rohypnol and mellowed out so completely that I woke at 5:45, over 8.5 hours sleep, which I clearly needed. Then, just before typing these pages, I finished the Discover magazine I got at Sony Theaters yesterday, felt it was still a bit early for lunch, so decided to try typing. Should really pack so that I don't have that VERY usual last-minute cramming things into the bags, but I just don't FEEL like doing ANYTHING!! Sublimated fear of flying? I don't THINK so, since I heard about the China Airlines crash on the flight from Bali to Taiwan without MUCH fear, and watched the helicopters in the Everest thin air without agitation, so I think it's only the problems of FATIGUE of TIME-CHANGE that have the most concern for me at this time. Keep thinking that by this time next week I'll have been HOME a day already! NOT the way to anticipate the actual ENJOYMENT of the TRIP ITSELF. Painting myself into a corner that's not the most pleasant. Decided I did NOT need the gym to make me tired today, so just shower before I go. Really hungry for lunch now at 11:05!

Also from 2/19/98: 6:10PM: Packed, telephoned Marj and Mildred just to pass MORE time, showered, ate dinner, got reminded to take a Mardi Gras mask and booze for my sleeping pills, and even included "pee" on my "before leaving" list, which will go into the wastebasket when I leave at 6:30, hoping Clinton's leaving from Newark at 9:40PM, OUR departure time, won't delay us TOO long. Finished with absolutely EVERYTHING much too early to stop FRETTING, so I decided to finish this page---at least to THIS point, and finish day with FreeCell!! TRAVEL:FLORENCE

2/27/98: 8:10AM: Just finished the three dreams at the end of DREAMS:2/27/98, happy that I got my computer fan going again, taking care of ONE of my current worries. Now beginning to feel hungry for breakfast (at a FAIRLY reasonable hour), and then will start on the Springer index in case Tony DOES call back to ask how things are going. Didn't go out at ALL yesterday, playing games of FreeCell despite having no fan going and endangering my chip with heat, but did manage to get through all the mail and a lot of Independent People, which is due in four days, though the 280 or so pages shouldn't be a problem, and it is SUCH an odd book that I don't even get tired READING it. Also didn't get very tired toward the end of the Vaganova Ballet last night with Charles, though I was glad that it ended at 10:10PM, getting me home by 10:30 without an urge to jerk off again, though I hope my next one will be better than the relatively senseless one after TWO WEEKS last night. Well, maybe I'll print out a fresh copy of my RESUME now, before printing THIS page! At least I got the rolls of film in the mail yesterday. But got to get groceries today, maybe even type the trip-journal to get my fingers used to typing once more, and other chores. Maybe it was just tiredness, but I had disquieting touches of ANXIETY as I sat watching the ballet last night: as if I were ABOUT to take a trip rather than just RETURNING from one. Though the time-shift anxieties are similar: I'm worried about surviving TOMORROW night with a LATER production of Tartuffe thanks to Lina M.. AND have to call Marilyn now that Pope told her I'm BACK. WHY does she think I'd immediately call HER?? Then have the IRS forms to look at---do I get BACK all the quarterly payments to UBT?? And WHOM do I call to see what to do about that $23. At least the "Business use of home" forms came from the IRS YESTERDAY at last, AND got the old $300 payment!

3/18/98: Last shot NINETEEN days ago! Remembered feeling GOOD last week with all the interesting activities: helping Arnold on Tuesday, great Beard meal from Quebec on Wednesday, Madge's invitation to Michael M.'s opening and reception on Thursday, showing my Tibet slides to 8 people Friday with good wine and snacks and dinner with Peter afterwards at Teresa's, Circus Diva on Saturday, and Haydn's Creation at Carnegie Hall Sunday matinee with Charles. Getting things done THIS week doesn't make things better: DETERMINED to get through my book-want list by checking at Remsen Books and BPL, then to Strand Bookshop (buying Preternatural and Wolf Solent) yesterday with NYPL checking for no in-copies of Edmund White or James Leavitt, so I ordered Arkansas and Infinite Jest from Remsen after Dr. C. this morning, then tried to call Pope but his line was busy. Nothing on Audience Extras. Finished one index yesterday and still one to do. Taxes to do. But I jot down on a note: WHAT WILL MAKE ME HAPPY? True, the winter-darkness is ending but it's raining today, which erases "seeing Versace at the Met" from my list today. I AM getting older, but I should be HANDLING that when I take my blood-values to Dr. G. for my FIRST real rheumatologic exam (oh, and C. said there ARE no food-avoidances for OSTEOarthritis; and I should keep a food-list to see WHAT possible allergies I may have developed that cause the intermittent gas-attacks). Occurs to me that I don't spend time READING as I used to, but then there are no books that really GRAB me recently, while I've become obsessed with throwing them OUT! While not ACTUALLY doing it! Haven't even finished going through the OMNIs yet! Spending too much time on FreeCell, which my impulse is to get to RIGHT NOW! SHOULD make a videotape of my possessions while coming up with an inventory for my new apartment insurance. SHOULD make plans for my "final trip" to Angel and Kukenaam Falls. SHOULD update my VCR and record-playing equipment. SHOULD learn Word for an eventual telephone call from Al L. But I don't WANT to! DO want a lover but have taken no steps to GET one. Owen is FINALLY coming over tomorrow to install FreeScan, or whatever, and check out my modem. HAVE caught up with the mail and the pile of stuff to be handled immediately. STILL in my "no work, first-of-year depression," that's clear. Don't even feel like writing more of this PAGE!

3/20/98: 9:45AM: Mind-blowing session with Owen yesterday (even inviting him to my "Tibet slides" before calling him last night and saying, "It's really Scotland, Russia, Mongolia, China, Koror, and Ponape"): 1) selling me a $30 14.4 modem that WORKS and downloads JUNOINST in 18 minutes (rather than 31 hours with the old one), and I send new bobzolnerzak@juno.com greetings to Susan, Vicki, Bernice, and Don O.; 2) tells me I need a new power supply (to replace a noisy fan) for $30-$40; 3) installs FreeScan, which does the pages I did at Vicki's WONDERFULLY, but fails later in a) making TWO columns out of some Table of Contents pages and b) lighter-print earlier travel pages from 1972---so there WILL be problems; and 4) interprets the pages through Word, which I now have to learn for TWO reasons, but he makes me search out the Word diskette under the dining room table and loads WordPerfect Help files that INTERPRET the difference between WordPerfect and Word FOR me ONSCREEN! Then have GREAT lunch with cancer-operation scarred Carolyn at Petite Crevette. TODAY I have an ECG with HIP, and then MUST see the Versace exhibit (last possible day) AND see Kevin's play (last possible day), probably spending ALL DAY in town, and typing out THIS page to clear out the newest (and rather incomplete) restaurant list from the printer to take with me today. With stacks of stuff in the bedroom, living room, AND dining room, I have my duties (along with a long index) cut out for me before Friday's slide-show---though I can always pile things BACK in the bedroom before they come, as I did LAST week. And now have to finish dressing and ignore my stomach wanting breakfast so I can give blood also this morning, and get the stool cards so that I can submit a stool sample, and get the arthritis-blood components to the rheumatologist with whom I have still to make an appointment, and record my date for the dermatologist!

3/21/98: 1:20PM: SO MUCH TO DO!!! Up at 9:15 and put stuff away before and after breakfast, then bring piles BACK from bedroom that I hid when Owen came over on Thursday, with the remaining index and tax-stax on the bottom and mail on top; put away the OLD pages that unsuccessfully scanned from Table of Contents and Travel, and then put the SCANNER out of the way atop the filing cabinet; got through lots of old mail with lots to throw away, but also order "last" Gemfibrozil with the old prescription and wait till I get it to send in the NEW prescription I got from C., phone for Lincoln Center "Voyager Passport" for 30% off July performances (which may conflict in an inner week with going to Akron, if we go), mail for TDF for The Herbal Bed for April, get Arnold to join me 11AM tomorrow to buy $10 tickets for Tales of Hoffman at the State Theater, say OK to Carolyn's birthday-dinner on 3/29, get my $20 loan back from John, just open the door to the exterminator on his monthly call, record the five plays I’ve seen and the 10 exhibits I went to at the Metropolitan yesterday: after going for my ECG at 10:15, giving blood for FIVE ampules for tests while waiting, and finally getting IN at 11:15 after complaining to the nurse about all these "emergency" ECGs while I'm annoyed at not having had breakfast yet, then catching the last of the bacon-and-egg croissants (tiny but tasty) at the Riese-owned Roy Rogers, with "home fries" that are only square-cut and possibly lightly "breaded" French fries, and orange juice with which I take my morning pills, I get to the Met at 12:15 for the GREAT Versace: beauty, form, color, sparkle, sheen, shape, design, sexiness, spirit, to 1:40, then wander back through the Egyptian study exhibits to 2:05, see the film Slaves of Fashion: J.A.D. Ingres for 50 minutes in the Uris Auditorium to 2:55, dash (on the elevator) upstairs to look at Pajou until going back down to watch the film Pajou: Royal Sculptor from 3:15-3:45 and back up to finish looking at his mostly portrait-bust oeuvre to 4:10, fast through Paul Strand to 4:25, then to lunch of baked shells, veggies, baked potato and 1/2 bottle of wine for $21 till 5PM, when the restaurant opens, then to When Silk Was Gold from 800-1500 China-Kashgar area, with dragons chasing flaming pearls to 6:15, getting tired, then Paris Porcelain in America scan to 6:25, Honoré Lannuier, Parisian Cabinetmaker in Federal New York with Crowned Beds to 6:40, and to finish the "must-sees": Pierre-Paul Prun'hon for some GREAT nude male "Academics" to 7:40, REALLY tired. Then I look through his catalog for more nudes, leave museum at 8 to decide to WALK to the 9th and 42nd theater since the subways really don't GO there. Left sole starts to feel "squishy" as I get to theater to find Philip S. in audience, and I ask him if he's "still writing" but forgot that I met him at Gay Men Together! He gives me card to his website for his great-grandfather Harrigan, of Harrigan & Hart! "By coincidence" get my AOL start-up kit and decide to ask AMAZON.COM for the Aronson and Powys books that I can't find anywhere ELSE. Had breakfast at 10:45 but I'm HUNGRY now at 1:45, but I've still GOT to go to the GYM today: for the last THREE TIMES it's been extended to FIVE days over my over-extended FOUR-day convention. Well, decide that IF I eat by 2:15, get to the gym at 3:15, I'll be back at 4:45, still enough time to go through TODAY'S mail and get out at 5:30 to the NRL meeting on the West Side by 6PM. And want to check Juno to see if I've gotten any messages from the four I sent two days ago. AND go through the computer-stack on the floor and the to-do stack on the shelf to see what NEW has floated to the top, though my calendar is getting FULL and now we're at the first full day of SPRING, so I won't have to worry too much about the heat being at half-mast for the past few weeks: my feet are cold NOW! And put more lotion on my thumbs, physically hurting on the TOP of my right thumb-joint now as I type---the lotion coming along with the Arthril pills that I've been taking since Thursday. AND threw away more index-pages to free up space for new indexes, pleased to have GOTTEN the Springer $360 for having WORKED on an index that had already been EMBEDDED IN THE TEXT by the authors. And yet to get the phone-authorization for my $14,000 withdrawal from the Keogh with 20% withholding that I need for my $10,152 Keogh/IRA 4/15 deposit!

Also from 3/21/98: 8:57PM: NRL BENEFIT: Capture the madness: the hostess is on the NRL board: that's how we got Creative Resources as the venue at 126 W. 22nd St, 7th floor, for the benefit. Her husband, however, said that they bought the stock about four years ago, sold about 2/3 of it, and are selling it NOW to move into smaller quarters: at first they had 11 assistants, now they have the two of them and TWO assistants (obviously straight, for the walls are papered with centerfolds of spread womanhood, and the men's room is papered with WOMEN. UGH!! They're taking the best of the upholstering stock with them, leaving the rest for a dumpster. I told Paul N. that this would make a WONDERFUL set for a play: I wish I'd brought my video camera. Talked to Vanda, who has a one-act that succeeded in THIS year's competition: they'll have a production meeting tomorrow. Met Ken, Alden's other half: they've been together for SIXTEEN YEARS---having met in a Puerto Rican showcase that Ken was in, and they've been together ever since. They're hosting a "Sponsor's Brunch" tomorrow, for those who will contribute $300 EACH YEAR: they want to have 100 of them, so far they have only SIX, but "We have to start SOMEWHERE." Talked to the fellow who had LAST year's full-length winner Henry's Bridge, who submitted something inferior this year, but NEXT year he expects to sweep the prize again. Most of the invitations were by TELEPHONE, so it doesn't matter that I didn't get a WRITTEN invitation: they expected about ONE-THIRD the crowd they had tonight. But the goodies KEPT ON COMING: after the tonic and the lime seltzer gave out as accompaniment to the vodka and gin, Ken told me to try the non-alcoholic Raspberry Natural Drink with the vodka, and it WAS good. Better, anyway, than the Pear Extract. For the goodies: the cheeses were OK, but there were no knives on the table, since the host was expected to move about and cut new pieces as the old were used up. The "hit" was the freshly popped "Act II" (I told them they should get Newman's next time) popcorn, which was taken almost before the last shreds got cold. The Hershey kisses were undermined by the person who said that the factory was only twenty miles from THREE MILE ISLAND. What a way to GO: Radioactive Chocolate! The honey-mustard dip was good with the pale preserved asparagus from a glass jar, of which he emptied two new ones while I took most of the old, along with the celery stalks and the carrot sticks. I dubbed the candies in the "poppers" "Whitman's Rejects," since they were mostly insipid jellies (though I DID have multiple flavors of them, including a coconut, and I SAW that someone else took one that was lined with nuts, which I managed to miss), but the blue cheeses, the nutted cheddar, and the muenster were all good with the crackers and the gingersnaps and the almond cookies. Neither of the white or red wines were sampled by me THIS time. Talked to a fellow who had ART-WORKS for the art series; to Vanda, who had a woman's winning one-act for THIS year; to a semi-Oriental who wrote plays (he'd heard of Village Playwrights but wasn't interested in it), and we talked stonedly about China and India and mysticism and playwriting without ever CONTACTING each other, except that he KNEW the fellow who'd written last year's Henry's Bridge, who got NO new contacts from the production, though he received a number of PRIVATE letters of encouragement from the audiences. The raffle rewarded mostly people of NOTE, so that everyone shouted that it was RIGGED. I did NOT get an "entry bag" (they must have run out of COWBOYS just as I entered), but when I looked at the ceramic pin, the bird stick-ons, and something else in the tacky bag, I was just as glad I MISSED that. Aldon DID invite me to the brunch tomorrow, where he would make eggs and HAD cassis but had yet to get the champagne for a kir, but I said it might be in the FUTURE for me, after I retired and started spending my money in earnest: we talked about Alfred B. and agreed he was mostly MOUTH and very little actual MONEY, though he DID write a check for $1400 and some small ones, not to mention paying for the first meetings at the Cornell Club, so he DID pay his dues. Lots of "trying" people talking and meeting and not-remembering names, and I got there at 6:15 and left at 8:30, stoned on booze, to get back and type this by 9:15, SQUIFFED!

3/26/98: 11:30PM: STONED, STONED, STONED! GREAT dinner at Beard from Bistro 110 in Chicago, with LOTS of wine because only 55 people reserved, and no one knows WHY! Talked to Doug R. during lots of the time before Ken arrived, and he's the OWNER, for God's sake! But immediately I think of the subway ride HOME after Ken got off at Chambers: the young kid reading the paperback of Oscar and Lucinda with his LIPS, whose outer shape determined the INNER shape: so that the voluptuous outer curve of the upper lip-line was DUPLICATED in the actual curve of the upper lip itself: the low end, the rise in the middle, and the downward dip to the centerline, so that the center-lip would be only a FINGERTIP in pressure when applied, and not a "flat surface" which would make lips mediocre. Next to him the elegant young Black (with incredible contrast between the whites of the eyes next to the ebony of the iris and pupil) with a Strawbridge and Clothier yellow plastic bag between his black-jeaned legs, looking at me, away from me, at me, away from me. The curly headed (too YOUNG for a wig) Semitic type with another book who kept LOOKING at me, rather like Joel B. upstairs, but who didn't harbor the least thought that his glance would PRODUCE anything. The heavy-set fellow in the seat next to me with the daily Times, looking at the entertainment section with books and movies and plays. Another one on the aisle waiting to get off to give scope to his cruising. And then the rush to the elevator, the first group getting off from the lower level and the ascent to the top, while the secondary serfs waited for the second car, and I remembered to put a dollar in my hand to remind me to buy a quart of milk at the deli before leaving the station, and such was my largesse that when the register registered 99¢ I gave her a dollar and deigned to LEAVE before she should thrust the penny into my palm. And as I sit typing I get the full-throated, eye-spinning prequel to nausea as the AMOUNT of wine (and I FORGOT to take the menu from tonight!) builds in my system and I encroach upon illness. Talked to Bob to Ken's right as if I'd never met him before, and I think I DIDN'T, though he asked the question I'd wanted to ask about the goose-fat in the lobster bisque. Really SICK now, and I figure I'd better STOP this page and get to BED.

4/5/98: ACTUALISM [No sense resuscitating the old ACTUALISM section at THIS late date!]: BRJ, Dahlia, Harry, Marilyn, Meg, BL, VW, BZ, Pat M., BBC, DL, Angela H., Arthur D., Dorothy K., Linda P. (whose name I CANNOT remember until Bruce says it): 15 of us, 13 students and 2 teachers; 11W & 4M. BBC leads, unifying with devas, and at 3:13PM starts. 3:32 introduces ministry of service (not teaching or bodywork) takes Actualism to marketplace. This is the INTENTION energy (organized by Stan Smith) around for YEARS. Energy of FAITH. 3:35: Stan's tape of 6/25/97: 21st Power Ray (maturity number). Stan felt it FIRST in late 70s with last five power rays from Russell. Powder/baby/pale blue (sky-blue is electric-blue). Vision and commitment. NOETIC (my word) feelings. Discovering fresh possibilities. PART of freeing and moving intelligences. See others accurately. Not "I'm right, you're wrong", but USEFULNESS. C16 is working home---connected to Ajna. 3:47 start SESSION. At mental concentrate on the red-gold: Peace related to faith; C3 subcenter is Ajna. C5: "Whole to parts" center at top of spine. C18 in HANDS: Joy of Expression. C10 fights belief in inevitable decline. C11 faith in entering intimacy. C16 (at silver) forming 3" powder-blue sun. 4:23 break: sharing, me with 1) Faith lost in Long Day's Journey and 2) Marilyn D. OUT! 4:39 back to tape to 5:28. Sharing: I: Mom changed me; I changed Rita; Rita now changing Mom! We have to leave at 6PM. Everyone's bubbly about "new beginnings" but sadly I'd misheard Dorothy K. for Dorothy H., who wasn't there, nor were Mary V. and Maya, who was out of town. First fourth class taught by Bernice, it sounds like, and Bruce slept through most of it. Linda kept exchanging "significant" glances with me. Gave $50 check and said I'd be at the next one. Updated Actualism "summary" sheet and stashed note to take to NEXT one also, to keep things together and organized and everything in place.

4/10/98: WHERE AM I NOW? FEELING AWFUL!! In a funk when Paul was here and fell into a DEEPER funk after Paul left. Spent HOURS on FreeCell since then! Made a list of THIRTEEN ITEMS that I've been WAITING for (Keogh check MOST important) for WEEKS. Get Schwab on the phone at 11AM and I'm still holding at 11:15 with my phone on my shoulder: I MUST have the envelope postmarked 4/15 AND the checks dated 4/15, and he's NOW checking if I can't send a LETTER with the checks saying that they can't CASH them until my check from Schwab (which he says was sent on 4/7) CLEARS. How ironic---is there even MAIL today???? Probably NOT, since he kept saying, "You'll get the check tomorrow or Monday the latest" and I keep saying, "Yes, and the bank will KEEP it at LEAST until 4/20!” IF I had a brokerage account I MIGHT be able to switch the funds directly, but "with the blackout days" ("Just like the bank!" I shout) it wouldn't be in effect in time to do any good. So I suppose HIP is closed, too! No WONDER I just reboot the computer (to yammer at me until NEXT week, when the new power supply, ordered only LAST night, will get here) and hammer away at FreeCell! CUTE Dara D. tells me to mail the checks to SAN FRANCISCO, which will delay it a week in cashing!!!

4/13/98: 9:10AM: FEELING BETTER!!! Went through Omni magazines Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, still not QUITE finished (only 17 issues to go), and had a good Games group yesterday, booze at Indian Cafe tiring me so that I went to bed at 11PM and read Infinite Jest to 11:30, then woke at 8AM with dream (recorded later on DREAMS:4/13/98), wrote note at 8:20, shit and pissed and went back to bed till 9:05, when I moved the note to water the plants to the kitchen table so I wouldn't forget it, and thought about a piece for Village Playwrights ELABORATING on the dream, but ending with SCENARIOS FOR INSTANT CHANGE OF STATUS: 1) God gets tired of the universe and destroys it and TRILLIONS DIE. 2) The earth passes near a black hole and BILLIONS DIE. 3) Anthrax IS released into the Manhattan atmosphere and MILLIONS GET SICK AND DIE. 4) A rogue A-bomb from some Soviet splinter madman explodes overhead (no warning signals worked) and THOUSANDS DIE. 5) Some kook brings a bomb RIGHT NEXT DOOR and it inadvertently goes off and DOZENS DIE. 6) an embolism in your leg hits your heart and YOU DIE. 7) Nothing happens and you DON'T die. Then recall that 1) I want to start AOL so I can go to www.ci.nyc.ny.us and get Form IT-219 for my NYC tax return. 2) I want to finish "Hey, you got a soul" for Village Playwrights tomorrow. 3) Should e-mail Suzie that we KNOW we owe her $50 and are looking forward to the Letchworth trip. 4) Phone Abbe with the names of the two books that she can look to get for me before I do Amazon.com. 5) Got to get groceries so I can have salad and stabilize my fat-stuffed system. 6) Finish the Omni-discards and start on the Scientific American- discards---anything to delay getting to the BOOK-discards! 7) Phone Carolyn and ask if she wants to go with me tonight to Barbara's reading. 8) Write my current disgust with my life---though THEN recall Mildred's booster-shot that she's HAPPY that I feel I'm becoming less driven, reinforced by Tamasaburo Bando's enlightened views of living moment by moment, which I want to excerpt and keep, as 9) I want to excerpt and keep the porno tapes I've still got strewn about, which Mildred undoubtedly SAW with the fur and the rubber bands and the Spectacular Gay Orgasms box right on my chair when she showed up on Friday night expecting EVERYONE with her and my slides and which ended up BETTER with only ME looking at her slides and she seeing some of my Adirondack slides and then ending up at Teresa's where she loved the roast duck and we ended talking philosophy like grad students on the Promenade until midnight, which sure ended Friday night unlike I expected: hours of FreeCell. 10) Which calls to me right at this moment, but I think I can resist until I get to the end of the page, and won't it be nice when the power supply is installed---but then I won't have the overshadowing of the GODDAMN dog's barking CONSTANTLY outside even WHEN the people upstairs aren't tromping around, and 11) got to fix up the messy living room and finally 12) VACUUM the 3/27 potato-chip bits.

4/17/98: 12:18PM: Did most of the things on the above list, but most important of all is two stacks of (shitty) indexes on my table: one from Spectrum to "add t and f for tables and figures" and one from Springer that the author marked before added figures changed pagination, with ANOTHER Spectrum job phoned in this morning of a study guide that should have the SAME index as the book to which it's a guide! I really am getting CRAP now, almost COUNTING indexes to the "last ones" done just as I hit the age of 65. Had a REALLY bad time with FreeCell time-wasting over the past two weeks, centered around the "13 When Do I GET" list: 1) 3/3 Dining A la Carte STILL not here, 2) "NYS tax form" unknowingly PRESCIENT since I did NOT get it a) from phoning the New York City forms office, b) from looking at the NYC forms website, c) from the NYC forms office at 25 Elm Place to which I reluctantly walked on 4/14, but from d) the New York STATE forms office at 55 Hansen Place, after the GUARD at 25 Elm said what no one had the WIT to say before: "IT-219 is an NYS form, not an NYC form!" 3) Keogh check finally arrived on 4/11, deposited 4/13, clearing on 4/21, so I sent a LETTER with the checks I mailed to a Schwab SAN FRANCISCO POST OFFICE BOX at the recommendation of a sexy-sounding Dara D., speaking from San Francisco when I called on 4/13. 4) PC power supply STILL not installed, but at least the fan is still WORKING with MINIMAL noise at the moment. 5) Buzzer was SUPPOSEDLY enhanced 4/14, but I missed ANOTHER delivery 4/15! 6) HIP test results finally obtained the FOURTH time I phoned C., and STILL have to call L. about thigh-extract. 7) Guyana plane information I must assume will NEVER arrive, since I didn't give my address to a PERSON. I'll just have to GO TO the travel agencies listed. 8) Last Center newsletter still didn't have the updated Village Playwrights listing, nor did any other publication I phoned or wrote. 9) Phoned Steve H., who said everyone ELSE was calling about the non-notice of the 4/18 meeting, and then called yesterday to say he JUST got notice of a Wings Theater party at 3PM Sunday 4/26, which is the second ACTUALISM power-ray! So I phoned Bernice this morning about a hour ago and had a LONG talk about how California is STILL considering NYC a poor relation and saying there should be more SESSIONS to earthe the preliminaries of the power ray, maybe doing the power ray on 5/17, which I thankfully have free. We talk a lot about her position in Actualism and her possible new job with an 83-year-old who's giving away all his money. 10) Terry's index turned into Crista's index turned back into Terry's index, and it STILL seems to be in flux. 12) Library Arkansas card still hasn't arrived, and I'll have to note that MONDAY is the last day I can pick up the Lem Highcastle from the library, interrupting the unending Infinite Jest. AND I got the blood readings for the arthrologist on 4/9, which means I now FILED a set of my readings away, and I may have to start taking anti-cholesterol medications. So that gets rid of the last PAPER on my desk, but the "stack to look at" to the right of the desk gets bigger and bigger. I'm waiting for it to stop raining so I can start enjoying SPRING IN NEW YORK CITY by shopping for guarana in Manhattan-India, Angel Falls trips in Brooklyn, and Bronx cherry trees when they're growing here---or was it rhododendrons that David C. so highly recommended? Got Sherryl to sign up for the free Metropolitan lectures on Sunday that Lina gave me, still haven't found Susie's Internet address, though I SHOULD take down the computer-stack before it falls down AGAIN. But NOW I have to look at "adding t and f" to see what and HOW I'll be doing it BEFORE I start on the Springer book. Good to be getting work again, having had to hold off writing checks for everything until today or tomorrow to make sure the Keogh check clears before others start bouncing. Came TWICE last night to reflect my frustration, did NOT video-extract the new tapes yet, and talked to Tony for the first time in ages and HE'S been very busy, but CONTENT with his 67-year-old playmate for whom he bought a VCR after the playmate gave each of his boys $25 for EASTER and Tony a pair of panties with BUNNIES on them. AND just got a call from Schwab explaining why my Schwab Advantage interest on my March statement looked so LOW: only for 23 DAYS! Good!

4/24/98: (continued from DREAMS:4/24/98): Annoyed by the tromping of HER, upstairs, as she seems to be here LATER in the morning and return EARLIER than before, so that she's almost ALWAYS up there, dropping things, thumping around, clattering on the bare-wood floors. SO disgusting! But them I'm disgusted with almost EVERYTHING recently: Spartacus on the phone, the indexes I'm getting to do, the meals I'm eating and not eating, the mess in the apartment, my personal messes (ears needing hair-plucking, toenails needing clipping, gym needing attending, stomach full yet demanding food, FOUR teeth needing to be drilled), my (admittedly fascinating and delightful) hours of FreeCell when I should be doing other things, the awful production of Salieri's Falstaff last night that the rest of the audience seemed to love, the declining health of Pope and Carolyn (and whatever happened to Don M.?), and the increasing stack of letters (to Paul's Japanese friend who wants to visit New York, to Sandy about my plans for our trip to Chicago, to the guy from New York magazine) and stuff-to-be-filed on the shelf, the STILL-to-be accomplished wait-for tasks of Al's Word-for-Windows indexes, Angel Falls information from the Guyana travel office, Arkansas card from the library (truly trivial, yet still on the list), the updating of Village Playwrights's listings in the Center news and HX and LGNY, a return call from Hector about deposit-interest on the apartment AND the still-not-being-heard bell, whatever A la Carte restaurant it was for 3/3. FIRST the wait was for indexes, depressed because I didn't have any and wanted some, THEN the wait for the IRA/Keogh check, THEN the trauma of the dentist's visit with FOUR drillings needed, one traumatic in the BACK of my last upper-right tooth, NOW the depression of two indexes WAITING to be done, but ONE already marked (which I EITHER have to write all over OR have to read HIS awful handwriting), the OTHER a study guide to a book I'd already indexed (at least I have my index ENTRIES still on file!) that I have to "tailor" the index to follow. REALLY DEPRESSING: 1) first I WANT indexes and then don't like them when I GET them, 2) first don't LIKE getting the same "typical" indexes and then don't like GETTING "non-typical" indexes, 3) first I WANT to go to restaurants and then I don't like the stuffed feeling I'm left with after most of them overfill me without really too much food, 4) first I KNOW I feel better after exercising but many times it's gone to five and even SIX days before doing it, 5) LOVE FreeCell but do it too MUCH for my liking, even tempted to get off BEFORE this awful page is out of my system. And then the notation from the page before this [DREAMS:4/24/98]: when I DON'T have any problems I GENERALIZE to pandemic cataclysms even worse than individual problems. But I look through previous pages and things DO get done, eventually. I DID check and have proper deposits to my Keogh and IRA accounts for 1997, so the check did NOT bounce. I DO have a new power supply (though the $139 was SLIGHTLY more than the $30-$40 estimate for the power supply ALONE, but he DID give me good clues for things in the hour he charged me for time, more than half of which WAS taken with the power supply installation) which enables me to leave the computer running again---so that I can get to FreeCell easily! But still no answer from Bob R. or the M.s on Juno, though the modem IS working nicely on AOL, and I still want to get through the stacks of CD-ROMS that I at last sorted out from the stack of computer stuff (finding the missing card after TWO MONTHS of having been lost in the stack!) so that it won't KEEP falling off the shelf. Can ADD things to my "waiting for" list, if I wanted, and I DON'T want. And at last the bowel-pressures are building up (by 11AM!) for a shit that I couldn't take when I got out of bed at 9:15, still tired from going to bed after falling asleep over reading Lem's Highcastle last night trying to digest all the food from Junior's after the Falstaff with Charles, where I forgot to take the next year's Met schedule to find what Charles wants to see in 1999, the last day of which I've already marked IN my calendar: time DOES pass, things DO get done, I DO go on and feel better (after feeling worse) and after getting things down on paper, particularly on the last line, like this is right HERE!

4/25/98: 10AM: ACCOMPLISHMENT SHEAF: DETERMINED to handle all the STUFF that has to be done, so I think of and start a COVER PAGE of 26 grand areas of accomplishment, each with 10 subareas: coming up with this first draft of it:

ALWAYS: 1)Contact people, 2) Discard things, 3) Enjoy, 4) Index, 5) J/O,
     6) Meals, 7) Organize, 8) Read, 9) Sleep/Dream, 10) Write.

BUY: 1) Book-bag, 2) Groceries, 3) Record amplifier.

COMPUTER: 1) AOL, 2) CD-ROM tries, 3) Games, 4) Juno, 5) Scanning, 6)Word learn.

DISCARDS: 1) Audiotapes, 2) Books, 3) Clothes, 4) Files, 5) Magazines (NY/SA),
     6) Porno, 7) Souvenirs, 8) Travel, 9) VCRs.

ENJOY: 1) Friends, 2) Life, 3) NYC, 4) Self, 5) Time.

FRIENDSHIPS: 1) Cruise, 2) Dine, 3) E-mail, 4) Letters, 5) Meet, 6) Phone,
     7) Show slides.
G:

HEALTH MAINTENANCE: 1) Arthritis, 2) Cholesterol, 3) Dentist, 4) Gym,
     5) Physicals, 6) Supplements.

INVESTING: 1) Bill-collect, 2) Keogh/IRA, 3) Stuff (coins, Screw, stamps),
     4) Taxes.
J:

K:

L:

MEDIA: 1) Books, 2) CDs, 3) Movie-rentals, 4) Records, 5), Slides, 6) Tapes,
     7) Videos.

NEW YORK CITY: 1) Audience Extras, 2) Broadway, 3) Exhibits, 4) Galleries,
     5) James Beard, 6) Museums, 7) Neighborhoods, 8) Restaurants, 9) Tours.
O:

PHYSICAL MAINTENANCE: 1) Apartment, 2) Closets-empty, 3) Dry cleaning,
     4) Haircut, 5) Laundry, 6) Mail, 7) Plants, 8) Vacuuming, 9) Wash dishes.
Q:

RECREATION: 1) Computer games, 2) Games, 3) Journals, 4) Porno, 5) Sex.

S:

TRAVEL: 1) Angel Falls/Guyana, 2) Baltic States/St. Petersburg, 3) Chicago,
     4) Letchworth, 5) NYC, 6) Ohio/Cedar Point, 7) Vienna.
U:

V:

WORK: 1) Finding more, 2) Indexing, 3) Playwriting, 4) Writing.

X:

Y:

Z:

5/1/98: 3:15PM: WHAT a way to start the month: Beard First Friday luncheon, where I "had" to sit next to sexy Marko in his black-and-white shirt, Germanic, not liking Bouterin, not liking Cote Basque, talking of how he found it difficult to find friends who liked food and could afford the Beard and coming alone, as did Bill from Jersey I sat next to and talked with about his upcoming 15 days in northern Italy on the Lakes, telling him not to miss Thyssen-Bornemiza, ASIDE from what he knew to be their collection in Madrid, and sat with a couple who'd been married for 46 years and were going to Tibet, where I said they should see Norbulinka WITHOUT the zoo, and should see Samye even if it was out of their way in their three days in Lhasa, and couldn't think of the A-medicine for improving oxygen-processing in their blood. AND felt like I was "CHANNELING for aliens" when I asked the chef about the kohlrabi soup and he said a LONG thing about the white root and later the green leaves, and I didn't understand a WORD, only kept eye contact and a semblance of understanding as the ONLY questioner from any one of us at table 1, sitting with the woman who suggested I try to get here, and I DID! Feel GREAT about the day, taking up spare red wines when no one drank them, getting about three of the dessert wines, NOT understanding what Marko explained about the "6 puttanyos" of the Spanish (?) dessert wine which had a SLATEY taste, which he thought was somewhat medicinal, and Metchey was there looking good, and EVERYONE remembered the name "Ron" from the neighborhood who went at least twice a week, and maybe I should just RESERVE for the first Friday EACH month until I'm tossed out! Liked the bright married woman whose husband was separated from her by the wife whose husband didn't like the food (or was it the husband whose wife didn't like the food, which implies THREE couples, even MORE complicated!), and I jabbered on about my 12-hour flight to Beijing over Alaska and Bering Strait and Kamchatka while Marko tried to impress with his real-estate management, which echoed Bill's real-estate BROKERAGE business before he retired three years ago, but WHY would he still be living in JERSEY if he could live ANYWHERE he wanted? Then glanced at the Journal of Longevity from the Canadian company that John G. put me on the mailing list of, and supposedly D-phenylalanine (the main ingredient of the Arthril that I started taking on March 19) brings "statistically significant relief from discomfort within the fourth and fifth weeks after beginning" and it's now been exactly SIX weeks (42 days) after I started and, if anything, the discomfort is WORSE now than it was before. Called Shelley who CANCELED the IMAX for tonight, so I could call Arnold and tell him that Kit could join us at 6:30, only THREE hours from now, so I'll still be feeling good, and we MAY end up about 8:30 at Dallas BBQ for the RIBS, which would be GREAT if my stomach digests all the food it has NOW: brought back the Beard menu AND the May announcements, which by coincidence arrived TODAY in the mail. Typing in a delirium of coincidence: Infinite Jest is talking about the hold "the Substance" has on a person, and MINE is definitely ALCOHOL, which puts me in a WONDERFUL state so that when I've had enough I OPEN UP to people that I would ordinarily be shy with: like LOOKING at Marko during the reception and wondering what he'd be like, and then seeing that he's AT table #1 WITH me, and by the time Bill and I wander toward the table the ONLY SEATS LEFT are next to Marko, so I SIT next to him!! INCREDIBLE!!! Talked across to the woman who made my invitation possible, to the people across talking about the food, to the wonderful couple traveling to Tibet, to Bill on my left and Marko on my right (Marko Mattius, no less, and I remarked about the absence of Luke and John), and talked of indexing and restaurants, and he likes the THICK FISH SOUPS of the Oyster Bar in Grand Central, which I'll have to try, and STONED home, reading on the subway, ready to watch videotapes to fill out the afternoon, forgotten already my dental appointment past and the three upcoming, and today's Mom's BIRTHDAY, for which I changed my calendar, and no call yet from Spectrum, should I call to say I should still do the job, or wait for THEM to call as they SAID they would. THINGS DO SOMETIMES WORK OUT, and I AM sometimes HAPPY!!

5/7/98: 8:51AM: WOW, what a DREAM I'm going to record [DREAMS:5/7/98]! Now 9:18AM: I'd gone to the second David Parsons Dance Program after eating a Peruvian dinner, and felt VERY tired when I got home (two nights of bed after 2AM and up before 9AM to listen for the delivery-buzzer), so I washed my face in the good hot water and got into bed at the DOT of 11PM, ready for a solid night's rest. Started meditating but went RIGHT to sleep. Woke about 5:30AM with a dream-fragment where my cock felt VERY good, teased it, and then at about 5:40 turned on the light and got out the fur to tease better and glanced at the clock at 5:45 when the feelings grew VERY intense. Played at the edge for a bit and smoked half a bidi and had some STRANGE feelings: that I was close to cumming but not feeling THAT excited, that I wanted to increase the feelings, but the bidi-smoke only seemed to decrease the sexuality while prolonging the session in a desired way. Came without too much sensation, thinking this was what was now left my aging body, drying off a spot that dribbled onto my bathrobe, and next glanced at the clock at 6:15AM to find that I'd actually had a "productive" half-hour jerk-off. Had a "total" pee and emptied the ashtray and put things away and sat on the edge of the bed thinking of what facts were left for me: I'd cum, I was feeling rather chilly, the scar on my inner thigh was healing from the cells that I'd just yesterday phoned to find weren't malignant, thought of the cancers rampant in Carolyn and Sherryl, of Shelley's sarcoid condition, of Pope's declining health, and felt good that I had only the dentist and minor discomforts to worry about as yet, wondering how the future was going to treat me. Lay down in the dawning light to start a fairly thorough meditation session and glanced at the clock a few times, trying to remember the "Joy" series: 1) Joy of Living, 2) Joy of Being in Form, 3) Joy of....something ...of Truth, 4) Joyous Warrior, and 5) Desire of God. Returned to Joy of Perception of Truth? Appreciation of Truth? Discernment of Truth? And now at 9:27AM checking the pages and finding that it's Joy of EXPRESSION of Truth. Figure that ALL those components contributed to the INCREDIBLE dream I've just recorded [DREAMS:5/7/98] and printed out and think to call Pope to talk about. SUCH a conviction of PRESENCE: a delight in the sexuality of the first part, touches of fear and apprehension in the second part, and almost panic in bits of the third part: panic and total helplessness and not-knowing-where-to-turn for clarity about where I so clearly WAS without knowing how I'd gotten there. Now birds chirping in trees, dogs barking in distance, fucks moving around upstairs, I'm quite out of the mood for continuing this after 9:30AM, but it was a TERRIFIC dream sequence!!

5/14/98: 12:35PM: REALLY am losing it! Did NOT record that I got the $900 AMSCO check, left word with Lawrence W., who got back to me to say that it had been mailed 4/18 and I find that I did DEPOSIT $900 on 4/24! AND then I was updating my index-list to find that I'd THROWN OUT Vascular Morphogenesis without recording the number of pages or number of lines (could get the number of hours from the calendar), so I had to dig into the WP51\C6\VM.WP5 file and SEARCH for the largest page-number and count the number of lines!---but I can remember Hildegard Behren's name almost every time I think to do it! Astounded to find that "senior moment" has only been around for a YEAR---I'd thought it was around at least twice as long. VERY disappointed to find HALF the 10 indexing jobs I had since the end of January have been "NA" as regards pages and lines: no WONDER I feel like I'm getting only JUNK JOBS. But finally sort out the THREE jobs I'm getting from Peace K. and have enough space to put them into the file-boxes. Two people WAITING while Ed D. sits on the stairs when I pass yesterday: let's hope they're TAKING HIM AWAY!! I've been SO sensitized to the noises upstairs that they seem to occur CONSTANTLY, and I have the loud radio on MORE often as DEFENSE! Have to sit around today waiting for FedEx to pick up the non-job from Spectrum, but tomorrow promises 80° weather AND the Bronx Botanical Garden rhododendrons, followed by Arthur Avenue dinner, with Vicki and her new-borrowed car. AND another meal with Michael T. Sunday!

5/17/98: ACTUALISM: BRJ, Angela, Meg, MP, HU, DK, VW, BC, BZ, MB, DL, LP, AD for 13 of us, most of whom were at the "non-power-ray" session. 3:25: tape MADE by BRJ. Energy of Actual Authority, "master" energies (HW, Creative, Regen) ENABLE others to "work." SUPPORT energy systems with MY authority as being of light. We are authors (have authority) of our SELVES. Inversions: shy AWAY from power or GREED for power. Color: pale metallic pink-gold, to PINK of NEW copper or pink-ORANGE of a penny. Gold of CF + silver of CM, COPPER-pink-gold. TRUST desires: KEYS to aspects of your actual PURPOSE. Break through the SHELL of images that LIMIT MIND. Through mental to 4:15 and break, restarting at 4:25. This power ray gives "go ahead" to deepest desires: DARE! Sun in C18, WITH Joy of Expression (sea-green). LIKE mature color of COPPER. Expand C18 through field and hold your creation in your hands in this energy (STOOD at 5:05, to "wake up" to energy). HOT sticky room and bodies. End at 5:10. Reports to 5:37. BRJ: Not ONLY Tuesdays at Harry's office (for the six who go), but SUNDAYS at TRS now. I don't say ANYTHING about going back. TRAVEL:LETCHWORTH

5/24/98: 12:35PM: Things are almost "slipping away": I left piles of stuff not handled when I went off to Letchworth, ate to surfeit and barely READ while I was there, taking minimal notes, and got back to phone who I had to and got through the PREVIOUS Sunday's Times and then jerked off to 1:30AM, making myself SORE but without remnants of soreness the next morning. Then Saturday, after trying AGAIN to download AOL files and catching up with MAS to ask if THEY know how to download, was DEVOTED to the last possible day for the two China exhibits at the uptown Guggenheim, convenient when I picked up the index at Bernice's at 99th and West End Avenue at 12:25 and transferred free to the bus across to the Guggenheim at 88th and Fifth by 12:50AM, Michael AGAIN there ahead of me, and we paid the $16 for BOTH museums and got through more than half by 2:40 when I paid $17.35 for his $6 snack and my SECOND (after the first went swimming in hot chocolate after being knocked over by a passing porter) panini, brownie, and hot chocolate. Peed while he had a quick few puffs of cigarette, then back for the rest of the show until 5PM, when he said he was tired, but we bussed downtown, where he flaked out completely and (tried calling him NOW but only got his machine) left me to zip through the mediocre showing and get onto the subway in time for a free transfer at 6:30. Play a lot of FreeCell and look abstractly at the index and go out for the Times and do the puzzle after watching Suddenly and get to bed at 2:35AM! Talked to Pope both mornings, and he's REALLY in bad shape, even WITH his supporting people: depressing to talk with. Sherryl's not going to get many people tonight at her Brooklyn Bridge party, and I've got to get to the gym before that, and want to print out the index I did before I left on the trip, and resist putting on radio LOUD because the people are CONSTANTLY moving about upstairs, driving me BATS last night so that I put on the Frank Sinatra tribute BLINDINGLY loud and then sat in the library to AVOID it. Just don't feel like WORKING, and glad that I seemed to have found that the SHERRY contributed greatly to my stuffedness on the trip, but that's FINISHED now. Also typed up the two trip-pages in my\travel, not to be confused with tr\**, and changed the printer ribbon for the first time since January, but still have PILES of things to go through, and rush to get to the bottom of this page so I WILL do some FreeCell before going to the gym, and then HAVE to get to the indexes waiting for me, not to mention Tak coming in tomorrow and probably meeting around Village Playwrights Tuesday evening, and I'll try NOT to get him to stay here, since he seemed so surprised that I'd offer it to him. Had to re-talk Bernice into letting ME have the responsibility for her index, agreeing to mention her IN ADDITION TO ME in the bill, but she did NOT ask all the questions she should have asked about the wanted size and style of the index, which I have to do on TUESDAY, and clear up lots of OTHER little things, not to mention seeing all the videotapes on a stack, though there's not much to be added to the list this week, slowing down for the drear summer.

5/26/98: 10:45AM: AWFUL nightmare this morning [DREAMS:5/26/98], but I added a NINTH note to my list of things to do this morning by saying that I SHOULD point out that at least my life ISN'T as bad as my NIGHTMARE! Called and talked to Sherryl about birding, now Central Park this afternoon rather than the longer schlep out to Jamaica Bay, meeting at 1PM sitting at the "Imagine" circle. Checked that HEARTMOR did NOT have see somewhere embedded in an entry that I forgot to remove (so I have to mail THAT when I go out this noon), left calling Michael until I got back from dinner with Tak this evening after VP, when I have reminded myself to take announcements, but when I SEARCH for the note I'd made for the Fire Island readings I can't FIND it. Ask MANUEL to bring in the number HE copied down??? Leave checking the Imbornoni index and the Spectrum bill until TOMORROW, when I'll be here in the afternoon to get the message. Desk and floor and table still loaded with DETAILS to handle, and I've GOT to get to the indexing work. That's enough to settle THIS detail!

6/11/98: 8:40PM: One of those INCREDIBLE booze-smoothed evenings: going to The Seagull, translated by Tom Stoppard into current-sex, with Mildred and Marilyn, who talked to the fellow (of course) sitting behind us who recommended the best Italian restaurant in the neighborhood: Puttanesca (where Mildred and Marilyn proceeded to have a real CAT-FIGHT about a topic that I frankly couldn't recollect when I phoned Lina to say that I was coming on Sunday), and then the subway home was one of those stoned-trips that makes alcohol and NYC so incomparably synergistic: the bas-relief veins in the legs of the thin-faced fellow with the balding companion, standing next to the sunken-jawed positively Italian with the enormous shoulder bag which blocked the edge of his crotch until he moved aside and revealed not much of a bulge, but nice upper thighs nonetheless, across from whom sat the Spanish-type who'd been standing in the door inhaling to inflate marvelous pectorals atop a ballooning chest, across from WHICH sat the totally indeterminate-sexed person who didn't utter a word until we started through the tunnel, at which point the cars, or the wheels, or the undercarriage, began a syncopated hiccup that, as she stated with a smile to the cute Hispanic to my right who didn't respond, "THAT doesn't sound right," but I was so engrossed in the evening that when SHE (her voice revealing her appearance-denying gender) spoke, I responded (when the sound vanished at change of speed), "And is the fact that it's now GONE, GOOD or BAD?" and she responded with a smile, "Let's assume it's good." Also, there was the above-door-head-level (namely, over about 6'2") blond who kept looking around and was VERY nice to behold, and I remembered when I'd smoked grass and assessed the IMMANENT seductibility or seductivity of almost everyone I looked at with pleasure, but he got off at Fulton Street, probably to cross the footbridge to Village South, or WHATEVER that's called west of the World Financial Center. AND I'd stared longingly at the cute guy at the table to my left, which Marilyn maintained contained THREE eligible guys, but I thought there was just the ONE, who at the start KEPT engaging my eye-glances, but then as the meal wore on he hardly looked at me, though the white-faced woman, whom Marilyn had dubbed "the white-faced transvestite" DID notice we were looking at her, but she left without making a scene. The young waiter was a doll, even getting MILDRED to ask him if he would come home with her (though she shamefacedly admitted afterward, "I have no idea what I'd DO with him if he DID come home with me!"), and I thought he might be from Milan because he sounded and had EXACTLY Edgardo's speech patterns, but he said he was from Venice, which Mildred quickly called the most romantic city in the world and he DID say that he might go back, and he brought more amaretto-honey sauce for the apple-tower that we shared as the $5 dessert. SO Marilyn owes me $25 from the dinner, Mildred decided to walk home to get warm in the 65° air, and I came home to decide to jerk off ANOTHER night with the invigorating wine, and HAD to type this page to TRY to capture the MAGICAL quality of LOVE that the wine (as well as the play, in stated purpose) threw over the evening.

6/18/98: 11:40AM: MOST of the stuff for the trip (except showering and packing) is now finished: talked to Peace, Terry, Marj, Bill, Pope, and Sandy, who called this morning. Decided to take Paul's gift of the Perrier-Jouet Rosé Brut in a tin for the house-gift, being too lazy to go out and pay good money for a present I don't particularly care to give. Filled all the plants up with water, the first time in the middle of the week, though John said he'd take a look in during the time I'm away. Using the OLD phone-machine tape that says I'll be back on Wednesday, even though it's Wednesday AFTERNOON when I'll be back, but at least time to get BACK to Peace if she calls me from Burr Ridge, which I checked to find a small suburb just west of Chicago's Near South Side. Told people I can't imagine using my bathing suit in Sandy's pool, unless we hold Sunday morning services around it. Terry praises Chicago for her trip there three years ago as "a clean New York City" and Bill warns me "Don’t get blown too much, if that's possible." Ken persuaded me to take the 1PM bus from the World Trade Center for a 3PM plane departure from Newark, where I would have chosen the 1:30 bus, but John agrees with Ken, and I figure it's not worth the hassle to argue. Decide to take along three New Yorkers to supplement my paperback for reading on the trip. Taking $312.02 in cash and an as-yet-unweighed carry-on bag, which Ken couldn't be convinced would be worth the time-saving on the baggage claim, but he DID go so far as to volunteer to take his oversize bag on IF the plane weren't too crowded. I phoned this morning to find that we're only getting beverage service on the way out and a "subway sandwich" on the changed-number flight back. I'd had my seat reserved (I guess next to Ken, seated at the window) and they didn't have a window to switch me to, so I'll just have to negotiate with Ken if the sky is clear, though it's cloudy NOW and Pope said that the forecast predicted thundershowers most nights coming. Put the air conditioner on for the second time this year: yesterday to keep down the heat of my successful FTP of two index files to Cohoon in the San Francisco Hilton! Scrubbed the toilet bowl and sink and washed dishes, but decided NOT to do any cleaning or vacuuming (which it GREATLY needs), and not enough time to go to the gym, which will be closed July 4-18, JUST when I'd want it BEFORE my trip to Akron, for which hotel I made reservations yesterday. SOME trouble getting to sleep after going to bed at 11:15PM last night, but probably dropped off in the middle of an Actualism session about midnight, then woke at 5:30 and again at 6:15 and 7AM and finally up about 7:30AM, not really tired, not really rested. Spent time cleaning and de-linting my black strap-on shoes, the only pair I'll be taking. THOUGHT to wear jeans on the plane, but we'll be going to Arun's FROM the plane, so I'll just wear blue pants and a short-sleeved shirt and hope my jacket will be enough if it's anywhere near formal. Otherwise I'll just have to change shirts in the car if I have to wear a tie. Only the SLIGHTEST "Why don't I just stay HOME!" tinge to thoughts about the trip, mostly wondering about the quality and quantity of the food, sleeping in a different room from Ken's snoring, not imposing TOO much on Sandy and Marv, though I WOULD like to try Charlie Trotter's on Tuesday, to fill out the restaurant dance-card. Now 11:53AM and I'm not REALLY near the end of the page and have to shit and shower and PACK within an hour, so I'd better just STOP. TRAVEL:CHICAGO

7/27/98: 9AM: WHERE AM I NOW? Astounded that the LAST notebook entry was thirty-nine days ago! How MUCH the priorities CHANGE!! Did a VERY reluctant Actualism session yesterday morning, and again this morning, but still feel "jammed up" with thoughts, which leads me to "run them off" here. Still centered about the "change in priorities" in BOOK-READING and -keeping. Now thinking of just THROWING OUT books (though of course AT LEAST keeping a list of what books I DID throw out), just as I "throw out" the many, many movies I go to when I don't KEEP them, just keep a LIST of the movies I've seen and periodically glance over the list and feel dumbfounded by the number I remember ABSOLUTELY NOTHING about. Which gets me re-thinking about LIFE IN TOTO. Print the previous page and there's a BIG black ink-blot where the new ribbon is still over-inked, but it's the LAST of the re-inked ribbons that I seem to have done about SIX MONTHS AGO. I really go through ribbons, though not (recently) on NOTEBOOK entries. AGAIN: the constant of change! All the TIME since the 39-day-ago entry was involved with 1) the trip to Chicago, 2) returning from the trip to Chicago, 3) working on numerous indexes, 4) the trip to Akron, 5) returning from the trip to Akron. (Now I have to tape parts of Boricuas, a Spanish-porno that I got from Spartacus and will record some of the good touchless-cums and give to Pope.) Now that I've gotten caught up so that I'm not OVERWHELMED by the number of things lying around the apartment that I have to do, but merely in the LAST THINGS I have to do before getting to the LIST I'd made up months ago of things to do, before getting to the REAL things to do like throwing out books and scanning my writings and getting rid of STUFF before my move to Cadman Plaza in a couple of years. Those "last things" include phoning Vicki and Mildred, whom I still haven't phoned since I got back ALMOST a week ago, washing dishes, getting the Holt book pages and sample book before I can start with the index updates, and throwing out (LITERALLY!) most of the Beard shelf and the "Cruise" (yeah, sure, I should cruise!) shelf so that I can start filling it UP again. And getting diskettes and buying Guarana to get THAT off the list now that I started drinking the Elderflower Concentrate that Spartacus brought back over a month ago from his trip to England. But still thoughts of LAST THINGS AND DEATH are with me: throwing things out as PREPARATION for the final throw-out of life from the body; talking with Carolyn with her possibly terminal melanoma, with Pope about his coming-near-to-dying, with DON (who just called last night to say he's in NYC), and replying to Bill C. that I'll be around in September when he comes to visit after he phoned while I was away. Now thinking of throwing out PROGRAMS: using the rationale of "I've thrown out MOVIES without keeping them, just keeping LISTS of them": I can't keep the performances THEMSELVES, so keeping LISTS of them is "just as good" as keeping the programs from them, which FROM THE START were only assurances that I've DONE such things---now I KNOW that I've "done such things" and keep thinking about the "revelation" of the ACID HOUSE trip: I don't NEED records, I just have to LIVE and LOVE and EXPERIENCE in the MOMENT, not sift through the dirty bathwater of fragments of the past: I'll leave that to COMPUTER files to save for me, which are EASILY portable. I can even "read" War and Peace from the computer, if I REALLY need to! Or, HELL, BUY another copy of it if I want to read it again! Like I've been thinking I could GO to more first-run movies if I feel like it: what am I saving my MONEY FOR!? Which presents the thoughts of selling off EVERYTHING of stocks and bonds that I have, to guard against a depression, though even US DOLLARS won't be worth much if THAT happens! I'm just thinking SO MUCH of death because I'm thinking of WHAT TO THROW OUT to make room in my apartment for MORE stuff, which means RETHINKING PRIORITIES, which I started this day's thoughts OUT with. Books HAD been important, but now they're NOT so important (of course, the BEST ones, which I'll surely keep, ARE still important)---but then the "shower-curtain-ring" thoughts circle back: I'd KEPT spare shower curtain rings in my lower drawer for YEARS, and then threw them out, and now I NEED a spare one for the one that BROKE! But I can buy a WHOLE NEW SET for a couple of dollars and don't HAVE to worry about what I should have kept and not thrown out!!! And the thought that IF I took a book-a-day to get rid of maybe 5000 books, it'll take ALMOST FOURTEEN YEARS to do THAT! So, just like Pope, start thinking of taking down A BAG OF JUNK A DAY to start lightening the load in my apartment, in my life, and on my MIND and PSYCHE!! AND think to start getting tapes from Marty again today, the first time since my EARLY-FEBRUARY lifetime-card punch. The main thing is to stop THINKING about doing it, and just DO it: "I'll do it and do it until I stop doing it, and then I'll do something else, either worthwhile or NOT so!"

7/29/98: 9:55AM: Incredible documentary entitled 1968: The Year That Shaped a Generation. Featuring commentary by Pat Buchanan and Judge Robert Bork, arch-devils of conservatism, it might have APPEARED that they were depicting the students, slyly, as some sort of heroes who must, nevertheless, be repressed, using such quotes as: Bork: "Utopianism always leads to violence and repression," (that is, "the powers that be will NEVER allow proponents of change to succeed, or they would LOSE"), and that the students found that Grayson Kirk HAD been supported by the government in trying to "clear the Negroes and Puerto Ricans out of the Columbia area." I watched to the point where the assassination of Robert Kennedy left liberals like Tom Hayden with the conclusion that "From that point on, we became a generation of might-have-beens; we'd fallen into a defeat from which we may not YET have recovered," and felt that I HAD to capture my feelings on paper before they got covered over by more intense feelings, or even worse, LESS intense feelings! I'd never connected that "all over the world, in France, Italy, Germany, and Japan, the student uprisings PROVED that the conservative accusation that the American students were spoiled members of the permissive Spock-influenced generation [Spock never influenced Germany or Japan]" was unheard amid the propaganda that the students must be WRONG and KEPT FROM their positions of power (even though they agreed that French student-strikers DID manage to pry more freedom from the French academic systems). The "seven million students" were forced back into inactivity and ineffectiveness by the police actions that brutally attacked and injured them at the command of the rich and powerful. The peaceful impetus of the Martin Luther King marches were disrupted by the CIA-paid Blacks who started non-peaceful riots and lootings. McCarthy insisted that three segments of the government MUST be changed: the CIA, the FBI, and the Selective Service Draft Boards, and the first two are still in power. And then the last-seen images of the PROVEN CROOKS of Nixon and Agnew are shown appealing to "the Silent Majority" to RETURN to the repression and conservatism of the past, and they were ELECTED!!! The handful of organizers REMAINED IN POWER thanks to the brutality of the police and the killing of King and Kennedy, which broke the hearts and backs of the opposition to the powers that STILL REMAIN in control. Maybe, as they tried to portray him, Kennedy WAS manipulative, changing from a Vietnam hawk to a dove, changing from advocating capital punishment by his reading of Camus, but how can Bork insist that the students were uncivilized and stupid when it was THEY who were doing the THINKING that posed the CHALLENGE to the powerful that HAD to be repressed. "Utopianism" HAD to be met with violence and repression! Mayor Daley of Chicago PROVING that the appeal for "law and order" means the UPHOLDING OF THOSE IN POWER against those who would BREAK that power. Pat Buchanan stating that the rioters were "just as awful, and crude, and ugly, and nasty as they could be" because they were threatening the power of people like HIM! What a pity the powerful can influence the poor, repressed POLICE and National Guard units to SUPPORT THEIR OWN REPRESSION BY THE CONSERVATIVES WHO ORDER THEM TO SUPPRESS THE LIBERALS WHO WOULD FREE THE POLICE FROM THEIR OWN REPRESSION. Hayden compares the "Prague Spring" under Dubcek (suppressed at the time by the Communists) with OUR spring (a dawn which the fucking Nixon called a "black night" from which we had to recover by becoming even DARKER), congratulating them with victory after 30 years, and we don't have ours YET! Forgot how WALTER CRONKITE was blamed for starting the student uprisings by going to Vietnam after Tet (when Johnson asked for 100,000 more men to "win" the war) and saying the war was UNWINNABLE! I almost felt like getting the producer's name and writing a letter saying how much I admired his courage in showing how and why the FIRST attempt at a modern American Revolution failed, and if he plans to help cover a SECOND attempt which might have been fueled by this documentary. I couldn't tell from the credits just WHO put out this CLARIFYING film. It's now 11:40AM and Richard S. has clarified my job on the Holt indexes, and so my month of August now seems mapped out for me work-wise.

8/2/98: Catching up on EVERYTHING leads me to notes on top row of desk-stack:

Note from 9/28/97: That GREAT music at "Duet for Two Hands" end is Mahler's Symphony No. 10!

Note from 2/16/98: Pope: "I was watching Turned on by an Angel---" "What?" "---TOUCHED by..."

Note from 2/20/98: Cirque de Soleil: in 1991 I saw Nouvelle Experience, 1992 was Mystere, saw Saltimbanco in 1994, 1996 was Alegria, and saw Quidam in 1998 (poor).

Note from 3/13/98: For slides: Regina never answered, but got Stephanie, Mildred, Peter "couldn't come", Barbara K., Mary V., Maya B., Daniel N. (who dropped gay messages for Peter B. to ignore), and John A. came for a bit.

Note from 3/27/98: Russia-China slides: Charles, Mildred, Peter B., Stempanie, Sherryl, and John. Pope won't ever come up again.

Note from 6/7/98: 21 Tonys: Ragtime 4 (score, orchestration, book [by Terrence McNally, who kisses a guy], and supporting actress Audra McDonald), Lion King 6 (choreography, costumes, lighting, scenic design, director, and musical), Cabaret 4 (musical revival, supporting actor Ron Rifkin, actress Natasha Richardson, actor Alan Cumming), Beauty Queen of Leenane 4 (director, supporting actor and actress, and actress), Art 1 (best play), View from the Bridge 2 (play revival and actor Anthony LaPaglia, who was just AWFUL at end!).

Note from 6/13/98: After a MAN encounter: Shaun, Shaun, the leprechaun/ Sexy eyes/ Thunder thighs/ One look----man, I'm gone!

Note from 6/16/98: AWFUL year: Sherryl with breast cancer, Carolyn with facial melanoma, Michael T. HAD rectal cancer, and Tony has third cancer and lymphoma!!

Note from 8/1/98: Outrageous humor in Sunday New York Times: 1) (TV section): Guinness World Records (9PM Tues, Ch. 5): Man blows bubbles with a tarantula in his mouth. 2) (Book Review): P.30: Review of AOL.COM: "CEO Robert Pittman, who as a teen-ager used to tap his glass eye with a straight pin while sitting in class, hoping to unnerve his teachers."

Note from 8/3/98: 9:20AM: Didn't have a dream with my last night's bidi, so I don't have a dream page to finish to get the page I need out of the printer, so I put on the list of things I have to do today to write a page, which this is it: a WHERE AM I NOW, lacking anything more interesting. Look at my appointment at 10:30 with Holt this morning, and find that it's the ONLY thing on my calendar this week, since the Beard evening Ken proposed was filled, and Lina canceled the Games Group this Sunday, so there's nothing planned until TUESDAY 8/11! And my Wheatena just buzzed, so I'm torn between finishing this and eating breakfast now at 9:25AM. Have on ANOTHER list to take out the cardboards tomorrow evening to catch up with my "cleaning up" and actually THINKING of getting to throwing away books so that I can at least clear off my dining room table of the stuff that's been there for YEARS now. Getting the videos from Marty's seen, having called the people and gotten no response to doing things (well, Friday may see lunch with Mildred and Charles and Victor again), and of course there's Audience Extras to fill up time. Pity I was watching tapes this weekend, which was probably, weather-wise, one of the greatest of the decade: sunny but not hot nor humid. Jerked off last night, have to go to the gym tomorrow and water the plants today, take back two tapes and get two new ones, but I'M ALL CAUGHT UP and can actually think about getting OUT to enjoy New York City before winter comes again, getting rid of the 20-item list from months ago, and maybe even scanning more of my writing pages, but the time is WIDE OPEN, except for the Holt indexes, and not even any TRIPS PLANNED---yet!

8/4/98: 8AM!: An epiphany of sorts! After the meeting yesterday with Holt went so well ("Don't take this personally, we just HATE to think about the indexes!"), I came home and looked at the magazines and mail and had lunch and glanced at the videotapes on the table to return and sat down to play FreeCell and then Scrabble and then FreeCell some more and then Scrabble some more, and looked at the clock to FIND THAT IT WAS 8:30PM and I'd MISSED RETURNING THE VIDEOTAPES FOR THE FIRST TIME IN MY LIFE! Tried to assuage my feelings by saying that it's "only a couple of dollars," certainly nothing compared with a grand meal somewhere, but it was the IDEA that I GOOFED that was so compelling that I woke at 6:15 this morning after going to bed about 1:15AM, thought about it more and more, started an Actualism session about 7AM and finished at 8 with CONCLUSIONS: I'd wait until after 8AM to phone Mildred to see if she wanted to join me for breakfast at 5757 (and start going through the restaurant list as I'd STOPPED doing the last few years); I'd BUY some grass from John (with the fantasy of jerking off with him AGAIN); I'd put up a SIGN on my computer saying "I don't NEED computer games!" (which I just did, as an alternative to REMOVING the icons for FreeCell and Scrabble from my Windows, which seems extreme to START with); I'd throw away books which would enable me to file the NEWLY READ books, which would free me up for more READING, which I haven't done because there's no SPACE to PUT AWAY the books I've read. And decide to TAKE the videotapes with me: there might be a DROP-OFF instruction at the video shop so that I don't HAVE to pay the overnight penalty! And it's now 8:20 and I checked that Gael Greene recommended the lemon-ricotta pancakes at the "power breakfast" at 5757, and I'm NOW going to get into my NEW day!!!

8/18/98: 9:20AM: Just finished DREAMS:8/18/98, which indicates the frustrations I've been feeling, but here are MORE: 1) Sort of figured out that the LACK OF BOOKSHELF SPACE has so changed my way of storing books to be read that I HAVEN'T BEEN READING recently: ONLY the subway-book, which takes about two weeks for a small book and months for tomes like Infinite Chance (or whatever the huge one was), 2) Index-stress with Holt and Springer preventing me from working CONSISTENTLY in a way that ENGROSSES me with a sense of ACCOMPLISHMENT as opposed to the current "don't quite know what's happening when" frustration, 3) Michael, brought to a head by Mildred's pushy "When are you two going to 'do it'?", emphasizing we're BOTH afraid of what might happen, probably mostly what the other will THINK about what we want to do sex-wise, and it looks like it'll be up to ME, as usual, to initiate the conversation, 4) Without tapes to watch and indexes to do and amusements to attend last night, I finally broke my "no computer game" rule from 8/4, ANOTHER two weeks, and played for HOURS, losing consistently to Scrabble (which makes it less attractive), winning consistently with FreeCell (which makes IT less attractive)! 5) Think AGAIN to just start THROWING OUT books, just to make ROOM, so that I can empty shelves to file boxes of programs and souvenirs on shelves so that I can empty closet for piling OTHER boxes into RCA-TV box which is almost as big as my thrown-out air-conditioner box, 6) GOT to videotape my possessions for the insurance policy, since it's beginning to BUG me for not having done it, and 7) Should throw out the old turntable and amplifier and replace it with the new before THAT becomes a "big-undone," not to mention 8) Returning to Marty's for more tapes, now that I have a television to watch them on. SO glad that this humid summer is coming to an end, but except for VACATIONS I haven't really USED the outside to look at bodies or enjoy the countryside or eat OUT! And arthritis is getting MUCH worse: twinges when I'm not even DOING anything and SHARP jabs when I'm writing or taking the salad bowl out of the refrigerator; should I start taking TWO Tylenol each time? And the new TV reflects my VERY fat stomach when I'm sitting in the chair watching in the bright-lit afternoon room: VERY depressing, circling back to MICHAEL, with whom I'd just as soon negotiate a CUDDLE-CONTRACT, rather than anything overtly sexual which might make BOTH of us TERRIBLY uncomfortable and tense.

8/19/98: 9:07AM: Just finished DREAMS:8/19/98 because I was energized by the coolth of the 60° temperature-reading as I raised the shade in the comfortable bedroom, hoping that the passing of the extreme humidity of the depth of summer might make me more energetic, so that I don't have to spend 4-5 hours at FreeCell as I did in the last two days when I broke my 2-week fast from 8/4 to 8/17, but I'll watch Mi Puerto Rico because I TAPED it last night when they DIDN'T do In the Footsteps of Alexander for the SECOND time when I tried to tape it. Installed the amplifier and turntable VERY successfully yesterday, at last, as well as returned to Marty's for the OK Good Will Hunting and the charming Zero Effect and hope to do the videotaping of my possessions today BEFORE getting to throwing the books away, which I feel newly energized to do. Then if I can put in a couple of hours "learning" Word for Windows, and buy some Guarana, I'll be down to the easily remembered "4" of the long-term to-do list: Cull Sci-Am and Nat-Geog, and VP write/check ad!

9/12/98: Noon: Ideas crowd to be written down: travel, health, indexing, Bill and Gerry from Melbourne, Michael, Clinton. 1) Watching hours of Islands, Journeys, and Portuguese explorations my mind is bombarded with thoughts: a) Wouldn't it be great to just MEANDER through the islands of Indonesia, or the South Pacific, or the Indian Ocean, or the West Coast of Africa, taking whatever local transportation offers itself (except that the West Coast of Africa is dangerous politically; Madagascar looks depressing because of the ignorant population burning forests, killing wildlife, and increasing a poor population by 3% a year; and I remember my depression on Koror when, as an individual, I could find NOTHING to do to investigate the treasures within guided-tour distances). b) With upcoming retirement, I could spend MONTHS away without worrying about work; yet would I still yearn to return to NYC and paying bills and old friends' news? c) I identify strongly with the places I've SEEN already: South Georgia, Kathmandu, Xian, Borobudur, Olduvai, Ayres Rock, King's Canyon, and somehow feel that the EXTENSIONS are worthless, except possibly Darwin and Cairns with Bill and Gerry. 2) But they so EXHAUSTED me last night with their chatterings, expecting me to be exciting and excited, yet they wouldn't shop for theater tickets they wanted, ended up at ordinary restaurants because none of the new, or discounted, places had vegetarian meals that Bill wanted, and scheduled the Museum of Natural History for Sunday when, forgotten, I have the Games Group at 2PM, so that it'll either have to be Sunday MORNING, or Monday afternoon. 3) Haven't been to the gym in over two weeks because of my cold and then my rash, which has left my limbs flaking with Caladryl. Feel so TIRED (from the cold?), and still hawking up quantities of nasal mucus and coughing up phlegm from rale-filled lungs. Aging? Disease? Dirt causing the rash after not showering for five days in the hottest, most humid weather at August-end? Or not changing the sheets or clothing? STILL itching, STILL coughing, STILL tired. 4) SO pleased that Richard accepted my Grade 10 effort well enough to say I should do Grade 9 "the same way" and then finding I don't have to DO and REDO as I did with 10, but just DO the pages and EDIT the index, which shouldn't take more than 20 hours (which I say will demand 80), helping pay for my current $14,000 bill, which should more than double by the time I finish with all seven books. AND then have the Hollywood Hoopla to finish today, and maybe others coming interspersed for CURRENT cash, since I'll not be paid by Holt until next year: 1999! 5) STILL haven't resolved bedding with Michael: Dendy Dancers sold out on Wednesday, canceling our plans together, meeting tomorrow for the Games Group. 6) Clinton's coming to the crux, newscasters agreeing with Pope that the PUBLIC, rather than Congress, will decide his fate; I'm relieved that everyone seems annoyed that Starr's report is ONLY sex, nothing really CRIMINAL! So I watch TV tapes, eat ice cream from the gallon in the freezer, try to eat fruit and vegetables, overeat in restaurants (Beard on Monday), and try to feel productive and thrilled not writing for VP, except for this page!

9/15/98: 2:30PM: YESTERDAY was a pain because I had to set the alarm at 9AM to make sure I got up in time to meet the Australians at the Natural History Museum at 10:30AM, and had a poor lunch and RESTED before the Beard at 7PM, but TODAY was supposed to be voting and bills and Leslie-Lohman and VP, but Pope called to say he wanted me to walk him to HIP, and his 10AM appointment was taken at 11:27AM, and mine was after his (see MEDICAL:9/15/98), so we're out at noon, then to Sloan's for shopping (which I pay for with my IGT card), then to vote in a cafeteria full of screaming kids, and I'm DYING for breakfast and to get out of the 82° heat and humidity (turned on the air conditioner when I woke in a sweat at 3:47AM this morning), and finally get back to finish breakfast AFTER 2PM and the mail's not in yet and I don't FEEL like doing anything, so do THIS page to hope to stop FreeCell, which I probably WON'T!

9/26/98: 1AM 9/27: Just back from the W.-C. wedding with Carolyn, and it's been one of THOSE nights: when drink and people and emotions and dancing and release blend into an epiphany of well-being. I'd taken the invitation ONLY because Carolyn wanted someone to go with her, and in fact she had diarrhea this day, which meant that she left in the middle of the Riverside Church ceremony to go to the john for a "false alarm," so of course I said, "So we have to wait still for a REAL alarm?" I didn't remember the people who were getting married, though she said I'd met both of them, and I didn't remember the people (I STILL can't remember the names of the couple), at whose place we had a picnic in Westchester two years ago, but we got there in time for the nice wedding at Riverside, with the added facet of the FAMILY standing and saying they would support the couple, and a wonderful tribute to a dead mother by a sister that I DID meet at the end of the evening and congratulate for her "reading," and she DIDN'T seem to realize how effective it had been, and then we did an intermission at the Dominican day in front of the General Grant Memorial (the largest mausoleum in the United States) to see who was shouting through the ceremony, and then BACK to the subway to get down to Bridgewater's at 6:30 to avoid ANOTHER wedding and up to the third floor for the RIGHT one, and there was MY name in beautiful calligraphy on an envelope for table 8, with what I thought would be a HORDE of people from Catalyst, but it was ONLY the President, Sheila W., her husband, and the couple who'd hosted us in Westchester to Carolyn's left, Celia and Jennifer to my right---AH!---and the dark-haired boss-type between the wife (of the couple) and the husband of Sheila, so there were only NINE of us with Carolyn and me. AMAZED that some of the TABLES got up and serenaded the married couple with SONGS by the group (and we couldn't think of the lyrics of "I Am Woman" for the appropriate song from the Catalyst table), and after I INSISTED I'd NOT get up and dance, at last Jennifer and Carolyn got me away from the table and I pranced and threw my arms in the air and gyrated back and forth and tried to look for anyone else sexy on the floor (not really)  for about a half-hour until I dropped out, then Jennifer, and then finally Carolyn. The HORS D'OUVRES were good, including the hot ones from the balcony overlooking the FDR drive and a blocked view of the Heights from buildings between, but a feeling of the FREEDOM afforded by the city with walking, taxicabs, tour buses, private cars whizzing past motorcycles, the FREEDOM of everyone here, the RICHNESS of going where you wanted when you wanted, drinking Seabreezes: vodka, grapefruit and cranberry juice to a visual purple, white wine with the sea bass, the good mustard vinaigrette on the salad, the London broil and scallops and roast vegetable appetizers, the feta-cheese appetizer in ravioli, and the chocolate bombe when NONE of us seemed to get any of the wedding cake, but the GRACE of the clientele, the CHARM of Celia and Jennifer when Carolyn told them I was gay, and her getting off at Fulton Street and guys looking at Jennifer when we get off for the Times at Clark Street, and she PROMISES to take me to the University Club and I PROMISE to tell her about Henry's End and the Beard Foundation, and I've told Carolyn FIVE times how much I've LOVED this EVENING!

9/29/98: Noon: WHERE AM I NOW? Just finished (with great printer-difficulty) printing out four copies of Dye A Log for Village Playwrights tonight, having managed to get out the 15 pages required for my yesterday-scheduled half-hour tonight. Feel "unslept" and "full/hungry" from the James Beard overdo last night and not eating anything yet this morning, except drinking lots of water to try to get rid of the excess-yellow in my urination. Woke at 6AM and perversely spent an hour in front of porno trying to get excited and manage only to abrade the sides of my cock before cumming (with spraying but not that much feeling), then get caught up in watching early-morning kids' cartoons (one Beast Wars, a Japanimation rip-off with multi-national production names, with grim forests, rats and tigers [who give a punch-line I might add to the end of Dye A Log: "You must live with your beast-nature AND your human nature" as Kid will tell Alex to live WITH fear AND with hope] and rhinos and apes with remarkably erogenous asses; that was followed by Disney's Doug [in case you wouldn't look at the production credits] that was simplistic and "do-goody.") and got back into bed at 8AM, getting up at 9:45AM to shit and dress and then out of bed about 11AM to finish printing, a mess-up from page EIGHT that went back to page SIX of the second copy making me print a FOURTH copy so that I can make notes on mine while the characters and stage-direction reader works from THEIRS. STILL don't feel quite "right" sleep-eat-health-wise, which made me fret about HIV in the play about me and Michael and a Pope-clone with muscles. Forgot that I'd typed the whole previous page about the wedding, so I just have to fill in Sunday, when Michael arrived five minutes early, with flowers, and hungry, so we filled up at Eamonn Doran and farted for the rest of the afternoon, which went on so long that at 7PM he confessed to not having brought his 6:30 pills! So we jerked off rather hurriedly and I said that he could go, and he did. He left a message last night saying that he was thinking of me as he lay in his tub. Can't even do decent Actualism sessions, trying to convince myself that I might be feeling GOOD under all this "propping up on pillows so I don't reflux" and "getting a nap because I jerked off early in the morning" semi-nausea. Debated NOT taking in the piece this morning, but decided that, rather than adding anything NOW, I'd see what the group's reaction was and go from there. Figured out my Holt hours yesterday and I can PLAUSIBLY make a convincing case to slow down because I'm just about to break the $20,000 mark. If Richard complains at the end, I won't have to finish Grade 12 until next Monday, Grade 11 two weeks after that, leaving the last three for November as scheduled, not having many of the pages yet anyway. Did one index on Saturday, finished and Express Mailed one yesterday, and figure to do a third today, and still haven't got the last pages of the 666-page book OR the ASME catalog, which are still due in. Heat over weekend was debilitating, adding to my Sunday hangover, and today is stuffy inside while clearly cooler outside, and the people moving around upstairs (waking as I jerked off about 6:30AM!) are irritating me no end, probably due to my tensions over indexing and overwork in general. If only some of the feelings COULD be an incipient love-relationship with Michael, I'd feel LESS like my surrogate, Alex, in Dye A Log. Reminded myself to put more cards (hope they last till I move!) into my wallet when I couldn't give my card to the woman who only wanted ONE (Ken's) anyway about a possible cancellation for the 10/30 dinner. Ken invited me to see his new place, which is less spacious than his last, with grim hallways in the Vermeer on 14th and 6th. Talked to Shelley, who was at the Harbor Festival in Greenport on Saturday and Sunday when Michael and I got no answer at her new digs on Monroe Place. Pope called today to AGAIN tell me about his conviction that this election will affect the course of the rest of the United States, and I'd bought my new toaster and gotten through the Times and will eventually put away the jerk-off stuff I left out this morning. But this page will eject the last of the play's pages so that I can mark up the parts with yellow to make it easy, and then Carolyn calls and says she’s invited Kimberley to her birthday party but won't invite "mixed-messages" Sherryl, who sent a card.

10/14/98: 8:10AM: Read Gift of the Alien at Village Playwrights (35 pages taking a surprising 43 minutes), and know it's going badly when John I. completely trivializes Bob and Kent M. totally intellectualizes and robotizes Allen, not to mention Bill P.'s mangled stage directions, which are elided without notice and probably with malice at some critical points. Bob Q. looked puzzled, Burt C. annoyed, Dennis S. sat with closed eyes, Stan seemed engrossed for his first time, and Manuel didn't laugh when I thought he might. I took notes: Burt: "It's too talky: talking heads. It takes too long to get anywhere." Stan: "Needs something at the beginning (many didn't even HEAR the HX line, which I actually thought had gotten LOST, but it was really there though most didn't register it) to rouse interest, draw the audience in." Manuel: "HX SHOULD be in. Now, sex comes as a SURPRISE at the end. Too detailed---very talky: shorten it. Trig was good (by which I assume he meant Grafleen). Jerking off in canoe is REAL. The more human the content, the stronger the impact." Dennis: "Allen REPEATED his 'reasoning' more than needed. He should have been persuaded earlier." Burt: "The rhythm needs change, a refreshing jolt: write an OUTLINE. You need a breath of fresh air. Stop writing from train of thought and free association." Stan: "The alien is instructing the human, REVERSE and have the human teaching the alien about emotions or actions. Looks like alien is omniscient. Play is slanted toward Allen, with little energy from Bob. Humans have problems understanding HUMANS, MORE with 'other system.'" Burt: "Let actors IMPROVISE, let Allen take Bob to his planet, 'open it up,' let it BREATHE." Manuel: "Bob, waiting for an HX client, should be dressed in anticipation, sex should be APPARENT in their meeting." Bill: "Liked the big Indian." Kent: "I LIKE deeper material in a gay play, so this is a good DIRECTION to go in." But I noticed that John didn't say a WORD, and Kent had nothing to say about the PLAY ITSELF that was in any way good, and Bob Q. had nothing to say AT ALL. At least there were nine of us and we WERE in the only $10/hour room (305, which I misread as 303 and had to be tossed out of by some other meeting, after I had set up the room with an almost-prescient EIGHT chairs), and Bob and Burt and Bill and Manuel said that my "proposal-letter" to Candice and Ector was good, and Bill said that he thought the Center would never like giving ALL future meetings for "what we get" if we gave them the ENTIRE treasury, but he DID like the idea of saving up anything OVER what we might get for the NEXT dry period. Gita didn't show up, but I was glad that Burt DID appear, though I would have liked the support of intellectuals like Danny and Alvin, and I WAS disappointed that the "alien-loving" Dennis didn't like it more. I got back home with the thought of just putting THIS into my yesterday-established "file-drawer of Village Playwright writings" and then putting all my OTHER writings (the Indexing Handbook, AIDS House, Gain, and other play-readings [like And Then There Were Two] which Marj and Village Playwrights have already heard, which are filed SOMEWHERE else) into the same filing cabinet and LEAVING them there to be published after I'm DEAD. Partly this is 1) RELIEF that I DID fill the hour at Village Playwrights EVEN WITH all my indexes, 2) DISAPPOINTMENT that the play I liked so much got so little good reception, 3) RESIGNATION that WHATEVER I write to please myself will please NO one else, 4) PRACTICAL because indexing and social catch-up take priority in my life now, 5) WISHFUL THINKING that even though I don't pursue publication, I'll be READ, 6) DISMISSAL because it excuses me from MORE thought about writing now for VP. And at 8:53AM I'm tired of writing this page (lovely looking through LIFELIST I for the title Gain, and all the OTHER interesting I-events in my LIFELIST list), want to phone Kathleen about my insight to grouping verbals in the R index to reflect terms in EACH OTHER index, finish the Jazz Profiles index (sadness about Dennis's having wanted to publish JUST SUCH a book), and GET ON with Grade 11, which I should be MUCH farther along with now, though I'm pleased with 1) Kathleen's praise of my work and my indexes on Monday, 2) Richard's praise of my finding two "empty" pages in Grade 12 that NO one else had found, and SURETY that I WILL be paid the tens of thousands from Holt!

12/1/98: 8:46AM: Last page was 10/14! REALLY busy with indexing, not least the EIGHT pupil editions of K-7 for Boston (thanks to Susan) which I did in FOUR days last week, and look forward to the eight TEACHER editions the next TWO weeks, along with finishing Holt's Grade 11 and maybe even 10, but with Boston at doubling hours, working 100 hours in 2 weeks is only 25 of MY hours/week, and a 60-hour week for Holt, at tripling hours, is only 20 of MY hours/week, coming up with a grand total of my having to work easily only 45 hours/week. AND I manage to keep up with the mail, ordering tickets, phoning Pope and Sherryl and Carolyn about their various cancers, keeping Tony and Michael obliged to phone me, Charles and Mildred and Vicki busy with invitations and socializing, and other peripheral indexes finished vaguely on time, hoping to get no more NEW ones before Christmas so I can get off my CHRISTMAS letters as well as repairing my porno-VCR, and I hope Paul does NOT manage to get here for any time in December. AND just calculated that Holt COULD finish at the end of JANUARY, at least a VISUALIZED end for this agony of work---at a bill approaching $60,000!!! Really MUST leave some time for vacuuming soon, and even debate phoning Lina for Scrabble this evening after Village Playwrights! Played about 4 hours of FreeCell Sunday to my disgust, with three games of Scrabble to finally lose one, and slowly catching up on VCR tapes so that I can get to Marty's for some NEW MOVIES at last. Running out of steam HERE now!

12/9/98: 7:35AM: SO great to look at my table for ONCE this morning and see it TOTALLY cleared of work, which I did yesterday in preparation for Tony's visit, which never took place: TWO stand-ups (hm, I was STOOD up, but does that make it a "stand-up"---it's not FUNNY!) in TWO days: Monday 12/7 Michael phones in response to my invitation to Steve's tonight and HE BREAKS OFF THE RELATIONSHIP, saying only "I'm just not comfortable," and "We're going in different directions," and SOMETHING about a commitment that I can't QUITE remember, because I THOUGHT he started with "You want too much of a commitment," but when I asked what it was he thought I WANTED, he changed the subject. At WORST I can figure he holds my age and physicality against me, which I can't change, and doesn't want to hurt me by TELLING me (though he kept saying he LIKED older men and he LIKED me); OR he doesn't like MY increased "touching" of him (which HE started, and since it made ME feel so good I figured it would make HIM feel good); OR, at BEST (an awful thing to say) he just got news that his physical condition will be going rapidly downhill after five or six years with HIV and he wanted to spare me the anguish of his slow departure. So far I've told Carolyn and Charles (both of whom said that they took all the events at Lips to be GOOD, rather than bad) and Vicki and Pope, so that leaves only Mildred (who said he wasn't worth it to begin with) and Sherryl and Shelley, to whom I'm debating asking if SHE knew he was HIV positive---now that he's LEFT my life (to put it on HIS terms), why should I hold back ANYTHING he's told me, or return anything he's GIVEN me (the Moody Blues CD)! But my physicality IS causing problems: 1) GOT to get back to C. for an x-ray of my left shoulder, which began re-paining as I stopped the pain-killer, 2) GOT to make a dental appointment for my upper right bridge-molar which seems finally to be paining, as she predicted months ago, 3) GOT to get rid of the putrid pork cutlet for $1.35 that went GREEN in the fridge and seems to be smelling THROUGH the five or six plastic bags I wrapped it in, and 4) GOT to see if there's an alternative for arthritis since the dropping of the Tylenol didn't do ANYTHING to increase or decrease my thumb-pain. AND I've got to sort through the stack to see what's got to be seen and done SOON, AND wonder why there's nothing toward the 12/17 deadline---now only EIGHT days away for the California K-7 TEs---on Juno, which keeps insisting I upgrade and which I foresee will be kicking me OFF someday. AND finished the Watson-Guptill bomb in 6 hours for only $385 only to get an ASME 110-page quickie to KEEP me at three indexes to do, but GOT to get rid of others for SPACE even though I haven't YET got the 10/17 check from Princeton. AND check VCR status!

12/12/98: 3:15PM: WHERE AM I NOW? Besides typing out one page which will enable me to get to my last Christmas-card letter---and going downstairs to get the card I knew Steve H. was sending, bringing my total of cards OUT on the first day to FORTY, which only leaves me SIX spares to send to anyone who sends any that I don't really expect, like Arthur D., Dorothy H., Bernice, or Michael B.---interesting that all four are former Actualism students! Had wanted to get at least STARTED, and bought stamps yesterday after I found that the x-ray technician had gotten sick so I wouldn't get my left shoulder x-rayed until today. And then also today I went shopping for bidis after the x-ray and couldn't find ANY, except for trying Penny Bridge tonight, and GOT to relocate the place I bought them in the Village last time, or return to the new porno shop where they said they'd get them "Thursday." STILL nothing on the California TEs, with a supposed deadline in just FIVE days! Forgot that I'd more or less DONE Grade 10, and I'm only bringing pages up to date with NEW ones, so I shouldn't have trouble finishing that next week, and then have A MONTH to finish each of Grades 7, 8, and 6! Startled to sit next to Anita F. at Gotham yesterday after I restrained myself from staring at the BEAUTIFUL man (her son) she was eating with, sitting next to me. Caught up with the videotapes last night, and resisted getting some for this weekend, but haven't heard anything about the return of my NEC from the repairman. Had a few twinges from my LEFT jaw, and can only hope nothing blows up dentally until my 12/28 appointment, just as my x-ray results will probably wait until my 12/30 C. appointment. Pope hasn't called at ALL in the past few days of the rushing Clinton impeachment proceedings---impossible to credit politics for being SO vindictive!! Playing Carmen on WQXR to blast out the noise from upstairs---will probably start keeping it on while I'm working: more comfortable than earplugs, anyway. Michael's departure from my love-live has started seeming more and more comfortable: not only won't I have to worry about any worsening health, I don't have to worry about keeping CLEAN for a possible bedding, or even IN SHAPE, which I don't have anymore, anyway. NOT going to the gym recently, even though I've been telling myself I should at LEAST start using the pool so that I can use the sauna and Jacuzzi, but I still haven't gone past checking the lane-swim hours of 12-3:30 on weekdays. VERY tired yesterday after the Forbes, Gotham, and Tibet House, but it passed when I played about two hours of FreeCell, wakening me enough to finish the tapes and the last of the bidi with an orgasm on my abraded cock and bed at 12, to STILL feel tired when I dragged myself out of bed at 8:45AM. But I DO have the cards DONE, which is a great deal! I think I've worn out my typing!

12/22/98: 11:15AM: Finally finished Grade 10 yesterday, as well as the bill for $46K+, and e-mailed the California 7 revision to Kathleen, who accepted it as complete by e-mail before my TELEPHONE went out about 11AM, as well as John's! Also completed the "no rush" ASME job, getting both Express Mail packages out just after a spectacular sunset-light on the St. George at 4:30PM. Then had lunch, put stuff away, and watched Nova from 8-9 while stuffing myself with chocolate ice cream; then, my workaholism unsatisfied, I played FreeCell until 1:45AM! Got notified that my NEC is unusable, and I've got to get a new phone machine, too. Showered in case Tony comes over at noon, but he can't call because I got no dial tone when I tried to phone Audience Extras at 11AM. Modem doesn't work, either. COULD start on my 1998 LIFELIST, or COULD start one of the two January-due Watson-Guptill indexes. But now getting to the bottom of page 99 BEFORE 1999, and I have to see what I did BEFORE: NOTEBOKA started page 1 on 8/29/92 and ended on page 100 on 6/8/96 (so I'll need to finish page 100 here to keep the numbering "sequential"), 45 months for the first 100 pages, only 31 months for SECOND 100 pages. Will I feel this disorganized when indexing SLOWS DOWN during the next years and I have to accustom myself to PERMANENT non-work-orientation? Someone moving around upstairs who did NOT answer John when he rang to see if THEIR phone works!

12/31/98: 11AM: Yesterday REALLY busy: I'd made out a list of EIGHT phone calls that I had to make, and 1) Arnold starts the list JUST as I get out of bed at 10AM, talking to 10:30. Then I have breakfast and get rid of mail and find that there's an exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum of Artists and AIDS: What We've Lost that ENDS TODAY listed in HX magazine. Then to see if there's a phone number for the zoo in New York magazine, I look in the "Kids" section and see that the Brooklyn Botanic Garden has an exhibit of Trains and Lights this week! So after my appointment with Dr. C. my AFTERNOON is now filled with subway activities! Phone 2) Pope to talk about Tony's suggestion he get on the list for the two NEW Catholic Charities residences in Brooklyn, and WE talk from 11-11:50! Leave word with 3) Victoria C. about the page and questions on her index at 11:50 and at 11:55 find that the 4) Stinehour Press job that I possibly had would be done by someone closer to the author in Philadelphia. Call 5) Richard S. to hear that my bill was OK, and that I do the Grade 11 corrections on the pages, but that he did NOT get the Express Mail package I mailed Monday! Add a call to the 6) Post Office to find that it WAS delivered to his office 11:45AM Tuesday. He said he'd phone back if he got it. Then called 7) Kathleen D. to leave word at 12 [and got her LATER]. Then 8) and 9) tried two different NEC numbers to finally find one who says they STOPPED making VCRs in 1990! Finally at 1:25 phone 10) the zoo to find they have light-hours 5:30-9:30 Friday and Saturday nights. Then dash out at 1:35PM to C.'s, to wait until 3PM to get them to FINALLY find (what IS this with not FINDING things today? Pope later says that Mercury JUST went DIRECT!) that I DON'T have arthritis in my shoulder. [Rest on MEDICAL:12/31/98.] Starved for lunch, so I try Kentucky Fried Chicken's BBQ chicken sandwich for $2.70, which is just AWFUL, then get on subway for a cold walk across Botanic Garden for a chintzy train setup but nice flowering cacti in the Conservatory 3:30-4PM, and a flowering apricot bonsai for New Year's, and to the Museum for Artists and AIDS, literally in an elevator lobby with 14 photographs from 4 dead photographers, then wander through China, Burma, a not-yet- finished Tibet, India, and Domestic Transformations and Hine photographs until 5PM closing time, satisfied that it's still LIGHT out! Home to phone Manuel, Moshe, and Bob Q. about VP's going to LAST Tuesdays (Ector even phoned Wednesday morning to VERIFY that!), and re-phone Kathleen and GET her, and she remembers Eric and WILL put column headings on the indexes! Then talk long to Eric, who is charmed to be remembered by Kathleen. Then out to an only-OK dinner at 222 with Mildred, back to watch the Kennedy Honors (featuring Andre Previn while I'm TAPING his opera from Streetcar Named Desire!) and put other stuff away and watch tapes till 1AM, sleeping WELL until 10AM today! Pope calls JUST as I'm getting out of bed at 10:15 and we talk until 10:50, I put on WQXR's classical music countdown as background, and finish this at 11:30, not even hungry for breakfast and hoping last night's heavy dinner doesn't TOTALLY clobber my blood readings! 3:23PM: But the lab was CLOSED from 10AM! Today's phone-list even longer than yesterday's: 1) Pope, 2) Spartacus about tomorrow, 3) Mildred about tomorrow, 4) Sherryl, 5) 1-800-HIP-TALK, which doesn't help, and 6) 1-800-HIP-HELP, which says I must call on Monday. 7) No children's plays for VP, 8) Bronx Botanical to find the south entrance has been closed since 1990 and the trains have been in the Conservatory since 1996, 9) Charles to get no answer, and 10) Audience Extras to get A) this evening for Ballet Tech, B) tomorrow for all-male Importance of Being Earnest and C) Bosoms and Neglect for Saturday 2PM, both of which latter two 11) Spartacus agrees to join me with, and I don't phone Mildred back to ask about tonight, but I do re-phone 12) Sherryl, who's still not home, who might have wanted to join me. The WQXR countdown includes oddities: Mozart's Requiem at #15? Beethoven's Violin Concerto in D at #12?? Play FreeCell after putting on warm socks, and even turn on the living room radiator, which I shut off at midnight. Leave for Joyce and remember I DIDN'T pick up the pills! Egg foo yung at Chinita Linda and an AWFUL Ballet Tech evening, followed by fireworks 10-12:15AM---1st thing in 1999!