Writing Day

A writing day? I have been meaning to get back in the habit, or try to, in the happy thought that it stimulates brain cells and enriches one's sense of life, la di da da. But it's not easy, even if you are not trying to score publication or money, nor even Internet-friend comments. I wanted to try at the end of last week, but Grocery Day was the next day, and there would be no time for it. And the next day after that, Saturday, I thought it would be better to get back into my Clay-Webster-Calhoun book. Then there was yesterday, Sunday. Pop's Cowboys were playing, which screws up another day for me, or at least it screwed it up enough for me to rationalize putting off my 'writing day' for yet another day.

Now there is today. I was close to blowing it off again. I'm surprised by how averse I seem to be to it. It's almost as bad as having to clean my shower. Maybe it's aging. It's never been this way before. I am not sure if it is because too many of my brain cells have died off, or if it is because I am too self-aware now and know that I am not a writer and that there isn't any real point in trying to write. Maybe it's both working together.

But, evidently, I do want to try. So, here I am doing the easy 'stream of consciousness' thing. I have the further prop of the Old Journal. I intend to use that for fodder. I don't think we will be starting that great american novel today. I didn't have any firm intentions about the form this would take. I suppose I was thinking that I would just be working up a 'higher intensity' journal entry, which is what I have always done before when in the writing mood.

But maybe I will make Writing Day a Steam of Consciousness Day. In addition to the Old Journal journal entries, maybe I will roll up my Twitter discussions in this enterprise as well and make it all one journal entry. This comes to mind because I want to log into my Twitter feed and get that going. Today promises to be a bigger news day with the Mueller indictments coming down. Yeah, let's do that...

* * *

Here's a provocative tweet on the Weinstein and sex stuff: "Remember when Winona Ryder shoplifted once and it destroyed her career, but men can rape and abuse and still have careers". There is a misogynist relish in that, but it is a bit of an exaggeration. She did go into a hiatus for a few years, but her career seems to have gotten back on track. The men, too, seem to go into a kind of hiatus, and it's not clear if they can get back on track professionally. Also, Ryder was convicted in court. Allegations don't seem to get that far with the men. Cash buys a lot of forgiveness.

[Twitter]

* * *

That was quite a finale for "The Deuce". Did I really see naked dick going in and out of a naked pussy?? That's okay now?

I google and check Twitter for some discussion, maybe even a firestorm of controversy. But it is like nothing. Like it happens all the time on HBO. I also checked to see if the show is greenlighted for a second season, but I cannot find any word on that either.

* * *

Google has put up a cheeseburger emoji, but not without a little playful controversy. The emoji has the cheese below the meat. That's the way I make my cheeseburger, with the lettuce, pickles, tomato on top, with the mustard and ketchup on the bottom bun and on top of the meat. But apparently there is a right way and a wrong way, and guess which way I do it? I didn't see any discussion on why it is superior to put the cheese on top. So, I will stick with my way.

[MSN News]

* * *

Old Journal, part one

My writing day is almost over. It will end with my afternoon snack, somewhere around five or six o'clock. And I have yet to even look at the Old Journal. This fact is a little off-putting, because it was the main reason for my writing day. But going through my Old Journal entries is about as bad as walking on a red-hot bed of coals. Those journal entries were the main enterprise of my best adult years, sort of my career, and in my giddier moods, I looked upon it as the potential launching pad for my literary immortality, and now I understand what a revolting waste all of it is. I might as well have poured gasoline all over my life and lit a match. A real dumpster fire. My only consolation is that there really wasn't much else to do with it.

It's especially tough now, because the next entry that I want to work on is about Jack's new life with live-in girlfriends and how Teri and Arthudo are favoring him. I am tempted to simply skip it. Problem solved! But I cannot let myself cheat like that.

Recall that I am working on a fat little notebook that covers the spring of 1994. I want to complete this notebook before moving on to some other section of the journal.

* * *

Maybe I should get something on all the excitement over the Mueller indictments. Let me grab Jeet Heer's tweets:

I've thought Dems should be cautious about expecting too much from Mueller investigation but Papadopoulos plea is massive news.

With Papadopoulos, we have the outlines of what happened and it's terrible for Trump: quid for quo collusion tied to emails.

This is the biggest scandal in American history. Bigger than Watergate. We're headed for legitimacy crisis.

I don't know if we are there yet. Heer is an elite media guy and brilliant, but he is partisan and rather out there on the left. But the plot is indeed only thickening.

But, assuming that we are reaching a climax, I like this response from one of his followers, 'I am going to be SHOCKED if this ends any other way than blanket pardon, Mueller fired, congress shrugs and says "let's repeal ACA again".' Though, this would qualify as a legitimacy crisis, albeit the one with the worst ending.

[Twitter]

* * *

Old Journal, part two

Looking through the old entries in question, I see that I overestimated their gravity. They do touch upon the new status of Jack with Teri and Arthudo however, and I guess that was enough to make me queasy.

May 8, 1994

Monk is struck by how busy Teri and Arthudo are in trying to do favors for Jack. I said it was as if they felt a "need to cover a deficit with him." But I went on to note that with Jack's social life at H.E.B., he seemed to be becoming much more independent - even kind of grown up, you might say. This would seem to be the answer. They want to be supportive and maintain their link with him. Though, it also might be exaggerated in an effort to try to spur me to look beyond the family hearth for a life of my own.

In another entry from this day, I wrote, "Monk believes that Teri takes pleasure stepping on his ego, and that the many and varied subtle ways in which she does this bespeaks a twisted genius." Unfortunately, I did not give any details, or go through these subtle ways. But such game-playing does smack of her mean little mentality, even if the intention arguably has some worthiness in it, such as trying to motivate me to get off my ass and do something, get a job, make a life for myself.

Of course, she, with Arthudo, could have simply forced me out of the house if they wanted. And who knows what that might have wrought. Maybe I would have done the 'right thing' and got a servile job, or else have put an ending to it all then and there, instead of dragging on through all these years. Who knows?

What seems clear is that I put myself in a vulnerable and humiliating position, and Teri and Arthudo were willing and able to make me feel it. And I chose to cling to my homebound, do-nothing life desperately.

* * *

John Cheever once said, “I don’t work with plots. I work with intuition, apprehension, dreams, concepts.”

I am guessing he didn't write stories so much as compelling scenes of troubled and conflicted lives.

"If it's so easy, why don't you do it?"

Whoa, I didn't say it was easy. It probably requires more experience and understanding of human relationships than I have ever acquired or hope to.

All I know is alienation and estrangement, of drowning in air.

"You do have a knack for phrasing."

Yeah, just about everyone notices that. That's what enabled and sustained my writing fantasy, I suppose. It is also what has made me think that poetry might have been my road to literary success, if any road was open to me at all, but that seems to require something more too. I just can't carry a tune. I can't even whistle.

[Twitter]

* * *

Well, my writing day is coming to an end. I enjoyed it. Now watch my laptop break down, forcing me to quit! Until that happens, though, I think I might have a couple of these a week.