#260

Remembered a moment. That moment filled me, filled me to the very brim with itself, with its redolent emotion. I was a pure clear vessel for the wine of my memory. I determined to make straight for the laptop to record this pure beam.

Literally two things happened--a cat moved and I turned my head--and I forgot what it was. Reeling slightly due to the vertiginous effects of blanking of that magnitude, but kind of amused, I did a few more things, then smoked half a joint just to seal the deal.

Hey, who gives a shit? I can write something else.

*

Life is too fucking hilarious. I leave you with nothing. Nothing is the greatest and most comical joke I could hope to tell, and I leave it with you, dear reader, so you may laugh at nothing with me. I fucking love you. We are going to die. STRAP IN YOU BEAUTIFUL GODDAMNED BASTARD WE ARE GOING TO

BREAK

ON

through.

--JL

#208

Hey, blogland! I took August off and it was fucking excellent for me. I read and bought so many books I’ll have to type up massive lists. Does that excite you? It makes blue steel of me, ladies and gentlemen. I could cut glass thinking about how things have gone with books this month.

Plus I quit smoking cigarettes again (been using the gum this time around), my computer appears to have destroyed all of my documents and I am tapping this out on my dad’s old iPad and do not know if I will be able to recover any of my projects in process (not the first time such a thing has befallen me, kind of a bummer but, forward, forward, always forward, not a glance backward!), and my heart is full of love. 

Also I work six days a week now with a scheduled double on the second day. It’s tiring but I know folks work way harder than that. I appear to be entering a time in life in which a sixty-hour workweek seems only right and proper. Feeling pretty strong, pretty lucky. There are far worse things than having plenty of work in front of you.

*

Yeah, this vacay was pretty necessary. Rediscovered some fundamentals in selfhood long-neglected and joyfully embraced. Remembered some stuff about myself. Sounds silly and simple, but it is frankly fucking amazing, fucking ridiculous what a person can forget, can let go of without realizing. 

More on that after I take two more weeks off! Bwahaaaaa! Tho long, thuckerth!

—JL

#77

Post seventy-seven. My preference would be to have something or do something special for the seventy-seventh post, but that's not really how life is. At least, not for me. Some people are "preparers", or "planners". Some people are "checklisters". I am neither. My driver's license expired a couple months ago. Haven't done a fucking thing. Probably I will continue to forget to do anything about this problem and however many other problems of mine I'm forgetting about for who knows how long. Do you seriously think I can be on point to do something special to celebrate a number I like?

Admittedly, it is more likely than my remembering to complete a federal census. 

Well, at least I vote.

*

There are no other writers in my life, anymore. Everybody from the old days quit, and it was the right move for them. Not only are they happier, but in plain factual talk, the tenth part of what I have written and thrown away is enough to match all their notebooks combined. All lacked what John Gardner referred to, best I can remember from his book On Becoming a Novelist, as the "driving demon." 

Writers I met later in life, people who write as much as I do or at any rate write well enough or place themselves well enough in communities of writers to be called writers, known as writers, still write, but I don't know them anymore. I have frequented such communities casually and professionally, have even made myself responsible for one such environment. I quit. One thousand times I have quit these things forever. That was a permission I had to give myself, over and over.

In many ways, not just in this matter, I am back to where I began. One day around nineteen years ago I started scribbling, alone. Now, I scribble alone.  

*

I'd like to write more, because of, y'know, the demon, but I gotta go to work.

Happy seventy-seven.


--JL