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I am...a New Yorker
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[Previous entry: "Fat, Not Stupid"]

Wednesday, June 12, 2002
Reminded of Me
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Watching...
Undercover Brother and S1M0NE, both of which I greatly enjoyed.

Boys and Girls and getting nostalgic as they ran into the Red Vic.

Six Feet Under pilot and delighted that they're replaying them, especially since I'd missed taping this one for Fang.

Quoting...
"So I guess this whole hellish experience I'm about to go through is just going to burn a little brighter now! Great! Thank you! Fuck!"
-Claire Fisher, on smoking crystal meth moments before learning of her father's death.

"Your father is dead and my pot roast is ruined."
-Ruth Fisher

"What?"
-Nate Fisher

Burning...
A pink candle.

Smoking...
Still my corncob pipe with buttered rum and cavendish blend. Yummy!

And nope, no wacky tobacky.

Eating...
Rotisserie chicken. Such a vacation from the herb-roasted variety. I actually like chicken a lot, but they choose to make the kind they are worst at preparing 4-6 nights per week.

Meeting...
Jen, her royal sparkliness for the first time since my birthday last August, just two weeks before everything changed. The next time we see each other, it will be in San Francisco and we'll both be back in college. Hurrah!

Fucking...
Up the text of 161 entries. I tried to fix one case of "iin" and instead deleted all instances of the letter "i" before "n." The mystery to me is why I didn't just eliminate any "i" appearing before an "i" or even just edit that one entry.

I am...so far behind. I started the previous entry 3 weeks ago, I don't know why I haven't been able to keep up. It's not like I'm busy these days.

Then the laptop crapped out. I was able to get (purchase) a battery and it was 29% charged, so I managed to back up a bit more data before it., too, died. I still need to back up my Outlook email, Windows settings, program files and print my mother's airline ticket receipt before I can send the laptop in for repair.

Tonight, a supervisor at HP actually offered me another battery, free of charge. It only took $2000 for the laptop, $270 for this pending repair (though they agreed to bill me later, instead of charging my checking account in advance), and 3 hours in long distance calls to the HP "support" line. After all this, I could use some fucking support, I have a glimmer of an understanding of the expression that something "drove me to drink."

. . .

My most recent form of therapy was going to Our Name is Mud last Thursday night. The rain poured down all night, but I enjoyed getting drenched from head to ankle. I can't stand for my feet to stay wet, so I wore my rainboots. Water of any sort represents cleansing and rebirth in literature and music.

I'd tried to get a friend to go for over a month, so it was great to finally do it. Let that be a lesson to me -- I'm still waiting for all my friends to move to San Francisco or New York and they are mostly where I left them years ago. As lonely as I get, if I waited forever for others to come along, I would still be at Cal State Foolerton.

It was incredible to sit there, concentrating and getting lost in the creativity. The steady rhthym of the rain helped me to clear my mind. Writing can be cathartic, but it never really allows me to get out of my head, which is a nice vacation, especially these days.

I am on a rickety old computer and too lazy to look to see if I mentioned my past life reading in New Orleans. One of the lives was 1500 years ago in China. I was a man who, at age 40 had an epiphany that most people were sleepwalking through life and they needed to know the truth. I left my family and village to study at a monastary and learn to read and write.

Next, I apprenticed to a potter. I put those skills together and made tiles with idiograms and hung them around the outside of my home. I would give them to people with the requirement that they memorize the message (since most people I encountered were illiterate) and pass it along to others. I spent the rest of that life making these tiles in an effort to introduce ideas to the people.

Before I left Non-Profit, I was supposed to have a show of my photographs, which could have resulted in some sales. The woman in charge of the display case was also the head of the ceramics department and she invited me to take a beginning course. Since I was fired so suddenly, I never had a chance to take the course. I had been looking for an opportunity to learn handforming, or at least paint some tiles. Also, I've passed the tile memorial on Greenwich and 7th Avenues dozens of times.

It's funny how you forget yourself. I often wasn't allowed out of the house because my father worked the graveyard shift and was usually asleep when I returned home from school in the afternoon. There was one loophole -- I could play in the garage. I had an easel out there and painted all the time as a child. I spent hours doing this. I can't think of what I painted -- cheerful houses, smiling yellow suns, and big, strong trees.

I made rose perfume with the fallen petals from our landlady's rose bushes. I also painted rocks, mostly with rainbows, and sold them as paperweights. I wish I'd maintained this throughline of creativity and entrepreneurship throughout my life, but it slipped away somewhere along the line, as have so many other aspects of myself. I don't know what's bringing it back to me, but I am truly grateful.

[Next entry: "The Cheese"]
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