Saturday 11 July 1998

I'm having a contemplative breakfast at Hollywood Burger Bar, taking stock of my life on another overcast day in July. It's not raining and it's not cold and I should be happy, but the winter here is just so fucking long and cold and I'm thinking about it already in July. That strikes me as pathetic. Maybe I need to move, but then I'd have to give up my quest for the elusive essence of the lobster. I made a pact with myself when I started this job at “The Sky's No Limit,” my humble architectural firm employer, that I would stay at that job and its humane health insurance, paid holidays and vacation, and 30 hour a week schedule, until I finished my projected 1000 page novel, tentatively titled Seafood. It's been two years now and I haven't written a word.

I really had something particular in mind when I started this cup of coffee and the above paragraph, but I guess I got sidetracked on this crucial subject of the weather. That's the thing about taking stock—it only lasts as long as there's nothing going on—once you get involved with something like a book or a movie, grocery shopping or deciding on what color to paint something, you're right back in the business of living your monumentally insignificant life.

I've been reading this book, “Easy Riders, Raging Bulls,” about the “New Hollywood” of the Seventies. I'm always reading stuff about Hollywood lately, trying to draw parallels with where I live, the Hollywood neighborhood of Portland, which I call “The Other Hollywood.” Basically, there are no parallels—but anyway, the book is quite engaging. Actually, I had something to say about it earlier, before I was floated out of the diner in a sea of coffee, but now I can't remember and it's much later. Time passes within the same paragraph. I've got to tell you, whoever you is, that I don't use the word “basically”—that was a joke. Not a very good joke—but a joke.

Anyway, I thought of what I was trying to remember earlier. I accidentally wrote the date wrong—the year—I wrote 1989 instead of '98—which made me think about what was I doing in 1989? It doesn't seem as interesting to think about now, as it did earlier.