I'm at my usual
breakfast haunt, The Hurst, and I'm haunting it. Dragging
chains across the attic floor and such, the attic being my mind, and
the chains are those chains that keep me from moving forward to an
interesting and new place.
Much later. Now
I'm back at the same place as for breakfast, but it's now converted
to a bar, a night club—with a live band playing—virtually no
cover charge ($2.00)—almost empty—9 piece jazz band—a handful
of paying customers—they're essentially playing for free. My
handwriting has deteriorated beyond all recognizability—hopefully I
won't have to read it later. My all-day headache is a little better.
It's really
difficult for me to get to the real reason for this journal anymore.
It's not so much that I'm afraid that it will fall into the wrong
hands, it's that I'm afraid that I won't be able to fully explain the
full expression of how I feel and it will thus be a watered-down
version. That's what it is, I think—it's that I'm afraid of
feeling, afraid of jinxing myself, superstitious of talking about
anything because then it won't happen, that nothing will happen and
all I'll be left with is a bunch of sorry-ass fiction. But it's
getting to the point where I can go no further the way I am going
without some major changes because I no longer know what I'm talking
about. Seven patrons left at the bar to 9 musicians—that's a
fraction that very well represents my life, 7/9. Don't ask me how or
why. No. What I'm saying, what I'm trying to say, anyway, is that I
need to do something to be able to write about. Otherwise I
just write about writing (like I'm doing now)—which isn't that
interesting, ultimately. Or at all, maybe. So I've got to pick a
direction and reel it in. I've got to pack my bags and check my maps.
I've got to create another, make it happen, get a job on a lobster
boat. It's a matter of life and death. Not really. But it's a matter
of the life of this stupid journal. I've come to the end of my
notebook and have to get a new one now, so I'm vowing that this will
be the new way—the new changed life reflected in this new fresh new
notebook, and that it will be actually interesting to read.
