Tuesday, February 5, 2019

Sunday 8 November 1998

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.

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