Friday 13 November 1998

I'm at breakfast at The Hurst once again, how many days this week? I just can't seem to get it together to cook breakfast at home. Or else I just feel compelled to get out of my basement apartment. It's incredibly dark out today, but not raining yet. I have a feeling I'm going to get rained on before the day is over.

I can't seem to get caught up with the earth-shattering events crashing through my life lately—I've lost all sense of time, and all sense of proportion. It's been like a mythical giant has been stomping through my world, and his footprints have been forming lakes that were never there, and earthquakes and floods are creating hills where there were valleys and valleys were there were hills, deep ravines running with icy melted snowcap, and craggy volcanic peaks forming in front of my very eyes, time-lapse evolution shooting up into the clouds, creating a new no-man's land, unseen by human eyes. Oh, good, the food is here. Too much coffee and not enough food and I'm turning love into the Jolly Green Giant.

Oh, this kind of autobiographical writing is always such a struggle. I can't imagine anyone suffering through reading it. I guess the goal is to always have my notebook at hand and write about things as they are happening, and not have to go back to “three days ago” and like that. And stop writing about writing—god that must be boring. I could be like David Foster Wallace and make prodigious use of footnotes. But as much as I think he's cool and experimental and all, I still feel like footnotes would be just laziness in this case, anyway—they're a pain to deal with, to read, and it's not like they're hypertext—they're footnotes, goddamnit—no matter how you look at it, you have to leave the text and go somewhere else, and the worst thing is you have to make that decision whether to read them or not.

Thursday 12 November 1998

I'm at The Hurst for breakfast again, after not a good night's sleep, but some sleep. I was all exhilarated after watching Heather's film—the film she got back after the first weekend shooting, the rushes. We watched it while it was being transferred to video (for editing) at this super hi-tech editing facility downtown. I don't know what was more exciting, watching this fresh, newly unwatched film (what could be more exciting?) or watching Jordy on film, Heather's lead actress (she's the only thing I could imagine to give watching new film a run for its money as far as excitement goes). I was so wound up after that, that when I got home I had to sit out on the porch and cool off, and it was cold, and I had some hot tea and I wrote in my notebook, and I looked over at the bar. I can always see if the girl at the bar is there, because she sits in front by the window. I can see her, and who's working behind the bar, and the people coming and going. It's more interesting than any TV show ever conceived. When she's there, I always have reasons for being interested, even though it's a long way across the street, and nothing really happens and... well, more on this later.

I want to go back to the previous night—oh, hell—it's time to go to work (I always think I'm going to be able to write at work, or on my break, or at lunch, but I never do).

Thursday 12 November 1998 – 1 A.M.

I'm sitting on the front porch after a long day working, and then going to a film and video editing place with Heather to look at her film that she shot last weekend on the first weekend of shooting her movie. I all looked great. It's all very exciting. I could almost forget my own obsessions for awhile.

But now I'm back here sitting on the porch, writing in my notebook. Why? For one thing, because it just won't do to sit in my apartment and write in a notebook—I don't know why—maybe because the other writing tools are in the apartment—the computer, the typewriters. Also, there's a certain exhilaration to being out in public—even if it is just on the porch. For me, that's the way it's always been. I can write in bars, and coffee shops, diners and restaurants, laundromats and train stations—better than at home. But then also there's this other reason, which I've bean avoiding, and that's the terrible beating my heart's been taking ever since I feel in love with the girl who works at the bar, The Hurst, across the street. I say girl rather than woman, I don't know why. Because I feel like I'm in fourth grade. But I say I'm in love rather than I have a crush because I'm very serious, and it's no little thing. I think you can say you're in love with someone even if you don't tell them, and even if they're not in love with you. I think you can say that. I don't know what the rules are, but I know there aren't any rules.

It's a long story and it was easier saying I was in Portland, Maine because there wasn't any background. Now it's like I'm a complete new person. But I'm still a character. Plus, I'm kind of of afraid to talk about this stuff because it might ruin my chances ever of... Whatever—what is it that I want, anyway? I don't know. I'll just use first names, and of course this disclaimer (this is a work of fiction, etc.) and any lawyers who approach me had better do it with a pay-check and nothing like a subpoena, or you might find yourself flying (lawyers!).

Wednesday 11 November 1998

Morning, I'm at The Hurst for breakfast, not exactly on the same bar stool I was on 12 hours earlier. (I read a review of this place somewhere, they said if they had showers here you could just live here. Breakfast, lunch, dinner, beer, music, and no TV.) It's a nice feeling, somehow. Not a bad thing, like I have no other life. What would that life be, anyway, if I had it? A wife and kids. I don't know—I haven't gotten over being a kid yet, I really haven't.

I've just eaten, I have a full cup of coffee, and Billie Holiday is playing, I couldn't be more in place. I could just sit back and appreciate the little things, but I want to get back to my New Way, telling the whole truth and all. I had an interesting experience here last night. I was sitting at the bar, drinking coffee and writing in my notebook, not talking to anyone, as usual. Perfectly happy. Listening to people at open mic night. Then a bunch of people came in—all together? I don't know—but it was that kind of a whirlwind kind of thing like when someone is returning from a long absence. Plus, they were all cold and had this freshness and vitality and outdoorness radiating off of them like they just walked here from the ocean or something. (It's a two hour drive, so that's not possible—motorcycles?) I don't even know if they were all together, but there was definitely a group of people who knew each other—a short, good-looking guy who went and hugged a few people here. There was a bunch of roses produced from somewhere. The woman who checks ID's and takes money, who sits by the door, and I'll talk about later, got a vase for the roses. Were they for her? Or the people arriving? I was trying to observe, to figure out the relationships, etc., when I noticed that one of the people who came in was a woman who used to work here as a waitress when we first moved here—she was someone I always liked, and then one day she was gone, as happens with waitresses, and well, even your own co-workers. She was actually the first person in Portland that I had a kind of crush on. More like, if there was going to be someone I would have a crush on, it would be her. I couldn't really have a real crush on anyone while I was going out with Heather—it wasn't until we broke up that the complete fury of my heart was unleashed. Now, I don't even get crushes anymore—I'm beyond that. More on that later. Later—much later.

Tuesday 10 November 1998

I've thought long and hard about the new... I don't want to say rules—orientation? Let's get this over with. I'm at the Hurst in the evening, trying to get somewhere while my coffee holds out. Before my time runs out, or the spell wears off, whatever. Okay, I'm not in Portland, Maine—that's the first thing. I never was, and I can't keep up this charade any longer. I'm now in Portland, Oregon—I was all the time, actually. That is, after the Fuel Tour was over. I came back here instead of going to Portland, Maine. Heather and I broke up shortly afterwards. I moved to a room on the other side of town for six months, and I was going crazy, so I started this journal—I mean, I already had a journal, you know, like my whole life—but I said I was in Portland, Maine, and started to call it the Lobster Bible. I had been going to a therapist for six months or a year previously, and that was really helping me a lot, but then my insurance coverage ran out and I needed to do something, so I kind of really went crazy within the framework of “The Lobster Bible,” my therapy journal. Therapy for the price of a notebook and a pen. That's what I told a waitress here yesterday at breakfast who asked me what I was writing. It's only half true. This is also part of my proposed 10,000 page novel, as yet unnamed, that I started in 1989—kind of discontinued when I was sick in the early 90s from wheat poisoning and alcohol poisoning, and then decided to continue again, I believe, in the spring of 1996 when I started the job I have presently. It was initially supposed to be a 1000 page novel, but I decided that was too limiting. Anyway, here it is in part—hopefully it will just be an organic continuous endless mess but not too much of a mess to read.

Monday 9 November 1998 – Portland

No line should be wasted, no time should be wasted, no page should be wasted, it's a good day. I saw Velvet Goldmine yesterday, and I think it was an ingenious way to present history and biography in a movie. It probably has more real history than if you did a straight bio and tried to be true to the facts, names, and places, and all that, which is, of course, impossible. Especially in a movie. So, in changing the names and making it all a fictional story, it's able to get at the truth much more effectively, I think—and avoid lawsuits!

That said, it's probably not a good time to bring this up, but I've decided to change my entire philosophy, focus, rules, locus, nexis, sexis, plexus, what-is and etc. what have you, of this project, alas with this new notebook. And I know the reader doesn't give a damn about this notebook, because if you are having the fortune or misfortune to read it, it is hopefully in a magazine format (and not furtively, without my knowledge!) all typeset with the misspellings fixed and the handwriting a bad memory. But it is a new beginning, because last night, while sitting in the bar attempting to write, finishing out my pages of the old notebook, I came to the realization that it just wasn't working anymore. I was left with nowhere to go. Rather than saying goodbye—which is one option, I made the rash decision to tell the truth. I just said that for dramatic effect—I was really telling the truth all along, but now I'm just going to stop withholding information. (This has, I want to be clear, absolutely nothing to do with Bill Clinton—and I'm sorry to even bring his name up, but it's funny to keep hearing these discussion on TV and radio about what the truth is—is it lying if you are not forthcoming with the information that you know your questioners want to hear, etc.—it seems to me it's an issue for philosophers, not Democrats and Republicans, who will no doubt make a mess of the entire thing.)

Let's begin by coming clean about a few things, and laying down the law for the new way. Not really “laying down the law,” I just like that expression, because I'll continue to change the rules as I go along because that's necessary. But just to create a new framework in which to flail around in, for myself, and also to help reorient the reader, and that's who this is all about , that is, when it's not about me.