An entry in which I spend an inordinate amount of time looking in the mirror by the light of fancy fancy candles
Wednesday, Jun. 22, 2005 - 20:50

I have returned and it was a life-changing trip:

1. I saw Star Wars and have decided to go over to the dark side. The years I've spent dedicated to the light side haven't paid off AT ALL. But with the dark side I will have so much power, it will be awesome.

2. I bought a book by Gertrude Stein and I'm sorry, forgive me, yes I do have a B.A. in English but I only had to take a few (terrible horrible unbearable godawful) literature classes so I don't know who the fuck Gertrude Stein was, I had no idea, I still don't, but I got this book for a dollar, Everybody's Autobiography. Two things about this:

A. Whisper, if you haven't already read some of her stuff, you should because her writing TOTALLY REMINDS ME OF YOURS, or your writing totally remind me of hers, whichever.

B. I don't read, I don't care about reading. [I do read, I'm always in the middle of a book, but it's been years since I laid in bed reading a book.] [That's a lie too, I did that with the da Vinci Code last fall, and I also did that with Harry Potter last winter.] [I just mean, some people consume books and I don't.] So, I don't care about reading, but I pretend to be a "writer". But then I find some writers who I LOVE, I ADORE their writing, they delight me. And then I get a little freaked out because I think that maybe I'll start copying them, that I'll lose my own voice and start using theirs, that I'll be a stupid stupid copycat fake, and it sort of freaks me out. So, I wonder, I write all the time and I think that in the last couple years I've developed a certain style or voice that comes naturally to me and I'm comfortable with it, maybe it's okay I don't read. HOWEVER, it just occurred to me that reading more would be good for me because it would challenge me, especially with good interesting writers.

But I never wrote about robots until after I read that one guy. Um, Kurt Vonnegut.

That's a lie too! Oh, no it's not. I was going to say that I've never written about robots, but I have in this diary. So never mind.

So, anyway, I read a few pages of Everybody's Autobiography and LOVED it and then wondered if I should stop reading so that I don't start copying her.

But I'm still not even halfway through Nicole Kidman's Waist and it's going to take me YEARS to finish that big long motherfucker so I'll never even get a chance to read Gertrude Stein anyway, I will DIE reading the Waist book.

But if I ever did it would be life-changing.

What else, what else what else, oh yes, at work I started a newsletter, an illegal illicit newsletter, and it's had tremendous success and someone was writing to me today about writing and stuff and I'm like, well, this is just my day job, I "am" a "writer" - and now that I think about it, I'm so idiotic, I'm just going to stop talking about this.

3. It's a good thing I left town when I did because my nose was caught up in a bad scene here, the black tar heroin of the nasal world: nasal spray. My nose was stuffy so I bought this nose spray and my nose instantly became addicted to it, she couldn't breathe without it, but she could never get the same breezy thoroughfare effect as the first time. And every 12 hours, as soon as the nose spray wore off, she'd become completely blocked off, unpassable, it was terrible and unbreatheable. And: you could only use the nose spray for 3 days or else your nose would explode, and I'd used it 3 days and there was no end in sight. But then my nose and I jetted off and she quit cold turkey and hasn't gone back on the smack yet since we've been back. So, it's tough, but I'm proud of the progress she's made, and we'll see how it goes, we'll just play it by ear.

Also, my brain had become addicted to the word games at m-w.com. She would dream about the games, she would wake up and think about them. It was annoying and I couldn't make her shut up about her stupid games. But the trip seems to have cured that, too.

4. I got caught up on old grad school friends and enemies: Friend 1, Friend 2, New Girl, and Mr. Knowitall. Guess what! Mr. Knowitall got kicked out! He got kicked out! Yay! That motherfucker! He was such a fucking stupid stupid annoying moron. And he got kicked out, ha ha!

Yeah, blah blah blah, the end.