It is a gray day. I sit on my couch in a darkened house and watch the wind and light rain buffet the avocado trees. I have been good for two or three hours of activity in town each day and then hit the wall and have to come home and lie down. I stopped at the library on the way home and looked for a few diversions to pass the time. I settled on an old friend, the first paperback I ever bought as a precocious adolescent, Nine Stories by J.D. Salinger and a japanese subtitled movie thing that I don't have energy yet to tackle. Do you ever reread books that you loved in your youth and past and find that the meanings have totally changed. Salinger's The Laughing Man from this collection had great impact on me as a kid. I am savoring these one by one and will see very shortly if it still has an effect.
We had an eleven thousand book library as a child that got donated to a school and we read everything, Bruce Catton to Tolkein to Roth. Not having a television, my brother Buzz and I memorized the World Book one summer. I went through a Hesse phase at 13 or 14, remember great upwellings of sadness when I read Narcissus and Goldmund and wonder at Magister Ludi but thought they were total shit after an adult reread. The things you think you know...
Big Dave came down with his boys to Legoland yesterday and we went out for sushi with Leslie. My friend Brigitte was there with her hubby Morgan and their high powered Jewish producer friend Roz, also from Chicago. Dave and Roz had never met, they are both brilliant type a heavy duty former Microsoft computer mochers and after a short round of requisite butt sniffing, started into a competitive bout of launches and past successes. I must say that she was far more gracious and less self aggrandizing than Dave but it was funny to watch. The male and female version of the same organism sitting at the same sushi bar. Really capable productive people are enchanting and both of these two have made it happen again and again.
She even talked about hiring me to write for one or two of her current projects but I told her that she might want to read me first as I am pretty disjointed at present and would need to tighten up my shit considerably to become a "writer". But maybe she will read me and lord knows I can write if nothing else.
I am trying to give myself a serious break and the time to heal but it's weird not to have my nose to the grindstone and not be continuously pushing to make something happen. Luxury of illness and supportive friends and family that tell me that they will not let me fall.
I am craving ice cream and must call my wife so that she will bring home a quart for a fix. I have been following the nasty give and take between the Palins and Levi Johnston with such guilty pleasure that I feel like my dad found my porn stash. Real People Magazine stuff, the sanctimonious Eliza from the gutter having to confront all of those folks who know where the bodies are buried. The illegitimate grandchild, like a bomb descending on her storybook family, you couldn't make this stuff up.
I figured out last night that some of my discomfort arose from a rash on my torso from adhesive residue. Leslie got up in the middle of the night and we used some special swabs and removed what we could and I feel better. I saw Doctor Reynolds, a pulmonary specialist, at the coffee shop, and he said that everything appears to be healing well. Thursday I yank the catheter and see if the prostatitis goes away.
Feels good to blather. Catch you soon.
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