January 12, 2014

Went to the studio early and painted. The heaviest rain came while I was there and as I stood and watched, water came through the wall and the shoddy window frame and flooded me. I rushed around trying to get everything off the floor. One hole in the wall was bubbling like a woodland spring. Mitch rammed something down a pipe from the roof, and the obstruction went away, but he had to do it twice, Part of the time I was on the phone with Verizon, trying to get a phony charge off my bill, one I had been hollering about since 2011. It worked this time. Lady on the phone said, “Well, why did you pay for a service you weren’t receiving for all these years?” I said, “Because I called four times and you ignored me each time.” Even as I said it I realized how fatalistic I have become, assuming after the first couple of tries that it was a burden I was meant to bear and that calling again and again was rebelling against fate, futile and pointless. But it worked this time. Let it be a lesson to me. Estimated cost: $3422.

Afternoon at Tom’s watching football to celebrate his birthday. It was a good time. I’m usually uncomfortable in such a situation– child-heavy families, all known to each other, me a virtual stranger-- but I stayed long enough this time to get used to and to like everybody. Many of the people Tom talks about, and I was able to fit faces with narrative. His brother-in-law Bill seemed perfect to me, handsome and funny and a beamingly benevolent father. His little boy said, “If you do such-and-such for me, I’ll give you a hug.”

Woke from a dream of going to work through a colossal mall. I was looking for a place in the mall to sit down and write in the diary I carry with me. I’d been to a theater performance the night before, and one of the theater staff recalled a play of mine once done there, and said, “Oh, I remember that. We regretted doing it. It had no life.” I wanted to find a place to write so I could refute him in my diary.

Threw my jaw out biting down on something wrong, and was convinced through the evening that troubled muscles were actually jaw cancer. The cancer seems miraculously healed.

Affectless morning. I might have woken in a cardboard box.