Tuesday, December 7

I got up and wrote on my book on Sunday, then I went to The Red Bar.

Brenda stayed at home. She had some catching up to do.

Walker Percy says sometimes you'll be writing along in a book, starting out, and it's like you're in a car on a roller coaster, and you reach the bottom of a hill and go on through, on momentum, and then, just as you begin to flag, and sink backwards, a hook catches the bottom of the car, and lifts it to the next peak.

It drags you along.

Sometimes a book will hurl you off into space, like an atlatl throwing a spear. You go off the rails.

I saw Balder and the boys. I saw friends. Members of the Buzzard Cult.

I bought a loaf of French bread at Modica Market, in Seaside, on the way home. Brenda made a spaghetti sauce. We ate supper and watched Book Notes.

The last Book Notes. Three hours with Tom Wolfe.

I read my book about the Sandy Creek murders. Brenda taped a Peter Sellers biopic on HBO. We've been getting HBO since Hurricane Ivan.

There was a good fight on Saturday night.

Marco Antonio Barrera beat Erik Morales in a close fight.

I said something about having CRS, and Brenda said, "You're drinking too much. Drinking kills brain cells."

Can't remember shit.

I went 20 years without drinking. 1977 to 1997. Then I tried some controlled drinking, from 1977 to 2004. Time to stop drinking again.

Hemingway didn't think he was a rummy. But he had a comb-over.

I don't have all that many brain cells left to lose.

I get aphasia, and a confused chimp expression.

At least I haven't been caught fucking a pretzel. Or muttering the Senility Prayer.

I have to go to work today.

It's Monday morning.

I usually write a day ahead.

I got a lot done this weekend.

I have made notes on the rest of the book.

If I had two weeks, I could stay at home and write it.

As Brenda said when I was writing Playing Hurt, at home, on a day I was snowed in, from my job as an electrician's helper, "Well, Jack, you don't have two weeks. Take two months."