Dairy

Saturday, February 26 (cont'd)

I booted up my machine this morning and found out it was Thursday. I thought it was Friday.

I asked Brenda and she confirmed it.

"What difference does it make?" she said. "You don't have to do anything."

"I was going to clean the house," I said. "On Friday."

"Now, you'll have to put it off until tomorrow," Brenda said.

"Ubba course," I said. "No sweat, GI: pretty soon payday. This is like getting a day off. I never get a day off."

Whenever Brenda and I would say we had a day off, Granny Brown would say, "I never get a day off." Whereas, to me and Brenda, she had every day off. She was retired.

"I want to smell that Murphy's oil soap on the floor," Brenda said.

Part of my deal is I am going to do the maid's work once a week.

"I've got an extra day to write," I said.

I've quit drinking beer and I'm going to stop drinking coffee on Tuesday, March 1.

I am in training.

I'm going to ride my bike and go for a walk after supper. Lose weight.

I've started eating salads, fruit and yogurt, more vegetables, more whole grains.

If anything good happens I want to be fit enough to enjoy it. If anything bad happens I want to be strong enough to deal with it.

It's easy to get out of shape, writing.

You sit in a chair listening to the FM radio and typing at a computer workstation. Making up stories and poems.

Nobody calls, you have the house to yourself.

All day.

Hunter S. Thompson's books are flying off the shelves, and he hopes to have his ashes fired out of a cannon, over the Snake River Canyon, where, halfway across, he will pull the old ripcord and float down with a duffle bag full of money, like Evel Knievel's last motorcycle jump.

"Well," he said, "as your attorney I advise you to buy a motorcycle. How else can you cover a thing like this righteously?"

"No way," I said. "Where can we get hold of a Vincent Black Shadow?"

Thompson always knew how to get his name in the papers, and committing suicide was a good way to go.

What should he have done? Hobbled around on a walker, tranked out on pain medication? Taking short steps, like Tim Conway?

I remember him throwing long, not rooster-tails, but long, touchdown spirals.

Open Book opens with a screenplay, "The Jiz Biz."

Albino Grizzly is a househusband, who has the house to himself all day, to write.

1. Interior. Albino Grizzly's living room.

An adult movie is playing on the VCR. Heavy action. Assholes and elbows. Breathing. ALBINO GRIZZLY is doing his housework. He's naked, with a dinky French maid's apron on. He has an erection that pokes the apron out like a prong. He has a feather duster in his hand and walks around the living room, dusting, glancing at the TV set, sipping on a cup of coffee. He walks over to the set, dusts the screen.

Your twat's not dusty. Nosiree.

Q: Open Book opens with "The Jiz Biz"?

A: When Will I Be Loved opens with Neve Campbell masturbating in the shower.

Moby-Dick opens "Call me Ishmael."

An old guy with a prong out in front of him is a disturbing image. Gross.

Purple, twitching, hideous.

Albino Grizzly is a leviathan of househusbands. A bear of a man.

I saw a bee-tree from the boardwalk going out into Fackahatchee Strand.

Berserker was a wearer of the bear-shirt, invincible in battle. Like the hadjo motherfucker Asi-Yaholo, or Osceola.

Go berserk.

Jack Remick compared Screed to Beowulf.

"Anglo-Saxon Rhythms in Screed." (http://www.outyourbackdoor.com/oyb8/jackremich.html.)

Beowulf translates bee-wolf, or bear.

Q: I remember Jack Neff's wife, Karol, saying, "the richness of language contributed to the imagery but the looseness of structure left me somewhat confused."

A: Just keep reading.

Skip.

Go back and read it again.

Some people get it, the first pass.

Some don't.

Is Albino Grizzly Black McGoon? Is Buck Sergeant Art Brew? I don't know.

I don't know who these people are, or why they keep changing their names.

That's what I'm trying to find out.

Q: So basically you got two years of sabbatical out of working for Lucent.

A: Yes. A year of separation pay and unemployment.

Then I worked for a year, and started paying for our house.

Then a year of the retirement pay I rolled over into an annuity.

When that's gone, I'll take a job again and finish paying for the house.

Two years out of three doesn't even interrupt my momentum. I didn't stall out. I didn't even slow down.

The wave has not receded. If anything, I have been paddling out against the waves, and now I'm ready to catch one and ride it all the way to shore.

Surfer Jack.

When I had to go TDY to Hawaii, from Japan, all my buddies in Japan called me Surfer Jack, because they knew I'd rather be in Japan than Hawaii.

I hated the Beach Boys, rock and roll, surfing, California, teen culture, pop culture, I wanted to listen to John Coltrane records and write the Great American Novel, and one day I would, and now I am, and the people who don't like it can kiss my natural white ass in Macy's window during the Thanksgiving Day parade.

Or the Rose Bowl parade, the Superbowl half-time show, the Oscars, the Grammies, I give myself a Retreating, or Disappearing Artist award and go my own way.

I'm still here, as John Hartford said about the mud-slides in California, the earthquakes, the drought, the flooding, the windstorms, the locusts, the smog, the brown-outs, Enron, Arnold.