Q: Well, the holidays are over. You are back at work.

What are you up to?

A: Owen played with Lisa and Bobby Steeno at Pandora's, and made enough money to drive home on.

He took some Saunders Brothers CDs by Big Mama's Hula Girl Gallery, and Debbie agreed to sell them. She took some of his faux-fauve paintings, too.

I told Owen I called what he was doing faux-fauve and he thought about it, then said, "Not yet. Maybe three-fauve."

Stan is selling his paintings on eBay.

Let's see, I went by the post office and mailed GULF COAST BLUES to River City Publishing.

I sent Gregory Cowles, a copywriter at the New York Times Book Review, a copy of the poem I wrote about seeing the EVIL GENIUS bumper sticker in his cubicle and a picture of the cover of SQUIBS, autographed, "All best--Jack Saunders."

The postal counter person asked me who I knew at the New York Times Book Review, and I told him about seeing my bumper sticker on TV.

He said, "I didn't know you wrote bumper stickers."

I said, "Bumper stickers, coffee mugs, gimme caps. Funeral home fans. A warm-up jacket with The Beet Poet Tour embroidered on it."

I asked him if he knew an underground filmmaker was making a [secret project] about me.

He said, "No! What's its status."

I said, "Pending. It's in post-production. A [secret project] takes time."

Q: That's an understatement.

A: I started updating HEAP again.

I'm caught up at SQUIBS.

I'm going to try to write a little on SQUIBS every day and continue updating HEAP every day.

Q: That must be an odd feeling, typing up something you wrote four months ago.

A: It's about working as a custodian.

It's like Henry Miller typing up Tropic of Capricorn, about working at the telegraph company, and writing "The Plight of the Creative Artist in America" at the same time.

Nothing gets any easier. You just write more.

That's what Greg Lemond said. Nothing gets easier. You just go faster.

Q: Miller said he was the happiest man alive.

A: He was. Now I am. No money, no job, no publisher, no prospects. The happiest man alive.