1223
Put a cellphone in a psychotic's hand and he could fake normalcy.Jonathan Kellerman: Monster
I realized quite some time ago that these people who speak and rant at invisible companions should get a cellphone. Even if it's just a realistic toy, or a real cellphone that no longer works. They could sit there using their "cellphone" and no one would think it was anything strange.
There was a man walking back and forth around the Rainy Day Bench on Tuesday, ranting away into (what might have been) a cellphone. "I'm going to fire him, he's a shit!" he said.
Next day, without a cellphone, I said, "knock it off! just forget about it!". I was speaking to Lady Grey who came late to lunch on Third Wednesday and had nothing to eat but the scraps from her children. So she sat at the top of the wall and used her wonderful Cleopatra eyes trying to mesmerize me into going to buy more food.
No doubt about it. One reason I ran into financial difficulties in April was those cats, buying them extra rations almost every day. I must adjust my thinking, stop seeing them as adorable feline creatures, instead see them as homeless bums. No way I would spend as much money daily as I do on them for some human bum.
I took it right down to the line this time. Despite The Banker's help, I had eleven cents in cash, about seven dollars in foodstamps. (Oh well, neither I nor the felines would have starved had the SocSec check been late, but I might have died from thirst.) Mercifully, it wasn't.
But evidently, I had my last $1.99 beer on Tuesday's trip to Chinatown. Now even there the price has risen to $2.29. Overnight.
There has been a ranter, without enough sense to get a cellphone, who has recently come to the Rainy Day Beach area each evening. He lectures the setting sun. One evening I'd had a third beer (NOT a good idea) and made fun of him, jeered, in other words. He was apparently offended because he has since maintained quite some distance between me and my usual bench. Gott sei dank, his rantings can't be heard from there, especially if (as usual) I am listening to late afternoon radio.
If Arianna is off promoting a new book, NPR should just cancel Left Right and Center. Without her, it's dull.
Without the Sleeptalker, Seventh Circle is dull.
Maybe I should buy cellphones for me and the Sleeptalker, we could rant away at each other from a distance.
1224
"Now I can kill myself," I told The Banker when repaying his loan on Friday morning. Well, I could hardly purposely exit this plane of existence when owing him money, could I, especially after all these years of his kindness?I had attempted to meet and repay him the day before at the Earth Day festivities on campus, at the newly christened "Sustainability Courtyard", but we failed to meet and I stomped out of the place after an excruciating hour of dreadful speeches which included a lot of hype about that "courtyard". Matt Swalinkovich (aka Makana) was supposed to have performed at 11:30. He was there, wearing a really ugly knit cap which seems to be something of a current fashion statement by young local men, but at 12:35 he still hadn't sung or played a note. This courtyard is a rather dull area between The Banker's building (I consoled him for having to work in the most ugly building on campus) and another building with a name that starts with a K (I won't attempt to spell it). Some months ago the little food/drink booth there changed to all-vegetarian and they have put in some wooden tables with benches, but it certainly isn't anything to justify the grandiose speeches I suffered through.
Missing persons.
The old couple who visited campus almost every day for years has been missing. She was looking increasingly frail. When I say "old", I am talking OLD ... like eighties, maybe even nineties. I would not have expected the survivor to have lasted much after the other one departed, as I once told the Psychologist in one of our conversations. I miss seeing them. Sweet old folks.
And Joe Guam has not been seen for weeks. When I took the bus to the mailbox on Third Wednesday, it was the first time in ages I've seen the beach park during daylight. The police seem to have loosened up a bit, because there were quite a few little "encampments" suggesting more people are living there again. But no glimpse of Joe. Of course, if he did get busted for drinking in the park, which he does (or did) every day, he'd no doubt be in jail because he wouldn't have been able to pay a fine.
In a nice contrast to the ever increasing prices of my daily needs, the used bookshop near campus has a ten-cent sale. Unfortunately, the selection is not too enticing. Either I've read them already or else they don't look like they are worth reading (no doubt explaining the bargain offer). In the latter category was a novel by Michael Korda about JFK and Marilyn. By page 28 I said, I don't need to read this, and threw it in the trash. But Stephen Coulter's The Chateau was entertaining, an historical novel about an American woman who married a Frenchman and went off to live in the Bordeaux area of France, among some very unpleasant French persons. (And the French are surely world champions at being unpleasant.) (Don't take that personally, French readers, or else take it as a compliment.)
Meanwhile, back on the ranch ... errr, the campus ... when I see one of them, I think "adorable!". When I see the two of them together, I think "ADORABLE!" But then people have no doubt been thinking that from the day they were born. We have identical twins on campus, Japanese lads. Indeed, adorable.
Sigh. As Gertrude Stein said, "my life, my long life ..."
1225
Missing persons. Amusing, that on the morning after I had written about the missing Joe Guam, I saw him early in the mall. He looked even more bedraggled than usual.And that other missing person, the most important one, was, I am 99 percent sure, in the game on Saturday, incognito. I tried numerous gambits to remove his mask but failed. Two other players said publicly it was the Sleeptalker, with no admission from him either. Unless he plays absolutely silently, he has such a unique style he really can't hide. But even though he so coyly remained anonymous, it was good to know he's okay.
I listened to the first act of "Die Gotterdammerung" on Saturday, but that was enough Wagner for me. Seemed like a decent performance. Later I wrote to Felix on one of the five postcards I sent him on the weekend, Richard Wagner was a shameless hussy.
On other cards I said: I've gone manic (as if you couldn't guess) and I'm too old for this. True, too true.
(That was on the other side of the cards, with the main side being some stuff the Sleeptalker and I did together beginning last year, to which I invited Felix's contribution.)
One thing I'll really miss about not having the campus locker is the ability, when I can spare four quarters, to get the CD player or the tape machine out on a whim to listen to something from my small, but choice, selection of recorded music. I did that on Sunday, listening to "Four Saints in Three Acts". What a work of genius that is.
1226
I inhaled Danny's scent while I still held him close, the musky odor that comes when your last shower and dose of deodorant have worn off and you start to smell human again. It was wildly intoxicating, better than any cologne.John Morgan Wilson: Revision of Justice
Synchronicity. I was thinking at the Black Hole, the night before reading that, when a man came out of the showers reeking of artificial scent, I'd rather smell good old-fashioned B.O. than these chemicals. Although it would be much better if I didn't feel wild intoxication at the Black Hole, for any reason.
Unless you suffer from homophobia, I thoroughly recommend Wilson's novel. Off-beat, but admirable.
It's strange. As I grow older, all the senses deteriorate except smell.
manic depressive
I don't much like the term but I suppose it's a fairly accurate description. When you are younger, if you are a manic depressive type, you can go with a manic swing, let yourself get somewhat crazy, lose friends, screw up your life, at least temporarily. When you get older, it is just exhausting. You have to be careful every moment. Like I recently said, "I'm too old for this."
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