1248
Angelo made his ill-timed reappearance early Sunday morning, timing off not only because it was such an unsociably early hour (if one hadn't been up all night smoking the pipe) and, of course, in the dread x equals time when resources were far too scarce to extend any generosity. He has been in jail, a sixty-day residency this time. He's such a sweet young man and I do love him but these encounters leave me feeling somewhat depressed. He seems destined to spend the rest of his life in and out of jail, with the in time growing increasingly longer. He is just so amorally determined to get something for nothing in any way he can and regardless of the consequences.He said he was hungry. I suggested the Black Hole which would have soon started serving breakfast. But no, he is banned from there, having gone to lunch the day before. He got into an argument with an older man and ended up punching the guy, bizarrely enough because of disagreeing with the man's stance on homelessness.
A pleasant enough weekend with an emphasis Saturday on France in anticipation of the upcoming Bastille Day holiday. One hour of French music interspersed with some wicked English comic skits featured an arrangement of the national anthem by Berlioz which I'd not heard before and found most impressive. It also included a thoroughly delightful recording of "Peter and the Wolf" narrated by Jacques Brel, the most charming version I know even if I couldn't understand most of the words. Unfortunately, the performance of "Faust" from Covent Garden in the afternoon was so lacklustre I abandoned it.
I almost abandoned that Tryon novel, too, and was relieved to finish it, pleased to then discover a P.D. James book which I've missed before, Devices and Desires. Good to have some nice solid prose to read after all that highbrow nattering.
Old Grubby from the beach park has been missing all week and I wonder if he's in the hospital or dead, although I didn't see any newspaper reports about a homeless body being found. It's odd not to see him early every morning outside McDonald's but I can't say I really miss the experience. Joe Guam still shuffles over every morning to get his bottle of Steel Reserve so I assume he has decided to continue his present lifestyle with the added luxury of the SocSec money each month, the Duchess still sits on the same bench every day doing nothing, the Regular does the same in the Rainy Day Bench area, and the Queen Mum still wanders around muttering to herself. Everybody just waiting to die, I guess.
1248a
It was, as is so often happening this summer, raining for a little while (it's doing it about every three hours, remaining pleasant in between). Consequently, I was sitting on a sheltered campus bench, reading a quite delightful example of that sub-genre of fiction called, more or less, "charming little British murder mysteries", Colin Watson's Coffin Scarcely Used, what, if I recall correctly my French reader designated a "400-word book". But nevertheless charming, and I was very near the conclusion (the solution to which I had not, as is usually the case with these books, guessed).A Japanese student reclined himself on a nearby bench. Such nice hairy legs. Baggy shorts, too, so if I'd had a light source I could have seen all the way to the Promised Land. He was also reading but could have been more kind and situated himself on the bench in the opposite direction. But I am not really complaining, just wanting a powerful flashlight.
I'd been thinking, while reading the Watson book, that I could write one of these things. I think I'd make Angelo the victim, poor fellow. And through most of the novel it would seem that the Sleeptalker was the murderer, but it would in the end turn out to be Tanioka or, even more shocking, the Sleeptalker's mother!
I didn't mention Michael Lasser's wonderful show this past weekend. The songs of Arthur Johnston. Never heard of him, but I surely did know his songs, many of them written for Bing Crosby, including Crosby's first "hit", "Just One More Chance". And "Thanks", "Pennies From Heaven", etc. There was the original romantic version by a singer I don't know of "Cocktails for Two", impossible to hear without remembering the zany Spike Jones version, and a few tracks by Dick Powell. Amazing for Lasser, it was an hour of all vintage recordings. Splendid. Especially the Crosby tracks and Sophie Tucker's touchingly absurd version of "My Old Flame".
In my case, I remember the name all too well.
All this month, Prairie Home Companion will be repeats of past shows. I hadn't heard the one re-broadcast this week, but tuned in again on Sunday to hear Odetta a second time after having heard her on Saturday. I'd forgotten what a wonderful singer she is.
1249
Bastille Day 2004. A shame they abandoned the guillotine. Seems a very kind way to kill someone, much better than hanging or electrocution.On the day before, the Sleeptalker arrived in the secluded grove, to my surprise. He has very obviously been hitting that wretched pipe far too regularly since I last saw him, and he was high as a kite on the fourth of July, as the song says. I've never seem him look so thin and gaunt. For some time he said almost nothing, just kept jerking his head from one side to the other, once in awhile would look at me with those beautiful brown eyes. So we sat there for over an hour saying nothing.
Eventually we went to the library. The game had been down since Saturday and still wasn't up earlier in the day but it returned while we were there so we played for about an hour, then walked downhill to get beer, him complaining about how boring the game has become.
He said nothing about what he has been doing or how he managed to have cigarettes, a new watch, a new pipe and (presumably) filling for it. And he wouldn't say whether or not he plans to keep the court date next month. I suspect he won't. At this point, I'd be happy to know he had been sent to a re-hab center or even to jail.
I've never known any drug as awful as crystal methamphetamine in destroying people but I'm sure others, like heroin, even alcohol, have been as destructive, just never knew that many people whose lives were trashed in this way.
But how to offer some alternative?
1250
You're worrying a lot about him, aren't you ?Yes, I am. Tanioka and Angelo, even when going very heavy with that pipe, continue to eat. The Sleeptalker has my reaction, a total lack of appetite. (After all, amphetamines were used as a legitimate, and successful, diet drug for years.) Even though I did use foodstamps to buy him lunch, he only ate about half of it.
The time when you had problems with speed yourself, and decided to seek medical help, what made you take this decision ? Could he have the same kind of motive, sooner or later ?
Unlike many members of my generation, I had never experienced "speed" until the mid-Sixties. Although purists were very annoyed by the (mostly Californian) "adulteration" of LSD with speed, I was quite fond of it. "White Lightning", etc. Then an American friend sent me a bag of a hundred methamphetamine tablets, the pharmaceutical version. I am so deeply grateful that this smoked crystal version doesn't affect me in the way those little pills did, else I'd be lost for sure.
It was the "medical help" which, who, had first introduced me to those little pills, as an anti-depressant. But then the doc decided not to prescribe anymore and my illegal sources vanished. At that time, in London, it was difficult to find the stuff on the underground market. And I was beginning to feel disillusioned, realized that the promise of the drug, that the "ultimate answer" was just around the corner, lacked veracity, shall we say. I was also concerned about the physical effects, the drastic weight loss and things like cuts or scratches not healing for weeks and weeks, the extremely annoying way it made you want sex desperately but at the same time making you physically incapable of "doing it" (something it shares with the crystal version).
So I went back to the doc, and he put me on Valium.
[sigh deeply, and wish I could find some]
1251
Oh, I do hate these x equals times, not so much, really, because of having no money but for being so repetitively stupid. About $650 is not much for a month but, even so, any sensible man could at least discipline himself to make it last more or less equally throughout a month. Even Joe Guam, who now gets more money each month than I do, still walks for about half an hour each morning to buy cheaper beer and cigarettes. Only saves about a dollar, but do I do that? No.I am so lazy. Always have been.
So the furry ones are enduring human food (and even that is in jeopardy since foodstamps are running on empty, so empty that they will get food and I shall rely upon abandoned food until Third Wednesday).
This is, indeed, a disastrous x equals time. Oh well, on Saturday I shall be able to say x equals = 3 and we should all be able to survive that (after all, on Sunday the Cat Lady will give them food so if necessary I can skip that day). I could just email her and ask her to feed them until Wednesday, but what am I going to say ... I spent too much money on my boyfriend for his birthday?
At least so far, the Goddess of Abandoned Food has been generous.
The Black Hole, not helping at all, has been pretty awful this week. On Wednesday night they announced at about 8:30 that they had run out of mats. "If you want to sleep here tonight, you will have to sleep on the floor." Since it was pouring rain outside, quite a few people slept on the floor. On Thursday night, that Alcoholics Anonymous meeting ran late, as often happens. It's so stupid to have that there on Thursday nights from 7-8. Lots of people standing outside waiting to get in, and then the poor alcoholics have to run the gauntlet when they (finally) depart, listening to snide comments. Fortunately I did get there early enough both nights so that on Wednesday I did get a mat and on Thursday just had to stand in line for awhile to get one and sleep in the "early wake-up" area. For only the second time, I mis-read my watch, thought it said ten after five so got up and left, didn't discover until I got on a bus that I had actually left at ten after four. Early wake-up, indeed.
Jonathan Cainer promises: This weekend, as the opposition of Mars and Neptune's opposition begins to lose its intensity, clarity will return.
1252
I don't make much use of that interesting verb "excoriate", but Andrew was thoroughly excoriated on Saturday morning. Silently by me, very vocally by a flock of mynah birds swooping over him. I am sure they used every nasty word in the mynah vocabulary. He actually managed to catch one of them! They are such savvy, punk birds I never thought one of them would be dumb enough to get caught by the most clever cat, never mind a stalker as silly and impatient as Andrew.Oh well, time to take some action here, before I have to re-label the secluded grove the Killing Ground. So I lectured Lady Grey and Andrew sternly on Sunday morning. (Anyone who knows cats also knows just how successful "lecturing" them is.) But I also took a more involved role by alarming either the birds or the cats or both when a stalker was approaching. Lady Grey gave me a very dirty look. Tough, lady, you want this old man to keep bringing you food every day, you restrict your murderous activities to when he isn't sitting there.
Makes it rather difficult to enjoy reading a book if I have to keep one eye on three or more cats in order to save stupid birds who should be more wary.
A long dormant routine had to be revived. I went to the beach park early on Saturday morning to wash my tee shirt which was beyond being endurable until Third Wednesday, and then sat there until it dried. I didn't pick a very good laundry morning because there was little breeze and too many clouds, so the drying process took longer than it would have on a better day. But then, I certainly wasn't in a hurry.
Grubby was in the park, so I assume he has been banned from the mall. It's surprising it hasn't happened sooner since he's such an unpleasant looking person with a decidedly foul aroma, and he is a blatant trash digger. The latter is no doubt the reason for the mall's apparent one-year no-trespass edict.
John Barth's The End of the Road was a very interesting uninteresting novel, to adopt the style of its main character. I'm surprised I haven't encountered it before, having long been a Barth fan. It's not one of his best and I can't recommend it even though I could easily use an entire Tale to quote interesting sentences or paragraphs from it. Ken Follett is not someone I usually read or, perhaps more accurately, the genre he specializes in is not one I usually read, but I was intrigued by the setting of Cairo in the early 40s so did read, and enjoy, The Key to Rebecca. This kind of yarn set in WW2 is certainly preferable to similar productions during the so-called Cold War era. And during a visit to the State Library on Saturday I was delighted to find a volume containing two Ellery Queen novels. Haven't read him in decades even though he was once one of my favorites. So many contemporary best-sellers in the same style owe him a lot.
And x=2, Gott sei dank.
1253
Halfway House (1936) and The Four of Hearts (1938) by Ellery Queen. Delightful, both of them. And really, that favored fictional character of mine, Archie McNally, is so directly connected. Has anyone written a book discussing the history of American "detective stories"? (Hmmm, what else could it be called, that genre?) Whatever, re-reading these two makes me want to find all of Ellery Queen's books and enjoy them again. I say "re-reading" although I'm not sure, certainly remember nothing of them, but there was a time when I tried to find and read all of his books, so I am fairly sure this is not the first time.I'm very sure it's not the first time I've read the Tales from the Fourth Year but I have been re-reading some from the late 600's. I am happy that I've recently written much shorter Tales. Some of those are far too verbose, especially the ones wrestling over my feelings about the Sleeptalker. But re-reading them did remind me how sweet it was to have the Cherub as a character in those days.
And how sweet it was to have somewhere to sleep other than the wretched Black Hole. I got one of those "you have to have a shower" young men on Sunday night when I just wanted to lie down and sleep. I think that's part of the secret. These workers, no doubt getting lousy paychecks, resent people who arrive and just want to sleep, when they have to (supposedly) stay awake all night to keep watch. So after I had settled down to sleep, he told me I had to have a shower before I could sleep. There are, I read, shelters on the mainland which make it a condition, everyone must shower first. But at least they hand out soap and a towel. I am, of course, grateful the Black Hole doesn't go to that extreme, but it does at least eliminate discrimination, everyone has to do it. So far as I noticed, I was the only victim of this silly young man's need to exert his "power". Oh well, a shower didn't kill me. Unfortunately.
The weekend was rather dull, as weekends before Third Wednesday tend to be. I didn't especially want to hear Weber's "Oberon", so didn't, the Prairie Home Companion was a repeat which I've already complained about in the Tales a few years ago, and Lasser's hour of theatre music was devoted to songs about dancing. As he said, there are "thousands" of such songs, so why he picked so many dull examples, I don't know, nor do I know why it was almost all lame contemporary recordings. But at least there was one track by Noel Coward and one by Crosby ("Dancing in the Dark") which left the contest open as to which of them was the most camp entertainer of the twentieth century.
One reason I just wanted to go to sleep was because dream life has been so much more interesting than waking life in recent weeks. Life goes on, within and without you ...
1254
I was waiting for the bus to the Black Hole when a lady of a certain age asked, "are you homeless?" I admitted that I was and she gave me five dollars. Since it was the day after Third Wednesday, I really didn't need it, but assumed she'd feel better for having been charitable and so put it into the feed-the-furry-ones budget.The evening before Third Wednesday was Bad Boys night at the Black Hole. The Sleeptalker was sitting on a bench in the outside courtyard. I hope that meant he had kept his appointment with the Public Defender earlier. I just waved to him in passing. Tanioka was on his mat in his oddly-preferred spot right by the entrance (far too busy a place for me to want it), reading a book. Upstairs, Mondo was settling on his mat in front of the television.
And Third Wednesday, praise all the gods, found that brown envelope in the mailbox. I had $1.44 in cash and $1.25 in foodstamps. If that check had been late, I would have cried and six cats would have gone hungry.
1255
intermission
"What does that mean?" asked the Sleeptalker.I thought it endearing that he didn't know what the word meant
and was honest enough to admit it.
He's had a job, working outdoors, as one could see from his
handsome tan.
A dirty one, as one could see from his grubby clothes.
"Digging holes," he said.
"How have you been?" he asked.
I, too, had to be honest and say, not very well.
I've been a bit depressed.
He showed me his current notebook, but from a distance so I could see the drawings but not read the words. Two spheres, delicately shaded to suggest three-dimensions, and a striking drawing of his hand holding a pencil. Instantly brought Durer to mind.
Good reading:
Walker Percy: Love in the Ruins
John O'Hara: The Lockwood Concern
Barbara Pym: Glass of Blessings
Nancy Mitford: Madame de Pompadour
Good listening:
The splendid performance of "Rigoletto" from the Houston Grand Opera.
Michael Lasser's hour of songs from the "Great Depression"
and, almost as good, his hour of songs the following week about "love letters".
Homeless encouraged to vote
I certainly would NOT vote for Bush2, but I cannot vote for Kerry, either
so, no thanks, not this time.
I went to the Mai Tai Bar to watch the acceptance speech from the Democratic National Convention and constantly thought while watching, "I can't vote for this man." Sufficiently depressed by that, I drank more Bloody Mary's than I should have.
August surely did get off to a WET beginning as the remnants of "Hurricane Darby" swept slowly over the islands, drenching us in non-stop rain, especially on the morning of August fourth. Joe Guam complained the morning before about how heavy the rain had been during the night. Fortunately I was already inside the Black Hole before that began in earnest and it wasn't until Wednesday morning when I had to sit for hours on a sheltered campus bench and experience strong deja vu ... back to the '73 India monsoon.
Joe's new routine is to stumble by my bench in the pre-dawn hour and ask if the supermarket is open yet. It opens at six in the morning, Monday-Friday, at seven on weekends. But Joe doesn't know what day it is ...
Cartier-Bresson
On the second of August, Tanioka asked me for a cigarette when I arrived at the Black Hole. "But yesterday was your payday," I said. "No more," he replied. Uh-oh, he's run into the welfare time-limit rule? I saw him again on the sixth at the bus stop, he again asked for a cigarette. "You're a mess," I said impolitely, "need a haircut, a shave, a job." "Can't do," he said. "Well, the Sleeptalker has a job and if he can get one, anyone can." Tanioka said he'd seen the Sleeptalker. "He was looking good." He was, indeed.
Many thanks from me
and from my furry friends
for the box which arrived from
"A. Reader"
They loved the Nine Lives "Super Supper"
(now I have to find somewhere to buy the stuff)
And I am loving
Ken Bruen's The Guards
Now I know at least some of my readers are as crazy as I am.
Have to be crazy to mail catfood from Hilo to Honolulu.
1256
A new Bad Boy?A young man I have not before seen on campus asked me as I left Hamilton Library if he could "bum a cigarette". Very bad form, on campus, where one is supposed to at least offer to buy one. Nevertheless, my tobacco-bum policy is, if it's a friend, of course, I give him one, if I have any. If it's a young man, even if not that cute, I give him one. Anyone else need not apply.
"Would you do me a favor?" he asked, telling me his name (one of the Apostles). He wanted me to buy him alcohol, he would pay for it. I said, "I'll buy you a beer at the Garden." No, he wanted me to walk downhill with him and buy a bottle of whiskey! (Shades of the Cherub.)
No, sorry, I was not walking downhill. But I won't be at all surprised if I see this young Apostle again.
I was looking forward to the broadcast of Handel's "Orlando" but when it arrived I was bored after half an hour. I'm too old, not that much time left in this life, and I'm not going to spend any of it being bored if I can evade it. So I went back to the (yes, not exaggerating) extraordinary book I was reading, Patrick Carey's True History of the Kelly Gang.
Now that Ned was a Bad Boy I no doubt would have loved, indeed.
the tales