1266

As always, when one of the Boys arrive, I put down my book. And, as always, if it's Tanioka, he picks up the book and examines it. (One Hundred Years of Solitude). "You read so many books," he said, "you should write one." Not a good suggestion, when I'm reading Garcia Marquez. No chance of getting into that pantheon.

Tanioka made a brief visit to campus on the morning after the holiday weekend to re-pay the five dollars he had borrowed the last time I saw him. Thinking about it later, I had to smile at the idea that Angelo would make such an effort to re-pay a "loan". Uh-huh, about as much chance as me writing as beautifully as Garcia Marquez (even in translation).

I was strangely restless on the holiday weekend, had a difficult time settling down to do anything. But I did finish Great Expectations which I found at the State Library on Thursday. Poor old Havisham.

Then a Christmas in September box arrived. It included a number of cans of Fancy Feast for the furry ones! Yikes. They seemed to love the things but I hope it didn't give them ideas above their station. For those of you who are unfamiliar with the feeding of cats, Fancy Feast comes in cans about half the size of ordinary catfood and costs twice as much as I usually pay to feed the critters. They can't expect those in their diet very often.

Greedy Andrew is trying to counteract his younger siblings by grabbing as much as he can and running off with it. He almost managed to carry an entire can's worth of Fancy Feast, so I took care to split it up after his first attempt. Can't really blame him since the little ones are so fierce about not sharing.

Also in that overly-generous box was Jonathan Franzen's The Corrections, another beautifully written novel but not easy reading, especially since one of the main characters was dying, had Parkinson's, was incontinent and wore adult diapers. Errrr ....

When I saw Rocky on Sunday morning, he said "haven't seen you in so long I was afraid you had died!" Errrr ...

"You're shaking again," said the Sleeptalker.

And in the box was Dave Eggers' You Shall Know Our Velocity, a surreal novel about two young men, a bit like the film Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle but on a global scale.

There was a lengthy, amusing letter from Felix in the mailbox, too. He disliked the Candide even more than I did, and didn't like the performance of Norma from the Washington National Opera which I found quite touching. But then he has a huge library of recorded music, so hearing Bellini isn't as special to him as it is to me. I missed the opera on Saturday this week because I just wasn't in the mood for flying mice.

I wasn't much in the mood for anything on the holiday weekend, despite the good reading, and a pleasant lunch provided by Helen R on Labor Day. Where I felt so "shakey" I had some trouble getting the food from the shared Chinese "family-style" dishes to my plate and the glass of iced tea seemed extraordinarily heavy. No, I don't need to read books like The Corrections because I'm living it.

Oh well, better than being Havisham.

1267

"'Make sure things is right at home first,' I told him. 'If things ain't right at home, you won't make them right anywhere else. You're like to do more harm than good.'"
Gail Godwin: A Mother and Two Daughters

A shame no one told Bush2 that.

Felix apologized in his letter for complaining so much about money matters. No need whatever for apologies. Such thoughts play far too big a role for all us old folks. I was puzzled when I got a bill for the postbox due in September and also one for LavaNet. I pay each three months at a time. How had they become synchronized? Well, evidently I'd had an email invoice from LavaNet in August. I didn't see it, or maybe I deleted it in a fit of getting rid of junkmail. So now I have to pay both in the same month. The same month in which I must buy a new bag because the current one is literally falling apart, despite my continued repairs with needle and thread. The same month in which I must buy new shorts because the ones I'm wearing are two months old and I am sick of them.

Speaking of those shorts, which are dark gray or grey. What is the difference between "gray" and "grey"? Well, I bought a dark gray/grey tee shirt which seemed okay with the shorts under the lights of the department store. But in daylight they just didn't go well together at all. When I told Helen R I was depressed by the combination, she looked at me as if I were crazy (which I probably am). So I quickly said, "if that's the worst thing in my life, I can't complain." But I did go to the discount clothing store on the following Tuesday (old folks discount day) and bought a black tee shirt for $1.97. Nevertheless, the shorts must be replaced.

This is the second Godwin book I've read. She's really very good.

1268

Most of the time, it really isn't that bad at the Black Hole. I've no objection at all to sleeping on a three-inch-thick mat, or even on the concrete floor if that should happen. But sometimes it really is awful. It began to rain off and on Saturday, the eleventh of September, although fortunately not until after the annual Aloha Floral Parade had completed its journey (no, I didn't go watch it). But late afternoon, early evening, yes, quite wet. So of course the Black Hole was filled to capacity.

I was far too engrossed in Prairie Home Companion and arrived later than I should have. Had not much choice of places to park for the night. As it turned out, between TWO thrashers, one of whom also snored. Oh boy, what a lovely night. I kept looking for someplace to move to, didn't find one until about four in the morning. One of the thrashers threw his feet and arm over me, the other dumped his rather large knees on me ... and he was the kind who gets mad because he ends up on top of you. (He was also the one who snored.)

Even more annoying, because it has been the season of truly strange dreams, and I was looking forward to more of them without undesirable creatures throwing their body parts on me.. There was the woman who had some very serious problem with one eye, the eyeball more or less hanging out of her face, dangling from some white thread-like things (yeukh). There was the man who grabbed a little zebra dove, put it in his mouth, chewed a couple of times and swallowed (yeukh!!). And there were two glass rabbits, a big one and a baby, in the bed with me. The big one turned into a white cat, lept off the bed and made a puddle on the floor, then jumped back into bed with me. The puddle kept expanding and expanding. My roommate, in a bed on the other side of the room, woke up. I said, "don't you notice anything strange about the room?" He didn't ... until he stepped into the lake.

Poor non-dream-life pussycats are enduring human food in this x equals time but didn't seem to be too unhappy with their sardines on Sunday morning.

1269

A really interesting book could be compiled from my omissions and I think I could promise that it would prove a Best Seller.
I know I can promise that it will never be written.

Graham Robertson: Life Was Worth Living

A raccoon was presumed to have witnessed a murder. Some law enforcement types were spreading out photographs of the possible perpetrator, attempting to get the raccoon to identify the murderer by putting its paw on the appropriate photo.

(Whether I am crazy or not in waking life is up to debate, but I've gone totally loony in dream life.)

And, crazy or not, I guess I must be looking as old and fragile as I've felt recently because the Sleeptalker was once again concerned about my mortality. "I don't want you to die," he said on Thursday evening when he arrived at the mall and talked with me for awhile. Well, I'm sorry, dear boy, but it's going to happen and I surely do hope it happens to me before it happens to you.

To consult the I Ching, one method uses three coins. Perhaps I've found another coin method. Count the coins in your pocket. On the morning of Third Wednesday, it was fourteen pennies. I stopped worrying about whether the SocSec check would be in the mailbox.

1270

I've long admired Frederick Forsythe and his ability to write hugely successful, engrossing novels about Nazis and Cold War machinations, etc., even though his material wasn't really stuff I cared much about, but it wasn't until I found his collection of short stories, No Comebacks, that I admired him as a writer.

I also recommend John Cheever's Falconer, don't know how it has escaped my attention all this time, since I do think Cheever is one of our greatest American writers. This book confirms my opinion.

Helen R. and I went to see Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow at its first showing in Honolulu on the last Friday of summer. As usual, it is discussed on hawaiithreads.com.

Yes, the Summer of the Monkey has ended, or is about to, as I write. Of course, I am a ghostwriter. deathclock.com tells me I died in December, 1990.

So there can only be one question. Is this heaven or is this hell?

the tales