The Boxer
(6-15 July 2001)
15 July
2001
[from Albuquerque]
-Would be cool to be in DC right now with a bunch of the
guys.
Would also have been cool to be in Beantown last night with Ariel &
Stina. But
I think that once this novel finishes, I'll be most happy I was right here trying
to
write.
-Our rabbit was killed by a raccoon last night. She was about four
& a half years
old & we'd raised her from infancy.
-After talking to seven distinct friends
(all non-local) on the phone in the past 24 hours,
I have only one question: Wasn't Ariel supposed to call me too? Maybe
the line was
too busy.
14 July
2001
[from Albuquerque]
-Getting control of my dreams would be mighty nice.
Until then,
I'll keep seeing all sorts of crazy people as I wade through schools of squid in
shallow water
which covers the graves of ancient British kings. & feel very insecure
about the whole
situation. How far from reality ARE dreams, anyway?
-Pastry Day!
-I
gotta stop
dragging my feet...
13 July
2001
[from Albuquerque]
-Time to get back to work...
-My friends rule.
Ariel & Stina called me from a Paul Simon concert they'd
spontaneously decided to go to (okay, I guess cell phones are good for SOMEthing)
& I heard
probably 2/3rds of his set, including "Sounds of Silence", "I am a
Rock",
"The Coast", & "The Boxer" in the encore. Though
there was some
static, it was the next best thing to being there & they even said there was an
empty seat.
Good times.
12 July
2001
[from Albuquerque]
-The best way to get myself up for writing more is to read
parts
of the novel I've already written!
-Almost unbelievably to me, I just did a
stastical checkup revealing that this is only the
49th day of my work on the novel. Tomorrow'll be big #50. After today,
I have 28
more days in which I'm eligible to work on the project. It doesn't seem like
much time at
all (total), but the pace now is about 3.5 pages a day overall & thus 267 total
final
projection. This, you'll note, is a substantial picking up of the pace.
Woo!
-I will start e-mailing folks again about the time that Ariela hits
town. OR
when I hit page 300, whichever happens first. I'm sorry, but this project has
really
consumed everything.
-I am so so so very tired of friends of mine telling me
that they think they're losing
respect in my eyes, or worse yet, trying to keep things from me because of possible
respect
loss. It's so irritating! Yes, if I didn't have any friends &
didn't believe in
the concept of friends, then I'd constantly be scoring points up & down about
people on my
nefarious "respectometer". But oh wait, I have friends! The
word means
something to me! AMAZING! So guess what that means? I'm here to
be supportive
of my friends, not just judge them to my self-standard! There's three
standards I have for
people: myself (least forgiving), random people (middle), & FRIENDS (MOST
forgiving)!
I think this applies to darn near everyone, but everyone's so quick to judge
me out of
this line of thought. Christ.
-Sometimes there's just adversarial behavior
in the air.
Tonight may be filed under that category.
11 July
2001
[from Albuquerque]
-What a great All-Star Game. Garcia the win, Sasaki
the save, Cal
the MVP, & Andy Pettitte blew the perfect game.
-Things, as they are wont
to do, have
180'd from 24 hours ago.
Kinda arbitrarily, but it's just the way moods & energy work. Hey,
it's a good
thing, so I'm not questioning too heavily. If only I could find some energy
to write
e-mails... so many people are owed them, but every time I write, it's just novel
& once in
a great while, this page. Anyway, at least things are better than yesterday.
I'm
really ready to finally put Part One behind me. It's gonna be longer than
150 pages,
as I'm over that line now. Wow. Hopefully not too much longer, but I'm
just feeling
better now.
-Although I must admit that the latest round of
"research" I did for
book-writing was depressing. But I try not to let it get to me. If
only we could
all make some frightening dinosaur skeletons out of the old bone structure that
haunts our
closets...
-I know Mesco was having some trepidation about making her
"Transmission" public,
but this "Forbidden" garbage is ridiculous!
-Funny how places can
trigger memory.
Lisha discusses walking out of the Harvard Science Center & suddenly I
have all these
thoughts from my past experiences there (2 in particular)... far different from her
memories,
I'm sure, but it's so funny what the mind can do without one's voluntary
participation.
-Energy surging. For once. That's good enough for me.
10 July
2001
[from Albuquerque]
-This has been a rotten rotten day, all things considered.
BLECH.
9 July
2001
[from Albuquerque]
-Getting awfully close to the 50,000 words/150 pages
threshhold. I'm
fairly sure that such a milestone will put me into personal record territory,
jumping above
& beyond the beloved terrible old "Legend of Enutrof". The
problem now is
that I'm taking so many risks in Part One that I'm worried that Part Two will be
almost dull.
It's got to be in there, & it's very important, but will it just end up
feeling like a
footnote to the book? I know once I get there I'll have a lot to say &
it will
lengthen itself out, like Part One has, but then will I have enough TIME to write
it all?
I worry like this is a child, but I NEED to finish this, more than almost
anything I've
ever asked of myself before. Ever. I really think that whether I can
finish this
novel is the make-or-break of whether I will ever be a Writer, regardless of
whether THIS work
ever gets published. I need to prove to myself, to the world, that I can put
a plot to
paper & take it to completion. I just wish it didn't make me so nervous.
Then
again, without a deadline, I'd still be sitting on page 5.
-Schneider checked
into my site for the first time in about 3 months, he said, & wondered
why he's reliving my life (see entry from yesterday). After trying to explain
it to him,
he was still unconvinced. & yet I remain fairly convinced. So, just
so you know,
Schneider disagrees with my analysis. Decide at your own discretion.
-I
made 15
freethrows in a row before John showed up, but he at one point drained 6 straight
3's.
I need to get back into more basketball... next year, the Debate Basketball
League is gonna
be big-time, with the House of Mep in order.
-Turns out the egregious charge for
"room
damage" was because they couldn't find my window screen, which I removed
within 5 hours of
moving into Pomerantz. I bet it's still in the closet, if they look...
8 July
2001
[from Albuquerque]
-Sometimes I think JP is reliving my life, a few years
later.
-Well,
this was a good night. DK & JP came over for some bridge with my Dad
& I, finally
yielding a 3160-2530 victory for DK & I over John & my Dad. DK
insisted on mixing
up the partnerships & it was a lot of fun. Things were tooth & nail
for the first
3 games on each side, though DK & I needed just 3 hands to score the first
1420
unanswered points. Then it got closer.
-IMDB is too
thorough. Scary.
-Ah, how I'm looking forward to August!
7 July
2001
[from Albuquerque]
-No such thing as coincidence.
-I always have to live
my life in such
brinkmanship. Or at least my outward life, my "work" life, my
writing life.
Would it hurt me so much to have breathing room? To get a little bit
ahead?
Maybe.
-Sometimes I think Freez & I have the same gut.
-15 pages in
the last 12 hours. Now if only there were some sort of way to keep up
THAT pace. Whoo! Just 11 more segments in Part One. This time
next week, those
11 segments better be behind me, which will leave me a little over three full weeks
to write
Part Two. That's a fair bit of pressure. But I'm enjoying this
afternoon/night/morning's work.
-Ah, the urge to rewrite history.
-Well, they
finally televise a Mariners game, but to
no joyful avail. At least we end up beating the Yanks on All-Stars 7-6.
But where is
Arthur Rhodes? Sure, Nelson's great, but he's worse. He only got on
because he's a
FORMER Yankee.
6 July
2001
[from Albuquerque]
-The most frustrating night with html ever. I knew I
should've
left well enough alone. So I tried to use FrontPage, sue me.
Apparently the
Pond won't forgive me for that, & is now refusing to
recognize my
assigned link colors, active or unviewed. ARG! If anyone thinks they
can help with
this, PLEASE let me know... I've done everything I know & it looks like the
links SHOULD
be working, they just aren't. I'm also curious to see how the new fonts
look, especially
in Netscape, since I don't use Netscape. Feedback on all these matters
appreciated.
-Okay, okay, some important things to clear up! But first,
big thanks go out to the
Hero of the Day, Alisha, for saving my page from my ONE-TIME use of FrontPage.
FrontPage
& my page clearly didn't get along, producing a font-color link disaster that's
now
thankfully over due to the efforts of Alisha. Now then, I've taken flack from
BOTH Lisha
& Mesco on this, so I want to clear it up right now. I DO know HTML!
I do NOT
use FrontPage regularly, in fact EVER before last night. I used it last night
because I was
LAZY. Not because I'm a moron. Clearly I will never make that mistake
again, given
the consequences. Also, I use 3-letter file-extensions because they're
BETTER. The
entire computer world runs on 3-letter file-extensions... .txt, .wps, .doc, .jpg...
etc. I
don't believe that HTML should be special, so I use .htm. At least I'M not
the one who
thinks it's still 4 July today!! Thus ends my (mostly jesting) rant.
Introspection, My Worst
Friend* (Current)
Ye Olde Archive (Past)
Tell me this is not the end...*
*-lyrics from an as-yet unreleased song, "The Same Old
Frontiers",
by SWClayton.