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.