december.98
12.26.98
Only got one book for Christmas from the family. It was a cookbook...Texas Home Cooking. Not bad. Good stories deeply set inside. I'll enjoy it here in New England probably just as much as anything.
12.15.98
I sent word out about wanting books for Christmas. My family tends to think that I am crazy for lugging around so many all my life. My books are my security blanket. They say that women need men? Hah! Only men in print. well...not really...but they are more faithful...'cept when I loan them out.
12.12.98
I finally renewed my subscription to Living Blues magazine. I miss the days when it was available to me in libraries. But that was at the University of Mississippi. I still keep up with my Interview subscription. I cried when my mother discovered mine from the 80s and tossed them into a burning fire.
12.10.98
Lit reading has left me. I've been so worked up about work that I just want to blob out on the computer and surf. I've been reading every online journal I could find. Usually those that are not news-related...but they always pull me back in.
november.98
11.19.98
my friend is coming to visit for a few days. i've been reading the underground man. as well as blindness.
october.98
10.18.98
first day in a new life. read about New Haven. bus routes. various maps and schedules. read a bunch about New York. tried to anticipate much. too much. I have to get out and live.
september.98
9.1-30.98
spent my reading time interviewing and preparing to move
august.98
8.11.98
The Greenwich Village Complex A BAD artist almost always tries to conceal his incompetence by whooping up a new formula. Hence Dadaism, Vortism, and all the rest of that sort of buncombe. No really good new formula, it must be obvous, has ever come out of a bad artist -- which is to say, out of an artist who could not do good work within the old formulae. Among the so-called "modern" musicians, the only ones worthy of any respect are those who have proved their right to be revolutionaries by writing sound fugues. Among the advanced poets who now bray in every cellar the only genuinely amusing ones are those who have sound sonnets behind them. The rest are frauds -- and bores. -- Mencken, 1925 so should we be embarrassed if I disagree?
8.9.98
The capacity to blunder slightly is the real marvel of DNA. Without this special attribute, we would still be anaerobic bacteria and there would be no music. --Lewis Thomas, 'The Wonderful Mistake,' 1979.
july.98
7.10.98
one down three to go. July is going to fast. I need to move to that 26 hour day everyone is talking about. the nation spoke to me. china might not be so bad. hahahahah.
7.3.98
there was a time when i read three books a week. i'm not into the _Blue Flower_ for three days. it's only 225 pages long. do i just not like reading?
7.1.98
I saw in Louisiana a live-oak growing, All alone stood it and the moss hung down from the branches, Without any companion it grew there uttering joyous leaves of dark green, And its look, rude, unbending, lusty, made me think of myself, But I wonder'd how it could utter joyous leaves standing alone there without its friend near, for I new I could not. --Walt Whitman, I Saw in Louisiana a Live-Oak Growing
june.98
6.25.98
Prisoners at Auschwitz were also forced to be present at hangings.
6.14.98
In December 1938, in an appeal to American Jews, Leon Trotsky in a certain manner predicted the impending Jewish catastrophe. Here is what he wrote: "It is possible to imagine without difficulty what awaits the Jews at the mere outbreak of the future world war. But even without war the next development of world reaction signifies with certainty the physical extermination of the Jews." Would i have listened?
6.2.98
i read so little and of such small visions and with no point towards growth.
may.98
5.21.98
what do i want to read next? five novels in five months. god damn. what am i full of?
5.20.98
careful conclusion of another book. i put it aside and search for another. my mind is on my self. perhaps i should read about myself.
5.13.98
my birthday. mother and father do not send books. i get cards with signed notes of love in all its simplicity...never a complex moment in the fundamentalist's heart
5.2.98
the month of may. I'm old. I've outgrown my collection of books. I dont feel like reading. I don't feel like learning. I've lost my way. I'm utterly frustrated with my lot
4.28.98
i read a new word today.