Today it was 5:00, I know you’re wondering.  (What time I woke up).  I’ve got Hemingway and cocktails on the brain. 

Last night I dined with Barbara and Arthur and as usual it was lovely and, as usual, it made me long for New York.   For one thing, B. and A. have a terrace on 53rd street and it’s as long as the apartment and we should all be there summer nights discussing political scandals and baseball.  Also, when B. and A. are in town I pass time the way summer time should be passed.

In the summer, every day, there should be exercise and work and then proper cocktail hours should be observed where dialogue is, naturally, clever.  Following cocktails a simple dinner — a bottle of wine, maybe, opened — and the night should end at a civil hour and the process repeated again.  That’s how summers should go.  Every day.  Unless, of course, you run marathons. 

Hem is on the brain, I’m sure due to many things.  One is P.  He told me Monday that Hem shot himself in the head to get back at his wife.  I thought that was funny.  Another is T., because for some reason I brought up ‘the line’ and now the line’s in my head and while that’s not so odd — it’s a beautiful line, it’s been in my head before — I’ve been wondering what it was that made me think of it and then bring it up.  I ramble sometimes with T.  Most of the time actually; my cherries, for instance, I talked about twice.  Still, what was it — it had to be something — that made me think of, then trot out, that line.  It’s for me to find out. 

There’s also the grandson.  He’s rewriting the memoir, which is fine I don’t care either way, it’s just in the news and probably what started the whole thing, and then somewhere in all of it I picked up Joyce Carol Oates.  She wrote a story, it is Hem on the last day.  Or the last morning, or in the days leading up to the last day — it’s fiction, it uses devices.  I read it yesterday, and then later had cocktails, and that’s why it’s all on my brain.

Next week C. is here, and we will exercise and work and observe proper hours of cocktails.  You’re welcome to observe them with us.   

I fixed it, the buzzing is gone – the anxiety, the panic, too, all of it.  (Though the shower, I’m sure, still makes that sound.)

It’s the noise, I think; activity.  I need people to be here and do things, loudly so I can hear them.  Today there’s a bunch.  No one is allowed to talk to me, but they are under strict orders to be active I have to hear things going on.  Art Tatum, too, has helped.  His hands buzz like mosquitos, there’s no piano player on earth who has touched more notes ever.  I’m in the mood for lots of notes.

Hemingway’s grandson has fiddled with a book.  The one we all really like, perhaps my favorite, the one about Paris.  I just told someone on Sunday, no less, that it’s the book with maybe the most romantic line ever – one that’s imagined as Hem waves goodbye to his wife with an adulterous arm around her best friend.   The grandson is in the bloodline of the best friend, I hope he didn’t cut the line. 

(PS:  Theresa Acocella is 21, it happened yesterday!  Can you believe it?) 

Yesterday it was the lack of noise, then this morning at 4 it was the strange ones that made me wild-eyed.  How do I snap awake so abruptly at the wrong time?  There were years where I could be groggy until noon, now here at 4:00 was a noise and there was no turning back.  I don’t like to be awake when others are not, so I tried to put off acting on it, but there were three bugs on the walls, three.  And in the end, it’s what drove me out.  Then the shower was loud, there is a terrible sound that happens when it’s on, that started Thursday.  Old houses have something new collapse daily, it’s terrifying if you dwell on it.  (I’m dwelling.)

Yesterday I had a mild sort of panic that persisted until almost 10 at night.  It hummed like mosquitos do in ears, it was bearable but not really.  There were things I did to allay it, they didn’t work.  Now this morning the humming is worse, it’s like a flock of mosquitos, or a herd of killer bees. 

I’ve taken my vitamin and drunk some milk.  I’ve watched Michael Jackson sing Billie Jean three times in a row.  I’m going to listen to the Australians next, they’re funny and their accent soothes somewhat.  It’s a cat I need, perhaps.  Meows seem calm.  A cat and a drive to the beach and maybe some mango and maybe the right song will do it and the sun’s coming out today (though sun I find sometimes disturbing).

My shampoo is from Aveda and it’s Rosemary-mint, it’s amazing.  I can still smell it a little right now and I think if maybe the whole house smelled of rosemary-mint, there’d be no panic or anxiety, it would even chase off mosquitos.  If you find things that smell of rosemary-mint, let me know.  Otherwise, write me here.   

I drank the water, I made some lunch, Deborah brought Lily and I’m still not convinced I’m real.  When Deborah comes back, which she is, she’s bringing her parents and I intend to ask them right off if they’re imagining me, I’m sure they’ll be frank.

It’s hard to do great work or even half-great when you’re not sure that you’re here, though by most counts it ought to be easier I suppose.

I’m haunted today.  Not only am I very possibly not real, but I’m haunted by images I saw, I saw them on Saturday, I want them.  There was a fly drawn on a paper at a table just following a murder and I want it.  Where did it go?  I want it right now.  I want not only the noun — the drawing — of the fly, I want the verb, too.  I want the doing it uploaded to YouTube, I want to play it when I’m colorless, I want the tall man who herds nerds … 

I’ve put the vacuum away, but the outside chairs are still askew.  I may straighten them for Deborah’s parents, it’s embarrassing to have eccentricities when they’re dull – crooked furniture’s fairly dull.  A snake collection, maybe.  I’ll let you know.    

I have Pandora stations that completely misrepresent me and I haven’t determined how to take them off.  “Country Pop” for instance, I have a station called Country Pop.  When did I start listening to Country Pop?  Not that there’s anything wrong with it.  I have Michael Buble, too, I don’t know why.  And there are more.

I’m in a colorless mood today, I feel odd.  I feel invisible, unmoored — no, imaginary, that’s how I feel.  I feel imaginary.  Like I’m not really here but instead something I’ve made up.  Perhaps I shouldn’t eat the blueberries before they’re ripe.

It’s quiet, today, it’s unsettling.  It’s so quiet that I’m afraid to make noise, you can see the predicament.   

Last summer I mowed the lawn one time, the piece on the side, and I left the lawnmower in the very middle of it.  I loved how it looked that way so I left it there for days and I’m doing a similar thing now with my vacuum.  Its cord is unwound on the floor and it’s just sitting there not put away, not in the middle of the room, but toward the side.  And I like how it looks so I’m leaving it.  There’s something about activity, I take comfort in evidence of it.  I don’t like for things to be always put away; it’s not a particularly intriguing eccentricity but it’s a start.  Don’t you think?

I’m going to drink Vitamin Water because I don’t think imaginary people drink it and this way I’ll know I exist.   In the meantime, you should be sweet and make noise.     

What can you say the day after Farrah and Michael die?  Not much, really.  Except that Farrah got screwed, don’t you think?  She’s been unjustly upstaged, this should have been her whole week.

G. is killing an ant on the couch and yelling ‘die.’  She’s yelling it loudly in a blood-curdling way like real murderers, I imagine, do.  Now it’s dead, and that’s been our morning.  

I’m picking up my Knot today, when I get it I’ll show you a picture.  I’m also going out of my mind because G. is now talking non-stop, we’ve all been together too long, we’re all going mad.  The sun today won’t help, sun fosters madness.

There are errands to run, I hate errands.  There is a book to read, Christina Nehring’s.  There’s a lot of buzz, now — it’s that time of year – on love and marriage (at least there was, before M. and F. died).  Sandra Tsing Loh has detailed her breakup in The Atlantic, Nehring thinks complacency’s replaced passion, everyone trots out numbers again.  No one has ever really known anything why doesn’t someone write a book that says that.  It’s still the heart, more than pills or cancer or car wrecks, that kills us, blah blah blah. 

I’ll say more about it later, we’re playing Mancala.   

There was a snake by the pond yesterday.  A big one, I think it had just eaten a cat.  I have a picture but the pond’s not pretty.  When I get my new pond I’ll invite the snake back and take another picture and that’s the one I’ll show to you.

I need to find a lollipop today, a big round one, but not big like the snake.  And I also need to add water to the pool, it looks low, and there are some plants that died that I might throw away.  Jr. wants to golf later and I don’t want to until I get new clubs, these are the things we’re faced with on our return.

It’s fairly big where I live.  There are lots of different places to go in the house, there’s another little house across the patio, there’s a great big backyard, there’s a garage.  Everyone who lives here, though — bugs and animals alike – is currently within two feet of me.  The summer might be long.  An interesting ailment would help.  All my ailments are run-of-the-mill, they’re dull.

There’s little, really, to say but I do have a joke: 

What did the embarrassed traffic light say?

“Don’t look!  I’m changing.”

(See you tomorrow.) 

Tomorrow, barring locusts or floods or something terrible with the transmission, I’ll be home.   Not just me, but all five of us:  G., Jr., John and Janis, too.  I won just over three bucks in 31 and met some people dressed up like animals and saw some cousins and aunts (and uncles) and that’s mostly it.  I went on three roller coaster rides, and took G., and those three things were mistakes but outside of that I made very few.   

I don’t know, I could go serious here.  I’ll try not to.  The preparing for road trips makes me anxious, I have a packing disorder for one.    The beginnings make me irritable.   Somewhere in the middle I hit my stride, then I’m melancholy by the end.  Wednesday, after John and Janis leave to go home, I’ll be crushed and soon after I’ll feel breathless from stress — there’s a lot to wrap up in a week, I’ll wrap it up.

Tonight I’m melancholy so tomorrow it’s crucial that I’m not.  I’ll prepare a lively dinner at home, we’ll laugh about stuff.   I’ll shake or stir up festive drinks and everything will be fine.  Won’t it?  I hate the ends of trips.  It might be what I do to E. and H., they’re supposed to have one more thing, you know.  E. is supposed to get away somewhere, get off the hill is what my editor said and so maybe I’ll send her on a trip, trips make you think about things.  Where should I send her?

There’s lots of work to do this summer, and C. is coming soon to do it.  She’s bringing Miss M. and Scruffy will have to cope and I’ll listen to Woody Allen at the end of work days from the pool. 

(G. and Jr. are fighting about blankets, it cured my melancholy.  I might be okay.)    

I discarded Grandma’s advice and drank the Red Bull.  I had a vitamin, too, and am back from the fitness room — it’s an eerie place at 2 am but these things can’t be dwelt on.  The point is, there’s a book due very soon and finding sleep again before finding the deaths of two baby frogs was a ridiculous idea to entertain.

There’s another problem, too, it’s music.  I’ve become stuck on Paul Simon, it literally happened days ago.  It’s not good, I don’t think, I need stuck on something else.   I need music and inspiration and it has to somehow shut out Disneyland and if you can contribute in any way to that I’ll give you a banana slug.   

(PS, no tadpole deaths yet, but a slew of missing other things.  And I just used the pretty word “calamitous.”) 

I don’t remember what I told you about books, except that I’d turned one in.  I think I omitted that it was recieved well and is due polished in the extremely near and incredibly close future.   It’s got some trouble in the final third, needs some plot points sexed up, is low on dialogue — that’s what I’m left to do.  Well, and there are themes that trail off, I need to fix them.  The volcano, for instance.  Ellen and Howard live in a square house on the top of a hill right in front of a volcano; I set it up well but don’t use it.  The tadpoles, too — set up nicely then let go. 

Tara Bauer I set up for Howard but does he do it with with Tara or doesn’t he?  I don’t tell.  Additionally, Reed is moved too early and Ellen seems nonplussed, she shouldn’t be.  And the insects, I’m not totally convinced, are appropriately placed to match the tone of their sections.  These are all things to be handled in the final third, the final third’s got some work. 

For this and other reasons (but really only this), I’m awake in a Holiday Inn Express at 2:00am. 

Working condiitons aren’t the best.  I’ve emailed, twice, the manuscript to my Kindle so I can read it in the car and twice it hasn’t appeared.  The 100 pages I printed at the house were when toner was low so what’s readable is every other line.  The same copy swallowed by Kindle was cc:d to my email to also read on the phone — again, nothing.  Intercepted, I’ll bet, by Sasquatch.

Inspiration, too, is low, it worries me.  Sunday I thought I’d send Ellen to Eureka, then yesterday I drove her through a tree — last night I gave her a part-time job at Chevron peddling samples of ExtenZe in both its liquid form and gel caps.  None of it is helping. 

The ending is perfect, I’m happy about that.  There are pages missing, though, in the final third.  When Rocky and Sally Ann die it’s a tragedy, plus a moment for Howard to shine and I can’t find that anywhere.  Months ago, you might remember, I felt unwieldy at 130k words.  I hoped to lop 40 of the k off, and I did.  It appears, though, this was done with little thought.  So tomorrow at Disneyland I’ll find a nice quiet place to go through previous drafts and find (among other things) Rocky and Sally Ann’s tragic death. 

I could do it tonight, I suppose, but there’s too much anxiety, I’d need a Red Bull and Red Bulls shouldn’t be drunk in hotel rooms past 2:00am.  My Grandmother told me that.  She was infinitely quotable.