Lazy Saturday

Saturday and woke up late. The alarm played slow marimbas for me at seven; I got up and moved about, then lay back down again to listen to some music. Instead, dropped off again and had strange dreams. It was something that has been recurrent lately, thematically anyway; I was somehow involved in checking in to a new dormitory room at a college somewhere. I recall something about problems with the locks on the doors – someone had broken in to my room and filled the toilet and the sink with bottles of some drug – I think it was Tylenol, but I can't be sure. At some point also, I was flying at a low altitude as someone looked on and I was explaining that I had to practice because I hadn't flown in quite a while. Then I was in a remote place, some kind of loading dock. I said "I'm lost – I don't know where I am." Then I found myself on my knees polishing a boat or surfboard. Someone handed me a brush, and when I saw that it was Laura, and she was praising how glossy I'd made the board. It was black like obsidian and very shiny. We talked for a while like old friends, and then I wandered off. It was very dark, and where I thought the road should be, there were instead thick woods. I walked further down the trail and eventually came out into what looked like a combination of a mall and an industrial park. There were two people standing in work clothes there. I told them I was lost and the woman laughed saying "Mass Ave. is right there!" I looked up, relieved to see a sign reading "Massachusetts Avenue". Then I asked the woman how far it was to Boston proper, and her companion answered "about forty five minutes" indicating the direction. I asked if there was bus service, and he said there was, and pointed across the street where a bus was just pulling in. I remember thinking that I'd have to figure out, once I was on the bus, what the transfer points were. When I crossed the street to get on the bus, I found that the bus was no longer there, but there was a station selling tickets. Just as I was about to move to the front of the line, I woke up.

Inception got one thing right - when DiCaprio's character says that you never remember the beginning of a dream – you always start someplace in the middle of the action. I wonder whether that is because the dream memory is only partial – or whether the dreams actually begin midstream. I do remember dreams though in the past where the beginning of the dream was waking up in a bed. I wandered in the dream world, unaware that I had woken up someplace other than the world I know. I followed routines that were clearly established – no hesitation, no questioning why I needed to follow the routine. Shower, shave, dress, go to kitchen, kiss wife, eat breakfast, go to work in the field. Later in the dream, I came home after working in the field, kissed the kids, had dinner, showered, went to bed with my wife, made love to her. I Woke up after going to sleep there, disappointed to find myself alone. That dream – was that the whole memory, or had I actually dreamed days before and after the events that I can remember. Was that first remembered moment waking up part of a longer dream? The oddest thing about that dream is that I never felt the disjointedness I usually do when I am dreaming, the oh gosh I have no idea how I got there why I'm doing this, I know that person but I don't know how quality. It was laid out factually – a day in the life, just not the life I know. I had other dreams in that place too – I don't know how many. I know that there were lots of fields that needed work, and I also know that the fields belonged to me. That much I know for certain. I called my wife by name in the dreams but when I woke up, I couldn't remember her name, or mine. In the dreams I was thinner, taller, handsomer. Blonde with a bushy beard. In fact there was a time when it seemed that I was actually leading two lives, and at one point I remember thinking that this side was actually the dream, and that it wasn't a very pleasant one. I more recent years I haven't remembered dreams as regularly as I did back then. I often wonder whether some of the dreams that I don't remember are dreams of being that man in that place with that wife. An old girlfriend suggested that they might be a past life memory but that doesn't seem likely. The place seemed very real, but it also didn't seem like I was in the past. The time in that dream seemed to be my time, and although the setting was different from my own life, the world seemed very much my own world, in that the gadgets, cars, even thoughts I had as this other person, were all things I can recognize. It was the modern world as I know it in waking life; I was just in a rural setting, living the pleasant life of a farmer.

The sky this morning redefined blue. I looked out the window and was entirely startled by its purity. It has since clouded up but that sapphire quality us still there, only in patches.

I was planning to use the trimmer to start cutting down the tall grass this morning, but got waylaid by my own indolence.

Everyone here is dressed for vacation – shorts, tees, sandals, the clothes I wear every day. Since it's a weekend there are more kids around, and it's noisy. Behind me there is a man with a laptop on his table, who is tying balloon animals for the kids. Strange – I looked up, and there is a kid, maybe eight or nine years old in a soccer uniform, staring at me. It's as if he's never seen a bald guy typing on a computer before. Even when I look back at him, even when I grimace, he doesn't look away, just stares as if at a fascinating bird in the zoo. Outside the wind whips the mesquite trees. I'm on level with the people going through the drive-thru, and every once in a while I'll look up to catch one of them looking at me. Usually they smile shyly and look away when I catch them. The kid isn't staring anymore. He's been joined, apparently by his parents and his little sister, and the girl is now occupying his attention. The guy behind me slipped, and his huge balloon construction hit me on the shoulder. Kids eating voraciously. Behind me and off to the left a woman in a plaid top is gesticulating wildly, trying to make a point of some kind. Her husband is shaking his head as if in agreement. The little girl with them has just put a French fry up each nostril and now she is banging on her mother's shoulder, demanding to be notices.

It looks like the rush hour is hitting its stride. The line isn't long, but it's constantly replenishing and there is a constant stream of automobiles going by the drive-in window. It's amusing to watch their hands as they pass, trying simultaneously to drive and to get the money ready, even to juggle a coupon into the mix. One guy careened wildly to the right, wheels over the curb, and now he's trying to right himself. The woman in purple is pumping her right foot as if nervous. She looks up and I have to translate what I see when she smiles, because she is wearing braces and I really don't expect to see them on someone as old as she is. When I was a kid, only kids got braces.

Thinking about braces, my tongue finds the ragged line of my lower teeth. I had braces too – they were on for two years, and when I was done with the braces, I got a retainer for the top teeth. We moved overseas before I could get the retainer for the lower teeth and since military health didn't include pre-existing dental work, my parents opted not to get the retainer and within a year, the lower teeth had reverted to the way they are now.

The name on the fat kid's jersey is Bland. I knew a man named Bland once. We worked together as janitors in a catholic high school. I remember Eva there too, the three of us cleaning up bathrooms after tampon fights and mopping buffing waxing floors. Later I worked for another janitorial company in a large office building where they designed engines and motors. I used to love going in there at night and looking at the discarded blueprints in the trash bins.

I used to love Waukesha at this time of year.

In early September the days were still warm, and there was seldom any rain. I'd sit out in the grass between the campus buildings to study, or just to stare at the clouds. I still do stare at clouds now and then. Different configurations will remind me of different seasons, different places, and different people. Looking at clouds is like going into a time machine and moving, back and forth, back and forth.

Now the traffic is picking up on the highway. The left turn lane is full, but cars are breezing by in the right lane. Now the light has changed and the turners are moving too. The lane cleared out. The yellow pickup looks like a scene from "the grapes of wrath" with what appears to be an entire household of furniture in the back. Tied up haphazardly, it looks as if the bed may fall out if they hit a bump. Little blue cooper mini. A girl with a ponytail drives, "We heart U" written in soap on the window. The soccer team is still savagely murdering its hamburgers. Two fisted drinker at the counter alternately sipping from a smoothie and a soda until his mother slaps him in the back of the head saying "that's mine" and he gives her the smoothie. The banners and ads are like a slap in the face. Everywhere you look there is an order to buy something. Look out the window and see buildings, each one looking like a massive logo, Target, Wal-Mart, K-Mart, Burger King, Sutherlands, Lowes. Ad after ad after ad. They make the street signs and warnings look paltry and weak by comparison. Too much study of Marshall McLuhan and pop art. Everything I see is branding or salesmanship. Buy me, visit me, eat me, put me in your car, your computer, your backpack. No matter that you already have everything, get more, get more. She has one hand on the wheel, with the other counts bills – three fivers by my count, gray Nissan Altima.

Mexico in Sierra Vista

I went to the local Golden Corral restaurant for dinner this evening.  I do that once in awhile when nobody else is around.  It reminds me, and not in a pleasant way, of the galley on board a cruise ship I once traveled on.  The ship's galley had good food - as does the Golden Corral.  Its not gourmet food, but it is very good, homey, comfort food.  They even use salt in some of their recipes!  But there was also something about the ship's galley that didn't feel real - as if it was a theme park version of a mess hall.  That's what I was reminded of inside Golden Corral - it was like going to a fake restaurant. But what was really strange tonight is that it didn't seem as if there were any other Sierra Vistans there.  I scanned the parking lot on my way in, and all the license plates were from Sonora, Mexico.  At least, I didn't see any US plates tonight.  The people who charged me as I went in were Mexican (and they had the nerve to ask me if I was a senior citizen - me!  With all those years left to go...) and they addressed me in Spanish before they realized their error.  All around me in the seating area, I heard Spanish spoken, except one table where the two men were Chinese and speaking their own language as well. On the PA system they were playing Salsa music, which definitely set a South of the Border tone.  I imagine that I felt tonight as most of the Mexicans who visit Sierra Vista do when theycome here, like a stranger in a strange land, more of a curiosity than a person.  I don't know whether it was the Aloha shirt, or the shaved head, but everyone seemed to know that I wasn't one of them. They looked away as they passed by me.
I did enjoy my dinner in Mexico though.  Very nice, tender pot roast and an ear of very tender corn on the cob.  Driving home into the sunset was a delight, once I got the visor over the windshield to the appropriate level, and started driving in the correct lane (which I couldn't see before that!)
Well, I think if I could go back in time and redo some things, one thing I'd do is sign up for High School Spanish.  I learned German pretty well, but mine has grown very rusty and childish from disuse.  Spanish is a language I could have put to good use - I wouldn't feel so dumb in the presence of the Mexican visitors here who have courteously learned to speak excellent English in addition to their native language.

Yellow

Near San Pedro

Everywhere I look, yellow. Yellow sun, yellow clouds, yellow flowers. The sun in the sky yellow and the flowers, also yellow, pull it to the ground. All around the hummingbirds whip back and forth, their tiny wings fanning my cheek as I pass. I am drenched in sweat and watch happily as dust wells up around my feet with each step. That lizard with the yellow spot is talking to me. He is saying eat a lemon, eat a banana, eat some yellow food. A turkey buzzard wheeling around above me is carrying a yellow snake in its talons. The yellow snake calls down to me: its not so bad. I'll be his dinner, but the view from up here is worth a death or two. In my dream, there was a yellow mushroom. It pulsed as though it had lungs. On the mushroom, a yellow ant and a yellow spider. I picked up the ant on my fingertip and read its mind. Suddenly I could see the yellow lightbulb on my lamp through its compound eyes. Yellow pulsed and sang to me. In the shower, I used yellow soap and yellow shampoo, but they did not turn me yellow. The imp inside me laughs when yellow comes. Welcome yellow, he says, come in yellow! Vincent loved yellow and his house was a yellow house. In it, he kept fresh yellow sunflowers and he painted them into immortality. He saw yellow with a magic and perfection that no one before or since has seen. He was the high priest of yellow, the president of yellow, the dalai lama of yellow. He tried to share his yellow with Gauguin, but the beast wouldn't have it. He was too consumed with his island girls. He was too involved with his pure cinnamon girls. He pried their legs open with promises and devotions, and paint smeared on canvas, never understanding the curative value of yellow. Tomorrow will be a blue day, but I say that today was full of yellow.

Talk, Talk

A History of Illuminated ManuscriptsI talk a good game when it comes to writing. The other day I was talking to a woman at the library. She asked where I get the ideas to write so much. I told her that I don't bother to wait for ideas. I just start writing and follow the words wherever they take me. Yet this morning, sitting here in front of my computer screen, I was doing the opposite, struggling to find an idea to get started with. Finally I remembered my own advice and just started in. 

In "The Plague" by Albert Camus, there is a character who is working on a novel. He is so obsessed with getting the first line just right, that he never progresses beyond the first line. I remember laughing at this guy when I read about him for the first time. Later, I read a brief excerpt from one of Camus' letters and he talked about "writing everything as it comes" not forcing organized thought on the words until after they'd found their place on the page. That passage had a profound effect on me – and its what I strive to do when I'm writing. In the format of MAWMAP I don't take the next step, which is to go into the work, pull the good from the bad and start revising and polishing. The task would be anathemic to the work. MAWMAP is about the raw material, the unpolished, unedited, unholy mess of it. The writing is haphazard, sometimes good, but often slipshod, grazing ideas but rarely delving deep into them, writing thoughts without considering them first, letting them go like water over a waterfall, hoping that the whole will be considerably more than the sum of its parts.

That may or may not be the case in the end. We never know really what the worth of the things we create may be. This I know: I find a great pleasure in the work. When I am working, writing or painting, I feel that I am in my proper place in the world, doing what I was made to do. When I find myself in a place, as I have this past year, where I have the freedom to work on MAWMAP and nothing else, I find that I enjoy everything a lot more than usual. I love working. When I stop working, I enjoy the break. If I go for a walk, I enjoy the walking and then enjoy stopping when I get home. The sky looks bluer, the air seems more substantial, the food I eat has a distinctly cleaner flavor and I feel like all is right with the world. If I stop the work, I start to worry about things, I get anxious and start dwelling on how I look to other people, wonder what I'm doing here at all, and so forth. Those worries and anxieties go away when I am working. It's a very simple equation: when I'm working on the project full tilt, I am the happiest and richest man in the world. When I stop, even if its to earn money, I get poorer with each day I don't work.

This was at its best when I lived in Boston. I'd work part of my day to make money by playing music. When I made my daily bread, I'd go to a café, library, or other public place and work on MAWMAP and would work until I couldn't work anymore. I'd go home, pleasantly exhausted, and fall into happy sleep.

Here in Arizona, it hasn't been that simple. I've held down a few full time jobs, and they were involving enough that when I was done I'd have no energy to work on the book. The jobs were not particularly difficult, but they were exhausting spiritually. One job was working for an inbound call center, providing customer service for a health insurance provider. That one was more draining than the others, because very frequently I was required to put people off without providing any meaningful assistance. Another was designing ads for a newspaper. That one was a bit easier to take – I enjoyed the work in that it utilized my design and art skills – I enjoyed it enough that when I was laid off, I was sorry to leave the workplace. It took me awhile to find my way back into MAWMAP though – during the years when I worked for the paper and the call center, I did not work on it at all. I got the volumes I'm working in now nearly 4 years ago – they sat on the shelf for a long time. So after the layoff, I spent all my time looking for a new day job, and worrying about what I was going to do for money and so on. I was feeling very empty, kind of lost and very, very depressed. I couldn't find the ambition to do much of anything. Occasionally I'd pick up my guitar, but when I tried to croak out a song and found my voice still essentially useless, I'd quit fast. Last year in early autumn, I took out the current volume, and started to write. It didn't take long to hit my stride and to establish a routine and within a few months I'd begun to feel I was on track again. I stumbled like a blind man through the early pages, looking for a format that worked for the scale and surfaces the book had to offer. I went back to images and styles I've worked in before, and started trying to loosen my rusty voice (written voice, that is) and to find some of the narrative tools I'd used in earlier books. When I look at the early pages of the volume, I have to say that it was like clearing my throat. About three months ago, the current format asserted itself, and the book started to jell. And right now I am totally involved.

I've since stopped asking what its for – I know what its for – its for enjoyment. Right now, its my enjoyment. Someday soon I hope that other people will be able to enjoy it too – either in gallery exhibits, or in some published form. I don't want to dwell on that aspect too much at this point because I need to learn a lot more about marketing before I can decide where best to apply the finished product. What I do need to focus on is how to produce the modest income I'll need to continue working.

just quick thinking/the sun is out but the interruptions by clouds are more alarming and beautiful/i dreamed that i was wilhelm reich and that the two of us/the original wilhelm reich and me as wilhelm reich/were discussing the merits of the cloudbuster and its longterm effects on orgone energy/ i looked up/surprised to find a very young nikola tesla/who told us that we needed to speak to the orgone energy the way he had learned to speak to lightning/all these spirits/he said/have languages/it angers them that we don't learn to speak with them/somehow it was dark outside and the laboratory had become a shotgun shack/i was with and old girlfriend/one i still love in memory/although i haven't seen or heard from her in 30 years/and she was telling me that the orange slime on the floor meant that there were pteradactyls nearby/and when I looked through an opening in the door I could see that she was right/then there were other people with us/more worried about checking in to the dormitory than they were about the pteradactyls/after awhile I started telling them that I was not crazy/just tired and a bit angry/and that they should leave me alone about it/ thats when the voice over started in/opining about the tragic state of American youth/ as it turned out I was being filmed for an advertisement as part of a US Military propaganda campaign aimed at selling parents on the idea that death in war was far better than a life of juvenile delinquency/the director screamed that my delivery wasn't intense enough/and bill/who was standing nearby/was suggesting that if I attacked the director with a hatchet/he might find the performance more intense/ I felt the axe in my hands/ as I hefted it to learn the balance/it became a ruler/and now i was looking at a single sheet of perfect parchment paper/ it was blank/but my mind had superimposed a brilliant golden line drawing/which i knew was the intended subject for this scroll to be/and I dipped my pen/which had been first the axe then the ruler but was now a dip pen with a speedball tip/ and started to apply the image/which showed a dragon breathing fire/surrounded by the words /beware the bookstore/in a very ornate french letter style/ then we were back in the shack and the pteradactyls were slamming against the side of the building/I was talking to an alligator who had sidled up next to me/asking whether he was afraid of the pteradactyls/ he said that he was more afraid of me than he was of them/fearfully I picked up a harmonica and started playing olde lange syne/ and hoping that the alligator would not remember that he was a carnivore/meanwhile my ex was wandering about gathering candles lamenting that they were a synthetic parraffin and not truly beeswax/ the harmonica kept sounding sour notes/ so i just looked down at my hand and couldn't believe that the palm was now entirely inhabited by a sunflower/I wonder weather this is what Van Gogh saw/ I asked out loud/thats when the alarm went off and I woke up

Just a quick link

I was browsing earlier and found this link to a very good description of using Gouache paint for manuscript illustration.
http://www.jehannesjewels.com/2.4GOUACHE.pdf

Journal not Journal

(When is a journal not a journal?)

It's so strange to be thinking about Suley. I saw someone yesterday who reminded me a bit of her – the olive skin, the dark, dark eyes. I didn't know her very well at all. But since seeing the look-alike, I've been thinking about her almost constantly, conjuring her face, hearing her name in my head. I've been getting flashes of our work area at the call center, I've been replaying memories of shared work. It would make more sense to be thinking about other people, people I knew well and really cared about. Suley was just someone who sat next to me once or twice.

I've also been having a song play in my head to the point of distraction – something I heard in a video, a woman rolling around in a bed whining "Its quarter to three and I'm a little drunk and I need you now" that kind of crap. Unfortunately her voice reminded me of Jonatha Brooke, so initially I paid attention. The song has a memorable if awful hook, and it's been playing ever since. The lyric is as silly and obvious as the worst country songs can be – I've been thinking of recording my own spoken word version of it – but rather than a nubile post-teen rolling around on a bed in a satin nightgown, it will be me, ugly faced and drunk slurring my way through the lyric like a stalker in a late night telephone call.

I guess on a day like this with these loops going, I can honestly say that my thoughts betray me. Too unruly and (there it is again I need you now) intrusive. Today was my big shave day. My head is bare as a baby's bottom, and I'm looking clean again for the first time in a while. My hair was getting long – no longer attractive, it grows in lank and oily, and hangs limply over neck and ears. So this morning I took off most of it with the sideburn trimmer on my electric razor, and then followed up with the Sensor. My face is bottom heavy now. The "Just for Men" is on the medicine cabinet shelf calling my name. Its saying "Eric – do the skunk stripe again." And yet I may.

After talking so much with people about how "different" my book is from a journal, here I am using my laptop to produce a journal which is much more like a regular journal. So far, the blog has not been creative at all. Its all observation. I have to be more disciplined to create more free form stuff. Maybe it's because the blog is published instantly, so I have to contend with the idea that someone else may actually read it.

Well, I'm thinking about "Pan on the Diameter" again. It deserves, at the very least, a rewrite. It shouldn't take too long, and now that I have the laptop in tow, I should be able to produce ten pages a day, or thereabouts. It would be nice to start putting the polish on it, eliminate some of the crap (and I'm sure there is a lot!)

The weather is a repeat of yesterday – clear skies, no clouds. The sun sits up there like a demon, an enemy implacable that people want to defeat. They try to undermine his power at every turn – air conditioners, curtains, swamp coolers, fans. Everywhere you go you see places designed to banish the sun – rooms without windows, awnings. The restaurant have outdoor seating, with misters to try and mitigate the hot air. Its September. The days are much shorter. Sunset comes at seven, and earlier every day. Birthdays are coming up, including my own. And I'm looking forward to October, when the evenings will start to get col

The tattooed duo was here just a while ago. That's what I call the couple I see around town every now and then. One is a tall, statuesque brunette – the other is smaller and a bit more stocky, but with a pleasant face and a dazzling smile. I'm not certain that they are gay, but that is my guess. They are also tattooed. The tall one has nearly a full arm of them, like a sleeve. There is a small dark one on her neck, and when she is nearby I find my eyes drawn to it almost obsessively. Her companion has tattoos on her arms, neck, and face. She also has a few piercings, small glittering studs. I love seeing them. In a town like Sierra Vista, where so many of the expression of self tend towards the gaudy or downright ugly, the tattooed duo has a class and an elegance that I appreciate. A few weeks ago, the taller of the two came over to look at my work – I had a page open with an image of a feathered creature of some sort – looked part human, part bird. She told me she really admired my work. I wanted to talk and introduce myself, but found myself retreating as usual. When I work I tend to be only superficially social. Don't get me wrong – I like it when people talk to me as I work. I wouldn't work in public spaces, cafes and libraries if that was not the case. But I also find myself retreating into "public" mode, as I did when I played in the Square, open, but only to a certain level. I never introduce myself unless someone specifically asks me for my name. Even then, I tend to give them a nickname or just the first name, and they are often put off by that. Its something I've tried to change over the years, but for some reason haven't managed to.

I was out with my parents yesterday, and I saw them then too. My mother made a comment which bordered on rude, and I immediately told her that I knew the two of them, and that they were really very decent. I also mentioned that I found the tattoos, not bizarre, but very, very beautiful. Then mom and dad went into one of their patters, comparing notes about how accepting they are of other people. "Look how well we took it when Uncle Bill told us that Lucilla was gay!" Very self-congratulatory.




 

Excerpt from 1996 journal.

Downtown, April 22, 1996

Fucking cramps in the worst spots. I had a tank of coffee this morning. Maybe it was that or maybe just the shitty hamburger at lunch. Codfish sounded good last night but this morning the farts smell of it. I'm in the grip of the constipator. No toilet nearby. Offal, the books are green and faded. You looked like a noose, coming to get me. Your eyes were big as the Eiffel Tower and you had a generator in you backpack. I was a swordfish and the lists got longer and blossomed into singular travails.

Fucking cramps but I can still walk. That guy he can't even stand up. From here he stinks of Listerine. It's fucking cold down here too. The Russian dude with the electric guitar was there again at Park Street. He's going to get shut down if he doesn't lower the volume and learn a few more tunes. Folks will only tip for "Dust in the Wind" so many times. Jealous of his gear though. I'm jealous, especially of the Roland synthesizer. I want one of my own and that's a fact. How can you not? But I know I won't get one either. I like what I have. Its limited, but ample, loud but not overpowering. It makes me money, see, and that's what you need down there.

The Russian gave me his name the other day (I've since forgotten, so I just call him tovarisch) and suggested sharing spots. Thankfully, he's an early riser and has no objection to sharing hour sets. So tomorrow he'll go for Park Street early, I'll join him around ten and we'll work in shifts until we drop from exhaustion. Later we'll arrange more equitable sits for the morning grab. I'll have to talk to him about migration too – he wants to play PS every day. I can't do that, don't want to piss on the spot so to speak. I'll meet him for coffee - maybe Saturday. I really want to meet the wife anyway.

Rumor is that ML hooked up with Curt Cobain at a nightclub on Landsdowne Street and blew him in the doorway. Now his chick is after her. I heard ML's agent talking about how cool it would be to set up a fight between the two of them – Rolling Stone might give it a bit of space, as Courtney's pretty hot right now.

There's a new girl at Harvard Square, playing crappy keyboard and singing Cat Stevens songs. She's not terrible at least – and she's cute, so she'll make a bit of money. Has to stop calling herself Astarte though! Everyone knows she's from the Bronx. They're already joking that her name is something a whole lot worse. I won't say what it is, but its something ugly and degrading, in fact. And of course the anti-Semite crowd is already calling her Myrtle Cohen. She'll learn, and if she's good enough, they'll learn too.

Suod is crowing about the rent again. Its more than a week before the first, but he's bugging me already. Considering that the heating oil ran out last month again, and that the oven has still not been repaired, he should be less aggressive. I've always paid him on time and in full so this anticipatory crap is a pain in the ass. The guys downstairs from the Indian Restaurant was saying that he's going to raise their rent.

I was at Passim for lunch on Thursday and was shocked to see Peter there with a brand new laptop computer. The damned things look so weird. I can't imagine wanting to use one, but Peter swears that they're great for booking gigs. He was talking about email, and all I could think of was the time we emailed a photograph from the Ranger to the JFK and it took us nearly 48 hours to do it. So Peter is becoming a technocrat. He's been staying away from the streets and working on legit gigs, so I shouldn't complain. The more gigs he books, the more often I'll be able to get Davis Square.