cellini's Diaryland Diary ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- A Short Term Task I wrote a 50 page autobiographical novella or whatever the fuck you want to call it and put it away for posterity. Then I wrote a few short stories which I suppose are as good as a lot of James Joyce's early stuff and almost as good as early Hemingway. If I sound like as ass with that, I really don't give a damn. I know how my stuff reads and I know how indifferent my older stuff was and how good my work right now is. I've seen enough of life now that I'm entitled to write about it and have some notion of what I'm talking about. You ought to write about what you know about and really have some truth to share about. I've spent a night in jail and delivered babies and starved and driven fast cars and killed to survive and written books and built houses and fixed trucks and hitchhiked and been well and truly stranded in a foreign land and made and lost a fortune and dropped acid and filmed a TV show and watched an IRA bombing and fixed the furnace and went on the run from the feds and had cancer and produced a single and taught a little girl how to tie her shoes. In no particular order. So now I get to fucking write the great American short story collection. One of the assholes from Discovery is back, 'just checking in.' Whatever. Write a fucking check, or get lost. All of these TV people are time-wasters. I'm supposed to hit the road at the end of the month with Grant for an article for Men's J0urnal. We're to go to New Orleans for a month. This is to be the myth-making trip and article. The big national piece that lionizes me for a major audience. That is the whole point of the article. They want to present this great new model for modern manhood. And by the way it will hit the newsstands right ahead of my book launch. I suppose that the modern American male could have worse role models. At least its not that 7ucker M@x guy. Last night I had a speaking engagement that went well. The usual sense of alienation from everyone else present, but I suppose that goes with the territory. Nothing is really any better. I'm going through these motions and realizing that even if all of this is a success, none of it will put a dime in my pocket or a meal in my childrens' mouths any time in the next year or two. There's no point to any of it except for crafting some sort of legacy. Once that is done I don't know what the point is of continuing. I get very, very little satisfaction or happiness out of my life in any given day, week or month. Poverty has isolated me from friends, perhaps permanently. Now that I'm finally getting paid by my publisher in two days and hitting the road again, I don't even know who I would celebrate with. I have spent so long suffering that I don't know anymore how to live like someone who isn't being crushed alive. I have been ruined, inside. Ruined for the company of civilized people from my own social class and background. Unable to hold a conversation about the kind of idle nonsense that the rest of them are concerned with. Television shows and political controversies and Lady Gaga and shopping. The only things I can even pretend to care about are matters of immediate survival and really worthwhile books. My grandmother's funeral was yesterday morning. 1:58 a.m. - 2011-05-05 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
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