A Calendar of Days - 2018

At smiley cafe with my lover who has come to visit.

At the Durango public library with Diego. We’be been here a few hours. We went for a hike earlier today and he asked me not to smoke any more weed while he’s here, which made me sad, for several reasons. But it was a wonderful hike. We climbed a tree.

Have to get my things in order: car, license, registration, etc.

Macho’s. Diego left about an hour ago. He’s driving now. He told me some history about wars in eastern Europe. More happy memories than can be committed to paper. I loved how, when he left, he didn’t say goodbye, and I didn’t say goodbye, and I don’t think it even occurred to either of us. Just I love you, I love you, I love you. His heart in my chest, mine in his.

After he left I sat in the van in Macho’s lot and read a letter from Jessica Allen, what a joyous letter it was!

At Macho's while I was working there’s a kid at the bar playing peekaboo with Carlos.

Magpies, 4:47 pm

Bought a copy of the Baffler and a coffee. Today: visited the bank, had a beer at Macho’s and met the editor of DGO, drove to the social security office and applied for a new card, put fifty dollars in Stevanie, met a guy named Rain with his eyeballs tattooed black. Visited Macho’s south and also the tattoo shop, where I got an estimate for a foot tattoo that I won't get. I visited my brother's kids at Chapman, and wrote in my journal a lot. Schmo and I slept in until noon! The day is not yet done…

6:35 in the van putting those thin metallic safety blankets around.

I come home, lips chapped (this happens every night). I think about drinking water, about the noises of the house.

I had planned to read but instead I get on facebook, and there I find a terrible long message from a friend, and wonder what kind of friend would send such a thing. Then I make the plunge to respond and suddenly am caught in a quest for the perfect comment to another post and time goes and goes while I search for self portraits of german artists on the DIA web site and on the Google, forgetting the name of the one i saw. ...(Otto Dix!)

Questioning my own motives!

I went to roller derby practice and it was dope. Listening to Hypnotic ASMR for Sleep (with Auditory ASMR triggers) INTERGALACTIC SPACE TRAVEL on Youtube.

My core is weak, at derby I realized. So last night I did sit-ups at home and now I have a sit-ups sore on my ass. My muscles aren’t that sore though.

Listening to a 1973 Alice Coltrane Album - Reflection on Creation and Space (A Five Year View)

MONDAY

Perplexing since I came here before work with the challenge to myself to finish the leaf bracelet, with a subsidiary intention to package my most recent letter to Faye, that I have left both my bag of string and my little book with the letter. It’s not yet noon, and I may yet go to retrieve them.

12:19 back with both
Leaf
Pattern Planning 12:19
12:21p loom is made
12:30
Colors chosen, loom strung, ends trimmed.
12:44 finished row 5
12:54 finish row ten
1:04 finish row 15, taking a break.
1:16 recommence
1:32 finish row 26
Taking a break
1:43 first mistaken half-stitch.
…
Work
...
1:09 am, on the third round.
3:00 am, finished.

11:11
The Steaming Bean

It snowed last night, to the relief of most of Durango, and to my dismay. Mom and Dad are in town, but I won't see them. I bought some edibles: a white chocolate bar. Feeling depressed. Quite depressed.

Got on the phone with Christine (11:30) and the smalltalk made me cry.

finally hear back from Elaine

After she jilted me in Utah, my heart beats hard and my extremities tingle watching the bouncing elipses in Elaine's chat window. They appear, and disappear, and appear again, bouncing like knives on a concrete floor, and I run here, away, to another window. Eleven eleven a lucky time. Eleven eleven. Eleven eleven. One, one, one, two. Still nothing, no entrance, no word, only a knowledge that she is thinking of me, and me wondering why and what and how and if and why, oh why, you bastard. You fool, torturer, ingenue! Nothing still? Why do you even type, what horrifying blade do you wield and when will I feel it’s slice? Bounce, bounce, bounce. My teeth chatter, my knees pulse. All along my spine a tread of devil’s hooves. Hot and cold my forehead tightens, wrinkles as I now have. And then it disappears, gone, no response. Teeth chatter, cheeks chill and drain of blood, is it rage or fear? They ride again, those impersonal dots. Long distance faded indications, a footprint of a thought, a memory card that’s been erased. Shaking all over, knees, and legs and teeth and torso and body wracks with harrows, jolts like electricity doubling every sense. Terror.

For the record, I spent a hundred and twenty dollars, fifteen hours in the car. These and this harrowing self doubt are not, to me, worth one hour of your dismissive, impersonal, blind-and-deaf time.

unsent email to Elaine

1. I took off work and spent a bunch of money coming to Utah, to see you. It was a huge effort.

2. Your ignoring me made me feel terrible, and not knowing why made me feel worse, for weeks. Lotta crying.

3. You didn't acknowledge this at all--- (this is incorrect, she did, it just didn’t feel like enough for me)

4. Your apology read like an excuse

5. It also included some blaming of me, which I did not appreciate

6. Your refusal to engage with or acknowledge my anger was invalidating and frustrating again

7. I'm still angry

8. And I still feel terrible, and I'm still crying, and I'm going to need a better apology if you really are "interested in being friends" which, as far as bland alienating language goes, is right up there with some of the awful stuff you said to me in Utah.

Superbowl Sunday
10:45 am
Smiley Cafe annex

I talked to Becca, lonely lonely, and I didn’t call Diego, who is sick.

tasks:
- package Diego’s two letters
- Make menu notecards for hayley
- mail scuzz album art to Becca
- one length/link of Philip’s bracelet

Monday February 5

Car’s dead, 12:58

1:09 got a jump cars humming again

To wal mart? I forgot to eat. Back to Phil's house? What’s there for me but Schmo?
I forgot to eat! Glad I wrote that down I would have forgotten again

I have dandruff.

Aching for my radio show. Grateful for the free format of this doc the doc the doc,

come to the doctor hee hee hee,
the doctor can “help” you medically.
Come to the doctor ho ho ho,
everybody says that you should go.
If you feel sick
the doctor will fix
a potion of billing and sugar.
Come with a cough,
Lighten your pock
no insurance
for you to fill out.

Psst… it’s gender dysphoria

Outside,
The knife sharpener, the card players, the anxious confidantes.
Take a breath. It is good to be among the young. Like Del, young at heart, purple in his white hair, old denim shirt sagging over his hunched shoulders. Eyes like ice. Hulking red Andrew and relaxed, rollie-smoking Willie of stained fingers and matchbook tricks. Willie’s ponytail an object of interest to a big yellow dog lying against the wood slats, against the crickets of the creek.

Applying for field research jobs.
If I want it too badly I won’t get it.
Play it cool

Saturday

It just started raining a little. I’m in the library, mountains all around, thinking about how much I want to stay here or go somewhere else.

Friday

Schedule for free webinar
Resources for jumpstarting outreach on invasive species
Leigh Greenwood, The Nature Conservancy
February 22nd, 11:00 AM EST

Recognizing and reporting exotic forest Insects
Cliff Sadof, Purdue University
March 1st, 11:00 AM EST

Hemlock woolly adelgid and biocontrol efforts
Mark Whitmore, Cornell University
March 8th, 11:00 AM EST

Determining impacts on wildlife from emerald ash borer infestations of black ash forests
Alexis Grinde, PhD, University of Minnesota, Duluth
March 15th, 11:00 EST

Wood utilization post-emerald ash borer: An update
Jessica Simons, Southeast Michigan RC&D Council
March 22nd, 11:00 AM EST

Sunday, 5:15 am

Acute insomnia, eating salty chips and filched cheese from the empty kitchen. Kelsey and Phil gone to Bear’s Ears, now open to drilling. I'm on a harmless little eating binge. Taking the insomnia drive to walmart.

Monday

Night: watching David Byrne- screaming goals
Bouncing around friendship-bracelets.net trying to get patterns for: cups, wands, swords, coins

I’m designing my own pattern, in blue, for cups.

How to get out of Colorado:

-Mail the thing to the people in Texas
-Get the driving record
-Take the driving record to the driver's license office, with my passport and social security card and proof of Colorado residence (W2’s)

Or since this takes some weeks, I may just re-take the driver test at the DPS.

Pussy like ground beef

Coffee after massage. The lymph things are moving.

Darsi is a dear, even if she did stand over me and talk nonstop while I lay looking up under a blanket, hot rocks beneath my palms. She was an apprentice on organic farms, and at the school of chinese medicine. She farmed on the hillside in an “earth house” which, she tells me, is a concrete dome covered in earth.

She said it was the best place for god at the time. The story was brick-red and sun-drenched and late-spring in tenor. My hued sunset view to do with hope for relief I think.

Who knows. Darsi is from Michigan. She’s pretty sure she got hurt by chemicals when she was a kid and her dad… The motion she made when she explained the way her dad died.

Coffee coffee coffee, here to tank up before retiring to the basement with some apple whiskey and some string.

I’ve measured and cut the string, found the patterns, and made the looms for the tarot bracelets. I want to make them all fives, at the moment.

Saw Russ at the bike shop. He said he used to own it for sixteen years before he just sold it.

I bet that’s a lot more relaxing. I say.

Oh, way, way.

“I don’t want it!” My brain says, looking around. It’s nothing the matter with the place, at all.

Depressed yesterday, all day in bed. Today went to Purgatory with Billy, Kelsey, Sam, and Will. I didn’t ski, just napped in the lodge. Got my transcripts in the mail and now I can apply for more jobs.

7:39 pm Durango Joes, filled with excuses to leave, of course, terrified abstractly of myself and my desires. Finished the big rainbow bracelet today, and began on the five of cups.

8:35 economist listening, tidying, stressing out

8:39, Sealed one envelope, Faye.
Lips chapped.

My education seems so incredibly skewed, to me. Why have I read so many works of men? Where are we, where are we, where are we, my people? I know we are here, and I am looking, but the heritage flashes and disappears or I fall short.

9:45 here again.
extra smelly. Got some chap stick, at least.

Cousin Becca’s address SLC UT
Christine's address in Vegas
Ronnie Z's address in Sturgeon PA
Paul's address in Austin

Fran in oceanside

Hannah in Brooklyn.
Lucy in Santa Clarita,

Katy Chicago, Max Evanston.

Sunday. My goal for today is to work through the contents of my bag. Shall I enumerate them? There's…

-The sparkly folder with the important documents- sift, sort, ponder
-My wallet
-A loom loaded with the beginnings of the blue five of cups bracelet
-Argan oil
-Stamps
-Three unsent letters: Olivia, Lucy, Faye
-Big piles of valentines
-Some stickers
-Phone speaker adapter for my voice recorder (where’s my microphone?)
-Large journal
-Keys lighter rubberband
-An old to do list

When are where will we be, we be?

Tuesday

The kohl eyeliner is feminizing without being beautifying. Because of it, the social pressure to smile is lighter, as if I’m already doing something to conform to expectations.

Wearing the PBR tee I wheedled out of the bar manager, parking meter running until two. I brought everything: string, looms, books, file folder, envelopes, stationery, letters, pens, chapsticks, eyeliner pencil and sharpener, pattern printouts, wallets, lighters, documents, chargers, bags, wadded up toilet paper, a list of addresses that rips as I pull it out of my bag, a bottle of cold cream, even a glass of water.

1:55 When I went to renew the meter, I intervened in a couple’s fight to tell the guy, “hey guy, you’re a huge jerk.” Which he was, yelling at her, chasing her. He seemed to understand and didn't reply back. Fight in public, invite comment, I suppose.

Thursday

Leaving Durango tomorrow morning… oil change today. All linens in the laundry, and still need to vacuum and sweep and clean the tub and the shower walls.

I make my bracelets in horizontal rows. It’s slower than making triangles, but the knots are less likely to curl, twist, and slip when I move down the pattern one row at a time. Individually, I can snap my strings with my teeth or a key, but once they are woven together, the weaving remains intact even if you snap the cords at several points. I use 100% Cotton 6 ply DMC emroidery floss, made in France. The bracelets can withstand washing, sun exposure, and heavy strain, and often last many years.

Thursday

I’m in Slab City, by the skate park. Windy. Bright but not hot. Dogs come up at sniff my car, or bark from over where they are. Every time I take a hit of weed it makes me cough.

Friday I guess. Moved from skate park onto my own slab, but two big dogs came barking at me when I went into the back of the car, so I guess there’s a reason the slab was empty.

My hips and groin muscles, from lower back to inner thigh, are terribly sore. I don’t know if it was sleeping cold last night or the rowing machine at 24 Hour Fitness. Nine pm and I can hear the music from that dance party starting up. Or else another gathering. Tomorrow morning there's the trade circle. It seems like I’ll make either one or the other. Weaving a bracelet for Gorgie today.

I watched some happy kids drag ramps here and there in the skatepark as the sun set and the wind started to pick up for the night. The skate park has some cool graffiti, like a many-eyed alien head that you hit coming down one of the ramps.

A blonde skater with red jeans, pink converse, blue Ray Ban glasses and gems on their teeth decided to make friends with me today, we sat and talked for an hour or two or three. I like the way time passes here.

The internet cafe is not an irony. The place you poop is a hole you make. The summertime is not a joke. That Coachella Canal is in fact the Colorado River and you CAN swim in it, if you walk out a ways to where there's a break in the tall fence. The mountains are called the Chocolate mountains. They look just like they are made out of chocolate.

If you put a sign outside your camp that says, ‘occupied’ then other people will know not to pillage it for scrap. Especially important if you go away for a little while. East Jesus is a party camp, but go out in the other direction and you’ll find people camped way off by themselves.

Acid paper is hard to find here, it’s all the liquid. You have to take it right there. Crystal meth is dirt cheap, you can trade weed for meth. Barter does better than money.

At Diego's parents house, and it is Diego Senior’s Birthday. Excellent food. Today I finished reading Shapeshifters.

Other books:

The Impossible Community: Realizing communitarian anarchism
Radical Ecology: The search for a livable world, by Carolyn Merchant

USPS is making me provide a street address in order to get a P.O. box in Austin. smdh.

Diego just got back from meeting Beto O’rourke. I saw Del W, he is now making sculptures, scratchy little ceramic deities. Cousin Becca calls me and calls me and I love it.

I'm reading about Gertrude Stein, talking about Chris Burden, and now Annie tells me about Kathi Wilcox. Talking about Marina Abromovic, and I fall asleep restless and thinking that Joe is my muse… he inspires me so much to be an artist!

And it’s nice that he seems so much more mature than when I first knew him, and more physically respectful. Joe says his health isn’t too bad. Yesterday we talked and talked, and kissed a little, and slept at five thirty am and woke at nine thirty and hung out until noon.

I heard that Camille and Yohan got married in Dallas, and wore incredible traditional Korean clothes. In July I must figure out how to go to Nadia’s wedding as Faye's date. Lunch date with Hannah tomorrow, and a day off. Hopefully I dont get scheduled for Monday lunch!

Made a little money last night!
Dang asked if I had a twin that wanted a job, and suggested that everybody tip me out for my training shift. Not everybody did, but I made about forty bucks!

I’m with Hannah at Flat Track. She and James are discussing a trip to Marfa.

Not sure what to do this afternoon. Almost all my money is gone already, to guest-check books, to pens, to tacos, to coffee, to gas.

Made approx 62 dollars

I couldn’t believe how many stoners were on the patio. It wasn’t like this when I left, prohibition isn’t over.

Eavesdropping on some kids,

“Dylan’s drunk”
“Did he show up drunk?”
“No, he’s been very slowly getting drunk.” She laughs happily.
“He was getting drunk in the car, he was sexting Colton from my car.”
Everybody laughs, “That’s awesome!”
“I want to see him, where is he?”
“Probably… around the corner, honestly.”
“I want to go scare him”

Two of them move away to find Dylan and pass introductions, “I’m Summer!"
“Hi!” Dylan's voice is gay, sonorant and pitchy. They both seem delighted to see each other.

At the table they left, someone says "I'm Emily by the way," to someone I had assumed was already their friend.
"You looked like you were a little bit angry earlier."
"Oh, It’s just because I need glasses."

Somewhere else…
“I dunno, I mean bagels definitely take up a lot of space, I’ve always been partial to bagels, but there’s so many other things I like to eat."

On my way out, a perky girl I had spoken to in passing asked me if I wanted to smoke.
"Thanks I’m super high I’m going to bed actually."
"Ohwh, are you leaving?"

Around midnight, there were about sixty people lined up on North Loop and Lamar waiting for Friday the 13th tattoos. They were all in good spirits.

I got to Epoch and there was a naked guy at the curb. Lots of people were out on the patios, and remarked in wonder, but then we realized he wasn't a streaker, he talking about mustard gas and was distressed.

John Miller (The AA guy) is so tall it's silly, with a lanking sideways prowl, narrow bespectacled head, and cloth cap. He was the right person to help, and went and applied to the naked fellow gently and kindly and brought the man away.

Here's what the crowd says about naked guy:
“It was amazing and it was really funny at first but then you were like oh this guy is schizophrenic or something… it was horrifying”

Willie, rounding out some story of the 70s, comments on the difficulty of buying acid in Austin at present: “You can't walk in to the Whip-in and buy mushrooms or LSD … until two o’clock in the morning!”

3:07 am
Did you ever kill anything, Schmo?

Schmo’s song concept is intact wanna record some of that

Wanna pick up Faye’s hat
Wanna get a P.O. box
Wanna clean out the van
Wanna start paying the debts
Wanna talk to Diego

Wal mart trip tonight! New work shoes and also beads! <3 I remember now that Bouldin Creek Cafe is twenty four hours!

Dinner then drinks at Bufalina last night with formal friends and then afterdinner smokeforever with epoch friends.

Sounds still needed for schmo song: Mourning doves, whistling calls, jackhammers

Loud laughing Vietnamese at a big game of cards, I listen avidly, and quietly try to repeat the sounds.

A blessing For Udell:

Security and good sleep, a roof.
Cleanliness and safety from velcro and from Men of all races.
Actualization and truth.
Neither generosity nor prosperity.
A steady sunshine available to the soul.

---

Cherrywood coffee, expensive bagel sandwich, work shirt at the cleaners next door. Reading Charmed Circle, the Gertrude Stein biography.

Two women next to me are having a meeting about a short film production: "The sound guy asked for five hundred a day," one says. The other says they can meet him at three hundred, "people here are desperate for work, to do anything. They’re hungry."

Full moon last night, bed early. Had a good morning reading I Am A Cat, but it's not as fun as when Diego reads it aloud to me.

Almost enough in my account for the deposit on the apartment on Alta Vista in Travis Heights. Slept in and woke in a very hot van. Disorienting, uncomfortable. Foul mood after trying to get my credit score.

I opened the computer the other day to write and got lots of bad vibes from it. Splashing my anxieties across a notebook today, I called Diego and had a flip out, feeling very crisis.

Calling Diego,
He talks me into or out of things,
Tries

It’s been five or six days since we signed the lease on the most beautiful apartment in the world, but it feels like a month.

In the van, hot backbent.

Eight days of this remaining. Vic is homeless and has been posting up by the creek, I let him sleep in the passenger seat last night. He was awful. I failed to save my work shirt and he slept on it, now it’s at the cleaners and I have no work shirt for today. At Irie Bean coffee for the first time. Nice place, there's a sort of sculpture garden in the back yard. It’s noon, in half an hour I'm going to get a free manicure at Coated before work.

Out in the slabs, Mojo with her weekly rubbish burns lets everyone know things are okay. Mojo helps drivers out of sugar sand, helps the hungry out of hunger.

The sound of someone vowing to learn to knit. The heat. The music breaks, I draw, Tyler picks their arm. Tiff makes pictures on her phone. All of us down-and-out, wishing each other good luck.

Stephanie broke down. I miss the clean difficulty of my math homework.

Stephanie broke down. Need to-
Ask Forest if I can stay with him til the van is fixed
Find a shop to tow her to
Find a tow company to tow her cheaply to the shop
Move my things to the place to stay
Oi vey, oi vey

I can’t get the tow without the place to stay, I can’t get the shop without the tow. I won’t have a place to stay, I have to get my stuff. I have to leave here, will I solve this today?