Happy birthday to my sis, who deserves to be happy.

To the rest of the world, to the rest of you: I don’t understand you. I don’t understand any of you. I’m not even the same species as you. You make no sense to me. I am from a different world and a different genetic heritage. All I ever wanted was to love all of you, but all any of you ever gave me was your indifference and the opportunity to make a profit and to build a career.

I have no use for a profit. I have no use for a career.

I have no use for anything I can recognize or for anything I can get my hands on.

—

Hemmingway said that for every hundred pages he wrote, ninety-nine were shit. For every hundred I write, only sixty-six are shit. Therefore, I am a better writer than Hemmingway, or at least a more efficient writer than Hemmingway. For those of you who hate Hemmingway: oh well. You hate everything.

I love Hemmingway.

—

One paper down, two to go. I will be done with a second by sometime Monday.

—

Three things touched me more than anything else ever in my life:

1. The Northern Exposure episode called Nothing’s Perfect.
2. Learning that I was my grandfather’s favorite.
3. Young people spontaneously singing Lean On Me in a park at night in DC after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Strange, because I am not a patriot and I didn’t think the attacks were particularly undeserved.

—

Somewhere tonight, a mother cat is slowly dying.

—

Somewhere tonight, a twenty-something man is sitting in a small university bar wondering what he will do next and whether it will matter to him more than what he is doing now.

—

Somewhere tonight, Iraqi families, Spanish families and Afghani families, among others, are cursing the war on terror.

—

Somewhere tonight, Nikki Sixx and Axl Rose aren’t dead yet.

—

Somewhere tonight, Bob Marley is.

I was asleep in the library. I was dreaming again. I woke up. I don’t think I’ve ever felt as unhappy in my life as just now, coming to the groggy realization that I am in Chicago, in the library, alone and with papers to work on.

Suddenly I regret almost everything I’ve done since New Year’s Day, 1995. Or maybe since winter quarter, 1992. Or even since the summer of 1986. I don’t want to be here. I don’t want to be in Chicago. I regret applying to this school (or any schools), I regret the money I’ve spent here, the nights I’ve been alone here, the compromises I’ve made here, the people I’ve met here, the place that I live here, the things that I’ve done here.

I regret eBay and I regret FX and I regret MCP and I regret Caldera and I regret TMI and I regret About and I regret TMC and I regret the road trips and I regret the camera work and I regret the list of girlfriends and I regret the car and the computers and the cat and the bus stops and the shows and the metro library and the bottles of St. Provo Girl and the fish and the grey days in my apartment on the dumpster couch eating frozen vegan food and everything, everything, everything.

I hate this. I don’t know where I am or who I am or why I am here or how I got here. I want to go home but I haven’t been home in decades and there is no home anywhere to go to. Everyone I ever cared about is either dead or gone.

I fucked up. Somewhere along the way, I fucked up.

This is more serious than a couple of summers ago, when I didn’t talk to anyone for two months and spent every night on the corner of Harris Ave. under the street lamp listining to Mazzy Star, smoking pack after pack and drinking vodka. I don’t know what it means. Maybe I just need to wake up a little more. I’ll hope.

I regret having come to this place today. I regret having fallen asleep in the library.

Something has to give.

“There’s no there there, son. Stop telling yourself tales. I mean look at you, all covered in stains, threw away your hat, unshaven, sulking. You look like hell.

“My advice to you? You’re a writer. So write.”

—

There is a lot to think about.

I don’t know where today will take me.

I am not satisfied with who I have become recently. It will not do.

I haven’t forgotten.