What?
Going to work early and leaving early seem to sit well with the journal. In the old days I'd write between eight and noon, sometimes nine and one, four hours being about right. After four hours I was ready to climb up out of my head, rejoin the world and head over to pre-sports bar Mission Rock Inn on the bay for a (cheap) hot dog and a beer (when I was flush), a bleary eyed wasted looking wanna-be writer gazing out over the water thinking why had I had those fucking Spider Monkeys burst into Betty-Sue's bedroom in the third chapter, stealing the incriminating weapon and hiding it under a mattress in an abandoned children's tree house in the Mill Valley woods? Would I lose readers?
Spider monkeys, after all, domesticated or not, might make them wonder; might make them think I'd gone farther than they wished to follow into some hopeless cellar of my subconscious mind. Or Holly Go-Heavy, Cindy Butterfly's evil twin, where'd she come from and why her fascination for that left coast member of the Purple Gang?
You think thoughts like these for long enough and they become good reasons not to write at all if they weren't also such good reasons to continue, trusting in one's gut (you understand). Depends on the writer. Go with the flow. (Spider Monkeys though, I don't know.) I eventually ran out of gas when the space aliens - Spider monkeys will lead you (eventually) to space aliens - filleted and deep fried my characters (my remaining characters) in a vat of super heated vaseline. But perhaps I digress.
The phone developed a loud background noise yesterday, picking yesterday, of course, to call the DSL support people at the phone company, describing the call from the police department asking if I'd called 911. They'd gotten a call from my number, but didn't find anyone on the line when they'd picked up. Was I in trouble? No? Did I have a computer on DSL? I relayed this conversation to the DSL support person who said he'd never heard such a thing, but he'd open a ticket and, by the way, what was that horrible noise on my line? Not sure, it just started. Well, he'd open a ticket with the phone side too and they'd be calling today. I found a message on my answering machine when I got home, which was good, but then a DSL support guy showed up at the door to look at the junction box.
I related the 911 story as I watched him work on the beat up junction box in the basement of our building and he said, well, if you generate a garbled series of numbers on a line it will automatically default to 911. OK. Then how about the guy with caller ID who'd phoned and asked why I'd dialed his number. Hmmm. Yes. Reminded him of a story they told at Mill Valley Pac Bell about a band of Spider Monkeys who liked to scramble up their telephone polls and make long distance calls with an old blue box they'd copped from Jobs and Wozniak in '75.
What?
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