Later. I spent the day with my old friend MSM, a walk through a local flea market, lunch at a Chinese restaurant, a talk over coffee through the afternoon of old times and old friends, what was happening now (getting too damned old) and what we were each thinking for our own futures. She's begun a new chapter with a new old man in a new house overlooking a green valley southeast of here. Her advice for me was to dump the job and take a year to do whatever I damn well want. You don't know whether you have a tomorrow, let alone another year: Live each day, live each minute, as if they were the most important day, the most important minute in your existence.

No argument. I've been threatening it right here for the last six years. (Actually, there's been movement, the move to photography, the writing, hammering the job back into its miserable eight hours in a day coffin.) At least if I get laid off next week I'm not considering it a problem. Get on with the day, plan for, but don't count on tomorrow. All that riotous living we did in the old days eventually catches up with us.

One thing, she asked me to loan her my copy of Eve Babitz's Eve's Hollywood as she'd heard about it and wanted to read it. As I thought, she knew Babitz in the old Atlantic Records days and wanted to see if the book brought back memories. I'll be curious to know.

Otherwise, what's happening? Don't know. I finally called Airborne Friday to see why my firewall computer has been sitting in their Oakland station since December 30th and not sitting on my own floor gathering dust with the operator and the rest of his equipment. They were apologetic. We'll see how apologetic when I get home Monday. I did, however, receive the Tom Rush CD today from Amazon. (Along with Turbo Tax. Depressing, but at least they'll owe me money.) I've always known the name, but really hadn't placed the music until I heard his No Regrets cut off the Wonder Boys motion picture soundtrack. Great song, don't know how I feel about the rest of his music.