FAILURE AND SUCCESS TOGETHER ... BUMMER

Despair about my inability to sleep and consequent exhaustion has finally driven me to seek counseling. First meeting on the 10th of month. I live every moment of my life in a sort of daze, a trance. I feel so dizzy at times that I make mistakes in medicine, and I can't carry on reliable conversations with my care givers. Last week, I asked Mertie talk to one of the KP nurses for me so that good information would be transmitted. I dread bedtime approaching. I seem to have no emotional resources with which to meet my painful existence. I'm quite a wimp.

In the midst of all this confusion and despair, Jessica Gleason, editor at online journal Aberration Labyrinth, accepted two of my poems for publication. They were written in what I think of as my Cannon Street period, quite different from the poetry that came out of my time at Eastern Washington University as I was escaping my addiction to alcohol. The journal fits quite nicely the poetry I was writing at that time. I like the poets I find myself among on the journal's pages. I'm too tired to feel much pleasure. 

HENRY MILLER, STEP ASIDE. HERE COMES THE BEATNIK BOOMER

Can't tell you how much this 77 year old writer is enjoying the rewriting of his novel, The Porn Writer, once known as The Porno Writer. I wrote the novel when I lived on Cannon Street in Spokane, Washington. That period in my life was when I also wrote all the poetry that is now included in Gray House By Cold Mountain which is probably the most authentic poetry I've ever written. So far, I've already rewritten 11 chapters, nearly 100 pages, in a week and a half of work. Everything about this novel thrills me and carries me forward. I'm excited to rediscover all I put into it. For some damn, probably fearful, reason, I put the novel aside, finished but discarded for some reason. As I slowly rediscover this novel, I'm excited at how it deals with the many issues I faced in my own recovery from alcoholism and also worked through my issues with women. The style and subject matter is a shocker for the timid, but how else can the timid, as I was timid, deal with sexual matters except by exploring them unabashedly and forthrightly?