BEATNIKING THROUGH LIFE WHILE RIDING THE MAX

FB tells me I haven't written in this writer's blog lately, but they always tell me that one or two days after my most recent entry. I put in a good day's work this afternoon on Memoir Of A Nobody. Spent several hours on no more than three paragraphs, writing and rewriting, fine tuning, trying to get the past emotions down just right.

My current emotions are running hot then cold the past two days. Yesterday, I took the Max into Portland, felt recognition of some sort for all my life's work was very near. Everything I've written has been brilliant... then this morning I awake filled with doubt and self-loathing, remembering all the people I've alienated, imagining how no one will come to my funeral. Of course not. I'm not going to have a funeral, no showing, nothing. Wife and I have both decided on how the end of our lives will be without fanfare—drop dead and off to the crematory. 

BEATNIKING A PATH TO UNDERSTANDING

Putting aside the memoir today. It's escaping me and that's discouraging. Trouble is the timeless connections within the unconscious. I'm working on Chapter 5: Cast Of Characters. I want to rough out limited bios of the people in my family who most affected me. But as I begin to write about my mother, thought leads to thought and emotion fires up emotion and soon enough the hidden connections between my mother and my ex-wives takes me to the moments in my marriages when I feel my mother in the images of my exes. I find myself

far off target, in a memory that belongs to another chapter. I mean, when you understand that the abuse your mother suffered as a child is connected to how you picked your wives, what chronology can contain that awareness? Where do you write it—when the twist was put, without your knowledge, into your psyche or when decades later you finally discovered it hidden there? When I understand my life, everything seems connected to everything else. I wonder if another structure is called for? One without a chronology of any sort, but, I've tried that too, and I can't imagine anyone reading it with any patience. Think I'll go home and pick up where I left off in my third read of Steinbeck's East Of Eden. Let me tell you about finding myself with James Dean in the movie East Of Eden, cold and lonely atop a freight car heading to Monterey to look for his whore mother—connection to connection to connection....

BEATING THE BEATNIK TO DEATH

It's 5:30 am, and I'm unable to sleep. Writing my Memoir Of A Nobody is turning out to be quite a disturbing task. Writing stirs up memories in me that won't go away and let me sleep. Several nights recently sleeplessness has overwhelmed me. It's a good thing I don't write every day or I'd be in awful shape. My life contains many disturbing events, many psychologically terrifying periods. Fortunately, I don't believe I normally realize what I've been through. I have so many tales to tell and many psychological insights that I've gotten from them and through counseling and reading in psychology, specially in evolutionary psychology. I truly have something to offer about the process of recovery from many emotional difficulties to find happiness and love. I spent four hours today writing and rewriting four paragraphs, trying to get the facts and feelings down as they truly happened. I'm writing about my experiences as a 19 year old with prostitutes in San Juan, Puerto Rico. In many ways those experiences foreshadowed the troubles I would later experience with all women. I've rewritten the opening sentences below too many times already. 

1. Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner

I wonder if writing this memoir will be the death of me? Lit by a computer monitor, here I sit, age 81, at 1:52 am, naked except for white briefs, bent over a computer keyboard, driven out of bed by a restless memory to begin….

Somewhere within me my stepmother’s words are indelibly inscribed: “You’re selfish. You’re not like your father at all. You’re not a Thomas.”

    I’ve begun many times in 81 years to write this memoir, and every time I begin, I tell myself memoir writing is the most selfish task a person can try. I immediately begin to quibble with myself....


It's now 6:15 am as I finish this entry and still no sleep....

Now 2:43 pm as I add this entry. My lack of sleep has nothing to do with guilt. I'm long past that, but my mind just goes hyperactive sometimes. Thoughts run riot.