MAILER AND ME AT AGE 84

Still working on the rewrite of Ghoul World. But I'm not
making much headway. Too many days, I get this sort of headache from sinus problems that blocks any clarity, and nearing the end of my life, I need clarity to go on. I don't really know what mentality it is that holds me back now or won't supply an adequate motivation to continue. I recall a visit to Mailer that someone made near the end of his life. The caller asked if he was working on anything. Mailer halfheartedly replied, "Yeah," but I didn't believe him. 

This photo is of Mailer at age 84, the same age I am as I write this. He's got more hair than me and more best sellers too, but I think I'm still handsomer and looking more fit than he does. Of course, I don't think he stopped drinking. I'm not sure of that, but not boozing can works wonders on your health.

FRED ASTAIRE DANCES TO MY BEATNIK

12:10 pm on a Wednesday. Only 3 days between last posting

dead man

and this one. Sitting at Starbuck's a few blocks from home. The writing has gone well enough for the past couple of mornings. I've been working on the dialogue and exchanges between Charley Manning, his sidekick, Beaunita, and Nathan Dane who writes and makes films about Yetis and Bigfoots. Simultaneously, I'm dealing with old age stuff that impedes good writing, with dizziness, weakness, tiredness (even though I've slept well) and accompanying pinchy bowel stuff that sends me frequently to the can to deliver resounding farts but little else. This condition appears from time to time in its own good time whenever it pleases. I know you don't think you want to know this stuff, but it's the stuff of an old writer dude, still trying for financial reward in his mid-70s. I think of Norman Mailer who was being interviewed as part of a PBS show, and how old he looked. I wondered, at the time, about his ability to continue writing with arthritis plaguing him. I don't recall that what he was working on at that time has ever seen the inside of a printing press, and he's gone now. Finished. His brief time upon the stage strutted away. As if to accent this rumination on Mailer's and my own age, at this very moment, scratchy on Starbuck's speaker system, Fred Astaire is singing Cheek To Cheek to Ginger Rogers. Ah, the coincidence of it all!