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Air in the Paragraph Line Issue 01
Air in the Paragraph Line
A Newsletter about Jon Konrath's writing and life.
Issue 1- March 1996
My latest deal:
Hey all. I'm still alive and kicking it up here in Seattle. This is
my latest attempt to keep in touch and distribute some of my most
fucked-up day to day writing to those interested, and keep you updated
on larger projects.
I'm still plugging away on two books, in addition to other projects.
Summer Rain, my first book, has been in a continual editing process,
and I'm hoping for a good final draft by summer. I've been focusing
on making it 'thicker', and bringing out some of the hidden emotion
that I don't feel I correctly conveyed during the earlier drafts.
My second book, Rumored to Exist, recently hit the halfway mark, in
shortly under 3 months of on-and-off writing. An excerpt was
published in Metal Curse zine ($3 payable to Ray Miller at POB 302,
Elkhart, IN 46515-0302) and I'm currently looking for other zines or
small journals to pick up excerpts. I've also been working on a
tag-team story with Ray Miller. We wrote some insane stuff together
when he was in Seattle a few months ago, so look for something
interesting...
Enough babbling, let's get to work here...
Scraping the Bucket:
The worst of Feb's outgoing email.
[editor's note - this is all a bunch of outgoing mail I sent to
various people. It isn't a poem written in cantos in some random
fashion while on angel dust. Just a clarification.]
Hey, I guess I am going to see Rollins speak here in seattle on
2/13. Do you know anything I could get him for his birthday? It would
have to be something I could throw from my cheap balcony seat. No
TVs, lawn tractors, Nautilus gear, etc.
which brings us to the whole dating thing. no nothing has happened
with the 6'1 chick, i havent talked to her we have just been playing
phone tag. she is answering my calls which is a good thing but i am
sure she got like 400 replies to her ad and if there was a 400:1
horse, would you bet your paycheck on it let alone your sanity?
because i have absolutely no self-esteem at this point, i doubt that
anything would happen if i met her. and i have been seriously fucked
up about the dating thing since i got here, because i have not met
anyone even friends since i moved here. one of the reasons i stayed
in school for such a long time is because i feared that i would
graduate, get a job, move away, work 9 to 5 with a bunch of yuppies
and then spend my evenings alone watching tv and eating microwave
food. well, that basically happened except i dont have a tv. and
every fucking counselor or self help book tells you to turn to god,
your family, or your friends to get guidance, and i dont really have
any of the three.
so that's what's been sticking it in and breaking it off lately. thats
why im always writing, thats why i have been drinking lately, although
i plan on stopping after last night's little stunt.
How's things? My book is sinking like the titanic after the fucking
iceberg. I haven't been able to get any cohesive writing done, the
day job's really sticking it in and breaking it off.
im hoping for weird, fucked up dreams about scooby doo and the
antichrist. and nobody's speaking english. this one's all about
japanese, spanish and subtitles. and a porno-film soundtrack with
dubbed moaning. oh, in 3-d.
I had a dream that I had sex with an ex-girlfriend in one of those
photo booths in the mall. and later in the dream, i had to give a
speech on carpal tunnel syndrome, and i knew absolutely nothing about
it except i know people who have had it and i fear that i will get it
myself someday.
it is raining and 50. and i have to go to some dumb banquet dinner
for work today. time to break out the Charles Manson T-Shirt.
Sorry to hear of the simmsmobile. My image of that car was like one
of those monsters in a zombie film, where the people keep chopping off
limbs and lighting it on fire, but it keeps trundling along. Except
your car never killed a bunch of people at a summer camp (well, as far
as I know).
what a car... i have very odd and fond memories of riding in that
thing during the summer of 94, toting around beer and dole and duckman
video tapes and zappa cds and sitting in that basement apartment while
JM freaked out over the concept of us watching TV
i say you get a rottweiler and train it to kill people when they say
"daddy" or "mommy" i.e. a sorority dunce in dunn meadow says "my
daddy is sending me to cancun" and the dog fucking devastates
them. also train it to bark the theme song from hawaii five-o. that
is good for parties. and it should be able to drink beer from bottles
every night I plan on writing a lot. every night i fall asleep for 4
hours, wake up, find something to completely fuck about 3 or 4 hours
of time, and then suddenly have no motivation to write because it is 4
in the morning.
There are times I wish I was back in Lindley hall at 3am with the
broken machines and all. But then I wish I still had the shithole
apartment at mitchell st, a 15 minute walk in the darkness along the
empty traffic of 3rd street.
I was in Canada today. It was beautiful here, 50-60 degrees and very
sunny, so I piled a few tapes in the car and headed north. From my
apartment to Canadian customs is 100 miles, almost exactly. The drive
up was incredible, very breathtaking views of every mountain range in
the northern part of the state, and great evergreens and rock
formations and fields of winter golden plants.
I crossed into BC, and drove around just south of Vancouver. I got
sort of lost, and it was like 3:30 and I hadn't eaten lunch. I then
realized there was no place to change money and I didn't want to look
like a dork trying to spend US currency. So, I turned around and came
back. Got a little shock at a "Seattle - 200" sign until I realized
it was K and not miles. Also, the gas stations all said 559, I didn't
realize it was 55 cents canadian per liter. Duh.
American customs was far ruder and more stupid than Canadian. They
actually made me get out and open up the car and trunk. Single
person, new car, one hour in the country, no purpose, no apparent
cargo, I don't know maybe they did expect me to have an illegal alien
in the hatchback or something. Anyway, my impression of British
Columbia is much poorer than that of Ontario. Ontario seems much more
royal, with wide open roads, majestic plains, and cities that look
like they have hundreds of years of history. The part of BC I saw
looked more like Alabama. Lots of crappy strip malls, no real sights
to see, and a lot of congestion and confusing roadway. Maybe the
heart of Vancouver has more noble metropolis centers, but the southern
suburbs were pretty lame. However, it was cool to finally take the old
escort into a foreign land, and the little metric differences along
the way gave me a chuckle or two.
Also on the way, I heard a radio station that sounded like the
soundtrack to that Raja Babu movie crossed with Tori Amos singing the
Indian lyrics. Pretty weird.
i went out with this chick who is a registered nurse and she gets to
pronounce people dead and she has to catheterize people sometimes. so
i figure she must be good in bed. but she is 6'1 and weights 135 lbs
so i am afraid i would break her in half.
you should get the next issue of Details (the one with Coolio on the
cover) it has an article about working in slaughterhouses, this guy
worked at one and it has his picture wearing all of his gear, covered
in blood and holding a cow's small intestine which weighs like 50 lbs.
anyway tell me if you have done any new stuff with bones or anything.
Then I spent like 2 hours on the phone arguing with someone about my
dating life, or lack thereof. They are concerned that if I spend all
of my weekends writing and reading books that I will wake up some day
and realize I am all alone. I told them I write and read books so I
won't wake up someday and realize I'm all alone. One of the reasons I
sold my soul to the devil with regard to the writing thing was that I
felt that I could no longer beat the game of dating. I wish I could
convince my friends that I like doing this more than I would like a
volvo station wagon, mortgage, wife and kids.
I guess it all sounds stupid unless you're there.
Hey! Where have you been!?!? A lot has happened since 1947 when we
last talked. lets see, there was the korean war, then they came out
with this restaurant called mcdonalds, then they started putting fins
on cars, then they took them off again...
you gotta be careful with the mind drug stuff. i have taken about 7
or 8 different kinds of drugs to make me into a shiny happy people and
effects have ranged from loss of money because of the cost to lots of
side effects. i have been taking lithium for about 5 years and that
helps me to some degree. at least it keeps me off the overpasses and
keeps the sniper rifle in the closet. it stops the manic part but i
still get really depressed. i could take prozac or some shit but that
doesnt do much for me. now if i get depressed i just listen to silly
music real loud and sleep a lot.
Since Henry is always talking about riding in cabs and on busses and
soforth, we thought a car would be a good gift for him. So, taking an
idea from an old M*A*S*H episode, we bought a small Volkswagon, took
it apart, and threw all of the pieces on stage while he spoke. We
could not get the radio from the car into the venue because the
bouncers thought we were trying to bootleg record the concert. I
think he liked the gift, although he got hit pretty hard in the head
with an exhaust manifold while he was talking about the grammys, but
the bleeding pretty much stopped by the end of the set. Also, during
his more serious rap about the boy with leukemia, we launched one of
the fenders from the balcony and it didn't quite make it to the
stage. Luckily the people near where it hit were able to herd the
piece up to Rollins without causing too much chaos.
I sure hope he is able to get that thing back together and running
good, maybe he can drive it back to New York and then just drive
everywhere in the Big Apple. Are there many good, safe places to park
cars out in the big city?
Can I just give you answers to a bunch of questions, and no questions?
John Wayne Gacy, 17 inches, Orange Crush in an enema bag, La Femme
Nikita played backwards, valvoline motor oil, and in the middle of
iowa naked.
i live in seattle. im from the midwest but i dont like to admit it. i
work as a technical writer to pay the bills, but at night i am a mean
motherfucking fiction writing machine. i am editing my first book,
finishing my second, both kick ass and are unconventional spirals of
napalm pain and robitussen. i read like its orgasm-producing,
kerouac, bukowski, miller, vonnegut, jong, sontag, heller, rollins,
and fante to name a few. i dont own a tv because i think that the
people who can force a jillion people to watch baywatch are just going
to tell them to all start drinking jim jones koolaid or something.
plus i dont have room for one in my apartment. if there were a lot of
pirate tv stations i would buy one though. im nocturnal but i have a
9-5 job so at any given moment i am probably hallucinatory from sleep
dep. cds are my religion, my kenwood is the altar, my paycheck is the
ritual sacrifice. i listen to a lot of stuff, some alt some fringe
some progressive some fusion some jazz. my prized posession is my
german peter gabriel cd and i think all problems in the world would
vanish if everyone listened to a stanley clarke song a day. or wilson
pickett. im not into country or too much rap, but i think apple
computer should license the public enemy song 'dont believe the
hype'. i just ate some unidentified fish objects and angelhair pasta
with tomato basil sauce. but i cant cook. thank Thor for microwaves.
AND I LIKE THE OUTDOORS AND I LIKE TO GO OUT DANCING AND I LIKE WALKS
ON BEACHES AND I LIKE ROMANTIC DINNERS AND I LIKE HOLDING HANDS IN THE
MOONLIGHT AND I LIKE TO FUCK CORPSES AND I LIKE TO EAT THE SHIT OF ZOO
ANIMALS AND I LIKE TO JUMP INTO LARGE POOLS FULL OF LEECHES AND HAVE
THEM STICK TO MY PRIVATES AND I
sorry, went insane for a second there. or was that a moment of
clarity?
speaking of which, i saw pulp fiction 20 times in the theatre. i
watch a lot of films, when i get writer's block i sometimes watch 2 or
3 in a row, alone. i saw beyond rangoon, one of the best films of 95,
back to back with while i was sleeping or whatever the fuck that julia
roberts film was.
ending sents. with was, the english dept is going to show up and take
back the diploma.
hobbies include caffiene, monkeywrenching, yelling from my 5th floor
balcony, music that makes my eyes bleed, punching the keys at 3 in the
morning, spontaneous roadtrips, buying toys, and working on a large
thesis about how the planet of the apes is a social document of the
70s, comparing it to star wars, all in the family, and star trek.
Okay maybe not. can i ask a million questions how are you where are
you from what do you like how do you eat a reeses peanut butter cup
what type of global economic system would result in a medium term
solution to churning interest rates what is your favorite cartoon can
you say sally sells sea shells by the sea shore 10 times real fast do
you like anchovies on your pizza have you ever brought chicken
entrails to a catholic church and acted like you thought it was a
pagan ritual do you ever have that dream where youre falling and you
always wake up before you hit why do people instinctively sniff fresh
mimeographs who did you vote for in 1904 do you think i should buy
aluminum siding for my car do you have any tattoos of european contour
maps on your thighs do you think dr seuss translates well to sanskrit
have you ever played black sabbath at 16 speed and convinced someone
it was a form of time travel do you like red grapes or green grapes
and finally DO YOU HAVE A WEB PAGE A FAX MACHINE AND AN 800 NUMBER?
1) I don't shoot up, but I have a permanent sternum IV and hook it up
the four tubes to two liters of Coca-Cola, Jolt, Mountain Dew, and
Dr. Pepper every morning. 2) as for anal intercourse, my job's got me
bent over the table from 9-5 every week. 3) I watch my three sons
episodes nude about 4 times daily. I have complete computerized
measurements of the circumference of my penis for the complete run of
the series. maybe we can split a PhD thesis in psych and american
studies over the data? let me know.
i take photos of ugly things. i like to take photos of ugly buildings
that nobody cares about so when they are gone and some chrome and
glass bank is there, I can go "see what used to be here?"
Halloween 95, in Boston, sick to death but completely fucked out on a
6x dose of dayquil, wallflowering at a place called the Ramrod. There
was an AWESOME mix of drag and Halloween costumes, guys dressed as
nuns, a totally buff superman with slicked black hair and makeup, and
a huge guy dressed as chef boy-ardee, swinging a big plastic cleaver
over his head on the dance floor.i read more than a lot. i read too
much. i wish i could write as much as I read but that's a flawed
assumption. i am reading Roald Dahl's Lamb to the Slaughter, it
doesnt really count though because it is a Penguin 60 and I will
finish it tonight. Penguin 60's are awesome, 60 titles, a buck each,
today they were on sale buy 1 get 1 free so i got like 12 of them. i
am a BIG charles bukowski fan, and Henry Miller too. I am going to
see Tim O'Brien in a week, he also rules. He is sort of into the
pacifist-type thing, because he was in vietnam and got sort of fucked
up. his writing is severely twisted, his last book _in the lake of
the woods_ will take the paint right off your house.
i have never been anyone's ball and chain, per se. I'm more like a
fur-lined set of handcuffs.
i had a dream about you last night! we were at my old old apartment
on mitchell street and we were sitting on the couch and reading these
magazines. you were reading news week or something and i think i was
reading omni and you kept asking me questions about some computer ad
in the magazine. but you had long hair so maybe it was really someone
else trying to trick me, or maybe it was an old dream. i dont
remember where we got the magazines, maybe we got them at the
bookstore! anyway i dont remember any more of the dream but it was
still neat.
I feel a great need to quote from the Jimi Hendrix song 'Fire'. I
think it's the dayquil.
its 12:19 and I'm at home. i was going to go to elliott bay books,
get fully caffienated, and then go to the fenix underground and do the
meat market thing. but id upgrade my cold to bronchitis and then have
to go to the doctor and he'd ask me a bunch of inane questions blah
blah blah. i prefer not to go to the doctor, i would rather just
figure it out myself. in fact, i removed my own appendix last year. i
bought a dissecting kit and a fifth of smirnoff, saved myself a lot of
money. ruined a few towels though and i couldnt sit down for 6
months, but im cool now.
my lang was spanish, two semesters about 5 years ago that's mostly
vanished. "donde es tu hall pass, senor beavis?" i occasionally have
a dream where i can fluently speak spanish, but my dreams are fucked
up and another topic entirely.
I was in the middle of editing my first book, and was on a business
trip, dragging this laptop all over boston trying to EDIT and I just
started fucking with a new idea. within a weekend, I had the
framework for a second book, and just started working on both, full
throttle. the first book, i dont know who will like it. but the
second is getting there, part of it was published as a work in
progress in a magazine and now im sort of pressured to finish the damn
thing.
I washed my car today in an act of reverse-reverse psychology, to get
it to stop raining. It didn't work.
i am experiencing this heavy, sinking feeling from being domestic,
doing laundry, cleaning my car, dusting the house, it feels sort of
like the night after you freebase Immonium AD and feel all shaky and
nap-desiring.
i have been celibate for two years for no other reason than I have
been too lazy to find a partner. i am afraid i am going to pull a
'just out of prison' on the next poor woman i sleep with. of course,
that might not be a bad thing, i dont know.
my three least favorite tastes in the world are squid, that white shit
women use for yeast infections, and dishsoap. each of the three are a
long, bizarre story for a later date..
hey you know i think i found a cool product idea. you see, you could
cross allergy testing with tattooing. they could put colors in all of
the test specimens and then when you got done, you'd have a full back
tattoo. think people would go for it?
so im sitting here listening to chick corea and reading charles
bukowski and trying to think of ideas for the book, so it is pretty
much business as usual. the scantily clad women who peel me grapes
and massage my feet did not show up today, so i have to pull the
grapes from the little vine-thingees myself, and run the ceiling fan
instead of having someone wave one of those giant peacock-feather type
things above the room. so i feel your pain about the workers not
showing up tonight.
im in a sort of weird mood today. driving back from the u-district
tonight, im on I-5 doing about 70 and I suddenly realize that my
apartment doesn't really feel like a home and I don't exactly know
where my home is because it sure isn't Indiana anymore and I just got
this very disorienting which-way-is-up feeling. Sometimes I don't
even think about the fact that I'm in Seattle now, and I've got a job
and I'm financially independent (barely) and this is my home. So I
looked at my driver's license and I feel better now.
i think i am just permanently fucked up when it comes to
relationships. maybe i am just feeling sorry for myself, but this
whole woman thing makes me want to just lock myself in my apartment
with 10 years worth of hi-c and snickers bars and just never come
out. its the typical argument ive been whining about for years now,
most of the women out there want something other than what i really
am, and the ones that might be somewhat of a match are so hidden that
a person as shy as me will never find them. of course it is stupid
for me to whine about this but i do. and i should go out and meet
people blah blah blah but that is so self-serving of an argument i
mean we are talking about a person who routinely spends entire
weekends inside because they fear having to talk to a stranger.
meanwhile the sex oils stay locked away and my hormones are driving me
nuts and im going to have to start adding saltpetre to my food or just
cut it off or take a lot of cold showers or something. but more than
the hormone thing, which is actually pretty minor since its been so
long, is just the sinking feeling that im just going to snap my
fingers and wake up and find myself in my 80's, having been completely
celibate for 60 years, with nothing but a bunch of memories of
spending my weekends in bed reading stupid books.
maybe i can buy some shares [of stock] for real cheap and then sell
them and then buy a BMW and then buy a condo and a cell phone and
marry someone named barbi who looks like a model but is frigid and
we'll have kids and buy a volvo station wagon and go to church and
send the kids to boarding school in connecticut and then she will
start fucking around on me and i will start drinking a lot and then i
will divorce her and lose the kids the stock the bmw and have to keep
the volvo and ill sell the condo at a loss and the cell phones gone
already and ill be 40 and look like im 80 and then think, man, why
dont i just go back to being single and writing books after all?
or maybe i will just spend my money on oreo cookies and pornography
and CDs and just avoid the horror.
and whenever i see him it is like "hey jon did you hear i am buying a
yacht or something?" and i say "hey, did i tell you i managed to stay
up 60 hours last weekend and i pissed off my balcony and got it to hit
the I-5 overpass with the wind shear?" and then they are never
impressed. see, that's why i dont like hanging out with yuppies.
gotta go make my toaster strudels drink my coke write in the book and
then give the plastic woman the old one-two. have a good one. no new
stories no new women no new exploits no new nothing except my heart
beat about 115,000 times and all of them worked. A toast to all
things boring which didnt raise the number and use up any of the ones
i need later.
nothing new to report here today more dumb stuff more writing more
work more rain more wind more time more death more shit more piss more
roadkill more guns more bombs more rapes more records more cough syrup
more mroe more more more makes you wanna just not spend any money and
put it in a jar and then smash the jar and go buy 23,574 boxes of
Atomic Fireballs at the village pantry. well gotta go run gotta cook
my toaster strudels they are good i pretent that the strawberry is
really human blood
The money thing has become a more focal point in my life. Sometimes
I miss the days when I was so far in debt that I knew I would never
have money for big things and I just didn't worry. Now that I have a
decent check, I've gotta think about savings, 401K, cars, rent,
furniture, houses, vacations, whatever. I'm still clearing out a lot
of debt and getting caught up on some big stuff - I still owe IU some
money I flat out haven't paid them, and the credit cards are always a
bitch. But by fall, only the student loans and this damn car will be
left. But I might not start buying shit, I might just eat potatoes
and fish heads and ramen and keep writing and put the whole damn check
into gold bars or in a big penny jar or something so I don't have to
worry about money for a while. I'd like to just work for a few years,
clear out all of the debt, and stash enough that I can go back to
school and get a $200 room and take a class a year and just do nothing
but write and fuck women 10 years younger than me for a while. Who
knows.
then i dont sleep for 3 days and listen to Jimi Hendrix and when he
is singing all along the watchtower i imagine talking to god and im
the joker and god is the thief and i complain about the confusion and
how i cant get no relief. and then i realize i need a vacation.
Anyway, I agree that there's a strong relationship between writing
and loneliness (and depression). I feel that the people who best
perceive life and see this human condition of loneliness and respond
to it are also those who can see life through different lenses and
portray it on paper in a way that's entertaining, or at least
endearing. Same holds true for musicians, artists, and others of
artistic ability.
My lifestyle borders between simple and chaotic. I now work a
full-time, salaried job at a big computer company writing essentially
boring documentation. I'm fairly good at leaving my work and its
related thoughts at the office at 5 everyday, which leaves me my own
life outside the corporate maze. It pays enough that I can afford the
luxury of my own studio and complete solitude. So most of my time can
be spent writing, or pursuing other passions like books, reading,
music, or just wandering around town observing the normal yet
abnormal. As for people, I'm fairly nonplussed. The office gives me
an extended family which keeps me busy on the weekends when I want
it. But I enjoy seclusion, especially when linked to writing. I do
write in public places at times, airports, malls, coffeeshops,
restaurants, parks, etc. But I guess I've managed to train myself to
enjoy passing time by myself at times. And when I am around others
and I don't want to be, it tends to make me a bit nutsy. (i.e. the
holidays with my family). I guess it sort of bothers me that most of
America feels a need to be around other people when they are not
working or schooling or whatever.
And my job is fairly tedious too, so I spend a lot of time writing
mail. I don't correspond to a great number of people, but I write too
much and too often. Or maybe not.
Okay, here's why I like Bukowski. He worked the Post Office job, he
did the repetition, played the timeclock, and realized how much the
system ran on masses who did what he did. So he started writing,
started calling in sick, and when he got a few people to pay him
pennies for his poems, he left. And as he spent most of the 70's in
his run down apartment, beating the typer every night for 4 or 5 or 10
hours, he saw the world around him as flawed as these zombies did the
same thing every day just to do the same thing every day.
Bukowski never lived on the edge. When the hippies and freaks and
acid-heads and beatniks and eccentric euro-poet hipsters showed up at
his door, he usually put a pillow over his ear and stayed in bed. He
isn't easily pigeonholed with other literary movements because he
pissed off most literary movements by ignoring them and just writing
miles of poems about horse-racing and waking up drunk in bus-stations
(write what you know, I guess).
So, to me, Bukowski symbolizes the need to call in sick or avoid the
giant marketing machine of life to sit in a cheap apartment and
scribble poetry on the backs of old computer printouts. I don't bet
on horses, I don't drink, I don't screw women I meet from poetry
readings, and I don't pretend I'm some hardened dirty old man. But I
do wish I had his synergy for writing so many damn books for so little
money.
As for stalking, I've never tried it myself. But I imagine it would
take more time and energy than doing your laundry. And I'm not having
much luck with that this week, even though I have a washer and drier
in my place.
I also figured out how to play "satisfaction" on the phone
keypad. along with my renditions of "another one bites the dust" and
"whip it", I'll probably have enough stuff to cut a demo by summer.
The Journal Pit:
February's spiral notebook scribbling in action
2/1
The mirror I'm looking into is disturbed, broken, untrue. I want to
rise (or sink) to another level where the self-emulation, the
purgatory becomes valuable instead of destructive. Now, my
self-criticisms only produce more ripples in the lake, more pain. I'd
like to reach a point where they produce a more true item, an
artwork. THen my own indoctrination becomes an item to draw others to
my feelings and existence.
2/7
Everyone said it rained like hell in Seattle, warning me of some new,
more evil rain. But rain is rain is rain. Back in Indiana, I
remember the summer drought-breakers, the 4 and 5 day long
rainstorms. Like an orgasm after a year of celibacy, inches, feet of
heavy downpour, almost closing down the cities as the drainage ditches
filled and overpoured into streets and basements. And I used to deal
with the pissy spring cold rain, days of charcoal skies, pounding
winds, and frigid showers in the fifty degree rain. And Seattle is
worse?
2/8
If I was back, I'd go to CD exchange, say hi to Tom. Stroll Kirkwood,
duck into BW3 for a quick look around and maybe a beer and a game of
trivia. Then I'd walk to Karma, see if Michelle still worked there.
Then to Dagwood's for a corned beef on a Kaiser roll, swiss, mayo,
mustard, green pepper, tomato, and a liter of doctor pepper. With the
food in hand, I'd walk through Dunn meadow, and over to the IMU, where
I'd sit in the union commons and eat. Dagwood's, Dr. Pepper, and
Chaucer in the union - the total experience of taking L297 last
spring. I hated Chaucer, but damn I miss it.
2/21
Thoughts of money, LS Ayres, Visa, dentist, doctor, Ford, IU still
tear and eat my flesh (yes Simms, like weasels). The list gets
smaller but more roaches keep running out from the floorboards, more
shit, more problems. I scratched my car bumper today, I looked at my
teeth and saw 6 or 7 holes, and then I thought about my other bills.
At least I have cash coming in, but hell, when does it stop? I think
when I move, I'm not going to buy the furniture I planned on getting.
Just a small bed and my bookcases, no couch, no TV, nothing but milk
crates and stolen lumber. Fuck Ikea, if I had $1000 to buy a new
leather sofa, I'd buy a $20 futon and put the other $980 in the
running-away-to-mexico jar.
[...]
No writing, no nothing just a bunch of sleep and a headache and I'm
still tired. Kicking ideas with no thought, and I'm too sleepy and
too nothing-esque to put the fingers to the keyboard and kick life
into a blank screen. It's all futile, I think, telling the life of
someone who has no life to tell. Cyclical - I stay inside trying to
tell others how I lived when I haven't started. I need ways to go out
and grab life by the shaft.
I need something anyway to worry about besides this damn stack of
bills my teeth the books the job my car my dick my toenails my
apartment my computer tape drive my family my stereo volume knob blah
blah blah. Fuck the ones that increase my circulation my pulse the
pressure of my crimson fluid. Every heartbeat shortens my trip on
this slab, and they're punching my ticket early. A toast to the
boring, the old, the ignorable of the world. Thanks for keeping me
alive.
And so on:
I forgot to mention that I got to see both Henry Rollins and Tim
O'Brien this month. Rollins spoke for 4 hours, pretty intense and
funny stuff. I've been waiting to see him live for years, so it was a
pretty cool experience. O'Brien wasn't as good of a speaker, but he
did have some good stuff to say about The Things They Carried.
Unfortunately, he only spoke for about an hour. With an $18 ticket
price for balcony seats, that wasn't too cool. But he's given me some
new ideas for the eventual final draft of Summer Rain, so it was worth
it.
So that's it for now. Keep in touch (or get in touch) with my info
below. Buy the new Metal Curse from Ray if you want to take a look at
my stuff, or send me an e-mail or letter and I can fire off part of a
draft for you to check out.
To Contact me:
[Editor's note: I changed this to be current as of 9/9/96]
Jon Konrath
600 7th Ave #520
Seattle, WA 98104-1933
(206) 343-5604 (home)
(206) 217-7811 (work)
jkonrath@speakeasy.org
http://www.speakeasy.org/~jkonrath
I am also responsive to skywriting.
Copyright (C) 1996 Jon Konrath. All rights reserved.
