A bumper sticker I saw:
Bumper to bumper
butt to butt.
Get off my ass
you silly nut.
September 19, 1986
Chicago
Last week a girl in our fiction workshop told the teacher, Jim, that she didn’t know what she wanted to write exactly. She said she was interested in death, so today she turned in a poem about Vietnam called “The Walking Wounded.” “I see silhouettes. / Green silhouettes,” it began.
Every line had a period at the end. Jim called her poem a list, and she announced that she would not be coming back. She wore leather straps around her wrists.
After class I came home and spent an hour and a half taking my typewriter apart. Something was jammed inside. There are countless tiny screws in there, and it’s amazing to me that I fixed it. I feel so proud of myself.
September 25, 1986
Chicago
Yesterday Amy took a cab home from her improv class. She sat in the back wearing sunglasses, and the driver tried to flirt with her, saying, “You’ve got beautiful eyes.”
Later she went to the Laundromat, where she saw a man carefully folding his wet clothes and putting them in the dryer.
September 28, 1986
Chicago
Paul was here until this afternoon. During his visit we went around town on bikes and buses and the L. We took a few cabs, but mainly we walked. Last night he had a meatball sub and today he had a hot roast beef sandwich. He ate a lot of gravy on this trip. Before leaving he told me this joke:
Q. How did they know Christa McAuliffe had dandruff?
A. They found her Head & Shoulders on the beach.
October 2, 1986
Chicago
Dad called at six a.m. It was still dark outside, so I assumed someone had died. Why else would he call me?
It seemed he was on his way from British Columbia to Raleigh and was at O’Hare, laid over between flights. In Canada he’d fished for steelhead trout. He caught five big ones in ten days, but his main haul was stones, which are his new thing. In his suitcase were two twenty-five-pounders, one that he says resembles a human head and another that looks like a fish.
While there he saw an eagle swoop down and snatch a beaver off the banks of a pond. I loved the wonder in his voice when he related this story. My father has a terrific voice.
October 3, 1986
Chicago
A woman on All Things Considered did a seven-minute story on the idea of home that involved a number of different people. Mr. Rogers talked about the house he grew up in. He said that the bedrooms were upstairs and described the furniture and the hallways. It was layout information. Then came an old woman who talked about her father. She said that he was a kind man and that he had been beaten to death while working as a scab at a bakery. The woman received the news and remembered thinking, If anyone has to die, why not my mother?
In those days, she said, dead bodies were put on ice and displayed in the family’s home. Her father’s casket had a leak. “I remember the ice melting and dripping and forming a puddle on the floor, and I will remember it until I die,” she said. “I’ll remember seeing it and thinking, Here is my father. He is on ice in the living room.”
I found some Xeroxed papers from Adult Children of Alcoholics that included the following Checklist for Hidden Anger:
Procrastination in the completion of imposed tasks
Perpetual or habitual lateness
A liking for sadistic or ironic humor
Sarcasm, cynicism, or flippancy in conversation
Frequent sighing
Overpoliteness, constant cheerfulness, an attitude of “Grin and bear it”
Smiling while hurting
Frequent disturbing dreams
Overcontrolled monotone speaking
Difficulty in getting to sleep or sleeping through the night
Boredom, apathy
Slowing down of movements
Excessive irritability over trifles
Getting drowsy at inappropriate times
Sleeping more than usual, twelve to fourteen hours a day
Waking up tired rather than refreshed
Clenched jaws while sleeping
Facial tics
Grinding of teeth
Chronic depression
Chronically stiff neck or shoulder muscles
Stomach ulcers
These people have got you coming and going. You can’t be happy and you can’t be miserable. You can’t yawn, laugh, or sigh. I am sarcastic, sometimes have a hard time sleeping, get tired at school and work, and have facial tics. Four out of twenty-two isn’t bad.
Here is the list of telltale attitudes:
We judge ourselves harshly.
We take ourselves seriously and have difficulty having fun.
We are approval seekers and fear personal criticism.
We feel isolated, different from other people.
We focus on others rather than looking honestly at ourselves.
We are attracted to people who are rarely there emotionally for us.
We guess at what normal is.
We live from the viewpoint of victims.
Is seven out of eight bad?
October 5, 1986
Chicago
Lately Neil has stopped sitting down. She hovers, but her ass never touches the floor. I lifted her tail yesterday and discovered an awful mess. She’s balding back there, and it’s all very raw-looking, so this afternoon I took her to the Uptown Animal Hospital. At first we were alone in the waiting room. Then a woman came in with two Persian cats in a carrying case. One was named Wiener and the other was Schnitzel. A few minutes later a man arrived with a dachshund that was wrapped in a blanket and was named Schnapps. As I was leaving after seeing the vet, a well-dressed woman walked in with a white poodle and announced that it was time for Gucci’s distemper shot.
October 9, 1986
Chicago
A list of things that I could paint on a cat:
a log
a telephone receiver
tonic
a list
a trophy
a tongue
October 13, 1986
Chicago
In sculpture class we looked at Arte Povera slides. One was of a pile of potatoes with bronze ears lying on top of it. We saw Richard Serra and Eva Hesse pieces. Everything looked dirty and depressing to me. There is an odd chatterbox in our class who speaks as if she’s known the person she’s talking to for years, and like it’s just the two of them in the room.