Caveat: 2001

At my work at ARAMARK, I migrated from the finance department into the IT department. I started working as a programmer. I studied SQL programming and accounting, and combine these disparate fields into a pretty good understanding of my employer’s business model.  I took many long drives around Southern California. I accepted the fact that I was meant to be alone in the world. I deleted a novel I was writing from my computer in disgust.
[This entry is part of a timeline I am making using this blog. I am writing a single entry for each year of my life, which when viewed together in order will provide a sort of timeline. This entry wasn’t written in 2001 – it was written in the future.]
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Caveat: 2000

A programmer at my place of work becomes slightly famous for creating a non-Y2K-compliant application after January 1, 2000. In June, Michelle committed suicide. It was as if to say, ‘So there!’ or ‘Take that!’ That’s how suicide works. I worked hard at ARAMARK. I bought my Nissan pickup truck, which was the first and only time I ever bought a new car.
[This entry is part of a timeline I am making using this blog. I am writing a single entry for each year of my life, which when viewed together in order will provide a sort of timeline. This entry wasn’t written in 2000 – it was written in the future.]
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Caveat: 1999

I started working at ARAMARK Corporation in Burbank, as a temp in the finance department. I proved sufficiently competent that they offered me a permanent position. Michelle and I occasionally discussed getting back together. We had long, drawn out, long-distance telephone conversations, her still in Philly and me in L.A. (well, Burbank). We both clearly had difficult-to resolve ‘issues.’ I told Michelle that I didn’t think it could work out.
[This entry is part of a timeline I am making using this blog. I am writing a single entry for each year of my life, which when viewed together in order will provide a sort of timeline. This entry wasn’t written in 1999 – it was written in the future.]
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Caveat: 10 ways of looking at a city bus

A sensuous mother’s hand strokes her daughter’s brown back, a sort of innocent, pure eroticism, unconscious, formless, concrete.

10 ways of looking @ a city bus (after W. Stevens which I just was reading)

1. A boy is kissed by his girl
@ a bus stop on Figueroa St.
By the taco stand. A bus pulls up.
And struggles away in a cloud of exhaust.

2. A child watches the red & yellow bus,
all angular, be-wheeled giant,
irrelevant to his life
He watches from the window.

3. Rural, inter-city county bus,
bound for the university
A column of eucalyptus trees flips past
College students look out at the lumber stacked in rows

4. 11 pm on Washington Blvd.
A man waits, stomping to stay warm
Almost dancing on the icy sidewalk
The 16A doesn’t come.

5. Two yellow and brown buses
careen down Avenida Insurgentes @ 2 am
their drivers are racing.
The passengers doze, or are drunk.

6. The newspaper headline says
the buses are overcrowded.
The state orders the transit authority to buy more buses
one man asks “Where’s the money going to come from?”

7. An old woman clambers onto a bus,
Somewhere along 6th Avenue – the 50’s, I think.
An impatient young man flicks his burning cigarette into the gutter
And reaches for the handrail to climb aboard.

8. Somewhere near St.-Germaine-des-Pres
a bus disgourges its passengers
The rich, intoxicating smell of diesel fumes
Still makes me think of Paris in January.

9. Accelarating passionately
the rural bus swings into opposing traffic
To pass a donkey cart
An old woman who boarded @ the mercado hugs her chicken protectively.

10. Sgt. Jones was impressed, when I knew
which bus to board – I decifered the hangul.
We went to the modern art museum
South of Seoul, amid luxuriant green trees.

I went to a meeting this morning – early, for the thing on deep ecology. I talked more than I expected. And after, two ladies & I talked about Quaker schools, & the decrepit situation @ Pacific Ackworth. No sé.

Yesterday, after counseling, where Jeffrey was the dominant subject, I drove to Pomona, walked around in the desolate desert, hot. Saturday morning ‘ closed. Decrepit 2nd tier urban core. Then I ate lunch at Dennys, which reminded me of Michelle and her cravings.

Then I came home. My pen ran out of ink the end…

[The “retroblogging” project:  this is a “back-post” transcribed from paper on 2013-06-08.  I’ve decided to “fill-in” my blog all the way back.  It’s a big project.  But there’s no time limit, right?

The above was written one Sunday afternoon – my journal entries of this time period were very precisely dated and time-stamped. I was probably in a Starbucks in Pasadena or another in downtown Burbank, or else a Java City location in Glendale I was hanging out at a lot during that period – I tended to migrate around these places depending on what other errands or tasks had me doing at the time.]

[UPDATE: I re-published the poem enclosed in the center of this post as poem #1799 of my daily poem series, on July 4th, 2021.]
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Caveat: 1998

Things began to break down with Michelle and I wasn’t doing very well with it. In August, we decided on a “trial separation,” but I wasn’t willing to  approach this methodically, and by September, I had quit my teaching job and I ran off (somewhat irresponsibly, I realize) to stay on my uncle Arthur’s land in Alaska. I cut trees and brush with a chainsaw (in the rain), and shoveled gravel (in the rain), and wrote a novel (sitting in a white van, in the rain). In November, I gave up on Alaska and on solitude, and I went to LA to stay with my father, who had recently divorced my stepmother of 21 years, whom I sometimes idolized. This was a very bad period for me, and so, closing out the year with a bang, I attempted suicide while parked alongside the Pacific Coast Highway north of San Simeon, and I nearly succeeded. I spent time in a mental hospital (the parallels with Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance are, um, disconcerting).
[This entry is part of a timeline I am making using this blog. I am writing a single entry for each year of my life, which when viewed together in order will provide a sort of timeline. This entry wasn’t written in 1998 – it was written in the future.]
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Caveat: More! Zap!

12/2 4:50  am Update – Wednesday.

Now on your second procedure [ECT]. The first was completed without problem on Monday. Yesterday (Tues) you were discharged from hospital, stayed at home with Phil. You will be starting the hospital program today after procedure.

[The "retroblogging" project:  this is a "back-post" written and
added 2013-06-09  I've decided to "fill-in" my blog all the way
back.  It's a big project.  But there's no time limit, right?

I
wrote this while among the dead. My paper journals from this period are
precisely dated and have multiple entries from each day.]

Caveat: 1997

I resigned from the graduate program at Penn, feeling very unhappy with departmental politics. I was awarded a Master’s Degree in Spanish Literature, as a sort of consolation prize for not finishing the Ph.D. program I was enrolled in. I got to try to be a “soccer dad” with Jeffrey for several months, while Michelle put in ungodly hours with Merck, Inc., in her new job as a chemical engineer. I started teaching high school Spanish and Social Studies that fall, with an ungodly commute to Moorestown, New Jersey. Neither Michelle nor I particularly liked living in suburban Philadelphia. We fight a lot about money, and about parenting issues with Jeffrey – a step-parent’s role is very confusing.
[This entry is part of a timeline I am making using this blog. I am writing a single entry for each year of my life, which when viewed together in order will provide a sort of timeline. This entry wasn’t written in 1997 – it was written in the future.]
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Caveat: 1996

My cat Bernie frequently slept on the bookshelf I’d put next to my desk, and she would fall asleep and then fall off the shelf and into the pile of papers on my desk, surprised by her own clumsiness. Cats are like that. I worked very, very hard at Penn, teaching Spanish to lazy, over-privileged, Ivy League undergrads and taking qualifying exams that summer. Michelle and I finally got legally married in a pizza joint in Minneapolis over the summer, too (the Judge came on a motorcycle). Michelle and Jeffrey then joined me in Philadelphia, after she graduated in Chemical Engineering from the University of Minnesota – we rented a house in Yardley, PA, across from Trenton, NJ. I enjoyed taking the train into the city each day for school/work.
[This entry is part of a timeline I am making using this blog. I am writing a single entry for each year of my life, which when viewed together in order will provide a sort of timeline. This entry wasn’t written in 1996 – it was written in the future.]
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Caveat: 1995

I worked nights for UPS in Northeast Minneapolis in order to save up money. This means I can say I’ve been a card-carrying Teamster. At the same time, I took a really amazing class on semiotics in the Comparative Lit department at the University of Minnesota. We bought a kitten that Jeffrey named Bernardo O’Higgins, that was declared to be “Jared’s cat” to accompany the two other cats: Keska “Jeffrey’s cat” and Charlotte, “Michelle’s cat.”I applied to graduate schools. My first choice was UCLA, but I started at the University of Pennsylvania in August, at the Department of Romance Languages, because of Michelle’s eventual East Coast job prospects – so I rented a charming, run-down apartment in West Philly.
[This entry is part of a timeline I am making using this blog. I am writing a single entry for each year of my life, which when viewed together in order will provide a sort of timeline. This entry wasn’t written in 1995 – it was written in the future.]
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Caveat: 1994

Michelle and I moved in together. Then I spent six months studying the Mapuche Language (Native American Patagonian) at the Universidad Austral de Chile, in Valdivia, Chile. I got to see Buenos Aires, Tierra del Fuego, Patagonia, Uruguay, etc. I was back in Minnesota with Michelle and Jeffrey for Christmas. Michelle and I decided we were ‘married.’ We both had apprehensions about state-sponsored relationships, though, so we didn’t do anything legally binding at this point.
[This entry is part of a timeline I am making using this blog. I am writing a single entry for each year of my life, which when viewed together in order will provide a sort of timeline. This entry wasn’t written in 1994 – it was written in the future.]
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Caveat: 1993

I did some graduate-level coursework in Spanish Literature and Literary and Cultural Criticism (Lit-Crit) at the University of Minnesota – tuition was cheap because I’m an alum. I also studied the Dakota Language (Native American Great Plains). I worked in a bookstore. I had a bicycle accident in which I shattered my 2nd metatarsil into 23 pieces. Two surgeries and six weeks on crutches later, at some point, an initially platonic relationship with Michelle became ‘dating.’ Michelle and I took several camping trips to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, which is why the UP is symbolically important to me.
[This entry is part of a timeline I am making using this blog. I am writing a single entry for each year of my life, which when viewed together in order will provide a sort of timeline. This entry wasn’t written in 1993 – it was written in the future.]
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Caveat: 1992

I lived in Pasadena in the house my great grandfather built around 1910. I took art classes and tried to learn Arabic. I was a bit aimless on the job front – I remember working as a temp at a Robinsons-May department store warehouse in West Covina. Then that summer, after a huge, confrontational fight with my dad and stepmother, I moved back to Minnesota. My bestfriend Bob and I become housemates again in South Minneapolis, near Powderhorn Park, and I met our downstairs neighbors Michelle and Jeffrey (her son, who is 5 at the time). I started working in a bookstore, and one time the front wheel came off my car while I was driving it (a 1965 VW Bug).
[This entry is part of a timeline I am making using this blog. I am writing a single entry for each year of my life, which when viewed together in order will provide a sort of timeline. This entry wasn’t written in 1992 – it was written in the future.]
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Caveat: A Minimalist Book Journal

The Idiot, F. Dostoyevskii, May 91
The Mosquito Coast, P. Theroux, Sep 91
The Siberians, F. Mowat, Nov 91
Travels With Charley, J. Steinbeck, Nov 91
The Fountainhead, Ayn Rand, Jan 12, 92

[The "retroblogging" project:  this is a "back-post" written and added 2013-06-09  I've decided to "fill-in" my blog all the way back.  It's a big project.  But there's no time limit, right?

I found a single loose scrap of paper among my voluminous collection of papers, with the words "Book Journal" at the top and then these 5 titles with dates, but no other information. I'll blog it here with the last date, which is more specific than the others. All but the last title were read while I was in the Army, stationed at Camp Edwards in Paju, South Korea. I remember very vividly reading the first book on the list while sitting on a Korean hillside in the woods, avoiding my sergeant.]

Caveat: 1991

I was stationed at Camp Edwards, Geumcheon (about 7 km from Ilsan of later residence). I was attached to the Bravo Company of the 296th Support Battalion, 2nd Infantry Division. I drove a giant camo green tow truck (named Rocinante) around northwest Gyeonggi province, mostly dragging Humvees out of rice paddies. I found Korea to be a beautiful and interesting country. I was a competent mechanic, but an indifferent soldier. When the Army announced that it was downsizing in the wake of the end of the cold war, I grabbed an honorable “early out”discharge when it was offered, and by December I had become a civilian in San Francisco.
[This entry is part of a timeline I am making using this blog. I am writing a single entry for each year of my life, which when viewed together in order will provide a sort of timeline. This entry wasn’t written in 1991 – it was written in the future.]
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Caveat: 1990

I ended up in Eureka, somehow. I was broke and directionless. I was depressed. I dealt with this directionlessness by enlisting in the U.S. Army, as a truck mechanic. I completed my training in South Carolina, and narrowly missed getting sent to Kuwait for the first Gulf War. Instead, I ended up in South Korea on December 28th.
[This entry is part of a timeline I am making using this blog. I am writing a single entry for each year of my life, which when viewed together in order will provide a sort of timeline. This entry wasn’t written in 1990 – it was written in the future.]
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Caveat: 1989

In August, I graduated cum laude (and Phi Beta Kappa) from the University of Minnesota (Twin Cities), despite the  ‘lost semester’ from the Spring of 85 at Macalaster marring my transcript. My final major was Llinguistics, with a minor in Computer Science. I’d managed enough coursework to have ‘undeclared’ minors in Spanish and Botany. I returned to Mexico, and spent two months in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala. Then, later, after two weeks in Cuba, I ended up becoming very sick in Merida. So I returned to Humboldt County, where my father was at this time.
[This entry is part of a timeline I am making using this blog. I am writing a single entry for each year of my life, which when viewed together in order will provide a sort of timeline. This entry wasn’t written in 1989 – it was written in the future.]
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Caveat: 1988

Having forfeited my scholarship at Macalester by dropping out in 85, by January I fromally enrolled at the University of Minnesota. My declared major was computer science, but I soon changed it to linguistics. I dabbled a lot in languages: Portuguese, Medieval Welsh, Japanese, Russian, Ancient Sumerian, Georgian (Kartuli). I worked hard at a book bindery (book-making factory). I studied very hard, too. I rented a room in a house in St. Paul, and Bob and Mark are my housemates, among others.
[This entry is part of a timeline I am making using this blog. I am writing a single entry for each year of my life, which when viewed together in order will provide a sort of timeline. This entry wasn’t written in 1988 – it was written in the future.]
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Caveat: Fireman

Fireman

I don't remember the exact date, but we took a number of fall camping trips to Northern Minnesota during the period 1987-89. I chose this date as plausible but it's at best a guess.

I was standing in a campfire (notably, a failed campfire), probably making a goofy speech. I really enjoyed those camping trips.

Fireman2

 

[The "retroblogging" project:  this is a "back-post" written and added 2013-05-05.  I've decided to "fill-in" my blog all the way back.  It's a big project.  But there's no time limit, right?]

Caveat: Okey, ya vamos

The day dawned raining grey beauty, and is fading with oppressive luminosity. Zoom-bunny skidded still tight against retro-contextuality – the MTC was of course slightly responsible for it all – ¿did I care, even? Нет. Okey, ya vamos, cansados del vivir de lo todo que hay, ¡güey!

[The "retroblogging"
project:  this is a "back-post" transcribed from paper on 2013-02-18. 
I've decided to "fill-in" my blog all the way back.  It's a big
project.  But there's no time limit, right?  The above was written in a
journal I was keeping while at the University of Minnesota in 1988.]

Caveat: Buy now, at discount

Mikkerbauk fantasie Joe - 
Ah, blue hills of quiet paradise.

The captain-people will take it all away
in fancy flying rocket-planes of self-individual, 
hallucinatory love of masses - 
squalid suffering folk with homes of cardboard, 
you see, don't you,
the danger?!
(Buy now, at discount).

[The “retroblogging” project: this is a “back-post” transcribed from paper on 2013-02-18. I’ve decided to “fill-in” my blog all the way back. It’s a big project. But there’s no time limit, right? The above was written in a journal I was keeping while at the University of Minnesota in 1988. UPDATE 2023-11-27: I republished this little snippet as poem #2672 in my series of daily poems.]

CaveatDumpTruck Logo

Caveat: 1987

After a year working in Mexico City, I travelled (somewhat aimlessly) with a friend by horseback in the mountains of Michoacan (southwestern Mexico). I met lots of interesting people, including many indians, hippies, a draft dodger or two, and a dangerous, drunk, angry man with  a gun. The gun shot bullets.  I got a bullet hole in my shoe, but somehow survived this incident mostly unscathed. Eventually, I return to Minnesota. I rent a room in a crappy house in Southeast Minneapolis and take extension classes at the University of Minnesota, with the intention of returning to school.
[This entry is part of a timeline I am making using this blog. I am writing a single entry for each year of my life, which when viewed together in order will provide a sort of timeline. This entry wasn’t written in 1987 – it was written in the future.]
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Caveat: 1986

In January, right after the Superbowl, I flew on a one-way ticket from Chicago to Mexico City (and why do I remember the Superbowl as the salient fact? – because it was the Chicago Bears in the Superbowl, and the city was crazy with it). I took an intensive course in Spanish at the Universidad Autonoma de Mexico and ended up with typhoid. During my convalescence, I ended up with a job at Casa de los Amigos, a Quaker meetinghouse and rather leftist hostel in Mexico City. I worked as a volunteer English teacher, too, teaching English to Central American refugees. I made lots of friends. I got to travel to El Salvador for a few weeks in the fall, and get to see a civil war up close and personal.
[This entry is part of a timeline I am making using this blog. I am writing a single entry for each year of my life, which when viewed together in order will provide a sort of timeline. This entry wasn’t written in 1986 – it was written in the future.]
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Caveat: 1985

I decided to study art history in Paris for the January term. That was fun. By May, however, alcohol and drug issues caused me to drop out of college. I lived in my car, first passing through Duluth and Ottawa, and then up and down the East Coast (mostly Boston, New York City, with a week in New Orleans). By the Fall, I was living a few blocks from Barack Obama (not that I, like, know him or anything – I just figured this out in retrospect) on Chicago’s South Side, and working in a hardware store. My unabiding love for instant ramen was formed during this period.
[This entry is part of a timeline I am making using this blog. I am writing a single entry for each year of my life, which when viewed together in order will provide a sort of timeline. This entry wasn’t written in 1985 – it was written in the future.]
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Caveat: Chartres &c.

14 janvier 1985 lundi

The weekend was busy. Saturday, recall: the soft chilly gloom of Chartres, an amazing cathedral, so dedicate to god, as were the generations of men who created it. Each window, her own story, framing the illiterate world wherein the medievals lived placidly, sheep of god. The cathedral seemed the sort of thing that I though only appeared in myth, or in the daydreams of young children (like I once was) who went to be architects someday (as I once did). But I watched too the midwesternesque french countryside roll by outside the frosted bus windows, and watched the little farms and towns swing past, and the vast wires which swooped by only to be caught up just before they fell, under their heavy electric loads, by another prententious tower of gaudy, post-industrial steel. So much for Poetry. I spent that night – the whole night – at La Piscine – a strictly across-the-channel sort of scene (i.e. Londoneque). But I stayed six hours till 5:30 am. Not drinking, not dancing, but just watching several hundred disaffected french, british, american, german, etc. youth party all one Saturday night. It left me content but exhausted. You can feel all the shields of a thousand static individual clash, and smell the hot, empty ozone of their lonely intermingling. Some were happier than others.

Yesterday, having slept 3 hours after taking the 1st metro homee (yes, I got that wonderful, almost ecstatic sense!), I staggled off to the Louvre, looking for something meditative. I hit the whole thing, spending 7 hours there, and despite my exhaustion, I felt somehow compelled to see it all, and meditate a little on each thing I saw. I spent a lot of time especially with the early rennaissance schools of painting in Italy. I could spend hours watching the renditions of so many vivid imaginations.

Well, I did miss the Ancient Near-Eastern part, basically. But I meditated too a great deal on the displays of tapistries and works of Coptic Egypt. I recalled several books I'd read last spring on gnosticism, and how one of the centers of that alternate, powerful christian spirituality was coptic Egypt. I tried to squint my eyes and visualize the vibrant, christian faith in its hydra-headed, flowering, youth among the dead stone and starched styles – but all I felt were the overwhelming waves of heat, that desert, where those same artifacts waited 1200+ years after Islam had ousted the coptic vibrancy. Etc.

So I spent today pretty much recuperating.

1985_ParisFranceViewFromND01

[The "retroblogging" project:  this is a "back-post" transcribed from a paper journal on 2013-04-26.  I've decided to "fill-in" my blog all the way back.  It's a big project.  But there's no time limit, right?

I will concede: frankly, this is very pretentious, embarrassing, unpleasant writing to look back on – especially considering it was my own journal? In 1985, who was I thinking was going to read it – some futuristic world-wide computer network?

The picture is from a scan of one of the rather extensive set of photos that I took in 1983-1985. It shows a view looking toward Sacre Coeur from one of the bell towers on Notre Dame.]

Caveat: Paris &c

7 janvier 1985; Monday
I arrived in Paris Saturday the 5th at Charles de Gaulle Airport, and took the bus into Paris with the group. I was impressed by the “Americanness” of so much of what I saw, yet at the same time permuted in its own peculiar french way. When one anticipates traveling in Europe, I imagine that it is easy to forget that for all the history, most of Western Europe is very modern, XXth century. Freeways slip past XVIIth, XVIIIth, XIXth century houses without pause, and the littel cars with yellow headlights climb over cobblestones laid many years ago.
After establishing myself at the hotel <- St Sulpice, I went out with some people to try the Metro, &c. We went to l’Arc de Triomphe & the Champs-Elysees and looked around a lot. I wasn’t too impressed – the Champs-Elysees was so “touristy” and the Arc just sort of brooded over it all, monument to another unnecessary, painful human folly. The flame burned insomnolently, but its focus seemed other than the present moment.
Yesterday, I went to see this Magritte exhibition across from Beaubourg, for I have always liked Magritte and surrealism in general. It was no disappointment, & after dwelling several hours peering at Magritte’s dark, dusky symbols, I checked out the Centre G. Pompidou, and moved on to see the Musee Rodin across town. Rodin is gorgeous, I love his statues – I expect to return here better prepared for what I will see. I was plunged into an extremely pensive mood by all this art, and unfortunately became depressed – the snow fell, and it was cold, & I could not sleep last night (perhaps that’s jetlag too). Somehow al that art got me thinking of the John Barth book I read over vacation amongst the redwoods of the isolated California coast – my home. The book was called Chimera, and all the mythological references made there were evoked by the Rodin statuary. Coming out of Rodin, I went past “Invalides” & l’Eglise de la Dome. Anyway, I finally returned to the hotel.
[The “retroblogging” project:  this is a “back-post” transcribed from a paper journal on 2013-04-28.  I’ve decided to “fill-in” my blog all the way back.  It’s a big project.  But there’s no time limit, right?
I will concede: frankly, this is very pretentious, embarrassing, unpleasant writing to look back on – especially considering it was my own journal? In 1985, who was I thinking was going to read it -some futuristic world-wide computer network?]

Caveat: 1984

I changed my declared major from math to religious studies. It wasn’t that I was feeling some sense of religiosity, but rather because I was looking for answers. Also, a certain math professor left my self-confidence in ruins. I worked for the Mondale Campaign that summer. I remember commuting to work on the #16 bus along University Avenue in St. Paul. I wrote more poetry this year, probably, than all the other years of my life combined.
[This entry is part of a timeline I am making using this blog. I am writing a single entry for each year of my life, which when viewed together in order will provide a sort of timeline. This entry wasn’t written in 1984 – it was written in the future.]
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Caveat: 1983

I walked a lot in high school – mostly in the fog. I graduated from Arcata High School in Arcata California. My summer internship at a civil engineering office turned me off of the idea of pursuing engineering, careerwise. I started college at Macalester College in St Paul, Minnesota. The main reason for my choice of Macalester was that it was very far away from home. I met my best friend Bob on day one, and he is still my best friend almost thirty years later.
[This entry is part of a timeline I am making using this blog. I am writing a single entry for each year of my life, which when viewed together in order will provide a sort of timeline. This entry wasn’t written in 1983 – it was written in the future.]
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Caveat: 1982

I took a road trip, alone, over Easter break to visit my uncle, who at that time was in Port Angeles, Washington. I was surprised my mother let me do this.  I didn’t take enough money for gas, so I panhandled in Coos Bay and got enough quarters to put enough gas in the car to get home. That summer, I went to Harvard University, where I studied astrophysics and creative writing and went to a Dead Kennedys concert. I felt I had been transformed from a nerd to some kind of  beat poet, by reading William S. Burroughs and Ginsberg and Kerouac. I doubt I pulled off this transformation very effectively, but I started wearing Army surplus jackets and smoking (secretly).
[This entry is part of a timeline I am making using this blog. I am writing a single entry for each year of my life, which when viewed together in order will provide a sort of timeline. This entry wasn’t written in 1982 – it was written in the future.]
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Caveat: 1981

I just kept going to high school. I was a very depressed teenager. I refused to talk to my father, but I would go visit him because he had cable TV, which my mom refused to get. I spent the summer with my uncle who was in Skagit County, Washington. I developed anorexia (self-diagnosed, but seriously – no food for 2 or 3 weeks straight?). I began writing poetry.
[This entry is part of a timeline I am making using this blog. I am writing a single entry for each year of my life, which when viewed together in order will provide a sort of timeline. This entry wasn’t written in 1981 – it was written in the future.]
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Caveat: 1980

I just kept going to high school. I walked a lot in the fog. I played dungeons and dragons a lot with my friends, Wade and Richard. I spent the summer with my uncle, who was in Boise County, Idaho, at this time. I contemplated becoming a Mormon, just to annoy the hell out of my parents, and because the church was conveniently located across the street, and I envied the sense of community the Mormons at school projected. I also remember telling my mom that if I could vote, I would vote for Reagan, though I suspect this didn’t annoy her as much as I hoped.
[This entry is part of a timeline I am making using this blog. I am writing a single entry for each year of my life, which when viewed together in order will provide a sort of timeline. This entry wasn’t written in 1980 – it was written in the future.]
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Caveat: 1979

That Spring I travelled to Europe with my father, stepmother, sister and stepsister. I liked Europe – I tried to speak French and pretended I was alone and not with those American tourists. I graduated from the 8th grade with the feeling I was destined to always be alone. My mother separated from her second husband and we moved back into the house in town on A Street at 11th Street in Arcata. I hated high school before it even started. I felt fear every day.
[This entry is part of a timeline I am making using this blog. I am writing a single entry for each year of my life, which when viewed together in order will provide a sort of timeline. This entry wasn’t written in 1979 – it was written in the future.]
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Caveat: 1978

This was the year at the ‘ranch’ – my stepfather’s farm on the Arcata bottoms up against the Lamphere Dunes near the beach. I disliked my stepfather and my mother was clearly distressed by this marriage of hers, but I chose not to give a damn. I had a little hut that was a sort of detached bedroom. I listened to Cat Stevens and drew pictures and watched the rain. I took very long walks along the one lane roads of the bottomlands. I decided that I liked math, and over the course of the year – the end of 7th grade and beginning of 8th grade – I went from being rather remedial at math to being very good at it.
[This entry is part of a timeline I am making using this blog. I am writing a single entry for each year of my life, which when viewed together in order will provide a sort of timeline. This entry wasn’t written in 1978 – it was written in the future.]
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