If I lack all conviction, does that make be the best?

A general sleepy-time depression has descended over everything this week.  I can’t bring myself to watch the Republican convention.  What used to be my party has turned into a religious movement.  I got in a fight with a lady at work.  I’m sleeping too much.

The novel is on hold for now.  I’d rather not look at it till I’m good and ready to plunge back in for more than just a few hours.

The girl across the hall is at it again.  Weird, I only hear her moans, no guy.  If I go outside for a cigarette will she think I’m spying on her?

I once saw a book about depression called “The Noonday Demon.”  That’s exactly it — I get up early all zippity doo dah and everything is going just fine.  Then, right as I finish my lunch the same old ugly lethargy sets in.  It’s always right around the same time.  Maybe it is because I’ve just had a moment’s look at some kind of freedom I call “lunch,” but now I have to give it up and go back to reality and that makes me sad.  Or maybe it is just this damned San Diego climate, the way summer always overstays its welcome right up to the day before the day before my birthday.

Julia’s getting a new roommate upstairs.  His name is Cameron.   I haven’t met him yet.  Good to have another guy in here.  Not sure why I’m nervous about meeting him.

Found a bunch of old pictures of me and Julia as teens.  Didn’t know so many pictures of those years still existed, let alone in my posession.  Need to get them all scanned and saved.  Not sure what I’m going to do with them.

Sunday is arts and crafts day with Julia.  She’s got a ton of blank canvasses just waiting for us to go piss wild crazy all over them.  I’m already planning what to do with mine.  I remember a German or Swiss lady artist I discovered at the Reina Sofia, she was one of the first collagistas with Picasso.  I fully intend to plagiarize her work wholesale.

Read a lot of blogs today and I cannot for the life of me figure out how they do it.  The guest blogger on Elegant Variation is going for a record number of posts.  If you look at the time stamps, he’s posting once a minute, which suggests the texts were prewritten.  Not exactly spur-of-the-moment inspiration.  Still, they are damn good thoughts from an experienced writer and teacher, and a couple of them I’ve saved for future reference.

I need to find a really cool painting that deals with the subject/theme of fathers and/or sons.  Preferably Spanish.  There don’t seem to be very many comprehensive art galleries online.

Finished Obama’s memoir yesterday (pretty good, up until he gets to Kenya, where he just sort of wanders around and meets a bunch of family whose identities and relationships are almost impossible to keep track of).  Needed a new book today and just couldn’t wait for Amazon in the mail, so I printed my wish list and went to Border’s (I know, I’m a traitor to everything I stand for.  Principles’ worst enemy is impatience).  I was surprised to stumble across Tao Lin’s EEE EEE EEEEEE (did I type the correct number of Es?)  I will read it, someday I will, really.  Tried the first two pages.  His first two sentences start with three guys with plain names, and nothing to distinguish them from each other.  Not promising.

In the end I purchased Bolano’s”By Night in Chile.”  Not sure if I made the right choice, since I hate reading the same author twice when I’ve got so many other writers to read for the first time — when I read a second title by the same author, feel like I’m cheating the others.  Still, el Caudillo will be ecstatic to see me read a fellow Chileno, despite his family’s support for Pinochet.

New favorite song — “Kids” by MGMT.

Countdown to Portland — 16 days.

It is hot and sticky and gross and I do not look forward to getting in to bed like this.

My day of labor.

Last night at midnight I passed page 50 in my manuscript.

Today is my third straight day sequestered in my house, cellphone shut off, doing absolutely nothing except type, eat, piss and sleep.  I feel like a soldier.  My beard is exploring the lower reaches of my neck.  It is like a marathon — a crazy idea, but one that you just have to do to prove yourself.

And I have learned a lot.  I’ve learned to just keep typing, even when forget what I’m doing.  To stop could mean the loss of hours of work.  I’ve learned to let go of my devotion to the clock and the arbitrary schedules I’ve set for myself, to stop beating myself up if I start something ten minutes later than I thought I would.  And I’ve learned that no matter how much research and preparation I do beforehand, always something unexpected will come up that I never could have foreseen.

Example, last night I reached a pivotal point in the plot much sooner than anticipated, and took a five minute break from typing to find my place in my outline and sketch out some next steps.  All out of nowhere I get this idea for my protag to see a Spanish painting in a hotel restaurant.  I don’t know why; I don’t have any memory of a Spanish painting in a hotel restaurant myself.  It just bubbled up from the depths, I guess.  Anyway, fool that I am, I then stopped typing and started googling Spanish paintings, wasting hours staring at Goya’s Black Paintings (which unfortunately, no one has done a very good job of collecting online — note to self).  And none of which even remotely connect to the themes of my story.  Good education on Goya — bad waste of time.

And that is what I learned over my summer vacation.

The aces aligned for this weekend.  All but one of my housemates are out of town for the holiday, leaving me a deserted house all to my self.  I’ve eaten well without running out of food.  The weather has behaved.  The distractions are non-existent.

Every weekend should be like this.

But every weekend won’t be like this one, this has been extraordinary, a one-off.  There will parties and chores and errands and social outings and friends wanting me to listen to them talk about other friends.  I know this.  I’m fine with it.  I’ll make another weekend like this — promise.  For now I just need to get this weekend complete TODAY before I go see El Caudillo at 7:00pm and start on my homework.  I need to congratulate myself for what I have accomplished, even if it is not the full 90-page perfect manuscript I had imagined.

And I need to set myself up for Act II, the middle section, the next 200 pages.  I can’t even remember what I sketched in my outline for that.  All I know is that I will have to get myself excited about writing that long stretch, as excited as I am to finish this glorious first act.