Private Public

Mark,

Living in L.A., you're probably more of a phone guy.  I'm trying unsuccessfully to hide out in the cornfields and have always been an antisocial lunatic (apparently), which makes e-mail so convenient.

I appreciated getting the call last night, I guess, although it made me and my wife feel bad, so I guess we're even now.  And I feel sorry to have upset you.  I am sensitive to the fact that you are a real person, that you have feelings.

I don' t know Courtney at all and I know only the most superficially about the circumstances of her work and friendship with you and I heard that it ended badly.  I related that information to the hints and superficial allusions in the notes for your play.

I didn't like "Rantoul and Die," but what I disliked most of all was the fact that the entire community seemed to entirely uncritical and worshipful towards it.  It's that kind of "our team" attitude that rubs me wrong.  Someone wrote to the list saying how she had known you as a child, or was your cousin,  and wanted to get in touch with you, or something like that...  On the other hand, Groucho and I have trouble belonging to any club that would have us.

I like to be praised as much as the next guy, if not more.  But being a known personality wears one down.  Been there.  It makes one long for the pleasures of anonymity. 

I aspire to continue to aspire, to be a genuine amateur.
I aspire to write a sonnet today.
I aspire to refrain from ever getting rich.  At this I am so far amazingly successful.
I aspire to learn to love.
I aspire to be patient.
I aspire to thankfulness and abundance.
I aspire to parenthood.  At this I have barely progressed beyond the procreation stage.
I aspire to acceptance and creativity, but if my efforts remain invisible to the world at large, that's probably better. 

I am writing two novels and procrastinating prolifically.  My wife is legally blind.  We live in third world conditions.  I have never been able to hold a job.  If I have neckties, they must be on the floor of my closet.  I go to Guatemala, Mexico, or Colombia for dental and medical treatment.  We don't have health insurance.  There are wild animals in our back yard.  America is over, lost in dreams of money.

The necessary materializes.  Whatever God there is, provides.  My roof no longer leaks, at least not as much.  I have five or six cars and don't know why.  There is a mountain of mulch in the driveway of the abandoned house next door.

What did you think of the movie and/or play The Dying Gaul?  That is my image of life in the entertainment industry in Los Angeles. If I imposed that image, that idea of your life, unfairly upon your own aspirations, I apologize.

Now the question is, do I simultaneously post this to the Last Good Name?  I think I shall.  Isn't it odd how that makes a difference, how making something public changes things?

--
"I have no idea what I am talking about.  I am trapped in this body and I can't get out." -- Thom Yorke, Radiohead