A Writer’s Diary Entries From Mid-May, 1998
Tuesday, May 12, 1998
3 PM. I just printed out the first draft of an 11-page story I began writing late last night. What I said yesterday about only getting into a “flow state” when I write nonfiction: well, I was wrong and it still holds for some fiction.
This is a publishable story, and all it needs is a light touch of editing. I’m exhilarated and exhausted. What triggered this was a mailing from Rick Peabody which included a notice of an anthology he and Lucinda are doing, about sex and chocolate.
Then I read a front-page New York Times story about the coming world chocolate shortage, and I began to envision this story about it and about my relationship with Gianni, using the structural device I came up with at Villa Montalvo: sections with the titles of bad 1970s pop songs you can’t get out of your mind.
The story wouldn’t stop writing itself, and I could barely tear myself away from it. I hardly slept last night, but I was so excited by the idea of the story, I couldn’t stop working on it all day. It’s taken a lot out of me.
Whether Rick takes it or not – the last three Peabody/Ebersole anthologies have been rejected by publishers anyway – I am certain I can get this piece published. This is one of those stories I had to write. The way I used to work, back in the 1970s, was the way I worked today.
In contrast to this story, “Silicon Valley Diet” has been painful to write, and it’s just not coming together yet. They say no reader can tell the difference between works of fiction that were created easily or with difficulty.
We’re having dinner at 5 PM today. Pam is giving a reading at the Sheridan public library at 7 PM so we’re all going into town at 6:15 PM.
I’m really tired and don’t want a long night, especially since we’re going to the Mint Bar afterwards, but one reason I can’t stay home is that I found a dead bird in the freezer downstairs.
Pam had put it there: it was roadkill that I did my best to avoid when I first saw it as I was bicycling.
Then after dinner, there I am, showing Liz the container of sorbet in the freezer that Nancy had left there for us, and as I’m clearing out stuff, I take out and hold in my hand some frozen fish – only I look at it and it’s dead bird.
Screaming, I dropped it and totally freaked out. It made me sick to my stomach. I’m very squeamish about dead birds, and I was furious with Pam.
To me, putting road kill in the freezer just isn’t normal – or sanitary. I talked about it with everyone because it had been so traumatic.
The two new residents – Robert, a Minneapolis visual artist who grew up in Queens and who seems very nice; and Julie, a tall blonde writer from St. Louis who recently graduated Washington University’s MFA program (Stanley Elkin intimidated her, so in that respect she’s normal) – probably think I’m crazy because I harped on it so much.
Anyway, I have to go to Pam’s reading to show I am not holding a dead-bird grudge against her.
Yesterday morning I finished taking my notes about Thien from my diary and appending them to the “Silicon Valley Diet” story, now about twenty pages and going nowhere slowly. I also wrote a letter to Thien and one to Sat Darshan.
At noon I went with Liz and Margot to a cattle auction outside Buffalo. It was kind of interesting to see how they did it: at a booth up on top, an auctioneer would rattle off numbers in that singsong-y way while a bull or cow would enter from a door on the right and would be gently prodded to turn all around the pen until it was sold and the animal exited from a door on the left.
The cattle farmers who bid were almost all elderly men (and a few women) in cowboy hats. Only afterwards did Liz tell me that the prices they were bidding (by means of subtle gestures), like 35-50, meant $35.50 per 100 pounds of cattle.
Most weighed around 1200 pounds. I have no idea how they distinguished between 
valuable cows and bulls and the cheaper ones that fetched lower prices.
In downtown Buffalo, after Margot had gotten all the photos she wanted, I went to the post office and mailed off my book manuscript to Alice. I also got a $100 money order, which I’d gotten using money from an ATM credit card cash advance.
I was going to use it to put down a deposit so I could be on the waiting list at the University of Maryland’s grad housing, but after realizing I had very little hope of getting an efficiency – and that they’re unfurnished when I want a furnished apartment – I decided to mail it as a deposit in my checking account.
In today’s mail, which I found in the kitchen at 2 PM, I saw that thanks to Libby, I’d gotten my Florida unemployment check, so I deposited both checks and will mail 
the $388 deposit to NationsBank.
I also mailed out my signed claim card for the two weeks of unemployment ending last Saturday to Tallahassee and my auto tag renewal to the Alachua County Tax Assessor.
Mom sent the renewal notice, which had been forwarded from my Gainesville address – I was smart to do another change of address form after the year since my move expired – as well as a reminder to write Arizona State to decline their offer of admission.
It’s sunny and warmer, though going to breakfast early this morning I nearly slipped on frost.
Judith was with us at dinner last night, and Sharon is probably coming tonight, along with Mike Shay, literature director of Wyoming Arts Council, and Cliff Becker, the National Endowment for the Arts Literature Program head.
Life seems so full that I feel that I’m about to burst.
Wednesday, May 13, 1998
9 AM. While listening to the radio news, I’ve exercised, showered and dressed. Today looks beautiful: it’s sunny and warm. It’s too bad that while it was cloudy, we didn’t get the downpour I’ve been hoping for.
The deep cuts around my fingernails continue to be very painful, and I’m glad I decided to bring lots of Band-Aids from California. Sharon says there’s nothing to do for them but keep soaking them in skin lotion and baby oil.
Luckily, Wyoming has cured my sinus condition, and I have no sign of the bad local allergies that drive others, like Sharon and Judith, crazy.
I’ve got plenty to do today. I want to go over the hard copy of my story – I’m not crazy about the title, “Those Old Dark, Sweet Songs” – and do a final revision and send it out to Rick Peabody.
I’m still delighted that I was so productive yesterday. My trouble is that I become satisfied so easily that I will now probably feel no pressure to produce for a while.
Anyway, last night’s 5 PM dinner was fun.
Cliff Becker is touring twenty states which are “underserved” – they don’t get their share of NEA grant money – urging groups to apply, and he’s also trying to counter the negative image of the NEA the right wing has foisted upon the public.
Just last weekend, the GOP congressional leadership, worried about losing the Christian right, acceded to their “pro-family” demands and agreed to three goals, including eliminating the arts agency. However, the Republicans are split on this issue, and anyway, Clinton would veto any abolition of the NEA.
Cliff grew up in Southern California and went to the University of Maryland to get a Ph.D. in English and teach. But he gave up on academia, and after several jobs in D.C., he applied to be an intern (“We call them volunteers now,” he joked) at the NEA Literature Program, which then had eight staff members, during the very week in which Bush fired John Frohnmayer.
After the big cut, the NEA was reorganized, and there are now only two NEA Lit Program staff members, Cliff and a “specialist.”
Cliff seems kind of colorless but decent. I told him I planned to move to the D.C. area and that Rick had asked me to read at the store in the fall. Cliff, of course, knows Rick and Atticus Books, and he remarked that although Rick has lived and worked in D.C. all his life, “he’s the least Washington person I know” because Rick “doesn’t understand the politics of anything.”
Mike Shay sat next to me at dinner and told me he’s a writer as well as an arts administrator. He said the state doesn’t have that many literary groups or organizations although the Jackson area is attracting wealthy writers like Warren Adler.
At 6:15 PM, after we’d done the dishes and said goodbye to our guests, Sharon took us all to Sheridan in her Subaru minivan. (Liz left earlier to work out at the Y and met us at the library.)
I sat up front with Sharon, and we discussed Brooklyn, which she loves, having lived in Park Slope for several years.
The library seemed eerily quiet when we walked in.
Except for the librarian who introduced Pam and a garrulous old man who does his “Man About Town” commentary on Sheridan’s AM station – he’s been in radio in town since 1942, when he qualified for a job in the medium by dint of his 4-F status – there were no attendees.
So the audience was basically Pam’s fellow Ucross residents. After her talk, I understood why she thought nothing of putting a dead bird in the freezer.
Pam read from her manuscript about Hawaii’s tiny northeastern islands, the oldest in the archipelago, which stretch out nearly a thousand miles from Oahu and are mostly uninhabited.
She worked with the endangered birds on some islands, including the part of the Midway Atoll that the Navy has turned into a wildlife refuge. Although her writing is a bit pedestrian, the slides of her photos were interesting.
I don’t have the feeling for nature that most of the others here do – I’m the quintessential urbanite – but I certainly can appreciate Pamela’s love of Hawaii, especially because she spent most of her life there.
I drove with Liz, and after dropping off my mail at the post office, we met the others in the Mint Bar, a cowboy bar with all kinds of cowboy memorabilia.
It didn’t have the tough cowboys I expected to see there. Actually, it was clearly a 
tourist place with a guest register and postcards, and last night it was rather empty.
Sharon bought us a round of drinks – I had a Diet Coke – and we listened to C&W music on the jukebox for a while before deciding to leave.
While I was helping Liz with her wheelchair – I’ve grown adept at the routine of putting it in the back of her van – apparently a passing truck nearly hit me.
In the Subaru parked behind us, Sharon screamed and said the truck missed me by “a sixteenth of an inch.” But I never noticed anything until the guy stopped, so I didn’t even skip a heartbeat.
Liz and I had a nice talk as we followed Sharon back home.
Today’s about the midpoint of my stay here, and notice: I feel comfortable to the point of calling Ucross “home.”
Friday, May 15, 1998
9 AM. I’m going on the town trip (Sheridan again) in less than an hour. I’ve just worked out, showered, put lotion all over my dry skin, and dressed. Hopefully, this weekend will be less bleak than last. Liz is going to Montana to visit her sister, so I’ll miss her and have less outlet for car travel.
But I’ve got a lot to read this weekend. Last evening I found I’d gotten last Thursday’s and Monday’s New York Times in the mail. I still have to get through 
lots of sections of the other issues, even though I read all of the main sections yesterday.
I don’t apologize for being a news junkie. After all, it was the Times story on the chocolate shortage that inspired me to write “Dark, Sweet Songs,” and in the past, the news has influenced the creation of other pieces like “Twelve-Step Barbie.”
Yesterday I was restless, but luckily I perked up when I could go to the 5:30 PM cocktail party at the Ranch House. Elizabeth is on the Wyoming Arts Council, so that’s why they had the meeting here.
Drinking Diet Coke and munching crudités, I chatted with different members of the Council, their spouses, and some arts bureaucrats. Wyoming is such a large state in area that people have to drive very far to get together.
There’s no large metropolitan area in the whole state, with the closest ones being Salt Lake City and Denver. Cheyenne and Casper have like half the population of Gainesville, and I think even Billings and Rapid City are also smaller.
The majority of graduates of the state’s only college, the University of Wyoming in Laramie, leave the state because there are no jobs here. And bringing in industry is tough because there aren’t enough workers here, so it’s a vicious cycle.
The state, which has only about 470,000 people, is losing population. One man told me that every school district in Wyoming but two are shrinking in size.
On the other hand, rich urbanites from California who want second homes in a place with lots of space and cheap real estate are moving into Jackson.
Even a place like Big Horn, at the base of the mountains outside Sheridan, attracts some of these wealthy people. But lack of water is a problem, as are the harsh winters.
I guess other states in the area – Montana, the Dakotas, Idaho – have similar problems, but with the possible exception of North Dakota, Wyoming seems the hardest hit.
At 6:30 PM, Sharon moved us all out of the cocktail party and back to the School House for dinner. It was Sharon’s birthday, so we gave her a card, and Gillian had baked a birthday cake.
After Sharon left to get back to her visiting parents and we cleaned up from dinner, Liz and I went to Buck’s and watched the East Coast NBC showing of ER at 8 PM here.
An hour later, everyone but Agymah joined us for the two-hour West Coast NBC finale of Seinfeld even though Pam, Robert and Julia are not regular viewers and don’t really like the show.
I found Robert particularly obnoxious last night. I think maybe he got drunk at the cocktail party. All through dinner, he spoke about spanking Sharon – apparently some bizarre middle-American custom.
And then he felt he had to sneer at TV commercials and even the show. Really, the show was just for regular Seinfeld viewers,
I think they made a wonderful choice in having the four characters – selfish, cruel, obnoxious – on trial for violating a good Samaritan law by joking while a fat man was being carjacked.
All the character witnesses the prosecutors called to attack them were actors from past episodes, so it must not have made any sense to a non-viewer of the series.
Anyway, the Seinfeld finale was a cultural event which is probably beyond criticism. It still amazes me that a show with humor that’s so “New York” and Jewish could be so popular.
Tired at 11:10 PM when I got into bed, I didn’t sleep very well but awoke anyway at 5 AM to the news that Frank Sinatra had died. Well, I’d better get ready for my town trip now. I need to get more inkjet paper at Walmart.
*
4 PM. I had a nice hour in Sheridan. Barbara dragged me, Agymah and Pam – the car-less trio – to Walmart. I bought paper and a few other things there – at Brittney I got some frozen veggies, fat-free fudgsicles and sweet potatoes for the next few days.
I also bought USA Today and last Sunday’s Denver Post, giving me even more to read this weekend.
Barbara is interesting when she talks about her life as a ranch wife (and sister of a rodeo champion). From talking to people like her, I feel I’m beginning to really understand Wyoming.
On the ride back to Ucross, we encountered the first heavy rain here – but the storm passed quickly. We really need the rain, as lately it’s been too dry even for the 
Powder River Basin.
I printed out three copies of “Dark, Sweet Songs” and sent them to little magazines that I’m sure will reject them.
Usually I send out a dozen copies of stories before one is accepted. But “Twelve-Step Barbie” was rejected by every magazine and didn’t get published till the Mondo Barbie anthology.
I also sent my last sample of my book manuscript to a small press publisher who advertised in Poets & Writers.
Alice will probably get my book in the mail today or very soon. But I’m going to try small presses, which is where the book is eventually going to end up getting published.
Saturday, May 16, 1998
8:30 PM. I’m tired and hope I’m not coming down with the bad cold that Julie and 
Pam seem to have. I went with them today to the area across from Big Red, the Ucross Barn and Ranch House complex, to watch the branding of cattle that went on most of the day.
It was quite an event. There were lots of cowboys – a couple of them were young and cute – as well as women and some little kids. Horses, of course, and mules, too. And lots and lots of cattle.
The process begins when the cowboys rope a calf’s hind leg or legs and drag him over to the spot where the branding is done with an electric branding iron. But first he’s given a couple of shots.
Then the calf is branded with the Ucross mark, a U on top of a cross, on his left side. Usually at this point is when the calf squeals in pain. Sometimes a cow is hovering nearby; I assume these are either their concerned mothers or perhaps just particularly compassionate unrelated cattle.
If the calf is a bull, John comes over and snips off his testicles, dropping them into a large yogurt container and then spraying the bloody area.
Next, a woman pierces the calf’s ear with those colorful orange plastic tags. Then the calf is free to get up. It must be traumatizing, but most seem to wander back into the crowd immediately.
I saw only one calf that refused to get up, and afterwards, as I was leaving, I noticed a cowboy was taking her somewhere.
I can still smell the burning fur – like the smell of singed hair – that permeated the area. I watched for about 45 minutes, and after that, it began to look predictably boring.
Margot told me they went over to John and Barbara’s spread after lunch and they worked till 4:30 PM. There certainly were lots of calves to brand. Margot said they let Agymah wrestle a couple of calves to bring them to branding and he said they were really strong.
Except for a couple of long bike rides, I stayed pretty much at the Depot and School House today. When I called Mom, she was appalled that I’d go to witness a branding.
“You mean they kill these animals for food?” she asked.
“No, Mom,” I said, “the Wyoming cattle industry is only a show for the benefit of 
tourists.”
Mom said that Marc moved into his new apartment on Thursday. Dad took down his phone number, but she didn’t know where the paper was, so I’ll call directory assistance in Phoenix.
They had their first prospective home buyer yesterday, a Haitian couple who seemed to like what they saw but wanted to put in a swimming pool. People are taking the flyers she put in front of the house like crazy, Mom said, but that couple was the only one who phoned so far.
Yesterday’s mail and today’s (which I got from the mailbox) brought my $100 deposit refund from Villa Montalvo and Mom’s forwarding of several bills, including my auto insurance.
I just hope my last deposit reaches NationsBank before they have to pay the check I wrote out to Allstate; otherwise, it will bounce.
On my own for food today, I ate more like I would on a “normal” day: for lunch, Kraft Free slices on rice cakes, lots of veggies, and a sweet potato and fat-free fudgsicle, and for dinner, a Garden Burger. What, no beef?
Speaking of which: Right now I’m hearing a lot of mooing going on, so I don’t know what’s happening with the cattle.
I sent out two more printed-out copies of “Dark, Sweet Songs” to little magazines, and I wrote to the Florida Division of Elections for a form in case I decide to be a write-in candidate for Congress again.
I spent much of the day reading the main news sections of the New York Times for four days. Now I’ve still got last week’s Business Day section and the Living Arts sections going back nearly two weeks. Last night I spent reading last Sunday’s Denver Post.
Three weeks ago tonight – was it that long? – I was at Dodger Stadium with Libby’s family in Los Angeles. Two weeks ago I was about to bring back the rental car to 
Billings.
I got my Delta ticket from Billings to Salt Lake City to Phoenix for June 2 in today’s mail, and Mom says she’s sending me the confirmation letter for the June 9 Phoenix-Miami flight.
Mom seemed surprised that I’m only spending a few days with her in Florida before leaving for New York. When she began to complain obsessively about my going up North, I got off the phone quickly.
Monday, May 18, 1998
9 PM. I slept pretty well last night although I woke up a number of times as usual. In reading about the frenzy over the new impotence pill, Viagra, I’m learning that lots of men over 40 have erectile problems.
Now my erections can come and go and may not be as strong as they were when I was younger, but nearly every time I awaken during the night, it’s with an erection.
Actually, I’m banged up tonight from a fall on the bicycle. My long shoelaces got tied up in the pedal as I started off and I tumbled over.
My right palm and kneecap were scraped, and the handlebars hit the back of my head, but the main pain comes from something I didn’t notice earlier: an egg-shaped lump and bruise on the part of my body where my leg meets my right buttock.
But it could have been a lot worse. I’d gone over to the Ranch House to fax a letter to the New York Times, but just now I see that in Thursday’s paper, they printed a similar letter: on why Governor Pataki and Mayor Giuliani are calling for an end to remedial education at CUNY, with its mostly minority and poor students – but not at the overwhelmingly white upstate and suburban SUNY campuses.
I should know better than to respond to an article published four days earlier.
This morning, although I hadn’t intended to, I decided to go with Margot and Liz to see more branding, in a pasture far out on a dirt road, past Clear Creek. When we got there, at first the people were just standing around.
But within half an hour, cowboys on horses (and the one guy on a mule) started driving cattle over from behind the hills and eventually getting them all in a pen.
Then they tried to get most of the mothers out while keeping the calves cooped up. The branding irons were turned up and they set up for injections, ear-tagging, and castration as the cattle howled like crazy.
For these Wyoming ranchers, from old men to middle-aged women to young children, this is a routine, and it’s also fun. I did admire the way some of the 
cowboys can twirl their lassos and manage to get a calf’s hind legs every time.
Once they’re dragged over, a two-person team holds down the head and hind legs while the others go to work.
Today they were using the ULC brand – for Ucross Land Company – but otherwise it was the same thing I saw on Saturday. Perhaps it went more quickly and methodically today.
Liz took videos – she was afraid she made the cowboys nervous, having her wheelchair there – and Margot got her still shots. We were out there till from 9:30 AM till noon, and I wish I’d used sunblock.
If I were a better writer – maybe journalistic training will help me learn how to describe processes and nature more effectively – I could say a lot more.
Tonight at dinner, Sharon surprised me by saying she felt too sensitive and faint-hearted to watch branding. I’d thought it didn’t bother me, but I did feel queasy much of the day; until I thought about it, I just attributed my rocky stomach to diet or illness.
But maybe hearing all those howls of pain by the cows and calves upset me more than I realized. I did decline an invitation to hold down a calf, though mostly because I didn’t want to get dirty.
It was impossible, of course, to avoid walking on cow shit, which was everywhere, and Liz kept getting it on her hands from moving the wheels on her chair.
Even if my vegetarian clean-freak Mom didn’t feel repulsed by the animals’ plight, she would have been freaked out by the filth. But I’m glad I experienced the brandings.
Margot, Liz and I got out pasta-salad lunches from Gillian when we came back to the School House, and we ate outside on the porch.
I called the San Jose Mercury News, and from a back issue department recording, I learned how to order copies of the paper for Mother’s Day or the Thursday before: presumably when my Grandma Sylvia story ran.
After my bike accident, I felt icky most of the afternoon and all I managed to do was some laundry. I also had a bad headache, but by dinner time I felt better.
When I finished cleaning up from dinner, I came back to my room and read the main news section of last Thursday’s Times. Friday’s paper also arrived in today’s mail, and I got the paper for Sunday, May 10, from the office.