A Writer’s Diary Entries From Late April, 2001
Thursday, April 19, 2001
It’s 7 PM Mountain Standard Time back here in Mesa, but of course it’s 10 PM for my body, which is still on Eastern Daylight Time.
I’ve putted put (that’s jet lag for you) most of my packed stuff away, and I’ve gone to Bashas’ for some groceries. I also went through all of my mail, including the credit card bills.
My back still aches, and probably the luggage and grocery bags didn’t help, but I’m sure it will go away – the pain, I mean, not my back.
Almost as annoying as my backache is the deep cut in my right index finger from cold temperatures in New York. It was 33° this morning.
Last night when their plane landed, Teresa called and was on the warpath. I got yelled at since the guy that Pam selected to pick them up missed them at the airport.
Teresa was hysterical, upset that all of us – me, Pam, Jade – were at her house and that none of us had driven to the airport to pick her up. In truth, I was embarrassed, but I felt too anxious to deal with the drive to JFK.
I had returned the rental car at 5 PM yesterday after taking a last ride out to Garvies Point and looking out at Hempstead Harbor and Long Island Sound. Pam and Jade were at school, but I felt awful about not picking up Teresa and Paul.
But they managed to find a taxi, and by the time they got home, she was in a better mood, especially since Pam had made dinner for all of us.
They regaled us with stories of their timeshare in St. Maarten: the rooms, the squealing little kids everywhere, the great food, the beaches, the people and the jewelry they brought back with them.
Pam and I seem to have turned Hattie into a house dog because she didn’t want to go to work with Paul today.
Even though we stayed up late talking in the kitchen, I managed to sleep for about seven hours, using the downstairs bathroom for my shower at 6:30 AM to make sure I didn’t miss the water cutoff or inconvenience anybody else.
By the time I finished my shower and dressed, they were all having breakfast, and then Pam and Paul each went off to work.
Teresa said that her sister was told not to tell her, but their mother has decided to get rid of at least one of the tenants after discovering that he put an ad in a local Williamsburg/Greenpoint weekly to sublet his $500 apartment for $1500.
So it’s unclear where Pam will be living this summer or whether I can go to Williamsburg in June or July.
With my readings in Los Angeles in early July, I figure I’ll be traveling a lot, since I’ll be at Ragdale from June 14-27 (I got the official notice today).
Teresa said I looked okay, but I doubt that anyone understood what a giant step forward in my recovery coming to New York was. While I was there, I felt basically normal again.
Michael, the guy who Pam called last night, showed up at 10 AM after the water got shut off and Teresa and I took Hattie to the groomer.
With Teresa and Paul finally home, I began to feel like a part of their family and I wish I could have stayed longer. At least I know that the British cousins won’t be coming this summer, and probably not Deirdre and her kids.
Teresa would like to rent out the Fire Island house for August to make $8000 while she’d stay with Camille (whom I spoke to on the phone) or with Diane, who’s at Teresa’s old Fair Harbor beach house.
I read most of today’s New York Times at Kennedy Airport as I had the lunch I’d packed (a cheese-and-onion sandwich and yams) because I was at America West’s gate early.
The flight was bumpy, and I was in the next-to-last row, but I liked the featured film, Finding Forrester, about a reclusive old fiction writer played by Sean Connery (á la Salinger or Pynchon) and the brilliant young writer (a black basketball player and clearly a genius) he warily mentors.
The film had a lot of good stuff about writing in it, and it made me want to teach and to write. Well, I’m doing that now, right? Writing, I mean.
This diary, which will be 32 years old at the end of July, was written for myself, although when I once read it to Rochelle Wouk, she said it sounded like I had my eye on posterity.
In this diary anyone can see what it was like for me to be 18 and agoraphobic, 49 and anxious, and all the good and bad stuff in between.
After my flight landed, I had a hard time locating Dad and Marc at the terminal, and I had to call Mom to use her as a conduit to them. When I asked Marc how work was going, he laughed bitterly because this morning he was summarily fired.
The new manager had it in for him, and although (or because) she’s incompetent, I guess she felt Marc challenged her authority. Called to corporate headquarters, he was totally shocked.
Perhaps they knew he’d had job interviews with Cricket; Mary Beth said the paperwork is in, and so it looks like Marc will soon have a better job. But today he was clearly rattled, as anyone would be.
Speaking of work, the one message I got in my voicemail was about an observation at Mesa Community College; I’ll answer it when I feel like it.
I really don’t expect to get the Nassau Community College job or to be teaching English again. I don’t give a shit about MCC and the lousy $188 I get every two weeks.
Teresa told me to cash the $400 check she gave me, so I will – though I’ll use some of it to get her something really nice for her birthday.
Anyway, it’s back to ASU and MCC for at least the next few weeks, but those schools have little to do with my life. My life exists on paper, in my books, in these diaries, with my family and friends, in therapy sessions with Susan, in the places where I live, etc.
I took an Ativan this morning, but I was really anxious about the flight. For the entire week I was in New York, I did not have a single panic attack: not on planes, not on the Long Island Expressway, not anywhere.
Saturday, April 21, 2001
8 PM. I imagine I slept about four hours or less last night. On the other hand, I did lie down for an hour between 8 AM and 9 AM and I did not feel sleepy most of today – that is, until now.
I won’t take another Ambien tonight unless I’m desperate.
I’ve been online for the last four hours, with breaks for dinner and snacks. I answered email, looked for jobs at the Chronicle of Higher Education, and checked my ASU students’ works cited pages, often using Lexis/Nexis or the Web to confirm some piece of information.
This morning I exercised to Body Electric again. Because I was such a couch potato in New York, my biceps are sore after even a very light workout yesterday.
I need to get my back well before I do really strenuous exercises. While I was away, I taped more of those 15-minute PBS Priscilla’s Yoga Stretches.
At 10 AM, I took my grocery list to Albertsons, where I spent $75 on food and a birthday card for Teresa that I mailed in Apache Junction, where I spent an hour at my parents’ house.
Jonathan was home, but Marc was out; I guess he’s still taking his firing really hard, though he did apply for unemployment benefits.
I brought over a New York Post I’d found in the Glen Cove Wendy’s so that my father could see the local news. The headline was a poll on the race to succeed Giuliani as mayor. (He’s term-limited but would probably win reelection otherwise.) Mom gave me a t-shirt that Jonathan got at his store.
On the way home, I stopped at the Wendy’s on Country Club and Southern. It became chillier and more cloudy as the day wore on. I may even put on the heat tonight if it gets down to 50°.
I had basically no anxiety today, though I noticed the soles of my feet sweated a little. Ordinarily I wouldn’t consider that a symptom. I notice I’m having voice problems, but perhaps it’s because I’m tired. I guess I’ll sleep well either tonight or tomorrow.
I sent Miriam the webpage from Red Hen Press about her book – it has a nice cover – but she says she still hasn’t heard from Kate. Maybe, I suggested, we could do a joint reading.
As I told Miriam, since my illness, I’ve become sentimental and I want to see her again before I die. Her husband Rich was laid off yesterday, and he wants to move, though I don’t think she does because she’s so entrenched in Santa Fe. Miriam says that Rich is more anxious than Robert was even when he was dying.
Josh told me that in Germany his friend Kristof met with the judge who issued the child support order on Josh’s behalf.
Although Josh has paid this year, he needs to pay for 2000, and if he doesn’t, he could be thrown in jail in Germany or any EU nation. Not that paying child support will get Josh access to his son if the boy’s mother has her way. Still, he told me he plans to pay his back child support even if he can’t get to see the kid.
I didn’t stay in Apache Junction this weekend because I’m tired of being in someone else’s house, and as unhappy as I’ve been in this apartment at Quail Creek, I am master of my domain here. (Yes, I can do that more easily here as well.) Besides, I’ll be out of here in five weeks or so.
There are some openings for full-time English teachers at the Maricopa Community Colleges, but do I really want to apply there?
I won’t apply at Mesa, although I like it there, at least a bit. But my teaching has been too half-assed. I guess I’ll contact Sam Martinez, the English 102 coordinator, about observing me the first week in May.
Monday, April 23, 2001
6:30 PM. Last night I read about the Incas and Aztecs for my class, but Professor Giner finally posted stuff on the discussion board today. He confirmed that the final exam will be on just the Apache Ghost Dance and his own 75-page treatise on the photo of Geronimo.
He also said he’ll give those of us who handed in our papers by the April 15 deadline extra credit, so perhaps that will make up for my terrible effort and I’ll end up with at least a B in the course. Giner is looking for about 15 discussion board postings; I already have 24 and I expect I’ll write at least a few more.
Although I didn’t sleep much last night, I didn’t feel tired today and had lots of energy.
In fact, I just walked to the mailbox to mail my change-of-address notice and about 15 change-of-address forms as well as some token payments to my store credit cards accounts.
With my ASU classes this morning, I went through most of the sample research paper in our text. During my break, I marked the papers I got from the 7:40 AM class.
Not feeling like coming home at 10:30 AM, I had a baked potato and Diet Coke at the Wendy’s on Baseline and Rural, and then I bought some frozen wraps, cereals and vitamin C at the nearby Whole Earth Foods.
After putting everything away, I went to the library, where I took out some books on Geronimo and put holds on others.
Back home, I exercised to a Body Electric tape – my back seems normal again – and then had lunch. In the afternoon I finished reading today’s Times.
Reagan at the Valentine Publishing Group said that Quimby Books in Chicago is amenable to a joint reading with myself and John Domini while I’m staying at Ragdale in the second half of June.
Last year, when The Silicon Valley Diet came out, Red Hen Press did nothing for me, but I’m not complaining now. Although I’m not sure I enjoy reading my work in public, we’ll see how it goes.
I got an email from Sam Martinez saying he would observe me at MCC on Tuesday, May 1. Big fucking deal. As my anxiety fades, I’m becoming less timid and more self-confident, or maybe even arrogant.
Now that I’m feeling better, I need to avoid falling back into an easy pattern. What I mean is that I don’t want to stop working on myself because I still need to deal with the issues surrounding my anxiety and depression. I know that once symptoms disappear, it’s easiest to simply go back to where I was.
Today it hit 86°, which is actually our normal high, and it should be a lot warmer in a few days.
In effect, it’s summer here, and just as I recovered in the summer of 1969 when I turned 18, maybe the same thing is happening 32 years later as I turn 50.
Thursday, April 26, 2001
7 PM. My cold is starting to break out as my sore throat subsides and my nasal passages become more congested. I probably won’t go to my parents’ tomorrow because I don’t want to get anyone else in the family sick.
Last night not only did I feel wretched because of my sore throat, but somehow my mid-back went out again, and that kept me up as well. I took an Ambien, but it didn’t do much. Finally at 1 AM, I took an Ativan and I slept from about 2 AM till 5:45 AM – enough so that I didn’t feel dreadful today.
At Mesa Community College, Debra told me that Professor Martinez, who’s observing me, is pompous and that it took him well over a decade to get his Ph.D.
To me, he sounds like a decent guy, but like a typical pettifog common in community college English departments, the kind of person who – like Mick at Broward – submits his poetry to literary magazines using the name “Dr. So-and-So.”
I had a decent class this morning going over students’ works cited pages. Afterwards, I xeroxed everything I need for Tuesday’s lesson on summarizing: one explanatory sheet and sets of three articles from Sunday’s New York Times.
After coming home, I walked over to Starbucks and read the paper, then exercised lightly to Body Electric and got into bed for a while.
I spoke to Mom, who read me my mail. From ASU Law today I got a form letter and affirmative action form for the Legal Research and Writing position. I’m not sure I’ll rate an interview.
By the way, I’m thinking of wearing my suit and tie to Tuesday’s MCC class. Martinez will probably be dressed in a shirt and tie, so why give him a power advantage with me looking like a schlump?
As I told Susan, I can’t get a clear picture of my chances for getting the job at Nassau Community College, but I will certainly take the position if offered it. I’d probably feel at home there because I’d be a professor, and because Long Island and New York City are home to me.
She said she has clients from New Jersey who have problems making friends here in Arizona because they talk too loud, invade other people’s personal space and tend to interrupt.
That was in response to my saying that what most made me feel at home was people like the department secretary at NCC, Marjorie, who talked the way I do – or the way I imagine I do. (I expect all my years in Florida softened my Brooklyn accent.)
The first thing Susan asked me when I came into her office and sat down was if I actually went to New York or had chickened out, but she was just kidding.
Susan and I talked about my summer plans, which I’m still not sure about.
She was pleased that I felt so good in New York. It seems like the Triavil has taken over some of the work the Klonopin did, but she advised me to wait until teaching was over before I tried to cut down on Klonopin.
I think that this is probably the best possible time for me to have a cold, provided it doesn’t turn into a major infection like sinusitis or bronchitis.
Maybe the travel lowered my immune response, or else it’s contact with my many sick students. If I can get over this by next Wednesday, I’ll be fine. I continue to suck on zinc tablets, which so far have not caused me any stomach trouble.
After therapy, I went to Borders and using a 20%-off coupon, I bought the new issue of XY and another tape, Feel the Fear and Beyond by Susan Jeffers. But I didn’t go to the café.
Back at home, I listened to All Things Considered on KJZZ and I added more comments to the Theater class discussion board on both Portraits and the suggested reading, Susan Sontag’s On Photography. I need to make up for any deficiencies in my paper.
The topics for our final exam will be given on Sunday and our papers are to be handed in by the following Saturday. So I’ll have plenty of work then.
But this afternoon I had time to email Tom and Miriam and read messages from other friends. Teresa has definitely turned down the Fairway deal, as I think she should have.
I don’t have too much to do tomorrow in class at ASU, so I figure I’ll survive unless I feel totally awful from the cold. And even then I’ll survive.
Monday, April 30, 2001
6:30 PM. I had a difficult time getting to sleep last night, so I took an Ambien, which sort of worked. I got enough sleep so that I wasn’t tired today although my cold is still hanging in there.
It’s not that bad, but I’m a bit congested, and I had a moment of dizziness at my office at ASU while I was downloading the entry on me in the Dictionary of Literary Biography from ASU libraries.
Professor Giner’s final exam in Pre-Columbian Theater of the Americas will be just a two-page reaction paper to his treatise on the 1884 Geronimo photo and the Apache Ghost Dance, and he said we could use our own postings to the discussion board in our paper.
I’ve essentially already done the assignment, and in a more sophisticated manner than most of my classmates. So I just added in more stuff after rereading “Portraits of Rebellion” and emailed it, ending my own coursework for the year.
I expect to get at least a B in the class, and that means that despite my illness, I’ll have 9 credits from ASU for the year.
This morning not that many of my own students showed up, and of those, fewer than I expected handed in their research papers. I have maybe 16 papers to grade now, which means that I’ll get about 32 papers next Monday and have to grade them quickly (and generously, as Mark Bernstein suggested in an email).
It looks as if Kate Gale confirmed that the reading at Midnight Special in Santa Monica is on June 9 rather than July 9, so I called Libby and Grant and asked them if I could visit in early June, the same week I did last year.
If I can’t stay in Woodland Hills, I can fly into Los Angeles for the weekend and stay over one night at a motel.
John Domini and I are reading at Quimby’s in Chicago on Friday, June 22 at 7:30 PM. That’s fine with me.
I bought tickets for about $230 on America West from Phoenix to O’Hare on June 14, with a return flight on June 27. That will exactly track my two weeks at Ragdale.
So I’ll be here for a while at the end of June, but then I’ll fly to New York in July when Teresa will be mostly in Fire Island and her parents will have left their house in Williamsburg for Mattituck.
Teresa wrote that she’d like to be in Fire Island now, but she’s got all these unused tickets to events that Pam got from Michael’s daughter, who freaked out after her classmate expressed a romantic interest in her and so she didn’t want to see her anymore. Tonight Teresa and Pam are going to the ballet, and tomorrow night they have tickets for an off-Broadway show.
With the extra 3000 miles I’ve earned by booking online, I might be able to get a free trip to New York – if not this summer, then later in the year.
I’m also going to be in Dairy Hollow in Arkansas for the month of September, paying $15 a day.
While I hope that I get the job at Nassau Community College or the one at ASU Law School, I doubt I will.
Tom wrote that I should hear from NCC soon, but of course if I do get a letter, it will be bad news.
I expect they’ll rank the candidates, and if they interviewed 35 people they’ll make a list and those below 25 will get a rejection notice. Or maybe not. It’s always possible that not everybody offered a job will accept it, and the number of positions opening up is in the air.
What I need to start doing is packing and getting my stuff ready to put away when I leave this apartment. I also have to figure out what to do with the Cougar (which didn’t start up at 7 AM but did later).
I returned all my Geronimo books and tapes to the Dobson Road library and took out Irrational Exuberance, Professor Schiller’s take on the stock market.
I’ve listened to far too many analysis of President Bush’s first 100 days in office. What strikes me is that he’s more conservative than I expected and that he’s a smaller-than-life president: more like his father or Carter or Ford than Nixon, Reagan and Clinton, all of whom won a second term.
I think Bush’s fate is tied to whatever happens with the economy, but that unlike his father, he’ll try to appear not to be out of touch. Still, this is a corporate, MBA-style administration.
I’ve actually set out my suit and tie for tomorrow’s observation at Mesa Community College.
The lesson could be a disaster if the New York Times articles are too long and complex for the class to summarize. But it will all be over by 8:30 AM, when I leave the room while Professor Martinez will have the class evaluate me. I’m concerned but not really anxious.
So I’ve basically gotten through one-third of 2001 and I’m still in one piece. The fact that I have to remind myself to take my meds must mean that I’m getting better. I know I am.