A Writer’s Diary Entries From Mid-May, 2001

Friday, May 11, 2001

3:30 PM. I’m writing this with powdered hands and a washcloth under my right hand, as I’ve had diaphoresis all day. I think it’s caused by the reduction in my Klonopin dose.

This morning I took .25 milligrams instead of the .5 milligrams I took yesterday or the.38 milligrams I’ve taken some days. Still, although I feel a little edgy, I’m not really agitated, and Susan said if these are my only symptoms of Klonopin withdrawal, I should be okay.

The Yahoo Klonopin Club members have said it’s a highly addictive drug, but Susan tells me that people do get off it. However, if my symptoms persist or worsen, I’ll go easy on withdrawal.

The Triavil at a low dosage seems to work for me, Susan said. She told me I should add another column, Stress, to my weekly/daily record of anxiety, depression and pressure levels.

In the past, I’ve had trouble distinguishing anxiety symptoms from stress, but there is a difference. Yesterday I felt stressed-out but not really anxious.

Having fallen asleep at about 8:20 PM, I suppose I shouldn’t have been upset when I woke up at 3:50 AM and couldn’t get back to sleep. After all, I’d slept seven and a half hours, a normal night’s sleep.

I left the house at 8:20 AM and after getting a haircut and some iced Starbucks Calm tea at the shopping center on Power Road and Baseline, I went to Apache Junction where Mom – whose Mother’s Day card from me was sitting on the kitchen table – sewed a button back on my cargo pants.

It’s the kind of thing that only your mother can do, and I’m so grateful that mine is alive and capable, especially when I think about the recent deaths of the mothers of Josh, Mark Bernstein and Mark Savage.

I love that pair of cargo pants, but they’re getting worn, and I’m trying not to buy clothing if I don’t have to.

Mom had gathered all my mail together for me to look at. I got that new Capital One Visa card with a $300 limit, but I also got a rejection from another bank, so now I can look at my credit file from Equifax. The turndown didn’t mention bankruptcy among its reasons for action, so I assume the bankruptcy is no longer listed on my file.

The other mail was related to job searches I got an acknowledgement of my application from St. Francis College, an affirmative action card to fill out from the University of La Verne (where I know I haven’t gotten a chance to be hired as a law professor – even at a non-ABA-accredited school), and a rejection by the Nova Liberal Arts Department, signed by Chris Jackson and Lynn Wolf.

As I told Susan during today’s appointment, I know the odds are stacked against my getting any full-time academic job for next year, so I’m prepared to return to Phoenix in the fall and spend the next year figuring out what to do with my life.

I’ll apply for lots of jobs for the following 2002-2003 academic year while taking a position outside academia, doing anything that will let me pay the rent on another small apartment of my own – unless Marc moves out of the Apache Junction house and I can take over his room.

I can try to do some legal work, and I also might want to consider some computer training that will help me get a position. The only way I will work as an adjunct again is if I can get classes in Justice Studies or Law. If I don’t get a job, I’m going to have to deal with my second bankruptcy soon.

Meanwhile, I’ve got to make sure my recovery keeps going forward.

In the car and at home I’ve listened to 11 of the 16 tape sides of Roth’s I Married a Communist, which I’ve enjoyed.

At the end of my therapy session with Susan, I made two more appointments with her: one on May 30, in her Phoenix office on North 7th Street and Glendale Avenue, and then one back in her Tempe office for mid-June.

Leaving Susan’s office, I went to the Wendy’s near ASU on Rural Road north of Broadway for a baked potato and a Diet Coke.

Last night I wrote to Sean, telling him about my summer plans and how my depression and anxiety seem to be fading away. He said life is good for him, “though I always thought of myself becoming an older man in the manner of Sean Connery – and that isn’t going to happen.”

After two years at Open Networks, Sean has got a lot of enjoyment out of learning new things although he doesn’t like the traveling he’s got to do for work. “But maybe someday we’ll be in the same city and have dinner,” he said.

Since I last saw Sean when he was 18 or 19, it’s hard for me to think of him as an “older man,” but by now the once-big difference in our ages seems less important now that he’s approaching 40 and I’m turning 50.

Sean said that my life is like a movie and his is a boring sitcom, but I envy his stability: he’s got a home, a long-term partner, financial security, a place in his community, a steady paycheck and a plan to retire to Breckenridge.

What have I got? Lots of nice memories but no real future – and that scares me a little, as it should. Still, Sean and I are both survivors.

Sunday, May 13, 2001

8 PM. It’s been a surprisingly pleasant weekend. I felt good most of today: no sweaty palms, even.

Last night on my little pallet on the floor of my parents’ living room, I slept wonderfully; instead of not being able to get back to sleep at 3 AM when I woke up, I dozed off again and slept till 5:15 AM, which gave me about nine hours of rest.

I hugged Mom for Mother’s Day, and as I saw Dad – who was out for a brisk walk – on the corner of Ironwood and Southern, I said goodbye. My car was caked with dirt from the sandstorm, but the early morning was cool and I felt good.

When I got home, I exercised and organized the Sunday New York Times in the bizarre ritual I have for reading it.

Theresa Wright McFadden called, saying that her daughter-in-law had just taken her son to Sky Harbor for his grueling business trip to Chicago and then on to Stockholm. I suggested to Theresa that I meet her and Chuck at the Starbucks on Mill Avenue and 5th Street in Tempe.

I got there early and had a venti passion iced tea as I read articles from the Travel section, which I usually ignore. But one article today was about Brooklyn (Park Slope, Caroll Gardens, Prospect Heights). The photos of Union Street and the restaurant row on Smith Street made me nostalgic for home.

Other articles were on the Philadelphia Zoo and the downtown waterfront of Chicago, both places I know. I really feel the need to travel, but of course I will be doing that soon.

I was sitting at a table outside when Chuck dropped off Theresa and joined us once he found a parking space. Both of them looked good, and Theresa said I looked great despite my email warnings that I’ve aged due to my rough times. She showed me a photo of their little grandson Jackson, who looks like an angel.

I envy Theresa and Chuck, who both grew up in Alexandria and who have spent their whole lives in the D.C. area. Their new house, which they’ve fixed up a lot, is in Arlington near the bridge to Washington. Theresa has a studio for her work, which is getting bigger and closer to sculpture than painting.

I enjoyed seeing Theresa and Chuck. She hasn’t been to a colony since Ragdale in June 1997, except for visiting Kerry Dolan at VCCA.

I hope Ragdale is good for me this year, but I don’t expect it to be. My stay is only two weeks this time, and I can’t imagine the people will be as nice as that special group I met in 1997. But we’ll see. It will certainly beat staying here in Phoenix.

Although we were in the shade outside, it was still hot, and I think both the McFaddens are fascinated by Arizona but a little repelled. The desert is so harsh, they said, and they were not impressed by Scottsdale. Like me, Theresa does not like “Southwestern art.”

After Chuck and Theresa told me they found Taliesin West “underwhelming,” I drove them to see Frank Lloyd Wright’s monstrous Grady Gammage Auditorium.

I’ve heard people say that it was originally built for Iran, but then the CIA overthrew Mossadegh in the early 1950s. Maybe the building would have looked better in Tehran than in Tempe.

Tomorrow Theresa and Chuck are driving to Sedona, and then they’ll go to Flagstaff, the Grand Canyon and the Painted Desert.

After riding around the ASU campus for a while, I took them back to their car. They’ll be back in Phoenix on Wednesday night, and on Thursday they’re going to San Francisco for a wedding. Theresa is missing her first class at summer school, but that’s okay with her.

This is the first Sunday night since spring break that I don’t have to get up early to teach or have that interview at Nassau Community College.

Thursday, May 17, 2001

6:30 PM. Last evening I watched Dawson’s Creek (the gang graduates from high school) and the season finale of The West Wing (President Bartlett, having lied about having M.S., comes clean – but will he seek reelection?) and then drifted off to sleep.

Again, I managed to sleep past 5 AM, though it wasn’t easy once 3 AM rolled around. I also did yoga stretches at 5:45 AM and ate breakfast 15 minutes later.

The only symptom that seems to remain is the sweaty palms I get in the morning, but that is certainly easy to live with. Basically, I feel better than I have in months.

I finally got offline two hours after Dad left a message that Marc is going to Denver for the job interview with Cricket. When I called Apache Junction, Marc picked up the phone and said he’s going on Monday and will be back on Friday.

Cricket won’t pay for his plane fare, so he’ll drive there, perhaps leaving on Sunday and staying with Tom and Carol (who’s the sister of my ASU student Tiffany) in Flagstaff overnight, though it’s a 12-hour drive up I-17, over to the east on I-40 and then up to Denver on I-25. At least Cricket is paying for his hotel room there.

If he does get the job, Marc would move to Denver in mid-June. “It’s too good an opportunity to turn down,” he said.

It’s not a done deal yet, but Mom already seems very unhappy about Marc moving away because he apparently helps them a lot financially.

Even if Mom doesn’t like Arizona as much as she did Florida, the prospect of moving to a condo bothers her. Of course, she has nothing else left in her life except her house, but it’s not as if they’re going to sell it so fast.

They’ve thought about moving back to Florida, and Jonathan said he would go back if he could finish up at FAU and get his bachelor’s degree.

Mom told me that she and Dad had never lived in an apartment, forgetting that they lived at Uncle Sidney’s mother’s fourplex on Ocean Parkway when I was a baby, and that then we lived upstairs at East 54th Street between Tilden and Snyder in Mr. Rachelson’s two-family house.

Mom will have a hard time adjusting to any change in her life. I saw that on Tuesday when she was appalled by how many books I was bringing over in boxes.

That obsessive-compulsive part of her and resistance to change means that Mom would like me to stay in Apache Junction and take Marc’s place as the prime breadwinner and mortgage payer. But that’s not going to happen.

I called Sat Darshan at work to see how her plastic surgery went; actually, it was the removal of that thing on her nose they’d scraped twice before.

I had tried her at home first, but Gurudaya said there was no reason for her not to go back to work, and Sat Darshan said she felt okay, but like “after you’ve had a tooth pulled and the Novocain starts to wear off.”

She was also glad that the clear bandage they put on her won’t make her “look like a freak.”

I also spoke to Teresa, who told me that graduation at Purchase College on Saturday was surprisingly nice, especially since she avoided seeing Jade’s mother.

The kids at the school ran the commencement themselves, and James Earl Jones was the featured speaker. Afterwards, Jade went with Teresa and Paul, Teresa’s parents, and P.J. and his girlfriend out to eat.

Jade turned down the trip to England to visit her cousins and instead took a watch that Teresa and Paul bought in St. Maarten.

Teresa said that Jade “desperately” wants to move out – which of course has me thinking I could stay in the basement if she does. Jade’s closest friend lives in Locust Valley and works in Mineola, so there’s no reason for her to go far away.

The other news today came from Kamari Lee. The reading at A Different Light is off. So much for the work I did.

At least Kamari said the 3 PM reading at the Midnight Special bookstore in Santa Monica with Kate is still on. Actually, that will make the day much less pressure-filled.

This morning at Borders, I had enough on my frequent drinker’s card or whatever it’s called to get a free iced tea.

Now that I’ve marked all my MCC papers and handed in my final grades, I wrote to Doyle Burke, thanking him and his secretary Linda for being so nice to me during the last academic year. I also asked him for a letter of recommendation.

It’s time for my nightly Triavil and Klonopin.

Sunday, May 20, 2001

3:30 PM. I just came from Burger King, where I finished the last of the Arts and Leisure section, the only part of the Sunday New York Times that I hadn’t read, and I had my second Diet Coke of the day.

I should probably make more of an attempt to avoid caffeine; I wish that fast food places, like Harkins theaters, would serve caffeine-free diet colas.

At Starbucks this morning. I got a cup of ice to put over hot Passion herbal tea. But it’s not as if the caffeine always makes me jittery.

Last night in Apache Junction, I tried to stay up to watch the penultimate Sopranos episode at 10:45 PM, but I drifted off to sleep after a couple of scenes and slept soundly, with elaborate dreams set in New York City landscapes.

Up at 5 AM, I stayed in bed – my pallet on the living room floor – for another hour, during which I might have dozed off for a while. After breakfast, another hour resting, light exercise, showering, and dressing, I drove back to my apartment with the mail I picked up yesterday. I’ve got about ten days to clear away a ton of stuff in the apartment, but I don’t feel pressured right now.

What I wanted to do today was call up and activate my Bank of America Flight Fund Visa, which I did. After returning to Apache Junction this afternoon, I went to Bealls, where I used the card when Jonathan rang me up for the two pairs of pants I bought.

This new $8,000 credit line will put off bankruptcy further into the future, but I don’t expect to get any more new credit after this. Still, I could definitely go till October using cash advances to pay off monthly payments, shuffling one card to pay another, in case I don’t have much income.

I know it’s silly to think of the $8,000 credit line as money; it’s just potential debt. Or I guess I could view it as an investment in a few more months of happiness and relaxation.

Last night I joined AARP online for $10 a year, and I printed out a receipt and temporary card. Jonathan said that at 50, I’m eligible for Bealls’ senior discount on Mondays. (Maybe I can get an article out of being a hypocrite, given my complaint against AmeriFirst’s senior discount in the 1980s.)

I gave Mom my 2000 diary to put away with the rest of my diaries. She’s got three boxes, dated by years, but the 2000 volume had to be squeezed in, along with the 1999 diary, into the box containing my first diaries from 1969 to 1975. (Mom has got the boxes labeled.)

I got a note from Mark Bernstein, who turns 57 tomorrow, but otherwise all my emails were junk except for one from Rick Peabody, who’s been working on a volume of poems by Ed Cox, who was not much older than us and who died young.

Maybe after I’m dead, someone will do something like that for me, but I doubt it. Well, I’ve now got over thirty volumes of diary entries in my parents’ walk-in closet, and I’m one-third of the way through this 2001 diary.

Is my long diary project just therapy for me, or is anything in it valuable? Surely out of all these millions of words, there has to be one book that some smart editor can patch together – if she can read my handwriting.

But hey, I’m not Anaïs Nin (thank God) or Virginia Woolf (too bad) or even Bridget Jones (I should be so lucky).