June 4, 1995

9:47 am

I've had this recurring dream that I have Tourette's Syndrome, the disease where you can't help swearing or saying awful things to people. In my case I call people "nigger" or "kike" when introduced to them or meet them on the street but for some reason the names I use have little to do with any ethnic or racial identity of the person. It must mean something terrible about me, or it's a neurosis just waiting to surface. Or maybe I'm getting a jump on senility.

I try to input at least one or two pages of my old journal pages every day. They will, I'm sure, prove useful in the future and, in fact, are very useful to me right now. I'm surprised at how well I had everything worked out in terms of philosophy and theory in the mid 'eighties and how I've pretty much continued working from that base even though I now read what I wrote as if some other mind wrote it. And, in truth, someone else did. Someone who wasn't putting all that theory into any kind of practice. Once I started getting the work out I had no time for theorizing. Now I have time for both.

My anxiety level seems to have ebbed this morning. Yesterday was horrible but it may have just been the weather. Muggy without being hot so I'd have a reason to put the air conditioner in. Friday I spent the afternoon tending Sofie while Remo messed up an interview with Robert Atkins of Art in America. I don't really know if he messed up but he said he did and I doubt Atkins was much interested in what we're doing. He needs news to gossip about and we don't create much news these days. Sofie wore me out. She's spoiled but, still, a sweet kid that you can't deny.

I'm in the middle of Carol's new book, "The Man Who Lied to Women" and it has a much better flow but, I think, at the expense of interesting characters. She says the next one is better and that's probably because it's about the art world and all her bile will come out. She loaned me some money last weekend to buy cigarettes and coffee and took me out to dinner where we sat at the bar in order to smoke and I told her what a wonderful writer she really is. She said I'd never told her and was happy for my judgment. She's started getting philosophical these days about the meaning of home because she's thinking about moving again.

Jess seems to have recovered or is feeling better. He says the money from his mom's estate will come through this week and we'll both be flush. I hope that's true but he lives in a dream world these days from the drugs and chemo. He claims that when he leaves the house someone comes in and rearranges things just to annoy him but he doesn't mind as long as they don't steal anything valuable.