Archive

4:16 pm. Bloodbath at the doctor’s office. I have “rolling” veins, so it’s not unusual that the phlebotomist can’t find a vein suitable for my bi-monthly IV infusions[1]. I’ve often walked out of there with multiple bruises on my arms and hands from all the failed needle injection attempts. My usual phlebotomist (whose name is, weirdly, Zaheda) was out today and my veins refused to cooperate with new phlebotomist’s multiple attempts to get a needle into one of them. A doctor was called. To no avail.

Another doctor was called. After asking Kathy if she was my daughter, he tried a different set of veins and was also failing to find a non-recalcitrant one. I was advised by all concerned not to look because the blood was dripping everywhere. On the chair, on my clothes, on my phone. Kathy was holding my hand throughout, saying: “Whatever you do, don’t look. Trust me, you won’t want to see this.”

10:16 am. Woken in the middle of the night by Kathy performing fellatio on my person. She told me she was fantasizing about me fantasizing about having sex with other people while having sex with her so she suggested we do that and we did and it was super-healing. Removing the previous prohibition on fantasizing[1]made it less taboo and therefore suddenly less exciting, draining it of whatever previous erotic charge it had. 

1:45 am. Saw the kids today briefly. They came outside for a minute while I was delivering groceries (and the flowers that Kathy had suggested bringing to Mandy) and I had to keep my distance (they all have Covid) which was sad, but it was great to see the kids. Beckett seemed super-excited to be hopefully able to end his quarantine tomorrow.

5:14 am. Pretty frustrating night. Way too hot. Way too muggy. Way too histrionic. Kathy was talking about wanting to kill herself.

11:54 pm. Finished the sound mix and sent the new episode to Eternal TV and the Kickstarter donors.

10:03 pm. What to do? Kathy is upset. She’s upset a lot lately.

The thing that scares me is her ego. She's frequently in the grips of it. She’s also frequently free of it, but it’s a rather dizzying back and forth. I worry sometimes that she’s too ego-possessed, too dark, too deeply intertwined with ego thoughts for this to work out but then other times I think that what she’s experiencing is what we’re all experiencing and that working through this darkness is what we’re here to do: to help each other disentwine from our ego thoughts, and that we’re doing exactly what we’re supposed to be doing.

1:17 am. Hard day. Kathy was in a funk and I, too, got up on the wrong side of the bed. Everything seemed a bit meaningless. Like I was just going through the motions. 

Oscillating between hard work and cuddle naps. Kathy talked me into watching HyperNormalisation by promising to massage my feet the whole time, which she did. Best viewing experience of my life. 

9:20 am. Beckett tested positive for Covid. I was supposed to see both him and Scarlett today but they are both going to be quarantining with Mandy for the next several days instead.  

1:15 am. Went to the live event where the new episode was supposed to premiere. It was fun and intimate driving there with Kathy. On the walk from the car to the venue, Kathy asked me to stay close to her throughout the evening and not walk away suddenly and without warning as I've done in the past. I assured her that I wouldn't.

12:49 am. Had agreed to premiere the new episode tomorrow night at a live event but realized, after finding out more about it, that it would be at a bar with people standing around and drinking and talking. I decided it was a terrible idea to show the new episode in that environment and context so I backed out. Thank God because the episode is still not finished.

Spent most of today tweaking picture and sound and making last minute changes to the cut. Kathy had an idea I liked (I’d had the same idea a while back but had abandoned it out of laziness) for some extra archival footage shots so we added those. Then there was a take that rubbed her the wrong way (I didn’t love it either but, again, was being lazy) so we replaced it with a better take which had the unfortunate side effect of complicating the sound mix to an absurd degree.

10:14 am. Went jogging with Beckett this morning. It was so great to see him. We’d never jogged together for that long before. We talked about global exchange rates.

He seemed taller and more mature. I’m loving getting to know the person he’s becoming.

7:05 pm. Beckett got back today. He’s jetlagged and went to bed early so I wasn’t able to see him but I’m hopefully going to see him tomorrow.

1:12 am. Incredible sex tonight. I felt divinely guided. We did things we’ve never done before. Kathy said afterwards: “I think that was the best sex I’ve ever had in my life.”

3:42 am. Kathy’s back from being upstate. Things were a bit tense between us at first, but then we did Molly and had a deeply bonding experience. Such a great drug. Our relationship hit a new plateau.

Beckett called me from the airport in Milan. He needed a photo ID of Mandy’s to give to the airport people so she could pick him up at Newark but she was asleep so he called me to see if I had one. I didn’t but sent him mine and offered to pick him up. It got sorted out but I was thrilled to be awake and to be able to be there for him.

9:04 pm. Tried to talk to Mandy about the Beckett situation but she refused to discuss it with me, claiming she doesn’t want anything she says to end up in the journal. I assured her it would be off the record but she said she doesn’t believe me because, a few weeks ago, I mentioned in the journal that we were in mediation whereas I had agreed not to discuss the specifics of our mediation publicly. I pointed out to her that saying we are in mediation is not discussing the specifics of our mediation but she insists that I broke our agreement.

I looked up the specific language and what it says is: “Neither party shall publicly discuss, portray, dramatize, or otherwise disseminate the specific conversations or details occurring in the Mediation Program, including but not limited to any public portrayal of the mediator himself/herself.” Pretty sure I’ve honored that, but she insists on interpreting it as forbidding me to say that we are in mediation or to even mention the word “mediation.” Not sure why this is such a big deal to her but she is using it to refuse communication. It makes me want to tear my hair out.

2:17 pm. Read a little of James Joyce’s correspondence with Ezra Pound.

3:40 pm. Beckett facetimed me from Switzerland. He was crying again. He had gotten a piece of glass stuck in his foot (this was the second time this week) and he couldn’t get it out. He was alone in the bathroom and was having a meltdown. There seemed to be no one to help him. And then he dropped his phone in the bathtub. I was alarmed and felt helpless. His wifi kept cutting out. I tried reaching out to Mandy but she is doing her usual non-communication routine. Not sure if he ever got the glass out but he texted me later that he was feeling a little better. But I can’t help feeling terrible that I can’t be there to help him.

Dear Mandy,

I know you don’t like what I say about you in the journal. I know you think it’s not good for the children that I talk about them in my work. But I disagree. I think honesty is a good. It is arguably the highest good. 

11:07 am. In [REDACTED]. I’m in hell.

3:48 pm. I knew that Mandy was aware of the journal but today in [REDACTED] it became clear that she reads it regularly and will use anything and everything I say against me in court, which puts a real damper on my ability to say what’s on my mind in an uncensored way.

12:15 pm. I was able to convince Mandy to at least look into how much it would cost to change Beckett's flight. She says that every single flight is sold out.

10:17 pm. Locked picture on the new episode of Season 4. That feels good. It’s insane how long this episode has taken. Mostly because it takes place in LA. It saddens me that I couldn’t fix some of the issues that I would have been able to fix if it took place here in NY. Oh well. Lesson learned.

Mandy had offered to talk today so I had been hopeful that something had shifted and that this insane hemorrhaging of time and money might end. I didn’t go jogging because she hadn’t gotten back to me on when she was available to talk and I wanted to make sure we had enough time. But she kept pushing back the meeting time, engaging in the usual passive-aggressive non-responsiveness to texts and phone calls.

Then Beckett facetimed me from Switzerland. He was crying on the phone from homesickness. I felt terrible and wanted to find out how much it would cost to change his flight back to the States but Mandy is the one with the flight info. When I finally got through to her, after the window she had insisted on for talking had already closed, I suggested canceling this week’s mediation session and using that money to fly Beckett back home early but she didn’t want to. When I expressed doubt that the mediation was working and pointed out that not a single agreement had been reached after thousands of dollars had been spent, she said that was just in my head. When I asked her to name a single compromise or concession she had made, she refused and hung up on me.

4:22 pm. Back in NYC. On the flight back, I watched Belfast, Reality, Habemus Papum, and Nomadland. Excited to see Scarlett.

Beckett is feeling homesick and says he wished he could come home early but he’s stuck in Switzerland for another week. I feel so bad for him, but am also surprised. He’s with his friends at an idyllic vacation spot. Did something happen?

9:56 pm. Left Macedonia this morning. Kathy woke up early from a nightmare she was having so we were both extra sleep-deprived all day. Ivica woke up early to accompany us to the airport which was incredibly kind of him.

11:25 am. While Ivica was trouncing me in ping pong once again, I started doing a kind of prayer/meditation mantra. It didn’t make the difference between winning and losing, but it did make the difference between feeling bad about losing and feeling good about it. I got to a place where I was happy either way. That’s what I love about competitive sports – they teach me so much about how to live my life and what I’m doing wrong generally. I hadn’t felt this close to God in a long time.

3:56 pm. Jury just convened. One of the jurors was a guy I had been on a jury with in Buenos Aires in 2007. I had found him offensively arrogant and condescending at that time, and we had gotten into a huge fight and had almost come to blows. I’ve rarely wanted to punch someone as much as I had wanted to punch him.

12:08 pm. Kathy has psychic dreams that she puts a lot of stock in and this morning she had one that I was intriguing with Courtney[1] which was a little bit true. I had sent her a photo from Macedonia without mentioning it to Kathy. We ended up having a great conversation about intrigue and about just affirming our age gap instead of being self-conscious about it. I was reminded of what Patricia Moraz[2] said to me about her relationship with Patrick[3]: “I had never been so compatible with a man before.”

7:52 pm. My powerpoint presentation file was damaged so spent three hours today reconstructing it from scratch, only to discover when I arrived at the venue that there was no adapter and the internet was too weak to transfer the file. So I did the masterclass without any visual aids or film clips whatsoever. What this meant, in practice, was that the people there had no idea what I was talking about.

9:32 pm. Ivica smeared me at ping pong again. First, I was mad that I wasn’t winning. Then, I accepted that I was outclassed and just wanted to do the best I could. Then I even gave up on doing the best I could and just tried to enjoy the experience of playing badly.

2:07 am. Tonight’s movie was on a boat. The town was astonishingly beautiful at night from the vantage point of the water. It reminded me of that Wallace Stevens poem, “The Idea of Order at Key West,” which makes me want to visit Key West more than any other place in the world.

11:28 am. Played ping pong with Ivica. He’s very good. He won every game but one. It’s funny how you think you’re good at something because the people around you are even worse but then you meet someone who’s better and you don’t seem so good anymore. 

1:37 pm. Visited the cave church of St. Stefan. It cost a Euro to visit but there was no one there, just a bowl full of Euros that visitors had left there. We didn’t have any money on us, so Kathy suggested we take a Euro that she found on a different shelf of the church and put it in the bowl. I started to point out that this was absurd when she explained to me that she was kidding.

5:58 pm. Up most of the night and asleep most of the day. Jon Jost[1] walked an hour and a half along the beach from the city center of Ohrid to meet us at our hotel and arrived at exactly the same time as Ivica. We met Ivica’s wife and two-year old son and then we all went to the beach.

They had pedal boats that looked like cars and I got excited because I thought Beckett and Scarlett would get a kick out of them. A lot of my mental space is being taken up by vicariously imagining how much fun Beckett must be having in Switzerland. And worrying about whether or not Scarlett is enjoying her day camp.

9:48 pm. Arrived in Macedonia, exhausted from being up all night. Ivica greeted us at the airport and took us to a Macedonian restaurant where I had what was arguably the best meal of my life. Kathy commented that she’s never in her entire life tasted better tomatoes.

After lunch, I was falling asleep from jet lag. We were waiting for the festival people to come take us to Ohrid (which was two hours away by car), but my body was insisting I lie down immediately. Ivica took us to the park where I saw three benches side by side in the shade. It was like seeing water in the desert. We headed towards the benches but, just as we got there, a local on a bicycle pulled up and sat on one. I was tempted to try to explain to him how badly I needed to sleep and could he let us have these benches, but Ivica said there were more benches up ahead.

1:32 pm. Peter came over to reshoot the camera addresses that weren’t centered, and then drove Kathy and I to the airport. He’s such a deeply kind person.

2:20 am. Still on the plane to Macedonia, by way of Vienna. Kathy and I watched Nightmare Alley and then The Last Duel. I LOVED The Last Duel. I’ve never seen a Ridley Scott film I didn’t like. I have so much respect for that man. Nightmare Alley had its moments, but the minute The Last Duel started, it was blindingly obvious how much better a director Ridley Scott is than Guillermo del Toro. 

12:14 pm. Realized that in all the camera address footage Stefan had shot, I wasn’t centered in the frame. When I showed it to Brian, he agreed that it was unusable. Reached out to Stefan to reprimand him and also to reshoot it, but he wasn’t available.  

6:41 pm. On the way to Mandy's, I saw some datura growing along the sidewalk and took a picture. I told Scarlett it was datura and she said: "Is that the one that's also called Devil's Weed?" I was touched that she remembered that. Then Beckett asked me how I know so much about flowers. I told him about how I used to be a member of the California Native Plant Society but stopped short of telling him I became interested because of my experiences with psychedelics.

7:48 pm. The kids are back. They seem like they had a great time. Scarlett showed me a picture of a triple rainbow they saw, although it’s hard to see all three rainbows in the picture. Violett galloped towards Mandy when she saw her, and nuzzled ecstatically in her arms.

1:27 am. Today was the opposite of yesterday. Got almost nothing done. Shot 4 shots with Anna, and then cancelled the rest of today’s shoot because I hadn’t done my homework and had failed to plan properly. I usually beat myself up about this sort of thing, but I did the best I could given the hand I was dealt. The good news is that I think I can shoot most of what’s needed for the five most finely-tuned episodes of Season 3 in about 7 shoot days, so should be able to get that stuff shot before school starts back up in September.

The truth is I’ve been trying to strike a healthier balance between working non-stop, enjoying life, and being there for Kathy. After canceling the rest of today’s shoot, Maxwell and Kathy were bonding over their shared love of Neon Genesis Evangelion while I was organizing today’s footage and I was suddenly overcome by a wave of exhaustion. I decided to lie down for a moment and promptly fell asleep. When Kathy woke me up, two hours had passed.

12:50 am. Great day. I was so productive. We shot 49 shots! That’s a record for me. I was efficient and I was able to shoot a tremendous amount of material in a very small timeframe. I couldn’t help thinking of Raoul Ruiz[1], whom I am trying to be more like. He was a big influence, actually, without my even realizing it at the time.[2]

It made me feel hopeful about finishing Season 3. It seemed possible suddenly. Realistically, this is what I will be doing during my sabbatical this winter.

4:32 pm. Shooting Season 3. Kicking myself for choosing the apartment with the less nice interior but closer to our next location instead of choosing the further away apartment with the nicer interior.

9:48 am. Listened, while jogging, to the second episode of Ben Lee[1] and Ione Skye’s Weirder Togetherpodcast. There’s something so touching about them. He’s so warm and she’s so sweet and they’re both so deeply human. But the best part is always when their young daughter is on.

5:37 pm. Starting to get back into the Show. It’s funny how that works. You make the smallest incremental progress and suddenly you’re in it again.

1:31 pm. Theo came over today to help prep for this week’s film shoot. He also pitched his Civil War Reenactor documentary.

8:02 pm. Hard day for Kathy. A guy she was seeing briefly eight months ago saw the Instagram post of the two of us together and sent her a shockingly hateful series of texts. Then she found out that a friend of hers had gotten into a physical fight with the guy who raped her when she was eighteen. Her friend had called the guy out in front of a group of people, including his girlfriend, and had gotten a black eye in the ensuing melee. This brought up all kinds of complicated feelings in her. After a panic attack and a lot of processing, she felt way lighter.

4:12 pm. Received this email from a Kickstarter donor:

“Any chance we could get another update? I recall in the interview you did with The Ion Pack that if you lose momentum with a project, you sometimes lack interest in resuming the work. I hope Ulysses hasn’t taken away your drive to finish The Show. I understand Season 4 might take some time, but maybe we can get a few deleted scenes from the archives of Season 1 & 2 to tide us over? :)

11:39 pm. Felt frail tonight – frail and meaningless. It had nothing to do with Kathy, but Kathy also couldn’t save me from it. The old despair is back. I wish I could just skip to the end of the line on this one, but life is clearly process art. And the not-knowing and the fumbling and the being in it are the essential thing and I’m smack in the middle of it.

Kathy: Today you reminded me of hopscotch.

11:34 pm. Kathy and I met with Colin Robinson about the book manuscript that he’s reluctant to publish because of Mandy’s lawsuit threats. He was with a book editor friend named Amber who took a real shine to Kathy. Afterwards, she went on and on about how great Kathy was. She called her an old soul, and unusually kind. All true.

Amber was also a big John Wilson fan and, when I told her that the magazine piece for which I was about to head over to the Chelsea Hotel was recording a conversation between me and John Wilson, she got very excited. Colin didn’t know who John Wilson was so we took turns trying to explain his show to Colin. Kathy and I had just run into John a few minutes earlier on the way to meet with Colin (he was filming in front of the Chelsea Hotel) and had invited him to join us, which he eventually did, along with one of the camera people on his show.

3:07 pm. Rough day. Woke up still angry from last night. Kathy sensed it and kind of collapsed emotionally. Haley B. came over to help edit and got roped into being our couples’ therapist. I didn’t understand why I was still angry but my anger eventually dissolved in the face of how hard Kathy was taking it. She was crying and unable to speak. I was finally able to reassure her and we were close again after that.

5:13 pm. Beckett has been unusually affectionate in his texts from Maine. I think he’s more comfortable expressing love through writing than through speaking. He has been sending me lots of photos.

10:45 pm. Kathy spoke to the camera yesterday for the Ulysses film. Afterwards, she asked me to show her the footage so she could see how she looked. I thought she looked great but she was horrified and started crying, insisting she looked terrible and asking me to destroy the footage.  

We somehow got past it, but the shadow of yesterday hung over most of today. And then Maxwell came over and he and Kathy went and got coffee. She told him she felt ugly and he told her: “You’re objectively beautiful.”

10:06 am. While jogging this morning, I noticed a banana peel on the sidewalk. My first thought was to avoid it so I wouldn’t slip but then my next thought was that somebody might not see it and slip on it and get hurt. So I turned around and ran back to remove the banana peel from the sidewalk. As I picked it up, a ton of banana goo dripped onto my brand new sneakers, leaving an ugly brown stain.

2:24 pm. The table we abandoned on the sidewalk outside my apartment was taken.

11:18 pm. K. wanted to eat 4th of July food so we got veggie dogs and pickle chips and they were astonishingly delicious.

10:30 am. Violet is feeling better! She was eager to go on a walk and was able to go up the stairs by herself.

4:21 pm. Another simultaneous orgasm!

6:34 pm. Simultaneous orgasms!

11:53 pm. Violet[1] was sick all day. Beckett was worried about her. He’s so attuned to her moods and disposition. Scarlett wanted me to bring Violet to Mandy’s so that she could see Mandy for a few minutes before they left for Maine. Mandy was worried about Violet too. Texted me the number of Violet’s vet and asked me to take her for a checkup, but the place was closed.

3:29 am. Fell asleep while putting the kids to bed.

Beckett asked me if I wanted to play a board game. I didn’t, but I said sure. Then I suggested we play Cactus instead. Neither of us could remember the rules very well, but we decided to try to reconstruct how to play it.

10:19 am. Up most of the night trying to figure out how to recover my missing project files, but to no avail.

4:57 pm. Wasted the entire day dealing with hard drive recovery nonsense. It seems to be truly gone. Very disconsolate.

10:27 am. Kind email this morning from Yung Chomsky (who reads this journal and was at the Ulysses event): “I don’t think there’s such a thing as an insincere standing ovation after a four-hour performance!”

3:43 pm. One of my hard drives failed so I called tech support and asked them how to fix it and they walked me through a procedure at the end of which my entire project disappeared. Two years of work down the drain. I was so upset I decided to ignore the situation and just hope that it would somehow eventually reappear.

9:46 am. Listened, while jogging, to Joseph Campbell talking about James Joyce’s theory of aesthetic arrest. He does such a good job making it feel relevant to one’s life. I love that man.

3:42 pm. Shot ten camera testimonials today. It was numbing but also demoralizing. So many people are suspicious about “how much of it was organic and how much of it was manufactured.” I guess skepticism is healthy but in this case it just feels frightened and obtuse.

1:52 pm. K. is helping me to finally clean and organize my apartment. I’ve been putting this off for years. It feels so good to be doing it finally. I always underestimate the suffering that not doing something causes.

6:38 pm. K and I started reading the Nestor chapter of Ulysses. I really can't think of anything more gratifying. Stephen Dedalus is so much more likable in the second chapter than in the first.

9:46 am. K. and I went to the farmer’s market. They had sour cherries! I’ve been waiting all year for this day. Took them to Mandy’s for Scarlett, who loves them. Mandy seemed annoyed, but Scarlett seemed happy and grateful, and sent me the following text messages:

THANK YOU SO MUCH

8:41 pm. Weird contretemps. Everything was going well. K. had been super-helpful with helping to find and name the missing clips. We read Ulysses on the fire escape which was super-fun for me. And then she seemed horny, and I thought I was doing what she wanted by aligning with that direction when I could easily have prioritized something else, like making dinner. And then she was in a bad mood, and I felt guilty for not realizing she hadn’t been horny. I had just misread the situation.

It's kind of the first time we’re up against this particular limit. I feel like I never know which version of herself she’s going to be at any moment. It keeps things unpredictable, but also makes everything seem a little unsafe. It’s ironic because I’ve been doing everything I can think of to make her feel more safe. Maybe that’s why she feels more free to express parts of herself that make me feel less safe.

2:12 pm. Found out today that Mandy is reading this journal which is complicating my legal issues concerning the divorce. She doesn’t want me to mention that we are in [REDACTED]. I feel that between her interdictions and K.’s, the whole purpose of this journal is being negated and I’m wondering if I should just end it.

3:47 pm. Good talk with K. She was very sweet about the journal and basically gave me permission to say whatever I want to say. Was touched by that.

9:53 pm. Happy day. It was my first day off since starting the Ulysses project over a month ago. K. and I just lay in bed for a lot of it. Bought some shoes. Set up a new hard drive because I’m out of space. Wrote letters of apology to the angry equipment center personnel.

Mandy and the kids returned from their trip to Montreal. Scarlett was excited to show me the French graphic novel about dragons she bought in Montreal and was inspired to take up learning French again. She showed me the airbnb they stayed in on Google Maps, and the menus from the restaurants they went to.