Archive

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.

11:05 pm. Great day. Woke up next to K. and stayed in bed a long time. Only got up because we had to meet Yung Chomsky for lunch. On the way back, we saw a huge dragonfly.

9:16 am. Summer solstice. Sad that Spring is officially over.

2:21 am. Long ten-hour day of testimonials and equipment returns. I was so exhausted that I fell asleep next to K. during Peter’s 40 minute monologue.

8:39 am. Crazy night. Huge fight. K. dissociated. Then great sex. Then closeness again.

11:09 pm. K. went with me to get an IV infusion. She held my hand while they were sticking a needle in me and again when they were taking it out.

12:41 am. Shot three of the direct-to-camera testimonials today. Jack’s was very good. Eleonore’s was very touching. And Sam’s was very weird.

9:01 pm. It was a beautiful Spring day and Beckett wanted to drive somewhere but Scarlett didn’t because she gets carsick so we compromised by driving only a little way - to Prospect Park. We had wanted to go kayaking and had checked the Prospect Park website which, from past experience, is absurdly inaccurate. But it said the kayaking place was open, so we went. As I feared, the kayaking place was in fact closed. But it was nice to get out of the house and do something together.

Afterwards, Beckett and Scarlett got into a fight. Beckett wanted her to play catch with him but she was in the middle of playing a video game and didn’t want to quit before it was over. He thought she said “two more minutes” whereas she insisted she had said “a few more minutes.” He became impatient and angry that she wasn’t quitting her game and that it had been more than two minutes. She eventually said, "Okay, I’m ready to play now," but he was so upset by then that he no longer wanted to. They started arguing about who had said what and it kept escalating and my attempts at de-escalation were not working.

7:10 pm. Spent most of the day recording testimonials by the Ulysses and I camera crew which ended up being about 25 people.

A reader of this journal suggested updating the Sam plotline.

6:39 pm. The run-through was incredibly demoralizing. Everything felt flat and lifeless.

7:20 pm. Feeling better after meditating. I was able to feel into what I should do.

11:58 pm. Got into a shouting match with Sam during rehearsals. He was refusing to do the simulated sex scene, and I got so angry with him that my hands were shaking. I’m regretting casting him and the idea of editing 24 hours of footage of him makes me want to kill myself.  

The good news is we were able to get the University to let us keep the building open until midnight. And the play is starting to come together, even though we weren’t able to get through the whole thing today and everyone is worried that it’s going to be 5 hours long.

9:45 pm. Today, Sam was being chaotic and interruptive to the point that I couldn’t take it anymore so I replaced him with another actor. Then Peter started a group chant of “We want Sam, we want Sam!” But the new actor was already on his way. After Eleonore chastised Sam publicly, he agreed to cooperate and, to prove it, spent the next few minutes being a model actor. When the other actor arrived, which was awkward for everyone, he was given the thankless task of trying to figure out the role at the 11th hour. He was not chaotic or interruptive but he also didn’t seem as right for the part so then I replaced the new actor with Sam, thereby successfully alienating everyone. Morale is low.

6:39 am (6/15/22). Passed out last night from exhaustion.

9:25 am. Was busy working on the script and forgot to exit the train at the proper station. Going to be late for Scarlett’s school presentation. She’s going to be so disappointed. 

10:19 am. Mandy was there, which surprised me. Scarlett had gone out of her way to have us sign up for different time slots. I asked Mandy about the books I need as props for Ulysses (and that belong to me) but she did her usual: “I am not having this conversation with you right now.” This was in front of Scarlett who was obviously distressed by the interaction and encouraged me to leave. Poor thing. It has been 5 years since we separated and Mandy still refuses to let me have my books back. These are books I’ve had since long before I ever met her.

11:57 pm. Insane day. Dropped Scarlett off at Mandy’s. She was her usual hostile self. Wouldn’t let me put my foot in the doorway of the building to keep the door open while Scarlett went to try to find her wand and then refused to let me borrow Beckett’s wand for the play.

I asked K. to come over and she did. She was in the hospital twice this week and is having trouble taking care of herself. I told her that I would have time for her tonight and I didn't.

6:29 pm. Such a happy day so far. The play seems to be coming together, but I’ve also let go of trying to control things. I’m not in charge. I’m just the vehicle of something moving through me. That’s why I’m happy I think. I feel like I’m doing what I’m supposed to be doing, even if I don’t understand what it is or what it’s for.

Picked up Scarlett from her sleepover. We’ve had such a great rapport all day. She wanted to make slime so we went and bought slime-making supplies. She’s in an unusually good mood. Is it my mood that’s contagious?

9:02 pm. We were kicked out of our rehearsal space because the building apparently closes at 6 pm on Fridays due to summer hours, even though we had been told we could have the space until 9 pm.

The bigger problem is that, because summer hours have started, the building apparently closes at 8 pm on other days, which means that we can’t do our performance there this Thursday night at 7 pm as planned. We’ve already sold tickets for that location and time. Going to try to figure out if there’s a way to get the building hours extended, but knowing the New School, it seems unlikely.

12:10 pm. Rehearsals start today. I have to pick up Scarlett from ping pong so it will have be a short one. Hopefully, we’ll have time for a read-through at least.

Blanchot’s “The Writing of Disaster” comes to mind.

2:24 am. Another crazy day.

K. had a medical scare. Her doctor thought she might have sepsis so there was some panic about what to do. Ended up driving her upstate to see her doctor there.

8:12 pm. Another crazy day. Still trying to cast the leads.

Someone mentioned Crispin Glover in some unrelated context and I thought “What about Crispin Glover?” So I called him and we had a long talk about it but he ultimately declined. He’s trying to finish his own film and it would take a suitcase full of money to make it worth his while.

1:54 am. Crazy day.

Production meeting. 11th hour casting.

6:06 am. Last day in L.A. It has been hellish in many ways, and I wasn’t able to get all the shots I needed for the new episode, but it was also in many ways a godsend. Couldn’t have finished the script if I had been in New York. Way too many distractions.

11:32 am. Scarlett called me. She dyed her hair blue. That’s a first. She’s growing so fast.

5:41 am. Woke to a message that K. had a 103 degree fever and had been taken to the hospital. She’s on an IV. They gave her pain and anti-nausea medication. They think she has a kidney stone or a kidney infection.

5:50 am. Worried about K. I’m so emotionally cathected to her. Hope she’s okay.

4:06 am. Woke up early because I forgot to set my alarm and was worried about missing today’s mediation session.

10:15 am. Mediation session was inconclusive. But it still cost a fortune.

7:33 am. Play happens in two weeks. Still no script. Still no cast.

9:45 am. Text from Hayley that said: "Suggestion from my friend Zoë," accompanied by a screen shot that said:

7:02 am. Now Elliott also has Covid. What a nightmare.

8:15 am. The question I keep asking myself is “am I insane?” Is this just insane hubris on my part to think that I can pull this off? And to involve so many other people. Are they insane?

4:01 am. Woken by the metallic taste of Paxlovid in my mouth.

9:25 am. Mom still testing negative. Elliott still without symptoms. Sister’s symptoms are still mild.

7:35 am. I feel so much better this morning. Still have a cough and stuff, but the intense fatigue and body aches have lifted. This feeling-better-after-having-been-sick is one of the greatest feelings in life, this hopefulness-after-a-certain-hopelessness, this shift in perception and outlook, this sense that things are going to be okay. Even though I feel worse than usual, I feel happier than usual. Strange how relative everything is.

9:12 am. My sister just tested positive for Covid. Yikes. The worse part of this is the guilt one feels for infecting other people. Was already worried about giving it to my mother but am even more worried now.

9:36 pm. Sick in bed all day. Somebody recommended CBD but my sister, who disapproves of drugs, and is happy to drive to the pharmacy to get me Dayquil and Paxlovid, is refusing to get me any, acting like I need to contact a drug dealer. But it’s totally legal, right?

Working on Ulysses between naps.

2:27 pm. Worked on the Ulysses script all morning. It helps being at my mom’s house. No distractions. I was a writing machine. This is my ambition.

9:28 pm. Shot the Samuel Jackson lookalike stuff. It went well, except that I started feeling increasingly under the weather. I think the stress of trying to write, cast, and stage Ulysses, plus dealing with the divorce stuff at the same time, somehow pushed me over the edge health-wise.  

10:00 am. Mediation session is about to start. I feel like this is our last hope for a shift in perception to occur.

11:50 am. Mediation session was promising. My favorite moment was the minute long silence where the mediator was trying to decide how to begin. But he seemed respectful and appreciative of art as a valid and worthwhile activity and of artistic license as a reasonable right.

10:13 am. I keep getting mixed messages from the New School about whether we can use the theater or not. Yesterday it looked like a yes. This morning it looks like a no. It’s maddening.

4:21 pm. Unsettling phone call with my lawyer. Mandy’s lawyer sent their counter-proposal today finally, after months of not getting back to us. They basically give in on nothing, reject all of my compromise attempts, and are back to trying to get me to pay her legal fees. We have “free” court-ordered mediation tomorrow, but the lawyers will be present which means it’s going to cost us thousands of dollars. Given today’s counter-proposal, it’s hard to imagine tomorrow’s mediation session leading to anything other than more debt.

2:16 am. Every day is like the dream of a day. Can’t believe K. is in my life. Ulysses continues to come together. I don’t feel like I’m making it happen – just allowing it to happen. There’s a certain strain involved but it’s not that bad and I’m more than willing. In fact, there’s something delicious about it. 

Picked Scarlett up from school. Got there late because a crazy person on the subway was freaking everyone out by yelling that he was carrying explosives so they stopped the train.

10:42 am. Caught another mouse in a glue trap. Its tail was still twitching from underneath the oven (which is how I noticed it). I felt it was kinder to kill it than let it starve to death so I tried to crush it against the bottom of the oven which, in addition to being gruesome, was also ineffective. I put the mouse (still stuck to its glue trap) in a trash bag but I could hear it still squirming inside so I took a fire extinguisher and pressed down on it as hard as I could. There was a sickening sound of bones breaking after which I tossed the trash bag into one of the outdoor trash cans downstairs. It was horrible but it was that or live with mouse poop (and pee) everywhere.

9:41 pm. Got an email today saying we had lost the theater where we were going to stage Ulysses after we already started selling tickets. I felt nauseous reading that. It was like being punched in the stomach. It took a while to recover from the blow. I’m hoping I can get the theater back but I won’t know for a week.

2:37 am. A perfect day. Worked hard, on Ulysses mostly, but also on The Show. Even so, I made time to enjoy the perfect weather and K.’s company.

In the evening, we got stoned.

2:15 am. K. wasn't crazy about yesterday's entry. She thought that juxtaposing what I said about loving Mandy's singing voice with saying how healing sex with K. is made her feel like that’s all she’s good for. I told her: “I love having sex with you but I also love your soul, your mind, your sense of humor, your artistry, your voice, your way of speaking, your diction, your kindness, and your spiritual aspirations.” She said: “Well, make sure you put that in today’s journal.”

9:48 am. Summer is a month away. And the Ulysses play is happening in 26 days.

2:36 pm. Nice walk with Beckett to get him a burrito. He was chattier than usual, which I always love.

1:22 pm. Woke to the following messages from readers:

Reader #1: “You turn everything gold into shit,” I love that!!!! I know so many people who do this without even realizing! I will probably quote you in the future (winking face emoji).

2:07 pm. Was woken at 4 in the morning by a spam call. Went into the kitchen to get a drink of water when I noticed that water was dripping from the ceiling. It was raining hard, but I don’t live on the top floor, I live one floor down. I put a bowl under the leak only to notice another leak and then another. The water was starting to pour in.

I spent the rest of the night emptying pots and pans of brownish water that had leaked into my apartment. The leaking stopped when the rain stopped.

3:02 pm. Woke up from Ulysses dreams. My unconscious is fully immersed and is working out problems even while I sleep. I am happiest when I am gestating a new work.

Listened to Joseph Campbell’s Joyce lectures while jogging. I always feel very close to his way of perceiving the world. He’s a theist, like me.

12:21 am. Close to K. all day. In a new way. Took several walks together in the perfect Spring weather. Lounged on the fire escape. She helped me with both the Ulysses script and editing the Show. I feel so much love for her when she does that.

9:34 am. K. was upset about my last journal entry. She felt it misrepresented events and left out important information and misquoted her. She’s right, of course, but the journal isn’t an attempt to speak accurately and fairly about anything or anyone. It’s just me processing my feelings and trying to relate my experience of my day.

While meditating this morning (“Let me remember that God created me”), I had an insight about the Ulysses project. I’ve been freaking out about it because there isn’t time to do this properly and my ego keeps getting involved and then goes into a panic. The insight was that I can’t do this by myself. I can’t do this with my ego alone. I need help from a higher source. This was helpful and comforting to realize. I can do it, but it won’t be “me” doing it. The lifelong call to drop my ego is shifting into a higher gear because of this project simply because I won’t be able to pull it off any other way.

11:32 am. Woke up unsure of the status of my relationship with K. or even of what the proper sexual protocol now was. I said to K: “I don’t know how to be with you anymore. Are you my girlfriend or his?” She said: “I’m your girlfriend.” I questioned the over-simplification of her answer. We talked about it and eventually ended up having sex.

Afterwards, I said, “What do you want to do about our relationship?” She said, “I don’t know.” I said: “We have three options. 1) Keep seeing each other as we have been, 2) Keep seeing each other but also see other people, and 3) stop seeing each other and only see other people.” She shook her head “no” to the third option, which left 1 and 2. When I asked her which she preferred, she said she didn’t know, adding: “What if in a few days, this passes, and I stop having feelings for him?” I said, okay, she could take however much time she needs as long as she understands that her uncertainty is taking a toll on the relationship and that the longer it continues, the bigger the toll.

11:47 pm. Reeling from today’s events. K. came over today. She seemed a little far away. We talked about what happened and why. I think she had been holding some grudges. But she said that she had started having feelings for this other person. Which caught me a little off guard and made me angry. It felt like she was adding insult to injury. But we talked it through and eventually got to a good enough place that we ended up having sex. Pretty good sex. And then I felt better and somehow healed.

She basically said she felt we were even now (even from my slight of having fantasized about other women during sex) and I was under the impression that her infidelity was over. But then later this evening, she said she was feeling anxious and when I asked why, she said it was because of the feelings she was still having for this other person. I guess I realized then and there that this was probably the end of our relationship as a monogamous couple.

4:20 pm. Today, K. sent me a both touching and troubling text informing me she’d just had sex with another guy, a friend she’d had sex with once before and who was visiting from out of town and who she had let spend the night at her place. The night before, she’d written: “No funny business, don’t worry.” She said in her text that she’d understand if I wanted to break up with her but that she wanted to stay together. She seemed pretty shaken up about it and kept saying how sorry she was. I called her. She was crying. We talked about it a little, but I had a zillion appointments today, plus I had the kids, plus I had a lot of Ulysses stuff to take care of, so I wasn’t totally able to process it or completely reassure her. I’m seeing her tomorrow so hopefully we can process it then.  

I mentioned it to Calvin because he was helping me with the Ulysses project when I got the text from K. and he said, “But you see other people too, right?” And I said, “No, I don’t. I used to before I met K. but I stopped because she asked me to.” He was surprised. I was surprised that he was surprised.

10:58 am. After last night’s journal entry, I received the following email from a reader of this journal: “With all due respect, I would take out sex related parts of your journal. It’s not that interesting and feels disrespectful to K.” Not sure why this troubles me as much as it does. Tempted to reply: “With all due respect, it’s interesting to me and it’s my journal.” But it’s also true that it stopped being my journal the minute I decided to put it online. Plus, on more than one occasion, I’ve invited readers to weigh in. So, fair.

But I’m also tempted to say: “I’m not sure why you think it’s disrespectful to someone to talk about having sex with them.” When B. threatened to sue me for slander because I’d said in The Show About the Show that we’d had great sex, she pointed out that New York State law defined slander as, among other things, publicly disclosing that a woman had been unchaste. I found this hard to believe so I looked it up and she was right. That is what the law says. But it must be from the last century and I can’t imagine it’s enforceable. It just seems so obsolete to me. But my point is I don’t think there’s anything wrong with having sex or enjoying sex or wanting sex and so I don’t really agree with the notion that it’s somehow disrespectful to the other person to talk about it. I guess it’s arguably disrespectful if they’re not okay with it, but even there, the truth is the truth.

10:46 am. Great morning sex, followed by meditation.

11:57 am. Saw B.[1] While jogging along the pier. She was with a guy who looked not very different from the last guy she was with. I guess she has a type. She saw me and immediately turned away and whispered something to the guy who turned to look at me. I waved to him. He waved back, not unfriendly. She continued looking away. I was tempted to stop and say hi but our last encounter was so traumatic and she obviously didn’t want to talk. Not sure what she’s so mad about since I did everything she asked[2] the last time I saw her. Afterwards, it occurred to me to warn the guy that she’s a sociopath but I’m sure he’ll find out soon enough.

7:17 am. Woke up early with thoughts of Ulysses on the brain. Not enough sleep but hopefully I can take a nap later.

8:45 am. Tried recording an ad-libbed monologue on Ulysses while jogging. It was helpful!

2:41 pm. Woke up feeling very close to K. Listened to The Odyssey while jogging. Lots of ideas for the stage version of Ulysses.

Long talk with K. about her playing Molly Bloom in the stage (and accompanying film) version. She’s scared but also interested. Trying to figure out the cast.