But then I pressed the 23 button. And the 24. Then the 16, the 37, the 39, the 22. I pressed every goddam button, and that elevator is STILL stopping and starting, strepping and straffing, hocking and chewing, maybe by now it is up to the 15th floor and still stopping, reflecting, opening its doors, sighing vacuous disappointment when no one enters, closing the doors again. What do you bet?

A nice, gratuitously constructive outburst of passive anger, in the frenzy of which part of me thought "If I can't do this right, I'll never get a job."

Such a relief.

 
I am listening to a tape of music that a friend sent last week. Listening to it for maybe the 25th time already, but who is counting

(I am going to leave rhetorical questions such as that one punctuation-less)

In college friends sent me tapes all the time. Tapes of their favorite music, tapes of themselves shooting acid with friends, tapes of themselves arguing with their parents, taking a shit, walking around.

I made tapes, as well. Mostly monologues and faux-conversations intended for friends and partners in crime. Tapes not of nonsense sequences of numbers spoken mechanically in Coptic, nor of deeper nonsense rapt in the desperate gobbledygook of theosophical hammerheads who slam books shut in your face commanding you to "READ BETWEEN THE LINES, COCKSUCKER!"

No, I spoke mere nonsense into the thin air, and sent the tapes to friends, lovers, countrymen, and once to the house of a complete stranger whose street address happened to appeal to my amateur interest in what I thought of as "Intuitive Numerology."

Numerology, again. Ho-boy. I think I have to lie down and let impossible fantasies of angelic abduction and alien alphabets flood my life so that the boredom of existence does not numb me into abject surrender.

I am a man who knows how to kill time.

 
These tapes that friends sent have always interested me. Tapes in general intrigue me. Anyone can record any goddam thing they please onto a common cassette tape. It s like the post office of aural communication. Anyone can reach anybody, more or less.

When I moved to New York and lived in the Parc Lincoln Hotel on West 75th Street, one of the things I did on a nightly basis was go into the basement of the building and rummage through the trashcans looking for tapes that had been discarded.

I listened to a lot of them, and read a lot of old magazines from the recycle bin; and once I found a frazzled, spiraled up cassette (only the tape portion) in a gutter on the side of the street and I picked it up and wound it up all nice and tight and took it home and unscrewed the case of a cassette tape and took the tape out of it (threw it out, but not into a gutter) and then carefully rolled the found tape around the spindle and screwed the case back together and popped the finished product into the tape player (which I found in the trash can) and rewound it and pro-wound it, rinsed lathered and repeated again and again just to shake the debris of the streets off of it and hear it all, and then I was ready to hear the songs which splay themselves prostrate into the sewers of the town.

And then I hit play, and it was a goddam Barbra Streisand tape. Clear as the air into which I was born.

Mem'ries

 
I can not think of a thing to say tonight. Am trying, though, and will alert you to progress in this matter.

In the meantime, I will listen to this tape that a friend sent, and then listen to it again. Because no one has ever sent me a tape like this one.

• July 31, 1997 - Empty
• July 27, 1997 - Persevering
• July 13, 1997 - Nothing
• June 29, 1997 - Noise