by: Mark Thomas [[email protected]]
September 27, 1995, 11:23 AM



i picked up edward robb ellis' "diary of a century" a couple of 
weeks ago. i jumped ahead to his journal entries from 1991, wondering 
if by some chance he had decided to mention me. he did mention the 
report on CNN -- they did a report about how ellis had maintained the 
world's longest personal diary. he has, in fact, maintained a diary 
with daily entries for something like 55 years. something about the 
report on cnn struck a chord with me, and while the story was still 
airing i picked up a phone book and looked up his name, and sure 
enough, he lived down on 23rd street. or maybe it was 28th. i wrote 
him a letter, telling him how touched i was by his experience, and by 
his subtle grasp of the time in which he has lived. or something like 
that. i included my phone number on the letter, and he called me back 
and invited me over. i went down to his place. i was 23, and i think 
he was almost 80. i tell you, that was some lively chatter right there. 
unfortunately, i derived no particular pearls of experience from our 
meeting, except that he had a brutal dislike for john updike. bitter 
may actually be a better word, although brutal is not inappropriate 
either. ellis said that the letter i sent him was extremely 
touching and beautiful, and he said that i should bring him some of my 
writing.  i did this, knowing that i had not written anything that was 
worthwhile, and in fact, from his comments about updike's style, and 
about what he thought constituted bad writing, i knew right away he 
would not find my output to be of any merit whatsoever. i remember 
writing turgid volumes of the strangest, most vapid lore. alas, at 
least i got to meet the guy.

 


i am addicted to reading phonebooks and dictionaries. in fact, the 
first thing i remember looking for when i got onto the internet, 
the very first thing, was a hypertext dictionary. those things still 
are a source of endless entertainment and amusement to me. phonebooks, 
too. lists in general, i guess. one of my favorite songs is "It Was a 
Very Good Year," by Frank Sinatra. it is not a song of great moment, 
or of any real meaning. but it's an elegant and charming statement, and 
lists do something to me. they capture my attenion, more than anything 
else. now that i think of it, nothing gets attention (in print) quite 
like a list. or in speech, lists are fabulous organizers of information, 
but more importantly they serve dramatic purpose.

whenever i think of dramatic purpose, i think of Verdi.



there is something quite restful about a unix prompt, and a dark 
telnet session. dark meaning white type on a black background. it 
reminds me of something Robert Helps once said on back of one of his 
records, i can't quote it verbatim, but he described the anticipation 
and drama evoked by the setting of a piano on a concert stage, where 
the audience is waiting for the performer to appear, and there's an 
indescribable feeling of anxiousness and even dread, the open 
possibilities present in that scene, which has been repeated so many 
millions of times, Helps described it in such thrilling terms. it's 
how a blank document strikes me. and at a unix prompt, someday i'll 
get around to writing a silly shell script that returns expressions 
of anguish and grief at near-misspellings of regular commands. or 
else, something that could actually talk to you.



so hard to maintain a decent journal any more, what with these 
crappy telnet connections i keep getting. it's agonizing sometimes 
to know that a paragraph i just wrote is frozen somewhere off the 
top of the screen, and that it is only a matter of minutes before 
the connection dies and the window disappears and my 
pearly, precious words are vanquished into the jabber.



i'm working on a composite character, a preacher, who i am going 
to name The Reverend Dwayne. i've been trying to make sense out of 
it for weeks now, out of the character, and it's coming together, 
although i want to try not to offend anyone too deeply with it. i 
mean i want the character to be something compelling and unique, 
not another foul-mouthed preacher man in midtown with his thumb up 
his arse.  i wonder what ever happened to that guy. you know, i'm 
sure he's around, i'm just in my office 15 hours a day and missed
this whole summer's characters out there.