So it's 9:13 in the evening and I'm here at the office. I spent the balance of the afternoon sitting in a church-like courtroom waiting for my name to be called. Man, I really had to go to the bathroom, too, but once I was sitting in the jurybox I figured they'd arrest me if I asked to go, so I sat there looking relaxed and not listening to a damn thing.

I am sure, now, that I would have made a poor juror. At first, I was fairly positive about the possibility of being on a jury for "5 to 6 months" so I could impartially determine the guilt or non-guilt of some investors from a failed investment consulting company on Broadway. I remained positive about it even through my own realistic assesment that the trial would probably really take a year, even 2 years.

Well, I don't even want to bore myself with this, so I'll get it out of my system now and forget the whole stupid thing. I don't think I would have made a good juror because the moment, and I mean the moment the attorneys started talking I was wincing and fidgeting and scoffing at their blowhard rhetoric and I couldn't stop thinking "Man, these guys are buncha assholes!" And I could not stop thinking it, and somewhere during the questioning I just slouched back into the seat and stared at the ceiling and counted the seconds until I could get up and go to the john and then create an opportunity for myself to go into the judge's chambers and tell her that there was no way I could do this shit, these people are jerks, and what's more I actually feel sorry for the defendents. They were sitting there looking so fucking pitiful I could hardly stand it, and no matter what happened I could not convict these poor people.

I actually thought I would have an opportunity to request a moment with them all, but the next thing I knew I'd been dismissed, and man I bolted the fuck outta there.

I never understood this reverence for judges in this country. It seems that if most Americans rate politicians and lawyers among the same class of human being that they rate hookers and used car salesmen, it's unimaginable that judges, who are nothing more than combined lawyer-politicians, should be so respected. They have political and personal motives just like anyone else, and to think that bias and pre-judgment and all the other sleazy qualities associated with lawyers and politicians somehow vanish when a lawyer/politician becomes an elected judge is preposterous. God, hearing these obnoxious attorneys blathering on today, not addressing matters of even the remotest consequence to any of us or to the jury selection process or even to the case itself, I began to see what I've always suspected about trials, which is that it's not as much a search for truth or justice but a search for who among the teams of attorneys can most incisively manipulate facts and testimony. *

Well, I had plenty of time to think about my stupid life today. I was thinking about that story about Brahms that I was remembering, and it also caused me to recall a conversation I had with a friend who was in his early 60's. We talked about almost everything, it seemed, except women and relationships and such. I knew he was not gay, but we still had never been able to talk about the fact that he had gone through life and chosen never to marry or have any kind of home-life. I finally asked him why.

He said that there had been many opportunities and many times in his life when marriage would have been perfectly possible and seemingly sensible. But he chose to never do it, because he had "lost" legions of his best friends to marriage. He said he could not stand to marry into a life in which he would spend 30 or more years being manipulated and controlled by his wife the way he thought so many of his friends had been manipulated and dominated by theirs. He insisted to me that he had never seen a marriage that did not end up that way, and that for himself to maintain contacts with a lot of his friends he had to really force himself into their lives, and before long (and i already know this to be true) that kind of effort is just not worth it.

Maybe he is a coward to say things like that. Or maybe he accurately foresaw the kind of situations his own personality and his own character would inevitably lead him to. Either way, I remember that conversation cutting into my mind like a rude and obvious lie, and I remember feeling like his was the grinding voice of reality reaching out to me and telling me that I was only 23 years old and that it was only the beginning of not only my own complicated lovelives, but also it was only the beginning of losing friends to marriage, to girlfriends, to other cities and jobs and livelihoods. They, I then knew, would be gone forever if they were gone at all. *

When I called my boss to tell him I had not been chosen for jury he was funny, he said "Well, we'll take you back, you reject." *

I wonder if the guys at JET.NET are making some big bucks yet? *

2:01 AM
Damn, looks like it'll be another sleepless night, or else a night of failed attempts at meaningful and holly-polly sleep. Holly-polly, it doesn't mean anything. It's a word which, if it could be in color, it would be purple, like the sleep I wish I could have. Purple and kind of flowing, maybe making a smooth sound.

Was remembering something from college, but having started typing this sentence I can't remember what it is I had remembered. Oh, it was the time I smoked pot. I only smoked pot once in my life, and it was so bad and so terrifying that I can never let it happen again. But there was one thing that I remember from it that was pretty cool. My friend Matt started talking to me, and in my mind I saw his every word in text flash in front o f me, and the shapes and colors of the words reflected the inflectios he used, and the meaning of the words and phrases was contained in the colors and the patters in the same way operatic music comments on the text of the libretto.

Usually I am at least in bed trying to be asleep, tonight I am not. But I took a sleeping pill, and hopefully my lucidity will gradually disintegrate as I type this and I will be powerless to crawl into bed. The air conditioner is on. So is the heater. I've been trembling a lot lately. The women i've been with lately have all remarked on the fact that I shake and rattle when things get intimate. They don't seem to realize that I'm always shaking and shivering these days. I don't know why. I do think, though, that being close to someone does exacerbate the shaking. And I know, too, that the shaking goes away when I sleep better and when I eat better, and I really do need to join a health club or do something to quench this gravity-like tension in my back and in my head. Now I'm starting to feel sleepy. I just cracked every knuckle in my hands and in my wrists and elbows. I can really pop the elbows really fucking loudly. Used to pop my neck but then there was that little problem with my head coming off so I try to be careful about it now.