Writer's Diary
9/1/24
Sunday, September 1st, 2024—The first completely unscheduled, free day I've had in a month. I played football in the morning at the parade grounds, and although I had a few tutoring sessions, they were easy enough to handle over Zoom.
The first half of the month was filled with travel, partly to put on play readings on the West Coast. But the irony of traveling is that it's hard to rest because you're constantly figuring out how to get from one place to the next, navigating new cities, which isn’t exactly relaxing. For me, relaxation means right now, Sunday night in my apartment at the end of summer, surrounded by a pile of half-finished books I want to finish.
It's a random collection—*Notes from Underground*; a history of the CIA; a John Berger collection of short stories; *The Technique and Practice of Object Relations and Family Therapy*; *Invention of Prehistory*; *Barbary Shore* by Norman Mailer; the first volume of Nixon's memoirs; Truffaut's letters; Kay Boyle's memoirs of the 1920s; and *Life's Emergence* by Sarah Walker; *The Greeks and the Irrational* by E.R. Dodds; and *The Culture of Cities* by Lewis Mumford.
There’s also a stack of books I haven’t started yet; and ones I dip into some mornings, like works by Rilke, Yeats, Shelley, Keats, the Bible, and Montaigne. My reading reflects an interest in origins—of the self, the tribe, the city, the nation. Although this pattern doesn’t always hold, it’s interesting to see how my mind arranges these physical stacks, almost as if I’m organizing my thoughts and my relationship to reality.
We're a few weeks away from fireplace season, which is when I can really let go—when the fire's going, that's perfection. It's still too humid tonight for a fire, but I’m looking forward to the coming cooler nights.
This past week has been hectic, even crazy at times. It started with a successful reading of *Doomers*—but I was up working on the script until the last minute, as usual. I had a film meeting the next day—and had to prepare a treatment. And the announcement of my novel’s publication went viral on Thursday, and not entirely in positive way.
I also discovered fraud in one of my checking accounts, and for about 90 minutes, my fiancée thought her car was stolen—though she may have just forgotten where she parked it (but it is possible someone took it and dropped it off a few blocks away. My summer play) *Morning Journal*, had its closing shows, and I had to be at BCTR a lot this week to make sure things ran smoothly. There were also some tense moments during *Uncle Vanya* rehearsals.
I’ve had to deal with it all; none of it is so bad, or so good. But it’s my life, and it’s enough to occupy my time.
Some readers might be curious about my reaction to a certain viral tweet which followed my book announcement: