Roads

I want to link to this L.A. Times article about my high school film teacher, Jim Hosney. The article’s no joke: really the best teacher I’ve ever had. Informed everything I’ve read and written, seeing how everything in books or movies has more than one meaning. That article says a lot about where I came from, what formed me—both on the Hollywood side, and the better film-freak side. Watching “Taxi Driver” and Godard at 15, it was a good education.

I need to put a link out to Booksprice.com . A representative recently wrote to me telling me that they’d send me a free copy of The Road if I wrote about the site, or even if I didn’t. I didn’t quite believe it, but lo and behold a new copy of The Road arrived in the mail today. Along with a subscription to The New Yorker. My dad said he read a good review by David Denby of a terrible movie and he couldn’t take it anymore, and he forwarded the rest of the issues to my address. Also says a lot about where I came from.

Been reading other apocalyptic novels as well. Really recommend Alas, Babylon and Earth Abides. Lucifer’s Hammer, a comet novel by Larry Niven, is depressing and bad. The other day, while walking to pick up my daughter from school, I found a box of books by the curb with a bunch of trash—all science fiction, all pretty good taste, including a great copy of RA Wilson’s Illuminatus Trilogy. Exactly what I needed and I felt right with the universe.

I’ve had a lot to blog about lately but I just, just haven’t needed it. Health problems leveling off. Really terrifying for a while there, sad. But my condition is stable. On an awful diet, but also manageable. Have to lower my potassium, which means cutting out healthy food like tomatoes and potatoes and beans, making a vegetarian diet that much harder. I can deal with it. I’ve eaten enough burritos in my life. I've lost ten pounds, which I needed to.

Mostly, I’ve been working on my novel, 100 pages in the last month. The first real writing I’ve done since I started this blog. I’ve always been writing something, but not WRITING. It’s always feast or famine with me.