“In this world, it is not what we take up, but what we give
up, that makes us rich” – Fortune cookie 12/14/12
February 6, 1981
I really
should start trying to live within my means.
I mean, my
bank statement says I have $27.30 cents left in my account, when mere days ago,
it said $500.
What an
illusion.
In the last
several days I have spent without real consideration to where it went or how
fast. The relief of a job merely an addition to my usual poverty.
I had books
to buy, and old bills to pay, and I’m also in debt to my girl friend Susan, and
now the rent is due – again.
The
professor we call “Dr. Chief” at school tells me I have a future in writing,
and claims it is “tight and accurate,” and talks to me as a literary equal as
uneducated a I am – a ninth grade drop out who faked my way through the GED so
I could go to college to learn more about how to write.
And I
haven’t even shown him what I write for myself.
I wonder
what he would say and if he would like it?
Yesterday,
Andy, Mary Kay and Chief sat down together in the college cafeteria where Mary
Kay – laughing – asked if I talked about anything else but writing.
Maybe I’m
just too enthusiastic, needing to know how to turn that enthusiasm into cash --
$27.30 doesn’t buy a lot in the way of futures, and unless I find a way to
inflate my account, I might wither away from malnutrition.
I guess I
should eat less at taverns (and stuff fewer bills in the g-strings of go go
dancers) and learn how to make more money.
Sure, I
just got a job making donuts. I hate the job, and I hate donuts. I much
preferred working in rock and roll, but that paid peanuts, too, and left me
picking up the pieces of potential suicide groupies who didn’t get to go home
with the musician they wanted and got stuck with me.
But even
with a steady pay check, I tend to think I have more money than I really have,
especially when I have to bust my ass to get it.
I’ve just
taken on too much.
I write a
lot and read out a lot, but don’t have enough on paper to save me from the
grind of manual labor. Everything is school, work, school, work, school, work
and in between a few hours of precious sleep.
Maybe the
poet Gray was write in his church yard elegy in that we spend our lives in
constant struggle with the elements and in the end we only manage to get the
rent paid, gas in the car with nearly no time left in which to create.
I even
dream donuts, even though this semester my writing has exploded, my forms have
molded into something worth reading, and if I can find the time, I might even
find a way to get myself published.
This is
quite a change from last year when nearly everything I wrote felt like crap.
Yet isn’t
that why I came to school, to find inspiration?
Maybe I’ll
end up okay after all. It is hard to tell.
Don’t
laugh. It’s hard to tell how far I’ve come or how far I still have to go. I’m
pretty sure I’ve made progress. But how do I know when I get to the top, I
won’t just fall down the other side?
How do I
know if I have the strength to climb up again?
How do I
know if I’ll end up anywhere or just become one of Gray’s gravestones of people
who could have been?
With $27.30
cents in my bank account, I know one thing for certain – I’m not there yet.
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