Office hours

Feeling better this afternoon than yesterday afternoon. Reasonably easy class day given mostly to an in-class exercise. Thursday is my hard day in class this week.

Mentally feeling ready to get back to the novel. I am thinking of changing focus in screenwriting, another round before retiring, and doing some low budget scripts, including adapting a couple of my plays. For the low budget indie crowd, which is actually sizable. I think the last "big script" is about as far as I can take the Hollywood Model without throwing up. And I did get a request from a producer for it, even though my agent doesn't like it yet. But I'm having disagreements with my agent and seriously am thinking of not resigning with him. Our 2-year agreement expires in a couple months. He's offered a renewal. I'm thinking on it, increasingly No thanks. We'll see what happens.

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Damn, I like being on campus! This truly is the last social thread in my unsocial life -- after this, I'm a hermit. Well, not quite, but close. I'm curious if this is my last hurrah or if I'll be around next year as requested. Nobody seems to know what is going on. We'll find out.

I'd really like to make one last significant SALE before I tuck myself into obscure avant-garde masturbation. However, this seems to be increasingly unlikely. If I can't sell this last Big Movie, well, I think it's beyond my reach. I feel pretty good about writing some low budget scripts that would interest folks, however, though there's very little money in that sort of thing. It's been too damn long since I've received a four-digit check for anything, let alone more. I miss the 80s when you could make real money optioning a screenplay. And all the grants that were around. Man, little did I know that those days were the best days as far as staying flush on your own terms.

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Been thinking about this grad school reunion in August and getting a bit nervous about it. The grad school guys I wanted to stay in contact with I HAVE stayed in contact with -- and while I have a natural curiosity about how various folks turned out etc, there also are some ghosts in the landscape. My wife hadn't come out yet and our home was a big social center for this crowd. I see on the list of folks, she is listed as a DEEMER, so they don't even know we've been divorced for 30 years. The problem is, She seems to hold this grudge against me for something or other. Granted, I didn't send her flowers when she told me, I'm a lesbian, See you later, but I've never disowned how important she was in my life. I'm not sure I would have become a writer without her support and editorial skills. She has every right to be pissed because I became an asshole when my heart was broken but for the sake of the gods, all that mess was over 30 years ago! I think it would be very awkward if we were in the same room in August. Be nice if I'm wrong. But lots of folks there will remember us as the Party Hosts whose home was a weekend gathering place -- how's it come off if one of the hosts can't even be civil? And do I want to deal with all this shit?

One approach to this mess, the usual knee-jerk to "it's all material," is to MAKE SOMETHING OF IT. And thus I thought of making an autobiographical dramatic video, shooting the reunion, interviewing people, going to the library and getting articles about the times, etc, and making a kind of coming of age story, mine, about this moment, focusing on the relationship, it's importance to me, and it's dramatic change when the wife decides she's gay, and my unfortunate if typically male initial response to the news. This might be an interesting little video. And it would keep me behind the camera, and therefore out of the action so to speak, where I'm very capable to putting my food in my mouth.

Another approach is to bypass it. Or just attend one function -- this is scheduled as a three-day affair, which strikes me as pretty damn long. THREE days to reminisce?

Well, we'll see, we'll see.

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The weekend is supposed to be WARM and sunny -- maybe I can actually do some yard work! Ideally, listen to the Mariners on the radio, poke around the yard, the dog outside with me, a bit of Our Town Americana. Need to feel up to it, but I'm hopeful.

Also been brooding about what to read at First Wednesday. At first I thought I'd read the short story Lessons From The Cockroach Graveyard since a high school student from Texas has reached the state finals in interpretative reading with it. But then I thought, hell, this may be the last time I ever read in public, maybe I should read appropriately -- in which case, I decided on 3 short excerpts from my novel Kerouac's Scroll, a light moment, a heavy moment, and the ending. I think that's what I'll do.