This
Journal

October
1999

I have wasted this one perfect day. I have spent it seated at this machine, doing some things I had to do and other things that could have waited.

I slept until something like nine o'clock - late. By the time I was downstairs and finished with breakfast and the Tribune (which mysteriously had its back page carefully removed), it was almost ten. And then I had to fiddle with some stuff online and check the e-mail and respond to some e-mail. And then I noticed a little problem with The Closet so I went in there to fiddle around. And then it was one o'clock. It strikes me that I have become a computer geek. I try to tell myself that I really don't know or care enough about the tech side to actually be one of Them. But I am not comforted by this.

And I really do wonder what was on the back page of the Tribune. It might have contained information that I could have used today, that would have gotten me out of the house, put me in the company of fascinating strangers with interesting lives - people who know what to do with a perfect Saturday in early October.

Later this afternoon I found myself reading some articles I'd been putting off and listening to some music I love. Paul Hilliard singing Bitter Ballads, and Muddy Waters. Then I thought about some paper letters I need to write and didn't write them. Then I tried to load some apps from Mac Addict. (I don't know why I bother. They promise the world and deliver...nothing. I install, open, try to use, fail, and trash it. A racket. An actual computer geek would know what to do with all this crap.)

I comfort myself, now that the day has faded, with the loser's justification that I deserved a day of nothing; I've been working so hard on all these other days. There might be some truth in this. And, besides, tomorrow is another day.

There is nothing more mysterious than a TV set left on in an empty room. It is even stranger than a man talking to himself or a woman standing dreaming at her stove. It is as if another planet is communicating with you.
Jean Baudrillard.