Nov. 4

Note to self: be much more careful destroying dangerous artifacts. Got kind of caught shredding the breakfast coupon and had to take some heat for littering.

Note to Bella: sigh. Not skanks. You just don't cut it as the jealous type, bellabellabellawheel. You're not fierce enough or focussed enough, and when it comes down to it, you trust me. You were, however, right the first time. Only it wasn't ajillion. Just four, besides myself, and, I'm sorry to say, a spliff the size of a Havana cheroot.Of course one of them was Mikey. I have to reward him for all the computer time. He made the icon, too, or whatever you call it. Avatar?

I think taking Monkey with you when you go out at night is a very good idea. I mean, every murderous thug with a butterfly knife and a gat and an eye for artsy girls is terrified of short-legged dogs, right? Isn't that so? And Monkey is the bravest dog you've ever met. Isn't that so? Seriously, take Monkey when you have to be out late. At the very least he'll pee on the enemy's shoes.

Nov 4

Chain was generally just a centimeter from peeved and a centimeter from blissed. He strove for a kind of bitter nonchalance but he'd lose it in some passionate access of rage or wonder and there he'd be, not cool again. Not that any onloor knew. As far as the casual observer could tell, not only was Chain unfazed, but he was oblivious. He didn't flip the bird to the onboxious driver. You didn't see him scrape the side of their oversized vehicle. But there it was, etched a thousand dollars deep into the monstrous flank:"I PISS ON YOU."It was a power, of sorts, though not exactly super.

He had a reason to distrust the two-egg breakfast coupon, though it was slight. He'd seen an oversized mockup of the coupon in an office he'd delivered to and he'd seen a memo, lying there for everyone to see -- and why was it printed out? Didn't these jokers ever hear of the paperless office? -- saying the purple numbers were going to be used for tracking. He didn't know and he didn't care what was being tracked, but he knew damned sure it wasn't going to be him or Bella. Chain would just as soon nobody even knew he existed. He'd feel the same way about Bella, except that she had some ambitions as an artist, and you sort of can't get anywhere as an artist if nobody's ever heard of you. He had suggested to her that she work under a pseudonym but she had just looked at him blankly.

Nov.5

The Upper Santo Street Fair was an established tradition. Over the years different streets had been closed for the fair, as it had grown from a block's worth to six blocks' worth of booths and festivities. The first weekend in November was getting pretty chilly, but as it was a daytime event, and very crowded, it was warm enough right there in the street.

Chain was interested in four things at the fair: getting into the booze block, listening to some loud music, watching girls dance, and making sure Bella didn't walk into anything with sharp edges. She was on the inattentive side, he thought, and ought to live in a world with padding on everything. Bella's opinion about this was that she had been taking care of herself quite well for a while, now, and that Chain was a sweetheart who worried too much and got underfoot sometimes and look, there's pretty girls dancing over there, why doesn't he go watch and let her go through the crafts displays at her own pace?

Which is why she was alone when she saw the "Famly Alter." She couldn't figure out whether that was a mistake or a deliberate misspelling, or whether the handwriting was meant to look so childish. The object was like and unlike her own work. It was the size of a large breadbox, a table made of rough cut one by twelves nailed together in the crudest way. Affixed to the table were an eccentric collection of small objects and many business card-sized placards with words on them. The words were things like "stop touching" and "listen" and "couch in the morning" and "Hot coffee."

"We make them to order," a voice said. Bella looked up. A woman who could have been Harry Smith's sister, lean, bedraggled, excessively wise and almost sneering, stood up from the rocking chair she had behind her table.

"We take orders and make them to fit your family. We come over and observe for a day, and then we make an altar that alters your family. In a good way," she added, tentatively, as if she were not sure of that, and didn't care much whether it was true, but thought she ought to say it for the customer's sake. Bella asked about that, and the woman gave her half an answer but Chain came back before she could finish her spiel.

"Lunch time," he said. "Let's go get some of those teriyaki chicken wings." The crowd was very dense and they were separated every few steps. Bella was determined not to let Chain keep her from seeing everything. So she stopped again when she saw the table where there were the display boards mounted with small materials samples.

"Ah, I was hoping to see you," said the genial man behind the table. He was large and his smile was larger. He almost seemed like he ought to be selling medical supplies to doctor's offcies instead of staffing a funky crafts booth at a street fair. Maybe he did sell medical supplies most of the time. He most certainly didn't look especially familiar to Bella. But she hesitated anyway to hear what he had to say. The display boards were interesting anyway. The one the man was holding up, now, that had a compelling familiarity she couldn't put her finger on.

"Just see what you've done already so far," he said. "You're doing a great job. You can see what comes next, can't you? It will be so easy and delightful. It's so obvious --"

At this point Chain appeared again, tugging on Bella's arm.

"Let's go, Bella," he said. "There's a line at the teriyaki chicken wings and if we're going to get any before they run out we've got to go stand in that line." Bella caught a last look from the main at the table, and the smile he gave her was way too knowing.

Nov.1

10:00 am - Halloween is over, thank dog
It was a long night. Mission Street wasn't like this last year. It was like everybody's going away party plus the most raucous of wakes and New Year's Eve and somebody's naff idea about Hell on a shoestring independent movie set. And that was just the early part, when it was still mostly kids. Most of the time I had no idea what the kids were supposed to be.

(note to ritaxis, who's reading this, I know: yes, Chain was grumpy about it, especially after about two in the morning and he'd been woken up six times. He had to work today and he says he likes his beauty sleep. Pretty well futile if you ask me. I mean, he's a bike messenger, for dog's sake, where's the beauty?)

Since I couldn't sleep I worked a lot. I'd have finished the stacking animals one, too, if Monkey hadn't taken it into his little doggy head to remove several of the stacks and distribute the little plastic animals all over the apartment. And then -- this was really weird, he never does crap like this -- he took the elephant stack and ran out the door when I was dealing with some adolescent trick-or-treaters who apparently weren't after the candy so much as they were asserting their right to ask for it. Does that make sense? So there I was -- Chain was out there somewhere at that point, probably chatting up some skank -- door open, dog tearing down the hall and a bunch of teenagers wanting to banter. I yelled at them to get the dog and they tried but they failed, natch, Monkey can be pretty fast when he puts his little doggy legs on the job, and I had to go after him -- he got to the street, and into the crowd, taking evasive action the whole way. Monkey doesn't do shit like that. By the time I caught up with him, he'd lost the stack and was sporting a hot pink feather boa fragment and a big poufy marigold stuck in his collar and carrying a Slim Jim, you know one of those skinny dry sausages they sell in the plastic tube. I guess somebody thought he was a trick or treater.

And then -- the doors were locked and I didn't have my key. Or a phone to call Chain. Luckily for me that guy Harry was drifting in around then -- I think it was only ten or eleven by then -- and he opened the door for me. I was only standing there on the sidewalk, barefoot, with an unleashed dog in a feather boa and a flower, for maybe twenty minutes. But somebody gave me a gummy ghost lollipop and somebody else gave me a coupon for a two-egg breakfast, so it was not all lost.

Our own door locked when it closed behind me too, but Chain got home around then, not wasted but a little smug and smelling of that damned oxygen bar down at the yuppie end of the street. It must have been a skank: there's nothing else in this warped galaxy that would get Chain into such a yuppie establishment.

And so Chain tried to get some sleep and I tried to recreate my work until Chain went off to messenge and I crashed.

Tomorrow is the first of the Wednesday Wanderings that Harry's supposed to host. I have to work that night. I hope it's not too dreadful.

Nov.2

Lasagne for breakfast
Wednesday. A long day for me. I have a regular shift at the bookstore and then a Wednesday Wanderings at the bookstore. We'll see how that goes.

Meanwhile, I went to go down to the Korean store to get food this morning and Monkey wouldn't let me out of the house without him soi I had to take him along. Luckily he's pretty good about waiting outside because state law says you can't take a dog into a grocery store, even one with mostly bootlegged videos and pink plastic folding clothes dryer things with integral blue and purple clothespins on them. And stuff like that.

Confession: I almost never put Monkey on a leash. So He trots down the street ahead of me, or sniffs around behind me, but he always kind of squeaks when he shits -- I've never heard another dog do that -- so I always know when to clean up after him. People give me the evil eye, sometimes, but that's the price of living in the city. Not everybody's going to like you or what you do. He doesn't chase cars, bite kids, or fight dogs. Well, hardly. He's never bitten a kid, but he's done a little wrassling and chasing of invisible enemies in the park.

Actually, today I wished he was more aggressive. And then I wished he was less, a few minutes later. This guy comes looming out of nowhere when I've got my arms full of gorceries and he hands me a paper with some kind of gibberish on it and tells me he can sense I've got great -- I forget what: ki? chi? karma? chakra? soiul? One of those damned words that all seem to mean the smae thing or no thing or something. I'm waiting for the light to change, I've got my arms full of groceries, and the dog is doing me no good at all. I thought about turning around and going another way but suddenly the corner is full of people and I can't go anywhere but across and I'm not crossing against the light when there's sixty-leven SUVs and thirteen bicylces roaring through the intersection anda beat cop right there too. So I even tried to make eye contact with the cop but he's not interested in saving me from the guy who thinks I have a great something. Maybe it was my chest he thought was great. Couldn't be that because I was smashed up behind a bag of groceries (shut up, Chain, I got the groceries in a paper bag because I need lots of brown paper to make the Book Of Crinkly Things, okay?).

So I stood there and he kept talking about this idea he had that artistic people like me -- I think he said artistic and not autistic -- should be trying to coordinate our efforts to saving the world. Dog, where were you? Sniffing the damned utility box and even the cop's shoes. Fortunately for me the cop wasn't interested in loose dogs either. Anyway, the guy went on for a long time and I just had to listen to it, but I didn't quite get what he wanted me to do.I mean in particular. I understand about wanting me to use art to save the world. I want to also though I have to say that nothing I've ever thought of doing would save the world much. I've thought about it. I'd do it if I could.

Those projects that I can't shake off, they feel like I could save the world with them but I know better than that. No world's going to be saved by rag dolls or little Fimo animals stacked on a wheel. Or even the Book of Crinkly Things.

I didn't describe the guy. He was almost normal looking -- I guess he was Indian, to account for his beautiful deep-set dark eyes and his gorgeous but hardly comprehensible accent, and he was dressed in nice jeans and a button-down plaid shirt. Except for the line of crazy crap he was giving me, and the fact that he was talking to me at all on that corner -- and not about the traffic or the weather or the City Council elections or anything sane strangers talk about -- if it wasn't for all that, he'd seem like any ordinary 40-something engineer or landlord or something. Except that most of those guys are repellent and this guy wasn't, except for the crap he was talking about.

Finally, Monkey seemed to realize I was being bugged, and he peed on the guy's shoes. The guy didn't even complain, just looked sad.

Anyway, I got back and I made Lasagne! For Chain! To eat! For Dinner! And BREAKFAST!!! You can EAT BREAKFAST TOMORROW, CHAIN!!!

I think you're right about Monkey and Harry's boxes. But I have it on good authority(Hugo and Josh)there's nothing in those boxes but papers, patchwork, painted eggs, and 78s. Paper airplanes, too. Must be rats nesting in a box or something.

The serial number on the coupon is in three colors. You guessed it, red, purple, blue. What does that mean?

Also, Chain, how do you expect me to believe it's not skanks when you smell like an oxygen bar and won't tell me where you've been? I mean, I don't mind on principle about skanks. I told you there's no exclusivity clause in the contract. Only in practice because I hardly ever get to see you lately.

Nov.3

- what happened to the lasagne?
Well, that was weird. I guess it was mainly unpleasant, but not very. Josh and Hugo pretty much abandoned me to do the gig on my own. I'll probably find double time in my paycheck or something but I didn't expect them to cut out like that.
I'll say this. Harry is an odd duck. He starts every conversation with this blank leer -- honestly I think he doesn't know what planet he's on and he's stalling for time so he can pick up clues before he gets into it. The old coots that came in to hear him talk weren't phased by any of it. They just nodded their heads when he talked and they asked questions that as far as I could tell had nothing to do with what he was talking about but that seemed to be all right because his answers seemed to have nothing to do with the questions they asked. And yet. They all seemed to think they were making sense.
Well, it was billed as "Wednesday Wanderings," and I suppose that's what it was, really. Wanderings through the mystical brains of Harry and his followers.
I have to admit I was kind of disappointed, because Hugo said Harry was going to talk about the pull of pattern, whatever that might be, and I thought that he would maybe just hit on this thing that's been happening to me lately but not, as far as I could figure.
He had quite a lot to say about paper airplanes and the rhythm patterns of disco and techno music.
I was down there till one o'clock, folding tables and sweeping up cookie crumbs. It's a good thing the store is only a few doors down from our partment, because if it had been any farther, I would have slept over. It was creepy out there!
I shouldn't have said that. Chain, you are simply not allowed to go all protective and knightly on me. You will not walk me home from the bookstore when I'm there late at night. Though next time I may bring Monkey.

In other news, I have a plan for the Book of Crinkly Things. Like a Choose Your Own Adventure book, only the choices of which pages to go to will be determined by a mathematical sequence. Why may necessitate numbering the pages out of sequence to get it all to work. I have other technical problems anyway so I won't be starting it too soon. I have to figure out how to run brown paper bag paper through the printer. Should I crinkle the paper before or after it has been printed on? And I have to decide aboiut text. Part of me wants a strong text presence, and poart of me thinks that's hokey and the visuals should speak for themselves.

I wish Monkey hadn't ditched that stack of elephants. I wish there had been lasagne left. How did it go so fast -- were there a jillion bike messengers in the apartment while I was listening to Harry? Or skanks?

Nov.5

Guy Fawkes Day. I can almost remember what it's about. I wish we had bonfires and fireworks here. But it's something to do with religion, right? That would be a problem. Anything to do with religion gets a scary gloss here in the City. I gather they're more relaxed about it in England, at least nowadays, after having had wars and crap over it for a long time.

I must I must I must remember this. Chain and I went up to the Upper Santo Street Fair. Dog knows why they waited until now to have it. It could rain at any minute, though the lady at the shave ice booth said that in thirty-five years of having the street fair on the first weekend in November it's never rained once. (dog it was cold, why on earth did we even buy that thing? It hurts to eat shave ice on a cold day, just freaking hurts) Anyway, it was a fun fair with lots of artworks going on in it.

This one guy had a table -- I don't know what it was for, but he had these rectangles of yellow varnished plywood about the size of a standard bathroom mirror -- four or five or so, maybe a frew more than that but not a lot. And the plywood was like those displays people used to make for science fairs and agricultural exhibitions and stuff but they weren't informative like a real one, they were strange and mysterious. The one he showed me had samples of materials -- every damned thing, a two-inch square of turquoise green carpeting, a hardened ribbon of red acrylic paint squirted out of a tube, a sparkplug, no sense at all. But get this. There was sense to it. There were about a hundred of these little metal cups nailed to the board, and there were samples in say maybe sixty of them, more than half anyway, and he showed me how the objects were ordered by color, by their place in the spectrum, which kept repeating over and over, and he hinted there was some pattern in the way the spectrum repeated itself but Chain was getting impatient and wanted to pull me over to the teriyaki wings table and I followed him, trying to figure out what the guy was trying to tell me about it. Something about the next object -- its color and, what? material? shape? Provenance? Some moral aspect? and like he expected me to do something about it. The next color was indigo. I got that.

And what's scary is that the wheel of stacked animals is indigo. I think that weird guy knows I've been working on it and wants me to finish it. But that's crazy. I've never seen him before, so I hardly think he's ever seen me before. Most of the people who know me don't even know about the wheel of animals unless they read this journal. (and that's nobody but Chain and ritaxis, right?) And Chain doesn't pay attention to it except when I'm whining about it. The elephant stack that Monkey took away, and like that. And even then he doesn't pay much attention to it. It's just art and he has to pretend to be an utter philistine and not care about art at all in case he might happen to hate something I do and then he thinks he'd be in a tight spot. But it's not true. He's not required to like what I do. Got that, Chain? Nobody gives a shit whether you like my artwork, so you can stop pretending you don't know anything about art. You know, just entertaining for a moment the idea that maybe that guy at the street fair had the slightest idea who I am and what my work is -- maybe he's one of Chain's bike messenger buddies, in which case why didn't they greet each other like they knew each other? -- but just entertaining that idea for a second, wouldn't it have made sense if any of the other materials samples had anything special to do with my work? But they didn't, as far as I could tell.

Oh, and I found one of the missing elephants in the lobby today.

Nov. 7

Harry Smith woke up early, around 11:30 in the morning. He walked down to the corner store and bought a quart of milk, a boiled egg, a piroshki, and a package of bologna. He took these things back to his room and consumed them slowly over the course of the afternoon. Also early in the afternoon he opened one of his boxes, and while he slowly ate his breakfast, he took items out of the box, one by one by one, and laid them our singularly on his bare mattress, arranging and rearranging the things, studying them, nodding his head. He had a yellow legal pad on which he made a few notes, which at first glance appeared to be in the language of the Voynich manuscript.

Among the items were several looped pieces of string, varnished to keep their shape.

These items were the problem, he decided. He rummaged through another box and produced a padded mailing envelope which he addressed toThe Smithsonian. He plaed all the varnished string into the envelope, sealed the envelope carefully, having drawn an elaborate symbol over the flap, and set out to cadge postage money from someone.

He met Chain on the front stoop, his bicycle slung over his shoulder. "Hey man, you got ten dollars?" he asked. "I got to mail this shit to the Smithsonian."

Chain made a face. "You ain't mailing shit to the Smithsonian," he said, but he dug out two fives and slapped them in his hand. "If it's junk, keep it to yourself. But it you get decent weed I expect a hit."

Harry just leered and went on to the post office. He thought it was odd that Chain didn't have Monkey with him, considering the time of day.

Nov.10

Well, that's over for a week.

That Harry Smith guy is a trial upon my life, I do swear. I got stuck with the Wednesday Wanderings again last night but honestly all I wanted to do was to get back to the house and make Fimo animals. I have a better idea about what the wheel of animals ought to be like, and it's like all I can think about for any amount of time, not even the Book of Cirnkly Things gets my attention for long.

So I took Chain's advice and I brought Monkey along and that was amusing. He seemed to think it was his personal job to inspect and pass on all the people who came to the shop. I swear he wasn't going to let a couple of them in, but Harry said it was okay! And then he gave me one of those looks. He keeps giving me those looks and I don't know if he wants to do one of those old men seduces the young women thing and he's trying to mesmerize me but I'm not falling for any Svengali number. Just give the damned talk, and let me sell the books and give out the tea and cookies.

Hugo came round for part of the evening this time. He approved of Monkey being there. It had me worried for a while, because most people don't trust dois in stores. But Monkey isn't just any dog. He's my bodyguard. Chain said so.

So most of the evening was just like the other one but all of a sudden Harry was going on about D'arcy Thompson. This weas odd, because I thought Harry was strictly into the metaphysical stuff, or at least his audience is, but D'Arcy Thompson is straight science as far as I know. Growth and form. Form follows function. Function follows form. Everything is beautiful because beauty is function and form and everything.

But he wasn't talking about beauty. He was talking about revelation. All of a sudden from nowhere he dragged out this huge poster I think he hand-did hnimself with fountain pen and colored inks. It was a geometric design, more or less, kind of organic in a way, kind of architectural in a way, symmetrical, incredibly detailed. I immediately wanted to make one myself. Especially when he began pointing to places on the design and saying stuff about the music of the spheres and the rhythm of the stars, like not hyperbole but as if there was something precise and telling about that. I don't know. I made a little sketch of a piece of it, and Harry looked me in the eyes and said, "Not yet you don't, kiddo."

Which was unnerving and I lost my place and the drawing I ended up making wasn't much like the thing I was trying to copy, and he seemed to notice that and take great satisfaction from it. One of those ones that Monkey hadn't really wanted to let in, a woman who was here last week, also gave me a look and raised her eyebrow at Harry. Who naturally smiled a really dirty smile back at her. I don't know why she didn't stomp out. I would have. Ick.

She's a pretty strange duck herself. She came and asked to look at my drawing afterwards and I showed it to her and she like critiqued it or something. What's that for? She seemed to think she knew what she was tlaking about but her suggestions were all "put a dot over here, probably," and "that line is too close to the other." Like she knows.

I know I sound like a cranky brat but I'm tired. And I won't see Chain hardly all weekend because I'm working hours and hours extra so the lover boys can go have a twenty-third honeymoon down the peninsula.

Nov.10

I don't want to alarm anybody but I think I got the point of the two-egg breakfast coupon scheme. I hear crap when I go in the offices with the drop, right? Mostly it's just dumb penguin crap but every so often I hear crap that has some relevance in the world of the real. They don't know what they're saying even when they think they do, naturally. They know what their nasty little plans are but they don't know what they reveal.

This was in the Knob building. I call it the Knob building because it's pretty well phallic. There's a whole raft of dweebs in that building. I hate getting sent there. The order's never right and never profitable. But into every life some Knob building must fall so I don't moan about it unless I get slipped more than my share of drops over there.

So I went and I knew the package was going to be oversized but it was a fucking harpoon and it wasn't where it was supposed to be, naturally, it was the Knob and so I knew I was going to waste a half hour easy finding the pickup. It didn't actually take that long because I know the Knob and I'm a genius anyway (modest, too). So I got into some inane argument with the cockateel they keep at the desk there and while this was going on I heard a couple of assholes arguing about, you guessed it, the two-egg breakfast coupons. I already knew from listening in on another conversation that I will not go into that the purple numbers were being used for tracking traffic of different kinds but this time one of the guys let slip the thing they're really tracking and it is not pretty. I'm not going into details at this time because I do not want to be typed as a member of the tinfoil hat brigade.

Monday 11/14

The Open Book had, in each section, a shelf or two of used books. They didn't do a lot of used trade, but kept their eyes open for special things: mostly odd and old and undervalued. Bella was straightening the art section when she found The Secrets of the Masters. She thought it must be misfiled, and picked it up to see if it was more of the occult texts she called "that weird shit," a conspiracy tome, or a fantasy fiction piece. It was none of those. It was a study of the techniques of Renaissance painters, and she was enthralled. She lost a half-hour before a customer's question caught her attention.

"Excuse me?" she asked. "I was a little distracted."

The customer was a regular that Bella recognized from the Wednesday Wanderings: the one who had critiqued her drawings. She just stood and looked at Bella.

"Can I help you?" she asked again.

"I certainly hope so," the customer said. "Mr. Banter says you're an artist."

"Kind of," Bella admitted. "I do art, and I've exhibited a little." She had: she had had a show at the Universal Cafe and had contributed to one at the Side Street Cinema. And she had sold pieces, too. So she had every reason to call herself a working artist, but she didn't want to be accusable of inflating her image.

"I was wondering if I could commission a piece," she said. "I was very impressed by your sense of form and pattern, in the sketches you were making during Mr. Smith's talk. You were following the sense of his discourse perfectly. Extrapolating it in two dimensions, really conveying the deeper implications of the concepts. I almost could have used your sketch right as it was, with only a small amount of revision. You did not pause at the evocative, but went straight for the invocative, and that's not something you see every day, especially not in casual work."

"What did you have in mind?" Bella asked. Never mind that she had no idea what the woman was talking about, a commission was money, and it was also validation. Bella had the feeling that the customer's tangled paragraph was stereotyped jargon in some circles, but she had never heard art discussed in such terms before, except "form" and "pattern," which seemed to mean something different for the customer from what it meant to anybody else.

"Have you ever worked in three dimensions?" the customer asked, as if she really knew exactly what Bella did but wanted to pretend she didn't. But that was just appearances, surely. How could she know what Bella did? And why would she pretend she didn't know?

"I often do," Bella said. I think I work in three more often than two. Mixed media, generally. I do some work with found objects, but I don't just glue a bunch of junk together and call it art. Everything I do has a central idea to express, a principle of composition, and a technical plan, and they're all related. And everything I include has been through my hands, it never reaches the final product unaltered. " She didn't say: I think of myself as an artist, not a collector, not a documenter of jetsam.

"That's precisely what I have in mind," the customer said. "I'm thinking in terms of a wreath-shaped object, about so big, and featuring organic forms of some kind. Not parts. Whole organisms."

The Wheel of Animals. How did this woman know about it? And since she knew about it, why wasn't she saying "I heard you're doing a Wheel of Animals, can I buy it when you're done?" Bella wondered when and how and why she had become so suspicious. Must be Chain's influence, she thought. She was just about to confess to already working on such a project when the customer went on. "I was thinking -- I looked into the going rate for this kind of work, and figured in that you are entry level, though I think you've got a lot of success ahead of you -- I was thinking three thousand. And materials. But you'd have to keep an accurate record of your expenses. I'd want to take possession immediately it's finished: I have a room I would like to install it in."

"I'd have to consider it," Bella said. "I generally like to show my pieces before they're sold."

"I wouldn't like to have it shown," the woman said. "I'd be worried about what strangers might do with it."

"Ah, Maria," Harry's voice drawled from behind Bella. "Slumming again, aren't you? Pity about those shoes."

Bella, puzzled, looked at the woman's shoes. They were completely unexceptionable old-fashioned specator pumps, not what Bella would ever consider wearing, but utterly ordinary for a woman of her apparent age and class and tastes to be wearing. Maybe Harry was talking about some other shoes?

"Well, they're appropriate," Maria said. "And they're effective, too."

"Not as effective as you'd like. I've got business with the young lady. Bring your book, Bella."

Harry's not my boss, Bella thought, fuming. But she caught Hugo's glance and it was clear he wanted her to go with Harry too. They only went to the back of the store where the giftwrapping table was.

"That lady is no more to be trusted than a newspaper," Harry said.

"Are you saying I shouldn't take the commission?" Bella asked.

"Do you want your artwork to be used by her?"

"Does it matter who owns my work?"

"Do you think so?" Suddenly Bella thought she did think so.

"Well, she did seem kind of creepy and demanding," Bella said. "Like she'd be hard to work with."

Monday 11/14

Two things: I found a book that will revolutionize my work. The Secrets of the Masters is an old old book about how the Renaissance painters mixed their paint, what they painted on, and how they figured out stuff like perspective and composition. I am so mixing my own paints real soon. Second thing: One of the weirder Wednesday Wanderings people is a completely regular looking business lady and I swear she has ESP or something because she just asked to commission me to do something I'm already doing. Harry warned me off her, and insulted her shoes, but the only remarkable thing I could see about them is that they had a fancy buckle, with a design on them sort of like something you'd get off a spirograph toy.

Chain, in comments: No ESP is required: all she has to do is read your journal. You talk about all your projects all the time.

Bella, in reply: How would she know to read my journal? How would she know who I was, or that I had a journal worth reading (if I do, that is)?

Chain, in reply: Maybe Hugo told her.

Tuesday 11/15

I met an interesting woman today. I took a break for a couple hours because the morning had been hopping hopping and I was just burnt. I went over to Moneybags Park and there she was, with a big old plastic-mesh bag like the Filipino ladies use to buy their groceries, and she was picking stuff off the ornamental shrubbery. We got to talking and she said her name was Forager Girl -- which of course I do not believe -- and this was how she got about a third of her food. I asked her wasn't she worried about chemicals and she said she had researched the matter and had strategies to deal with it and anyway she couldn't afford organic so she was getting the same stuff from the grocery store. I know there's different rules for edible and not edible plants when you apply that stuff but I let it be. She told me what all she was gathering at the park and how she was going to use it and she invited me to dinner. I told her I would ask my Bella if she wanted to go and she got really interested when I told her about you.

Honestly, I think she's a lesbian.

I've been developing a very strong sense of what is and is not dangerous -- you may call it paranoia, but I am sure it will come in handy. And Forager Girl is not dangerous, and Button-Down Guy is. And I agree with Monkey: you can trust Harry, but you can't trust all of his boxes.

Wednesday 11/16

What the locals call Moneybags Park is a pocket park in the Financial District whose real name is Business and Industry Park. Its name comes from the statuary depicting civic leaders of the late nineteenth century. It is built on another reservoir. It mounds up like a natural hill. What very few people know is that the hill conceals a large chamber meant for a public meeting room but never properly finished. It does have leaky skylights which terminate among the statuary groups. It was meant to be paneled and floored in redwood -- first growth, as tight and hard as good oak -- and the prepared lumber for that did still exist, in miraculously good shape, in a drier back room. Why this matters will probably become evident later in the month, if things pan out as I think they will.

There's a thing that lives in that reservoir that has never been very happy as long as I've known it, but it's not inimical or anything. Just kind of miserable. Monkey has been there, and he thinks that the thing is miserable because of the denizens and the doings of the Financial District.

Chain likes to take breaks at the park, not only because it is convenient to his work, but also because what he likes to call the "penguins" -- the business workers whose deliveries he makes -- frequently take their lunches there and Chain likes to make them uncomfortable by lounging around in their territory, glorying in his outrageousness. When Chain told Bella about this amusement of his she was puzzled -- how could anybody be made uncomfortable by Chain's presence? She thought he was just about the most comfortable person she had ever met. To her there was nothing outrageous in his looks or manners. Then, too, she didn't spend any time in Moneybags Park herself, because the men and women in power suits made her uncomfortable. As if someone would have her taken out of the park.

Bella was not especially overendowed with self-confidence.

Meanwhile, Harry Smith had been watching the customers going in and out of the bookstore with increasing irritation. They were taking unfair advantage of Hugo and Josh, who were excessively tolerant and welcoming.

And innocent, if you wanted the truth. Those men might live to be four hundred years old, and they'd still be innocent as the day they were born. Which was an advantage when dealing with entities like Monkey and Chain but did not help when the Factions were maneuvering around them.

Harry could see why they were here. Each of them had a constituency that patronized the bookstore -- mostly entirely unaware they were part of anybody's constituency -- and that made the ground both neutral and fertile. And then there was Harry himself. He knew that the Factions each had their ambitions regarding him, though they must have known he was opposed to them all and moreover he did not think he belonged in any of their machinations. After all, he was not only a mere human being, he was an outsider in anybody's terms, in any politics at all.

Normally, of course, he considered himself above even noticing politics, Factional, municipal, regional, national, or global. This time, though, he could see that Factional politics had become more immediately dangerous than usual, and he could also see some rather easy ways to spike the proceedings.

Besides, they were messing with that girl, and he wasn't going to allow that.

However, the easiest way for Harry to spike the Factions was to mess with that girl himself. He wanted to keep it subtle, but when he saw the Mistress of Height and Extension come in to the store and approach Bella the second time, he felt he must take things more directly in hand.

"Listen," he said, affecting his normal sneering drawl but as sincere as he had ever been in his remarkably long existence, "Sometimes when it smells like a rat, it really is carrying plague."

Her eyes widened, not with comprehension, but with the understanding at least that he was very serious about her not accepting the commission from the woman she knew as Alida Westmore.

He figured he would probably have to explain everything to her eventually, but he thought she'd better be softened up by experience before he tried to get her to understand and believe what was going on. Chain, he figured, didn't need convincing. He had the soul of a mastiff, and all he needed to understand was that Bella, and the City, and the world they lived in, were in danger -- his instincts would take over from there.

Monkey already knew most of the stakes, and could be relied on, so long as he wasn't distracted by penny ante stuff like what was in Harry's boxes.

However, Bella was not the only artist under Factional pressure. Harry was going to have to go out among the art wanks. That was the milieu in which he could pick up the trail of the other artists who would be getting the same treatment as Bella. Though he had to admit, Bella, working in relative isolation, would look like a more likely subject than someone who had their artistic community established, he knew that the Factions would not put all their eggs in one artist.

And that is why Harry called Barris Mackey and asked for a ride to the Feuer Mansion Thursday night. Then he called Hugo and commanded a night off for Bella. Last he collared her in the lobby of their building and told her where she was going Thursday night.

Friday 11/18

Okay, this week has been strange enough. First, the coincidences. Chain and I met the same weird person at about the same time, it seems like, but on opposite ends of the city. I wonder how that works. Chain says I must be mistaken about when she walked into the store, but I know what time it was because I was doing the midday register snapshot (Josh insists, though it's stupid, and I only hope he doesn't get any more efficiency and accuracy ideas). So that was weird. She's pretty strange but I get a good feeling about her. She was toting around like four bags, each one different and filled with different found things. Sometimes I do art pieces with found things so we have something in common there, though what she was saying was that she does her whole life mostly with found things. I told her about the Wednesday Wanderings -- just for her amusement -- and she was more than interested, she was stoked. She says she's there. Well, there'll be another person in the store who's not eligible for Social Security, anyway. Other coincidences: I keep running into people who seem to know all about my work but they act like they're talking about something else. There's that lady that Harry said not to trust, and there's that Button-Down Guy who showed up again from who knows where and he was I swear he was talking about the Book of Crinkly Things. What's that about?

Actually, somehow, I kind of like Button-Down Guy, though Chain doesn't.Chain doesn't like anybody.

Second, there was Wednesday Wanderings, as usual. That's where Button-Down Guy showed up at. Forager Girl didn't, but she had said she might not make it this week but she'd probably come later on. Wednesday Wanderings is weird enough for any week. Something weird always happens. Always. This time it was some kind of psychodrama that erupted between the guy who takes the weird notes and this lady I had never seen before. She was kind of overdressed by the standards of the Santos, sort of like the lady who wanted me to make a Wheel of Animals for her own self, with those same shoes that Harry objected to before, with the spirograph buckles. Anyway, about an hour into the lecture she interrupted with a question I did not understand about the role of moon phases and tides in -- the harmony of the spheres? That can't be right, that's too medieval. But it was something that sounded like that.

And note taker guy accused her of complicity in murder. Essentially. It took a lot more words and back and forth than that, but that was about what it amounted to. She naturally got huffy and she accused him right back and it went on like that for several minutes, Harry just laughing that weird soundless laugh he has and having a high old time. Finally he raised his hand and said there was a time and a place for everything, and that this bookstore was not the place nor his lecture the time for factional infighting. They subsided right away but they were doing that dagger gaze thing ever after. So that was weird. I couldn't tell if anybody else in the store knew what any of that was about, but Harry, who for once stayed behind while I cleaned up, though he did not actually help, wouldn't answer any questions at all.

So Harry's also involved in the other weird thing this week. He commanded my presence at some high-tone art wank event at the Feuer Mansion. I thought what they did at the Feuer Mansion was bigger deal stuff than simple art exhibits, but I guess I was wrong. He didn't tell me till the last minute where I was going, exactly -- I only went because Josh and Hugo and Chain all agreed that I should probably go because it would be interesting if Harry cooked it up, and he did tell me that it was someplace where artists would be, which made me think it would be a tumbling-down shanty on the beach at Avila Landing, but no, it was the Feuer Mansion and Harry didn't tell me until our ride came and I didn't have time to go change my clothes. "You're dressed perfect," Harry said.

And then his ride -- oh my, it was Barris Mackey, who is one of my heroes, this Renaissance man from the old days. I don't mean the literal Renaissance. I mean he does all these different kinds of art, and he also has a radio show, and he writes a column for a webzine. And he looks like he's maybe half the age of Harry Smith, which means he looks like he's at least eighty (which is about right, if I remember his bio right). So that was exciting, even though I was dreading the whole Feuer Mansion thing.

Which was about as bad as I thought it would be. How any of those guys have any time for art after they've finished gussying themselves up I'll never know. The event I never did figure out what it was for, but it was this immense party, filling up almost all of the bottom floor of the mansion, and there was practically no place to sit. Everybody was milling around showing off for each other. Barris and Harry abandoned me immediately though I tried hard to tag along. I ended up having these awkward conversations with men who were wearing makeup and they weren't even in drag. I mean these guys were in tasteful, subtle makeup, like they were actors in a movie just trying to look good, not like they were playing around or anything. Two of these guys seemed to be hitting on me and I couldn't figure out why. I just pretended I didn't notice, which is what Chain says he does. I don't have a lot of practice dealing with men hitting on me which is why I wasn't even sure. I wished Chain was there, or Monkey even, or that Harry and Barris had not abandoned me.

There was music. I can't even describe it. It was live, and it was very sophisticated I guess, but there was like a note every five minutes and some of them were painfully loud and some of them werfe too quiet to be heard even if you were pretty close.

So the art. Well, there was a lot of it, by the time you had gone all around the whole mansion, but it seemed like there wasn't very much of it for the amount of space. I'd like to be all superior and say it wasn't any good, that it was empty and soulless and totally sold out, but honestly, a lot of it was good. There were a couple pieces I wish I had done, actually. I guess maybe that was the point of me being there. Harry maybe wanted to show me that there's a place for my work in the City, but I honestly am not sure I could stand to operate at those levels. On the way back we stopped at the Universal Cafe where everybody seemed to know Harry and Barris, and well, they all know me too, so that was weird in a different way, an "excuse me, I didn't know we were family" kind of way, kind of good. So Barris and I had a long talk about art and Harry laughed at us the whole time and then Harry and I walked home because we were only a couple of blocks away and Barris drove back to Avila Landing.

Maybe the next time Harry wants to drag me somewhere he'll take me to Barris Mackey's place instead.

Nov.19

Got some amazing things at the farmer's market but will they keep till Thanksgiving?

Nov. 20

the neighborhood
Bella and Chain live on Mission, a streetcar street back of Santo Avenue, on the flat just below a hill topped by a huge satellite disk and another hill dominated by a magnificent fossil-ridden outcrop shaped like a Gaudi construction. The street is lined with three and four story buildings, most of them having on the bottom floor small dark repair shops and stores carrying all of the needs of modern life . There is a botanica that gives Bella the creeps every time she passes it. There are two corner groceries, one Latin and one Asian, and a produce market with bulk grains and Italian packaged goods, and a sprinkling of restaurants. A couple of blocks down, Amina Street angles off sharply, containing a tiny park called Amina Green, and facing Green, the Universal Cafe, which deserves an entry of its own, and will probably get one someday soon.
Besides the Open Book, the cultural needs of the neighborhood are easily met by several workingmen's bars and the Side Street Cinema, which is in two small shopfronts and boasted two screening rooms capable of holding perhaps seventy people each. This is one of those jewels which can only be supported in a true city. The two screens are busy from early afternoon through till midnight weekdays, and Friday and Saturday each have their own special midnight series.
All of these make the nameless subneighborhood of the Santo as close to self-sufficient as any. But the one thing that makes possible Bella's life as an artist is Birdy's. Birdy's is a variety store. Its small street front is filled with cards and stationery, but the store opens up behind the other fronts on the block and runs from street to street crowded with supplies of all imaginable and many unimaginable kinds, boring to list but exhilirating to behold, especially for Bella who can count on finding almost anything she needs at Birdy's. Usually packaged in yellowed cellophane and bearing a faded price tag expressed in pennies and dimes. She is especially fond of the "loft," the upstairs of the main streetfront, and the basement, which is somewhat larger and makes up for its poor lighting and excessive silence with dump bins, display tables, racks and shelves of amazing splendor. Buttons, especially, though Bella knows for a fact that a large corner is taken up with model railroad supplies, which is how she planned to represent Kingdom Planta on the Wheel of Animals, now conceived of as the Wheel of Organisms.
The stacked animals she was working on before she will save for another project.

Nov.21

A nice day in the shop. I only had to work for about three hours but I ended up staying for longer because Hugo had this storyteller in who was reading books and telling stories to a little gaggle of kids from the neighborhood. Really nice. Mostly quest ones, which are always interesting. And really nice pictures.
There's something familiar about that man. I can't think of who he is, but I've at least met him before. He didn't seem to recognize me especially, but he didn't seem especially interested in me either. I didn't catch his name
Oh, and Monkey came to the shop with me. I didn't invite him, he just came. I guess he's decided he likes hanging out in the bookstore. He was really calm and grave when the children pet him and sniffed the storyteller all over, including a rather rude place, which the storyteller was gracious about.
Then I came home and arranged blobs of Fimo on the Wheel and when I couldn't stand that any more I worked on the Book of Crinkly Things. I've been testing printing methods. The brown paper bags are a little hard to work with but to my mind they are essential to the project, since nothing else crinkles just right.

Nov.21

Monkey let himself out this morning before I got up -- that is, at 0-dark-00 by the internal clock -- and was letting himself in when I was getting my coffee. I did not see him do it: the door was latched and locked when I went to bed and latched and locked when I got up. He had a prize for me. Where he got it I do not know, but it was a map of the water system of the City. It was one of those laminated fold-up maps like the Muni maps you can find. On one side it was a map of the City with the reservoir and mains all drawn out and marked with symbols (but no legend. What are they thinking, a map with no legend? Not even a scale). On the other side was a map that showed where the water actually comes from originally -- I knew most of it came from the Sierras but some of the other places are surprising.
I've come to think that we can use anything that comes to us, but this is just downright puzzling. Everything about it -- what does Monkey think about it? He's a dog.

Nov.22

The Visions of Vetrovia Vena by Karl Metzger
Harry stopped me on the way to the bookstore and gave me a book. Very puzzling. It's all designs, meticulously drawn by some nineteenth-century nutter, apparently nonrepresentational but gloriously complicated and symmetrical or dynamically symmetrical. Kind of like the ones that Harry drew that night at the Wednesday Wanderings. But for some reason the designs all have these strange metaphysical labels on them, which is why I call the artist a nutter instead of a genius draftsman.
He said I should study them but not reproduce them. When I asked why, he said it was because I was a twenty-first century City girl and not a nineteenth-century farm boy, which actually makes some sense.

Nov.22

Stupid jerkoff Knob.

Nov.23

Crazy artists and their crazy food
So tomorrow's Thanksgiving and Bella's gone insane. We're not eating at our house, and Hugo specifically told her not to bring something, and she's been cooking since last night. She had the day off, which was awkward, but she's going to the store for the Wednesday Wanderings as usual which means I will have the usual crowd here and what am I going to do to keep them from eating Bella's fancy food?
The food is all representational and symbolic or arranged in complexly symmetrical constructions. Fucking crazy artists.

Nov. 24

Thanksgiving at Hugo and Josh's house
Hugo and Josh's house is up the hill, behind Amina Green. They're lucky in their house. It is on the sunnier slope of the hill, and below the level of the persistent fog layer that envelopes the brow of the hill, so they usually have a view of most of the eastern Santo. It is a storied house, built in 1882 by a former slave who had gotten rich from the persistent Gold Rush ripple effects. It is such a big house that at one time it had been carved into eight generous flats, but when Hugo and Josh joined the consortium who bought it, they remodeled it into four. Hugo and Josh had the middle floor, which had originally been space for a ballroom, dining room and kitchen. They had removed most of the partitions which had been placed there over time, allowing them to have a dining table which could be set for twenty. Though today it was set for twenty-four, with the help of a card table at one end. Hugo took the end with the card table, which allowed the others at the card table to feel as if they were not sitting below the salt.
Bella was thrilled to find herself across from Barris Mackey and two of his cohorts and spent most of her time trying to decipher what they were saying about art, politics, and life. Most of it was gossip about people she didn't know, though. Chain was not pleased to see that Hugo and Josh had followed the ancient practice of disallowing couples to sit together. But he relaxed about it when he discovered that his dinnermates were titillated to be eating with a rough-tough bike messenger. They kept teasing stories out of him. He did not lose his guard, much, and only regretted one of the stories he told, which was about the Knob Building.
Hugo protested when Bella brought in her creations, but Josh silenced him, pointing out how lovely and strange they were. Also, as it turned out, delicious, except for the one that attempted to recreate the Bay in kale and various other vegetables. There was just something wrong with the way that one was dressed.
"It was the Comrade sauce," Bella confessed later. "I thought, with a name like that, it would have to be good. But it's not."
The storyteller was at the dinner. Bella finally figured out who he was. He was the man at the Street Fair with the materials sample board. His name was Lars. Later Chain told her she shouldn't have asked him, but at the time it didn't seem wrong. They had a nice conversation after dinner about artists' materials. Lars had lots of suggestions.
Monkey raised hell with them when they got home after midnight. Chain went straight to bed, since he had to work the next day, but Bella stayed up another couple of hours, making fungi and herbivores for the Wheel

Nov.25

should talk about Thanksgiving but I've got something else on my mind
That lady with the spirograph shoes -- the first one, who wanted to buy my Wheel -- came into the shop again today with another proposal for me. She gave me her card. Her name is Alida. She doesn't want the Wheel anymore. Now she wants a cylinder as big as a person, with finely-drafted designs on it. LIke the ones I tried to copy from Harry that time, the ones in that book, I think.
She said she'd leave materials to me but she thought some translucency would be good. She says she'd like to fast track it but she knows it will take a long time to do. It's an intriguing project. What materials would you use? What immediately comes to mind is mylar or that parchmenty stuff, I forget what it's called, that you can get in big sheets. Then you could glue it or somehow bond it to a plexiglass or lucite tube. The lady's rich, she could have the cylinder specially made.
I told her I'd consider it.
We've been so busy I still don't know what Chain thought of the food I left for him the other night.

Nov.26

life goes on
If I cut the bags perfectly and feed them one at a time I can print on them, but it still looks like crap.
I've been passing by the Universal every day in case Barris Mackey is there. But he never is. I guess he doesn't come into the City all that much, after all.
I saw this guy out on the street today -- I swear he was that biker guy from the street fair. I'm seeing these weirdos all over the place now. I guess it's a small world. I know it's a small City, as Cities go.

Nov. 26

Naming the factions
Harry Smith clicked his tongue and Monkey came running into the lobby. "Yeah," Harry drawled as Monkey sat alert with his head cocked to one side. "You liking this round? What did you do to piss them off this time? Piss in his eye? That's about all you hadn't done already."
Monkey didn't say anything, of course, but you could tell he was shrugging, unrepentant.
"I agree," said Harry. "But I get away with it, and you don't."
He opened his door and the two went in. "Oh, I got something for you. You can have it while I get the other stuff ready."
He opened the dark green mini refrigerator which shared a card table with a microwave which had once been white. He withdrew a ragged looking bone which Monkey regarded with suspicion.
"Don't give me that," said Harry. "You're a dog. Take it, you'll like it."
Monkey took the bone and set to gnawing it while Harry rummaged around among his boxes. Harry took an item each out of several boxes, including one near the bottom of a rearwards stack, and laid them out on the bed, which he had stripped of linen in the morning. "Okay," he said.
Monkey left the bone and leapt to the top of the bed, sitting at the head of it.
"The movements of the Factions have been disturbing my equanimity," Harry said. "The Spectrum was all right -- I got a 1929 Blake Finney and His Red Hot Vinegar Busters record off Lars and he was damned happy to give it to me when I traded him those lyrics for 'Monkey on a String.' He thinks he's going to make big points with his Faction over that but when he renders it he's going to discover it's innocuous as tapioca pudding. Okay? That's the Spectrum."
Monkey made a dismissive gesture.
"Yeah, they were never much to worry about. Okay, now, the Initiative. They're getting into straight lines, very dangerous, they can do them anywhere, but easy to disrupt, at least enough to let up the pressure. They're heavy handed and they try to seduce the artists with altars. Who'd fall for that?"
Monkey gestured with his nose. "That was a very long time ago," Harry said.
Monkey gestured again. "Well, yes, almost, but she's got Chain for that."
Harry waited a beat and said, "And of course you too. Anyway. The Vantage. They're clever and persistent. I don't think I can count on their pervasive nastiness to get in the way. And I just don't know enough about the last group, including what they call themselves. What do you think about the guy that takes notes on Wednesdays?"
Monkey rolled his eyes.
"You think that was a random outburst? I don't."
Monkey looked away, and then back to Harry, and trotted over to the boxes. He sniffed at the bottom of the front tier, and made a loud huffing noise before looking up at Harry again.
"Oh," said Harry. "I think you're right."
Later, he shifted all the boxes three inches to the left and switched several of them around.

Nov.27

weird weekend, par for the course (of course)
So this has been, as usual, a weird weekend. For once Hugo and Josh gave me the weekend off, and I took it, because I forgot that Chain's off biking with Mikey and I would be on my own. Which, when you think about it, is actually a good idea for me, since it meant I'd be undistracted and free to work all weekend long. So I was undistracted, and Saturday I got up really early, before light, to get a lot of work done, and I got into one of those moods where everything I touched seemed all gray and unappealing and I kept dropping things and crap. So I was unproductive and bored and eventually I took off with Monkey for the longest dog walk I've ever taken. I didn't just head for a park or something and I didn't use the leash, which seems kind of demeaning with a dog like Monkey.
After a while I kind of let Monkey do the leading, and we went all over the City. It seemed like we were going to all the reservoirs. I guess Monkey likes the smell of water. But I thought that was funny, because of the map that Monkey brought to Chain. Like he knew that was a water system map and he wanted to take this walk and check in with all his favorite places.
The reservoir system is pretty well designed, actually. They're all set up a little above the local street level, and they're about equidistant from each other -- not on a square grid, though, I looked at the map when we got back and they're radially symmetrical, kind of like a Wheel of Water, and that got me all charged up about the Wheel of Whatever again and I made a whole bunch of things for it. It's coming along, in spite of the fact that I never glue anything down because I'm afraid I'll have to rethink the Wheel or some of its parts or I'll decide I made a bunch of things wrong.
So I worked all morning Sunday on the Wheel -- we got home after dark on Saturday and I was exhausted and all I could do was read the map and drink tea. Chain buys weird tea, by the way, with sinister images on the fronts: this one has a dragon, but it doesn't look like the wise, beneficent Chinese kind, it looks like an agent of darkness wants to devour somebody. And there's a trick of the lines that if you look at it sideways and tilted in the light it looks like one of those paintings of Hell where all these naked people are flailing around in molten lead. I study it even though it gives me the creeps because if it was done on purpose it was a magnificent piece of work. Even though it's alarming. Chain likes alarming art.
And then, right in the middle of putting teats on a lioness, it hit me: what I need for the Book of Crinkly things is something like gesso to hold the ink off the fibers of the paper, but clear. So the brown of the paper shows through. Or maybe I could tint the gesso to the same brown as the paper. Because I can't imagine anything that's clear that would act like that but isn't glossy, and gloss is the last thing I need.
But by then Birdy's was closed. Stupid Sunday hours.
I wish I knew an animal behavior specialist who could explain this thing about Monkey and the reservoirs.

Nov.28

Do they listen to me? They do not.
I had misgivings about a road trip with Mikey, but it turned out okay. We had the usual flat tire and close call with some hootneck in a Land Rover who wanted to murder us in the ditch. We went to San Juan because Mikey wanted to see the bell tower from Vertigo and he wouldn't listen to me when I told him it wasn't there. Hitchcock made it up. But that was okay too because Mikey touched a prickly pear and then somehow got the prickles in his tongue and getting them out was hilarious. Too much beer, of course, and ended up sleeping in the bushes because Mikey couldn't remember where our reservations were.
Got back to find that nothing too bad had happened in my absence. Nothing happened at all, really.

Nov.29

- Barris Mackey remembers me
Barris Mackey was at the Universal but I couldn't hang out because I was due at work. He said he'd try to drop by the store but he didn't show. But he said hello to me, which means he remembers me, and that's something. Maybe he knows the answer to my problem with The Book of Crinkly Things

Nov.30

I'm going to try spray fixative in a matte finish.
The Wheel of Things is almost done.
Harry told me to get him up for breakfast tomorrow and take him to the Universal. I think I'm supposed to pay. Well, he is an old guy with no visible means of support, so I guess it will not harm me to buy him breakfast at the Universal.
Tonight, Wednesday Wanderings again.

. Nov. 30
Stupid jerkoff Knob.
Nonyomni
Chain
Bella

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