New Year's Day 1996

Like I was saying before I was interrupted, if there really was a God, wouldn't s/he tell us exactly what art is rather than leaving us to flounder around like a trout? This being, as it were, a way of saying, excuse me, I was just cleaning up after dinner—you know, pulling the bones from between my teeth. I'd like to ease into this, welcome myself back, and let myself off the hook by never saying, "What took you so long?" For someone who can't keep up with the world, I sure harbor a secret belief that I'm running so far ahead. I already have showered and am relaxing by the fire. But really, if I'm going to be silly, I'd like to stick to food issues, since my many agendas seem to be central to the kitchen, which I'll get to later, but just to remind myself ahead of time: things like my solidarity with fish, the international wheat conspiracy, and the religion of alcohol.

Okay. I don't believe in introductions, but to the extent that one may be necessary here, here it goes, as quickly as possible. This is the beginning of the new project; and the continuation of an old one, the old one being called  "The Mauve Decade" which I started in 1990—or 1989, actually—the idea being to write one page a day, and by the end of the century I'd have a 3000 page novel that says, more or less, everything about the state of human existence up to this point. Or maybe it would be just a mildly intriguing diary of a mundane but interesting life. Anyway, it was a journal—and while a page a day turned out to be ambitious, I did have some fairly prolific periods, and hopefully some developing insights—an ongoing learning process, etc. etc. —and a lot of typed pages.

Well, somewhere along the line, I got sidetracked, or disinterested, or just tired, and I stopped writing. Sure I wrote some other stuff—but short stories mostly—for the last several years. Something occurred to me toward the end of 1995—told me I should start this up again. But as I was going along before, I was considering it a work of fiction—changing names  and some of the places as I went along—now, I figured—why bother? I'll just consider it a straight diary—and use real names, and the hell with it. It's more for me than for anyone else anyway.

And as for the time in between? Well, I'm not sure if I'll get around to typing or even locating the first part (it's mostly scribbled on scraps of paper). If I do, and I type it—well, by that time maybe I'll have enough distance on the years between the time I stopped writing and the time I resumed, to write an account of that time. Maybe, maybe not.

Anyway—happy new year.