a day in a life (one of many) of a pot-smoker by sisyphus previously published in a recent hygienic fixx. I woke this morning at 5:30. I rose at 8:15. No aches or pains, no hangovers, nothing left over, just early morning bemusement. Pee'd, washed, drank fruit juice and started coffee heating. (Coffee IS addictive, I've recently found out. I hadn't had to go without coffee in years. At least. I found myself getting downright cranky. Not to mention not shitting right. Which, I suppose, would make ANYbody cranky.) Looked outside. Everything was still frozen. but the cold was moderating. The car was where I left it in the backyardparkinglot. There was squirrels in the trees, thinking on heading for the ground. J.A.C.S. was still sleeping. I let him lie and waited on the coffee. Put sugar and cream in the coffeecup. The squirrels got bolder. The coffee steamed and the squirrels got bolder still. I poured the coffee, stirred it and opened the upstairs back door. JACS was there before I had the back hall light on, but as he'd just got up, he wasn't bounding up and down the stairs at his usual wont. "Well, this works just fine," I thought. I opened the door at the bottom of the stairs and he was off like a shot. So were the squirrels. JACS sailed over the fence at the back of the parking lot and sailed back. Then down along the fence and up the other side. Over again at least once and then HE went and pee'd. I figured my coffee had cooled enough so I whistled him in and went and drank it. I suppose I should say my head was full of thoughts on the coming day, or that I got some sort of moral from JACS's early morning jaunt, but I didn't. I just went in and called my favorite BBS (Gemstone) to get my morning TradeWars turns in. The line was busy. So I called the MindPort dial-up and checked on my e-mail. 17. About half-and-half from the Ohmies echo and from the Fantasy-L writers newsletter. And one message to me from Mark-O Frucht. (ed. note: who the hell is that???) It wasn't about Steven Vincent Benet & James Merrill. Only commentary on his most recent cross-country hop (Connecticut to Wisconsin) and that it'd cost him $800 to repair the car enroute. (Well, Mark's more responsible than Cassady & Kerouac) I answered his letter, looked throught the alt.herbs, alt.native, and rec.backcountry newsgroups and remembered that I had to move the car before 9. (TO BE CONTINUED NEXT ISSUE...) And now we continue with Sisyphus continuing saga about continuing in cyberspace. "A Day In a Life (One of Many) Of a Pot-Smoker" Sigenos... (CON'T From Last Issue.) (due to word- processor incompatibilities, this saga was faithfully hand-typed by Candi Grrl. Shut the computer down, got dressed and went outside (again.) The cold WAS moderating. The car started on the THIRD try! (Minor miracle.) Went to the local vending box for a paper. None there. Went upstairs and finished off the coffee. Went back out & me and the dog got in the car. Picked up a paper at a corner vendor and headed for the Lyman-Allyn museum. When we got there, I opened the passengers door, (off like a shot again) closed it and sat in the sun with the motor running, warming up and reading the newspaper. Called the dog back after about 15 minutes and went back home, carefully parking in the Greek Church parking lot a half-block away to avoid getting a ticket. Went in the back way, rapped on the roommate's door to get him to move HIS car and made another cup of coffee. Read the paper. The other roommate got up and we started scheduling our day. (we had to move some items from his old apartment to this one.) Ate a tuna sandwich. Got high. Then my short-term memory went to hell. To hell with Kerouac anyway. As you can see so far the day was utterly normal and banal. Hey waddaya want? Besides, do you really WANT me describing chopping onions and peppers, garlic, eggs, doling out mayo, mustard, measuring vinegar, opening tuna cans, etc. and going on about it for the next page and a half? Hell the operation took two hours. But now I got midday sammitches for a week. Played Bob Dylan's new CD. Dutch got it for Christmas. He left a copy here. I like the music and the selections. "Series of Dreams", I gotta get the lyrics to. After 10 am the telephone calls started. First Ken Stroebel from the Bulletin. I forget what it was, but we fixed it. He got his picture/poster/graphic. We chatted about Live Nude Art. I hung up the phone and went after another cuppa coffee. Then I said, I'll call first and called Kathy Cohen from the Westerly Sun. She was all set, had everything she needed. Of course, Scott Timberg was next. but I was able to logon to BBS and play a bunch of TradeWars turns first. Made 600M. Every three days now. Scott was collecting quotes for his article and wanted to update the Hygienic Schedule. It was hard making perfect sense, keeping track of exactly who'd said what the night before at the last organizing committee (group?) meeting at the DutchTavern. I'd heard Vinnie say for the last couple of days that there was a group of dancers from Connecticut College that wantedto do a show at the show. I mean what else is a Show for? And Billy had said something of the same sort. So it seemed that there indeed was something up. They'd told me about Albert Kausch's poetry reading at the Keep, but I'd forgotten the time it was to start. OK, so Scott and I talk 15-minutes and I know there's things I gotta find out. I can call him back. I call Vinnie and leave a message on the machine. "Everything's not set in stone yet. What's this about dancers? I need info ASAP!! It's 12:21. PLEASE call back soonest." Call Bingham. He's not making any sense. Putting his two- year-old up for a nap. Neither of them make sense at that time. (Maybe it's ME and THEY'RE making the sense. No. I don't take naps in the afternoon. (CONTINUED NEXT TIME. (Tune in next week when, Sisyphus drinks kool-aid, gives a book review, and zonks on pot.)) And now we continue with Sisyphus continuing saga about continuing in cyberspace. "A Day In a Life (One of Many) Of a Pot-Smoker" (CON'T From Last Issue.) Call Stidfole. No answer. Call the other number leave a futile message asking if I can exhibit a bomb at the Hygienic. (OK so the pot got the best of me.) Can't think of anyone else to call. Call information and get the number for the Keep. There's gotta be a way to recoup these little bills I incur on the part of the Hygienic. That cost 75 cents. Call The Keep. L e a v e a m e s s a g e o n t h e a n s w e r i n g m a c h i n e . Gahhhhhh!!! No. NOT another cup of coffee. I'm coffee'd out now. Look I gotta lotta calls out and I should really leave the line free for incoming calls. I go get a drink of Kool-Aid. Fruit juice and sugar water, but it's soothing. While in the kitchen I look outside. A miracle! I can see through the window. It's warm enough outside to evaporate water! How nice on a late January day. I feel instant guilt that I'm not outside in it with the dog. The lawyer's cars half fill the backyard parking lot and there are no squirrels, no dogs or cats or raccoons, moose, elephants, nor any other critters around. (See? Works good, dont it? ) no people either. The sunlight is rather harsh due to a high haze in the sky. There are a few fleecy cumulus around, about scattered I'd say. The colors are all brown and gray, with a thin film of salt washing even these colors almost into a black-and-white world. It's winter, that's for sure. I pick up my book (Haggard's "King Solomon's Mines") and head back into the bed/computer/telephone room. There's no one I can call now. Time's passing. I know Scott's typing away, but there's nothing I can do at this point. Well, I'll read about Alan Quartermain as Macumazahn and Bougwhan (Good) killing Scragga to stop him from massacree-ing some beautiful maiden in some sort of put-up job by Twala the King and Gagool the evil witch-crone who'd lived forever. Haggard took 5 pages to describe the scene in the book but this will have to do for us because Vinnie called. Ah! The time for Albert's poetry reading is 7pm but Vinnie doesn't know if he's got dancers. He does know that there's supposed to be someone else who'd like to do a dance piece, but he's rather vague about the fringes of that, too. At least I got one hard fact. Vinnie says he'll call Bill, then Scott. I tell him I'll call Scott in the meantime. We hang up. I do so. I tell him the time for Abert's poetry reading and that he is to expect a call from Vinnie and/or Bill with any further information they might have. He's happy with that. I hang up and wait. Nothing happens so I go find the roommate and tell him it's time to move. He's lying across the kitchen table - spread quite like an omoeba absolutely zonked on pot. He sort of effervesces with amoeba-like colors of chartreuse, whit-orange and pink with narrow bands of blue forlining. It's pitiful. I scrape him into a glass jar, and abjure JACS quite strenuously that he is to STAY! Dog cringes. I tuck the glass jar containing my roommate into a coat pocket and head out to the car. When I got outside, my roommate came to life again, the car started on the first try and it was almost spring for a mini-microsecond. But it's still winter so we threaded our way through traffic to his old apartment.