Forty One Glorious Blocks

I suppose you want me to start and say that this is my favourite book or something phoney like that. Well I have read it three times, actually four if you count the time the student at school made us read it. I couldn’t see the point then and some sucker had taken out all the cuss words if you want to know. Having said all that, it is still a very good book, something that makes you want to stay up all night just to finish it. And you know what! It seems to change each time you read it. It really does! There are whole chapters that I don’t remember from the last time. That bit with the second Night Club, that Eddie and his piano, I just felt that the night then must have been too short for the guy to visit two Night Clubs. It was something around eleven at night when his roommate slugged him and then he had to walk and get the train and book his room and even then he managed to go to the hotel bar. And there were people still there. When was this supposed to be? It was the forties, just after the war. I had no idea that people did that sort of thing then. But I suppose it is New York and everything, all those phoney people wanting to stay up late and be seen or look for stars like those three girls, the ugly ones and the blonde one who was twice as good as anyone else.

Poor Jane! What happened to her? That was another bit I don’t remember. Did I fall asleep when he remembered back to playing checkers and going to the movie? Just talking to that soak her mother married made her cry. Maybe he was fresh with her like he said but even not knowing is so sad. I wanted to cry at him wanting to cry when she did. Like I said, I can’t remember that bit at all from before. It’s like reading a new book each time. It really is! I should go back and read the special bits again.

Sometimes I think it’s stupid to read bits of a book without starting at the beginning and finishing it. Or in my case, more likely putting it on a pile by the bed until I forget the first bit and put it back on the shelf. I was listening to something on the radio yesterday, some woman who wrote a book called Hotel World and this book was all over the place in time, written by dead people and funny stuff like that. Maybe you could read the bits of that book in a funny order and get it back to proper time. Like Pulp Fiction, that was a good movie. I watched it once and it seemed to make sense and everything but at the end I still couldn’t work out exactly what had happened. It was like Hotel World in some places, with people you knew were dead coming back to life. No sense in that I suppose. Why do the people who write these things do that? I would want to write about something I did in the right order so you knew about it all. I can remember something now. I think it was a friend here but it may have just been a dream. She dated some high-up clever guy at the UN, an interpreter or something. She told me about walking along many blocks because they couldn’t get a cab and then she was ill because of some crab or seafood rubbish they all ate. Seems like the same book, ‘cept some poor suckers got killed at the beginning. They were something to do with spying and the Russians but she hated what they did to them. She told me all about the smoke coming off them as they died, and one of them was a woman. I don’t know enough about history – I flunked history – but it seems odd all this about the bad people in the world. I know we have to do something about it all but sometimes it’s just not the right thing to do. As I said, I flunked history so maybe I’m not the guy to ask. Anyway, I was telling you about my friend. After she got sick and everything, she went back home. She was some clever girl but when she got home she couldn’t write for her term papers or something. I don’t mean she couldn’t think of what to write. She just couldn’t write. She told me that picking up then pen made her arm hurt and that all she wanted to do was lie in bed. I get depressed and everything and then I have to sit down and think about things. And I think about this sick girl and how she couldn’t write and I get all tied up inside thinking of how she should be happy. Even without those papers there is no way she could flunk anything. Clever girl that. I get depressed more because I know what happens to her but that is all I feel like telling you about that.

I dreamed a lot last night. I was doing stuff like I do now, programming and everything but I had to be taught more but the funny thing was it was stuff I already knew. I was bored. And like all my dreams, I was outside; the desks for the teaching were all lined up in a field. It looked like it should’ve been cold as all the trees had no leaves but it was warm. They were teaching all sorts of people along with me, babies and funny people like that. What would a baby want with doing anything with a computer? I had this wonderful thing going on my screen, a sort of virtual motor with cogs and everything attached to it. I was trying to sort out if I could create a long set of cogs like they have on the coin. Do you know a funny thing about those cogs on that coin? If you count them up, then there are either an odd or even number – I can’t remember which – but whatever it is means that the cogs cannot go round. In my dream I wondered if my program would tell me this and not work because of the even or odd number of cogs. But before I could test it out, we all had to look up as someone we all knew drove a goddam truck into some sort of canal. It was one of those old trucks, like from 40 years ago; with the round front and it went into the canal and stuck in the mud with water lapping at where the driver was. Like I said, we all knew him and I ran over to the other side of the canal – only a little bit of the canal was there so I could walk round to the other side – I had to drop my stuff in the mud to get there but before I could help the driver, one of my buddies had waded into the mud and opened the door. I woke up then though maybe there was some more after the truck went in the canal and then I woke up. It is difficult to tell. I don’t know what the babies were doing. I would like to know what sort of computer stuff they did, just for the hell of it. Oh yes! All my stuff was muddy when I picked it up so I was right. I did not wake up right then.

Well that is all I want to tell you about for this time. I am not feeling completely all right at the moment if you want to know so I may have to go away and have a rest or something. Damn near laid out with this! Maybe you can come back and hear some more tomorrow or any day you want. It makes no difference to me I suppose.