October 20 2004:

Even before I opened my eyes this morning I felt doomed. It was already 8:45. I wondered why Laura hadn’t called. I looked around for my phone, thinking it must be stuffed in the recesses of my pants or jacket where I couldn’t hear it, but it was sitting on the computer desk on the other side of the room. I knew I hadn’t missed her call then because I had been hitting the snooze button since 7:30. It was too late to take Lili to school anyway, and seeing as Laura hadn’t called I assumed all was well enough and I might as well get right the hell back to bed, which is when the phone rang. I remember the conversation only vaguely better than I remember the dream it proceeded – which had something to do with the grave mishandling of a time machine – but it went more or less as follows:

“Good morning Laura,” I didn’t even look at the phone – she’s the only one who would ever have cause to call me at this hour.
Half asleep she croaked, “Are you still asleep?”
“Mhm.”
“Me too – what the hell happened?”
“I dunno,” I said.
“Should I meet you at the store?”
“Hell no,” I said, “I gotta go to work.” Then she made some feeble sounds of dissapointment and we hung up. I fell immediately back to sleep and continued swatting my alarm clock until 10:30 – already an hour late for work – at which point I called in and said I would be late.

I worried all the way to work and told myself that some days start out like this and end much better. I wasn’t thinking about Lili or about missing work. I was still ruminating over the familiar sense of doom I had awoken with. I was doomed not to understand what anyone was saying or what they wanted from me today, I was doomed not to get a phone call or even a passing thought from Erin, I was especially doomed to want one despite my abounding denial of the fact, and moreover I was doomed to worry about and curse myself for it – all of it – and to bewail foolishly over the days when I had it.

I should interject here. I felt this way late last night too, and the night before, and mostly every night for the last good solid couple of months. This is not so troubling in itself because I have felt this way more or less consistently for years - spotted here and there with periods of relief lasting sometimes hours, sometimes weeks. I had a good couple of months towards the end of last summer. Anyway, so last night I got stoned with Hernan and watched a real piece of shit we rented from Moon Boy and then this morning bid Hernan happy trails as he was leaving for a week to visit his parents in Calgary. When I got into bed I began going over how to fix things up a little, and I thought it would be a really good idea to start this daily journal writing crap again. I opened my eyes, looked across the room at my computer and said out loud, “Journal! Journal! Journal! Journal!” so I wouldn’t forget. I thought if I was constantly being forced to remember my days I might begin to find them amusing again. So that’s what this is about. I think it’s working because it reads so far like I’m writing to a third party. That’s good. The eye in the sky – that’s who I lived for in those days when I say I had it, and was happy. (I know better than to derive any real hope from this little reprieve. It’s possible to force a kind of happiness over yourself for a stretch, but when one day you hit your wife you can’t blame it on the six months of snow you also said you loved.)

No one cared that I was late, except Dianna, who is a cold, spiteful shadow of a person with nothing else to care about. She didn’t say anything, even though I was a full 45 minutes later than I said I would be when I called. She just glared at me as I wheeled my bike past the front counter and disappeared out the back door to get coffee. At about eleven I put on a big show like I was finally getting to it, and went and hid in the dark room where by fortunate circumstance no one can bother me without knocking first. I turned on the CBC, ate a cinnamon bun and went right back to sleep on the dark room floor. I think it was getting close to noon when Dianna finally knocked and yelled, “Dan!”
“Just a minute,” I chirped, and before opening the door picked up a photo off the counter I could have been working on. “Yes?” I said, pulling the door open. She’s one of those people who’s face is so heavy with dissatisfaction you you want to lunge out and catch it before it hits the floor. She looked right at me – she’s always looks right at you like she’s trying to make a point.
“Molly Wood is coming into look at another proof in the next couple of hours so you better get to it,” she said. “She’s only in town for a few hours and she needs to see it.” I smiled right at her like this was good news and pushed the door shut again without a word.

The rest of my day was just as mindless. I printed a bunch of shitty photos of a White Spot and had lunch with Matt. We ate free burger’s and fries courtesy of our ludicrously unhappy friends who work the burger joint down at the market. (Keith says he stares down at the deep fat fryer all day and thinks about melting his face off in it.) I didn’t bring them any fruit today like I like to do, but between Matt and I we tipped them about five bucks. Hernan called me from just over Kelowna, he said, to ask me to pick up his sunglasses for him, which he left at Benny’s Market this morning on his way to the airport. I'd forgotten he was leaving so told him, “Why don’t you get them your fucking self?” to which he became frustrated for having to explain. “Aren’t you not supposed to use your phone on an airplane?” I asked, “Doesn’t it fuck up the signals or something?”
“No,” he said, “it doesn’t.” I was sure he was wrong so I didn’t argue the point and got the hell off the phone. On the way home I thought of an obvious thing I was doing wrong with my life and had the idea to write it down. I thought I should continue to make a list of these things (I have already cataloged a few) and I should pin it to my door. When I got in I hauled my typewriter out into the middle of the kitchen floor and wrote:


BEFORE YOU LEAVE THE HOUSE! REMEMBER TO:

- LOOK THEM IN THE EYE

- REMEMBER WHAT IS HAPPENING

These were the two things I had already noted. I couldn’t remember the new one and eventually gave up, stuck the incomplete list to the door and went to return that shitty video to Moon Boy down the street.

I was beckoned by the glow of John, Dave and Grae’s living room window next door to Moon Boy’s and went inside to complain some more. I don’t feel so bad complaining to them because it's probably the only thing we could do competently as a team. When I came in they were watching a hockey rerun and John was all antsy. We watched the game for a little while and talked about I don’t even know what, and then I just came out with it. “I think I hate her,” I said. They both laughed right away, which made me feel a little better, and then John said, “The Unicorn?” I said yes and then I said I hated myself too.
“The difference between you and me is,” John said, “when I get depressed I blame everyone else for being uninteresting.” Then Dave drove us all over the city looking for a slurpee machine that worked. He took us to the Shell station way up on Clark and 12th because he said the quality of the ones at the 7-11 down the street has been slipping. But he only drinks cola slurpees and the Pepsi one was turned off at the Shell station so we had to go Main and 15th. I ate a doughnut and then we drove home.

This has been somewhat uplifting.