2006-06-01 - 10:58 p.m.

Nothing really of note except a train with a good friend on it, coming to see the sights, and a submission by myself to my first poetry contest. I have now about 45 poems in what I would loosely call my "repitoire," two of which I sent out to the Margaret Reid Poetry Contest for Traditional Verse with a small reading fee. When I scrape together some more money, I'll probably send more poems out to various places.

Now my life is made of long spans of indolence, parades of job interviews, high heels, the creaking sound of our parking lot gate scraping against the pavement everytime a tenant enters the apartment complex, trains running just below the freeways, an owl that lives in the tree just outside my bedroom, stacks and stacks of books, the sounds of birds and the usual chaos. There are still occasional graveyard nights here and there, but it is nothing I cannot handle. I amuse myself with scribbles and sighs, keep the company of W. H. Auden and Issac Asimov, and of course my good friends.

The street people keep me entertained as well: young, jaded youth trying to sell their amatuer rap CDs in front of record stores; the usual slew of hobos, bums and hippies; kids selling boot-legged DVDs (only $5 and still in theaters!); those wretched perfume vendors; and, of course, musicians and poets, playing their hearts out on street corners for any part of a dollar fifty. You can buy large umbrellas that look like ducks and art supplies and Vicodin and designer knock-off perfume on these streets, CDs, DVDs, oranges, flowers, salvation, and all the usual intoxicants.