Douceur de vivre

 

2021.01.10

From my digital notebook:

Whenever I read through old notebooks and journals it’s like going back in time and I re-live a time many years ago: it reminds me how sweet life is. This week I went through my notebooks between 1989 and 1995 and found the notes for a novel I wrote that was to be called “In Radical Pursuit” about a young queer activist and the formation of his cell group of fellow travelers and their plan to attack some anti-gay groups in the Los Angeles. I remember being very passionate about this story; there’s a list of key words and many pages of dialogue overheard at coffee shops that I used in the narrative. The main character’s name is Omar, but sometimes I write Oscar and other times he has no name other than “you-know-who” and several times I name him Philip and Andrew. When I typed the notes into the manuscript of the novel I couldn’t decide his name and just typed “O” and “You-know-who”. I no longer have the manuscript of the book only the notebook survives and I have no idea what happened to the book. The notebook also records some events of the day and perhaps some imagined events (I can never tell now thirty-two years later what really happened or if it happened).

I usually title my notebooks: I named the 1994 notebook “This Kind of Bird Flies Backwards” after the Diane di Prima 1958 book. Flying through these five notebooks I read about happy dinners with friends and lots of work anxiety. I even read in one line only my first meeting with my companion of over 30 years hence, Henry. I’m astonished to read only that I met a guy on the bus while going to the Magic Castle. In later pages I read all about our dinners and walks and many happy moments. Thirty years later we can still do all these things but for the virus that keeps us from going anywhere.

Be fierce and thrive...

—Ph/HOPBELL