Some Things I Wrote in a Moleskine Recently

In what follows, additions or changes to the original journal entry will appear [in square brackets], with the exception of the names of chess players, where I will follow the same rule as in this chess log, referring to Player A, Player B and so forth. The reader should not assume that Player A below is -- or is not -- the same person as Player A in that blog post. Rather, in each new blog post in which I excerpt chess logs, I will start over again from the beginning of the alphabet.

I dreamed I was trying to return a stolen shirt to a store in a mall, stolen by someone else although I was wearing it. The sales staff would not or could not understand that it was not just an ordinary return. At one point I was an angry young black man, [In waking life I am neither young nor black. I do have occasional fits of rage, but I've recognized that this a problem, and I'm getting treatment for it.] stripping off the shirt and shaking it, angry and bare-chested, at the sales staff, who continued to fail to understand, or to pretend not to understand, that someone had stolen the shirt, instead blandly continuing to inquire if I wanted an exchange or a refund or what. The shirt resembled [my favorite shirt, a] long-sleeved blue shirt with horizontal pinstripes.

After the incident with the shirt, I continued down the hall in the mall, and came across Tim Allen sitting on a couch. Gradually it became apparent that Tim was one of several people sitting on a couch, and that they were all wearing face paint somewhere between circus-clown and Hollywood-Indian. They were sitting very wide-eyed, and very still, as if portraying carved figures. They looked a little scary. Then there were very many Native Americans storming into a house, perhaps a model house on the mall grounds, or a partial model house. I was concerned that I might have been part of what incited the Native Americans to anger. I was also concerned that they might inadvertently trample me in their headlong stampede or turn angrily on me.

Then I was pretty much out of their way and [nevermind who] and I were sitting on the ground and she was rubbing my shoulders. I groaned and she was concerned she might be doing it wrong, but I assured her that they were moans of pleasure and relief.

[End of dream log.]

[My Free Internet Chess Server rating rose to] 1305 after [winning] 3 straight [games] from Player A. ([Who was rated] a little under 1100.)

I'm at Barnes & Noble now. In the men's room, someone wrote on a stall wall: "Empty your mind/And you will attain peace" and underneath that someone else wrote: "Empty your bowels/And you will attain relief." I think the 2nd one is more profound. It's certainly more site-appropriate.

[there follows in the notebook a very bad attempt at the beginning of a sketch of the escalator in the Barnes & Noble. I've always been very bad at drawing, but lately I'm trying to see whether frequent practice might change that.]

When I was a teenager [in the late '70's], I was disappointed that no-one ever initiated me into Dungeons & Dragons. [I didn't realize that it was a game that anyone could buy in a store; from the way the few players I knew acted, I assumed that it was more of a secret society into which one had to be initiated.] Just now, near the bench where I was writing, were two full-grown pudgy geeks of the type which remind me why I should be very, very grateful that there never seemed to be time enough, or that I was never deemed cool enough when I was a kid for that D&D initiation to happen. Harsh? Fuck 'em, I'm being real. Game Stop was the name of the store in front of which the geeks were hanging, loudly speaking Geek. Game Stop? With truth in advertising, they'd call it Girl Repellent. Or just Repellent. [Yeah, I know I play chess. But I don't play it in person. Harsh? Maybe so. Don't some people think I'm as geeky as can be? No doubt some do.]

I had to quickly walk out of the Barnes & Noble to the bench near Game Stop in order to resist the temptation to buy STILL MORE MOLESKINES! A family walked by on the way into Barnes & Noble. One of the children was a toddler saying "Hi, hi!" to everyone they passed. Cute as could be. Maybe she very recently learned to say "hi." Several young ladies walked out of the store just as this family was going in. They exchanged "Hi!"'s with the adorable little toddler. One of the ladies said, "Aw, I want one!" That lady is to babies as I am to ever more Moleskines. [I gather that it's pronounced as if it were an Italian word, with a syllable for each vowel: "Mole-uh-skeen-ay."]