Running a Few Simple Errors [1980]

[passage from my journal, 24 June 1980]

I

 spent the day running a few simple errors—I mean errands—with my ex-brother, but I ended up accomplishing absolutely nothing. I couldn’t find Aresti’s dictionary of aerobatic maneuvers in any standard reference source (not Books in Print, not the Union Catalogue, not CBI—nothing. And yet it’s supposed to be the standard for all aerobatic pilots to work with—well, whatever); I lost the card and phone number of the person I’m supposed to call to see about getting a xerox of a rare book; the recordstore folk had never heard of Walter Carlos (or Wendy Carlos either—“Well, if we have any I guess they’d be in the electronic music section, but I never heard of the Brandenberg Concertos in an electronic version…”).  And people kept asking me dumb questions—“Have you tried the Cumulative Book Index?” “You realize the lyrics are in English—only the jacket is in Italian?” “Do you really want it in Latin? We have good English Bibles you know.” A day in the life of sbh, ace researcher, or something. Fuck it, is all I got to say. Of course my horoscope warned me. Do whatever you’re going to do in the early hours it said—just what I want to hear when I’ve gotten up at one in the afternoon after having worked until five or so writing. My parents are supposed to be in Spain or something and I guess I’m supposed to look after their pseudoapartment while they’re gone but I don’t know because when my mother called to give me the final word on the arrangements I was at the airport not-flying with my other ex-brother who has become so good flying aerobatics that I was unable to remain aloft with him even with the aid of Dramamine for more than about fifteen minutes.