What ever made me think I could write? I feel like…so betrayed by myself. That I could have cornered myself into such a fool’s errand as trying to write a successful screenplay. Why couldn’t I have just had a burning desire to follow in my father’s footsteps and be a lawyer? My mind – I opine – is far more incisive than his, far more suited to…what?…de…? What’s the word I’m looking for?…what they do to frogs in high school…you know where they cut them up and look at the insides…killing it in order to make it an object of…dissect. My mind is much more suited to the dissection of legal, moral issues. I think about things more, am more critical, and embrace that critical-ness, rather than shunning it, as my dad has learned to do under the tenure of his new wife. It all comes back to him, doesn’t it? A feeling that he betrayed me by leaving and by planting the seed of my anger and resentment and hatred such that I turned my back on everything connected with him, even though it might have made my life much easier (and possibly even happier) had I learned earlier to turn my back instead on the resentment and hatred, accept who he was, is, and what he did, as being the mark of flaws in his character, and not something that made me have to hate him, shun everything he stood for. Why could I not just learn from him as one might learn from any flawed character…Moses for example? One can both admire him, follow him, and yet learn from his mistakes, his headstrongness, his reliance…I'm getting a little too selfconscious now. But my examples are interesting, no? The thing is…I love my dad. When I talk with him, he’s just this nice guy whom I love and who loves me, and yet my internal experience of him is something entirely different. And if he were to read this, I imagine he would be hurt, yes, but amazed, uncomprehending, how he, with all of his good intentions, and his honor, and his having made what he must have thought was a decision that was best…for whom?…for him certainly (I’m talking about the divorce now)…but I imagine him standing in the face of this big decision – to stay or go – and taking a sober look at it and deciding that it was an awful decision to have to make but that he would make the right one no matter the cost, because the cost of making the wrong one would be greater. It’s interesting to think of him in relationship to his father, a judge, who many people active in the Platte legal community still ask me about and ooh and aah about. Not a very nice man, I’m told (he died when I was five), but he made a landmark decision in a desegregation case that effectively ended his judicial career. He was subject to voter approval, and he handed down his decision just before the filing deadline for running against him, knowing (or he must have known, that’s how the story goes) that the decision would spark controversy, opposition, and likely, his ejection from office. A difficult decision that he decided to make in the correct, honorable way, no matter the cost to himself. Whereas my dad…?…what was the cost to himself? He made this decision for himself. He can’t have thought it was best for his kids, could he have? Maybe it was. I mean, maybe everything they say about kids growing up in a marriage that lacks love is true. On the other hand, maybe that’s just a line that’s used to justify the rising divorce rates. What actually happens when parents who would otherwise split stay together for the sake of the children? You must know that. I want to know.

If only I could anneal [Not the right word, as it turns out. But I imagine my ambition is a sharp piece of glass that is heated so that the edges melt, soften, become rounded. Like sea glass. Perhaps that is what will happen when my soul finally encounters land and is washed up on shore.] my ambition so that going to law school…not that that has to signal the end of my ambition… What is it that keeps me from giving up writing? What does writing mean to me?

I want to create a world. Want to make something that people look at and admire as a complete and coherent vision and say, “Ah. That. That was made by Joel Geller.” And it will live after me when I die. I want to do something that uses my skills. And I have skills as a writer. I know that. I just can’t seem to put them together in a way that utilizes them. What can I do that is most suited to me? Screenwriting is very hard. Is that a surprise? No. But is it this hard for people who do it for a living? I’m in a stage of the process that’s very scary – Act II of the screenplay – that’s akin to the…throwing a ball…or juggling. What am I trying to say? Act II is about keeping the balls in the air, and it’s where a good deal of the inventiveness of writing comes in. The beginning and the end are easier because there isn’t really anything to maintain…why do you need to know all this?…I’m trying to demonstrate to you that I know what I’m doing, that I’ve become the writer that it’s easier to say that I am. I have to psych myself up and tell myself that I can do this before I sit down, rather than looking at the task and getting instantly discouraged by it. That’s what I do. I woke up this morning and thought about what I needed to do workwise today and my initial feeling was, “I’m failing. I’m embarking today on work that I know will be bad, that will not work, and the only reason I’m doing it is because I have to because I’ve told everybody I know that I’m writing. But I’m just going through the motions. This will not work, the path (storywise) I am going down. I can never make it work. I am not good enough. Someone who was good at screenwriting could do it, but I am not, so I cannot, and I am merely delaying the moment at which I am forced to acknowledge my ultimate failure and go to law school.”

I’m so jealous of Persis and her colleagues, teaching, professing expertise. Though I hate the way Persis talks about feeling good at what she does. She does it always with this “fuck you” behind it, this challenge, this sense of indignation. Like she’s sticking it to me that she’s hot shit. And it’s not personal, I think; I think she would express herself this way to anyone. But it’s always how she’s expressed herself to me when she’s feeling good; as if her feeling good precludes anyone else feeling good in the world, trumps it. As if she’s talking to her mom or dad and saying, “See, you thought I couldn’t do it, but I can. Fuck you.”

I long to be able to feel good about what I do again, like I did when I was editing. I don’t feel good about writing, I don’t feel good about daddying. I love Burt, love holding him, but then I want to give him away. I love it when he’s at daycare, and hate it when he comes home and I have to invent an afternoon for him. It’s almost the same hatred of invention that I have when I’m writing; I just want it to write itself. I hate taking this big leap into what might happen. Like going with Burt somewhere. I don’t like driving with him. But I don’t like to be out in the sun. We can’t go anywhere that demands attention; the only place that’s good to go is somewhere he can have constant stimulation. Sometimes, I just want to go to an empty park and sit and let him run around. But he requires supervision. Oh, I’m such a fucking broken record.

The session with my psychiatrist was okay. Arrived late and felt very guilty that he saw me through a cancellation he had the next half hour. Thought he didn’t like me because of that. Decided not to change medication yet, to wait another month, month and a half and see how I do. Sometimes I feel this burning physical sense, a burning at the base of my solar plexus (no, not heartburn), an anxiety that my world is desperately in trouble, that I am useless, and am lightyears away from fixing that. I feel in the middle of a very large ocean, spiritually. No land, nothing secure in sight, and no idea when I will see anything. It was good to articulate to you, to Dr. Weiskopf, to my parents that night (got high, as I said I would, and it made me feel relaxed and expansive, and I was really able to talk to them, which I think they appreciated, and was very helpful to me). Came home with a clearer sense of what was going on with me…but it doesn’t make what’s going on no longer go on, that’s the problem.

Do you know what I’m talking about? This burning, buzzing anxiety. It’s like a constant sense of butterflies in one’s tummy, but it’s not butterflies, it’s maggots. My soul is decaying, decayed.



I want to take something for this anxiety, but mostly I want to cause it to disappear, that’s the problem. That’s ultimately why I’m shying away from pot most of the time, because I know that what I want the pot to do it cannot. I want it to take me away, to change my circumstances. And I know that all it can give me is a moment’s relief, and in doing so, may make it actually less likely (or slow me down) to take action to ameliorate the conditions that are making we want a quick fix. But what’s frustrating is…and this is the middle of the ocean thing…all of those actions are so long term. Law school, screenplay, real estate. Can’t I just win the lottery, so I won’t have Persis fretting about money anymore?

I’m really afraid that I’m not going to be able to finish this screenplay. And it’s such a workable idea. So that will be the ultimate sign of my failure: being handed a good idea and not being able to make anything of it.

What else?

Our cats aren’t healthy, and now it’s falling to me to give them antibiotics, and fluids, and ointments, and special foods. I wish I could just shoot them.

I feel like I have so much to prove to anybody who has ever doubted me. And yet – it’s like Persis’s tone when she says she’s feeling good about her work – the fact is that none of them care what happens to me. But I want to make them care. I want them to be surprised at how far I’ve come, and how they’ve underestimated me.





Long pause. Sip of coffee.




I feel like ending early. I want to go tackle the writing. I want to tell myself I can do it and launch into it and tackle it. I want to get through my outline and start writing from the beginning again. A finished first draft – a contradiction in terms.




Long pause. Sip of coffee.







There’s stuff I’m not wanting to get into. Feelings about Persis. Feeling that I like her but don’t think we should have dated, or gotten married. Somehow I regarded all these quirks about her as challenges…like I would experience something about her and say to myself, “This is something that would scare most people off, or turn them off; but because I’m special, more insightful than most people, I’m not going to let this thing turn me off. I’m going to stay with it and see where it goes.” But of course, that can be said of anything. And any frustration that results from those quirks that others might recognize as potentially troublesome I regard as frustration to be tolerated. And I’ve already talked about how I think my frustration tolerance is too high. I wish I could give up sooner, because I think it would be good for my self-esteem. I could become a lawyer. Could go out there and find someone who really would make me happy, rather than constantly embattled.

My mom told me this weekend about the angry, dysphoric streak that runs in the men of her side of the family. My grandfather, my uncle. So maybe all this looking to circumstantial causes, while interesting, is ultimately fruitless. Maybe I would just be angry and grumpy all the time with whomever my partner was. Anna was always afraid of my anger. Burt laughs at it, which I like. But I feel like Persis… At some point along the road, I made the decision that I would not let myself be walked on by her, and…I don’t know if you watch Desperate Housewives, but the Marcia Cross character has a lot of Persis in her, as does Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter series. I don’t want to be married to either of them.

I mean, there are moments where I genuinely appreciate her (though I’m not very good at letting her know), but even at its best these days, my relationship with her is one of pleasant convenience and temporary alliance (always with the hope of permanence). I’m not particularly attracted to her. Sometimes there’s a flash. But I look forward to the day when I can conveniently, discreetly make love with someone who’ll really make me feel sexy and wanted. She’s very talented. And I appreciate and respect those talents. But we’re really just co-managers of our family.

Bell sounded, gotta go.