The denigration of my created stuffs in my eyes is still a big problem despite anything I'll ever be allowed to do to Oliver Stone.  It is unstoppable.  Even works not produced by me have a way of turning to shit from one reading to the next.  I use to like "Othelo," but now it's dreck.  This happens with everything I read five to six times.  There were some Bukowski stories I loved until that third reading.  What causes this to happen?  Is it common?  Does enjoyment fade?  Is it the same principal of the first cracker in a starving man's mouth tasting significantly better than the tenth.  It's called the theory of diminishing returns, and it affects us all.  I've never heard anyone discuss it in terms of art.  I have now seen Picasso's, Davinci's, Monet's, Van Gogh's, all in person and felt swallowed whole by some of them.  Sure, I had seen them in books, but the actual viewing felt like I was transported, no, more like violated.  Expecting nothing more than a kiss and the next thing you know you're at the doctor with a steel swab up your urethra. That's a work of art!

I shouldn't worry about my own writing seeming to be hideous masturbatory overstated whore's craft shortly after it has been completed when maybe this happened to Aristophanes over 2,300 years ago.  "How could I have written such bilge?  Orpheus' bunghole for you Frogs!  And you, ya damn Ka-nig-its!  To hell with you Clouds, and fuck Peace!"  Does his Grecian rage ring true?  Or did he simply love everything he wrote, always?

(Last night I had this wonderful dream where I found a liquor store that carried returnable cases of Leinenkugel's beer and even all the specialty brews too.)

I'm feeling better about my writing now.  Writing about it helped but could also be the problem.  I enjoy what I write as I write and by writing about my non-enjoyment of what I write after it is written, I may just be compounding the problem.  Tricking myself into believing that my writing is worthy of me by writing is surely the Devil's stratagem.  What to do?  To do what?

(There was a massive run on the store. Chaos and teeth gnashing. All the beer was purchased. Only a case of the original, brewed in Milwaukee, Leinie's remained.)

I walk through corporate hallways and see hanging, prints of Mapplethorpe and Longo.  Any art that is initially deemed dangerous and subversive will be acquisitioned by corporations, shredded by advertisers until whatever it was that gave it the initial affect upon the people is erased, lost, forgotten.  The ultimate price of art massly appreciated is prostitution and devaluation.  Better to have what I do devalued in my own eyes than the worlds'.

(Swooping down from the sky, a giant bald eagle clutches up the last case in its talons just before I can get to it.  With a 9 mm I got from some estranged dream location, I shoot the bird through the head.)

Maybe what Oliver Stone does is create what he knows is 100% bona fide detritus from the great American compost heap and in that way never has to feel the pangs of what he has made sour in his mouth.  Or slice up his ass.

(The eagle plummets.  I pop open a Leinie's using a talon and drain the bottle while pissing on the thieving bird's head wound.  The beer tastes good.  What I did was right.)

Think I'll go rent "Born on the Fourth of July," and if it seems to me like Oliver isn't being smug or really doesn't believe he was creating an important work of art, then I'll go into the basement and untie him.

 Next