I finished the beat sheet for my screenplay and now I just have to type it up and write the first 10 pages. I'm still deciding about whether to leave all the baseball stuff in there and just start with my character in the locker room after a shitty game. But I like the baseball stuff. Julie, my screenwriting teacher will probaby cut it out anyway. I don't even have a scene just with the character and Pac Bell park, which is part of the reason I wanted to write a baseball story. I wanted a hometown player who now plays on a different team to come to Pac Bell Park and freak out, thinking this park could have been his, if he only stayed put. I might put that scene in yet. If I do that, I think I'll put a scene in act 1, where my character runs into his old little league coach. The purpose of that scene will be reinforce the idea that the ballplayer is pretty damned bummed he's not a part of the team, he rooted for as a child.

I like the idea of Pac Bell Park as symbol for renewal. Certainly, that's the way the ad people for the SF Giants pushed the park during that first year. Baseball, the way it used to be played, in downtown stadium and played by homegrown little leaguers. It's so not like that in professional sports anymore, but hey the marketing people can push the dream, the lie, can't they? Can I help it if I'm going to help to push the lie and use Pac Bell Park and symbol of redemption and renewal for my baseball character? Since I'm writing fiction, I think I can use a lie or two in a story that's all made up.

Walking three miles a day is really hard on my left foot and my left hip. I just walked two today and will be on this schedule for another week to give my left side time to get used to walking again.

I can't wait to get started on my next story, the one I'm calling Texas Dreaming, kind of like California Dreaming, only it's so not. But I like the play on words. I also got an idea for a story about a woman who's about to have a nervous breakdown. I remember writing a story about this in junior high. Another old story coming back to haunt me. Then other story about a woman whose brain is sick, like my friend Amy and in that movie Iris. Maybe if I write about my brain dying, I'll be able to get what Amy went through in those last days. Of course, it's so fictional because a real person with this disease wouldn't be able to write anyway.

I got a whiff of it while walking yesterday. A panicked voice saying, "can't stop, must be keep going, can't stop, can't stop, can't stop, can't ever stop, must keep writing, if I write, I can keep it at bay. I can fight it, I know I can. Damned doctors, what do they know, they can't even cure the common fucking cold. Witch doctors, all witch doctors. Keep writing, don't stop, don't stop." It will be interesting to explore what the panicked voice is trying write about. Portents of my future, maybe? Who knows? They say we're all going to end up with some form of brain degeneerative diseases one day, when we're really old. Maybe it's time to look into to the future, my future to see how bad it's going to get, like my own time machine.