There are critics who fulminate against talking about the effects of false accusation and legal gamesmanship on a life, because, they say, you don’t want to give your “enemies” the satisfaction of knowing they’ve injured you. These critics value truth according to its utility: Tell it if it helps; hide it if it doesn’t. Certainly this is how a lawyer thinks. A lot of lawyers, though, are assholes.

Yesterday, a Sunday, it was a balmy 80 degrees where I live. I passed couples who were strolling blithely in the park with their dogs. A duo of skywriters nosedived in synchrony and sketched a valentine heart in the heavens (some guy’s idea of a grand romantic gesture) when I forced myself to leave the house around 3:30. The annual book festival, which I’d always meant to check out when I used to aspire to write books, was going on someplace.

I heard about it on the radio.

I spent the remainder of the afternoon working on documents in the library for an upcoming trial in which I’ve been cast in the role of “stalker” by some women who’ve serially accused me of this and that since I found them outside of my house 10 years ago (yes, outside of my house, and, yes, 10 years ago). When the library closed, I went to a Starbucks and hunched over the computer some more.

My next court date is my birthday.

St. Patrick’s is sometime this week. I’ll be wearing black, not green, and I’ll be very tired. I’m always very tired. I haven’t had nerve sensation in my feet since I was last in court in 2013. They’re chronically swollen from daily labor and little rest. I’ve been an insomniac for a decade, and I don’t mend quickly. Despite living in the desert, I drink more coffee than water.

Instead of writing this, after an afternoon and evening staring at legalese, I should be exercising or kissing someone or playing with my dog. She died, though—in August and sooner than she should have—while I was still writing about courthouse abuses, and along with her perished any interest in “healthy activities.” I no longer think about the future. I’m smoking as I type. I eat carelessly, haven’t gotten a haircut in five months, and seldom look in the mirror.

In February, I was invited and went to Maui for six days, which was the first time I’d been on a trip in over 15 years. I was dyspeptic the entire time, and the interlude wasn’t long enough to relieve the inflammation in my hands (my right middle finger, fittingly, is rigidly stiff from a sprain). I flew home on the red-eye the day before my last court date, a criminal arraignment, and Hawaii is already a faded memory. It was very pretty, my hosts were generous, and I slept on a bed with clean sheets for a change.

I missed some jobs, and after a stop at the grocery store this evening, I have five bucks and some change in my pocket. I have a cache of cigars, though, and the electricity is still on, so I can work on my next couple of motions to the court tomorrow from the comfort of a nicotine fug. The job I have lined up for Tuesday will cover the costs of the half-ream of color-printed exhibits for the court and the city prosecutor, their text abundantly streaked in canary yellow or framed in crimson rectangles (my surrogate for art).

I’ve only checked the mailbox twice since the cops came in January, and those two times were the only times I’ve checked the mailbox since June. I’ll have to start doing that more often now that I have a judge for a correspondent. I think he’s number seven, which I used to consider lucky. Lucky isn’t a word I use anymore.

I brought back a piece of lava from Hawaii for which a man I dined with warned me I’d be cursed. He might be right, but how the fuck would I tell?

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