December 2nd, 1979

Dinner and Maryjean and Jim’s new home in Maryland’ good-feeling, big family sort of house in an affluent suburban neighborhood. Jim’s two brothers Jeff and John were there, and John’s wife and kid. Such good-hearted, smart, funny people. Quick to laugh and joke and direct in expression of friendship and good will. How restorative it felt to spend such a nice evening of fireside camaraderie instead of the morbid introspection of most of my friends. Dinner conversation flew from funny, animated stories about high school, serious, earnest conversation about the lack of immediate help for mental illness in our society to first hand accounts of Iranian demonstrations about town. A nice, friendly night. Later, they drove me home; shivering starry night.

Walter Cronkite shows me photos of starving Cambodian children. Rice books on the stove to the steady tick of the timer. The washing machine thumps and whirs upstairs. My dogs curl next to me on the sofa. I write in my own shadows: and that’s the way it is, Monday night, December second, nineteen seventy nine.