January 8th, 1972
Sitting as it were– again– amid a sea of ashtrays I notice that it is 10:00 PM on a cold wintry night. Except that’s the last thing I’ve really been conscious of today. All day long I’ve been reciting in my brain a beginning sentence to a letter that I’m thinking of writing to my mother. It begins, Washington has been waiting for several days for it to snow. I think I’ll mention how the past few days have been building into a snow storm. I experience the weather about me from a mental perception. I experience by thinking about it and talking about it rather than “feeling”– “being aware of” the weather outside me.
I am locked into a closet of conceptualization. I experience life second hand. I think this is the end product of a life geared to the schizophrenic concept of experiencing life through movies, television.
Sitting at the kitchen table eating burnt popcorn out of the greasy bottom of the green pot. Swatting bugs off the wall with a Webster’s Dictionary.
I experience Larry Waite not as Larry Waite but as a third party– an audience. I suffer when the hero of this movie is not the way heroes in movies should be to be happy. Larry cannot be happy like that.
I spent the night at Gayle’s last night. She came over to see the apartment late yesterday afternoon. Or maybe it was early yesterday evening. She seemed to be a flurry of energy when she entered the apartment and she didn’t seem at all enthusiastic about exploring the apartment. Weird to have the set changed and have Gayle here where I live. It is much more comfortable for me to go visit her. There we lie in heaps on her mattress and consume vast quantities of shit food and smoke dope till our eyes bulge and our bodies vibrate from the technicolor action on her beaming vivid television not two feet from the bed. Here we sit in the barren expanse of the living room and talk like two middle-aged women meeting outside the office. But, we sat and talked philosophy and looked at picture albums. On cue, I dragged out my picture box. Curled memories junked in a torn and frayed cardboard box.
I got up this morning when Gayle was leaving for work so I could get home early and avoid the agony of trying to get to work in thirty minutes.
Last night, however– before we get to this morning– I was able to get into some very real experiences of physical tension. This book on Primal Therapy has caused me to do a lot of thinking about the importance of not avoiding pain– in any way. It seems inadequate to try to keep my head together and keep on trying to get high again. My highs have been failing me. Yes, let it be noted, my highs have been failing me. I need to really get into and consider my unhappiness. I cannot flee.