May 31st, 1975

Saturday again– and, sure enough, here I sit in my wrinkled old purple bathrobe, hunched over the dining room table. Stoned. With a messy dirty house to be cleaned. Balking, delaying. Not being able to get started. Gentle whining inside, countered by my efforts to muster that fever-energy that gets me up and about. That fantasy, fuel that charges me through my days and then seems so foreign and remote to me in moments like now.

I have flipped back through the pages of this book. Almost all of the entries have been made on Saturday morning just like today. With me in just about the same emotional tone. Like some wilting sensitive house plant, withering in a hot room. The dark side of the moon. I curl up naked in the middle of a giant bed being washed in sweet Spring breezes. A symphony of birds gently chants my spirit into sleep. Sleep– deep, relaxing, refreshing, rejuvenating sleep.

I charge through my days like a trooper– taking it on the chin in style. And, then, collapsing tired and aching into my Saturday miseries. My mild depressions and nervousness. My fears, my anxieties. My pain.

I cannot accept the presence of pain in my life. I do not believe in it.

I strongly suspect that this split inside is a common condition of the stubborn spirit.

You shouldn’t worry about what needs to be done. You should just do it. This urge to seek unconsciousness as an escape from tensions is really a desperate action. So you smoke yourself into a drugged fog, you drink yourself into a thick-witted stupor. And then you pass out. You wear a mask of strength all week, and then, left alone in the house, you collapse. You disintegrate emotionally into a zombie, dragging about the house in a smelly bathrobe, drinking beer all day long. Smoking cigarettes– into aching parched lungs. The dark side of the moon.