May 7th, 1972
I wonder if the way that I feel this morning is the way my father used to feel after a drunken night of rampaging through our home and beating my mother and myself.
I think it must be.
God, what demon is this that runs through our blood?
What karma is being acted out in the actions of my father and myself?
Last night I got thoroughly drunk and painted the window seat in my living room. My spirits were in pretty good shape. Later in the evening, Margie came by. She was stoned and very pissed off because Carl hadn’t been by to take her to a party. She has spent the day in Georgetown (buying nearly $100 in clothes and Georgetown trash– it’s all trash) and was worked into a Georgetown frenzy with all the shopping. I know what kind of a trip she was on because I was in Georgetown myself yesterday. Margie and I usually have within a fraction of an inch the same trips. It’s uncanny. Anyway, she came in just about the time I was casting my 7th sheet to the wind. I don’t understand the play of forces that occurred– however, this is what happened:
After I had painted the window seat, I decided to paint the orange and yellow barrel the same color of blue. As I was working, I got a slight (almost indiscernible) smudge of paint on the front of my red chair. I went abso-fucking-lutely berserk. I roared to my feet and grabbed the small bookshelf and flung it across the room. Books and brass objects went flying. Then, I got into the hallway and stood with my head pressed against the wall and, kicking backward, put my foot through the wall about five times. Then, still roaring at the top of my lungs, I made my way into the bedroom and pitched the bookshelf in that room clear across the floor. I grabbed the pot full of small stones which I had sitting on my mantle and flung it across the floor– stones and rocks flying everywhere. I then made my way back into the kitchen and tore the louvered doors off their hinges. Still not satisfied, I grabbed some apples which were on the kitchen table and with all my might hurled them at the opposite wall.
As satisfied as I could possibly be without tearing down the building and killing all the inhabitants with my bare hands, I threw myself into a chair and got completely stoned– which broke a pledge I had made to myself to not smoke dope for a month.
By the end of this, I was so drunk and so stoned that I fell in a heap in my bedroom, amid piles of books and scattered rocks, and passed out.
When I woke up about an hour ago the wisdom tooth on my bottom right side was swollen to the point of my not being able to close my mouth. The dull ache is terrible. So this is what I will have to contend with today.
In the last thirty minutes, the dawn light has changed this room from darkness to light.
Changes.
I have been going through some very negative changes lately. I consider that I’ve had some very bad luck lately.
This morning I feel frazzles and nervous and totally conscious. I feel oddly separated from my actions last night, but, the knowledge of what I did is constant, like the dull ache of my jaw.
I am going to go out on the back porch and in the dawn light and air– before traffic has time to put fumes and gas into it and before the day’s heat has had time to make the clear space thick– and before my day’s actions has really started– and cat my I Ching.