November 1st, 1978

Our yard is filling with brown leaves. Hanging low through a sunny autumn afternoon window are brilliant yellow leaves and the distance fades into reds and browns across the street.

I fabricate an incredible lie about our furnace blowing out in the middle of the night and take the day off from work. Now I drink beer and smoke cigarettes and listen to my new Pointer Sisters album and call Sonja in Tampa, Florida. I read Tennessee William’s memoirs and fret that my recent history has becomes so stable.

Oh, God, here I am now months later fretting that my life is not exciting. Just last March I was wailing about the hysteria of having to move and having no home and how I longed for stability.

Sonja sounds so good. Her life is stable and uneventful. She recalls her last year in Washington. The miscarriage, the two suicide attempts (which I knew nothing about) and the countless desperate romances. Finally she found David and ran off into the Florida sunset to live happily ever after. She’s sure of her happiness.

I want so much at times, and more and more often, for my life to change completely. For a drastic change of environment. I, too, long to run off into the Florida sunset. But, of course, I’ve been longing for that for years now.

What is going on? Here I am in the midst of some job pursuit that means nothing to me. Or does it? God knows, I’ve had lots of jobs before that nearly drove me crazy. Now I find myself with a very stimulating job and very intense warm friendships and a budding romance. Freelance jobs are taking the edge off financial chaos.

Oh, for God’s sake, Larry, stop trying to plot it. Just do it. And record it.