September 7th, 1979

AMAZING

really, a drunken phone call from my mother at 7:00 AM. That tearful voice that tells me immediately that something is wrong. And what am I supposed to do, 1200 miles away, to help? How can a call to me do anything more productive than just to drag me into it? To prove to me first-hand how awful and terrible her life is…

Really, Mother, haven’t you by now figured out just how awful the world really is? Do you still suspect that you are being cheated somehow out of your right to happiness? And now, after 28 years of provoked self-abuse you cry… Dry up, honey.

Life on earth is a pile of shit. And whatever stinking god is responsible for the whole thing is a manic at best.

You wallow in your pain. It’s presence in your life is so urgent that it fucks up every real encounter that you have.

Don’t you realize that happiness is just as contrived as unhappiness: that we are the architects of the stages upon which we enact our dramas. We write these scenes– and all you seem capable of writing is melodrama. Give it a rest.

Your drinking is ruining any chance at a normal peaceful life that you may have. The solace of those few moments of anesthetization that alcohol brings is hardly worth the pain it causes in terms of the disruption to normal mentality that it causes.

I have had these nights, and lord they have been many, when the crush of my life felt enormous.