Seven o’clock.
It was still dark outside when I walked to the store this morning. The partly clear sky permitted a view of the stars overhead. Out of range of the streetlight I could hardly see the ground in front of me. As I ambled along, I remembered a night nine years ago when I drunkenly made a trip to the same place, with my mind playing music by Khachaturian. At once, it was a romantic night and a miserable one, but sometimes we like to dream little dreams. Sometimes a dream can engulf us while real time leaves us behind… Michelle and the dairy guy were doing inventory when I came in the door. She was in a good mood because it’s Friday today and she gets weekends off. Just now the dawn arrives with rosy fingers, or rather a stripe of peach between banks of clouds that are breaking up. I read some Mark Twain yesterday noon. It made me think of what freedom means to different people. How is it defined? He might say with democracy and with honest labor. It seems to me that freedom in one respect entails a sacrifice somewhere else. Nobody has everything they want, so just appreciate what you have.
Quarter of eight. I spent a rough afternoon yesterday. My nervous system felt hypersensitive, as if I might go into a seizure or something like that. I was overwrought with anxiety and stress. When I wrote in my journal I reasserted my belief in Freudian analysis, and then I could relax a bit. One of the greatest lines I’ve read is by James Baldwin: “Funerals are for the living…”
robgradens 