I like to read Susan Sontag's diary entries from when she was just turning 26. She's neurotic and impetuous, wrapped up in the imagined details of others. Here is this thinking giant of the Western canon, suddenly reduced to an ordinary, self-obsessed 20-something. (Okay, so Sontag is anything but ordinary--even in her journal, she is a powerful, potent writer and thinker.) Still, it's nice to be reminded that all of us contain (and struggle with) this selfish, hot humanity.

"Smells Like Teen Spirit (Cover)" - Patti Smith

Not sure why, but Sontag is a great comfort to me in difficult times. It's her voice, the familiar music of her intellect. I hope Susan wouldn't mind if I painted some songs over the paragraphs of her young adulthood.

30 December
My relationship to Harriet baffles me. I want it to be unpremeditated, unreflective — but the shadow of her expectations about what an “affair” consists in upsets my poise, makes me fumble. She with her romantic dissatisfactions, I with my romantic needs and longing.. . . One unexpected gift: that she is beautiful. I had remembered her as definitely not beautiful, rather gross and unattractive. She’s anything but that. And physical beauty is enormously, almost morbidly, important to me.

"Love and Happiness" - Al Green

31 December
On Keeping a Journal. Superficial to understand the journal as just a receptacle for one’s private, secret thoughts — like a confidante who is deaf, dumb and illiterate. In the journal I do not just express myself more openly than I could to any person; I create myself.

The journal is a vehicle for my sense of selfhood. It represents me as emotionally and spiritually independent. Therefore (alas) it does not simply record my actual, daily life but rather — in many cases — offers an alternative to it.

"Epitaph of My Heart" - Magnetic Fields, off 69 Love Songs (Box Set), 1999

There is often a contradiction between the meaning of our actions toward a person and what we say we feel toward that person in a journal. But this does not mean that what we do is shallow, and only what we confess to ourselves is deep. Confessions, I mean sincere confessions of course, can be more shallow than actions. I am thinking now of what I read today (when I went up to 122 Bd. St-G to check for her mail) in H’s journal about me — that curt, unfair, uncharitable assessment of me which concludes by her saying that she really doesn’t like me but my passion for her is acceptable and opportune. God knows it hurts, and I feel indignant and humiliated. We rarely do know what people think of us (or, rather, think they think of us).. . .Do I feel guilty about reading what was not intended for my eyes? No. One of the main (social) functions of a journal or diary is precisely to be read furtively by other people, the people (like parents + lovers) about whom one has been cruelly honest only in the journal. Will H. ever read this?

"Goin' Back" - Neil Young, off Comes a Time, LP, 1978

2 January, 7:30 a.m.
Poor little ego, how did you feel today? Not very well, I fear — rather bruised, sore, traumatized. Hot waves of shame, and all that. I never had any illusion that she was in love with me, but I did assume she liked me.

"Three Saddest Words" - Bombadil, off A Buzz, A Buzz, 2008

March 8 (noon)
Via benzedrine, the ever-seeping down impact of Irene, Dr. Puroshottam [Hindu scholar]

last week, this morning’s lectures on Spinoza’s ethics, the long meditation on Kant which began in October, yesterday’s idea of the difference between ‘the truth that’ and ‘the truth about.’

"Nude (Holy Fuck Remix)" - Radiohead

There is no stasis. To stand still is to fall away from the truth; the inner life dims and flickers, starts to go out, as soon as one tries to hold fast. It’s like trying to make this breath serve for the next one, or making today’s dinner do the work of next Wednesday’s as well.. . .Truth rides the arrow of time.

"Moonlight Prizefighter" - Yellow Jacket Avenger, visit their Myspace page 

August 8
Monday Morning. I must help I. to write. And if I write, too, it will stop this uselessness of just sitting and staring
at her and begging her to love me again.

"Bright as Yellow" - The Innocence Mission, off Empire Records: The Soundtrack, 1995

It hurts then to love. It’s like giving yourself
to be flayed and knowing that at any moment the other person may just walk off with your skin.

"Out Like Bats" - Tu Fawning, visit their Myspace page

"Meet Me At The Pier" - The Doves, off Lost Sides, 2003

Sartre was very ugly — and knew it. So he didn’t have to develop “the schmuck” to pay off the others for being “the genius.” Nature had taken care of the problem for him. He didn’t have to invent a cause of failure or rejection by others. As I did, by making myself ‘stupid’ in personal relations. (For ‘stupid,’ also read ‘blind.’)