I moved a lot of boxes this weekend--rather, the Keelhauler did while I was working on the never-ending mural--and came upon a number of old journals, from as far back as 1990. I was a disciplined writer, writing sometimes twice a day, and I was always careful to go back and recap any entry I'd started at, say 4:30 in the morning and left unfinished due to drunkenness. Most of what I wrote involves guys I dated or had crushes on, and how distraught I was that it wasn't going well. I used the word "despair" a lot, which is amusing now, given that most of the guys causing it would have had difficulty spelling "despair," and the fact that the feeling seems to vanish a page or two after each occurrence. Reading through, I was reminded of three different guys I briefly dated (oh, the despair), two friends I forgot about, and the distressing idea that at one point in my life, I found it meaningful to listen to the song "What it Takes" by Aerosmith.

I don't know that I've looked at any of the older diaries since I wrote them, which is both fortunate and a shame, because I have very little context for a lot of what I have written. I carried my journal all the time, writing down phrases, or shreds of conversations I overheard on the subway, but I didn't leave myself a bread-crumb trail to get back to the reasoning behind noting each item, so I'm left with a lot of indecipherable notes in my own handwriting. This may be how Sybil felt upon waking after a long stint as "Peggy," or whichever of her personalities it was who went to Chicago and bought striped pajamas.

Here are a couple of notes I found, for which I have no back-story:

• The Big Picture Sammy clammed on some woman @ Radio City--telling to Tommy from Replacements--screaming from the balcony @ the NRBQ show @ Lone Star (Roadhouse?) Who are you?!?


• 23 peas, mp Roast beef onto a placemat


• chasing ham--think I got it cornered


• "Her name was Mrs Parsons or something... eventually she washed away in a hurricane"


• like this time this girl in my acting class threw a chair right through the classroom window in order to prove her dedication to her craft.

So, you know, thank God I wrote all that down.

Along with those phrases, this diary (one of dozens) is filled with descriptions of rehearsals, parties, phone calls, and guys I did not understand, who in turn did not understand me. Reading through, I wonder why I felt the impulse to chronicle it all, and I think it must have been because I felt hollow and insubstantial, and hoped that putting my experience onto a page might help to prove, if only to myself, that it was real.

Star of the day. . .Robert S., one of the forgotten--a nice one