May 8, 1982
8:20 A.M.
Good morning! I’m up already. I can’t wait to tell you things. I feel garrulous today. First of all, I think there might be something wrong with my stomach and I think I know what it is. It’s junk food because I get headaches also. Its milk and chocolate and sugar. I never got into junk-food. It’s gross! I’m not going to worry about it. I just will try not to eat that shit. But it’s just that I have been so uncomfortable. I’ve had an on-going stomachache all week. It couldn’t be that wonderful pot though. I have pains now. Oh well, I’m not seriously ill and I could really give two shits. Last Saturday or something, I wished I could get so bothered that it would affect my insides. Maybe I’m getting my wish. Maybe it will get really bad so I can’t attend school. Then I will really lose weight. But I don’t care now. I was just feeling sick again. Anyway, about yesterday. At 3:00 P.M., Mr. Ambrose took me, Ellen, Jed, Sheila, Melissa, Dan and Camile to Kean’s Library on Mrs. C’s card. I took two books out. Sheila was nice to me. We met her aunt there – Elizabeth Huberman – chairman of the English Dept. at Kean. I told her I recognized her. She asked from where and I told her that I recognized her from Kean’s first annual English Career Symposium. If there is another next year, I’m definitely going, even if I have to go alone – I’m going. I think that thing really change a few ideas I had about English majors. I never did want to be one. My mother used to say to me, “Why don’t you be an English major?” And I would put my foot down saying I couldn’t be something so boring. But I didn’t know, and besides, there is nothing I can be. All I like is reading, writing and art. Any human invention, anything, is art to me. From Natasha’s drawings to Nathaniel Hawthorne. And there is a lot between. There are all the musicians including the Beatles, there are the visual artists like Michelangelo and Gaughin to Miss Goldman’s art classes, there are the scientists (Newton’s invention of the calculus is art to me). There is Ford, The Wright Brothers, and Alexander Graham Bell who built little machines. There are the sculptors, architects, and teachers and of course the performing artists like Beverly Sills and Leslie Brown, and Bette Davis, Vivien Leigh and Katharine Hepburn. (I’d like to be able to say this all very well. I could probably write a beautiful essay about my appreciation of the arts). What an individual does with their mind fascinates me. There are the writers, millions of writers, even my mother who kept a diary of Europe. I never knew that until I found it in her drawer. She’s not like me, but for some reason, she wanted to record her excursion to Europe, on paper, in words, probably so she’s never forget. Of course, not many people would forget their first trip to Europe (and she lived 2 months in Rome and an overall 5 in Europe). But recording it! Whatever inside a person pushes to record in words must mean something special about what is desired to be remembered in that way. Of course there are photos. I like pictures also, but I’d write about the pictures too. I keep records so I can tell my children one day and also for myself. There is me, I’m a writer. I think I am. I hope I am. I write, I enjoy it, I look forward to it, I’m compelled at times. I need lots of practice of course but I hope everything I feel about writing is true. And besides, who can I tell this to? Who cares about my immature opinions about art? I can only write about them to myself and I want to become so very good at it! I want to become a good writer. I remember my early stages of writing. From first to fourth grade, my teachers praised my writing. I had a good imagination. I loved writing then also. I remember enjoying writing my little stories (and I have only one from that time in my life, the rest must have been discarded). I remember getting involved with them and I remember getting my good ideas and getting excited about them. I may seem like I really was a writer because I really could get into it sometimes, even then, before the age of 10. The summer between 4th and 5th grade, I was into letter writing. Going away to sleep away camp, I was not aware that people write letters when they depart their loved ones. But oh, do I know that now! I plan to be a big letter writer! My mother informed me of this practice. She gave me a stenographer’s pad to write letters on. How queer! But it’s cute. I noticed that everyone in my cabin had pretty stationary and I wanted some also. I don’t know if I wrote too many letters at camp that summer, but I do remember that I didn’t receive any mail the first week at camp. The second Saturday, I got my first letter from my mother. I was so happy I cried. After camp, I had my grandfather buy me stationary at Walden (I wonder if that’s named after Thoreau’s Walden?) book store in Livingston Mall. I was so taken by all the pretty boxes of stationary. Especially the Snoopy stuff. He must have bought me a new box every week. I still have some from 7 years ago. I didn’t write too many letters with the stationary but for camp the following year I had plenty of stationary. Somewhere along the way I got a diary. I felt really funny about writing things. I don’t know if I bought the diary or if my mother gave it to me or someone, but I got one. It was one of those pink things with exactly 365 pages, already dated, with a Holly Hobbie on it. I hated Holly Hobbies!! It had a lock on it too. It was dumb. There wasn’t even a lot of room to write on. But now I had this ugly plastic and paper thing with a stupid Holly Hobbies surrounded by a gingham pattern and saying “My Diary.” That turned me off. I was not aware at 10 that I shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. But I have this notebook here, which I think is more beautiful. (Note to self: insert picture). Anyway, I remember wanting to start a diary to record the events of my day. I think that may have been the only reason. But I was so shy about having a diary. I thought it to be extremely personal, and I was inhibited about writing one, and conscious about what people thought I would be writing about. (Now I don’t worry. I could be writing about anything, which I am now, and no one knows what I’m writing about). So I started my first attempt at a diary on September 1, 1975. I wrote in it that night, maybe the next night, and by the 9th, I was trying to catch up on all the days I didn’t write. I was compulsive about writing in it everyday. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t write in it at all. And I eventually gave up, but it only took a few days. I was afraid to write anything personal. I think I understand why, at that age, but I really can’t explain it. Now I will write about whatever the hell I feel like writing. If this were read by strange hands and I were confronted by the accuracy of all this, I could easily lie. Just because I write my honesties and confessions and truths does not mean that I must admit to them to people. I could say this is all a lie, and I could write lies just as well as the truth. (It may be more difficult, but it is possible). My book is not a piece of evidence for anything. Just because, for example, I say I smoked pot, and my mother read this, that is no proof at all. I’d only be worried if this were read, and then misunderstood, even with me being so utterly honest in my book. If read and understood, then I wouldn’t mind, because I know that those who understand this, will not judge this. I don’t even know if I’d like this to be analyzed by my psychiatrist. Maybe by a dear friend, if I have one. Maybe by Mrs. Chasan, but only if she could take all the things I say about her. I don’t know. I would hope so, but I can’t say. I really, really would hope so. If Mrs. Chas an could accept all the things I say about her, that means she would understand and she wouldn’t get nervous about it, or take it wrong, or hate me, or criticize me, or ridicule me, and she could look at my fondness for her objectively, or subjectively if she really understood the simple fondness I have for her at my tender age. But, back to my first diary. It never turned into a diary. I just couldn’t’ write one. Another attempt at writing was in the 6th grade. I was on a church trip in Philadelphia. I kept a 49 cent little pad and wrote in it all through Philadelphia. I loved it! It was so much fun to write in! I hated the kids I was with. They were rotten. I had Elaine with me. What I wrote wasn’t really personal so I could let her read it. I think I wrote only 15 little pages, sloppy, big, and not a lot. But I remember I let a Vail-Deane senior read it. She was on my bus and I liked her. She was interested in it. Seventh grade, in English, we had two short story writing assignments. I got an A and an A- on them. Mr. Viall liked my writing. 8th grade, got B’s on everything I wrote. 9th grade, got C’s on everything I wrote. 10th grade, bad also, until the middle of April, when I decided to pick myself up a bit. One night I was at Ellen’s and we had to write a sequel to “The Man Who Liked Dickens” by Evelyn Waugh. I got so into it. I accounted it for Ellen’s intellectual stimulation. What a surprise that must have been to Mrs. Chasan (my English teacher). She gave me an A/A. I was even surprised! And a nice comment. I remember Ellen reading it the night I wrote it. She said it was excellent and didn’t know I could write so well. She told Mrs. Chasan it was good. (Right now I can’t get last year out of my mind. I never spoke to Mrs. Chasan from December on until May. I remember going up to her in homeroom one morning, Thursday, May 26, 1981, and asking if I could talk to her later on. She was obliged. I remember later that day becoming depressed and thinking that maybe I wouldn’t want to talk to her. Before that I was feeling better and that’s why I wanted to talk to her. When I saw her 8th period, the time we decided we would meet, I was depressed and nervous. I was going to apologize to her for being rotten to her. I just didn’t like her all of a sudden. She never did anything to me. I liked her before, but when I became such a mess, I didn’t want her sympathy. I don’t know why. But now I’ll take it. She was surprised that morning that I wanted to talk to her. She was curious about what. When she came in 8th, a little late, she told the boys to leave. She told me to sit down. I didn’t know how long we would talk. I expected just a short time. I knew what I wanted to say, I was going to say it, but glibly, like I had thought about it, but of course I would be sincere. I always, always am with people I respect. She asked me what I wanted to see her about. But it was like all the coldness she had developed towards me all year had suddenly become softened or something. It broke my concentration, I think, because I became vulnerable to that. Not that I was going to be cold because I wouldn’t be cold to someone who I’ve already hurt and my intentions were apologies. So, my wall that I was going to keep, suddenly broke. I became dizzy, I remember, and limp, just like the day Barbara told me my mother was very ill, and the day my hairdresser decided to talk to me about my mother getting married, and the time Mrs. Chasan asked me what I had been drinking, and the time Mrs. Chasan confronted me in December about her being worried about me. That was an uncomfortable time. I didn’t want to talk to her. I was afraid to. She was really, really nice to me too. She told me she was worried about me. I had changed my attitude towards her at that time. I just couldn’t talk to her. I’m sorry about that. So I became limp and vulnerable to rejection already. I could feel it from her first words to me. All she said was to have a seat and asked me why I wanted to talk to her. It’s just me. I told her I wanted to apologize for being mean to her all year. I looked at her slightly when I said that. Her face changed. She took my hand and she was so happy to hear that! Oh, I could just cry now, if we could ever have another moment like that again! No, of course I’d never be mean to her again. I suppose this is exactly why I write about Mrs. Chasan, so I can relive the moments with her. The bad ones I write about too, because they get me upset and I have nobody to cry to or talk to about why I’m upset. Besides no one would understand why I should get so upset when Mrs. Chasan doesn’t say hello to me or good-bye. So, that day (5-26-81), we continued talking for hours. She started off being sympathetic, which I really, really needed, but towards the end, I was just depressed. Probably not her fault, everything is my fault anyway, but I wish I could have told her she was upsetting me. I know that I had upset her a lot that year. But I could not imagine that Mrs. Chasan would ever want to hurt me unless “there is within her, a knot of cruelty, born by the stream of love” (from the “scarlet Ibis – ninth grade English). Anyway, I had let down my wall for her, for the first time all year, because I wanted her understanding, but I ended up feeling rejected. (She said to me last Friday that maybe she was an obstacle for me. Shows insight on her part, but I don’t want anything like that to be so, all I want is her help). I don’t remember how things were between us after that. She did one nice thing for me before school ended, two weeks after our talk. She invited me to go with her to school for Chris’ excursion. But I didn’t go and neither did she. She said she called me once that summer but I wasn’t home. I do wish to God that I had spoken to her. But when I break my wall, so to speak, it’s like breaking everything I have, there is no strength left in me and I forget. I become a mush. If people open up to me, well, at first when Mrs. Chasan was so nice, she was opening herself up to a rejection (that was not my intention though fortunately for her, because she would have gotten hurt) that’s what I mean by opening up. She too had built up a wall from me. She let it go and then I let mine go, just like that. All she had to do was have a pinch of sympathy in her words, voice, actions, and I suppose therefore I detected it in her heart, and I immediately became a mush. My wall just fell, and I would be open to anything that may have sounded to me that I should take it personally. And it’s very hard to build up a wall when one is so vulnerable. I couldn’t’ do it then. I have a persecution complex my mother says. Back to writing. After the sequel, I turned in another good essay for 10th grade English. That was about it, and in my junior year, my writing is just satisfactory. I don’t think I care. Writing can be a difficult thing. You’ve got to know exactly what you are writing about, what you want to say. You’ve got to have the insight to do that and the imagination to make it interesting. Then you’ve got to have a talent at playing around with words and the English language. There are more things also, and I would like to continue to work at developing my writing skills. I want to be able to express myself in this way. It’s a quiet way to express myself, but I also like the stage, acting, drama, as a means of self-expression. I do need to express myself. Writing for personal reasons began in 9th grade History class. I always had that history notebook and pen sitting in front of me and I never used it. I couldn’t’ take notes. Instead I would doodle. Then I began to think about other things and write them down, but not in full sentences, in lists incorporated in the history discussion, and other ways. In 10th grade, the first time I ever wrote down how I felt was I think in Latin class. Maybe in September when I wrote a love letter to Ali in that class. But more often in February after my brief spell at home. I wrote my feelings down in my History notebook which had lots of room. Then I started writing on anything, at any time, and then I would write over the words and throw the papers out. They didn’t mean anything to me and I think I was still afraid that someone would read what I wrote. That’s all I wrote until after spring vacation that year. I got a notebook that I was going to use for anything and everything. I mostly wrote in it during Mr. Viall’s History class and eventually I started writing in it at home. I finished it in 2 months. That was my first notebook. My second notebook was going to be for the summer. I was also going to use it for an extra credit assignment for English. But I never wrote in it all summer long. When junior year started, I wrote in it and finished it recently. It covers mostly September to February but it has other dates in it and I don’t know if I like that book that much. My third book is my “Puerto Rican notebook,” it doesn’t’ have a lot of writing in it, just notes about the Catholic school. My fourth notebook I began for Washington and finished it in a week. It was my favorite. This is my fifth notebook, and I love it. I hope it lasts me through summer. At the rate I’m going, I’ll be lucky if it gets to June, but I know it will. I just have a lot to say. I’m not even that lonely, just garrulous today. So, along time ago, I was telling you about my evening and then I got into all this. After the library, Camile and I hung out together. We had a nice talk. Mish came by and rolled a joint for me so I could sell it to Camile (in the locker room). Then Lynn came down and invited us to go to the river with her to party. We took two cars. Dan and Jason in Dan’s car, and Lynn, Mary, Mish, Camile and I in Lynn’s car. We got so fucked-up by the river. It was great! We came back to school. Jed was so drunk. I got ready. When I finally got on stage, I messed up so bad! I can’t dance! I must have looked really dumb, but I won’t worry about it. I don’t really care. This morning I rolled 3 joints. They’re not that good, but they are my very first. This weekend is going to be good.
Good morning! I’m up already. I can’t wait to tell you things. I feel garrulous today. First of all, I think there might be something wrong with my stomach and I think I know what it is. It’s junk food because I get headaches also. Its milk and chocolate and sugar. I never got into junk-food. It’s gross! I’m not going to worry about it. I just will try not to eat that shit. But it’s just that I have been so uncomfortable. I’ve had an on-going stomachache all week. It couldn’t be that wonderful pot though. I have pains now. Oh well, I’m not seriously ill and I could really give two shits. Last Saturday or something, I wished I could get so bothered that it would affect my insides. Maybe I’m getting my wish. Maybe it will get really bad so I can’t attend school. Then I will really lose weight. But I don’t care now. I was just feeling sick again. Anyway, about yesterday. At 3:00 P.M., Mr. Ambrose took me, Ellen, Jed, Sheila, Melissa, Dan and Camile to Kean’s Library on Mrs. C’s card. I took two books out. Sheila was nice to me. We met her aunt there – Elizabeth Huberman – chairman of the English Dept. at Kean. I told her I recognized her. She asked from where and I told her that I recognized her from Kean’s first annual English Career Symposium. If there is another next year, I’m definitely going, even if I have to go alone – I’m going. I think that thing really change a few ideas I had about English majors. I never did want to be one. My mother used to say to me, “Why don’t you be an English major?” And I would put my foot down saying I couldn’t be something so boring. But I didn’t know, and besides, there is nothing I can be. All I like is reading, writing and art. Any human invention, anything, is art to me. From Natasha’s drawings to Nathaniel Hawthorne. And there is a lot between. There are all the musicians including the Beatles, there are the visual artists like Michelangelo and Gaughin to Miss Goldman’s art classes, there are the scientists (Newton’s invention of the calculus is art to me). There is Ford, The Wright Brothers, and Alexander Graham Bell who built little machines. There are the sculptors, architects, and teachers and of course the performing artists like Beverly Sills and Leslie Brown, and Bette Davis, Vivien Leigh and Katharine Hepburn. (I’d like to be able to say this all very well. I could probably write a beautiful essay about my appreciation of the arts). What an individual does with their mind fascinates me. There are the writers, millions of writers, even my mother who kept a diary of Europe. I never knew that until I found it in her drawer. She’s not like me, but for some reason, she wanted to record her excursion to Europe, on paper, in words, probably so she’s never forget. Of course, not many people would forget their first trip to Europe (and she lived 2 months in Rome and an overall 5 in Europe). But recording it! Whatever inside a person pushes to record in words must mean something special about what is desired to be remembered in that way. Of course there are photos. I like pictures also, but I’d write about the pictures too. I keep records so I can tell my children one day and also for myself. There is me, I’m a writer. I think I am. I hope I am. I write, I enjoy it, I look forward to it, I’m compelled at times. I need lots of practice of course but I hope everything I feel about writing is true. And besides, who can I tell this to? Who cares about my immature opinions about art? I can only write about them to myself and I want to become so very good at it! I want to become a good writer. I remember my early stages of writing. From first to fourth grade, my teachers praised my writing. I had a good imagination. I loved writing then also. I remember enjoying writing my little stories (and I have only one from that time in my life, the rest must have been discarded). I remember getting involved with them and I remember getting my good ideas and getting excited about them. I may seem like I really was a writer because I really could get into it sometimes, even then, before the age of 10. The summer between 4th and 5th grade, I was into letter writing. Going away to sleep away camp, I was not aware that people write letters when they depart their loved ones. But oh, do I know that now! I plan to be a big letter writer! My mother informed me of this practice. She gave me a stenographer’s pad to write letters on. How queer! But it’s cute. I noticed that everyone in my cabin had pretty stationary and I wanted some also. I don’t know if I wrote too many letters at camp that summer, but I do remember that I didn’t receive any mail the first week at camp. The second Saturday, I got my first letter from my mother. I was so happy I cried. After camp, I had my grandfather buy me stationary at Walden (I wonder if that’s named after Thoreau’s Walden?) book store in Livingston Mall. I was so taken by all the pretty boxes of stationary. Especially the Snoopy stuff. He must have bought me a new box every week. I still have some from 7 years ago. I didn’t write too many letters with the stationary but for camp the following year I had plenty of stationary. Somewhere along the way I got a diary. I felt really funny about writing things. I don’t know if I bought the diary or if my mother gave it to me or someone, but I got one. It was one of those pink things with exactly 365 pages, already dated, with a Holly Hobbie on it. I hated Holly Hobbies!! It had a lock on it too. It was dumb. There wasn’t even a lot of room to write on. But now I had this ugly plastic and paper thing with a stupid Holly Hobbies surrounded by a gingham pattern and saying “My Diary.” That turned me off. I was not aware at 10 that I shouldn’t judge a book by its cover. But I have this notebook here, which I think is more beautiful. (Note to self: insert picture). Anyway, I remember wanting to start a diary to record the events of my day. I think that may have been the only reason. But I was so shy about having a diary. I thought it to be extremely personal, and I was inhibited about writing one, and conscious about what people thought I would be writing about. (Now I don’t worry. I could be writing about anything, which I am now, and no one knows what I’m writing about). So I started my first attempt at a diary on September 1, 1975. I wrote in it that night, maybe the next night, and by the 9th, I was trying to catch up on all the days I didn’t write. I was compulsive about writing in it everyday. If I didn’t, I wouldn’t write in it at all. And I eventually gave up, but it only took a few days. I was afraid to write anything personal. I think I understand why, at that age, but I really can’t explain it. Now I will write about whatever the hell I feel like writing. If this were read by strange hands and I were confronted by the accuracy of all this, I could easily lie. Just because I write my honesties and confessions and truths does not mean that I must admit to them to people. I could say this is all a lie, and I could write lies just as well as the truth. (It may be more difficult, but it is possible). My book is not a piece of evidence for anything. Just because, for example, I say I smoked pot, and my mother read this, that is no proof at all. I’d only be worried if this were read, and then misunderstood, even with me being so utterly honest in my book. If read and understood, then I wouldn’t mind, because I know that those who understand this, will not judge this. I don’t even know if I’d like this to be analyzed by my psychiatrist. Maybe by a dear friend, if I have one. Maybe by Mrs. Chasan, but only if she could take all the things I say about her. I don’t know. I would hope so, but I can’t say. I really, really would hope so. If Mrs. Chas an could accept all the things I say about her, that means she would understand and she wouldn’t get nervous about it, or take it wrong, or hate me, or criticize me, or ridicule me, and she could look at my fondness for her objectively, or subjectively if she really understood the simple fondness I have for her at my tender age. But, back to my first diary. It never turned into a diary. I just couldn’t’ write one. Another attempt at writing was in the 6th grade. I was on a church trip in Philadelphia. I kept a 49 cent little pad and wrote in it all through Philadelphia. I loved it! It was so much fun to write in! I hated the kids I was with. They were rotten. I had Elaine with me. What I wrote wasn’t really personal so I could let her read it. I think I wrote only 15 little pages, sloppy, big, and not a lot. But I remember I let a Vail-Deane senior read it. She was on my bus and I liked her. She was interested in it. Seventh grade, in English, we had two short story writing assignments. I got an A and an A- on them. Mr. Viall liked my writing. 8th grade, got B’s on everything I wrote. 9th grade, got C’s on everything I wrote. 10th grade, bad also, until the middle of April, when I decided to pick myself up a bit. One night I was at Ellen’s and we had to write a sequel to “The Man Who Liked Dickens” by Evelyn Waugh. I got so into it. I accounted it for Ellen’s intellectual stimulation. What a surprise that must have been to Mrs. Chasan (my English teacher). She gave me an A/A. I was even surprised! And a nice comment. I remember Ellen reading it the night I wrote it. She said it was excellent and didn’t know I could write so well. She told Mrs. Chasan it was good. (Right now I can’t get last year out of my mind. I never spoke to Mrs. Chasan from December on until May. I remember going up to her in homeroom one morning, Thursday, May 26, 1981, and asking if I could talk to her later on. She was obliged. I remember later that day becoming depressed and thinking that maybe I wouldn’t want to talk to her. Before that I was feeling better and that’s why I wanted to talk to her. When I saw her 8th period, the time we decided we would meet, I was depressed and nervous. I was going to apologize to her for being rotten to her. I just didn’t like her all of a sudden. She never did anything to me. I liked her before, but when I became such a mess, I didn’t want her sympathy. I don’t know why. But now I’ll take it. She was surprised that morning that I wanted to talk to her. She was curious about what. When she came in 8th, a little late, she told the boys to leave. She told me to sit down. I didn’t know how long we would talk. I expected just a short time. I knew what I wanted to say, I was going to say it, but glibly, like I had thought about it, but of course I would be sincere. I always, always am with people I respect. She asked me what I wanted to see her about. But it was like all the coldness she had developed towards me all year had suddenly become softened or something. It broke my concentration, I think, because I became vulnerable to that. Not that I was going to be cold because I wouldn’t be cold to someone who I’ve already hurt and my intentions were apologies. So, my wall that I was going to keep, suddenly broke. I became dizzy, I remember, and limp, just like the day Barbara told me my mother was very ill, and the day my hairdresser decided to talk to me about my mother getting married, and the time Mrs. Chasan asked me what I had been drinking, and the time Mrs. Chasan confronted me in December about her being worried about me. That was an uncomfortable time. I didn’t want to talk to her. I was afraid to. She was really, really nice to me too. She told me she was worried about me. I had changed my attitude towards her at that time. I just couldn’t talk to her. I’m sorry about that. So I became limp and vulnerable to rejection already. I could feel it from her first words to me. All she said was to have a seat and asked me why I wanted to talk to her. It’s just me. I told her I wanted to apologize for being mean to her all year. I looked at her slightly when I said that. Her face changed. She took my hand and she was so happy to hear that! Oh, I could just cry now, if we could ever have another moment like that again! No, of course I’d never be mean to her again. I suppose this is exactly why I write about Mrs. Chasan, so I can relive the moments with her. The bad ones I write about too, because they get me upset and I have nobody to cry to or talk to about why I’m upset. Besides no one would understand why I should get so upset when Mrs. Chasan doesn’t say hello to me or good-bye. So, that day (5-26-81), we continued talking for hours. She started off being sympathetic, which I really, really needed, but towards the end, I was just depressed. Probably not her fault, everything is my fault anyway, but I wish I could have told her she was upsetting me. I know that I had upset her a lot that year. But I could not imagine that Mrs. Chasan would ever want to hurt me unless “there is within her, a knot of cruelty, born by the stream of love” (from the “scarlet Ibis – ninth grade English). Anyway, I had let down my wall for her, for the first time all year, because I wanted her understanding, but I ended up feeling rejected. (She said to me last Friday that maybe she was an obstacle for me. Shows insight on her part, but I don’t want anything like that to be so, all I want is her help). I don’t remember how things were between us after that. She did one nice thing for me before school ended, two weeks after our talk. She invited me to go with her to school for Chris’ excursion. But I didn’t go and neither did she. She said she called me once that summer but I wasn’t home. I do wish to God that I had spoken to her. But when I break my wall, so to speak, it’s like breaking everything I have, there is no strength left in me and I forget. I become a mush. If people open up to me, well, at first when Mrs. Chasan was so nice, she was opening herself up to a rejection (that was not my intention though fortunately for her, because she would have gotten hurt) that’s what I mean by opening up. She too had built up a wall from me. She let it go and then I let mine go, just like that. All she had to do was have a pinch of sympathy in her words, voice, actions, and I suppose therefore I detected it in her heart, and I immediately became a mush. My wall just fell, and I would be open to anything that may have sounded to me that I should take it personally. And it’s very hard to build up a wall when one is so vulnerable. I couldn’t’ do it then. I have a persecution complex my mother says. Back to writing. After the sequel, I turned in another good essay for 10th grade English. That was about it, and in my junior year, my writing is just satisfactory. I don’t think I care. Writing can be a difficult thing. You’ve got to know exactly what you are writing about, what you want to say. You’ve got to have the insight to do that and the imagination to make it interesting. Then you’ve got to have a talent at playing around with words and the English language. There are more things also, and I would like to continue to work at developing my writing skills. I want to be able to express myself in this way. It’s a quiet way to express myself, but I also like the stage, acting, drama, as a means of self-expression. I do need to express myself. Writing for personal reasons began in 9th grade History class. I always had that history notebook and pen sitting in front of me and I never used it. I couldn’t’ take notes. Instead I would doodle. Then I began to think about other things and write them down, but not in full sentences, in lists incorporated in the history discussion, and other ways. In 10th grade, the first time I ever wrote down how I felt was I think in Latin class. Maybe in September when I wrote a love letter to Ali in that class. But more often in February after my brief spell at home. I wrote my feelings down in my History notebook which had lots of room. Then I started writing on anything, at any time, and then I would write over the words and throw the papers out. They didn’t mean anything to me and I think I was still afraid that someone would read what I wrote. That’s all I wrote until after spring vacation that year. I got a notebook that I was going to use for anything and everything. I mostly wrote in it during Mr. Viall’s History class and eventually I started writing in it at home. I finished it in 2 months. That was my first notebook. My second notebook was going to be for the summer. I was also going to use it for an extra credit assignment for English. But I never wrote in it all summer long. When junior year started, I wrote in it and finished it recently. It covers mostly September to February but it has other dates in it and I don’t know if I like that book that much. My third book is my “Puerto Rican notebook,” it doesn’t’ have a lot of writing in it, just notes about the Catholic school. My fourth notebook I began for Washington and finished it in a week. It was my favorite. This is my fifth notebook, and I love it. I hope it lasts me through summer. At the rate I’m going, I’ll be lucky if it gets to June, but I know it will. I just have a lot to say. I’m not even that lonely, just garrulous today. So, along time ago, I was telling you about my evening and then I got into all this. After the library, Camile and I hung out together. We had a nice talk. Mish came by and rolled a joint for me so I could sell it to Camile (in the locker room). Then Lynn came down and invited us to go to the river with her to party. We took two cars. Dan and Jason in Dan’s car, and Lynn, Mary, Mish, Camile and I in Lynn’s car. We got so fucked-up by the river. It was great! We came back to school. Jed was so drunk. I got ready. When I finally got on stage, I messed up so bad! I can’t dance! I must have looked really dumb, but I won’t worry about it. I don’t really care. This morning I rolled 3 joints. They’re not that good, but they are my very first. This weekend is going to be good.
posted by Grand Inquisitor at 6:42 AM
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