Sunday, Jun. 29, 2003 - 8:42 p.m.

None of this matters. It will be gone soon anyway. This understanding of the essential impermanence of everything doesn't encourage me to be free. I am unaware of it at the moments when strength is required. I cannot embrace life. I can't release the little warmth within me.

I'm so incomplete. I'm three-quarters full of the stuff that makes a person. I am desirous and anguished and hopeful and despondent and dare do all that may become a man. Except speak. I am too often silent when words, when a word, is required. My symbol is absence, and when this absence is acknowledged the world frowns at me I shudder, like a coward.

I am absent at the key moments. When people need me I stare meekly ahead. My plans are mine, until they encounter the slightest difficulty - usually medical - after which their thoughts are transposed into the first notes of a requiem.

This fact that I am sick, will be sick forever, is a convenient crutch for me to stand on. It summarily explains everything that I lack in this life - a plan, a purpose, anything approaching a work ethic. I start, stop, start, abandon everything and begin again. And do it all too meekly. There is no gusto in my inconsistency.

Sometimes I want to curl up and disappear. To make the rings of Saturn my (to be sure) well-deserved halo. Does this have anything to do with my transforming the objects of my heart's affection into angels? They are endowed with all that I have not - endurance, human kindness, grace, eloquence, fundamental goodness. They don't just take up space.

The outer casing of my heart is a barren surface, but its inner environs is a damp home. Sprinkled by the sound of my footsteps, which produce tears in the gods whilst they look askance at their creation.

Where is my salvation? Not in God, but in Man. 'Woman', some friends might say snidely. I have a weakness for radiance and melody. And the harmony that 'spoons' produces.

Troilus

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