January 16, 1968

What's wrong? I've got a problem with Fr. William. I turned in the report and everything is fine on that level, but something is wrong. He can't stand me for some reason and I know what it is. He sees only my plaster face, but doesn't know me. My plaster face consists of all the idiotic and assinine things I do and say. I talk, socially, too loud and too much about the wrong things. I make a complete fool of myself. He sees it and hates it because I can't talk seriously to anybody. That's it. I'm a buffoon in pointed cap and bells. A hollow man, in the social sense.

I don't know what I'm going to do. I've got to change somehow. Goodnight.

January 17, 1968

Today's Wednesday. It's pretty late. I just got back from a history review for the semester exam. We reviewed from about 7 to 9 and played basketball 'til about 10:30. I don't know what force moved me to the sudden athletics, because I usually avoid them. But tonight, for some reason, I played basketball, and wasn't very bad either. I had to play bare-footed though and my feet hurt. That's the sum total of my evening. The day was like a sandwich. Tests in the morning, loafing in the afternoon, and studying at night.

Another thing, I got a B on the last two abstracts I did. That includes the one I faked. I've got a B average and my semester grade depends on the exam. Somehow I don't expect it to be very easy. The only grade I know is Trig, and that's not counting the exam I took for it today. The average for the second quarter is C. If I bombed the test...

I finally finished "Vietnam" by Mary McCarthy. I've had it for a month or two, but haven't had much time lately. She presents a very convincing argument. The last chapter just about sums up the dilema of both critics and advocates of the war: there are no clear cut solutions. McCarthy proposes a gradual withdrawal and in doing so she admits that she is no expert and cannot submit a step by step descalation. This willingness to admit "non-expertise" on the subject is something I have found very rarely in my reading. I'm quickly being pushed from the middle of the road onto the anti-war side, but I like to think I don't do this for purely emotional reasons. I think the war is wrong, but that's not going to end it. More fighting isn't going to end it. It seems that many people are trying to justify the war in their minds, but this is very shallow. Anyhow my opinion doesn't matter that much. I don't have a direct line to the White House. I've just been thinking about it.

January 18, 1968

Thursday. I took a Sociology test today. It was very simple, and very bad. It didn't cover a thing we had taken during the year. Apparently, Mr. Gannon didn't feel like making up a new test.

I'm really writing this on Friday, because I stayed up 'til three o'clock studying history at Tom Musich's house. We tried to cover the things that would be on the test, and it took awhile. We didn't really get started until 11 because we played some basketball after the history session at J.C.

The day was filled with study. Nothing else had time to happen. That history test is really going to be something. I don't have any way of knowing what its going to be like.

I'm going through a corrugated box stage right now. I feel like I'm in a huge one. Things are happening around me, but my own thoughts are so tangled I don't know what I'm doing.

January 19,1968

I am one great damn fool. That is my candid opinion of myself. I'd like to think otherwise, but I can't argue with the facts. I have no purpose. i do nothing very well. As is by now most evident, I have no writing talent to speak of.

I I I I I. I'm obsessed with myself. yes, I too have a mental condition. Insanity is right up my alley.

If I was a good poet I could write a piece about how I feel now. But I'm not. I can only mumble on with my half-ideas and stunted adjectives.

Don't pay any attention to me. I'm on a binge of some sort. It'll wear away, when I stop thinking.

It's getting pretty late. the sounds of the furnace, the blood in my head rushing in its futile course. No progress is made at night, with the black canvas covering our eyes. We can only submit; some of us struggle for a while but soon we will see that it is useless. The dark is a shallow, yet unfathomable, mystery. Is the night only in our minds? Do we see only when we think of brilliance? Are the sordid things to be overlooked, for fear of the shadow inside? In our search, my search, for the answers I stumble and thrash about beneath that black canvas. The world doesn't fit like it used to. There is no silent understanding between myself and the darkness. I can only see the hand in front of my face. I don't understand a thing. To put this briefly, "What's it all about? What am I supposed to do?"

Looking back on all that I have written in the recent past, I can see only slop and nothing else. If I could, I would throw this diary into the fireplace right now. But we don't have a fireplace.

January 20, 1968

I saw "Bonnie and Clyde" tonight. Blood and hilarity, horror and split-second emotions; that's what it was. Greatness. From the very beginning of the show we are tensely aware that violence is in the making, but the attempt of Clyde to hold up a bank that had gone broke put us at our ease. We next saw him robbing another bank in a somewhat hilarious manner, the audience was rolling; and then Clyde shot a man in the face. The blood spattered the broken glass of the car window and gushed from the man's face. silence. I think one lady screamed, but I'm not sure. this switch had stripped out gears. We sat and felt our raw nerves struggling to hold all sense of sanity within us. The scene in front of us changed. We too find ourselves sweating in the flimsy theater with Clyde, C.W., and Bonnie. We knew the winds of fate had set in, the course was spread before us. The blood, the death, the morbid comedy that still lingered. From this first encounter with violence the movie becomes tainted with the red scent of bullets piercing human flesh and shattering bones.

The characters in the movie will undoubtably be nominated for Academy awards, and with some luck might even win some. If I've made it to look like a great and gory free-for-all, I've been misleading. The depth of character and the involvement with one another is almost impossible to beat.

I could go on all night. I was very impressed. I think the movie deserves everything good that it can get. The acting was excelent, the photography unflawed. It's one of the greatest movies I've ever seen, and yet I hesitate to call it great. There is something about it that just defies description.

I'm being yelled at to go to bed now. It's late. A Walter Kerr I am not, but I know when a movie is good and when one stinks. Goodnight.

January 21, 1968

Sunday. The two big things that happened today were 1) going to church, and 2) going to Motel Rossi to swim. Church is always a big thing because it's usually the only thing I do on Sunday. The swimming is something I didn't do. The rest of the family went in, I said I had a cold and coughed a few times to get my point across. i didn't feel like swimming, that's all; but to tell them that wouldn't do me any good.

I've been thinking about "Bonnie and Clyde". My pseudo-critical mind has decided that this film's major claim to greatness lies in it's ability to keep two separate levels apart from each other. Like separating milk and cream, the film suceeded in alienating humor and horror. To say that there is any comic relief in the movie is an error, because humor is not used to ease tension, nor is it used to heighten it.

If that makes any sense, there it is. I could talk more, but it will get me nowhere. So I wont.

That's about the sum total of today. I'll probably go to work at the library tomorrow, and life will go on and on and on and on and on and on forever. What a hell this is. Hell is where nothing is everything.

It's late. Bon soir.

January 22, 1968

This has ben a very dopey day. I went to work and came home and here I am. Things are the same at the library; I hate my bosses and they like me. One of these days I'm going to strangle Josephine. It's not that she's really bad, she just forgets that anyone else exists once she opens her mouth.

I've been spending money like crazy. I've gotten into the habit of buying a book or magazine every day. I've got about five books right now that I've hardly even opened.

Right now there's a pale glow coming from behind the closed draperies. If this was a horror movie I'd expect a hunchbacked figure to pass in front of it, but no such thing. Only the pale light that will always be there. Funny, that light is always just where you don't expect it. Goodnight.

January 23, 1968

Went to school today. Things are the same. My long-running problem is still in the race. The finish line had better e near, because I can't take much more.

We're taking J. Alfred's Love song in English. It's sickening. It's too realistic. Everything of Eliot's that I've read has a strange quality that transforms my mind into a heaving dung heap. I can see he knew what he was doing, and he probably did it well, but it is not beautiful. His poetry is more of a depressant than a stimulant. He doesn't put me to sleep, he just drags me down into the depths of me.

There's not much else to say. All I can do is think. Inside me there is a big empty space. You know what I say? I say that death is the ultimate turning towards oneself. When we die we fold inward and understand everything. That's neat. Goodnight.

January 24, 1968

It gets very boring, having to say that it was a typical day today. There should be something else to say for a start, but I've yet to find it.

Wednesday. Blah-blah. I guess I should say, in all honesty, that nothing happened today. It might sound like an excuse, but its not (today anyway). I went through all the required exercises of humanity and apparently survived. There's really nothing to say tonight. Goodnight.

January 25, 1968

Mary Kay was here tonight. She brought her cousin, Billy, with her. He's a little brat, but a nice kid. (A note to my reader: Dear reader, you met Mary Kay the other day at the hospital; whether you knew it or not.) Her grandmother is in the hospital again.

I haven't gone to see Fr. Gerry yet. I hope it will be sometime during the next week.

I wish I was a pair of ragged claws scuttling across the floors of silent seas. Things would be so simple. I sound just like J. Alfred, don't I. Although I despise that poem, I can't get it out of my head. The nightmarish image that it projects is engraved upon my soul. I'm branded. I hope its only temporary,

If I didn't have to write this diary and had started it in a voluntary way, it would be where we are now. It would have ended after the third day or so. I don't know what I'll do when I don't have to write it. Maybe I'll keep it up; maybe we'll part as friends or enemies. I don't know.

I'm sitting here. I can't help wondering where I'll be a year from now, 365 days can mean so much. There are things to do, and if they don't get done the life of T.J.M. becomes a nightmare of broken glass and the weeds I trampled when I was a little kid. Don't pay any attention. Nobody else does. Goodnight.

January 26, 1968

Friday. This has been a pretty average day. In the past twenty-four hours I have learned very little. they've been a waste. I wish I could recall them when I have something to do.

There's a book out about McLuhan. It's called "McLuhan, Hot & Cool". Its a collection of various peoples' interpretations of him. pretty good. It gives a pretty fair picture of what this "oracle of our global village" is all about. he is extremely interesting.

I worked tonight. Nothing happened. Its getting pretty boring. All the Eleanor Rigbys in the world work there.

January 27, 1968

Catholic High played Lockport Central tonight. It was the only game I have ever become wrapped up in - basketball that is. As a rule, I loathe basketball; but this was the exception. I won fifty cents on it. I made the bet even though at the time I was sure we'd lose. That's school loyalty?

We called Fr. Gerry after the game, just to see how he was. He was in the mood which was expected. Triumphant. I don't know when I'm ever going to see him. he'll probably be out before I find the time.

The seminary is bothering me. I've got to see Fr. Bill. He's got a pretty lopsided opinion of me, but I can't blame him. I'm such a fool. I'm beginning to think that everyone in town knows I want to go to the seminary. although I said I wanted to go quite a while ago, I didn't really decide 'til about a month or three weeks ago. i told my parents, and now the whole stinking town knows.

I never get the opportunity to talk to Fr. Bill. He never stands still. If I did get he chance I don't really know what I'd say. Things are pretty gloomy right now.

January 28, 1968

Went to church today. That's all.

I saw the "Ship of Fools" on T.V. It was O.K. In fact, it turned me on. Michael Dunne, the dwarf, was great. Sometimes I think there are some things that I don't understand. Yes, there are a lot of things I don't know about. Like other people. I pretty well know what I'm all about, but people are a strange experience.

There are times when I just feel like talking, but no one is ever around. I need somebody to talk with, who will talk back to me. Things need to be opened up. Everything is impossible for me. There are many times when I think there is no future for me. I am less useful than a speck of dust curled in a corner. There's got to be an end somewhere, or maybe a beginning. Something. Goodnight.

January 29, 1968

Monday is the day when headlights are overly-apparent. In this totally uneventful day, there are some things that are dying. Like the light. Rage rage against the dying of the light. Wise men at their end know dark is right, but they can't cross the path without tears of some sort, because we're human.

The above paragraph is totally undecipherable, to all but myself. Isn't it funny. I can write something and no one else can tell what it is. this is the one power I hold over myself. I can mystify my mind with phrases squeezed from my head. And they don't mean a thing. Abstractions without interpretations, symbols without keys.

The world has finally gotten to me. I think I've reached my river. To cross or to drown. I've changed, but not that anyone would notice. I have a persecution complex. No one notices me, because I don't count. I'm an unperson, I'm wallowing in self-pity.

There are so many assinine things in this world. I'm not going through a phase because things are too permanent. I've got to stop. I'm going crazy.

None of this makes any sense. A communications expert I am not.

It might straighten out, but not by itself.

January 30, 1968

Isn't it funny. I can make, or not make, a decision at the age of 17 and it will have the most painful affect on my life thirty years from now. It's unfair, cruel. it breaks my rules. Bad things don't happen to me; at least disastrous things don't. They aren't going very well. I can't just sit the storm through. Action must be taken. "Start the process moving." Hell, this place is foul.

No one exists in this world other than the great, but cowering, self. Self must fend for its own honor and progress. Self can only die from natural causes. The selves all over are intent upon progress and well being. They straighten the forms and files and take care of their personal business. They will get along, and other selves are expected to do the same.

I'm in pretty bad shape. "Lament in rhyme, lament in prose,/ Wi' saut tears trickling down your nose;/Our bardie's fate is at a close,/Past a remead!/The lost sad cape-stone o' his woes;/Poor Mailie's dead!" That is what I feel. I ran across it in a book of poems by Robert Burns. He's excellent for moods. I think I'll take him up.

Right now I feel like calling myself an ass, but that will solve no part of my problems. I'm in a very bad way. Every breath I take is burdened with the stench of duty. I must...I must...I must. I can't.

Pressure, pressure, everywhere.
With sea and earth eroding
Pressure pressure all around
Now mind and skin exploding.

What the hell am I supposed to do? He hasn't been of much help lately. I'm thinking that he might have gotten off three blocks back.

Incoherence. g.n.

January 31, 1968

Something's wrong with my tooth. I think I broke it. I'm going to the dentist tommorrow.

I got my report card yesterday. My B average remains intact. The A in English balanced off the C in Trig.

As is probably evident (by reading the last few days) I'm very mixed up and very gloomy. Moods, darkness, are my specialty nowadays. I've been thinking too much recently. The more I think, the less I do. I rationalize and before I can do anything, the telephonepole is become a toothpick (and a very poor one at that.).

Mr. Edwards died last night. He's been our neighbor for eight years. A wife, three kids, cancer. That simple. His wife is being kind of strange about it all. I guess it can do that. She wont accept the fact that he's dead, or something like that.

Things are going to be kind of hectic for the next few days.