Going Through Some Stuff.

Work these days consists mostly of poring over journals and correspondence, drawings, drafts, and manuscripts from the first half of the 1980s. And then feeling a bit nauseous and sad the rest of the day. Maybe the nausea is a side effect of the vaccine, I don’t know. But the sadness is not, not a medical side effect is what I mean, but I did start crying out of the blue on my walk home after I got the shot.

The big overall impression I get from this look back at my early twenties is how insanely precarious life was: practically and financially, artistically, emotionally and psychologically, physically. Jesus Christ. It’s just falling in love with every man who says hello, suicidal breakups, crazy druggy days and nights, losing jobs every other week and job hunting and quitting jobs and moving, and getting sick getting sick, making art and questioning it TO DEATH. And all that stuff is just the background for a wild life of incredible freedom and fun, ecstasy, abandon in a neighborhood that is vibrating with it all day every day.

Looking at all the ephemera from that time is disorienting and to say the least emotionally complicated. It’s a lot to process, but process I will! For my birthday, Chan gave me a week’s retreat in a cabin in the Adirondacks to write. Work here at home is going well and steadily, but it’ll be great to be alone with it for a chunk of time.