old guys with beards, 60's haircuts and thick black glasses, haven't changed their style in 40 years. it's so strange -- if these people had any idea what i did last night, what my life is like...

when i stare off into space i always have the same expression on my face. the feeling i associate with that expression is "fatalistic."

more important than avoiding addiction is avoiding the trap of losing interest and enthusiasm for everything else. and i have to fight that whether i'm high or not, addicted or not.. i can't let ME slip away. it's like when gabe went to spain for a month, or when he broke up with me, and i'd make lists of things to do -- partly to keep my mind off him, but partly to regain an identity separate from my fixation on him. those "things to do" lists i made to get over him are so idyllic. have a picnic, sew a dress, make books, ride bike somewhere new, etc. i should make one of those lists again.

but with heroin, there is no forced separation, everything is within my power. this is a problem i never foresaw -- something harder than healing a broken heart.

even now i don't believe this is really happening to me, it doesn't feel real. i've never encountered something i couldn't conquer. maybe i kept looking for something that could break me until i found it.

i can't remember when donna realized that addiction and lying are two sides of the same coin. addiction is lying to yourself. what you "should" be doing is the lie, what you give in to is the addiction. i always construct these barriers between me and heroin, when i'm talking to people who are worried about me, or in my head. of course i won't do it, because he's not doing it, and i can't get it myself, i can't do it by myself, and here are all the details of why i can't do it by myself, etc etc. so that even if i wanted to -- and i don't -- i just couldn't do it! so stop worrying.

in order to be free i have to be able to watch someone shooting up and not want it. those physical barriers are meaningless, in fact, they just make it more pleasurable when i give in. the more you tell yourself you won't do it the better it feels. that's why it's so fucked, because the harder you try to stop the more incentive you have to give in.

today after work c. and i drove to some river about an hour from here and walked along the river bed on rocks. we watched frogs mating, one frog on top of the other in the shallow water. there were 3 pairs within a few feet from each other. i took pictures of the clear water and mountains. everything never ceases to amaze me..

the problem is, i've never had to teach myself to deny a desire, besides when it was forced on me when gabe left me. it's kind of like trying to amputate part of my body. in order to erase desire i have to erase the root of the desire, which seems to run deep.

archaic torso of apollo, by rilke

We cannot know his legendary head
with eyes like ripening fruit. And yet his torso
is still suffused with brilliance from inside,
like a lamp, in which his gaze, now turned to low,

gleams in all its power. Otherwise
the curved breast could not dazzle you so, nor could
a smile run through the placid hips and thighs
to that dark center where procreation flared.

Otherwise this stone would seem defaced
beneath the translucent cascade of the shoulders
and would not glisten like a wild beast's fur: