Thursday, November 17, 3:18 p.m.

I berate myself yet idolize those who live(d) as I do: loitering in the imagination, full of longing, possessed of a fugitive beauty, spot on about everything yet helpless to themselves, addicted, self-conscious and eloquent, broke, funny, warm as paving bricks under a June sun.

Brought so low by time that death is just a single step across a narrow stream. The crossing of a lowercase 't.' One cigarette away.

Tuesday, November 15, 2:20 p.m.

A blog, a video or two, and a thousand throwaway Facebook remarks later, I return to my black diary. I had consigned these episodes to my chronic drinking. But now, two months sober, I find I still slip into them: moments of complete devastation, anger, and terrible sadness. There is no rock too small for me to crawl under. I am ashamed of everything I have ever said. I am embarrassed to still be alive. [This holds for me, in general. I have a lot of things, but I have not established credibility in life, and I often feel "blown away" by stronger, more established personalities. But, you know, screw 'em. It's a big planet.]

Monday, August 22, 11:00 a.m.

It's never that you love them less. It's the certainty that they love you less. The love of others disappears pint by pint, like blood.

Friday, June 30, 10:55 p.m.

In the end, I'm afraid it's only me who most appreciated my creative work. So often in life I have doubted myself, but never my good taste.

Friday, June 24, 1:15 p.m.

The beginning of creativity is in limitation. When you have reduced the horizon to those elements you must work with, then your journey begins.

Wednesday, June 8, 11:25 a.m.

I'm where my friends go in times of weakness, because I am the face and the eloquence of suffering. I'm the Cartier of sadness.

But that's usually as far as it goes.

Wednesday, May 18, 10:53 a.m.

I can only make art when I'm excited. I have to get junked up on style. On memory. On my life's fabulous wreckage.

Tuesday, May 10, 3:24 p.m.

A person who struggles with depression is one who alternately sets fire to his own house, then throws buckets of water on it. There is a tremendous anger and resentment, followed by a desperate campaign to assuage.

The individual who lives through this process learns to look only for kindness, as companionship is impossible.

Tuesday, April 26, 1:50 p.m.

Grief is the ultimate suffering.

Wednesday, March 9, 1:36 p.m.

The personality is too often the worst place, the most frightening. Occasionally, thank God, it is sometimes the most consoling.

Thursday, February 3, 9:06 a.m.

The best days are when you find a story, a personality, a place to explore. One that modulates the sun like a large, colorful umbrella. [Still two of my favorite sentences.]

Thursday, January 27, 12:08 p.m.

My God! I thought good taste would set me apart.

Sunday, January 23, 6:42 a.m.

Wallace Stevens wrote about Sunday morning. I'd love to do a black companion to it, about being awake before dawn on a bitterly cold Sunday in January. Only now the sky outside these windows begins to be bluer than this page.

But in fact the nerves are not lined up for any creative work lately, beyond gasping and stuttering my way through a few Beethoven sonatas. Occasionally, I just remove the sign above my own shop, acknowledging myself to be average in every respect. Holding a ticket with just another number printed on it.

Wednesday, January 12, 11:42 a.m.

This spring it will be nine years since my mother died. I think, "It's time to leave the cemetery." But two hours later, drying a pot with one of her sentimental kitchen towels, I am wounded afresh.

She never reappeared, tapping a cigarette pack like a baby's bottom or daubing at her hair in the rear view mirror, despite my drunken prayers. Her brown kid leather driving gloves sleep spoon fashion in my top drawer like tabbies. I cannot waken them.

I still hear her voice in the bones of my skull, despite the amputation. The end of my own life will come quietly, by comparison.

Sunday, January 2, 8:53 a.m.

I began this diary the summer my beloved uncle died, because I was hanging around with some of the others cleaning up the house and discovered that, at least some of the time, they enjoyed my company. That introduced a new and entirely unfamiliar voice in my head, one that suggested perhaps I had some worth beyond my extinguished sexual assets. This diary became a dialogue between two different points of view: pleasure and despair.

Like the technician I am, I maintain it chiefly to catch some perfect miniatures: brief moments of crystal-clear observation. I truly look forward to those this year.

My eyes were always the best thing about me.