31 July
Journée longue et dificile, mais fini gràce à dieu. Longue période de frustration accomplie. Incapable d’aider, la maladie exige que je m’y resigne, le déclin d’un ami, l’attente trop longue. La première crise passée. Mais certainement d’autres attend. Longue périodes entre le jour de découverte et le jour de son mort—un deuil impossible.
3 August
A drop in the bucket. Emotional chaos. Nothing. What I was feeling Saturday returns again today. Resenting the absence of support when I need it. Feeling abandoned with a dying man. These moments of complete despair that always seem to be spent alone. The cave, the grave. The human condition, to face oneself alone in the world. Oh god, why hast thou forsaken me?
3 September
Return to the city. Little if anything new. Back in the seedy, marginal Mission. Back to the routines of French-American. All the old formulas, pursuits of futility. Waiting for the escape to fiction.
19 October
Whereas some will celebrate their union with a marriage, a child, we will celebrate ours only with a funeral? Bitter? Perhaps. Trying hard not to be so bitter to begrudge others their marriages and births. Forgive us all our human condition.
Journal entries, summer and autumn 1988
rlboyington 