Autohagiography

Andropov is dead and buried, to be succeeded by Konstantin Chernenko; the Princess of Wales is expecting another baby; Torvill and Dean win gold at Sarajevo.

Life goes on, and the headlines have even less relevance to me here than they do at home. Lee went to College early by his standards, making quite a fuss over filling his flask etc., etc., and Pete was up and gone when I got up. I’ve passed the hours of daylight reading Aleister Crowley’s Autohagiography. I’ve been sleeping a lot lately: twelve hours a day is usual, and by the time I’m dressed and ready for the day the sun is already slipping from the sky and the wind growing chillier.

I’ve been having a lot of vivid dreams just lately, dreams that are impossible to capture accurately in words. One this morning was about my childhood; I was watching myself as a kid of about five or six, and nothing in particular happened, but the mood of the dream was very sad and this carried over to my frame of mind when I woke up.

I’ve found sufficient interest in the poems of William Carlos Williams to opt for him as choice for my American Studies Special Subject. My two hour tutorials are fatuous and weary, and seem of no importance whatsoever and make me believe I’m wasting my time. By Monday I have to have read Gone With The Wind and hand in a second essay for Mr. Pugh: I can’t think of a more worthless or fruitless book to read but, as I keep telling myself, there’s nothing I can do. I am in this until May 1985, another fifteen months at least.

I worry that when that time comes my problems will really start, for I’ll be cut loose and forced to rely on my own resources without even the façade of a degree course to shelter behind. The true nature of my problems will be revealed and I predict a desperate search that leads to bitter confusion and self-deceit. But I have a pessimistic tendency to project rash assumptions about myself far into the future without so much as an effort to prove them wrong. I don’t know what it is I’m after but I know I’m on my way.