Dead skin

Dissatisfaction, restlessness . . . I itch to do something but I don’t know what to do.

Lee rang at teatime from home and he’s calling here tomorrow at eleven. I went to Whincliffe today and at last worked out my way to the Cartbeck Army Surplus shop. I bought a pair of leather Luftwaffe gloves, a German military shirt and a great coat—a German one naturally—all for £19.99.

When I got home Dad had just got in, and in the evening we cleaned out the tank housing the young axolotls and separated them into two groups of equal sizes, twenty five darker (and stronger) specimens, and fifteen of their smaller, paler brethren: forty of the original fifty seven survive. . . .

I want to capture things here but feel stifled by the form. It’s as if I let mimetic responsibilities smother my spirit and push me to stagnation. Why do I feel so low? I sense the drawing to an end of my time at home. I don’t think it’s depression, just claustrophobia.

It’s so frustrating.

I’ve begun to read (in a very half-hearted sort of way) Standish D. Lawlor’s The Cubist Cinema, and I even made a listless and contrived attempt to take notes as I read but gave up disgustedly and tore up what I had written. This is a thoroughly frustrating mood to be in. I don’t know what I’m after, and I can’t help my itchy mind, which jumps like a monkey from tree to tree. Too bad my fruit seems to be rotten when I bite into it! I want to write and write as a cathartic, healing process, but my mind freezes and my hand cramps to a devastating standstill. These mundane words are my only product.

I’m at a point of decision with regards to this journal. I can choose various ways to go in this search for fulfillment (and thence satisfaction) through words. I need to slough off the dead skin of those ‘mimetic responsibilities’ and not adhere to this tedious narrative formula just for the sake of it. I’m going through the motions, and it gets me nowhere.

Perhaps I don’t TRY hard enough at any one thing and let my mind shoot off in all different directions at once, its energies dissipating, my interest spread thinly.