Cleft stick

Last night, Ian, Lee and Philip and I investigated our probable new squat, the empty No. 39 Sutton Road.

We were surprised to find the front door unlocked. The house is OK, three floors and a basement in quite good condition, a little plaster and wallpaper fallen away here there, a large kitchen, all the rooms bare and austere with big drafty windows.

The sheer effort involved in moving in struck me forcibly, perhaps for the first time—the uncomfortable nights shivering in cold rooms, waking up with no running water, unable to have a wash, all routine dislocated. Just like at the vicarage, we are all starting completely from scratch, except Lee who has the furniture from Maynard Gardens. An empty, unfurnished and unheated house is a miserable prospect, and neither Lee nor I are looking forward to it, but perhaps me least of all.

I’m on a cleft stick, not wanting to go forward, loathe to stay where I am. . . .

My frustrations at myself and my surroundings smother all thought and reduce me to a state of abject boredom. Today I’ve let daylight slip by and done nothing with my time.  I did start typing up my extended essay on the Beats, which I'll have to turn in (late) tomorrow. It’s too easy to blame circumstances, but circumstances do play a large part in the paralyzing malaise I find myself in at present.

My mind’s in a straitjacket and I can’t write—I’m searching but the words aren’t there and the pages feel cramped and uninspiring and horribly tainted by my boredom and disinterest. What to do? Perhaps really I know—with a conviction I should probably act upon—that I’ve exhausted the possibilities for this diary-format. For these diary-words to become words of more lasting appeal then the diary-format must go, or the thrust of my efforts should be directed elsewhere, and this be left for what it is: a book of events, and of people, and of other outside things, things that impinge on the inside, instead of vice versa.

I will carry on as I have been for a while to come, trying to capture something of past ‘glories’.