Sideways glance

I’m in the house alone. Stu and Gareth have gone into town to “get drunk.” but are probably round at Barry’s getting stoned. Lindsey is in London at an RCP picket of the TUC. Susie is in Germany, Pete and Guy in America. Lee is at Maynard Gardens.

I’m supposed to be working, writing an essay on the beats, and I’ve taken speed with that end in mind, but with everything that’s going on I’m going to use it instead to try and break this curse of silent misery that’s befallen me. I can’t write anymore—I don’t know where to start or how.

A void stands in the way of further progress. 


How little self-knowledge I have, let alone knowledge of others. This has been revealed by this whole acid episode. For instance, I don’t know Lindsey at all and I never have. What was in my mind re. her long ago was an ideal that bore no relation to actuality, hence the tears and gnashing of teeth. Ideals are forever being destroyed and they destroy us in the process. This hopefully leaves us wiser., but I don’t know about that. In this house, Lindsey’s things are all around me; I long to discover the person hidden in them: to discover a person hidden in these empty objects would be a revelation and make me feel things fully.

What is this divide between people? I’ve never ever crossed it. I’m trying and failing to capture my meaning right now in words and trying to convey a sense of the futility I feel when I look at the things people surround themselves with. I don’t ‘want’ Lindsey anymore in that way, although I want to know her and I can’t; I can only get a sideways glance and in that glance the awful gulf between apparent and real is revealed to me. As it was last Monday night. I’ve been living in the same house as her for five months and I attach the label ‘friend’ to the name ‘Lindsey’.

But yet she’s still a stranger. It fucks me up. There are places in people shut away from others, closed off by walls, mysterious places I understand nothing of. We can’t get there by talking. Lindsey has seemed remote all term. There are difficulties at home hanging over her head, but she never feels any need to share the burden. We hear nothing; perhaps we’re not close enough. Are some walls of reserve so solid that only certain affinities can melt them away? Maybe it’s just Lindsey, just us, or just a combination of the two.

I think she should leave Watermouth, burn her bridges, move away, start afresh. 


I’ve been round at Gaveston Street pretty regularly since I cam back and I’ve got to know Paula and Elaine as well as they let me. At certain points in relationships labels are distributed and the barriers go up. This is what I was referring to earlier with regards to Lindsey’s hidden side. Once in a category it’s difficult to break free, and the first few occasions are crucial.