21st January 2001 - 8:31 p.m.

“I’ve no qualms with people wishing to create new identities for themselves, but one has to be quite sure that one is working on a canvas and not a shroud”.

Worry not, for your faithful narrator has recovered the composure and poise so sorely lacking in the past few days. He’s ok, the silly old sod.

From an old song we loved so dearly:

“Don’t regret the tears – they’ll focus your eyes (please open your eyes..).

Set ablaze those wasted years..!”

And I discover that I don’t believe it anymore. Those years of Nothing, of Waste, may count for little, they may have involved all kinds of nonsense of which I’m delighted to have cut myself free, but I AM NOT willing to shake off That Which I’ve Been simply in order to clarify That Which I Am. I need it, if only for ballast.

At some point, I stand in front of the mirror for half an hour or more, trying to grasp some kind of truth about myself, to understand that which I’ve already grasped. I stare, and stare back, and I swig self-consciously from a bottle of wine and take it all in, all of it.

I look pale. My lips are red – blood red – and my eyes… Something’s gone out of me. The spark has disappeared from my eyes. Where once I would look and see only this reflection, this familiarly-friendly face, I now seem to be staring through it. And those eyes in the frame, they also stare beyond – beyond me, beyond the non-beliefs responsible for seeing us through this far.

I once wrote that “I appear to have grasped the Ridiculous in such a way that I can’t shake it off”. But it’s gone – I can see that immediately. Those pained expressions which, only last week, would appear hilarious to my mind, which would soon degenerate into fits of giggles – they’ve lost the comfort of comedy.. Were I not being positive today, were I not over this for the moment, I would talk of my features taking on a curious air of tragedy.

The bottle is exhausted. I turn away and get on with my life.