December 14, 1999:
Again I'm so anxious I can't sleep. I lay on my right side. I stare at the Godard movie poster that hangs on that wall and think of how stupid Jean Seberg is-and this is what I always think-and I think of tearing the poster down, getting rid of it. I turn over, away from the poster, to lay on my left side. I blink into the dark, into the army green paint on the wall that feels darker than the-the night?-darker than the rest of the room. I listen to myself in and exhaling, my chest moving. I let air out loudly through my nose. I think that if I could get into a rhythm with this hissing sound from my nose I might be carried away to sleep. The cat runs under the bed, stops, is still. It dashes out, into the closet, out of the closet, out of the room. It is chasing the ghosts that live here. If I could run around like that for a little while, I would maybe get tired enough to be able to fall asleep. I turn over to lay on my back. My head presses too much, uncomfortably into the pillow that's too soft. I stare, blinking up at the ceiling.

December 15, 1999:
How is it that I can sit down and write such a banal paragraph as I did yesterday? What compels me to do this? Do I hope to get practice? Maybe that's it. Too often the act of describing the in between is so painful and riddled with anxiety-wanting to get to the action. This is discipline. To sit and describe that which does not beg for description. It is only when you can sit and describe paint drying that you have earned the right to go on to describe an event-an action.

January 01, 2000:
I listened to the Sex Pistols and The Minutemen. I sewed everything that needed mending.