I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead; I lift my eyes and all is born again.

The only thing I could think of was turkey neck and turkey gizzards and I felt very depressed.

Strange, when one thinks of all the other boys, infinite experimental kisses, test tube infatuations, crushes, pseudo-loves. All through this physical separation, through the testing and the trying of the others, there has been this peculiar rapport, comradeship, of us two so alike, so similar, but for science-boy and humanities-girl - the introspection, self examination, biannual deep summarizing conversations, and then the platonic parting.

I don't see,' I said, 'how people stand being old. Your insides all dry up. When you're young you're so self-reliant. You don't even need much religion.

But I am I now; and so many other millions are so irretrievably their own special variety of 'I' that I can hardly bear to think of it. I: how firm a letter; how reassuring the three strokes: one vertical, proud and assertive, and then the two short horizontal lines in quick, smug succession. The pen scratching on the paper…I…I…I…I…I…I.

I wanted change and excitement and to shoot off in all directions myself, like the colored arrows from a Fourth of July rocket.

And so I rehabilitate myself - staying up late this Friday night in spite of vowing to go to bed early, because it is more important to capture moments like this, keen shifts in mood, sudden veering of direction - than to lose it in slumber.