I realize now suddenly that I have never been trained at anything.  There's no particular skill I've ever learned.  I've only taken a few writing classes.  I've never been to graduate school, I hold no higher degree.

On days off, it seems like I really don't have any friends...  My co-workers seem estranged from me, not knowing what to do, critical of me and my ease and friendship with the regular customers, the fault of having personality in our times, as they go about business.   Why stay late, talking with friends about the differences between the attitude down in Jamaica and here...

To go out and have friends is a thing of money and commerce, activity.  Only a loner would be attracted to writing...


I thought the faculty at Amherst was a bit hard on me.  Ungenerous.  Commager, Townsend, Sofield.  I grew quiet.  It was a time of upheaval anyway, and I became too sensitive, isolated in the lone poet myth...


No excuse for my lack of engagement, lack of a profession, lack of economic means...  all of which make a person isolated.  I blame the job for lack of energy...

And not doing myself any favors not being involved in this economy...

Too much to do here just keeping up...

Now I am back to writer mode.