8 December 1975

TM–for the last few weeks it has helped, I think–and last night missed my meditation, wantonly and for the first time.  Is this why I suffer now? Does it really mean a good thing for my life? Something added?  A direction?

I am cut off. I hate to seal the break with my former life. I hate the idea of becoming a Canadian citizen.  I am still an exile.

Stan told me a story last night.  Several years ago, when he had dropped from sight altogether and his parents and family back in New York had no idea of his whereabouts, his sister was staying with her best friend Joy and discussing her lost brother.  Joy’s father said, “Oh, he’s out in British Columbia with Steven Marx, living with him.” This man said he had been Steven’s Hebrew School teacher: Leo Wolff.

Again to California.  A semester unemployed.  Babysitting, cooking, cutting wood, waxing floors in a perpetually disordered and drafty house.  Going into debt, living off patrimony, forgetting the past, and doing nothing in the present even to forget.

What frustration I feel about expressing myself in writing or any other form for the gratification of others and for the satisfaction of self.

What beauty here can I see? In the rain dripping from the eaves, the stream pouring, channeling under the bridge, the smoke, blue, passing the window, billowing up the hill, mixing with the fog, trapped in the cedar boughs.

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