The good thing is that if I do have to give an account of my life this will not be it. Neither will be my other words, my photographs, my books read and shelved, my stories which are mostly lies, nor my cigarettes.

Perhaps the cigarettes, as they are a source of scars and I write love letters on the paper sometimes. When did I start doing that? Recently. Someone told me. Or else a long time ago I heard that some men burn joss on graves to ensure the wealth of the deceased in their next underworld.

I suppose if I believe in reincarnation I doubt that we will ever see this particular world again, but rather the next world in which we may find ourselves will be something less than either heaven or hell but similar enough that we can find our way without asking too much.

Another party tonight. I very much hate these things; I find them unreal, artificial, stilted, and far too much incentive to smoke. I haven’t been drunk in months. Just not in me. But neither is much desire, either, so perhaps that shouldn’t be taken all that seriously.

Met a woman with red hair today who lives on my street. Read about wheat and gruel and rice yesterday, Fernand Braudel. Not really yesterday but one or two in the morning because I couldn’t sleep. I don’t really have insomnia, just too much to think about.

Most of my life is habit. This frightens me, really. I smoke because I have the habit of keeping things in my fingers. I wake up at certain hours, think about certain people, remember certain things and not others, do my homework and work on a thesis proposal. “God, it is good to be awake at night and smoke a cigarette with you,” Tony Hoagland (sp).

  I smoke too many cigarettes thinking of you
  I let the night go on and on when it talks of you
  The night my old friend...  (me)

Of course the night doesn’t talk, and if it did it would hardly speak of the same things incessantly like it does, or at least, it would have its own habits which I would no doubt find annoying, as they would not be my own, would not be inimical. Though in truth I find my own inimics as bland as those of others; I haven’t had an original thought in a fortnight; it’s absurd that I can’t find anything better to do with my mind, absurd that I can’t finish a smoke without getting tired of the taste and the thoughts it engenders. I say my two names with curses and prayers; if I really want to make a go of it I sing “time, time, time” or something else; then while the nicotine takes its effect and breaks down I think of very little at all.

The chinese postdoc with his computer two spaces over from mine talks to himself.