I woke up this morning and cried. I did little else. Shame. I was supposed to be leaving Cottonwood today yet here I remain in this little inn. What cruelty. What self-immolation, really. How can I expect to live alone when I cannot live with myself? My thoughts attack me so.

I don’t want to write about it but I am drawn to the page, as if the pain of memory will dull the pain of-

My words fail me. I am no writer, and there are no words for what I feel. I am not much at all. I act as if pinning this emotion to the page will draw it from my mind, like some Atlantic catfish. It may be true. It may be that I pretend it may work, so I don’t find the truth: that there is no hope, really. What then? What else is there? Is there another choice? This dichotomy of mine is a double-edged blade, either side cuts me the same. I think I used dichotomy right. I heard that word from another brick-layer.

So there is no choice, then. What choices are there for me? Either slice by writing, or watch the other side of the blade fall slowly in through inaction?. And there is another, yes. Stay here in Cottonwood and suffer people, or leave and suffer the work. And yet another still, the best of the three. To live and feel the pain as long as I live, or to die and never live again. Or perhaps burn in Hell. What choices are these? Pain or pain. This is no choice. My mind slips to a third. Another choice I cannot consciously make. I have found a numbness, a field far from the world where all seems unreal, where the veil of the world is lifted and I see it only through a small window. Is this heaven? Is this what Elijah felt as the Lord lifted him to His kingdom? Am I in His presence? This world, this Earth, has revealed itself to me as the illusion it is. I am certain of it. Yet I take the time to write about it, as if I find this nothing more than an interesting experience, that I find it worthy of a few pages of some journal and nothing more. I am distracting myself. Tomorrow I will be better and I will leave for Redding.