Banish the thought that begins as a question, ignites as a doubt, devours as worry, a slow conflagration. Don't think! Close the hole in my head (that keeps draining); neither speak nor hear. There is nothing quite as satisfying as... silence. The mind is a treacherous companion, prattling on in the adrenaline of these attled nerves. It breathes nightmares. It is dishonest in the corruption that erupts from fear, goading with a battalion of bogey men, fidgeting. My shivers are made to the measure of my anxiety, my sleepless nights. And in those hours, the deepest jungle of night, I fight you, wrestle you into the muddy ground. Python, tiger, banshee, ghost. Whatever form, whatever growl or howl or scream, whatever threat, whatever danger, you are only me. I am the monster that my mind projects, the messenger of my mortality, a madness that only I can unravel...in dreams...if they come...
"This journal is not a mere literary diversion. The further I progress, reducing to order what my past life suggests, and the more I persist in the rigor of composition--of the chapters, of the sentences, of the book itself--the more do I feel myself hardening in my will to utilize, for virtuous ends, my former hardships. I feel their power." --Jean Genet
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