thursday june 28 2001    |    5:46 p.m.

my heart is going to burst.

it's partially the platters and partially everything, and this even now while i'm alternating the dishes and the diaryland.

so many things going on -- any other time i would describe it as sensory overload, but somehow every punch seems to land in a soft accommodating space.

yesterday patrick drove denise and johnny up to the beach -- our area -- for the night. we bought a bottle of ron palo viejo ("old stick rum," as denise pointed out to patrick's amusement) and a couple bottles of coke and some ice. we drank in patrick's room and watched a crazy -- but, i thought, pretty interesting -- hbo or ho-time documentary about swingers (not the 40's kind) and then gradually got pretty drunk and half-played that boardgame we play and had two amazing, groundbreaking conversations. like we were saying, looks like the weed has lost its charm as a conductor. maybe now we need to return to alcohol.

i think dr. leary and that guy from sarasota who was profiled months ago in rolling stone head my list of the top ten people i'd like to have a beer with. them, and che; and justinian and maybe charlemagne or napoleon, but they're not half as interesting. and leonard cohen. and oh my god how could i forget -- frank bidart. last night i was explaining to patrick why i was so violently repulsed by "herbert white" when i first read it, like it could jump out of the page and infect me, violently you know -- and through the weeks i haven't thought of it until last night it all came pouring out, how fucking beautiful that poem really is, how dangerously true, how necessary, how human. oh i would love to have a stiff drink with frank bidart.

no, patrick. we are not crazy. or maybe we are: it's the same thing.

i keep having dreams about manna. dreams in which we're sitting around and talking. all i can remember about tonight's is his smile and his eyes flashing -- how do they do that? -- and that i woke up laughing.

shelley. i'm just thankful that i feel together. otherwise i would be a walking disaster.

i guess though that i'm a functional walking disaster.

i'm really glad i can crack myself up so easily. if we couldn't laugh we'd all go insane, props to whomever said that.

actually i don't remember ever feeling this together in my entire life. funny. although i have to say the nicotine helps.

some people say a man is made out of mud
a poor man's made out of muscle and blood
muscle and blood, skin and bones
a mind that's weak and a back that's strong