[I am guessing what time it really is.] I am suddenly inspired by Borges and by Radiohead (I [am in] love [with] their song "Idioteque"). It is troubling that my life only became bearable when I [started fantasizing that] I was dying [from an indolent disease with a protracted course of illness] (although we [really] are all dying….) This allowed me to rest my mind and actually go to sleep content. I imagined the lengthy doctor's visits and hospital stays, [spending my last days] tramping throughout the countryside, and maybe to the Old World. Give me an excuse to visit Rome and London. And I would write. How joyous that would be! But this is only assuming that my insurance would pay. I would hopefully get to die in a morphine haze.

I am trying to write out all the bitterness lying in my heart. I feel all of the sudden as if I have nothing to believe in. My faith in God and country has been shorn. I feel as if I have no allies, and am completely surrounded by enemies, who would use me as a servant, then scron me, with no reward for my loyalty. I feel like Diogenes carrying a lantern, still searching for that honest man. I knew from the start that such a quest was futile, but five years ago, I did not mind futility. Don Quixote was my hero, and I longed to emulate him, for what is a knight-errant for, but for the undertaking of futile quests? But it is a lonely life. I have no Sancho Panza patiently following me into madness, reeling me back to reality at the last moment. I am merely a dying thing, cold and afraid, and hungry. Yearning. That is the word, and what it is I yearn for I do not know.

Do you believe the ghosts of your slaves have forgiven you?
Though you had unshackled chains after much blood had been shed, still there is a mountain to climb

When I took A.P. U.S. History in high school… I learned about the crooked ways of the Republic. I learned that for the most part, the prosperity of this country is owed to the unthanked labor and often the death of the oppressed, starting with the poor ignorant English folk who came as indentured servants, starving to death at the hands of gentleman-adventurers who dreamt big but did little actual work. But the Native Americans are [the most obvious] first victims of the nascent Imperial onslaught… [starting with] the diseases the filthy Europeans had brought over, and… the depradations of… imperial Spain. The English did not become numberous enough to challenge the Natives for a while, although, I must say that it didn't take long for treaty-signing and subsequent backstabbing to become standard policy. After that came the despoilment of Africa….