From 4-Oct-1980

I am in earnest affable confab with a counselor whose speciality is sex, maybe Kinsey; he is smiling and I am loose and cooking and he says, "We'll get to the problem in a moment," which means he's sure I'll ask the question I'm there to ask, but I'm not there for any question, just the informal discussion - and then I realize or am convinced, there may be a slight trouble somewhere...

I am amazed he spotted this and in a total cordial easy manner besides, I am astonished and I am prompted and begin to point up my general references to the personal - but we are interrupted by a dowdy glum dull matron who plops down in the middle of our eager frenetic vitality to sap us down to her dreary mundane minutiae -

- she holds up a postcard she intends mailing.

And that bit of data seems to be the sole justification for sidetracking us all into the grim backwater of her droll dreary day; misery in a sad lady self-indulgent in the bleak company she inflicts on us unabashed. I am eager to get on with my own recitations like everyone else but can't with her there, holding up her foolish postcard, mailing a bloody postcard, that's her demand on our furrowed and frantic consciousness, dead sparks drying in the still air...

A postcard.