August 19th, 1967

I hadn't heard from Rachel for a few days & began to suspect something strange was happening. The trouble with the creative imagination is that it can operate just as intensely in negative directions.

I begin thinking she freaked out after our conversation & ran off to Berkeley & found somebody to shack up with. I've taken her too much for granted & when she's absent, I become very aware of her.

Get depressed, lie listening to Stones, decide to go down to Haight Street. Sit in I & Thou Café, one guy’s playing a lute, others playing chess.

Rachel & Susan come in. She’s been spending a lot of time with Nehemia, a 77-year-old sculptor whom she idolizes for his wisdom. Tells me about all the things he taught her about the dignity of a woman.

At her place, I tell her that in spite of the fact that she's going to Berkeley to confront involvement, she’s still running from something here. Love.

She talks about her notion of non-committed committal. She commits herself to protest but is never fully involved. Her cycle: involvement with things (politics & brief sexual encounters), then withdrawal from that & back to deeper involvement with a lover.

I tell her the only responsibilities we have to ourselves are success at love & success at whatever field we're pursuing.

She says she'd be happy as a teacher, the only involvement where she's ever been completely satisfied. Taught for 2 years before coming here.

“I’d like to be teaching and living near you,” she says.

She talks about her feelings of insignificance. It doesn't matter if she breaks her cycle & it doesn't matter where she is.

"I could be in New Zealand for all it really matters," she says. "What difference does it make?"

She kids me about trying to be such an individualist.

"What difference does it make what happens to me," she says. "I'm nobody."

She doesn't care if the cycle's ever broken.

"If that's the way things are meant to be,” she says, “that's the way they'll be."

She feels her entire being is subject to chance. If she meets someone who can break it, fine. She’s not feeling sorry for herself, nor is she despondent. It's her form of honesty.

» August 20th, 1967 : Body In The Freezer