There's alone, then there's lonely. I don't mind alone at all. I think there have to be other people to make you feel lonely. Other people to not give a crap, to fix you with blank vacant stares, unabashed hostility; other people to savage an otherwise empty world with their scathing opinions. What do you do when you're lonely but surrounded by people on all sides?

I'm glad for this journal, where I can kind of create a space again where there's no one around.

Some of the things have to do make me wish I was someone else far away. Maybe a guerilla in Lebanon, or an Israeli tankie, wading in bloodshed, but pure and simple in focus and in heart. Full of righteous anger, with something palpable to defend.

The things I have been given to defend. I don't even want to defend.

That's why, if Fidel Castro should pass on, I will weep for him, and remember the many good things that he did, and the part of him that is love for the poor and his people.

At work, I have to focus on the evil in each man.

And when work dictates I focus on the good, it is a plastic, manufactured kind of good. The words of the emperor's sycophant to the people.

God help me. I am so reluctant with the use of my words these days.