A journal entry as a word photograph of the day
4/11/1991
I heard the edginess—the lack of security in Teresa’s voice. She thought that Ann was moving in on her territory, her match. We do become jealous over our matches. Why? We want so to “reach out in the darkness” to help. We seem to understand so little what “help’ means—kind of an ego versus soul struggle. But, our little group is heroic and for all the world like characters out of some play. Each week at the end of our session, we form a circle arm in arm. We examine our feet in solidarity…whose socks are most unusual? Whose legs most hairy? The horror we speak promotes certain joviality…” Earlier, when I was at work in the court house as a Deputy Public Defender, while I was out in the hall lecturing away at some client with my arm outstretched in explanation, my thumb up in the air, I felt a warm grip around it (the thumb). I turned, Judge Cantwell had hold of it. And he passed by. In one small gesture, he said a lot. Funny how through all that happened today, that touch rings out supreme. As usual diary, this entry only partly holds the secrets of your day and of this day as they were revealed to me—I try to put down here the essence. The entry thus somehow reflects the feeling and the mood of the whole. Maybe each entry is kind of like a word photograph of the day.
End of entry
Note: 9/25/2025
The beginning of the above 4/11/1991 journal entry is referring to members of the Stanislaus County Aids Project (SCAP) grappling with with the complex relationship between persons living and dying with Aids and volunteers assigned to help them through the process. Ann and Teresa were such volunteers in 1991 as was I. Most of our matches were gay men. The 4/11/1991 entry shows how to blend thought and reaction on the journal page to try to capture the flavor of the day.













