Blank periods. Most often, when they strike, am outdoors and it is evening and then there comes a sweet current threading its way thru the air and I inhale at it deeply and the fragrance takes me to some beloved place in the past. Yesterday it occured while waiting for M in the CVS parking lot where I had just bought the tapes to record the band. Was standing and waiting and inhaling near the busy automatic doors - but was also standing on hometown green some late autumn evening in 1989 waiting for my girlfriend. Quitting time and work at Page's is finally over and oustide under most dramatic skies, S is fast approaching thru the purple twilight. These sights, sounds and scents are somehow unlocked and stirred by certain ingredients in the crisp air tonight. Distant memory has become detailed & close. The mind casts vivid projections of her image and of scenes from that marvelous autumn. Can feel remnants of the happiness and grace that once belonged to me for such a short short time - before life became a constant struggle. Hand in hand walking off together briskly kicking up great swarms of crunchy maple leaves...

With a terse bleet from M's horn, am suddenly returned to the same local & present snow, slush and parking lot, but with a mind that has been washed blank. And later when the band plays, am still blank, vacantly fretting away at the chords all uninspired as if a musical somnambulist. Songs unravel all over the place while I sleepwalk. At session's end, find self lingering in the bathroom, grappling with the sorrows of time and personality - calculating the sum & substance of all I know and feel and need - from every direction, looking for an escape from the dilemma of half wanting to live. Exit bathroom with thoughts adrift in bad latitudes - doldrums without enough breeze to fill the sails. M&T have already vacated the studio. Step outside where the snow is now falling heavily... and instantly, am pegged square in face execution-style with a most precisely aimed snowball. No time now for blankness, there is revenge to be had.