5/16/09 - If I weren't so emo, I might accidentally kick somebody's ass

While watching a fight between two adversaries on the TV show Deadwood, I am once again reminded of the violence that only in the last few years has become a part of my mental landscape. I find myself with a heart full of bloodlust, imagining foes, altercations, assaults, wanting to fight, carrying around a pen knife, wondering if today on the way home from the train I will need to use it on someone.

This is new for me, but I suppose I have always had it. It explains my former depressions, my black moods and despondency, which I thankfully have much less of, but which must have been nothing more than an already extant violence in my soul, which I formerly turned inward because I could not accept that it was part of my "good boy" personality.

4-24-08 I May Be One of Those People

As I may have mentioned on these pages, I used to live in Queens, a few blocks from the spot where Kitty Genovese was killed, and I've long been fascinated by the story of thirty-eight people who sat in their apartments and did nothing while a young woman was stabbed to death.

This morning, I awoke to the usual pounding on doors and yelling in my apartment building, followed by running up and down stairs and more voices raised in anger. Annoyed, I turned up the radio until I couldn't hear the yelling anymore.

When I left my apartment building at about 7:45, there were drops of fresh blood in a trail down the stairs, leading to a puddle of blood about a foot wide in the entryway of the building.