The Fargo Kantrowitz'z Literary Campsite

June 1865
Gave away that other diary to Jedediah. Don’t know why he wanted it. Was too much in it for me to keep it with me. Now that I’m on the road it doesn’t make a lot of sense to have two of them. So I keep this one now. Been sitting waiting for this sunset for about an hour. It’s been two weeks since I had a drink and my head finally feels good again. Every drink I was taking was a shovel ful of dirt coming out of my own grave. Every drink made me forget Mary and Annabelle and gave me all sorts of reasons for keeping on, but when I wasn’t drinking I forgot every single last reason and all I found I really wanted to do was kill myself. That’s the way the drink works for some people.
I’m sitting in a little place I don’t know the name of not far from the city of Los Angeles. I notice a lot the way that water comes in on the shore. There’s nothing more beautiful I think then the way those water curls boom one after the other when that sunset is just about going down. I never seen sunsets in Tennessee like I seen them here. They’re orange, orange, red, more orange and a little bit of blue.  And then they’re just gone, but they leave the clouds on fire and that’s a good sight until the stars come out and I get cold. Usually by then I got a fire going, but sometimes I wait until the last ray, I mean, that last little shimmer or glow is all gone because I want to see the night in a pure way when it’s just begun because the middle of it gets scary sometimes and cold, especially without the bottle with me any more. And the end of it I’m usually asleep for. No my favorite part of the night is just the beginning of it when I know I’m not supposed to be asleep but right where I am only. Also, this is where a little of the sadness comes in and I close my eyes to it and pray a little bit and that always makes me feel a little better, when I envision Mary again the way that she was when we were kids so beautiful wearing her white dress on Sunday mornings and my daddy telling me now that was a beutiful girl, that if I didn’t marry her someday I’d be a fool. So I did. Now the question remains: was I a fool? I still don’t think so. What’s the point of living if you’re not going to chase down a dream so obvious as Mary was. Her smile and the way that she held my hand and the way she would get distracted by flowers or a bird and then tell me stories about everything she sees, about trees and the people who live in the forests, about flowers and about how a man named Narcissus was so vain that he became one, and about the Goddess of Love named Venus who was married to a man who made her diamonds and beautiful jewels, but who loved a man who raged in war, and about Cupid and how he fell in love with a girl named Psyche and Cupid’s mama, Venus, didn’t like her so she made her do all sorts of things to earn his love. There were so many stories and they all come back to me now. How Mary could talk. And then Annabelle, well, and then Annabelle. That’s all needs be said. For now…