Journal, January 25, 1976 PM

Upon starting this journal, I declared that I hoped I would never be desperate enough to go back and read it myself. I’ve already reached that point. I read entries for December 26 & 27, and it brought back some nice memories. <It surprised me a little how strong my emotions were for Sofia!> So what the hell’s wrong with reading your own diary - I feel no guilt!

We have another visitor, Joseph, who Jay met on the road & brought back this morning during a meeting of El Maizal’s co-op students & two Acajutla consumer co-op people which they held at the rancho {beach house}. He’s Canadian, a chemical engineer, a former "Canadian PCV" {Canadian Peace Corps Volunteer} in Malaysia, and traveling around in a nice red van (since September). He’s renounced conventional North American life as gluttonous & too mind-oriented, and is into yoga, and totally experiencing each moment. It strikes me as kind of egotistical, but he’s a nice, mellow dude. He’s going into San Salvador with Jay tomorrow, and leaving the van - which he’s excited about because he hasn’t slept anywhere but in it since he began his travels. He spent most of the afternoon monkeying around it also. It seems to me he’s as tied to that piece of metal as others are to North American intellectual ideas or politics or football, or as I am to the idea of studying physics (as a method of studying my universe).

I may have seen a sun burn out on some fellow travelers in the universe tonight. It was just a quick flash - maybe I only imagined it - but it could have been judgment day for a race of God-fearing beings somewhere.

A second recognition of our mortality was visited upon me tonight. A reference to a presumed George Meany stroke by Hunter S. Thompson in "Fear and Loathing" {"Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail '72"} brought back a flash of the night two winters ago, when, in the middle of a coughing fit, Dad’s face turned so red & I put my fingers in his mouth to keep him from swallowing his tongue. We started to call a doctor, but he was coming out of it by then. He was so completely helpless, and when he came to he had no knowledge of the attack. I’ll never forget how mellow he was right after he came to - like risen from the dead - pale, calm, rational, yet bewildered, like a recovering amnesia victim.