January 4, 2006 Hello everybody. We've rung in the New Year. Do I have anything to show for it?? I made it back from Europe alive, after a month by myself in Paris and Rome. On the dark side there was the brothel incident in Rome, but that's way too long a story for this evening. I hope to one day put the story on the site as part of a little travelogue of my Euro-adventures, but as I said, not now. On the positive side I came back from Rome with a lot of souveniers for my family and friends, a greatly reduced drug habit, a bunch of memories, and generally high spirits. I've been home for a while now. You probably inferred this from my continually updated website, or if you're my friend or family member, because I've been hanging out with you for over two months. I'm shamelessly unemployed. I was using my being on call for jury duty as an excuse for a long time. That's over, so I'm simply left with my naked will to not do work, something not generally accepted as a justification for full time leisure. As many of you may know, I detest a lot of what people designate as work. I'm not against activity per se. It's just that the mere act of tiring yourself out and earning a wage does not impress me as inherently meaningful. I won't believe in that oppressive nonsense, or a least not wholeheartedly. I will eventually get a job. Who knows? Maybe soon. But when I do work it will be for a good reason, and living up to stupid social standards is not a good reason. Paying debts I owe people and wanting to be more independent will probably be the deciding factors in pushing me back into the working realm. That and the fact that people usually don't want to go out on dates with bums. In any event, right now I'm mostly just proud that my website is in a pretty good state of repair, and that I have recently posted an extended essay on Brokeback Mountain- almost 3,700 words I think. Hoorah for my little gay self. Someone should give me a cowboy hat or something. Really, what I'd like is a romantic partner, because I've been kind of lonely. But who knows what God has in store. Speaking of God, an English theologian I correspond with through e-mail has responded warmly to my suggestion that when he visits here he give a talk to Latino young people on Christianity and gay issues. This is so nice of him. Anyway- Have I babbled enough? I think yes. Good night! January 5, 2006 Today I went to the Huntington Libaray with my familia. I was in a bad mood. Too much caffeine last night. There must have been a rebound undersupply of some sort of neurotransmitter as a result. Yikes. I kept on getting after my nephew, Anthony. Very cranky, like I was a tweaker coming down from a meth binge, which thank goodness I was not. I called a guy I have a crush on today. I'm trying not to get obsessive/ infatuated, which is silly and unfruitful ultimately. We'll see how things go. It is a weird thing to be born, to walk the path of life, to be one's ever-changing, ever-confused, ever-guilty self, and to know oneself to be heading inexorably toward the portal of death. May God have mercy on me. Yikes, I'm scared. Yikes. Yikes. That is my word for the day. A good night to all. Yikes! January 8, 2005 Listening right now to a doo wop love song- "Life is But a Dream"-- it is so wonderful. I waft away into a tender rapture, defenseless, floating like a little angel, a light hearted fairy, and yet I am secure. The most definitively weak, inconsequential, and silly thing in the world-- a doo wop song-- is the only reality that can bring happiness to me. It's been over 6 years that I've loved doo wop. Does any other fool feel this way? Never has a doo wop song been sung whose subject was not love. And in doo wop music, love is innocent, light, ecstatic, and above all- effortless. To the real Brian Gonsalves love is anything but effortless. Sometimes it seems that I am 99.9999999% selfish, and that the helpless sub-atomic morsel of true charity that is in me is on the verge of being annihilated by the greed, pride, and vanity of my overall opposing being. But in doo wop love is easy. Oh how I wish that I did not have to be a Christian (though I don't have much of an option), for the truth is that I am not much inclined to the path of the cross, to suffering. I hate it. I loathe it from the bottom of my being. But I know that no matter what I must die, and if I die with Christ, his happiness shall be mine as well. It's just its so hard to endure this enveloping darkness-- to continually endure it, to make choice after choice, mistake after mistake, correction after correction. There is no such thing as being a Christian, Kierkegaard said, there is only becoming one. If only there would be doo wop and nothing but doo wop. In Revelation it says at the end of time God shall wipe every tear from our eyes. Does that mean that all will be doo wop in that new creation? Eternal love- easy, easy, easy, never ending beautiful love. No more trying to love, just being in love, easy, easy, easy beautiful love. January 12, 2006 Ah, if I were a Salvador Dali painting, I think I'd probably be the one entitled "The Great Masturbator", for obvious reasons, of course. Anyway, besides providing me with free pornography with which I can degrade myself, the internet allows me to have a forum to share my ideas and feelings. It elicits more than just semen from me. Althouh my ideas, no doubt, are of seminal importance. Um, yeah. Well, the biggest news I have is that there is a possibility I may soon be writing an article for an online Catholic publication called Godspy, which is pretty much a journal analyzing culture from a relatively traditional Catholic perspective. The article will be about gay issues. The editor has read my Brokeback Mountain piece. He said he cannot publish that. I'm not sure if I'll be writing an altered Brokeback Mountain review, an essay concerning my views on gay issues facing the church, or some combination of both. He said he'll be getting back to me. I'm also trying to plan out and prepare for a talk which theologian James Alison will be giving when he visits Southern CA. I met with someone to discuss the whole thing last night. We gay Christians need just a little more light, more hope, more encouragement and appreciation. I respect the Vatican's pronouncements for being as nuanced as they are. I am somewhat cautious myself about radically changing an ethical doctrine. However, we do need to step forward on these things. We need to have confidence that God can and will be generous to gays, perhaps not exactly like we'd wish him to be (things are never that way with God- he is the cosmic surpriser, the all powerful and ultimately benevolent prankster, if you will), but still, let's hope for something bright, noble, and beautiful. Night ya'll. January 14, 2006 I sit here at my computer, great wonder of modern science and technology, which, at least in this life, will probably forever be an enigma to me (like cars and football and cooking tacos). One of our family cats is also in front of me, or rather, in my lap. Is he fathomable? Do I understand him in the way which is impossible for me to understand the computer? Do I know the essence of my cat? If I were to give a lecture on him I'm sure I'd probably have more interesting things to say on my cat than if the topic were my computer, but mostly, too, he is an unfathomable piece of work. Very warm, furry, amusing, with sharp claws, and way too much energy, he is nonetheless basically unfathomable to me. Another strange being in the universe. But ya wanna know something else, all those of you whom my prose has not put to sleep already? Most of all what is unfathomable to me is myself, this weird mind in an awkward body, a being with 27 years on earth behind it, and an eternity of uncertainty before it. I shouldn't neglect to share that I had a powerful conversion experience bringing me into the religious faith of Christianity around six years ago. I still find computers, cats, myself, and most other things as well, to be unfathomable. It looks like the state of not being able to fathom things completely is not going to go anywhere. I guess that is simply finite life as we experience it in its present form. But the Christian faith does shed a significant amount of light on the profound mystery which is my life, and our life, and all the possibilities in the present and future which could be ours. Through the prism of Christianity things really do seem a bit more bright, though certainly worldly life continues to be rife with dreadful confusion and pain. I should probably feel thankful that I am privileged to live in a first world country, neither torn by war, strife, or mired in extreme poverty (as in Jamaican shanty town poverty-- real poverty). I'm not dying soon, at least not to my knowledge, and I'm not sick or disabled, other than being messed up a little in my head as well as, of course, in my soul. The hardest thing has been bearing with me a deep melancholy for ten years. I don't know whether it will live with me as long as I walk this earth. It has been said that the only certainty in life is that we wil die. I wager that there is still another certainty, that we will continually find ourselves surprised by various changes and events, by twists of plot that are incapable of being foreknown by us. Life in our world is a continually unraveling drama, and an improvised one at that. One might even call it the great unrehearsed Surprise Symphony. Surprised By Joy was the title of C.S. Lewis' autobiography. I've never read it, but I feel that I have most likely experienced that same feeling of joyful surprise he is referring to. I guess it mostly happens in childhood, which makes sense, as that's when we're optimally naive and unjaded. Everything surprises you at that time and life can be a continual carnival with interruptions of grief, boredom, or turmoil that are thankfully for the most part briefer than in adulthood. Life's shimmer wears off with age. Deeply resented emptiness set in for me when I was 17. My childhood dream was over and I did not know what to do. It seemed a hell which was so bad I could never fully express to others the discomfort, bordering on torment, which was continually with me. Loneliness, anxiety, consciousness of death, boredom. That is the stuff under which you are buried during clinical depression. It crushes and suffocates you. I've been able to break out somewhat, but these things very well might always be with me. What do you think? Will I be surprised within my years on earth (as we know it) by an unforseen, glorious joy- like I experienced in childhood- or will something like that have to wait until after I die? What will happen to my depression? I've heard enough impatient, judgmental bullshit from people. Ultimately, in fact, I've heard mostly a lot of nothing, as in the silence of detached annoyance or the deaf disregard of total apathy. You can't always expect people to care. If anybody who reads what I write actually does care about me, please take the time to say a prayer for me. I'm not sure what I may always seem to people. Clever, spacy, goofy, distant, intelligent, foolish, immature, wise. Most of the time I don't know who I am, myself. I can't speak about this person, Brian Gonsalves, as a completely objective judge. I'm an imperfect human and my devotion to the truth is not limitless. But I ask you to believe me that there is a real agony I experience, a torment that is my usual companion. It is vast and overwhelming to me. I experience it as a darkness which is shocking, unbelievable, and endlessly discouraging. Obviously, I have survived this personal hell. I should be grateful I have not been driven to go over the edge, that my own internal resources, the support of others, and the grace of God have protected me from suicide. But if you really do believe me and have any pity at all, pray that my burden shall be reduced to something I can carry with joyful confidence and inner peace. Pray that I may have the light of beauty, hope, and love shine in my life and save me from the prison of chronic depression. I ask this of whomever, wherever, in the name of Jesus. January 25, 2006 Just got off the phone with a guy "who I like". Disappointing and melancholy it was; the sting of reality overtaking the sweetness of my hopes. Avidly wanting to be an object of someone's enthusiasm- instead, becoming an object of weariness to him. Yes, weariness. With each second it seemed like I wearied him more. Awkwardness, instead of dissolving into the sparkle of flirtation, stubbornly lingered and gradually defeated the hopes I had in calling him. Not wanting to seem even more a vulnerable fool than I am, I excused him from talking to me (for lack of better words); we hung up, and now I've returned to my solitude, bitter and subdued. Oh well, oh well. That's all one can say. Even selfish and solitary people like myself, people well acclimated to being single, are often haunted by loneliness. Once in a while love seems like it can happen even to us. But it never quite works out that way. All I can do, I guess, is adopt a healthy measure of stoicism and move forward in my life. That's it for tonight. I hope you've enjoyed this minor revelation of my inner life. I'm not the only one like this. I know that. I hope you do too. January 26, 2006 Today I woke up feeling worn out and depressed. Was it the tequila I drank last night to stupify my wounded heart? Was it merely an overdue effect of way too much regular caffeine use? In any event, I drove up to LA to the Central Library. I found four or five books which should prove helpful to me if I give them the attention they deserve. I wrote a decent 3500 word essay on "Brokeback Mountain", but I'd like to turn it into a great essay, something publishable. And I simply can't do that by swilling down tranquilizers, caffeine pills, and Dr. Pepper- then pulling a bunch of beautiful words out of my head. It needs to be meaningful, as simply and sensitively stated as possible, and above all, based on diligent research into hard facts. Hence, all the Western movies I've been watching lately, various articles and interviews I've been reading, and the books I've brought home today. I won't get into it, but I've happened upon some interesting ideas. There are many ways of approaching this film, really. The trick shall be stringing it all together in a meaningful, logical harmony. We'll see. As for feeling worn out and depressed- that has faded some with my taking my nightly tranquilizer dose (very small for all you concerned anti-drug folk out there- If you knew me seven years ago, I was eating Valiums like candy). There is also, of course, the fact that I have mentally detached myself a little bit from the guy who is causing me heartache. That is useful in maintaining sanity. Lovesickness should not control me. Heartache is not necessarily unhealthy, but it should not make me suicidal, unable to engage in creative projects, etc. By the way, a woman who read my online diary sent me an e-mail saying I underappreciate Nietzsche in one of my essays on this site. I disagree, but really I'm just flattered that someone is reading my stuff in the first place. Take care everybody. January 31, 2006 Now has come the time for me to make one of my feeble nightly confessions, revelations of myself which are of interest to at least a few people out there. They sure as hell don't tell the whole truth about me, but there will be no overt lying. Having grown up with a schizophrenic father I learned to detest kooky, fantastic tales reeking of paranoia and grotesque self-importance. Today my main event was helping to move, along with Steve, the stuff of our friend Jimmy from one storage unit to another. Tough, manly work! Kinda reminded me of the old days when for three months (I can't believe I even lasted that long) I worked as a landscape gardener in South Orange County. It wasn't exactly a chain gang, but it truly wasn't a job well suited to me, to say the very least. I blew up at my boss one morning and walked off site, never to see that group of landscape gardeners again. He called me a faggot (in response to my expletives), and I continued to cuss him out royally and flipped him off. Moving stuff today, though a toilsome job, was basically fun because I was doing it with friends- guys who know that I'm a funny little queer and don't really give a damn. When I walked off my gardener job way back when I proceeded to take a "vacation" to Mexico, where in that lovely border town of Tijuana I holed myself up in a hotel room for three weeks. Mainly I smoked weed, popped endless tranquilizers, downed a fair number of pain-killers as well as CNS stimulants like Ritalin and phentermine. I gradually became a TOTAL mess. Isolated, sickly, slowly losing body weight, becoming paranoid, eventually stopping pain-killer use and going into mild yet still miserable withdrawal. Yup, I was a lonely, lost soul. I feel that I survived that weirdness for the most part by the grace of God. One would indeed think that I'd be in Narcotics Anonymous by now (about seven years later), but I'm still a stubborn, extremely individualistic guy. Though much more socially well-adjusted and spiritually inspired than I used to be, I continue to rely on pills to make my experience of the world and my creative powers more to my satisfaction. From eating Valiums and Ativans like tic tacs and snorting Ritalin, I've gone to taking 2 or so Klonopins a day (a substantially less intoxicating and addictive drug), and now my main stimulant of choice is caffeine (in the form of pills and Dr. Pepper). I smoke weed with my friends sometimes, and also occasionally use alcohol, either socially or because I'm all out of pills and cannot get to sleep without a grim anxiety attack. So there you go. Druggie Brian. Heavy user of years past to moderate or light user of today, depending on who you ask. I've never wanted to go to rehab, meetings, or anything of that nature. I'm rebellious, foolish, selfish, no doubt. But I also have dwelt in the pain of chronic depression for 10 years. It is very hard trying to deal with depression without having the option of prescription drugs, or street drugs even, coming to mind. This may sound an exaggerated, even insensitive comparison to many, but would you lay a guilt trip on a cancer patient for being addicted to morphine? Some people have indeed called depression the cancer of the soul. In any event, things are better than they were. Maybe eventually they shall be better than they are. Good night, my fellow denizens of this lonely and incomparably odd planet. Rest easy in the moonlight. February, 2006