(If anyone knows secure means of personally contacting Earle H. at the Bibliotecha Fictiva, can you please share them with me? When discussing forgeries no one else has documented, emails ending in .edu are too public, and phone calls through office lines are unwise.)
Having written and reviewed several samples of the form, I’m convinced that the diary is quite nearly a letter. What letters certainly have, which diaries seemingly lack, are recipients, but in becoming a more seasoned reader of other people’s diaries, I’m finding that this supposed difference is thinner than I first supposed. It may be only a mirage.
Every diary I’ve read already had an original recipient—their owners, who were simultaneously the diaries’ original writers and original readers. When one writes a diary, one reviews it also, so that its creation and revelation are twins. In a letter, by comparison, those two steps are more like the kin of two different generations, since distance and time collect much heftier tolls on the document.
See, for instance, how my mother writes diaries to be a reader of her own history. She writes and sketches her “bullet-journals” (affectionately called bu-jo’s, they’re not yet hit-lists) to understand her life’s events and her mind’s thoughts, and so in the writing she is reading her self in recorded motion. So, too, do the diarists whom I’ve read. I’d written above that the diary is quite nearly a letter. I’ll have to revise that now and say that the diary is certainly a letter, if only one that someone sends within his relation to himself.
The diarist whose self-letters I’m republishing below was named Sawyer K. Bolling. When he wrote these entries in 1954, he was living in San Antonio. I haven’t established with any clarity if he was related to my wife’s family, other than learning (from a dear woman who has since passed on into glory) that “all those Llano men came down here to sell things no one else could.” This relative-source had been the bosom friend of a woman named Daisy Patten, who came into possession of Bolling’s diary in April 1954. It was apparently the only diary he ever wrote.
He also un-wrote this diary, at points. His unlined pages bear the many cross-outs and scribbled thickets that Bolling used to blot out and correct his own words. Since his corrections are of the same pencil as the entries, I’m guessing that Bolling had corrected his words as he wrote them, choosing different phrases as soon as he had written the originals, choosing omissions, choosing a self other than the one recorded, choosing constantly. In the transcription below, I’ve marked with [scribbled out] where Bolling chose a phrase other than his first.
More challenging than these commonplaces of a mind in motion, though, are the illegible lines that accumulate through the entries. At points, I genuinely and literally can’t discern what Bolling wrote. Here’s what I mean:
The handwriting goes from discernible English to cramped half-hieroglyphics in the space of, well, a space. I wouldn’t have mentioned this tic if it were only an occasional tic, but illegibility is not occasional in Bolling. He becomes less legible and more glancing, more opaque, the longer he writes. In the transcription below, I’ve marked these inscrutable lines as [illegible].
You will shortly meet Bolling in his own words, courtesy of the self-letters of his only diary. After, of course, one last, unwieldy introduction written by Søren Kierkegaard in The Sickness Unto Death:
“he has no consciousness of a self which is gained by the infinite abstraction from everything outward, this naked, abstract self (in contrast to the clothed self of immediacy) which is the first form of the infinite self….So he then despairs, and his despair is: not willing to be himself.”
I’ve now made all my introductions for Sean K. Bolling, the unreal man.
— KLT, 6/18/2026
1/2/54
Suppose I ought to keep one. Don’t much like writing or reading but I like Daisy enough. Daisy says I ought to keep record of my life seeing that no one else will. It’s a good choice when she says it.
1/28/54
Ought to put it here. I only had it once but worry it’s coming again. It’s a dream where I’m under waves of crushing words. Its an ocean of words and it shakes with voices like thunderclaps. My body is heavy shining chrome and sinking down. But there’s nothing in it somehow I’m hollow and sinking down and drowned. It woke me that first night but hasn’t come back since.
2/13/54
Liz laughs when I say I’m keeping a record. She asks have you done something to record? You got fans or teachers who want to read your record someday? I’m driving us out to the picnic she wanted and she’s laughing.
I gone to Honey’s place and I done somethings w/ her that Liz wouldn’t like hearing but I don’t say that. I don’t tell that tomorrow I’m walking down Houston St by myself so I might see Ms Valerie in the shops there. She won’t be alone but I will.
Didn’t want to fight Liz since I don’t keep much of a record here. I don’t like choosing to. My radio and television keep better records anyhow.
3/21/54
I been thinking I might could write down things I hear and and watch and read. I already memorized them since they ring in my head days on end.
Taylor Dan Fixes Your Car, Man!
Tell her something grand you saw in South Padre, stud.
Only Marlboro smokes the competition. Only real men smoke Marlboro.
There’s more but those three come up first. On my drive into the office I see a red billboard say GET REAL, PARTNER: CALL NEWPORT’S INSURANCE. I’d rather draw it than write it out. I just can’t sketch for shit.
What I do well is sell and visit and charm and buy what I like best. On the radio I heard it said Be what you like best or some such. I like the voices on the radio best even more than those from the television.
Ought to record what I own. Red Cadillac Series 62 w/ the top I keep down. Christ-Craft Sportsman in a good berth at Sawrey’s Marina on the Medina. Could have a berth w/ room for a Sedan Cruiser too. A polished Philco Phonorama under my front window. Blonde Philco 21-in next to it. Rayon Tropicals tailored for me in gray (3) and blue (2) and black (2) and tan (2) and plaid (1) and oxblood and two-toned wingtips for each color. Full club set in Wilson Dyna-Weight for this year and last year’s too. Missions season tickets (2 seats) behind third plate. Subscriptions to Time and Man to Man and Texas Rangers and Fortune and wherever else I want. Invitations to anywhere I want to go socially thanks to office pals around the office. Includes King of Clubs and the Argyle for brunch, lunch, and dinner every week. I own good credit there and everywhere else I spend.
Ought to list my ladies too though I sure don’t own them. Most dates it feels like they own me wallet and soul. They’re Daisy and Liz and Honey and Jeanie and sometimes Holly when I’m in New Braunfels. There’s Ms Valerie in a way. She’s not my lady and never was. But she ought to be in the record. Ms Valerie Olsen grew up a stone’s throw from Lackland like me. She [scribbled out]
3/23/54
I keep hearing Be what you like best on the radio. What it actually says is You can be what you should by having what you like. It’s Retail Credit or some such. I hear the line twice a day over my breakfast and then over my dinner if I’m home then. I nod at it like I’m agreeing w/ a pal telling me something sharp. You can be what you should by having what you like. I repeat it perfect in a Crosby voice for my ladies, but Daisy hates it. It’s so right I don’t need to hear it again ever.
Still I keep on hearing it. It’s in my ear when I wake up shocked that I slept and when I stare into my closet that hardly fits my Rayons and clubs, it’s always in my ear. Seems why some people keep records I think: something doesn’t fit their lives so they write it down and see it outside themselves. Like what I done w/ the dream and this voice. They look just like suits on hangers.
Today I did something I never done before: I didn’t turn on the radio. I chose not to. Not when I sat down with my coffee or when I sat down with my dinner. I didn’t have to hear that I can be what I should by having what I like. Sure the paper was telling me how the best men buy bonds but I didn’t hear that radio voice that made me nod and nod and nod. Chose quiet for
3/26/54
I can’t write out what it is. I want to sketch it. The [scribbled out]
My right hand is [scribbled out] [scribbled out] thinned. It looks like water. I see through it. But it touches my face and my knee and the paper and the wall fine. It’s still there just looks thinned. I’m eating and sleeping fine like I do. I don’t feel poor or see ghosts and angels and beams. My hand just might could pass light through it. It’s like my class ring is floating almost. It doesn’t hold right on my thined finger.
If anything I feel good or better. I have most breakfats and dinners to myself without the radio or television. The coffee is better without them and the steak too. Just sitting here is better without them since I can see myself like I didn’t before: me setting my paper aside and sitting alone before the huge open window with huge live oak looming, seeing me as a man at his placesetting but not his clothes or even his face but more his shape of what he is at his placesetting. He’s me. It reels my head but I see me and myself at the same time. I’d like to meet them proper someday.
Ms Valerie might like all that or maybe not. I ain’t bet since Valentine’s but bet she knew myself and me on the first day she met me at the bus stop.
3/28/54
It’s my left hand now. It’s gone thin maybe overnight. I didn’t leave the bathroom for ten minutes waving it around with my other hand. They’re both thinned and don’t show in the mirror. They touch things and leave sweatmarks on the mirror but I barely see them. Putting on my suit was like trying magic tricks I was afraid of. All day I was looking at my hands and thinking they looked wrong in the gray Rayon I wanted for today. My rule is that return clients get gray suits and new clients get blue and today Clint from AT&T returned to our office. My suit looked all wrong on my waterthin hands and I swore off my rule. Ought to choose something better.
Tonight I came home and took the suit off and left it on the floor. It wouldn’t look right hanging. None of the suits looked right hanging. I dumped Texas Ranger issues from a cardboard box and then put that gray suit and a blue suit and a black one into it. My shins over my socks were waterthin too. Tomorrow I’m refilling the box with Texas Rangers and leaving the whole caboodle at the Goodwill.
Driving home I didn’t see either hand on the steering wheel and felt the sun shining into the convertible like it never done. I’m through something. [illegible]
3/31/54
No one notices. All week I watched people watch me and not see me getting thinned. They shake my hands without saying anything. I’m gesturing more with my seethrough hands to test them but no one blinks. What’s invisible on me is invisible to them but wholy different.
They see when I refuse things though. Today Phil asked me to King of Cups and I said not tonight and he asked what that was supposed to mean. I meant I’m never going back but didn’t say it since I didn’t realize it then. Phil said what the hell’s with you, Sawyer? I set my chin on my hand but he didn’t blink at it so I said I don’t like going there every night for all time and that there are too many voices too loud in there and I don’t like being seen there. See, I realized we’re always there and everywhere else to be seen there. Phil he just shrugged and said I better not be turning baptist about the dry laws. He wanted me to pay for his night again like every night I gone drinking with him probably.
When I came home and changed my belly was thinned too. Gone like my hands and now a scooped hole under my ribs but still there when I felt it. I look like air after rain. I feel like myself though. I am myself and more than I been. It doesn’t make sense but it’s the case I think and this is the record.
4/1/54
I told Liz today what’s going on. She said I wasn’t much good at April Fools. I repeated it and waggled my fingers. She grabbed them so I’d stop and said I’ve heard better jokes.
Ought to just see Daisy and stop with the others. I don’t like Liz most days I see her and Holly has her mother over her and Honey might be married. I like best being seen driving top-down with Liz but don’t like what she says or what I say with her. I liked seeing myself be a man who could take a girl like Liz. Same for Honey and Holly since I could take them from someone else. Not Daisy though. I like what she says and I don’t take her. We talk about her folks and the records they left in boxes and books and the rest. She bends near in half when she laughs and there’s no sounds like it. Daisy surprises me and feeds me no lines. Her voice makes my arms ring so I know I still got them. That’s good as gold even if I don’t think I’ll marry her.
4/4/54
I told Liz last night I’m through seeing her. She didn’t want to know why but I tried telling her. She kept saying I was no true man to toss her away during her sister Polly’s wedding. No real man would do that. I stopped trying to tell her and left her at the reception. Someone was singing and I didn’t hear what.
This morning was church but I didn’t hear the sermon. I wound up helping Mrs Edie sing hymns for children. I been thinking about what voices the kids hear while we’re all singing hyms and listening to Donaldson in the chapel. It’s just Mrs Edie and most days Mrs Rebecca Latimore and today it was me too. I stood watch to make sure the boys’ hands were to themselves and the kids knew the hymns better than me. They were singing Bring them in bring them in bring the little ones to Jesus again and again. That song begun with Tis the shepherd’s voice I hear. Tonight I’ll try hearing it on WOAI but it’s old for them. It’s [scribbled out] I never herd it before.
Mrs Edie will have me helping next week she said. I said I’d like to hear that bring them in hymn again and she gave me a look and said most men hate that one quite a bit.
4/11/54
When I come home from church my head was gone. It’s been thinned but today it winked out. I felt it with my fingers though. Felt that my hair got long since I can’t see to cut it. Looking at the mirror I only see the towel hanging on the rack on the wall behind. Took it down when I saw it through myself. Not sure I need to be cleaned after all this and I like seeing the bare rack shining and the bare wall.
I tried singing. I sang Bring them in bring them in bring the little ones to Jesus again and again. I went and stood in the shower and sang there loud as I could. Then I took off my clothes and sang and I only saw the empty shower and empty bathroom in the mirror but heard everything echoing little ones to Jesus. I kept at it a whole hour.
4/13/54
Im the shape of my chest. That’s all I see now: this [scribbled out] the ridge in the air where my chest is, in the center where there’s hair. I felt it with my fingers but see only the ghost of it in the room.
Writing this looks strange. It’s only this pen waggling and leaving words here like it’s got its own choices. My ring used to be there but I took it off the other day to see the pen move alone. Don’t recall where I set it but that’s fine. This record is words out of a pen with no brass ring or sleave or anything more.
4/16
In Good Friday service Ms Valery looked through me. She sat with with her aunt Betts in the row ahead of mine. No one else looks like her. Her hair is longer and loose too, some of it falling free. Maybe it felt better for her. It lay more than stood like it done after we swam as kids. I didn’t smell any spray like what her aunt and other ladies like best for church. Her dress was red linen I think. Or just cotton. My shirtsleaves were linen maybe. Can’t recall now but I know I chose no suit.
She looked toward me after her row passed the Lord’s Supper plate. Just turned her head to me while I was choosing my cup, but she didn’t see me. She looked through me like I look through me. She stopped a second. Must’ve saw the communion cup out of the plate with no fingers holding it or my linen shirt with no head or neck attached. Then she looked to Ms Cavender next to me and halfsmiled and turned around.
I love that Ms Valery didn’t see me. Glader than anything for it. Everyone talking to me or shaking my hand like nothing changed make me feel kooky and like they’re pretending everything about me. But she never once pretended with me aside from the castle and joust games we played on Medina river and Polecat. Ms Valery sees [scribbled out] sees by not seeing. There’s no words for it and her and me.
I have to wait for her and better than I been [illegible]
4/17
I asked Daisy to forgive me and not see me anymore. Forgiveness since it was only a shadow of the truth that I’d ever marry her. We were sat on her mother’s porch and I felt heavy like a Buick next to her in her mother’s wicker porch swing. I said I ought to have done good by her but only liked having her in my life but won’t marry her, can’t marry her. I never said so much to her at once. Rather never said so much real words to her at once.
She said it was probably best. Then she got fierce and asked why I can’t marry her and said there’s some other girl I can marry probably of course. She said I better well do well by that girl if not by her for shame’s sake. Then she said sorry for browbeating me with it.
I might could’ve told her about Ms Valery but it wouldn’t make sense. Only makes sense to me but I can’t explain it. So I said don’t worry Daisy, no need for sorry. But I wasn’t done just because we were at the end and I told her I was keeping the record she asked for once. She asked are you writing it? I said yes, it got harder for me. When she asked why I couldn’t say.
Daisy asked can I see the journal?
I said you can have it. I repeated myself when she started shaking her head and saying she shouldn’t. She should have this. This journal makes less sense to me and any explaining makes me emptier and I’m through. Daisy agreed and later I left her on the porch as friends. I’m here writing the last entry so Daisy might understand. Hi Daisy.
When I got home I couldn’t see my body. When I took off my clothes every inch was gone from the mirror.
4/18
This is the last entry Daisy.
Slept on how to explain it. I still can’t explain it even after sleeping like a baby. [illegible]
I gave up the most favorite things I owned. That’s my radio and Cadillac and Sportsman and suits and shoes and club sets. Might could give up the house. As these things went out my life I disappeared to myself. [scribbled out] The [scribbled out] Daisy I’m not fooling. Read backward and see I mean what I’m saying. Head to toe I can’t see myself. Nothing there but also everything here.
[illegible]
Never been more myself since Lackland with Ms Valery. That’s why I can’t marry anyone else or maybe marry at all. She won’t have me and [scribbled out] so I won’t have anyone else.
[scribbled out]
[illegible]
