Fay has a new boy friend.
I went home last night to be with her.
I went to my room first to get a bottle and then headed over on the fire escape.
But fortunately I looked before going in.
They were together on the couch.
Strange, I don't really care. It's almost a relief.
I went back to the lab to work with Algernon.
He has moments out of his lethargy. Periodically, he will run a shifting maze, but when he fails and finds himself in a dead-end, he reacts violently.
When I got down to the lab, I looked in. He was alert and came up to me as if he knew me.
He was eager to work, and when I set him down through the trap door in the wire mesh of the maze, he moved swiftly along the pathways to the reward box.
Twice he ran the maze successfully. The third time, he got halfway through, paused at an intersection, and then with a twitching movement took the wrong turn.
I could see what was going to happen, and I wanted to reach down and take him out before he ended up in a blind alley. But I restrained myself and watched.
When he found himself moving along the unfamiliar path, he slowed down, and his actions became erratic: start, pause, double back, turn around and then forward again, until finally he was in the cul-de-sac that informed him with a mild shock that he had made a mistake. At this point, instead of turning back to find an alternate route, he began to move in circles, squeaking like a phonograph needle scratched across the grooves. He threw himself against the walls of the maze, again and again, leaping up, twisting over backwards and falling, and throwing himself again.
Twice he caught his claws in the overhead wire mesh, screeching wildly, letting go, and trying hopelessly again.
Then he stopped and curled himself up into a small, tight ball.
"When I picked him up, he made no attempt to uncurl, but remained in that state much like a catatonic stupor. When I moved his head or limbs, they stayed like wax.
I put him back into his cage and watched him until the stupor wore off and he began to move around normally.
"What eludes me is the reason for his regression—is it a special case?
An isolated reaction?
Or is there some general principle of failure basic to the whole procedure?
I've got to work out the rule. If I can find that out, and if it adds even one jot of information to whatever else has been discovered about mental retardation and the possibility of helping others like myself, I will be satisfied.
Whatever happens to me, I will have lived a thousand normal lives by what I might add to others not yet born.
That's enough.
July 31
I'm on the edge of it. I sense it.
They all think I'm killing myself at this pace, but what they don't understand is that I'm living at a peak of clarity and beauty I never knew existed.
Every part of me is attuned to the work.
I soak it up into my pores during the day, and at night—in the moments before I pass off into sleep—ideas explode into my head like fireworks.
There is no greater joy than the burst of solution to a problem.
Incredible that anything could happen to take away this bubbling energy, the zest that fills everything I do.
It's as if all the knowledge I've soaked in during the past months has coalesced and lifted me to a peak of light and understanding.
This is beauty, love, and truth all rolled into one.
This is joy.
And now that I've found it, how can I give it up?
Life and work are the most wonderful things a man can have.
I am in love with what I am doing, because the answer to this problem is right here in my mind, and soon—very soon—it will burst into consciousness.
Let me solve this one problem.
I pray God it is the answer I want, but if not I will accept any answer at all and try to be grateful for what I had.
Fay's new boy friend is a dance instructor from the Stardust Ballroom.
I can't really blame her since I have so little time to be with her.
August 11
Blind alley for the past two days.
Nothing.
I've taken a wrong turn somewhere, because I get answers to a lot of questions, but not to the most important question of all: How does Algernon's regression affect the basic hypothesis of the experiment?
Fortunately, I know enough about the processes of the mind not to let this block worry me too much.
Instead of panicking and giving up (or what's even worse, pushing hard for answers that won't come) I've got to take my mind off the problem for a while and let it stew.
I've gone as far as I can on a conscious level, and now it's up to those mysterious operations below the level of awareness.
It's one of those inexplicable things, how everything I've learned and experienced is brought to bear on the problem.
Pushing too hard will only make things freeze up.
How many great problems have gone unsolved because men didn't know enough, or have enough faith in the creative process and in themselves, to let go for the whole mind to work at it?