THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 11, 2003, 10.A.M.It was exactly two years ago that the horror occurred. I had been in Russia just two hours when Jim called me to watch CNN. I will never forget that day and the anxiety I had being away from the family. This has been strange pattern for me. Away the day after the big quake of ’89, away for the fires in the hills in ’93, in New York when my dear old Mom died in the house…I have been half expecting that a massive “anniversary” might be attempted and of course it is the middle of the night at home. There is too much time for them. I find myself waiting, if not this day then others, all too aware as to how easy it would be.

4 p.m. I have spent a few minutes reworking the drawing of Dmitri and already feel better about it. There are times when it is better to work from memory because it is almost as if the memory collects impressions and then allows them freer expression when working. I like to think that having the model in front of me is good and in a sense the collective nature of the sitter makes itself apparent. But the very act of sitting tends to arrest that freedom in some people, especially the cadets. It is almost as if there is a kind of man-boy nature to Russian males that plays out depending on circumstances. One minute these lads are joshing each other and laughing with a huge easily accessible sense of humor, and the next it is as if the weight of family responsibility rests on their shoulders, or in the case of the cadets, the weight of national trust, and that weight becomes present in the persona. Certainly true of this drawing as he would be paging through my book looking all the world like a youth of such romantic innocence and then I would have him sit, and the sailor would present himself to me, dignity, spine stiff with strength, chin raised in drill sergeant’s pride. I seek to link these parts and as much personal history as when I do portraits. I find it increasingly difficult. Age? Or am I becoming more demanding? I feel sometimes that I have gone away from the demands of my younger years in some casual wandering, and now want to return more to that discipline.

6.40 p.m. Have just stopped working on Dmitri. He is so young looking and I have struggled to be true to that but as usual a strange seriousness descends on these drawings and the weight I wrote of above is apparent no matter how hard I try to avoid it.