Driving past a sign, State Eye Exams, I could say I just passed the state eye exams.

“You can’t help anyone if you feel sorry for them.”

Surprised I didn’t sleep over with J.B. when she asked me over to her apartment one sunny afternoon, back in my sophomore year at IU (or her roommate, Suzy?, sitting next to her f’ball b’friend and shooting me beavers) … and wondered why J.B. wasn’t so friendly a few days later …

J.B. was so beautiful and so obviously beyond my league. What could she possibly see in me?

Also surprised Nikki & I first went out on Pearl Harbor Day.

My innocence, like Parsifal’s, has protected me from so much.

I am my own guru. Well, only in aspiration.]

~*~

From Spiralbound Hippies, with commentary from now.

 

In revisiting these early volumes, I’m reminded of how much of the practice was an effort to recall just what had happened since the previous entry. Just recording the events has often been an essential attempt to see the connections in my life. Still, I am aware that many activities and realizations slipped past notation.

Often, my allotted time for journaling has left me barely able to make an outline of the course. I hoped it would be enough to prompt me into fuller memory later. By now, of course, so much of the fullness is lost in a haze.

So here are some things that barely showed up in the spiralbound notebooks.

My crazy employment situation: the scheduling (rarely two days off in a row) or the near-poverty pay. As for the others on the copyediting desk? Each would be worthy of a profile, had I been more inquisitive.

The autumn foliage: that first October was a revelation for me. As I’ve described elsewhere, the intense colors came on in waves, something like a fire beginning at the ridgeline of the forested hills or low mountains in the Southern Tier of Upstate New York and the neighboring Northern Tier of Pennsylvania. Since my shift usually ended at either 1:30 or 3, depending, I was able to explore that countryside in the late-afternoon sun. I put many miles wandering on my Skylark, sometimes getting wondrously lost. Adding to the brilliance was the fact that the trees were a blend of northern species and those of the South.

The snowfall experience: this was my first winter of relentless snowcover, one that was accompanied by extended deep cold. I had thought the sports editor was joking when he wrote to me in Indiana the previous winter that he was shoveling the snow from his roof. Now the reality sank in.

The people I was corresponding with: Those letters have disappeared in my many moves, though I’m certain I relied heavily on them in creating my novels. It was apparently more widespread than I’ve been thinking – high school classmates, a few others from college, including the student newspaper and my internship at the Journal Herald, teachers. Did I send off a large round of Christmas cards that year? I’m now inclined to think so.

The utility spool:  the one I used as a desk in my bedroom. Somehow, remembering that now stirs up a sense of what the rest of the room was like. Really drab, should you want to know.

Just what was I typing away on? Both in the apartment and later at the farm, using lengths of teletype paper just like Jack Kerouac, I must have been drafting much that was later used in the drafting of fiction. Perhaps those included details I’ve found lacking in the spiralbound journals.

Perhaps you sense other omissions. Fire away!

 

The month before I moved to the Poconos was also the only time I’ve been romantically involved with more than one female at a time.

This volume fills in much that didn’t make it into the notebook before it.

Lola

 perspires in beads
as if in a fever

with such a beautiful smile
her skin fit me better
than a silk shirt
in April

Her stories of Castro being in power 12 years, and Lola tells me how beautiful Havana is this time of year, but the Times says how dowdy the city has become … to encourage farm work … I do some quick math and realize she lived under Fidel and fled. The Times says Havana hides its beautiful women and hides its smiles.

Lola’s cool sensuous eyes sparkle like diamonds.

The Lola NYC trip was 3:X:71. Before that, when she came up to the farm, her parents thought she was at a church retreat.

Margie, who says she doesn’t know Lola well, says she emits good vibes. Is a center of color. How true!

Celeste

Puts her bra on backwards, as did Judith.

So how did Nicki?

Fine medium breasts, firm … this, the night we met!

A sometimes beautiful, sometimes something else face.

She hitched through Europe that summer. Her previous boyfriend was Puerto Rican.

Looks so fine and soft petting a kitten or puppy. “He was climbing inside my shirt earlier.”

She mentions the colored underwear of European guys or how Italian guys come up to girls while they’re eating and start kissing their necks.

She wasn’t yet on the pill.

Celeste able to fall asleep anywhere.

Our first kisses, our mouths didn’t fit.

Bubble bath or bath oil.

Celeste was scared by Pinocchio.

Virgos torment their lovers; she was on the cusp with Leo.

The girls at the ashram didn’t like her. “They felt her dynamite,” I learned much, much later.

(Here, the paradox: Nicki’s question of loving two people at same time, now me with Celeste and Lola … )

So how was this, the two Leos I’ve loved, both came into my life within a month’s span?

~*~

Also in my orb

Rainbow says everyone at Harpur is on the make.

And last night Todd was sleeping with another chick.

The Amazon, with Moe, just saying hello, did all the talking. And Cissy, who she wanted me to get together with, is pregnant and it’s not even her boyfriend’s although she’s making him believe that.

Glad I stayed out of that one!

I paid nothing for birth and will pay nothing when I die. (Except, likely, pain.)

Western religion loses the essential personal experience by emphasizing words instead.

In the East, the experience is told to the teacher, not the congregation. Listen for the vibe, not the words.

Words as the package.

Donnie, to Ajax: “Hey, you know who Hodson reminds me of? Bull Hollander, the same good vibes, same craziness. Well, Hodson’s more open about it, the same looks and dress, yep.”

Well, it’s good I remind some people of people they like!

Regarding Bhaktivananda:

• Anyone who has the way lives in blindness; even the Gita recognizes many ways to salvation.
• Any man who believes he is a reincarnated deity lives in delusion.
• Anyone who places himself above others (is carried to and from by servants, etc.) is living an ego trip. No man in Realization needs sensual gratifications.
• Any man who leaps to conclusions about others, as he has about Lakshmy and Swananashram living together sexually, is in sin.
• Any teacher who cannot do Dharma battle in defense of scripture translation is on a heavy ego trip.

Swamis serve as parent figures for a generation who have lost their own … parents who just don’t understand.

Three boys in a canoe, hitting each other with paddles. Finally, they capsize.

Youth must never die.

“You’re getting there, but you’re too intellectual about it.”

Skye came back, couldn’t register as a voice major at Michigan.

Rusty, mentioning, “When my dad was released from the concentration camp in Poland.”

(As was my former roommate Marj’s.)

Rusty, to Speedo in kitchen: “We’d agreed her being in Michigan was the best thing for both of us. I was losing identity of me. It was us. I said, ‘You can stay, I can’t kick you out, you know that.’”

The White Light: in middle of the night an incredible white light at my window. It took me a while to realize it was the window.

Four days after we met, I was sick … and she was nursing me, wearing my flannel shirt, etc. Deeply chilled.

To name children after animals (birds, esp.) or flowers, gods or poets or philosophers or theologians, actors, musicians, generals, anyone great or beautiful or tragic …

CONQUESTS / ETHOS

(I start attending Kundalini yoga sessions because it’s local)

“Why am I telling you this?” says a stranger after kundalini.

What the West calls “sin” the East calls “obstacles.”

It was after the trip to the ashram, two weeks before my move, that Celeste became “so tender, loving, no longer passive.” [My upcoming departure allowed her necessary freedom from entanglement.]

A car engine revving up:

“Listen to it growl! My, it’s wild!” I said.

“No, it’s just saying good morning,” she retorted.

So Swami and her star disciple were already involved when I moved in the ashram? [Didn’t know I knew about that so early on.]

Saw a bald eagle in Pa. Nov. 71. [So Yakima not my first.]

The work ethic … a man, judged by his labor and results.

So that trip to Ohio, with Celeste, went on to Bloomington and the Ostroms … Cincy and Antioch, too. She met Hap and Pauline, too …

~*~

From Spiralbound Hippies, with commentary from now.