So some of the major hippie farm activity occurs right around or after Labor Day, much later than I would have thought. Whatever happened to Shayna, did she just fade from sight? Or was there some more decisive break? Here there is a big trip, must have been the 29^th, after Lola was in the works. I came back from that trip seeing her as deep sorrow and resistance. Much Lola in this volume, and I’m surprised now to see she was barely 17, yet so well balanced. The volume also covers a week of vacation where I chose to stay at the farm, rather than go off to the ashram – notes, too, on looking seriously at poetry submissions. Much copying of Be Here Now rounds out the volume.

TO DANCE WITHOUT MOVING

~*~

Another volume that begins on a Saturday, 28:VIII:71

Aftermath Hurricane Debra

Trip to Rochester the next day.

Shayna’s sister was Tammy, not Serena as I had thought. “Beautiful … green eyes drinking in mine.”

Note that Lola and Shayna put their bras on backwards, as did Judith … as for Nikki?

At end of month, “much affinity for Aram Saroyan” … and Robert Creeley.

At campus bookstore, spent $16.55: far-out collection. Himalayan art, Neruda and Vallejo, two Rilke volumes, and 17^th century English poetry survey. Passed on a $4 book of Blake’s art.

Decided to spend week of vacation at home. “Where else would I see more beautiful land?”

Got an amazing letter from my sister, seems the ashram trip together opened her up … read parts to Helene, “She sounds cute”

News from Cheri was essentially a nervous breakdown.

~*~

The commute to and from the office, down in the valley, from the rundown farm I shared in the highlands along the New York-Pennsylvania state line was memorable – a series of right turn, left turn connections of country roads. In the early mornings starting in August, the valley was often blanketed in fog below me.

 

 

~*~

Notes from Rochester trip: At Shayna’s parents’ house … books everywhere … Harvey’s Readers … Callas on the turntable … her mother was cooking what I dubbed Ira’s Stew, a pun on Iris … so now I wonder, who was Ira … I thought her brother, if one, was David … maybe that was Skye’s?

“Do you think you and Nikki will ever get back together?”

“No, not after Saturday’s phone call.”

Nikki was struck by my lack of my, using your, his, personal referents, calling it instead the car, the book, the dorm room: do I see the universe as mostly my stuff, or perhaps my stuff as the only real/valid stuff?

Wheel of torture [not fortune]

TO THE WOODS, WITH TYPEWRITER

Typing poetry, especially

Thank you Lola, I feel 17 …

In grocery with Rainbow (the nudist but this time clothed), and Pips’ mother standing in front of me.

I laughed, and she turned around. “Oh, hi! I knew it was you by your laughter. Nobody else laughs like you.”

Was I, uh, really, that weird?

My room as a universe I can comprehend.

On a later Friday, on way to Rochester [was I late shift next day?} … Shayna had found an apartment in Buffalo but with twists. Guys able to play cards there once a week …

Jack, Gwen, and Moe talking of moving out … Jack a source of leadership, initiative, and knowledge … Gwen a real down, everybody telling me she’s been giving off really bad vibes, confirming my impression …. If only she’d wash her dishes … while she doesn’t want anybody to hassle her, she hassles others, even by sitting to take a shit …

Rusty, talking: “When my father was released from the concentration camp in Poland”

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

[Here, they stood in my eyes as a perfect couple.]

Rusty and Rainbow and me at the lake, one of the best days … hardly anyone around … warmish water, distant sun … his poison ivy so bad.

Another letter from Lola.

Ronco from Indiana visited, on his way to Ithaca, laughs like a little girl, gossips, yet good to see him. Slept with his clothes on using a mattress we dragged into my room. [We went up to Cornell the next day and I hitched home.]

Polly pissed to find about Willow; seems Mountain Girl [Willow?] wanted Polly to intercede to get Bob to pay for the abortion. “She’s really a fucked up girl.”

Molly’s pissed off about me and Gwen. “Boy, you should hear what she told me!” Also, a little later, “She was afraid she was pregnant.” Not me; we never got THAT far.

Walt upset ‘cause I left at 8 Saturday … 5½ hours. [Was I sick?] Tioga edition wasn’t there. A jam-up later. Also, I hadn’t finished editing a business story.

[Incinerated]

~*~

From Spiralbound Hippies, with commentary from now.

Starting a new spiralbound volume on a Saturday.

Molly’s sister was up: a Taurus, complete play: soft, active kisser – reminded me somehow of Tyner, way back in Ohio … just got back from a month in England, Shakespeare research at Oxford, very funny, a real up, drinking from a beer bottle in a shoe.

[Don’t think I ever kissed Tyner, alas.]

Molly, to me: “Sometimes I think you’ve changed, but sometimes I don’t.”

Both she and Lola 5’3.”

Gwen, repeatedly: “You know what?”

Copy courier Maddy to me: “How old are you? Not how old you act, but chronologically.”

Slip from teletype paper: what is is because it is and must be that way.

Helene: When I first met you, you were giving off funky vibrations like every hair was at a 90-degree angle, all nervous energy.”

The Bible does not have to be logical. If each recorded experience was authentic and full, words are irrelevant. The experience was right, regardless of how it connects. Both sides make the whole.

Monday, presumably after trip to ashram, apparently with Helene.

Levi, a fine class. Twice this week he has gone into trance. Swami Lakshmy took him out for drinks to pull him down. Swanandashram wanted to know it he had seen the Himalayas. He brought Levi out: “Levi, time to come back, Levi!”

Swanandashram down on both Helene and me: too skinny.

He’s 51 and sexless, sez she.

Letter from Shayna: “I’m a strange girl.” And that’s why I like her. She would have called if we had a phone. When I drove in, the phone company truck was in our drive. Party line, 669-4117.

A brunette here since Sunday, a Cuban friend of Rainbow [I erroneously record Luna]. Lola, from Maria Delores.

Some gray hair, from Vitamin B deficiency. Thick and curly, fine feel. Tomorrow we’ll swim across lake and back. Such clear brown eyes.

She had been up in March. Was just got back from Florida with mother.

Last night was the first time she had seen the Milky Way.

Next afternoon, she didn’t know the expression, “Mind your Ps and Qs.” Explained the type drawers. A mere 17. Hasn’t seen Cornell or Upstate: tomorrow, the gorges.

Rainbow (paranoid?) sez Gwen’s upset with her for the way she walks and Gwen gets turned on by Playboy centerfolds. Gwen this morning sez Rainbow’s paranoid of her.

Car turned 100,000 miles with Lollypop in it. She hasn’t yet seen the well, either.

[So much of her shows up in Pit-a-Pat High Jinks.]

When she said “no sex” and I replied OK, she was so happy and relieved, was afraid I’d be hurt or angry, “Many guys are.” When I told her how sexual she was, she answered, “I know.”

Swimming, we surfaced within the rim of an inner tube: no sight of others, only sky and treetops: kissed in our own sphere, so free … her kisses are so long, heavy, deep breathing yet breathless: wide and teeth bared, digging my lips: zowie! And back for more.

She prefers black and white to color: more discipline.

Said something to her in Espanol, she corrected me to use the personal tu.

Que piensa? I asked. Que piensas, she corrected me, smiling. And I loved her.

As a sorpriso, got her a can of apricots and some limonada … but she wasn’t back yet.

But then, she’s a Leo,. Seven hours of making out, she attacks so hard, I love her style. Sucking her breasts into my mouth, she even likes teeth: I broke some blood vessels in her areola.

But later, talking to her parents in Spanish, must go home tomorrow: no Buttermilk Falls or Cornell.

She insisted we sleep apart, and had a firm hand deflecting my prying fingers but so turned on anyway, viz the chest heaving and heavy breathing.

Her birthday was Aug. 5; Rainbow’s, Aug. 19, meaning our resident nudist had been 16 and not 15 as earlier recorded. Still! Her brother, 21, was attending Columbia, but her Columbia College T-shirt was a present from an uncle in Minnesota.

She lives in Elmhurst and wants me to visit.

~*~

 

~*~

Len, playing around with the idea of “making it legal,” sez “Have you heard the news?” Somehow I just can’t picture him married.

D-Man: “I used to think you were a narc. I’ll never forget the first time in the bank [when I saw their roommate wanted card] but then I decided we were just little fish, you’d be going after the big ones, you were just uncool.”

“Yeah, D-Man, I owe it all to you. I’m just so cool now!”

Lola doesn’t like most juices, except grapefruit, sometimes – and pancakes. Doesn’t eat a big breakfast, gets airsick. I gave her some Dramamine for her upcoming flight [why on earth did I have that?]: she loves the Metropolitan museum when it isn’t crowded.

When she speaks, it’s often abruptly and businesslike.

The Wrong Box was on the TV downstairs. So strange to hear the dialogue and soundtrack. As I described some of the scenes, she replied, “I thought it was the Firesign Theater.”

Nearsighted, she should have worn glasses while driving, to see signs. Giving her a driving lesson, I thought of Fay and Lonnie in Ohio.

Her father was a lawyer in Cuba, but a social worker in New York City. Still, he seemed to have money.

BECOME A SMILE!

I left a huge passion mark on her neck: big, purple, full, just in time for tomorrow.

She chews her nails.

Whenever anyone came up the steps, she pulled me closer.

~*~

The Marine Midland Bank building a plethora of scaffolding more interesting than the building itself

Look for Choconut NY or PA, as a driving destination …

Todd’s cosmic corn [not Rusty’s!] … the crowd, at least one event via teletype paper sliver: Moose, Luna, and later, Rainbow, Speedo, Skye, Linda, Duck, Donnie, Margie, Mountain Girl, Jack, Gwen, Moe, and Bill …

Also, cooking farina … cheap and hearty …

Taking a walk, I threw stones at the dogs … sat in a field, meditated: Q floated up, who are you? And in reply, I am happy! And then I laughed, grinned, felt good.

Big mossy rocks like Glen Helen (in Ohio)

Rusty’s red truck, Uncle Uh-Uh.

When you’re tired, it’s harder to FOCUS.

Hyperactive as I am, learn to SIMMER rather than FULL BOIL.

Get more out of life at roughly the same temperature.

Rainbow got fired, first day on the job, not fast enough.

Donald adds a fine guitar to our homey good times in the afternoon out back …

Lola smokes, but not much. (Game of the rolling machine.) And dope together. She doesn’t like the taste of yoghurt in my mouth and was glad when it was gone.

old roads disappear

a Saturday, another journal ends

[Incinerated]

~*~

From Spiralbound Hippies, with commentary from now.

 

Finally, I was really settling into a journal … some verse, some encounters, some intellectual speculation.

Recognition that I had been conflating Todd and Andy, housemates. They do form one character in my fading memory.

~*~

Skye’s sister Laura was up, Saturday night, with all the male competition for her attention wound up landing with Willow in my bed. She was another non-swimmer, as I learned Monday at Empire Lake.

As I later learned, B.L got her pregnant, with an abortion, and then she was out to prove herself a slut; 16 guys since September, one at a time; guess she was with Andy. A trip with here to the ashram was a bummer for her. It became exit for me.

When I broke up with Willow, Gannett purchased the Sun-Bulletin and moved everything into the Press newsroom. So much junk.

Skye was enticing in a white gauze India blouse.

Me, remembering Fay, parked along a dirt road beside Little Miami River covered bridge in humid summer moonlight her eyes glistening, teeth glistening, face glowing.

Another Tuesday I was off, unlike the usual Wednesday, had to go to the office to get my paycheck, though; got stopped for doing 41 in a 30 zone, let off with a warning.

D-Man, remarking on how much a company spends on advertising a product that’s bad, but who spends that much un-advertising it?

Phoned Kara, thought she’d dig blueberry pie; she was too busy sewing. Has seen the movie Bananas. Then said I was grossing her out, “swimming with nothing on,” stuff like that. She’s so afraid of herself. When I tried explaining yoga, she couldn’t understand.

When you’re off-center, meditation is difficult.

~*~

 

The joy of keeping a journal: I thought the task would give me insight into my depression, but last night in reading a volume found it is better as a record of my ups and stimulates once again the highs that make me happy.

Molly: Everybody can tell you their problems, like what they dislike, but few can tell you what makes them happy.

Keep a journal of both but read only one.

~*~

From Spiralbound Hippies, with commentary from now.

 

As I post these journals gleanings, they’re appearing in chronological order. But as they accumulate, they will also be read in reverse order. How curious.

Excerpting from the next volume of Spiralbound Hippies, with commentary from now.

~*~

FIRE: the great connecting link between all symbols. Joining mind and matter, vice and virtue, etc. “The most conflicting elements [values?] in a single image.” Double-meaning, destruction and creation [the phoenix].

Saint Anthony fire: he was more feared than worshiped. Pagan superstitions carried into Xristian mosaic.

A partial return to a Jewish sense of Satan as instrument of G-d. Pandemonium under thrall of Satan. Laws of nature have collapsed, obliterated distinctions between Truth and lies.

Life, in Bosch, midway between good and evil.

The paradoxical becomes possible.

The triumph of the strawberry!

$2.30 taxi fee to work today. [Nearly an hour’s pay.]

Polly: “I’m no materialist but I am learning from living with Ajax that money is very important at times.” Security breakdown: food and rent worries.

She said I look more like a painter than a writer.

Her parents found out about her situation with Ajax. Best wishes for his Bayville journey tonight.

Parts for my car finally arrived, Spring Valley station.

Did I make a trip to Dayton in here? Take some of my goods back, perchance? [Had already resolved to move to the ashram in late fall: felt, rightly, I had much unfinished business to attend to first.]

~*~

Girls? “Oh, you know, typical bitch,” sez Tom.

“Lost in that red meat of Rembrandt” – sez Pound.

Rainbow got an abortion. Thus, the tension with Speedo.

Fryyr up!

My earliest memory, age 2: people in yellow raincoats and some gray in the mist or fog on the boat at bottom of Niagara Falls. So why didn’t I record the falling water or roar?

Their adolescent neighbor believes her mother is a whore: “I knew it when I saw her walking down the street arm-in-arm with a Black man.” [Let’s be honest about the racial stereotyping.]

Luna, angrily, “Am I your wife or just your fukkin’ lay?”

Moose, laughing, “What’s the difference?”

Blueberry farm: Meeker, like Hub! Water cannon booming.

Donald Barthelme is right: art in our time is collage: television, a collage of ads and story: museum a collage of paintings or other artifacts, exhibits: libraries, a collage of books and magazines: we are a collage of consuming.

Incas built without mortar: each stone complete harmony/union within wall.

Swimming into sleep.

Pd car insurance $170.

Shifted into brown ink.

Economics dilemma: what happens when there’s free energy? [Solar, wind, tides?]

A novel is a private experience, requiring each reader to create own vision of characters, settings, etc. Film is public, shared – a group creation, just look at credits, Yet a novel is much longer, including reader time commitment: it is created in solitude, reflection.

From Sci Am: “For many cultures of ancient times, springs were sacred places, perhaps because the phenomenon of water issuing from the earth without any apparent source seemed magical.”

From Fay I learned to raise my eyebrows, opening my eyes wider: a movement to say hello … seems some acquaintances now know me this way.

Quick trip to Arrowhead after work on Saturday early shift … great time on the raft … what was happening at the camp?

Skye used to play cello. Her younger sister has a $25,000 Galluci or some such. [Four years’ pay by my measure.]

~*~

~*~

Long list of meanings for PICK, too.

Stanton, addicted to working Saturday mornings, Midwestern heritage: work hard! No interference on Saturdays, creative joy.

“It blows my mind that you open yourself so totally to me. You don’t tell me anything about your job, your family, your home. You just show me your power. If I never see you again, you will always be close to me. I never knew contacts between people could be so joyful.”

So was this something someone told me or rather something from Be Here Now or another ideal?

Am surprised I fill this volume in within a single month.

[Incinerated]

Another Saturday begins a journal, as noted midway down second page.

Pages of teletype snafus, many becoming my Sun Spots series of concrete poems.

~*~

Harpur [College] music room closed: open mon-fri 9-12, 1-4. Am assuming this was the record listening room and I used it.

NY Native tribal lines: no more than 70 to 80 Iroquois villages in New York State at any one time. [I imagine that figure has undergone major revision.]

And then details on Jack Hus (1373-1415), Wycliffe, and Calvin.

Surprised to see Hus read and translated Wycliffe … was excommunicated with 200 companions by Pope Alexander V in 1409 … the archbishop burned 200 volumes of Wycliffe … this was pre-Guttenberg typesetting!

 

 

New pope or antipope, John XXIII [not to be confused with John XXIII of 20^th century], renewed ban in 1411, placing Prague under edict … issued safe conduct pass in treachery.

More typographical poems, as well as drivel.

Wyclif: sin is the negation of being. Property is the result of sin (Jesus and the apostles had none) … he is the founder of English prose writing.

Again, early notes of Quakers – summer of ’71. [Still, I had no idea what was ahead.]

At this point, Carlos Williams, not Snyder, my measure of excellence.

Met Stephanie, late June. Much of this used in my novel Pit-a-Pat High Jinks. She was a non-swimmer. Of note now, the big men’s loafers in the bedroom left 2½ weeks earlier. Disappeared, in a later detail. Zippo, whatever his name, the dealer, dropped in, bad vibes: “Guess he gave her the motorcycle leg burn” that was still purple this day, her first without the bandage

Todd and Gwen were also at Empire Lake that day.

Later, swimming in another mountain lake, “the highest in Pennsylvania,” Quaker or Arrowhead, I presume.

Continuing reflections on Bosch and theology, Christian and Tibetan.

A bookstore spree: Carlos Williams, Bly, Joyce, Creeley: $5.99, total.

Joy of possession: inscribing my name on the opening page.

Ponderous clouds of lead and fire.

~*~

Stopped at Jennifer’s, she wasn’t home. Then Stephanie’s: she was spacy, no sleep, as noted in novel. Did get some details on her ex, a philosophy major.

Trip to Stephanie’s at Bear Mtn and then Polly’s for the 4^th on Long Island … Grannie Mully’s for steak, beer, and surf. “What! Another nature freak!,” as one of Polly’s cousins sniped.

This was the 4^th when my Buick broke down on Thruway. Sequence of hitchhiking experiences home. I stayed at Tom and Ajax’s the following week, 9 Doubleday Street. Sounds like a novel only one publisher would touch.

Polly was 50 pages from the end of Sot-Weed Factor when the puppy ate them.

Ezra Pound’s later cantos an intensely personal collection/collage of whatever was on his mind at the moment: artist vs audience, spirit or craft? So here we are.

~*~

Rusty was from Old Westbury. Skye, from Roslyn Heights. They were, however peripheral, special housemates during this time.

~*~

View from the road, more mountains.

No entries since Sunday.

~*~

Tom, home from a faculty party: They once hired a veterinarian to sit with their gerbil all night, giving it injections every half-hour. Imagine the two of them, sitting up with the vet sitting up with the gerbil. He kept saying, I don’t know it this will work. They told him, Don’t worry, just do it, you’re getting paid. And everybody was talking about everybody’s affairs, like Peyton Place. Who the college president’s sleeping with now …

Ajax’s new job: can labeler. Never before knew “labeler” was a category. This morning he’s snoring like a hand-pushed lawnmower.

~*~

From Spiralbound Hippies, with commentary from now.