Continuing my Spiralbound Hippies, journals excerpts, with commentary from now.
Got home from work: sunbathing in back meadow: my chance to develop lifeguard bronze: indulge in luxury, nudity [was thinking about the kids at Oak-Day pool when I was 10 or 11 or 12 or later, mostly on the outside of the fence, couldn’t afford the admission. The lustful yearnings of adolescence.]
Then heard Andy call me. I walked back to the barn. “Wanna go swimming?” After sweating in 83-degree humid sun, I expected cold spring water. “Um, OK, I can dig it. Let me get my gear.” (Books, blanket from field: nose plugs, upstairs.)
“Hey, can we take your car?”
“OK, fine with me.”
[Matter of trespassing, be a good boy, keep a clean nose, keep out of danger.]
Camp Arrowhead, atop a mountain: lake hidden back from the road; private cabins around half of the shore. [Quaker Lake, larger, was a mile or two further.}
Speedo led the way on his white Indian.
His girlfriend, Rainbow, braless as usual, wet white top revealing black tits: “Mean old bitches over on the other side chased us off.”
I dived in, not too cold, invigorating. Swam to the other side. Later swam underwater. As for Todd or Rusty further?
Luna, skinnier than me, afraid. “I don’t know how to swim. Don’t go in there, it’s too slow.”
Treading, I realized cold water is tiring.
Way home, told Luna she’d have to clean up the backseat after the dirty dogs (footprints all over the car). She did, swearing and dirty looks, everybody smoking cigarettes.
My own skin is so alive.
Thunder, it rains near lakes, they’re cooler than here though only a mile away. Scattered showers in the mountains, says Rusty.
So much easier to do and not worry than not do and worry.
With Rainbow, a shared appreciation of Bosch.
And R. Crumb?
~*~
Got my vacation check – three checks, actually, and felt rich …
Left car at station for repairs and hitched to the ranch ….
~*~
[Arrowhead Bible Camp is still in operation: no denomination mentioned ]
Rusty and I swam across the lake, a long, cold way, and back again.
Looking down into green murky depths: monsters below?
[Like Quaker Lake, these were in Silver Lake Township, Susquehanna County, Pa. Edge of the Endless Mountains}
“You’re all born in sin, you’ve got to repent and accept Jesus,” as the camp counselor went on quoting Scripture like a jukebox
Rusty: “Acid really clears up your head and clears away your ego.”
Shayna lives in a L-shape room.
Polly used to knock my laughter. And now?
A.Z., at office, used to study under noted poet David Ingatow.
Thor, bored, missing Sharon, came out to the farm and we walked forever … he says all the aspiring writers he’s known are weird … I replied that they can never be totally engaged in the event, though they try to capture it and analyze it …
Jennifer, blonde, 22, Baldwin Street in Jackson City, English major, boyfriend graduates next fall … looks 16 … a good kisser, has my sleeping bag … her expression is always so open, willing, expectant …
On meeting me, saw me as a writer. Her friend Claudia, the art major, saw me as a painter.
~*~
First trip to big lake … Jennifer saw me but was with another woman and two guys; they were leaving as we arrived.
A day later, took her to Morey’s for dinner … and saw the Andromeda Strain … told me she had laryngitis last week. I shouldn’t have kissed her goodnight so much but then I already had a sore throat. She was raised Baptist on a big farm.
Guess I was with Esperanza … had left my wallet at her place …
A white plaster sky.
Snyder: long hair a return to nature, short hair a sacrifice to the goddess
~*~
A year ago, you asked where I thought I’d be now. I didn’t expect on a rundown farm in the mountains with wild strawberries, meditating, still employed on this copydesk: yoga and no woman.
Peru, maybe, or Boston Globe. The Cummins p.r. job held faint promise yet …
Two years ago I couldn’t foresee the long hair. Binghamton and New York in general had just entered my life, and we had parted, desiring each other. I could not foresee your journey, either.
Now, paying $5 fine for bald tires. Austere waiting room, everyone jumpy. Mother, to me after everyone else had left: “That’s not fair, just not fair,” while her daughter was crying in the justice’s chamber and the father was pleading the case of an unregistered car. Suspended sentence.
Zazlenski, born Andre in France – en-dray, en-dry …
Eliot telling Danny to aum for calmness. A dead, um. “Hey, that really helps!”
Sounds like a guppy?
Fern: The Beatles crippled more girls. They couldn’t go out with American guys for years. There was always one Beatle, the one of their choice, tells much about herself: the ideal for others to fall short of.
My sister’s was Paul: as a fan, shy, retiring, flower in hand.
~*~
So, seven volumes to cover my first year after college?
Plus all of the now disposed correspondence?
Going, going, gone.
[Incinerated]
Jnana's Red Barn 