Another Saturday begins a journal, as noted midway down second page.
Pages of teletype snafus, many becoming my Sun Spots series of concrete poems.
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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 20th 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.
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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 4th 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 4th 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.
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Rusty was from Old Westbury. Skye, from Roslyn Heights. They were, however peripheral, special housemates during this time.
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View from the road, more mountains.
No entries since Sunday.
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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.
Jnana's Red Barn 