The next notebook, volume 17 in my collection, started the same date that Celeste came into my life. She’s one of just two people from the Binghamton years who’s stayed in touch over the decades since.
The spiralbound is also the first where I was consistently using the 17:XI:71 style of date notation by this point.
The concert program – Delmar Pettys with Paul Hersh – is taped to the inside front cover: Bach violin solo sonata 1, Schubert Fantasia opus 150, and Beethoven Kreutzer.
~*~
GENTLE. High shrieking laugh. Such red lips she couldn’t wear lipstick, which then appeared purple. Blue eyes. (Her home was 1261 Ocean Ave in Brooklyn).
Am surprised how late she appears on the scene, but she does round out my Binghamton sojourn on a high note.
Also, my autumn immune breakdown happened 21:IX:71, just days after we met. My VIRUS? [Over the years, I noticed it would happen every autumn until several daily prescriptions were added to my routine maybe two decades ago.]
The hippie farm crowd: Rainbow, Speedo, Rusty, Skye, Linda, Duck, Donnie, Margie, Mountain Girl, Jack, Moe, Gwen, & Bill.
The trip to visit Lola, too, on 3:X. The movie was Devils. [Sat in the next-to-last row and rarely saw the screen.] We also hit the Met, meaning art museum not opera, which failed to move me apart from its Tibetan entries.
Foliage on Columbus Day: hills half green, half tawny, golden, scarlet, purple, vermillion, rose with mercurial racing clouds
Friends Mtg 10:X:71 or so … “strange to meditate in a chair.”
Two poetry rejections: “Not these. These are interesting. Try again in April.” From another, “Not enough ‘poetry’ to these for me.” Problem of shooting straight, too little artifice.
THE FUTURE IS A BRICK WALL / why bang your head?
Halfway through the volume, I moved to the ashram, entry of 1:XI:71, which will fill out the next five notebooks.
Also, a trip to Dayton and Bloomington with Celeste. We stayed with Ostroms; also visited Fort Ancient.
Work ethic = a person is judged by his/her work.
Too much of the Midwest “living in the theology of Hollywood.”
In retrospect: Celeste was my best girlfriend up to that point in my life. There was an equality, a balance, that was previously lacking. And, from what I see, there was no underlying depression. Lola, who later noted depression, had potential.
YOGA OF PROTESTANTISM
- Meditation = Quaker
- Vegetarian diet = 7th-day Adventist
- Karma yoga, dancing, celibacy = Shaker
- Detachment/grace = Luther, sitting on the privy
- Communal monasticism = Anabaptists
[Incinerated]
~*~
My, sounds so cut and dry. Emotionally, this was hot.
From Spiralbound Hippies, with commentary from now.
Jnana's Red Barn 