The next spiralbound notebook covers summer ’72, ashram, and well into autumn.
As I inscribed in the inside cover:
More tracings in the water
into Sannasyn, 8:VII:72 11:45 am
Much of the following was from a trip home for the funeral of my grandmother.
Regarding my mother: she slapped me when I stood up to her / “We are poor,” she kept saying / “Don’t touch girls” /
SHAME / too thin and ill-dressed in hand-me-down clothes or my three-a-year new too-short trousers
She was inwardly jealous of each girlfriend, waited up for her 22-year-old son, furious when I came home at 3 am …
Resented me, says I nearly drove her insane: two years all alone with me while Dad was working / an interference with her own depending on her own dad: her insecurities as a conceived out of wedlock and therefore overly protected child
Mom makes herself so unhappy: nobody is better / does more / has less / she thinks too much of herself, “How poor!”
I cannot return home: there’s no room to grow
In high school, R.R. so sexy / at 22, a skinny mother, so sexless.
Even the green beans become heavy and dull in their passions .
The one-eyed pacifier (TV).
(My diatribes) Trying to comprehend the outside world.
The Christian suffers constantly because he can never be as good as Jesus.
The silent grace of Hap and Pauline Moon, a meditation so strong in one minute a rush, you don’t know what hit you.
Everybody on 3rd street walks as if under a burden: dead and unhappy, unlike New Yorkers who exhibit style and confidence. Such a shock to discover I prefer New York.
Virginia at the Journal-Herald was into yoga with Mishra and Vitaldas 20 years ago, takes another drag on her cigarette and is cool.
Surprised by this entry of meeting with Jim Millikin, at this point assistant managing editor at JH.
“I didn’t recognize your face (the long hair etc.) but I recognized your eyes.” 400 applications on file & he said, “Look me up when you leave the ashram. If I can’t help you, I may know somebody who can. There are so few sensitive, creative people in the business.”
“Yeah, that’s why I came in to see you!”
“When a man if 50 is willing to uproot, he’s usually a wino or something.” (Many [more] desk jobs than reportorial [open].)
Down (very) on Gannett, where we both had worked. And his own “lame” desk as well as the “flak” reported rather than “story.”
Kathy Hoerstein (leo/virgo cusp): “Oh, I just read some of your letters!”
Grandpa: “And he had nine children and 42 grandchildren, just a regular army of (offensive term now deleted).”
Clifton Gorge: such a piddly canyon “But it’s all we got”
Rundown house in Yellow Springs, windows open, no screens / artifacts carefree & lazy / memories of Olaf and D-Man in our ghetto summer stoned in the mountains.
This constant drive to do more / never satisfied to rest, to be / ambition is a hunger that devours the host / an inner fire.
Midwestern women trained to be sweet, smiling, o my! Tight curls and cut, print dresses. Do the right thing and worry about neighbors.
On this trip] find girls looking at me with desire – a free, long-haired fantasy of unfathomable sensitivity
So difficult to be alone and not lonely
The attraction of HIGH art etc / genius /
Mother of myself
The attraction and repulsion of pornography
The women in my life get more beautiful.
Keep demons
in place
under rocks
~*~
~*~
From Spiralbound Yoga, with commentary from now.
Jnana's Red Barn 