The journaling picked up with a new notebook with the inner cover inscribed, “His Holiness Sri Swami Jnana-Devananda in the middle of Erewhon 22 January 1973.”
So my ashram residency ended a month earlier than I’ve vaguely recalled.
The notebook begins in Yellow Springs, with a reference to ashram: “We’ve been watching you strangle yourself.”
Yellow Springs, “a certain atmosphere … eclectic earth of 1850s’ utopian dreams reflected in brick and glass.” Still the home of Antioch College, the village and its access to woodland reserves were one corner of freedom for me and had been since I first learned to drive.
Other notes:
At Dayton Art Institute, “a little out-of-the-way Rothko and the immortal worm-devoured Korean Buddha.”
In Midwest
everybody pushed to be other
than what they are
leveling everybody to this flatness
two beers and a pizza at Marion’s
Midwestern accents flat, nasal, drawn out …
Round of discarding old love letters and friends of predictable concern or affection
The plastic masks of mannequin people with cheerleader smiles
Homes with Chevy super-sport bucket seats / fuck it seats / watching the world go by their windshield TV screens.
Should I turn Hitchhikers into the loveliest love-offering short story ever? Letting her know my pain? (Meaning Nikki? It was her hometown, too, never mind her whereabouts at the moment.)
Every time the window is clear: Behold!
Whatever rings true
touches God
the river, clapping
Clifton Gorge
relatively quiet
overhead a few airplanes rumble
the Cincinnati-Pittsburgh stage coach road ran this far north
In rockface rope, fingerholds and stretches up a crack in two months, 30 feet gain of cigarette and concentration to live at the limits of existence better than a lifetime of dead. Maybe this was his temple.
And then, his friend standing watch adds, “Mitch is more daring than I am very cautious after a friend died, bad accident, not his fault, bad rock. Mitch is in fine shape despite those cigarettes. He ignores a lot of safety precautions but he moves quickly and with sureness, and that inspires me.”
“Remember how Larry freaked out rappelling!”
~*~
The worst part of loving you
nobody is your equal
and being alone
in a different country
I am lonelier than ever
Something more than a supple body requires me.
To love
searches the depths of sorrow
hers, mine, humanity’s
or is that yours, mine?
Damnit Celeste – You’re the only one who sees they’re not the artist’s eyes or lover’s eyes but the lonely terror-struck mocking eyes of craziness …
A city noisy
so it’s hard to meditate
yet a sun’s rising
Eyes, always the eyes … in history along with skeletons …
PASSIVE EMISSION afraid to love, afraid of sex, of being vulnerable, let down, betrayed, losing (again) as in a game.
Growing soft in what it wants so much defeats itself.
Oriental suggestiveness = lightness!
~*~
From Spiralbound Flatland, with commentary from now.
Jnana's Red Barn 