Another Saturday begins a journal, as noted midway down second page.

Pages of teletype snafus, many becoming my Sun Spots series of concrete poems.

~*~

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 20^th 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.

~*~

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 4^th 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 4^th 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.

~*~

Rusty was from Old Westbury. Skye, from Roslyn Heights. They were, however peripheral, special housemates during this time.

~*~

View from the road, more mountains.

No entries since Sunday.

~*~

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.

 

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]

 

 

Next volume starts with date, 22:V:71, and the death of our photo retoucher’s death in newsroom on a Saturday night. He was in a pool of yellow on the floor. A medical history of diabetes. He died of and in fear. He was a lousy retouch artist.

We did get his pulse going before the ambulance arrived, but they lost it on the way to the hospital.

The fear, the shaking, the anger: what is death and why?

He had just told copy courier Roxie how to make a million. Showed her which stocks he had just bought for his son.

Purple face and gurgling
piss on the floor
no way to go out

with elegance
even from a crowded cubicle.

Remembering Gran, white as ice a few blue veins thrashing her arms against bed rails and moaning her bald head and sunken face unconscious did she even know I was there?

In her case, there was nothing I could do, but this?

We tried and failed.

~*~

Situated halfway between New York City and Buffalo and points west from there, Binghamton was long an important station and switchyards for the Erie Railroad (shown here in a circa 1910 image via Wikimedia Commons); the Delaware and Hudson Railway with its connections to Albany and New England; and especially the Delaware, Lakawanna, and Western Railroad of Phobe Snow fame, with its superior route via Scranton and then Elmira along the Susquehanna River.

The Lakawanna station on Chenango Street is shown below in this 2009 Harrishhu Wikimedia Commons photo. Scranton connected to points south, such as Philadelphia and Baltimore, as well as west to Pittsburgh and the Midwest, as well as the Pennsylvania anthracite coal mines that fueled industry, trains, and even homes..

In Binghamton, the abundance of single men working the rails and businessmen on layovers or overnight stops was rumored to have sustained a seedy scene of prostitution and more. There were stories regarding the Victorian apartment building where I lived, which had definitely had more fashionable days. Some of them show up in my novel, Daffodil Uprising.

~*~

In my journal, notes of my acid trip, D-Man and Helene’s: “things like Odyssey album covers and Peter Max, only better.” Reading Rilke at dawn while Rochelle brushes her hair. Seeing my police pass press photo, said I look better with short hair, “makes your features stand out more, especially your nose”

She was living with Willie but not sleeping with him, “It’s a bad arrangement,” but I wasn’t getting anywhere with her, either

When heard stoned, Mozart’s music is too beautiful, powerful, perfect to be believed. His orchestration so fantastic, original, ethereal: like Berlioz.

Line from an English opera: the spider combs the air.

Driving stoned, impossible to remember the next curve or the last

Chocolate chips and milk: Pebble and Marj.

Damn Marj: dirties all the dishes, cleans out my paper and paper clips, devours my broccoli and Familia, and moves the milk around so I drink the sour … and lets the garbage (hers) pile up …

Tari, good-looking tomboyish friend of hers, stopped by … with Eileen downstairs.

In the middle of my nap, Steve and Joyce phoned.

Memorial Day, returned key to Vera, she said Coen would mail my security deposit, we’ll see. [He didn’t.]

Both D-Man and Helene said I’m one their few friends they both like.

“D-Man, how the hell could you and Thor stand me last summer?”

“Oh, you were OK, a little fucked up, but I feel things for people and don’t know why I like a person or not. Sometimes Thor and I would want to be alone, away from you. A friend, you can tell him you’re pissed off with him or want to be alone, and it doesn’t offend him. You can’t do that with Danny.”

Helene said she couldn’t live in the disarray of the ranch. She confirmed my impression that both D-Man and Thor are essentially straight after all.

Gave Rainbow my blue denim Dutch boy cap, the one Fay must have returned.

I’m a frikkin’ prince living in a frikkin’ zoo.

In a later entry: O shit! Rainbow, the Lolita of Eggs Ackley, is 15!!! If we ever get raided??? [Fact: she was 16.]

Later additions: She’s from Colombia. Freaked out to learn Esperanza and Eileen from P.R.

Eileen was Esperanza’s roommate … on Exchange Street?

Rainbow’ Speedo is 20, worked in city as a messenger driving a bicycle in Manhattan professionally, maniac!

~*~

On back of Lenox String Quartet program of June 5, my handwritten notes of upcoming films on campus: Marx Bros and Buster Keaton; Max Ophul; Orson Wells; Joseph von Sternberg. Which explains earlier entries about attending films with female friends and neighbors: less weight than a “date” in a commercial movie house. If only any of those had progressed further? I felt very alone and lost.

~*~

From Spiralbound Hippies, with commentary from now.

The titling on the next spiralbound notebook cover reminds me that I was probably able to do some journaling in the newsroom, especially late Saturday nights, the part I used to call the Presidential Death Watch. Everything was wrapped up and running, unless a STOP THE PRESSES kind of news story interrupted. I’m now recalling that I managed to do some letter writing there, maybe even on late afternoons or during lunch breaks as well, probably on the end-rolls of that long yellow teletype paper. I think there was some white, too. Was the yellow the carbon copy?

The spiralbound volume is largely stabs at poetry, much of which has been mined for publication already, especially Susquehanna.

Let’s shift to entries.

I read Hemingway yesterday, and then Virginia Woolf.

A lot of verse – bad verse! Though moving away from the socio-economic vein.

First explorations with the teletype outbursts during solar storms, too. Some of that shows up in my concrete poems series.

Toward the end, a few items have dates, more or less Snyder style

Volume includes my first Shayna G experiences, along with the first visits to Eggs Ackley, plus early yoga notes.

Mention, in pencil, of Nikki’s father offering to lend me the money to return to school (law school, most likely), then conceding, “We send you out to change her mind, and it turns out she changes yours and ours.”

They said she’s never looked better, more confident. They were all going to Israel that summer, and she would then go for six weeks to a Sufi camp in the Alps. Doris would go to the Aegean Isles to paint, and Gene and L-Boy to see cattle. I feel much more at ease, affectionate, around them. They were natural, doing what they’d do anyway. They’re open, honest.

Gene said I’m not aggressive. (I used to be; what happened?)

WHAT IS LIFE IF YOU’RE AFRAID TO DIE?

(Is that the same as “if you’re afraid you’ll die?”)

~*~

English once had more figures in the alphabet. Here are some that have been lost.

~*~

Introduced to Shayna. The encounter, and the trips to Rochester that followed, have been extrapolated into Pit-a-Pat High Jinks and its predecessors, Hippie Drum and Hippie Love. Note that I’m now dating my entries, and in the manner of Gary Snyder.

At the farm: Andy, “really together at 27,” also a “skin man … does it hold her together?” Was born the same day as Shayna. Story of a suicide attempt – slashed neck – he lends much, if he has it. He attended Corning Community College in ’67 and dated the redhaired Maria who had thrown me for a loop: said she used to be super straight, had dogs in her apartment, and her rug was soaked in dog piss, smelled awful. In retrospect? Bullet, dodged it.

See I also had a mishap on the Vestal Parkway that tore a chrome strip off my Buick.

Andy found Shayna’s glasses (sunglasses?), gave them to Hana. Where are they now?

Riding as passenger on his motorcycle, 70 mph: fucking scary, “You were really nervous.” Yeah. My eyes also teared up, I wasn’t comfortable, thrown forward, then back. Kept leaning against the turn. Got hit by a bug. Yet later, had to admit some really excited energy.

Annie at the farm: “Don’t let him live here! He’s a narc!” Fuck her.

With the old circle, a newbie was quite jittery and chattery. I asked Molly if I used to be like that, ‘Fraid so, said she.

Jack needs $70 by Monday, my share of the rent.

Final page has a phone number and address, “a fine place.”

Shayna’s second-floor apartment? Yup.

[Incinerated]

~*~

From Spiralbound Hippies, with commentary from now.

Judith seemed very happy to see me today. Very warm, smiling, affectionate but once her eyes tightened, like those in Children of the Damned, her voice turned shrill, terrifying. So strange, she.

I’m smiling easier, more naturally than back in January. Am more on personal salvation than on social action as I was a year ago.

Want someone but see how birdy the girls I’ve met are: seek strength/entertainment for their man.

Marj’s sister Hana talks-talks-talks, of her problems, her shrink, anything and nothing, she won’t shut up. She runs to new things, won’t finish. [And yet, I must confess decades later, I really desired to fuck her. Jail bait notwithstanding.]

My first trip into Susquehanna PA.

Marj’s stuff litters the kitchen: typewriter, textbooks, notebooks; sink filled with dishes from Monday, at the least

Ran into Judith on my way to swim (which then didn’t happen). Did take her through the car wash, “I haven’t had so much fun in years,” and then to Ross Park, where the animals looked shaggy, sad, bored – awaiting children. Repeated the Susquehanna route, with the barren tree hillsides resembling female pheasants. The river was sparkling turquoise aflame.

Judith insisted on picking ferns, “I’m such a naturalist. They look so sick with these spoors.” And she nearly fell in the river.

Back at my apartment, she climbed into my bed. Skin feels so nice, and sex on a friendship-only basis isn’t so bad – not enough, but better than none.

Running into Judith on campus again, she’s tense. Wants to get involved with Carl. That’s her trip. Read Springhill Mine Disaster, which Judith dislikes. She’s really afraid to feel, keeps cutting me off. Bad noos!

~*~

I was investigating some pretty arcane sides of English language and literature:

 

~*~

With another Tuesday off, I stayed up till 1:30 or 2 – reading Snyder. Very peaceful, like nights at IU.

Picked up a hitchhiker, it was Judith, so crunched uptight. [Am surprised she would stick her thumb out, big city girl that she was.]

This reaction of not writing: a reaction to five years of primarily writing?

Swam a length in butterfly, a must stroke now: great for back muscles and arms.

T.J. said I’m an ascetic. At first, it pissed me, but as his sister insisted, it’s an honor.

Feeling much better, free from hassles, but still miss a woman.

But then Hana showed up, yakking about her neuroses but doing nothing …

Leaving lights on and cleaning up nothing. Small pride?

Ajax got a job at the Chinese restaurant.

Molly/Polly/and him: talky, talky.

Hana, Marj’s sister, wants to know if I’m keeping the apartment over the summer, she’s hoping to stay but drives me up the wall. “Yesterday was the first time in three days I’d been outdoors,” “What was the weather like?,” “I dunno.” She’s like a three-year-old, needs to be led by the hand; offered to help me take the garbage down but left it at the first landing. Makes messes, doesn’t clean up. Flipped out because this guy she liked danced with every girl at the party but her.

She enjoys the sick little girl role. The simplest yoga poses are beyond her concentration.

Esperanza was really beautiful and sexy at the Latino concert, but she and Len are arguing too much.

Somewhere by now, Polly had remarked on how schizoid my life was, torn between the demands of journalism and what she thought should be grad-school for me. I was living as a grad student, essentially, hanging out on campus and among a college crowd.

[Incinerated]

~*~

From Spiralbound Hippies, with commentary from now.

St. Pat’s Day, everybody in Binghamton turns Celtic. Just look at the high school marching band.

Pebble’s staying: too many dishes pile up, and trashy living room

After I went to bed, Pebble and Marj began whispering in the living room, just outside my door. Pebble’s so loud anyway, and then they started giggling and I heard cloth rustling, snaps, and a zipper, followed by heavy breathing, oohs, and aahs. When I awoke, they were sleeping in Marj’s room.

Pebble’s stuff is strewn all over the place, and the dishes are piling up very high. They have been leaving them for me.

~*~

As for my typing, a la Kerouac, on long strips of teletype paper, which I had in abundance from the newsroom. It served me for both correspondence and my own drafts at literature.

~*~

Last day of winter: 2 inches new snow.

First day of spring: sunny and warm.

Getting my knee to touch the ground, closer to lotus. My body is a joy; it does some things I want now, like playing, standing on one foot and “flying.” My balance is improving. This trip started out on a downer.

~*~

From Spiralbound Hippies, with commentary from now.

By this point, I was getting addicted to the weekly hatha yoga sessions and had even visited Swami’s ashram in the Poconos. I’ll save those details for a more focused presentation later. Or you can read my novel, Yoga Bootcamp.

For now, here are some more mundane activities and thoughts from that period.

~*~

From Borges’ “Anxieties”: “Now that I have the secret, I could explain it a hundred different and even contradictory ways … Compared to it, science – our science – seems not so much more than a trifle … The secret, I should tell you, is not as valuable as the steps that brought me to it. Those steps have to be taken, not told.”

In my readings of the Inca: “In 440 years we have failed to eliminate the savage in music of language: Spanish remains the secondary tongue: the West has been defeated: the flute solo sounds strangely like jazz or Xanakis: there is hope for u.”

[Esperanza was originally from Ecuador!]

~*~

Headline writer
Poet of gossip
[Robert Katzman]

~*~

Meditation revelation: I was trained and conditioned to be a technician: me, the artist, a technician! Frightening thought! A technician knows the surface, not the heart or subjective substance

Swami: “Do not do the exercises on your own. You destroy your cells, they don’t have time to regenerate. Once a week will be much stronger.”

Two I may do, though:

• Contemplate a candle flame.
• Prepare for lotus.

~*~

Snow follows me wherever I go these days: here in the Poconos, also Staten and Long islands trips.

~*~

Surprised to get a letter from Fay and wrote a reply. Noted mine “sound manic but it’s not. How does one write about happiness? Or yoga, the Protestant atheist discovering God within himself, and Spinoza and a Quaker?” The latter item comes out of the blue, considering how little I knew of Friends. Once again …

Also wrote to Nicki.

Blue jeans, desert boots.

And Betty Ann said something like, “Hey, that’s a tough outfit you’re wearing,” and I answered, “Yeah,” She’s been mostly pouting, probably because I haven’t asked her out yet. She was dressing in a brown bibbed pantsuit.

With all the yoga, am going through such mind changes, perhaps the biggest in my life.

~*~

From Spiralbound Hippies, with commentary from now.

Polly’s hometown on north shore of Long Island … Oyster Bay … her grandmother’s house Mully Hill … there’s no hill, the area a lot like Lexington horse country or Palm Beach.  A little gardener’s house next door. Polly’s smoking Parliaments …

Sez she: “Your journal seems written with an audience in mind.” [Quite the opposite. And I should have been appalled by the invasion of my privacy.]

She calls her grandfather Chief. A terribly strong man. We heard from his duck blind the blom-blom of a shotgun …

Favorite words? Polly “far out,” Nicki “yuck,” Len “dig” or “stomp shit.”

I feel there’s this stranger inside me, the real me. The other self, the one I know, is an external shell, the intellectual/jokester/speaker/writer/observer/participant/moralist. The inner self is a pearl, an essence within a dark cave, surrounded by space. It is tormented by demons, driven by fears, seeks sexual release and union. One is rational; the other, irrational. Which is closer to God, I know not.

Marj or Judith, either or both: I’m afraid of a relationship, platonic or passionate.

Headlines? When top French radio show offers advice, astrologer is a big star.

Judith called to say she’d received an “A” in voice, it surprised her, though she’s one of the few operatic voices at Harpur. Her prof gives an “A” only to the elite.

Polly called to see if I’d join them for a movie. “Can’t, I just put a pot pie in the oven,” but she erupted, “Pot pies and onion soup, nothing changes.” That made me angry, why should I cook for solo mio? Now, if we go Zen macro?

Fay signed her postcard from Bloomington, “See ya!” I wondered how to take that. What was she doing there, anyway, rather than West Lafayette?

Ann [whoever] told of her new roommate who talks only of her boyfriend who has a girlfriend …

Started reading Gary Snyder last night: fine stuff. His entries seem to follow weekends: was this a journal, day-off work thing?

Nikki called, collect (2:30 now). Strange conversation, distant, she didn’t know why she called [repeated several times], too much to write: something about a 25-member commune, maybe Sufi, but soul searching, reaching, suicidal.

Somehow, I had expected her to call. Things are looking up. She would bring me down. I couldn’t follow her orbit.

[This was the moment, though, when I mentioned considering yoga and then chancing upon the notice the next afternoon. As I noted on the last page of my journal, “yoga – Steve, 723-7226, 7:30, 131 Clinton St,” a rather fateful commitment.

Of course, we believed there were little men inside our television.

~*~

Although I had three summers in Binghamton, including a college internship, my only winter there had snow cover from Thanksgiving to nearly Palm Sunday, sometimes several feet deep. There was no place to pile it, either. January’s cold was brutal. Global warming lessened the Snow Belt lock by the time I revisited the region a dozen years later. These photos, from the milder winters, convey none of the exhaustion we experienced. Even so, it could be breathtakingly beautiful.

 

 

 

Just about every time we thought it was going away, we got hit with a fresh round. The storms seemed to hit us twice a week. As I recall, the heaviest hit in March: a 24-incher followed by 30 inches and then a 36-incher. Our parking was already packed in on the street.

~*~

In the meantime …

Read Marj some of my Corinthian Columns: very fine shit but my arrangement of words is shifting: my prose style: how awful.

Reading piles around my mattress: self-imposed obligations and duties.

When I came home, wanted to play violin but Marj was studying but Marj was studying so I cooked noodles with mushrooms and broccoli while she watched.

How great it is to say that Sunday has been one of the most beautiful days of my life (had I gone to the Byrd tonight, probably would have overloaded my circuits.)

What shit I put up with from Nicki! Standup, standoff: why don’t I do that with others?

Snidely jumped out Molly’s kitchen window and ran away: dumb cat!

The Inca was king!

In revisiting these, I’m finding my Dark Age was quite fertile.

~*~

I could probably try to reconstruct the time sequence by weeks, but I did suspect the volume covered more than the two months between the holidays and the end of February, when the next volume begins. A lot was happening in the midst of seemingly nothing.

My updated perspective now accepts that I did, indeed, fill 150 to 210 pages in a little over two months. It was the cusp of a life-changing turning point.

~*~

Misc. loose slip of small notated paper: Doctors Bonebroke, Sickler, Dieman, and Hazard. As for Thelonious Panter? The small slip of paper was printed with Date, Instr., Period, Class, Absentees, and Tardy as the header and two columns to list the offenders. A school attendance document! Did I really find that floating, blank, on the street?

[Incinerated]

~*~

From Spiralbound Hippies, with commentary from now.

Nay does not mean no, except in oral voting.

Nark:

• From nok, nak, nose: Brit a spy, employed by police: informer, stool pigeon
• To act as an informer
• To become irritated, annoyed: “Hope you aren’t narked at me”
• Killjoy, wet blanket, an unpleasant and irritating person
• Nark it, meaning to cease, as command

Narky, ill-tempered and irritable

Mencken: “America has no institutions, only fashions.”

From Antioch Review, Summer 1970: “If everybody pleaded not guilty, the judicial system would collapse.”

And then: Laws “should not be understood as meaning what they purport to say, even after being interpreted in court. They can be properly considered only if one examines the intersection between the stated laws and the particular interests that are being served by it, in an actual setting.”

“Fairly obviously, then, the posted law … was intended and used for a purpose exactly opposite to the one stated in words.”

“A stable balance of illegality requires that the law, in practice, exclude from prohibitions the ‘normally’ illegal behavior of particular groups.”

“In this way, the customers get the law they want.”

“Law defends the rights of ownership.”

[Joseph S. Lobenthall Jr., “Buying Out, Selling Out, Copping Out: The Law in the City”]

~*~

Len announced he’s moving out, he can save $12.50 a month in rent and another $25 in food stamps. It hit me bad, at the wrong time: I’m broke, don’t want the hassle of getting a new roommate and getting to know him – most of the “character” here is Len’s: the lights, god-chair, dancing Victorian virgins. I’d like to live alone but can’t afford the extra $250.

Judith’s Wandering Minstrel says he loves her, she said bullshit but she loves him: three days during finals, no studying

[Later entry]:

She has decided:

• She hates Teddy, he’s really messed up
• She pities him (what did Spinoza say about pity?)
• She was crying after 10-minute confrontation when she told him to get lost

[Note that Teddy was in reality the same badass who would later cast a shadow over a promising fling with Stephanie of Bear Mountain.]

He condemned her because

• She likes school more than him
• She took him in to feed and shelter, “I don’t want that”
• She’s afraid of getting involved
• She won’t trust him
• She won’t take off with him to go nowhere
• She won’t give him anything, “I’ll give you anything you want”
• She’s not free

He’s 28, plays guitar and banjo, sings: no home, no income, and a parasite who believes everything should be free.

He doesn’t like classical, “It’s not people’s music, they can’t understand it.” As for opera, her major: “Why be better if you’re good?” Literature, ditto.

Looks like a sandy-haired, sad Allen Ginsberg.

She was crying: You shouldn’t see me like this.

Later, we were wrestling and laughing. Good! I can get through …

~*~

Marj G took Len’s room …

Mixed feelings about her moving in: a feminine touch, cooking, redecorating. A fear, too, of getting involved. She was going to be Polly and Molly’s roommate. Molly sez she’s fine. Tom O’S sez she’s funny, something about Baptist Corners …

Her friend Pebble, the Italian, so euphoric in a raucous way, promised to cook us a lasagna dinner

Adele, resembling Nicki’s sorority roommate of the polka-dot bra: very high strung, beautiful, into Ted. He keeps showing up, like bad karma, first at the old place, then Judith, then again tonight. Lives on Grand Avenue.

Still deep winter at this point of the journal, “it’s 2 degrees, my beard and mustache catch the water vapor from my breathing and it freezes”

I got a fat letter, with newspaper clippings, returned: insufficient address, addressee unknown, and no such street, it said. The Post Office knows so much but won’t disclose it. Are you dead or did you run away to British Columbia with him or merely to a country farm? It will not say. Goodbye, witch, leave me alone, my own life: do not come near me: you can destroy me, I hate you [or that] and fear you: my heart beats too fast. [Nicki? Or Fay? Or]  …

Style is projection.

Judith called this morning, wanted my box number, said she wrote me a long letter and didn’t have time on the phone … she wants to move in with me and split the rent with Marj “and I can pick up after Marj, she’s not too neat” – yeah, neither are you, babe. And she sez Teddy isn’t so bad, “I know so much more now, I can control people better, I don’t have to worry” and her voice tightens, pinched, nervous, “Teddy and I might go away for a couple of days … could I come up a few days early and stay at your place? I can’t stand it here, I can sleep only seven hours” she’s grabbing again, “If I stay with Shayna, I won’t grow”

Mixed feelings I have [too].

Perhaps I should have dropped Nicki when Cox told me to, but then there would have been no loss of virginity, no Florida, no Montana-Utah … am guessing my changes/growth would have been lesser.

Len, who seldom does the dishes, frequently tells me to rinse them immediately upon using. Today he made an omelet (with my eggs, he never uses eggs, he sez); he left the milk out and the dishes, “Oh, yeah, I was too busy kissing Zeezy and tucking her in bed.”

He was also talking about Dr. and Mrs. [his last name] and about hitching out west this spring. He’s in future-possessive bigtime.

~*~

Friday, Judith was here, I called the neighbors to turn it down, “I’ve got a biddie here and she’s trying to study,” “a what?,” “I said biddie,” and she attacked my bare back with a magic marker and I started laughing and Tim on the phone started laughing, couldn’t stop, any of us

Next day, when I returned from work, she was playing records, broke the spin on my Max Rudolf Don Giovanni album, put the discs back in wrong order, slopped up my collection

I enjoy telling people about the books I’m reading before I actually do enjoy reading them

Wrote to Fay today: what an effort! Pain, fear, trepidation, desire.

At the post office, a letter from Judith, sez she’s so much together, stronger, etc., but the script is tiny, tight, 5^th grade appearance … tried going downtown to try to get some arcade photos of myself, no luck finding a photo booth in any of the discount stores downtown

Pips was rushing a sorority … Polly and I were going down to the river by now …

Polly related that Esmeralda had told her the only time she’d seen me with my guard down was on our 4^th of July attempted camping trip … and she felt a sexual power.

In conversation, even if someone makes a trivial flat comment, I have to intellectualize it, a broad interpretation, etc, make the speaker feel guilty for saying anything – sez Polly. Or as Dick Allen had said, I say more than is asked for; it’s great for the prof and me but not for the rest of the class.

~*~

From Spiralbound Hippies, with commentary from now.

 

Volume 10, mostly tiny script, often difficult to decipher. This is the first volume to have an actual date inscribed (Sunday Jan. 15), though the practice is not yet the norm. Many of the entries are introduced, though, by the day of the week, which at least provides a sense of progression.

I am surprised to see how much opportunity – missed opportunity, in fact – was finally appearing in my social life, if I had only known how to “close the deal.” I was meeting young women, finding some fascination and crossing paths repeatedly but failing to consummate the action. We were even going to movies (on campus, I’m guessing) or to casual meals but never really “dating.” I just couldn’t get serious, not with Nicki weighing so heavily on my soul. Many of these I have no recollection of now (among them, Karen, “with the big breasts and small nipple,” as I recorded, who I kept running into; or Janet – and who was the nymphomaniac living in the apartment behind Polly and Molly? The same one who was getting into sadomasochism? Or who, for that matter, replaced Esperanza as the third roomie?). Judith kept returning to the scene, at one point hoping to move in with me, or even my [now] housemate Marj [after Len moved off with Esperanza] – I’m left wondering why I didn’t just settle for convenience there, as well as pleasure. Polly was more involved than I’d thought, while Molly was just plain scared of sex (like Kara, but much funnier and more insightful) but also a key figure.

I must confess how often the descriptions of the new women I met mentioned their breast size (usually small), relative height, and eye color. A real pig, then, or simply desperate. In a fuller view, I was unintentionally comparing them to my two previous loves, Fay and then Nikki – first real girlfriend, as I came to consider the former, and my first lover, or my college lover, for the latter. To some extent, I was looking for an accessory, to give me value I deeply sensed I was lacking. If I could only have seen myself as something other than a tall, skinny, crooked-toothed impoverished intellectual, my engagements would have been different. Maybe that self-perception is what generated the funky vibes D-Man and Thor picked up on.

These pages reek of deep loneliness and depression. I clearly wasn’t out for fun but something utterly serious.

For all of its dross, this volume (and others from this period) had flashes that might be revised into a Brautigan set of poems – an homage to Brautigan, possibly. The recent publication (2025) of my Antique Menu and Aquarian Leap poetry sets in this light are a revelation; many of the lines and stanzas originate here. .

Other pages became the Susquehanna chapbook or bits of Hitchhikers, Daffodil Uprising, and High Jinks.

The stabs at poetry arise largely in my rejection of general society – the superficial Christianity, pompous political motions, ongoing Vietnam war, and consumer-based capitalist economics. What I lacked was a definable, positive identity apart from that: an inner vacuum, back hole, was at my core.

~*~

This notebook picks up, apparently, right on Christmas Eve. Me in the third-person, with Esperanza. We went out to the fancy place just outside town; she had duckling, I had crab (surprising, considering how central it would become six years later, in the Northwest), “in the glow of intimate candlelight.” [On Christmas Day 1989, Yankees legend Billy Martin would die in a single-vehicle crash after leaving the establishment heavily intoxicated.]

Then the trip to NYC for New Year’s with Len and D-Man.

At the close, this fat volume also covers much that would prompt what sits as Big Inca, or originally, Inca Invasion … as well as a lot more, which is a good thing, considering that Inca still has a few memo entries that need filling.

WHAT WAS I EATING IN THIS PERIOD? BESIDES CANNED SOUP?

One note has me boiling many of my meals. Another mentions that Len has no idea about broiling anything, especially a steak.

And apple turnovers from the Italian bakery a few blocks over became a huge favorite, along with their napoleons.

~*~

Other gleanings:

Just read De Sade, Pinter, Bergman [movie scripts].

Lambert called me Hodson, just like Jennie in Love Story called him Barrett. Guess it’s an Ivy League thing.

I work best in extended spurts, unpredictable.

Judith spent the night. So nice to have soft-soft warm body to cling to. She said she slept so much better than she did in the dorm. She’s talking about moving in, but I don’t want that. Her uptightness repulses me, I like my solitude, too. Her voice can be like an upright out-of-tune piano wire.

Next entry regarding her: Went straight to campus after work [apparently, I had the early Saturday shift, which would later become the zombie-shift “presidential death watch”]. Saw Judith, we talked, she mostly about Howie and how she was going to let him down gently, how much he likes her, etc. [Who the hell was Howie?] I swam ½ mile in the women’s pool because of a swim meet in the men’s. Except for one girl and the lifeguard, I had the pool to myself. In the deep quiet, muffled and grumpy, sunlight angled in through the south windows so that as I swam into a patch of sunlight, my body transformed briefly into a gold, a fire-fish! And then turned off as rapidly. Swam twice my usual distance and felt I could have swum more. I love that feeling in my arms and chest and now understand Fay’s “torturing” her body in gymnastics.

Slept in Judith’s dorm room, went for coffee around 7:30, ran into Renee [first mention: who on earth was she] and went with her to see monster flicks. The first one was in color, right there I knew it wouldn’t be spooky. And then Moose Sinatra showed up as a convict, so I was so certain. It was very funny, unintentionally, a very formulaic. The other film, though, was excellent, based on Shirley Jackson’s Haunting of Hill House. … Very terrifying, half of the audience stoned, screaming, tense, laughing, Renee screamed and grabbed me and I was glad I could grab her, too …

With both Nikki and Fay, when the relationship started turning south, they were always late in meeting me. One night when I, too, was 45 minutes late to pick up Fay, she was an additional 45 minutes getting ready.

The week after Florida was the week Nikki and I had the flip-out at the Preservation Hall Band concert. [Why was I finally recording these bits of already ancient history? Here I was, a full year later and a world apart.]

~*~

From Spiralbound Hippies, with commentary from now.