This point in our review coincidentally comes on the cusp another job relocation and has me curious about whether you’re somehow fascinated by the staccato pace of the entries or are instead questioning the bigger picture, specifically alternative ways my career and life could have gone from here.

The newspaper industry was notorious for requiring young talent to slave away in small settings like Binghamton (which wasn’t so small in retrospect) and Fostoria (which definitely was small), training grounds where we had to “pay our dues” in moving up to more respectable – and better paying – metropolitan dailies. It was something like minor league teams in baseball. A variation on that was moving up into management on papers in medium-sized markets, meaning the majority of papers across America.

Returning to the spiralbound notebooks had me trying to envision myself continuing at each place rather than moving onward or away. Would I have actually been satisfied as managing editor in a modest city, attending my kids’ softball games or being active in Kiwanis or Rotary community service? Something within me obviously yearned for more.

Or, had the Wall Street Journal followed up on its interest in me just before graduation, would the big city life of Dallas or Detroit or some other bureau have ultimately led to a life as rich, in its own quirky way, as the one I wound up with? There would have been no yoga with its reconnecting me to my body and fitness, no Society of Friends (Quaker), probably no poetry, either – things that are so much of who I am today.

There are also the questions of why I didn’t pursue an academic path or become a lawyer or find some other profession. The best I can come up with was that I had “ink in my blood,” or at least was addicted to writing and publishing. The route I sought beyond journalism was book publication. Other posts here at the Red Barn carry on in that vein. So be it.

 In Fostoria, I really had no support system beyond my new girlfriend slash eventual bride, distilled here as Kat, and her family. Beyond that, those of us in the newsroom weren’t paid enough to be part of the community, especially on the six-day week the absentee owner had us working. Let me extend that to all employers of minimum-wage labor; they impoverish a community, period.

Now I am wondering how I would have grown had I become familiar with one of the town’s churches besides St. Wendelin’s or maybe taught yoga at the Y rather than in my loft. Meaning other circles where I might have discovered a deeper level of the community. Or even the community theater, no matter its taste for conventional fare.

Despite my negative portrayal of the town in my journals, something others confirmed over the years, there were some bright lights all the same.

Joe Dell, whose family owned and operated the corner restaurant where I met Kat, was one. He found a niche and he and his wife and brother and sister-in-law flourished within it despite the brutal hours.

As were my landlords, Judge John and Kathleen Bender, whose son Thomas Guernsey Bender, as I later learned, pursued many of the Asian awarenesses I was but applying them to architecture, ultimately in Oregon.

I’ve already touched on the insightful librarian, Dan, whose last name I’ve lost, someone I would definitely hold up as a paragon of selfless public service, no matter the cost. The library’s board, for that matter, should be included.

Nor should you rely on the earlier entries of Kat for her full portrait. She was often sparkling, very funny, original, a “stone fox” in the view of a friend of a close friend to whom I had sent a photo. There are good reasons I married her.

In this review, I’m sensing so much that I wasn’t aware of or at least didn’t inscribe. If I had stayed longer?

Yet much of the negative observation of the people and place as poisoned may be more prescient than I’ve been giving credit: Think of Trumpian acceptance across the Midwest in places that economically were dead-ends, even before the hostile corporate vultures who swooped in to raid healthy small-town businesses as Brian Alexander details in Glass House: the 1% economy and the shattering of an all-American town. (A book I highly recommend.)

I wanted symphony and opera and, well, something more akin to respect and power. I mean, had I settled somewhere and had the resources, I might have taken splurges in New York or San Francisco or Chicago to indulge in those.

Yet as I review these journals, for the last time intact before incinerating them, I am struck both by a sense of inevitability in their seemingly unlikely episodes and by wonder that I survived at all.

The path wasn’t one I would have charted, yet each stage provided unique lessons in my evolving awareness.

Somehow, a trip to the Ostroms in Indiana in early November.

“Both liberals and conservatives are intellectually bankrupt at this point.”

w/ VO walked in early morning fog reminding me much of the Poconos, rolling terrain, birds chirping, sun glowing off rosy cirrocumulus clouds.

From “general fog” to “low fog,” as Vince says, in that shift, the temperature drops two or three degrees, or in retrospect, perhaps rises. Was this something he learned growing up along Puget Sound?

Everything changed on our way back to the house. As the fog began burning off, distant trees and field tops appeared where earlier we had only treetops.

VO telling of Indian “blankets” as they were still being called by a few. They were used that way by tribesmen until Pendleton Mills (Washington state?) came out with more comfortable blankets, so traders got the idea of using the older weavings as “rugs” and shifted the emphasis.

 

 

 

They used color postcards to promote their wares. Along rail stops, their outpost trading outposts offered different colors and patterns, and thus a particular style became known by the trader’s station.

Met their carpenter and woodworker Paul Goodman, a character. “Don’t let them lead you astray.” “Too late, they brought me here.”

Their new house, wide-open basement, has 15-inch beams from an old hotel: “Yeap, guess if they held up five stories all that time, they can bear my house,” all solid wood.

“That there’s my boar’s nest I just ain’t fancy enough to have a den.”

No Smoking sign as a placebo.

~*~

I was no doubt sending out feelers to other papers about this time, but I did want to land someplace my bride could resume her college program …

That’s where my political science mentor and his wife came through with an unanticipated invitation to join them in the creation of the Workshop in Political Theory and Policy Analysis in Bloomington.

This would mean stepping out of the daily news business for a second time, but the workshop’s largest grant was for a groundbreaking, comprehensive study of how police services were actually delivered in the U.S. in what might appear to be a chaotic overlap of agencies.

~*~

If a Saturn transit (in this case, over my house of communication) is also a time to grow and learn (Saturn is The Teacher), it will be a period to set the pace and direction for my next 30 years. This proposed move to Indiana may very well be right.

I know both the place and the people.

The leap would again force me to utilize my mind, tap my creative abilities, and submit myself to a group cause. There will be no nasty women or men phoning simply to harass. I’ll have time to refine and reflect on our work.

It would be our first new home: Quakers, lakes, and hardwood forests rolling over hills and ravines.

[Again, am surprised to see the Quaker awareness – not the local ashram!]

The next volume has some overlap. Be it what it may.

Radha phoned, jubilant as usual, to congratulate and share.

“You’ve been to bed together, haven’t you!”

Smiling on the other end.

~*~

My one prayer in accepting a church wedding was for a self-realized priest.

A new father came to town.

Priests were unnecessary in weddings prior to the Council of Trent, 1560. That is, after the Protestant Reformation.

Marriage is an initiation.

“Before, we were only playing.”

Whether it goes by plan or accident, it goes right.

An organist who cannot play Bach, will trip on Mozart. As ours did.

Who are these brown eyes searching my face?

This makeup for the first time.

Hinayana
“small vessel”
you and me

plus all the others

“You’re too good for me,” repeated.

I really needed to get down and dirty, for the hell of it.

Haven’t played violin much since we married.

~*~

~*~

8 Aug, Nixon out, for the sake of the country, it’s such a shame” but also euphoric to see “that bastard get it.”

“What are we going to do for news now?”

~*~

When you’re relaxed, it’s easier to have faith.

Without inner tension, we’re more inclined to submit to Divine Will.

Many of our obstacles are of our own making.

Use one part of your mind to overcome another part.

That steamer trunk hasn’t been used in so long it must be filled with bugs and snakes.

Down so far “I want to die.”

Next day, so alive.

“I can’t believe it’s only morning.”

Fostoria, this junkyard on the prairie [unlike the land around me these days, where forest covers up so much and water most of the rest].

In a dream, I feasted at the ashram in a circle of smiles.

I woke full of joy.

Swami, reading our charts:

Don’t change jobs this year! Wait till June ’75. In June/July ’76, I’ll have my final cleaning out. Very rough, must now learn to live with Saturn. [Note the big move to Yakima ahead]

Kat must grow up. I can’t do that for her.

By not getting upset, I’m not being very honest and she knows it.

Barn: a three-rod job, considering lightning

Already she was speaking of divorce.

She admitted she was jealous of me, my resolve or strength.

In the night, I asserted myself upon her
And because seeing me strong,
she was excited to be a woman.

Remember when Cedar said, “When you open up, it will be fantastic.”

Well, looking back, those times of opening up are rare.

In pictures of Kat, one thing stands out from childhood on: the intensity of her eyes, usually looking straight at the camera with an unquenchable hunger, the eyes of madmen or spiritual masters, the thirst for that alone which quenches, that special security, deepest of drives: this is my woman, may I help her find that peace.

Blew my cool today, fricking proofreaders who don’t catch copy as marked. Bessie reads my stories, “Oh, my!” rather than typos. Don defending her, “For every 12 errors you make, we make one.” There’s no excuse for changing an obituary, though.

Moon’s chart: I still don’t see him as a double Leo … his love life fell in Gemini.

As a swami, “You’re just a friend, not a lover” when it comes to feeling the love in the ashram …

I can’t say I wasn’t warned.

~*~

From Spiralbound Flatland, with commentary from now.

Am surprised by my trips to ashram in this period, considering this visit may have been that pivoting vacation just before taking the plunge into marriage.

Swami, after much illness, short hair: (shaved, looks like Sivananda): accentuates her features, age of wisdom.

“I thought you were married. … Is she a yogi?”

Then I head, with Swami’s son, to some mountain climbing in New Hampshire for a last round of deep consideration.

Parnelli Kid: “New England towns will freak you out”

village greens (commons)
largest houses I’ve ever seen
framed, four-stories
stretching to barns

as for your dreams?

~*~

Back in Prairie Depot:

June 29, told Kat’s dad.

June 30, talked to the grandmother and also Father Gorman.

July 1, her parents’ turn to talk to him.

Asked her brother to be my best man.

Looked at dresses (like a funeral).

Kat appointment with her dad.

So much so fast …

The gauntlet to run: good thing we didn’t stretch ours out any longer.

We undertake all of the ritual steps pretending they’re for us, rather than marrying into the family.

Somehow contrasting guru/chela, Shiva/Shakti.

Father Gorman telling Kat we should live together instead.

The priest making me feel for the first time the poverty of Sannyasa.

~*~

Service officiated by the Reverend Father Stephen Paul Cairns.

Stephen, as the martyr stoned to death.

Paul, as the principal persecutor.

Cairns, as in piles of rocks.

I see now he died in 2012.

“I don’t even know if I’ve had a virgin come down the aisle,” yet all dressed in white an acquaintance, displaying the photos. As one said, “I was getting pretty far into motherhood at that point, but I covered it up pretty well.”

And then, despite the bed and books and her possessions, there’s no claustrophobic sensation. Rather, a feeling of the luxuriousness of Swami’s room. Tea master grace of the proper casual stroke: everything looks right, only half by design.

My thoughts return to Farina’s Been Down So Long, just the funky flavor of it.

Faces on my altar not to be worshiped but to be honored as examples, guides.

Homage to the Light: let it grow within.

I was still writing Prairie with only one “i”: remember my shock in realizing I had been misspelling it all along.

~*~

From Spiralbound Flatland, with commentary from now.

 

Somewhere along the way, I had begun dating the entries, in one of the new styles (colons or periods, depending).

The next volume, one with wide margins, had me realizing as I keyboarded how little I’ve traveled as a vacationing American in my adult years but rather relocated: the syndicate years that came in the mid-‘80s would be a variation on this.

~*~

Inside cover:

into Aquarius 1974
May my strength increase
and my wisdom multiply.

Ordained not with words, which are fragile, but with observation that detects proper hidden motions … changes that occurred perhaps in October, I’m not really sure.

My shakti has appeared, and I am grateful

My typewriter has come home! (from the shop). Back to work on the hard-copy draft! [Meaning perfect typescript]

There were no streams to speak of in Prairie Depot, a few drainage open sewers, perhaps, brimming over with their chocolate filth.

Her big self-discovery, that she awaits the approval of other people or fears their censure … now, to make the effort into self-assurance.

A long work of writing requires a much wider variety of sentence construction, arrangement, timing, than normal press writing calls upon … reading to her aloud, I saw so many typing mistakes, clumsy sentences, too much attribution (it breaks the rhythm and flow too much).

Typing is very uneasy: need new typewriter, all I need is the $.

Being under a bug, I left the office at noon and slept two hours. Missed pizza party for me b’day … “We wouldn’t have known if it weren’t for your dumb girlfriend.”

Heavy into Snyder, including Dharma Bums [Kerouac] …

We had a guy at ashram before I moved in who delighted in doing hatha exercises nude. Ran around in rain with only shorts on; barefoot in snow as well. Very stoic: would climb three flights on wood-rung ladders barefoot, balancing 100-pound rocks on his shoulders, no hand on the stone. He quit, became a Pentecostal preacher. Never understood the Dharma nor his nudity.

Kaubisch Memorial Public Library, with its translucent marble front wall.

The Dictator of Forsythia.

Hitchhikers needs a good, long Baroque subtitle!

On my 22^nd b’day, Nicki and I had big fight over transcendental meditation and broke up. And here I am, a swami.

And yet:

“She’d only known him four weeks when he popped the ring on her. It’s too fast. They’ve only known each other two months and they’re getting married in a month.

“Pam and I had been going together two-and-a-half years before we got married. I couldn’t of got a better wife, but if I had to do it over again, I wouldn’t have done it. There are just too many opportunities out there.”

Same day I convinced Kat we’d get married come summer.

~*~

~*~

At Reservoir 5, very cold, windy.

Kat, angry: “Leave me!”

Left alone, she gets better.

She doesn’t see what she has to offer. Thinks she’s bad for me.

Looked at electric typewriters, will get an Olivetti Editor 2. Was so nervous at the store I couldn’t type. Then sat in the car in rain at Van Buren Lake. A kind of morning I almost drove many miles in search of “something.”

7:IV:74, we bought the ring Saturday, now she’s feeling scared.

“You don’t know what you’re getting into,” her mother said.

Don’t know now whether it was to me or my bride-to-be.

TV host Lou Gordon’s guests Sunday night were the Kidnapper for Christ and a deprogrammed Krishna freak.

Kat’s mother believes him and is shocked I lived in one of those “communes.” Sez she, “They ought to be investigated.”

By whom? Greedy senators, bloodstained, potbellied generals?

If these “cults” brainwash kids and “hypnotize” them, what does “civilization” do? All the television commercials? As for the parochial schools, the biggest and blackest culprits? (And this is well before Trump and Fox.)  

Today, the original Christian disciples would have been the “brainwashed” by Jesus and Pontious Pilate the savior. Our bankrupt, spiritless society could not see the difference.

Who can truly identify the self-realized but the self-realized?

“If Kat went to one of those places, her father would be the first to come and get her.”

Also: “She’s too young to get married,” before attacking Debbi’s parents for “pushing” elsewhere on the family.

Slave labor? How much do you pay your wife?

Su Tung Po:

“the beauty
of the evening cannot
overcome my sorrow”

“the gentle breeze over ten thousand acres
makes a fine brocade of the waters”

As for an awkward moment, ran into her mother in Ada tonight. She’d seen the packed suitcase. “Well, if she doesn’t want to come home, that’s OK.” Wrecking our plans, all the same.

Completed five sections of The Thunder Cloud this week. From Asian back to more Western formal, via late Plath: mocking, histrionic, direct first-person address …

As I wrote to Kat, I’m feeling compromised here, so that my beliefs become hidden.

As I was asked, “Why do you wear those beads?”

If only I had replied, Sometimes they’re a rosary, for prayer.

Kat wants someone who knows what he likes. Poor me!

After all of this, I have no photos of Sam and Jeanice, nor of Helen Moran …

~*~

JOHN CHAPMAN

“Johnny Appleseed”
Swedenborgian minister
“He lived for others”
per tombstone
and engraved Bible

~*~

A declamatory style suits me best.

Two or three syllable end-line tugs, so typical!

~*~

From Spiralbound Flatland, with commentary from now.

The next volume, beginning in December 1973. opens with many Tibetan notes and has 3-inch left margins, a touch I still love.

Coincidentally, I revisit these after perceiving how much Kurt, from our Yakima years later, eventually photographed Tibetans in America and gained their respect, leading in time to the Dalai Lama’s.

To my delight, the local library had a solid selection of Tibetan Buddhist books, which I devoured in developing Subway Hitchhikers. Even in diluted form, you can see why in my novel Subway Visions. All thanks to Dan, the consummate librarian. He often bought paperbacks and had them bound, which was cheaper than buying hardbound. He also bought only one copy of a bestseller and had those readers on a waiting list, rather than buying multiple copies. That freed up funds for a deeper collection.

Research, research, research, and then follow your intuition.

~*~

 

~*~

Bonsai notes, not that I ever pursued that …

Sunday, 17 March ’74:

“If you keep walking in circles, you’ll never hit the center.”

Asked Kat’s mother for advice on how to approach Sam. “It’s about time! I was about to ask what your intentions were. … Did you tell your parents?”

“Not yet.”

Afterward, Kat was stunned that I had actually done it.

“Shit, looks like you’re going back to school.”

“Bird calls are so monotonous,” sez famed pianist …

Winter: when the skies are flat clouds over muddy fields / no escape for the eyes.

Well, she was flat, too.

Let’s leave it all ambiguous.

Some yellowed clippings of Howard Hintz “Nature Hints” column, one of my better additions to the paper.

Other entries became sourcing for my novel Nearly Canaan and the first novella in The Secret Side of Jaya.

~*~

From Spiralbound Flatland, with commentary from now.