HEMLOCK HALL 1976
October 2 - 10, 1976
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 2. Wake at 4:45, amazed, and get up at 5:15, feeling surprisingly good. Shower, put on tuna to bake, eat while packing, wash the last dishes, pack, but FORGET (of ALL things) blue jeans and q-tips, and get into the hall at 6:30 with my electric blanket in one shopping bag, the gallon of sherry and my boots in another, and my suitcase. We have to push the car to start, but then the battery charges and all goes well. Up to Warrensburg, me driving about 1/3 the way, at 11:30, and have lunch of liver at a diner and find that the "local museum" is closed. Stop to try to find the honey tree, but I can't locate it, and there don't seem to be THAT many mushrooms around. To Waters Edge about 1:30, drink some sherry, and out about 2:05 to hunt mushrooms, but the oysters can't be found in the upper meadow. Out in a canoe at 3:15, debating going onto an island for mushrooms, but don't. The sherry produces two thoughts: If I knew EVERYTHING (god), it might be a RELIEF to play stupid (become man). Also, it would be TIRING to know all, more exciting to know little. I KNOW HH is going to be a sexless bore and it's AWFUL. Resolve not to come again. In at 4:40, John's up at the Griswold's already, so I wash my face, debate taking sherry but have bourbon and 7-Up, which Jan Frye has because she doesn't like the taste of liquor. Lots of snacks and dips, photos, laughs about their going onto a beaver dam that everyone else says doesn't exist, and to dinner at 6 at the same table except for the girls and Mrs. Frye. It's a BORE sitting next to the dour John Sears. Freddie gives me HER cake after Betsy gives hers to John, and there's a third. Sit on the porch watching the end of a perfect sunset, disgusted with 1) missing sunset for dinner, 2) kids on dock, 3) dog barking in cabin, 4) kids shouting across the lake, 5) light on boathouse, 6) John here, 7) Dennis at home, 8) tired. In to write this at 8. Read "Divine Milieu" to 9. Then to bed, to doze and doze to about 10, when John comes in, and then I went right to sleep, the sway in the bed compensating for the downhill slant of the floor so that my HEAD is quite level and comfortable on the bed against the wall.
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 3. Wake VERY early, then doze till 7, when John wakes and showers and gets out. I meditated from 7:30, then up and shower and find the house-cant takes the water-trickle down through the bedroom, soaking my shorts. John's Chinese soap from the Chinese Bookstore on Fifth Avenue (26 apiece for his 12 dozen, or $4 a dozen) is great---GET some (and I now add it to my do list). Then out to write this at 8:15, remembering OTHER things from non-stoned last night: 1) how the advent of SILENCE makes the INTERRUPTIONS the more awful: sitting in the canoe on the lake and hearing things ACROSS the lake is WORSE than the sound up CLOSE. 2) Sitting at night on OUR side is better cause there are no lights ACROSS from us. 3) The constant image of a HUGE monster, rising from the depths of the lake to TOWER over the island, dripping trees. To breakfast with 4 awful, two nice people, then find we're going to Hour Pond, leaving just before 10. Beautiful drive on Cleveland Road to near 13th Lake, shirtless man waving to John putting me into a licentious funk, thinking of the bodies I'd like to be feeling. Ten of us in nicely, rest at lovely rocky falls, and then continue over mushroomed trail to lunch place and I cross the log-bridge and stare at foliage, mushrooms, and lush mosses on rocks. Four leave for a drive, and John Sears leaves his glasses at the bridge. I'm called back because I'm on the trail to Puffer Pond, and we get down to the swamp, bushwhack around the path submerged by the new beaver dam, then hear geese and walk in silence to Hour Pond, to find them as they fly when we crash down to lakeside. Sit, me silent and apart, not eating snacks with them, and we leave at 2:30, back quickly to 5:30, and drive to the Webb's recommendation of the White Pine Restaurant south of North Creek for decent liver after a horridly chemical screwdriver, but the steak sandwiches are square and dry (I think they might be beefalo; John proclaims that they were dachshund) and we figure not to go there again. Home at 9 to check names of mushrooms, John fries two tiny ones and we eat them, and he tries a raw bit of another, so they seem to be good. I get VERY tired by 10 and write this, then sleep without smoking again, feeling best not to THINK about Dennis not being here.
HEMLOCK HALL ONCE MORE
WAITING TO GO: Two jets fly silently across and vanish behind Blue. Seconds later, their wake of sound arrows down to where I sit, and I can hear the roar long after they've vanished: so it's impossible to HEAR the sound and look up and SEE the planes! Sit so that the ROOF blocks off the sun and the RAIL blocks off sun's reflection in the water. Then what looks to be a snake undulating in the lake is the rippled reflection of a quickly erased vapor trail of a jet high in the sky. Textures of lake: flame in sun-reflection; Sargasso mottled far out; DUSTY looking in the quiet lea of the island; sparkling against a far shore where canoe-wakes catch the sun just right; TRIPLY rippled: TOWARD the cabin by wind, ACROSS from the far shore, AWAY from the cabin from footfalls. And ALL THREE OVERLAP, serenely independent one from the other. Shouts of kids from the dock, their red Mae Wests brilliant in the sun. Knock of "Can we come in and clean now?" and vacuum-cleaner sounds from industrious women who laugh and sweep and move quickly, shaking the house and causing more ripples on the lake. BREAKFAST CONVERSATION TOPICS: "I will not talk about business," 3 times, and then she talks about business. "The decorative side of the towels won't absorb, only the terrycloth side." "Both sides are terrycloth," "Well, it's that polyester, it's not as good as natural." "I won't buy polyester at all." "They said, 'Get off, it's private property.'" "We could only use the middle of the stream." "Why not use the middle of the stream all the way?" "You gotta use SOME land to GET to the middle of the stream!" And putting down husbands; and warming the coffee cup with coffee before you can have a HOT cup of coffee; and how cold it was last night; the year they served everyone scrambled eggs because they didn't have the help to do varieties because they were snowed out; the places to go; the places they're from, their jobs and relatives and ALL sorts of unessentials. And I feel positively ANCIENT: I've heard the WHOLE thing before. This feeling intensifies toward the end of the week until I'm barely communicating with ANYONE unless they have something particularly interesting to tell me about.
STONED VIEW OF HEMLOCK HALL
The extraordinary RICHNESS (and the SLOWNESS in WRITING) that exists in the stoned viewing of moonlight on Blue Mountain Lake! First it's a column of light, glowing under the waters. Then it's a tree in the darkest forest (or the North Shore of Long Island in Sound Beach) surrounded by a cloud of fireflies. Then, incredibly, it TRANSPOSED its position from HORIZONTAL sloping away from bottom to top, to VERTICAL, sloping away from top to bottom, like a huge glittering goblet of sequins filled with a molten ingot of moonlight. Then, more incredibly, it was an advancing freeway of headlights, twinkling as cars rounded the obstructing backs of preceding cars. Then, MOST incredibly, it was a parade of torch-lit pilgrims walking in a dim cave, seen with x-ray vision THROUGH the mountain as the flames flickered up through the mists in the cave. So many similes I'd missed: the detailing of EACH REFLECTION into a LETTER of the alphabet, and blinking my eyes produced MESSAGES in quickly shifting letters, revealed only by frozen motion-picture frames. Taking my glasses off and it becomes a marvelous array of twinkling stars, actual STARS in the blackness of the night. When I want out again I thought of the column of light as getting more TENUOUS, and since the advancing wave was at an ANGLE to me and I saw the LEFT side of a wave, which spot then TRAVELED from left to right ALONG wave, it looked like a black cat hung by the neck TWISTING on its rope, the sight of which made me feel VERY dizzy. But I shivered and blinked quickly and it changed back into an array of stars, and what looked like red Mars glowed like a ruby ember in the black coal-ash of night. The glock-lap of the water under the boathouse is so constant as to fall in with the silence, but the sudden pulse of the heater, feeling like the thud of a heartbeat, impinges on one's awareness. And my thumb-joint HURTS as I try to write slowly enough to read it later, and agonizing TORTURE as it builds to something that I HAVE to stop now to turn the page. Extraordinary fantasies. Light goes on next door and I think this might be someone rich, Gatsby-like, wanting to be liked and thought special, walks down to his motor launch and gazes across to me. In fact, the guy waves his arms around rather ludicrously at me, then stuffs his hands into his pockets, walks away, and the lights go off. I THINK I hear John's voice over on the dock, but then I come in and hear the toilet flush. I think that he could have swept me up into a life of riches and luxury much MORE easily when I was 20 (but would I have been together enough to ACCEPT it and ENJOY it?), LESS easily now when I'm 40 and even LESS easily later when I'm 60 or 80. And then I think that, as the years go by and more and more of my fantasies become ludicrous, I live more and more in the NOW and will even become able to accept the idea of the PRESENCE of my own DEATH, when it DOES come. Put lip-ice on my lips against the frost. The wood smell from the fireplaces of the cabins drifts down the wind, and people talk of silly things on the docks. And I fantasize guys coming in to DO me, but this is AGAIN more in the past than it is now. Do I now become LESS mature by holding to the same fantasies NOW, later in life? The star exists at the LIMIT of visibility; I see it ONLY by looking to ONE SIDE of it. There are BATS in the air, whistling past my face and once I even think I hear one dash itself against the screen, but it's only John. The sound of racing trucks out on highway 28 is very loud. Remember not having written the thought that the FAR side of the waves NEAR me reflect the light, while it's the NEAR side of the waves FAR from me that reflects the moon. And speaking of the moon's reflection, the goblet has lost its cargo of glitter-fluid and only a fragmented moon spins below the railing, sometimes almost solid, sometimes exploding into the shape of one eyebolt or, incredibly, into a question mark. John goes in and out as often as I (but I've put on beret, scarf, sweater and gloves), and I'd offered HIM a smoke of my pipe but he didn't offer me one of HIS when HE lit up. I come in to piss and write thiss. And stray moths after I left in flutter against light bulbs. Oh, still MOSQUITOES outside, still alive before the first strong frost, which rumor has coming tonight. I itch in various places, reminding John that I'm alive on the other side of the porch. The lap-lap of the water under the boathouse is much reduced. Would LOVE to have something to NIBBLE on, but sadly my stomach is full and the boathouse is empty. The INCREDIBLE cycle of people (us) coming out to drink and get cold and going in to piss and get warm and me writing and John smoking---and when he's in the bathroom so long I vaguely wonder if he's masturbating---and then when I write THAT, wonder if he'd READ this, recognizing the marvelous power of the underlines. Figuring I WON'T nosh anymore after this so that I can brush my teeth---then smoke another pipeful and probably to BED. The moon's reflection collapses to an expanding and contracting inch-worm, impaled on a pin through its middle so that its contractions move it nowhere. The sounds of an occasional fish breaking water (breaking OUT of the water to break WIND?). The sounds of old ladies talking on the dock. The vivid flash of red and green and orange and white and blue from a star, and I quickly review in my mind (in case John should ask), the quivering prism of crystal heat-inversions in the air which jiggle its output prisms of color before our eyes---which reminds me that I'd not told him TWO things: 1) that it was wonderful that the moon took the trouble to manufacture THAT PARTICULAR reflected image for HIS eyes ONLY and 2) that Mr. Webb had offered me a ride to Alaska in his camper. I cross my legs to keep in the heat as a dog barks far away. Lights go on and off in houses across the way and screen doors slam like pistol reports. I suddenly smell lemon in the living room when I and John are in, he remarking "It's COLD out there." My empty glass jiggles icily on the tiny lampstand that my elbow joggles. Hear the long-drawn whoop of what sounds like a loon. And there's been little of the sound of geese flying over tonight. And this is one of the FEW nights up here EVER when there's been NO clouds in the sky ALL DAY. And the jiggle of the glass next to me is the jiggle of the PIPE against it. The water lapping sounds like an ill-fitting plunger in the john's BOWL. The multiplicity of stars as the moon mounts higher (and lights less light in the sky, permitting the reflection of the light from across the lake to appear in the water for the first time?) is astounding. Truly "thick as bedbugs." My nose drips lightly, but it yet permits a sudden sniff and I ask John "Did you put lemon in your drink?" He didn't, but my nose STILL feels particularly sharp. Time for the last pipe, now that my glass is empty. Everything into a seemingly ENDLESS proliferation of details: washing the glass, brushing the teeth in ever-seeming too-long counts of 8-6-8 (4x), rinse (4-3-4) (4x) and front and back and tongue. Then rinse the blood off the sink (DAMN)---NOW feel the cold in the right hand from the cold of the laving water. Hear the chink of the ice in John's glass. Now to smoke the LAST puff in the pipe (smoked two tokes before, carefully tucking the burnt match into the book (ENDLESS proliferation of detail, that would help to make HERE, NOW more present there, THEN (when I read this in the somewhere-some future), but takes ME away from the here now HERE, NOW! Later I observe that my ankles hurt MORE with low boots than they did with the hightop Army boot. During later smokings I again (particularly after John told me the tale of being up here in the spring and finding someone from Minnowbrook (who'd been over to dinner at HH) who was cruising by jogging along the beach, and he brought him into Waters Edge and did him) fantasized that someone would come through the door and be willing for me to do anything with his cock. There were a few young men with young wives who had possibilities, and a few male duos were found in canoes or sunfish, but I suspect they had wives left behind them. But there wasn't anyone until the group of 8 with the blond starer and the other young man really got me going. Maybe it's a GOOD thing that the sexy numbers avoid HH: if there were droves of tight-jeaned large-crotched young men running around I'd probably end up hornier than I felt up there at any time before, and since they'd probably be more interested in their own company than in mine, I'd be frustrated by the looking with no real possibility of doing, even by offering them a toke of a pipe---and then there's no telling whether it might not lead to an unseemly beating or attempt at blackmail.
CEDAR RIVER AT HEMLOCK HALL
MONDAY, OCTOBER 4. Breakfast with Mellie and her rabbit-scared husband with the mustache that reminds me of a scared animal with its mouth drooping open. And the gray-haired harridan that John dislikes, who puts down her husband, and the sweet couple who said they MIGHT get me the Times but didn't [though they DID] [and I have to remember to send a card to Dennis MENTIONING this Sunday's Times]. That's relatively painless except for John's "I was never a choreographer" rather than "I was writing a BOOK about choreographers," when she asks if "he wasn't a choreographer." Then down to write a bit after changing into boots, and John's up to the place already, so I sit on the porch while the cleaners come in and I wish "have a good day" to the response, "You, too." John decides to go with Curly and Freddie to take pictures and then meet us at the Cedar River Road for the falls and bridge, while I go with the Griswolds while they try to find Mack's stick. In the Cleveland Road, PERFECT CLOUDLESS day, and I'm slumped in the back seat taking it all in. No one at Sa-Go, the shirtless place from yesterday. He turns down the wrong road, we get quickly to the end, then down to find the campers out too. Not at the parking lot. Mack thinks that Betsy's right when she says he may have laid it down at the yellow mushrooms. He goes in, I go searching for mushrooms and find large white ones under the spruce [solitary two-inch fish swimming in the clear morning water below the porch] and thin-stemmed golden ones way up on a tree, and take two bags from Betsy to pick them while she rests in the sun on the duff under a tree. Mack comes back in about an hour with his stick, finding it just where he thought, and later JOHN says he was surprised not to see Mack with it at that point, but he figured he'd know about it. Back to Cedar River and meet Curly walking along road, having been up and back and not found the trail. Mack mistakes 9.1 for 9.4 miles from highway and we five bushwhack (Freddie wanted to start and turned back) down to LOVELY piece of river at 1 for rapids, lunch, and a HUGE find of BEAUTIFUL honeys on a spruce deadfall. Upstream to find John HAVING SWUM and there's the bridge that the ranger said HE didn't know. FIND the trail and I lead back in 10 minutes. Walk .3 miles back to car, drive up to find REAL entrance to bridge, and then up MORE to 10.1 for the FALLS, and Mack bushwhacks down, takes path back and we BOTH go down to find John at the LOVELY falls into a DEEP pool with impressive potholes around. Up and Curly's gone, and back talking about the early Webbs and HH and John. We race down to cook three kinds of mushrooms and I find that the WHITE can be EITHER 124 Clitocybe Dealbata (Deadly poisonous) or 125 Clitocybe Irina (Edible, choice) and the gills MIGHT be pink in age like the latter but NOT found in fairy rings and it sure DOES have a "dull white overall appearance" like the deadly ones. The thin-stalked MIGHT be 238 Galerina Autumnalis, in the Group I toxins of the Galerinas. Heck! John dumps on one pan of the goldens and one pan of the "honey-cousins" and I clean and put on one pan of the honeys. They arrive at 5:10, not quite cooked, and insist on staying INSIDE [remember talking to Mr. Webb YESTERDAY and the Griswolds TODAY about John's seriousness about moving up HERE to live and work], not out on the porch that John's arranged for us 6. Curly MAKES the drinks that he BYOBd, and I have sherry. Mushrooms are great, and we finish just as the bell rings for dinner. Up the hill to sit with a large mouthy couple and the spastic Bob, who insists on pouring coffee. His fierce bloodshot eyes and a certain SMELL lead me to think he's drunk. Woman talks of India, as we do, and have, at last, a nice communicative conversation, John and I reminiscing about India. Back to look at the moon, and I decide it's time to smoke, taking all the notes from before. John goes to bed at 8, and I'm in to try to feel sexy after not coming for three days, but it doesn't work. I get up at times, but then the coolness of the room brings me down, and then I don't have anything or anyone to play with except myself. Finally, I strain and grunt and come off with 3-4 white gouts, not really caring if the cabin shakes and John knows I'm whacking off, and I get to bed about 8:30, having no trouble sleeping 11 hours in all.
TUESDAY, OCTOBER 5. Up about 7:30 and John's out already, so I put the heat up and wash my hair. Meditate while it dries from 8 to 8:25, then to breakfast with the Hoyts and Griswolds and Jimmy Walker, who's lived in Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, Staten Island, and various other places in the east and has settled in Boston. Back and change to hiking clothes and John's up early and I'm up later to get a book on the Sasquatch to read from Eleanor, and then John's in front and Betsy and I are in back to get to Goodnow Mountain. There's Jimmy hiking down the road toward Blue, and Betsy asks him along to Goodnow and he comes, squeezing Betsy between. There about 10:45 and Freddie makes the climb slowly and protestingly, not knowing whether to sit and not be able to get up or to continue slogging. Monty and I talk of politics, Carter, Ford, Rolf, and he gives me his address for me to send a list of "books for investment tyros" from Rolf. Jimmy rattles on about ecological organizations, bird societies, nature magazines, asks about Hygrophorus mushrooms, talks of weather and trees and flowers and geology, a real PAIN and I can feel flames of envy licking up my ego. Two jeaned guys pass and AGAIN I feel the thud of sex. Up the last bit quickly and climb the tower to a view only slightly less clear than yesterday: there ARE one or two clouds in the sky today. Everyone eats. Monty calls me down with a sandwich, Eleanor pushes processed cheese and I refuse Jimmy's orange. John's been consuming gorp. Look and look at mountains and shacks and buildings and red-tailed hawks and fire towers and higher peaks, then leave about 3:30 and trundle down quickly, me talking of divorced parents and Monty talking of HIS rabbity father and snappish mother and $60/year alimony by his sister and their start in the business and his mother-in-law's "talking to voices," as well as HIS. Again talk of the camper to Alaska. Down to Freddie, cross-eyed with fatigue, and load up to get back at 4:50 and clean rest of honeys while cooking up one pan of honey-cousins and have GREAT snack at 5:40, sitting on porch to enjoy them, and then up to dinner with snobbish couples: Helen and Doug and Betty and Lyn and Bill, who talk to me and John, and then Bob the spastic sits next to me for 8. Out QUICKLY and down to smoke immediately while watching the light go, and the moon come up, and John's so tired he goes to bed at 7:30. I read some of the election book and again jerk off poorly at 8:30, then read more and go to bed about 10:30, forgetting to put the heat back down that I'd put up for jerking off. Wind begins to blow and the water laps below the building all through the night.
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 6. Up at 7:25 and meditate right in bed, then shower and up to breakfast with the loud-mouths, who bring up South America again, and a guy who's leaving this AM talks of the Army duty in the Guianas, finding the lost 60 planes flying from States to Trinidad and then to Africa have been downed by NOT changing the oils from heavy to light in the engines. Talk of Hinduism in Trinidad, 135 heat, lethargy, sweat, and jungles and snakes and scorpions and tarantulas and they're sinking BACK to lethargy after the colonists leave. Charlie Bruns comes over to say HE has the Times from the couple from Rockport. Down to see Bill and Lynn wandering around, and in to find John in the john, out to the porch, John's out to show the route to 13th Lake, I wash my teeth, he goes up to the Griswold's to see trail books, and I finally catch all of this up to date by 10:01 and then go up to the trailer myself, beating the cleaning ladies out at LAST. Look through two books, marvelously put together, but feel that any more would be pushing it toward indigestion. Back down to Waterside at 11:30 to start reading "On the Track of the Sasquatch." (see DIARY 1342). End at 2:25, John taking a nap. Then look through my trail map until 2:45 and actually work two hours on the index until 4:45, when John's about done with the mushroom cooking and we walk up to the trailer, bottles in his knapsack. I finish the first half-gallon of sherry, everyone else has bourbon. Betsy has found oysters and cooked THEM, so again we have three kinds of mushrooms, all of which go fast, with the drinks. To dinner at the large table, next to the woman John hates, but the Barris's are fun and Lyn and Bill are next to John and things go well enough with the chicken and biscuits, and I'm so drunk it hardly matters who says what. Leave early, however, and Charley Bruns gives me the Times that I carry back and start reading, and John's out to the porch and to bed about 8:30, when I'm starting on the puzzles, and they go poorly, particularly the doublecrostic, and I work and work, feeling poorly and work and work and FINALLY finish at 12:30, zonked mentally and physically, wondering if the mushrooms are affecting me in quantities unusual to my system. Crawl into bed thankful it's a warm night, the water's "gurgling like a sewer" to quote John, beneath.
A DAY AT CLIFFHANGER; STONED ROWING ON THE LAKE
THURSDAY, OCTOBER 7. John's up at 7:15 and into bathroom to shave and trim his beard and shower. I have a marvelous erection that I play with until he's IN the shower, and then jerk off with GREAT good feelings. Into the shower at 7:45, shave and up to breakfast at the corner table with the Brunses across the way, VERY charming, talking of their house right AT Jones Beach and their gladness that the hurricane Belle passed them easily. Loudmouth woman is down the way, and the baby's acting up at the next table and I barely remain civil as the woman next to me coos over it saying "how good it was in the boat yesterday." Back down to read a bit of the election book as John's on the pot until 10, and then up with the Times that they DON'T want (and I've written a card to Dennis saying we're staying THROUGH Monday, though today John says we're LEAVING Monday) and the Sasquatch book, and then we're up the trail (Betsy says Monty's changed his mind about driving down, I don't know HOW she's HEARD) to the Cliffhanger at 11, GREAT place, and I have the luck to exclaim about the old stove, which happens to be HIS great find and HE'S the cook, so he shows us around the kitchen, then the basement, bedroom, bathroom, HER room, and living room with GREAT "pane-removing" windows. They've made GREAT egg-salad sandwiches: I get hung up on a Time-Life book on the Amazon and two amazing volumes on Newfoundland and we eat, drink cider, and have Archway cookies. Then Monty gets out black plastic curtains for the windows and kitchen doorway and starts showing slides of the Gila Wilderness, where they stayed for 12 weeks at the only place to stay, getting a reputation all up and down the coast. The horses are away in winter pasture so they can't ride anywhere and all trails are 25-35 miles long. They wanted to find mountain lions but don't find any, so they have to content themselves with 32 river crossings in freezing weather. The Grudgeon brothers are killed by someone they tried to kill, and the funeral of some old nightgown-igniting harridan on the only level farm for miles breaks the pace. Curly sleeps, Freddy nods and I yawn a bit, but Eleanor reads all notes from books and scowls if Monty changes a slide too soon. Then the blinds are down, more snacks are eaten, and we're ready to go down the trail, taking a shortcut from the road. We're down about 4:30, but John says he wants no mushrooms because we've snacked all day. I read some more and maybe write some more (to the notes on 7-League boots?) and we're up to dinner early, so I check to see what books they may have of interest and find Halliburton's "Seven League Boots," lots of science fiction, and not much else. Eat across from people who were born in Manhattan long ago but they say "Oh, the BLACKS," when I ask what the biggest change in the city has been and can't think of ANYTHING but theater and opera when I say "What GOOD changes?" Leave QUICKLY and so do the Griswolds, and John says "You must have been with lousy people TOO," and they HAVE been. I ask John about who owns books and he, in fact, says, "TAKE it, no one will know," but I don't feel right about it. Down in darkness to QUIET lake and decide to canoe out and get stoned, so I gather hat and glasses and sweater and scarf and pot and notebook and go out under the cloudy sky that conceals the full moon tonight. Row gently out after lambasting a number of canoes to get to a wooden one, since the pile seems to be BLOCKED by a canoe chained to a tree. Out and make for the channel between Long and Osprey Islands, few lights at Minnowbrook shining on the far shore, and a slight breeze comes up that sends me through the channel to totally dark horizons. I light up and spend lots of matches, but get stoned enough to start constructing an elaborate multi-leveled fantasy: 1) I'm telling people in Hemlock Hall about my smoking and 2) letting the boat drift in the night and 3) thinking of what I'll tell the people that I'll later 4) WRITE down so that people will be 5) READING what I'm telling the crowd. But I know nothing will really happen so I have to 6) INVENT monsters rising from the bottom (and jumping when I hit bottom with my oar WAY out from shore), naked men striking matches to handsome faces (and finding WHITE tree-skeletons sticking out from shore like the PHALLUS of the island), and eldritch faces pulling me where I don't want to go (and the rising winds DO take me farther in, past far MORE rocks than I care to see), but the fog lowers down the mountains, a car flicking through the trees looks like a two-eyed owl from a Disney cartoon, and then it starts getting colder and I start rowing back. Leave the lights I'd seen through the channel and face the totally dark opposite shore beyond Minnowbrook, trying to frighten myself with the shapes of rocks sticking up from the dark waters, wondering how fast a storm and winds COULD come up to blow my boat away from the shore, and trying to get a system of rowing whereby the wind HELPS me direct myself where I'm going. Nicely stoned, with a few matches in reserve, but it gets colder and I put everything on, and then it stops being that much fun. I slowly paddle back into the lights, not really into any fantasies now, just watching the procession of lights from the shore, looking at the lights from the Hall, from the boathouse, and from cabins, and hearing people occasionally shouting to each other, though there are no other canoes on the lake. I drift opposite the Watersedge as it starts lightly drizzling, and I quietly move along, relaxing, coming closer and closer to shore in total silence, enjoying the shifting reflections of the lights in the water: where the wind blows over the surface of the lake, the reflection is tattered and lengthened; but where the hill of the hall protects the lea shore, the reflection is unbroken on the glass-like surface. I want to have someone here to enjoy it with me, but I don't think of that then, carefully excluding such thoughts from my mind. I land about 8:30 and John's in bed already. The place is SO cold as I get out of my clothes that there's NO thought of having an orgasm, and I really start shivering. I don't even bother to finish the pipeful of grass, but just get into bed before 9, finding the sheets so cold that I debate passingly whether to put on the electric blanket, but it feels so much better IN bed than anywhere out of bed that I lie limply until my feet stop being so cold, the covers warm up, the room swims into the comfort range, and I can fall asleep, to continue through the night, refusing to be awakened by the number of times that John says he gets up during these nights.
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 8. John's up at 7:15 and showers quickly, so I get in at 7:30 and wash my hair, letting it dry a bit before I shave, and we're up to ANOTHER awful crew, and I've started COUNTING: we have 6 meals here left! I finish cards for everyone and take down "Seven League Boots" after Mrs. Webb is SO taut about the books I don't care for it. Down to read for a bit before I'm up to see what's doing today, and John's taken the car to Cascade Lake. Everyone decides on the museum, so I go to get dressed, find John gone, and bring down a whole BUNCH of things on Sasquatch from Eleanor. Up and they're going shopping first, so we (Griswolds and I) go into Springs and I buy a large rainsuit for $5.77, but try it on in the car and it's HUGE. We drive up to Crow Mountain overlook, or somewhere, and eat lunch, and then back to find even the MEDIUM rainsuit too large, so I get my money back. To museum, pay $3, and look at "stick furniture" and a corner cabinet that everyone would love and look at furniture from the three great W.W. Durant-built camps: Sagamore (Huntington), Uncas (Morgan), and Kill Kare (Mrs. Garvin, STILL there with her servants). HEAVY rains and LOTS of kids, and around to old Blue Mountain Lake Hotel outbuilding, old menus, old places, the transportation building again---and I remember VERY little that I'd seen before and get VERY bored and filled up quickly, but Monty tells tales of getting caught in trolley cowcatchers in his dress at 4 years of age and MANY others. To hermit's camp, cane sugaring, and then TOO tired to go farther. To bookshop to glance through books and leave about 4:30, back here. John's still out, so I go through all of Sasquatch stuff and start on Seven League Boots. I'm drinking quite a bit, John says that 4:55 is too LATE for mushrooms, so I have a glass and a half of sherry and am quite plotzed for dinner, with AWFUL guy across that John says reminds him of Lou Costello with a watermelon belly and INCREDIBLE talk of prejudice and politics and junk that I just CRINGE to hear. Blur my words and get extra lemon pie and drown in tea and leave---but a blond at the center table, who seems to be husband to a fat old woman and father to 5 [PAGES 1347 AND 1348 MISSING]
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 9. Wake about 7:50, John having gotten up and showering before I even WAKE. Shave and shower and put stuff away and get up late for breakfast, finding that we're with the Hoyts and Griswolds, what relief! Raining steadily and we're up to their place at 10 to see Hoyts going off to see people and visit cemeteries, and Betsy says she doesn't think the Webbs will be down. I start looking at the trail books, volumes 3-5 of 6, some GREAT shots! John leaves to our place, Mack and I talk about writers, and I leave at 1 in HEAVY rain to dress in rainsuit and take ABSM (Abominable Snowman) and dry trousers and walk up VERY wet path to Cliffhanger at 1:30, being greatly welcomes, no food, they make coffee and talk endlessly about it (and I tell them about Brazilian coffee and about South American trip) then Monty puts up the shades and about 2 we start on their trip to the FABULOUS 24-hour sunlight on mountains in Alaska, GREAT shots of Mount McKinley, and animals: ducks and beavers and marmots and bears and wolves and ENCOUNTERS between bears and wolves, eagles and chipmunks and Dall Sheep and flowers and trekking. Down at 5:30, slogging, and John's slept 3 hours. Into dry shoes and up to dinner at huge square table, 11 of us, with 3-people (5-year-old Bobby) family from Ottawa, a couple of mushroom-hunters from Rochester, and other awful couples. Down, disgusted again, but loaded with three pieces of cake, to write ALL this, catching up to date at 8:10, counting 40 hours left, 3 days left, 2 meals left, 1 vacation left till home. The lamps on my desk are LITERALLY shaking with the force of the wind-driven waves against Watersedge, and I can feel the cold wind from the faulty cardboard windows around my feet. John sits in shirtsleeves while I'm chilly in jacket, and the whole place trembles like the camper did in a high wind. I just DON'T feel like writing anymore, though I could think of LOTS more to say, but I'll have enough trouble with paging this as it IS. So I stop now at 8:12. [Seven League clipping: Richard Halliburton (photo) lecturing at Lyric for South Baltimore General Hospital at 8:15, and the penciled date is Mar. 15, 1938. IN the book, he went to [PAGE 1 1350 MISSING]
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 10. John's up late at 7:30, I'm in at 7:55 and shower, and he's up to the hall already. Up to find SNOW on the bench up the path, and the cars are COVERED. I'd though we MIGHT leave today and John says "Oh, no, we're reserved through Monday." Eat with the loudmouths, the Hughes, we find out, at the round table and not even the Hoyts and the Griswolds can staunch the triviality of their talk. Odd, if the WEBBS would say the SAME anecdotes it would probably sound better, but when THEY say it, it sounds ugly and trite. The family group of 8 sits with the blond starer looking right at me and the lovely 14-year-old only later blocked by the old fat woman. Down to find John giving the mushroom-hunters a guide to Uncas, and I put on long john trousers and heavy shoes, and he says I should pack up my OWN knapsack for the "extra clothes," so I put my rainsuit in mine, disliking his arbitrariness and AGAIN thinking I won't come next year---but he HAS reserved a cabin with a FIREPLACE! Sit on john and finish this at 9:52, and he's up already. 30 more hours, 2 more days and meals, 1 more trip. Nearly over, thank GOD. [So ends my notes taken THERE.] I'd invited down the Webbs, which is great, because we go along Durant Lake to a parking place beyond a cemetery and take off toward the Cascade Lake shelter, stopping there for lunch, and then backtracking to the branchy trail down to a brook, then taking off cross-country for a spectacular set of falls that Eleanor found and named "The Silver Staircase." The day going in was bright with white snow on the ground permitting red, green, and orange and yellow leaves to peep through, making the stiff hobblebush leaves look like frosty placards of cardboard. Stare at the falls and get back RIGHT on schedule, out at 4:45, and around to pick up Freddie at 5, then meet at 6 for more booze and snacks and get out to the Lacey Lumberjack, which the Webbs started TOO, and it's just a glorified hamburger shop, but the beef sandwich is pretty good, the French fries are tasty, and the strawberry shortcake is copious. Back at 7 and finish "The Divine Milieu" after packing everything, and then into bed about 8:30 and skim the rest of "Total Orgasm" before John comes in to sleep about 10. The winds have died down except for the waves knocking a log against the base of the boathouse, but I sleep anyway.
MONDAY, OCTOBER 11. Up at 7:20 to have time to wash my hair and get the last of the stuff packed before going up to breakfast, and again they allow us to eat with the Hoyts and Griswolds, and with a new couple named White, who tell us about Garnet Hill and how nice it is, and HE reminds me of Fran Bowell and John said he was one of the handsomest men he'd ever seen. To the trailer to say goodbye to everyone, and leave at 9:50 in a beautiful day for driving. Suggest that we could stop for me to look at books at Warrensburg, but John refuses, and I fuss about that, then HE gets gas and doesn't even stop at the fruit stand, so there are no apples for anyone. I take over just after we get onto the New York Thruway, and then I have it for about 110 miles until we get to a rest area just about 35 miles outside the city, and he hates everything about the crowds and loads of cars. Back to his driving and we're over the George Washington Bridge, tied up at the north end of the Harlem River Drive, and get in about 3:40, just under the 6 hours I'd said for the 280 miles, which isn't bad. He parks at the hydrant while we unload, and I get up to find the mail on the desk and 10 phone messages: a couple from Dennis Sillari, who's not at work today, from Fred, who's coming over for liquid; from Rolf, coming back in 4-5 days, but he'd not returned by SATURDAY; and from Arnold, whom I called about the Times, and he said I could come over and pick up what he had, which I did; and Dennis, who wanted to come right over, and HE did, at 4:30, just after I got back from Arnold's, and he HAD gotten my card and saved BOTH New York Timeses for me, and our greeting is so fabulous that it's worth a separate page (see DIARY 1353). I have nothing in the house and he didn't want to think about bringing meat, so we're having sherry and out to the Atlantic House, quite blotto already, and buy wine and he has the Turkey Bapagallo and I have the Chicken Georgia and it's ALMOST the same except for his pineapple against my peaches. He has apricot pudding for dessert and I burn three fingers on the ridiculously hot plate from the blueberry crepe ala mode, and then we're back about 9:30 to put on "Jesus Christ Superstar," but it looks just AWFUL, so we have grass and MOST incredible sex and bed about 1.