BOSTON TRIP, 1996
FRIDAY, 8/2/96: Edgardo calls at 2:15PM. Anna and Julia arrive 2:20. I show them things. Edgardo calls at 2:35. I leave at 2:45, subway to Port Authority by 3:05, line for Peter Pan, ticket by 3:14, $51.95, gate 25 and get LAST window seat at 3:17. Actually LEAVE at 3:20! 4PM creeping in Bronx to Cross Bronx. But we speed up quickly, and at 4:40 we're near Armonk. Awful movie "Born to Be Wild." Sign on truck: Biomedical Meterial. 6:15 real downpour. 6:40 announce 10-minute stop in 5-10 minutes. Stop at Sturbridge 6:55-7:15PM. Sunset about 7:55. Off Mass Pike 8:02, about 13 miles to Boston. Stop in Riverside 8:08-8:11. Off bus at 8:31, Edgardo meets me and we walk to apartment where I wash in the bathroom three flights up at 9:07PM. We're eating IN. Eduardo and Eugenio are still large KIDS. Pround of GREAT Provincetown whale videos. Eat salad and meat and wine and lemon pie (store bought) to 10:15. All out to walk Newberry and other GREAT streets filled with tourists, buy breakfast groceries and basement at 11PM. They brought INCREDIBLE amounts of clothes. Bed at 11:58PM, TIRED!!
SATURDAY, 8/3/96: 7AM jot down xerox dream: Machine in lecture room can't be used during lectures, and a second machine is in the ladies room, so we go to third to make a xerox of a person near TOMBS with a second pass to insert INSCRIPTIONS on tombs which are too dark at a setting of five, so we move it down to three, then turn it and run inscriptions at 3 and they're too light, so turn it to 4 and he says, "It's perfect, you can be our artistic director!? I say it's only logical trial and error. Doze in comfortable bed till 8:20 and write this to 8:33. Up to shit and sort things out and put on clean shirt and socks and jeans and up to them at 9AM for breakfast. She insists on making me one egg, so Eugenio finally asks for a scrambled egg, which I have one of, with toast and cereal and orange juice and pills. We talk about my jobs and trips. Then out to see the HUGE Trinity Church, go up the Hancock Tower Observatory for good exhibits and a foggy view over the RESIDENTIAL town, and walk and walk and shop and shop and talk and they kiss and hug while they walk, a joy to see. They leave to buy Boston Celtics souvenirs at the Fleet Center by taxi while Edgardo and I walk to the harbor, climbing stairs to Wave Terrace at the Marriott at 12:40 for OK ribs and good clam chowder and interesting lemon beer. He has chicken salad and I pay for him. Down through hotel and walk back at 2PM to rest until they get me out at 2:45 to walk to the Gardner, which is sadly deteriorated with empty frames for the two Rembrandts and the Vermeer taken in 1990 and not found yet. Walk back in the sun along Fenway Park with the pickets shouting "This Bud's NOT for you," because they're trying to break unions. Back about 6PM and rest watching Olympics and guzzling Famous Amos cookies with half and half, a GREAT treat. Out at 8 to Kashmir till 9:30, then tired back to watch TV from 9:30 to 11:10PM, and get wearily to bed at 11:15, hoping to sleep LATE!
SUNDAY, 8/4/96: 5:20AM DREAM: I'm taking Mom to a good meal in a restaurant on a highway, but she begins to insist the entrance is in the back. When she ENTERED that way once BEFORE, she was led to my table and shouted at me that I told her the wrong way to go. So I won't go WITH her wrong directions. So she SITS at the high curb, then gets up in grim fury, tears apart the bouquet of ferns and roses I'd given her earlier and strews them on the roadway. Charles is across the intersection and watches with his mouth open in amazement. I think of writing this as a play-scene in which no matter WHAT tack I take with her she INSISTS on being contrary, obstinate, obstructive, argumentative, and accusatory. Feeling VERY sad, I pee, drink water, and write this to 5:32AM. 6:15AM: In the last 43 minutes my mind has fugued in ever-widening circles (spirals, rather): 1) Writing the above dream into another Village Playwright evening of alternative presentations of Mom's evils and vulnerabilities and of my hate/love/sorrow for her situation. 2) Think back to Simon and failed Interography, and my constant thoughts of my plays/sketches/notes being DISSEMINATED. promulgated, admired, discussed, and produced, making me world-famous. 3) Getting back my PWP laptop from Bradley (the black VP touring France) and HAVING TAKEN it to Ohio and Boston for transcribing THESE notes, and HAVING it in Brooklyn to TAKE my dream notes DIRECT from my bedside. 4) The future in which my PRESENT 2x2x1/8" pad IS a tiny word processor on which EACH LETTER is put into a minidisk JUST this size which can link to my main computer-of-future which HAS: a) WORKING Internet connection to b) MY working web pages for c) the SCANNER that's taking all my FORMER writings and digitizing them, AND d) The VIDEO-image scanner and e) SLIDE-image scanner and f) Voice-recognition scanner that puts ALL my FUTURE images into DIGITAL form for the WORLD to appreciate, adulate, promulgate, and TAKE TO THEIR HEARTS. 4) Finally RETIRING from indexing and doing "writing input" and "fame output" in modern digital/analog format that will PERMIT me to a) See Angel Falls, b) Read "Love in Time," c) See "Way of All Flesh, d) GET a lover, and e) Publish not A book but ALL my books, writings, slides, tapes, words, even to THESE megalomaniacal monoautotheistical ideas! to 6:33AM. 6:34AM: 5) Lay for a moment and think to add THIS: Also a graphical/painterly representation of my life-path that goes from job to job, lover to lover, dream to dream, and FUGUE TO FUGUE, whether a) gene-rated (GENE RATED?) INTERNALLY and sent OUT to aliens on distant planets, or b) Generated EXTERNALLY by aliens on distant planets and sent to ME, or c) Generated SOMEHOW and transcribed EXACTLY (and ONLY) as I am existentially doing it AT THIS moment: 6:39AM, 8/4/96, THIS universe as opposed to the trillions of ALTERNATIVE total universes generated every Planck-instant in which EVERY PERSON DOES in fact reap his own self-generated self-fulfilling Yogananda-defined karma: you live until you fulfil ALL your desires and wishes---INCLUDING the most SEXUAL of fantasies of lovers and infinite orgasms. To 6:43. 6:44: 6) INCLUDING INSANITY-worlds in which Joe Smith IS Napoleon, and the world (THAT world) bows to his EVERY WHIM, a) as if Gamov's Mr, Tompkins could LIVE in a universe in which the physical cosmic constants were CHANGED to allow simultaneous live/dead Schrödinger's cats, b) as if the comic-strip world of the Katzenjammer Kids LIVED in THEIR OWN reality-time, c) as every book, movie, TV program, and THOUGHT generates and perpetuates its OWN proper living alternate universe! 6:48AM: 7) And other universes I can't even IMAGINE or ENUMERATE ALSO exist, and I can GO INTO them when my mind/my aliens wish, to ENDLESS permutations, ENDLESS frustrations/successes/failures/ecstasies/treasures/deaths of MOST vivid horridnesses and lives of MOST voluptuous contentments AS you choose OR/AND as is chosen FOR you BY aliens/me/anyone who WANTS/or DOESN'T want to! To 6:52AM, how much can this go on? Goon? 6:53AM: 8) What strange UNIQUE intersection of me/Boston/Edgardo/Dennis/my mother/Pope/EVERYONE produced THIS set of mental gymnastics/recordings/wanderings/philosophizing/lunacies/lucidations? Do sketchy Actualism to 7:35AM. Up to watch Olympics marathon, and dress and pack to 8:15. Up to toast, eggs, cereal, orange juice from 8:20-8:45, chatting with drowsy Edgardo and Marina (I fantasize THEY are as exhausted by ME as I am by THEM!), even to their rousing Eugenio to join Eduardo in bidding me farewell. Leave at 8:53 and get on Green Line (after going ANOTHER street NOT in Edgardo's directions), and get to Red Line at 8:58. Off at South Station at 9:07. At 9:12 I have a panic: departing sign lists 10:45AM to NYC as next. Go to clerk: "Oh, signs are ahead of themselves; 9:45 to NYC is Gate 18." Sit at 9:15 across from three desultory passengers sitting on floor at gate. Board 9:40, coat over arm against cold, book in lap, dynamite Chinese calves across from me. Bus less than half full. Leave at 9:48, with Sturbridge the SAME stop from 10:58-11:08, AWFUL black kid CONSTANTLY jabbers and screams and shrieks in seat AHEAD of me! East 138th Street and Manhattan at 1:30PM! Off at 1:40PM, JUST 4 hours on bus, at 71st and CPW. Into subway at 72nd at 1:54, LOTS of people waiting. Home at 2:20, and THEY're back at 2:35, having taken too much time on rerouted subways, they say. They leave, happy to have been here, and I phone Leroy, leave word with Sherryl, and call Pope. Buy the New York Times, unpack, watch Olympics from 4PM on, doing the puzzles and buying a SECOND Times from John, bless/curse him. Don't feel like indexing; pick up Pope's "My Family" for watching tomorrow, and finish transcribing this, the last task of the day, at 11:12PM; now to DINNER!