Pages 78 through 104
DIARY 5368
OFFICE AMUSEMENTS
1. Walk into SBC john as Pat Bannon leaves it. Smell? Toothpaste.
2. Out of work one day sick, and Otto calls at 10 on Accounts Receivable, Tom Malafonte calls at 11 on Calmar; Eddie at 12 about telephone jack; Joan at 12:30 about party; Marty at 7 pm about party.
3. Amazing how desk drawers work out---my level of rubber bands constantly increases, while the level of paper clips always goes down.
4. From a letter from a Japanese addressed to SBC: PS. In this year, my round the world trip on Electronic Computer Investigation was the best remembrance of mine, and I hope to express again my hearty acknowledgement for your cordial reception during my visit to your organization. Always yours in Him."
5. NOTE: "Mr. Zolnerzak: Ten (10) minutes is equivalent to 600 seconds. On the standard watch or clock 10 minutes can be determined by noting the position of the large (not small) hand at some initial time. When this hand has rotated through an angle of sixty (60) degrees, then ten minutes have elapsed. A friend" (Cathy O'Sullivan). If it had been Mozelle Duckett, she would have signed "Santa C."
6. Andy Gyenes has the habit of changing after every six months. After ASCAP he was on Red Collins' staff for six months, a salesman for six months, at General Offices for six months, now here---he'll be due to leave April 1. He thinks he'll never get up to Curry's position---if he doesn't get there in two years, it's too slow. His family has the policy of working for themselves. His bug is thus to work for himself. He'll be very surprised if he's here 1957-1967. He once met a girl, in LA, asked if she wanted to go with him to SF. He later realized she didn't do it for his beautiful blue eyes (anyway, they're brown), but for a trip to SF. He got HIGHLY insulted. He was determined to hurt her, so he determined that she would fall in love with him. They went to Paris one day, and she fell in love with him. On day 3 HE fell in love with HER, and on day 4 began a 4-day conversation when she apologized for coming for the ride with him to SF, which was what he wanted, and now they were BOTH in the trap. Silly.
DIARY 5370
LITERARY READINGS
1. Arnold Fishman: not quite In when it comes to entertaining. Him sending killing looks at the kid when he screams and he plunged his head into his hands, looking as if he could die, when the poetry reading drones monotonously on. She being much too outgoing, trying too hard to be cheery and talky. But only appearing nervous and agitated. She tried much of the "grand manner" but the marinated cabbage leaf around the chopped eggplant from a bottle, and the shrimp in rice was a nothing touch. The rye crackers with the Roquefort lid was left almost untouched, and then saying goodbye, she stood grandly at the door and gabbed crazily away as we left, shaking hands and calling each by name. Then thanked each of us overly for coming, and shaking our hands out the door.
2. Half of the first part of "In Cold Blood" (Capote's new book, read to audience at YMHA) about an actual murder in Kansas, read names: Holcum, Kansas, working for six years. Holcum quiet with 220 until November 15, 1959. "Take heed, you know not when the time is." And he looked at his watch, the audience laughed. At 9:45 he stepped sideways in his red with black stripes sweater over black cotton pants (the pear shape that Chuck avocado-ed [advocated]) and put his knees together lavatorially, "I'll take that intermission now." He smiled through his high-pitched voice. At 9:58 he started again, with Garden City, Kansas, 1100 people. Then later he stopped JUST as he got to the best part. (May, 1965)
3. He has romantic, dramatic, loving image of all becoming him, or posing for him, or being beautiful mostly for him. His new LONG POEM (Is this James T. Farrell? It's certainly from YMHA) "The Universe of Pronouns" will be very good. A soldier carries him, all DREAM of lovely boys. "I must go out to sea, crumbling verge"---is he losing his virility? "Ye ARE one another---you are all I." AGAIN Omega Man. He even messes up he, she, and it seems to have no difference to him or us. In some, a boy ready to GIVE to love and death---"my days, with executioners standing behind." A marvelous simile of finality.
DIARY 5374
THE HOI-POLLOI IN NEW YORK
1. June 30, 1964: late on Broadway, Carol Channing, all tan powder and eyes and mouth, flashing blue sequins and no legs as she makes an elaborate Caddy to Caddy transfer at Broadway at 44th, away, undoubtedly, from the maddened throngs at the door of "Hello, Dolly." Off to a party at midnight.
2. By golly if kindness DOESN'T breed kindness: I waited to talk to a fellow with tickets outside the box office at the Metropolitan Film Guild. He was obviously anxious to get rid of them, and I recalled myself trying to sell tickets---to American Opera Society, West Side Story, etc. But he was GIVING them away.
3. The opera was over, but the spectacle continued long afterward. Three old ladies in gold, silver, and black stood wrapped in insubstantial furs on the steps of the Met. The one in black was wiry and fierce---the one in silver was overshadowed in size and sadness by the golden one. Of an uncomfortable weightiness, in too-high heeled shoes, she walked only with the aid of a golden wand---her tightly rolled umbrella. The black stood on high on sturdy calves in black high pumps, and she furiously waved at taken cabs, her silver topknot pulling her into the air.
4. People met at New York Film Festival: Otto Preminger, Zachary Scott, Walter Slezak, who must have been Julie Harris, could have been Delphine Seyrig, David Susskind, all the faggots and their friends, Bea Lillie looking very short, women who from their dress and capes and faces and hair MUST have been someone. Many beards, worn over as elegant a lavender turtleneck sweater over a large-checked black and white lapelless, collarless, pocketless buttoned suit, or over a yellow shirt over red plaid shirt over blue jeans over sandals, accompanied by a fat stringy-haired slob in a bulky muumuu. People who stop after they step off the escalators. Beautiful boys with elderly ladies, and the boys are VERY attentive to the lady. Everyone trying to look like someone, especially the young girls with exotic hairdos and color combinations that skirt perilously close to bad taste. And many intense young men talking with intense young girls, or strange trios, where the fellow and girl are together; and the other, a fellow, is invariably a DOLL.
DIARY 5375
STRANGE FOODS
1. Getting a crisp brown pecan waffle set down before me with what surely looked like a small scoop of ice cream in a small dish. I'd seen the menu that they had, and thought possibly they gave samples of their ice cream with their waffles. So I took a bit of it on my spoon and popped it into my mouth. First it was warm, and then it was greasy: butter! I grinned stupidly to myself and debated for more than a second before I covertly bent and spit the butter back onto my spoon and onto the waffle. It spread over the waffle much more appealingly then it tasted.
2. "Well, here's my friend," the little fellow standing with the tray, getting his napkin from the greasy holder, who said nothing. The waiter mumbled something to his coworker, then turned back with "He always pleads the Fifth Amendment." A muffled sound came out from under the bill of the low-slung cap, and he smiled to himself. "How's everything going?" The lean waiter behind the bar tried hard to bring the bill up, to show his face, but the bill stayed down, the face stayed hidden. The waiter smiled and shrugged. When his steak was finished, the waiter slapped the slab of meat onto the plate, and recoiling ends of the steak flipped grease onto the counter. It sizzled still as it lay on the plate. The potato handler took the small scoop of the brown sooty liquid that the menu demanded as gravy, then dipped, and dipped, and re-dipped, until the steak floated in a brown moat. He carefully selected a larger potato, split it with an oversize knife, and whisked on butter with a miniature plastic broom. The plate, when finished, slopped its fulsome liquids back and forth. Then he piled a tower of hard toasted rolls, four or five of them, on top of the steak. The boy went back to his table, and cut a large piece from the potato without removing his hat or coat. His grimy hands broke off pieces of the roll and soaked up the gravy, popping them into his mouth. Once or twice he was aware of my glances, but for the most part he remained buried in his concentrated chewing (Flame steak on 42nd and 8th Avenue).
DIARY 5377
NEW YORK COUPLES
1. "Oh, look over there---he---" and the preemptory hand on the coat collar turned into an ineffective brushing as her intent look (at me) turned into unconcern and she mooned off across the top of the subway war. Her eyes a marvel of clarity, she struggled to keep a conversation going with bits and scraps, and settled back to her mind-sweeping. Her partner was a stoic from the word "Go," and she tried to un-stoic him to no great success. "That's why I don't like any sort of dramatic art," he said as if from boredom with her chatter, and then went on about reading between the lines and Kafka and Graham Greene and others---he didn't like poetry or novels---and again she swept her mind and they found food for tongue wagging at my bemused writing. They of course knew I'm writing of them, and he removed his glove "accidentally" to show his wedding ring. They talked more of me---and she rather cleverly thought I was looking at her knees, so she uncrossed them and hid them with her coat. I had also stared at his shoes---she had told him I had.
2. My attention aroused as I caught HIM reaching into HER pocket, and I saws him bumble briefly, then look at her with his baleful eyes. She grimaced and reached into her other pocket, coming up with an unwrapped blue box of cough drops. She offered it to him, and he fumbled with the black band around the top. Then he stopped, raised the package to his face, gripped the tab end, and with a quick twist opened the container. He pushed his plump fingers through the softly crinkling waxed paper and held a couple drops up to her. She nodded and popped it into her mouth, then nodded for him to take one. He gazed at her for a second, and again his fingers dropped into the wrappings and the round objects and then, raising his hand to his mouth, began a quiet series of puckering, smacking, sucking motions with his cheeks. She sat quietly, her smooth face showing no sign of an interloping morsel outside the white facades of her teeth.
DIARY 5386
October, 1968
JOTTINGS: KUNDABUFFA AND MUSEUM ATTITUDES
Gurdjieff's organ "Kundabuffa" is equivalent to "imprinting" whereby the gods, to stop man from locating himself in space-time, is "hooked" to an attraction (to chase) and an aversion (to avoid) and that'll keep him busy. LSD makes STATIC imprint and makes it MOVE, as part of the maya. Serotonin is a chemical mainly responsible for conveying impulse across synapses, and thus ALL thought is conveyed SELECTIVELY by serotonin; LSD is similar in structure, so LSD pushes all brain energy. 100 milligrams is good for some effect, but alcoholics need much more to get turned on. Psychedelic art: light through salts on slides; soap films between slides.
September 26, 1965: Amazing how one's appreciation of the Museum of Modern Art, for example, depends on one's attitude. If one FEELS listless and bored and alone, the museum is boring and fruitless---but I suppose that applies to everything, and is a basic tenet of life---life depends on the person, not upon the circumstances. The attitudes and feelings (of ease, rest, excitement, eagerness, dullness) are a dozen times more important than the contents of a museum, the actual weather of a day, the temperature, humidity, windiness. Thus existentialists find a fruitless world because THEY are fruitless. The mystics find a mystical world because they ARE mystics. The artists look at the world artistically; the poets poetically. The objects are the same, but (not people's PHYSICAL being---though attitude certainly depends on if one's eaten or slept or drunk or had sex) the emotions and thoughts of the people are most different. I keep looking at PEOPLE in museums and parks and on streets and even at Yellowstone and Grand Canyon. People change---people are practically INFINITE in number---the earth is a stage, and one looks at the sets only as BACKGROUND, but the people are THE main interest.
The aluminum bead curtain at the New York State Theater contains over ten million beads which, placed end to end, would extend nearly fifty miles.
I saw a book, nestled in a book
And I too want to snuggle snug in the protecting arms
Of someone who'll help me, and love me, and direct me.
My eyes fill with tears, "Oh, hold and love me."
Yet love must GIVE before it can be got.
And again, through the circle of thought, I feel my fears.
THLOOB, lovely sound, like grok, in Manchild, and Gollum, in Lord of the Rings.
His was a body that one did not immediately consider attractive. On further investigation, however, it revealed qualities in length, breadth, modulated hardness and softness, that not infrequently induced people, quite unwittingly, to fall in love with it.
The rhythm of trade is maintained by the mails. THESE films will be art when looked at FRAME by FRAME (Perverted movies).
I actually stopped washing dishes to note the following jottings (10/28/65): 1) that'll teach me to wash dishes at 11:345 pm; 2) washing stubborn fork tines: try sticking it into a potato to clean it. Would it work? Dunno, but of such are myths born; 3) Pushing dishcloth into plastic bottle, the trapped air turned into a wind which rustled the hairs on my arm as it escaped; 4) the tape recorder purred in the background like a house cat---the image of a house-cat wouldn't come, so I dismissed the phrase; 5) Too MUCH unity in life would destroy one; carrying the dirt of a dirty apartment in a fancy restaurant; cock books while dating Madge; homosexual activities in an SBC customer meeting. TOO unified.
Power shovel being used to assist in tearing down a building at 59th and Madison is butting into a steel girder, and the jaws open and close giving the whole the semblance of a scrawny-necked monster with square jaws and serrated forms on the forehead butting and grinding the girder, jaws champing, until finally the girder falls and the head lowers, triumphantly at rest, over it.
In movies like "Contempt" there MUST be an act of God (like the accident) because there is NEVER an act of MAN in the whole film!
Sam Matsa, of all beautiful people, walking up Third Avenue. Fantasy of cocky encounters at work.
"Not tonight, baby; I don't want cunt, I want cock." "Well, hold onto your ass, honey, feel this." Umph. "That's not a WICKER basket, man, and it's YOURS."
Lovely wide-eyed girl laughingly removing her wristwatch in Faust, keeping conversation going, then asking TIME before Third Act, but cutting out FAST after last curtain falls.
Two little old ladies climbing stairs at Jewish Museum "So we can say we didn't miss anything." Exhausted pair coming down "I never knew he was so prolific." "One thousand; it was VERY abstract.' "What's a Habdalah? It's a Jewish expression. Do they have an exhibit of Jewish expressions??" Rivers paints like a camera: takes two pictures with slightly different poses---the only thing that can be said FOR him was that O'Hara, Joseph, and the "Whole family" had large cocks which he painted with circumcised realism.
"Oh, look, she's married to the man who's doing Prince Albert"! (About Dorothy Tutin, married to Derek Waring, who's playing Queen Victoria.)
IBM meeting (with females): "But when you get down to the nut-cuttin'---(price and project cutting---my PROJECT was cut off!)
Lila Kedrova in "Zorba the Greek": "Then come the bed time---they made piss." "God, who is a clever devil."
Speech fluff: in order to diffentiate (rather than differentiate).
Someone phones me: "Ed?" "What number do you want?" "UN1-6108." "You have wrong number." BUT I have ED'S number: "Ed?" "Yes?" "Remember me?" "Who IS this?" "Remember that night---?" "Jack?" "No, not Jack." "Where WAS it?" "You tell me?" "In Chicago when I was there for the---Convention?" "No, before that." "Was I living on 58th Street?" "Getting warm"---and find out ALL ABOUT him and then HANG UP.
A SECOND beauty of a doorman at the Victoria---super takes only LOVELIES to make his gay tenants HAPPY? Wonderful apartment service??
ODD dream, night of Sept 22, 1965: In someone's HUGE apartment, and some kid fiddles two dials and puts some radio transmission off that's crucial. Others crawl into huge vacuum tube-like control area and begin turning knobs to bring transmission back. Relays click and "Hand Transmission" lights up, and only one step before automatic transmission. I grab kid who fiddles and shouts "I'll FIRE you," then a few minutes there's a large "zup" and flash of light and an AGONIZED groan as someone is killed fiddling dials. I beat breast and say "How awful, how awful," and wonder if KID was trying to redeem himself and I killed him. Wake, cold and sweaty, and TREMBLING in awe.
Cafe Nicholson (7 pm - 9 pm): $24.00 meal + $.80 tax and tip: $28.80. Latin Quarter (9-12) $15.75 minimum: $18.00. Shepherds (12-3 am) $8.00 cover + $4.50 drinks + tip = $16.00. $1.25 for 3 coat checks; $7.40 in cabs = $71.45 6 pm - 3:30 am date with Madge.
Old Radcliff tour note: In the deMenil house, no brochure because it would be IMPOSSIBLE: 3 sheets for each of 8 areas. Spotlights in garden look like steaming cauldrons as heat evaporates rain that falls on them.
The first thing a child learns is "Who am I?" The child of so and so, the brother of someone, looking so and so, colored, smart, skinny, etc. The crisis of IDENTITY and ALIENATION from SELF comes when the physical adult looks at himself and asks "Who AM I, since, at LAST, it is obvious that I am not the child I always knew myself to be?" The search for THAT answer is the process of maturation. When one knows, one is mature, and an ADULT. My LSD trip SAID: I'm an adult. I'm not the DRIVEN, but the driver. Not the follower, but the leader; not the acceptor, but the enforcer; not relying on others, but responsible. One who hasn't realized this, though eighty years of age, hasn't matured, is still mentally a child: dependent, wishy-washy, other-directed, not responsible. NOW, the problem, there is ANOTHER maturation, BEYOND the one we know now, and only SAINTS have reached it. THIS is the problem of the "mature" adult: to become SUPER-MATURE.
FANTASY: Azak cock teases and cock teases and finally I ask him over and he refuses. This happens again and again. Finally HE says HE wants to go to bed with me, and I say, "What, are you KIDDING?"---and in retrospect, this sounds like a terribly hurt and hurtful fantasy.
Peter makes two FANTASTIC flubs: "Oh, two people could EVILLY (easily) live in an apartment that size." and "He reminds me of how Kelly and Sheets (Shelley and Keats) would have looked." Referring to John Browning.
1:30 am, Saturday, January 12: Woman walking in the middle of the street, erect and plastered, limping on agonizingly high heels. Cab stops short as she draws herself up in her coat in the cold on the ice in the street. Man walks her to the curb; "Her poor date," I think, but he leaves her to hobble on her way east, while he walks west and passes an inquisitive me. He waggles the fingers on the end of his hand and shakes his head "Bad scene." I smile, warm for him, and say "Yeah."
FINALLY! That full feeling of happiness that had been gone so long, which had been so long in returning. Merely on my way to get my shoes shined on my last day of work, and the melody I was humming choked in my throat from the HAPPINESS I felt. I felt lightened and lifted, and my head lifted higher and a smile simply couldn't be erased from my lips. I was happy; I was happy; I was happy!!
JOY! Just joy. I sat and fiercely rocked my head in the beat of "Etudes." Kivitt was mastering his double leaps, and chills fingered the back of my neck. My lips tightened with pleasure and the tears welled to my eyes. Glorious music and dancing! I forgot the audience, the seat, the angle of the view from the box at the Met, and ENJOYED.
The remarkable combination of a lisp and an accent: we get tintax for syntax, yet avay for away. But you get conthidered, for considered. and for a moment, brainches for branches, yet, with effort, selector, and "then" becomes a lisped zen, or dzen. and synonym has a Danish slash-O in the last syllable. For ectample (example), yet he says "concerned." Poor whatever-his-name.
GREAT gimmick---Mr. Mopper (the doll from the office who looks like Superman disguised as Clark Kent with his square jaw, beautiful hair and body, and horn rimmed glasses) punches in as I punch in, and I glance at HIS name and he misses grabbing his card from the clock as he looks for MY name, and then I miss the card as I double-check HIS name. Um-umm-good.
Herman has a "live cup." I'm sure there's dry ice or something else in it. I look down into cup and get hit on back of head with a drop of water, which the cup had been put out to catch! Herman: "Best laff I've had all day."
A yogurt orgy! Three people in clothes-less bathroom opening various colors and flavors of yogurt and painting each other with swatches of color. "Stir preserves up from bottom." FUNNY.
Peter: "I might take the ticket." Me: "YOU?" P: That was the BITCHIEST you I ever heard ... how much IS the ticket?" "$6.50" P: "EEEEEEE" Me: "That was the BITCHIEST EEEEEEE I ever heard." P: "Who'll take "OH," and we'll go through the REST of the vowels."
"The sobs gagged out like the tearing gasps of a person vomiting. The mouth-wide cries distended the throat and tore at the guts, in the same way that a baby blats out its misery." These thoughts raced through my mind as I fought for self control, fought for some stable base as I worked during the last week before vacation, irritated by the presence of mother and sister, pressured by decisions which had to be made in a job that I no longer cared for. I sighed and folded the jotting and tried, again, to get back to work.
There is this line: at one extreme is "Find someone PERFECT, and you love them and they love you and this is perfect." At the other extreme is "love everybody and everybody will love you perfectly." EACH PERSON in the world is SCHIZO, and half of them are heading TOWARD this line, and half are heading away. Now it would seem 50-50 that you find someone going in your direction, but perversely, as two people going in the same direction encounter each other, ONE SWITCHES DIRECTION, and they collide. WHY are fears and hopes so strange? Cissy says "It's your brought-up."
FABULOUS::::YVES TANGUY (1900-1955) PIERRE MATISSE GALLERY NYC: IMAGINARY NUMBERS (1954)
To get STRAIGHT line on canvas: SEW with thread through canvas, then paint using string as a guide, and then remove string. GREAT.
Great computer book title: "Computer Diagnosis of Down-Hole Conditions in Sucker Rod Pumping Wells," in the Journal of Petroleum Technology.
ACM meeting: the meal is $5, and I can think of a LOT of better places to spend $5 for a better meal. Then there's the stupid social hour, the epitome of what I don't like, then the meal, that I don't like, then the speech, that I don't like, and Teitel said it WAS pretty bad, and then the invitation to stay later that evening and over to Teitel's house later, and I simply want to get AWAY, even if I have to vomit my dinner into his SHOES to convince him I MUST get away. But then, two months later, with LOTS of better things to do, BACK I am (to give Bernie Roth's address to Bob Teitel, but it's 6:35 and where IS he?) and can think of nothing better to do in the groups of 3 and 4 and 5 people circled together in talk than to roam to the men's room (but I can't stay THERE all night), and then sit down in a rather comfortable side chair and write THIS. Otherwise I might contemplate leaving, and after paying $5, THAT would be silly. Rather like Mensa, I joined to go to an occasional meeting, but I really don't know WHY. Except for the snob of "I belong" and the "I CAN belong." Another poor fellow obviously feels the same way I do and sits down at the table near me to read the yellow brochure about the symposium on Friday---an all-day session of talk with a nice roster of speakers: Mayor Lindsay, Traffic Commissioner Barnes, Hanan Rubin (who's at GASL), and Ascher Opler (who taught the best class at IBM SRI I). We glance at each other as he sits down, and there's a SLIGHT frown, rather than an endearing smile. I've even prepared a smart retort if anyone remarks on my writing and not socializing "Oh, I just thought of some great remarks to put into the Edo Wiring Proposal I'm working on and I couldn't RESIST writing it down." The fellow at the table pulls out a pen and begins writing, too, and a few people move to the tables to get good seats when the general rush begins. As I recall, Bob Teitel arrived LATE last time, and I suppose I should save him a seat. The crowd is mainly men, and rather surprisingly old, for such a young field as programming, and I won't discuss the ladies, generally on the younger (but definitely uglier) side, who may have tried THIS club way out of the "impossible to meet MEN in New York City" bag. But they're hardly worth talking to. I guess I'd LOVE a crowd of dignified distinguished men who would SWEEP me off my feet with adoring glances, but that's just NOT the type of club this is, and, in fact, it would be petrifying if it was, what with Teitel and Gordon and dozens of other of my acquaintance as members. This time the exchange of glances is rather long and decidedly wide-eyed. WOULD be funny if he was JUST like me and felt and thought JUST the same way that I'm recording here. I could hardly look engrossed as I glance up at (the crotches of male) passersby and look at my watch every five minutes. It's now 6:30 and I'm dying to hear the dinner bell ring, but the drone of conversation, punctuated by occasional higher voices cutting over the drone (or laugh) and I hope SOMETHING happens before I run out of things to say or, worse, paper to write them on. How MUCH I wish I weren't here---but not actively enough to leave. All I can do is wait, stomach clenched, for the rush to the tables. HOPE they don't have roast beef or steak again. So tired of the standard "American" type food. This had GOT to be the end.
The ultimate mechanism for the gradual perfecting of man: the PEOPLE-FUSER. First married couples get fused---become ONE person with qualities of BOTH (and twice the size and twice as smart). Then families, then religious groups, then mega-people with mega-people. Then OBJECTS begin to be assimilated, until everything is fused into one---and the OMEGA-person (Mega to OMega=OM) fuses with the machine to become the UNIVERSE.
Joan; "Liz, this nightgown keeps slipping off, but it IS fun." Me: "THAT'S funny." Joan: "Well, it does keep slipping off the shoulders." Me: "But I can't SEE that over the PHONE."
Actually SEEN: Trumpet DUET in trumpeter's window. And pianist above shows, shirtless, with trumpet. Toots. Guy below goes to open window, looks around, then up, and shouts, "Hey, CAT." And there's a silent conversation between two shirtless trumpeters. Then the pianist is seen vacuuming and the duet below continues.
West Virginia Pape and Pulper---Paper and Pulp: again from Peter.
His phone was being typed---taped---TAPPED!!
So immense was the hall that it presented acoustic properties never before exhibited by a work of man. At a chord from the organ, a lasting, vibrating echo was set up that lasted over five seconds. Any successive notes in this wash of sound punctuated the veil of echo like stabs of light through a curtain hiding the sun. Massed choirs found their harmonies augmented a thousand times as each face of the diamond-faceted chamber threw back a sound an octave lower than the source. Finally, Rothman, the renowned composer, was commissioned to write an Inaugural Ritual expressly for the fantastic structure, utilizing, rather than trying to cover, the unusual sound characteristics of the room. A soprano note was echoed a second later as an alto tone, and a tenor syllable became a baritone groan in the following time interval. By realizing these sound sources, Rothman spaced the notes and varied the volume with much the mastery of a pianist on the pedal. Vast ethereal choirs of body-less voices were liberated from the very walls of the hall, and the opening ceremony enveloped the attendees in a cascade of real and repeated music. But as even a pianist wishes to remove the flow of tone, so Rothman at times wanted a clear, non-repeated effect---a triangle tone returned as a trombone wash, and at times a trombone was not needed. Then the technicians loaded sensors into the walls to analyze the waves of sound hitting on them, and these sent impulses to huge bladder-like devices that rested placidly behind the walls until they were activated; then they filled and emptied of air so rapidly that the walls took on the characteristics of a tympani, only anti-tonically to the voices, so that the sound, meeting its identical vibration, was cancelled into a soundless voice. Then, the shout "Hosanna" could ring out in a clear soprano and not be alto-returned if the walls were activated. Rothman composed for forces never before available, and created a sphere of sound within the hall that enthralled those who listened.
Colored cleaning woman at IBM: "Now that Bobby Kennedy, HE put all HIM eggs in ONE basket." Such tiny pearly eggs, too!
Discovery: Salada tea: 's a lotta tea! And Enna Jetick---Energetic SHOES!
Gros cerises (French for fat cherries) = groceries (English).
DIARY 4421
JANUARY 1967 JOTTINGS
I have only to INDICATE something (I'd like to see Alvin Nikolais, or I'd like to cross TWO items off per day) and IMMEDIATELY it becomes a compulsion. This MIGHT be called "a strong will," but sometimes it borders on "Neurotic Compulsion."
Making lists is GOOD because then I don't FORGET anything---all a matter of CONTROL. I NEED TO RETAIN CONTROL, THUS: 1) Love is impossible; 2) LSD is a "leave self" conflict which I win; 3) I must control environment and people; 4) I can be RUDE. If NO, SAY no!; 5) Fear psychoanalysis???
I (appear to) LIKE homosexuality, yet I WANT to have children (why?) and get married. But, HOW???
I love you for the light glowing through the shell-part of your ears, and the sun lighting the fuzz-hairs at the base of your neck, where it slides inside the white starched collar. I love you when you look at me, your eyes washing over my face like a napkin doused in alcohol.
On Barbados---Bridgetown---the Carib Guest House is recommended.
I am a jewel in the navel of time: useless, rather unusual, but interesting, all the same.
Barf, dried, streaming down side of car filled with drunken teenagers.
1) Driving a CAR---lack of responsibility---lack of PROPER handling of MALENESS.
2) God (Love) is not mocked---my first statement!
"So I asked John, "Juicy (did you see) George?"
I'll be with you in a couple a secs. Sex?
jottings pp 2-8 missing
had the book of maps, because now I knew exactly where the war damage was. Woke, rather impressed with the vividness of the dream, and felt that I could wait for work to type out the details, but by this time they HAVE faded somewhat, but the oddness remains. June 8, 1966
Little boy with handful of sand which magically becomes a smoky cloud that envelopes the mystified boy. "I fowd" and he couldn't think of words to encompass his experience.
Two colored nurses talking, one wheeling two bright drooling children, the other wheeling one dim drooling old lady.
Mother wheeling child and walking child with child going da-da-da up scale, and infant in stroller furnishing the monotonic base pedal tone.
Picture: West 83rd Street, mailman slowly walking route, two houses down woman with cataleptic stare waits, waits, fixed, and behind iron door two squashed children, dirty, sad-eyed, wait, looking uncomfortably at me as I look at them. Then two old ladies, older sitting in wheelchair with oddly modish toque hat, and younger, daughter (50), plays with doodle, saying "Ha ha ha" as poodle jumps, and all THREE stare at me, intruder, as I pass their hidden retreat.
RITALIN (CIBA) is a "little" LSD.
Cegestes is a temple in Sicily. Eduard? Cegestes is a sister-brother!
It's NOT a man, it's a woman with her DILDO on backwards!
From the ACM meeting, May 25, 1966---Real-time symposium.
"One of the benefits of automation is automating the raw material so that ANY information can be gleaned from the automated data."
Boiled down to considering WHEN real-time, rather than IF real-time or WHAT IS real-time.
Distinguish between 1) Real-time INPUT, and 2) Real-time OUTPUT. 1) must occur BEFORE 2).
Though SOME real-time systems (MAC) have NO data bank.
Contention that "good management" can't be automated because management techniques, NOW are so diverse. Probably not true?
DATA BASE NO DATA BASE
Real-time INPUT 1 2
Real-time OUTPUT 3 4
We HAVE something like 4, and 2 rather follows, 3 is what everyone would LIKE, but can't have it, effectively, without 1.
The young man, eyes rolled in blindness, prods with his cane to the side of the coffee shop---then with a quiet determination lifts his cane, turns and taps it at the center and it folds in half, then he swiftly halves the halves and stuffs them into his pocket, then he takes two more steps, makes a military left face, and enters the shop, blind, caneless.
TOO MANY WORDS.
The negro walks past with lowered head, raises embarrassed cross-eyes, then lowers them and shuffles past, inferior.
John Phillip Law---the tall sailor in "The Russians Are Coming."
The fantastic capacity of the human mind NOT to believe---in love, in God, in afterlife or a purpose to THIS life, in trusting people OR themselves, in the ability to LIVE their lives as THEY want (not as OTHERS want), and to live and CHANGE their lives---there's no FATE, only LAZINESS. There's no good luck, only optimism.
DIPLOMACY: 8 pm Saturday, May 28 to 3 am Sunday, May 29---to fall 07, Russia---placing a poor fifth. Hal---Turkey (10); Madge---Italy (8); Bob Teitel---Britain (6); Saralee---France (6); Me---Russia (3); Marty---Germany (1); Jerri---Austria (0).
I'm meeting my sister for lunch. I'm eating my sister for lunch? I'm Meeting my sister for lunch!
Funny if Gloria Swanson, in "Love of Sunya" realized that sunya was the Indian name for zero (a void).
As the fag walked out the door, bright blue eyes abstractly dazzled, he waved a limp wrist-full of fingers in the direction of my crotch and fluttered out the entranceway.
Poor "Bible according to St. Matthew": Christ should be TEMPTED by the devil's temptation.
What an affection there is, what a time to fall in love: handing an extraordinarily sharp razor blade to someone.
April, 1913, National Geographic: 200 pages and photos of Macchu Picchu.
Amazing, sometimes I think I'll never learn ANYTHING---at least not the first time. The first ACM meeting (NY chapter) was execrably inane---I would with reason talk with Barry Gordon and be introduced to some of the leading lights of the organization (to show, of course, he was talking) then stand and trade the typical banalities as everyone stands around with a drink in their hands---and I just don't FEEL like drinking, so I certainly don't. Others stand around just as lost-looking as I feel, yet the thought of going up to them and starting to mouth banalities is frightening. The first time I had Dan Tanner and his stupid friends and Barry and then Bob Teitel and HIS friends, so there was a bit of "Oh, I know him and him and him" and the room is now and the format unknown, so there's a BIT of interest. And of course everyone stands around talking about bits and bytes and IBM manuals and medical diagnosis and roots of equations, Backus Normal Form and disk storage.
Wilkins leads to Nautilus---FIRST one, in attempts to sail under North Pole (with J.J. Verne) and entries in NY Times Index make FASCINATING reading. They try, many delays, start out, radio signals faint, disabled but safe, back in nick of time, finally deliberately SUNK in Norwegian fjord.
Mrs. Watson's home at 920 Fifth Avenue. 82 years old when she died Feb. 11, 1966.
December 31, 1929---Marie Byrd Land named in 1929. Feb. 6, 1947: Last Byrd expedition in 1940. First usage of term "frogmen?" "They looked like "frogmen" characters in some weird comic strip."
Feb. 24, 1947: Red and black mountains in Queen Maud Land.
Mar. 2, 1947: Another oasis found near the Vestfold mountains about 500 miles west of the ice-free region of multi-colored lakes and bare earth discovered Feb. 11 (on the Ingrid Christensen coast---about 65 miles of this coast is free of ice and snow and has many landing places, fresh water, lakes and numerous patches of bare earth.
Mar. 4: "Bunger's Oasis" conical outcroppings of dark red rock rose like small volcanoes. All else in this strange land remains mysterious and unexplained.
Mar. 14: Letter: Oasis due to Radioactive Heat.
Sept. 11: The Antarctic oases discovered off the Knox and Princess Ranghill coasts are saltwater creeks---backwashes of the Antarctic Ocean. This somewhat prosaic anticlimax to what seemed the expedition's most colorful discovery---described at the time as a 200-square-mile ice-free area of blue and green lakes at an elevation of 200 feet above sea level---has become apparent from a chemical analysis of the water just received at the Navy Hydrographic Office. The black rock absorbs solar radiation, even through the ice of early spring, and re-radiates the heat and all ice melts over a considerable area. The existence of life in these "lakes"---countless billions of one-celled plants that give their characteristic color to the water---is considered the first step in the re-establishment of life after the retreat of a glacier. 1956: Literally DOZENS of flights around and about the South Pole.
Feb. 7, 1956: Soviet Scientific Party explored an Antarctic oasis. The midday temperature in the area rises to 77 and there is primitive plant life. Oasis covered about 200 square miles on Queen Mary Coast on the eastern edge of the continent. The area was sighted in 1948 by an aerial observer of the US expedition, but this is the first time man ever set foot on it. Area approximately longitude 100 E.
Mar. 14, 1956: Byrd: Explored more than 800,000 square miles of area, but there were still 2,200,000 square miles never seen by man.
Exciton: Most important property: to transport energy over distances large compared with atomic dimensions. "It is a quantum of electronic excitation energy traveling in a periodic structure, whose motion is characterized by a wave vector." It transfers energy, but not charge, in "wave packets" of excitation. "A particle of energy, essential." ((And from there it gets TREMENDOUSLY scientific and formulative and they talk about rest masses and excited masses, yet never give it A mass. A sort of scientific conceit, but it would be amazing if it turned into the forerunner of the infitron.)) "Excitons" by D.L. Dexter and R.S. Knox.
Trip to California in 1951
From Akron, Ohio to Cedar Rapids, Iowa, on August 10, 553 miles (Monday)
From Cedar Rapids to North Platte, Neb, on August 21, 581 miles (Tuesday)
From North Platte to Salt Lake City, Utah, on August 22, 642 miles (Wednesday)
From Salt Lake City to Reno, Nevada, on August 23, 530 miles (Thursday)
From Reno, Nevada, to Salinas, Calif, on August 24, 500 miles (Friday.
Total of 2806 miles.
Anarchaic---old anarchy.
Monday, February 12: woozy after work; Tuesday, February 13: feel LOUSY, ache, dizzy, 103.3 temperature at 3 pm, 101.3 temperature at 6 pm, in bed most of the day. Wednesday, February 14: throat sore, post-nasal drip, yellow sputum, 102 temperature highest. Eyes sore (from reading); Thursday, February 15: better throat, still spitting, read and up all day. Tired. Temperature in 100-101 range. Take shower and wash hair; Friday, February 16: 98.6 at 8 am. Drivers lesson and test (outside) and work. 99.3 temperature at 3 pm, home, cough once or twice, throat less sore, still tired; Saturday, February 17: 9:30 am temperature 99.6, getting sick AGAIN? Feel knocked out, more coughing.
Communication with God (Feeling); Communication with Self (thought); communication with Nature (Study). [DRAWING MISSING]
200 Man (indirect) God
100 Man (direct) God
700 Man direct-man (feeling)
"IS" 100,200 800 Man-recorded-man
Feeling 700,800 900 Man-recorded-man
Thought 300 400 Man-direct-man (human)
Rotework 000,400,500,600,900 300 Man-recording-man
600 Man-objects-man
500 Man-objects
000 Man-recordings
I want a man. Why? I want love. Why? Love feels good---I feel good when I'm in love. But you never are! But I want to be. How are you going about it? NOT by reading; NOT by writing; NOT by TV or movies or plays or ballet or opera. Dr. Hammer says I want love because I don't love myself. But I DO, maybe too much? I love my body---but why do you exercise, deny it of food on weekends, WORRY about it being unpleasant. I love my mind---but WHY do you READ so much? THIS IS NONSENSE. If I go for a walk, it ends up CRUISING.
SOCIETY vs LSD vs ME
Love ONE woman in marriage Love EVERYONE Love a Man
The thought of suckling pig sent my sight of the chorus into sheer fantasy: I saw the opened mouths spurting blood, or ingesting pulsating lingams. I saw flames flicking through the robes of scarlet, and the world turned weird and fanciful, as if anything were not only possible, but ACTUAL, and I had visions of countless universes in which each of these actions WAS actual, and they receded into mirrored immensities as between two parallel mirrors, but mirrors which distorted slightly so that each image was more grotesque than the last, until, sweeping down the corridors of image, the faces of the world reeled and twisted in blazing incandescences of madness, and I was sure that such thoughts would lead to gibbering lunacy---or would if the freezing thoughts of theatricality and "put on" didn't stop the images and restore "reality," but the "real" wavered and flowed, and the fluctuations WERE the real. And the words flowed into incomprehensibility as my mind staggered into blind fugue, interested only in keeping the pen moving. Thus, forcibly, I HAD to stop.
Ramos Fizz---Frothy Milk of Magnesia (with a kick).
It was all so TRIVIAL.
If the Fifth Amendment prevents self-incrimination, HOW does the Army get by with "Have you been homosexual?" on the draft questionnaire?
It's not FAIR---it's not FAIR that I should die! If I'm SICK, I've never LIVED; if I'm NOT sick, and fall in love, why should I DIE, THEN, when I've GOT what I've WANTED. It just isn't FAIR. I'm afraid? You're DAMN RIGHT!
Overture to Tanhauser DEFINITELY part of LSD experiences.
Moods---caught in the walks of Central Park on foggy mornings---must be pinned down at that point, or they vanish like the fog in the clarity of the office lights. But, still, a fragment lingers. The time is NOW, here, that I live, and the chasm between youth and age seems uncrossable. How many "children" in life search for fathers who will, with love, permit them anything, knowing that the "anything" that the children choose will go AGAINST the love of the father. Children can NOT know what love is until they know that a love can be loved with NO EXTERNAL SIGNS whatsoever---no words or caresses of love, no gifts or praises or pats, but only a loving regard and a loving thought, permitting anything, even lack of love, from the loved. Love is not in BEING loved, it is in loving. All who say, "I'm not loved" say "I do not choose to love." As in the Newman prayer: "When the fever of life is o'er," doesn't mean that the LIFE is over, but only when the FEVER is burned out can life really be lived. This is the level gaze of age, which the young can NEVER know, since when they know, they cease to be young. And still I pass the wrinkled, red-eyed stares of an old man, and I KNOW that my ACCEPTING love from him would be impossible, yet it may be the most ADULT thing I could do. And, damn me, I still wallow in words, and life---eludes me?
Is youth beautiful (aside from the fact that the CULTURE makes youth APPEAR beautiful---culture might better cultivate thoughts that WRINKLES are beautiful) so that everyone else will TOLERATE its gaucheness while it LEARNS how to behave properly? The old will accept ANYTHING from a beautiful youth. And helpless BABIES are thought to be even MORE winning.
In Compiler class; "There are people who are so enlightened that they can jump in and start whacking off (code)."
Insight as late as November 16 (1967): All people have SOME good and SOME bad about their appearance. When I look at the men, I see THAT which might be GOOD (a face, a smile, a walk, a pair of trousers, an ass, calves, a haircut, even an eyebrow or an eyelash) and DWELL on it until I'm love sick, IGNORING the FACTS which may be bad. With women, I search until I FIND the bad (and it is always there) and say "Oh, she's bad looking," and AVOID heartsickness, and even avoid looking. How sick!
The vision rose before me hazily, unclearly, like the first glimpse of the ring of the bottom of a deodorant stick viewed through the pellucid gel.
The ships floating in the harbor were "disembodied lumps of light"---as are MEN.
Elias Encarnacion, taxi driver.
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people, so I said nothing. Get out of plane and down VERY steep metal steps, and two legs changed to ONE leg above ground that had very narrow, widely spaced steps, with jump to ground. I negotiated the last jump slowly and effortlessly by "sliding" somehow, and felt very proud of myself. Remark made by husband and wife by "I'm sure they must measure the landing field before the plane lands here." Walk up hill toward hotel and fellow is taking a photo, and I debate asking him to share a hotel room with me, but I think, "Oh, they have separate reservations for us, and there's no use messing up their plans." Then I sense I've left a package on the front of the bus, a bottle in a brown paper bag. I "know" it's a bottle of crème de cocoa, but think of it as a bottle of Chivas Regal. I think "I'll go back and look for it," but don't, since I figure someone's stolen it already, so there's no use to go back.
"You should have seen what was left in the---" She paused, "Yeah, full of orange gloop," I said, knowing she meant the lint catcher on the washer after she washed the orange bathroom rug. "I'm glad I didn't have to finish THAT sentence," she laughed.
Fantasy: Azak cock teases and cock teases and finally I ask him over and he refuses. This happens again and again. Finally HE says HE wants to go to bed with me, and I say, "What, are you KIDDING?"
As she spoke, chunks of the hard-boiled egg she was eating fell from her fat lips.
pages missing
ON after death. HO HO HO? But if people READ these words DO I live ON. If ELGIN is true, and I WAS SHAKESPEARE, do I, as Shakespeare, live on because I READ those words? Of course not. I LIVE ON ONLY AS I. But what does this do to ELGIN? VERIFIED it. ___The Truth___I AM important. Joe---come over. I want to talk to you. I want to BE with you. I don't want to be alone. If this means I love you, then I love you. But I say it from fear (maybe) but I say it. Maybe I need Practice: Joe, I love you. So I called Joe up at noon and asked him to come over!
How much of SURFACE area of "electron cloud" can an electron COVER moving at the speed of light???
This schedule represents our guess estimate: from SBC salesman. HA.
The day of Coincidences: Pouteau in Chanticleer; Dicks Brundage and Peck in Ross opening; Rom from Akron at Avi's with Joan and me.
The perfect shit: after diarrhea; after stuffed feeling after Kaopectate; the perfect shit (sigh).
CHINESE DINNER: Cold plate: duck, cheese, fish, abalone, jellyfish, vegetable, tongue, pressed meat, wine chicken; champagne; shrimp; squab; fish; small bits of fried chicken and nuts with pepper and onion; Peking duck; mixed ham and shrimp and green mash and abalone and mushrooms and snow peas, chicken (Happy Family); sea cucumbers (Precious!); sweet and sour pork; lobster; tea; hot cream, baked, with red sugar sprinkled (Kootsa); all for Madge's sister's engagement at the New Shen Yee restaurant on 2/25/66.
DIARY 5496
November, 1964
JOTTINGS - THOUGHTS DURING BOHEME
SO INCREDIBLY MANY thoughts race through my mind as I watch "Boheme" at City Center 11/15/64, 1) That "Boheme" is one of the few operas that depend on being in the snow: third act is almost invariably snowing, and City Center goes farther and has snow surrounding the Cafe Momus---not noticeable at Met. But neither of them have it falling gently outside that huge WINDOW in acts I and IV. 2) That good acting and scenic sets and music can make even warhorses like Boheme and Traviata and Aida gripping and moving. 3) That FEW operas should be FIRST operas---definitely not Boheme but certainly Traviata. Not Faust but Aida. No WAGNER at all, but Mozart, like the ENGLISH Marriage of Figaro. How few good first operas there are. 4) That both Acts I and III of Boheme and with Mimi and Rudolpho ending on good duets, but both OFF stage. 5) People can be funny---the woman behind "Everything takes place in Bohemia." "No, France," and HER name is Mimi. 6) Shadow play as silhouettes, huge, come into opera glasses view as they bob without changing distance. And man trips and shadow vanished for a second. 7) That one's understanding of opera can really help in enjoying it. 8) That MOST secondary roles (Marcello, Schaunard, Colline) are completely interchangeable, when normally done, unless played up by CHARACTER (David Smith as Alcindoro). 9) That I'm a real writing FIEND. 10) How interesting everything seems---they paint in Boheme and I remind myself I would really like to paint. John has a good Double Demon party and I WOULD like to throw MANY Scrabble, Monopoly, Charade parties. Bill comes up with a paper and I enthuse. I see good (or sexy) writing and DREAM of writing. Genet has written so MANY of my ideas, I must get them down before they're ALL common knowledge. 11) I seem to remember "Six Characters in Search of an Author" is an opera, but WHAT about "Our Town?" 12) R. Sylvan Zolnerzak
DIARY 5497
November, 1964
JOTTINGS - ART AND LEISURE
From Mensa meeting, 11/20/64: Art changed as rapidly in the past as it does now, but maybe more people now are concerned, and the people involved create the furor that the artists DON'T take part in. The artist does what he did before: do what they want to do (and, yes, do what they can make money with) but the MASS (and the communications that serve (and indirectly influence) and mass) is the segment that causes the illusion of haphazard. The people's LEISURE produces the furor. Poems, paintings, statues, stories BECOME art only after standing the test of time, POP art MAY end up a tiny footnote in the history of ART. The artist (though that's the wrong word---the craftsman) paints what he WANTS. Artists don't make hoaxes, the people do. If modern mass art raises questions and provokes thought, that's pretty good right there. Beauty is absolutely definitely in the EYE OF THE BEHOLDER. People like the statistical method of liking because it BOLSTERS their weak egos. Gee, THEY believe, now I can. When I said "Mensa" at the gay party afterward, dancing cheek to cheek with someone whose name I'd forgotten, it seemed obscene, as though I'd shown my cock at the Ladies Aide, but they were so gentile that they solemnly ignored it. Arno and I both felt rather out of place at the party, those who were older were physically superior creatures, everyone else was younger and definitively better. We stayed for about an hour and a half and left, and probably the fellow Luke introduced me to, and Luke, thought Arno and I left to have sex together. How wrong such thoughts can be.
DIARY 5513
February, 1964
JOTTINGS - QUOTES AND THOUGHTS
"To hold that historical facts can be recorded, but not explained, is a confession of intellectual bankruptcy, a negation of the claim of history to be a branch of scientific knowledge." "Science is a methodical investigation by human reason of the facts of human experience. Science thus comprises history, ethics, metaphysics, as well as psychology and the natural sciences." FALSE.
Man is, above all things, a metaphysical, that is, an ideal-forming, animal; he seeks for reason everywhere, in history, in nature, and his thirst will not be quenched until he finds it." William George de Burgh, from "The Legacy of the Ancient World." TRUE, but if this BE his thirst, then his thirst is UNQUENCHABLE.
"The end of man is not to live, but to live well." Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics
Crowd cried, "Less bread, more taxes," in Lewis Carroll.
History reveals what is most permanent and universal (and COMMON) in the life of the spirit. Also it is helpful in finding out HOW MUCH of what you THINK is true has ALREADY been promulgated. Stepping on HIS shoulders, you're ready to bend your OWN body for the next seeker after vision.
What the Greeks did need not be done again. Progress in morality can only be inspired by religious faith.
Psalms 58, 69, 109 are anti-Christian??
Teacher has more to learn from Plato's "Republic" than from ALL books on pedagogy." All above from de Burgh.
DIARY 5523
BIOGRAPHY OF A PIMPLE: 6 pm, wash face thoroughly and inspect existing blemished rather cursorily. Notice nothing in particular wrong with the right side of my nose. There must have been some sort of hardening starting about then, but I simply didn't notice. Went out for evening and had a great deal of bed playing that night, coming home at 4 am, and finding a distinct patch of redness aside the nose, possibly a quarter of an inch in diameter at the most. Hard to the touch and giving a deeply felt throb if pressed. Looked at it disgustedly and went to bed. Next day: anyone would notice it now, on looking at my nose, that is. It doesn't stand out, but it's there. Slightly larger in size, and a trifle redder. At 2 am I start this, and, after having scrubbed well in the shower, investigated it completely. The obviously red area still covers 1/4 inch, but the area of hardening is more like 3/4 inch. It's raised above the surface of the skin, which has become slightly shiny with the redness and the pores on it are all but invisible due to the swelling. Has a tendency to redden at the tip if prodded, which makes itself felt as a decidedly congested lump of pus. That (was as far as it went.)
DIARY 5524
MATURITY, UNNATURALNESS AND PRIDE
1. AS facet of maturity versus immaturity: the mature person always LOOKS the same; the immature waits too long for a haircut, often has erectile hair problems in the AM, is troubled with facial disorders, and wears an immense variety of clothes. The MATURE person usually always looks the same in hair, face, dress, deportment. Only the young can come up with so many facial expressions.
2. How unnatural it all is: 1) Work week so short people have fantastic problems with leisure. 2) Women capable of having children are sterilized (Pumpkin Eater) to prevent her natural faculties. She sees nothing else to DO, maybe because it wasn't meant for her to do anything else. 3) The OLD, kept alive by medicine, and their problems of retirement and children.
3) Look, you people of Fifth Avenue and CPW and Central Park South, how lucky I am. You can, by looking out, see only me, while I, looking in, can see ANY of you.
Why must I concentrate on such trivia (as above) and let the important things go unthought?
DIARY 5526
QUOTES AND THOUGHTS
1. "There can be no great art without great discipline."
2. "He who spares not himself gets spared not by others."
3. Dare we hold our conscience above the code which guards our country?
4. The unexamined instruction is bound to have a bug in it.
5. The unexamined WORLD is not worth living in.
6. Question for educating the intelligent: How to stimulate without overwhelming? How to guide without limiting experience?
7. (June, 1963): The ideas popped in my mind like parched corn in a hot greased pot. The record business cut off because Marty "Couldn't take being torn apart" by his wanting Joanne and her wanting only a good unattaching time. I think of the plays and movies I've just seen in NYC, and the multitudes from the trip. I think of Marty's talk from his trip. Bobbie's honeymoon in Jamaica, and my possible next year's trip to South America. I think of the books I'd just read, the thoughts of the end of the world, and "The Answer" with Ylie's angel with the message "Love each other" and John Knowles "The Separate Peace" and the closeness of these friends leads me to the thought of me with Bill, how I tore Bill apart, and the tears shed by both of us over our odd relationship. Think of JJ and Walt Swan, and the excellence of the book makes me think of MY writing and FW course and how I might type with a pencil between teeth if I lost my arms, or should dictate this to a tape recorder. Each kernel pops and brings out tasty white thoughts, brushed aside by the next thought explosion. Mad. And thoughts of the details at work, the job card program and documenting the SDP program, and the meeting with Bobbie. Sleep at 3 and rattle through next day fairly tired, help Mozelle hang Venetian blinds till 8, and home to finish "Separate Peace," read "Doors of Perception," and dine on 14 cherries, 2 rotten; 3 peaches, 2 overripe, one under; a large segment of packed-in-wax Baby Gouda cheese, imported from Holland, and a large piece of perfectly ripe, slightly mushy cantaloupe. Then to bed at 12:30, feeling drooping and possessed of the runs.
