Mish-Mosh
TRULY A MISCELLANY OF MISH-MOSH---OR A MISH-MOSH OF MISCELLANY,
including Bon Mots, psychoanalytic versus est views, post-destination, immortality, everything, horny, United Asbestos, EFLA/EFA, looking new, computers (1979), Muktananda, “I,” Les Mouches (2/15/80), homosexualities, J/O nights, three book reviews (and reviews of an art exhibit, an opera, a movie, and a play, not to mention five “Where Am I Now?”s), hair analysis, ASIS, hates, sine on circle, seconds per second, writing, dream, feeling god, thought-cancer, reincarnation, cartoons, fantasy-fame, thrown back, jottings, chain letters, “India,” orgasm, witchcraft, fallen angels, numbers, apotheosis, ESP, masturbation, more-more, barium enema, unroutine, depression, “The Last Thing,” negativity, Eyeclasses, and Italy trip (1981). Other than that, not much.
Even worse is the “numbering”: Starting with DIARY 90010, dates 2/80-9/82, then ESSAYS 1-55, dates 3/79-4/81, then DIARY 91281 of 3/30/78, then DIARY 8899 of 9/7/74, then DIARY 561 of 9/15/69, then DIARY 5002-5006 of 9/65, then FICTION 2-3, then NOTEBOOK 459-473, dates 2/20/82-7/13/82, concluding with NOTEBOOK 382-458, dates 10/28/80-2/4/82. Go figure.
DIARY 90010
Bon mot pages, 10
1) [Me talking of exercises, after a bout of double-come sex] "Well, I'll perform for you" Dennis: (incredulously) AGAIN?
2) Joan: I'm still the best thing to hit the fan (in acting class) in years"
3) I'm incollegable---that means either I won't go to college or I'm a Japanese incorrigible.
4) (Telling Dennis how to open my door): "Bend the rod." D: "Bend the rod and spoil the child?" "Bend the ROD." "Don't bend the rod, it HURTS!"
5) (Talking to Anna-Teresa Callan): "...your slight accent..." "Thank you for the slight..." "??"
6) WNET news 1/26/78, 11:30 pm "Murder carries a mandatory sentence of LIFE in New Jersey." YOIKS
7) Pope from TV woman 6/7/78 "Reality is an idea whose time has come."
8) 1/3/79: Dennis: "We've got to get up." Me (fondling his cock) "I'm trying, I'm trying!" D: I've got lots of things to do. M: Yeah, I've got one of them in my right hand right now.
9) Sunspot from shade-hole shining roundly over bed: Look, we're being watched!
10) M: Look at that pile (of stuff to be handled). D: Is it anything? M: Anything! It's EVERYTHING!!
11) Dorothy Hunter just laughed uproariously: "I seem to be SURROUNDED by people who are willing to let ME do it. Dennis hopes to delay SO long in getting a humidifier that I'll probably get one for him because I don't like his dry apartment. Rolf said he'd do the programming, but he's NOT doing it, and when I said "I might do some flow charts" I could HEAR him smile over the TELEPHONE!
12) Scarcity, in 1/31/81 New York Magazine book review, became Scar-city!
Bon mot pages, 12
2/8/80
Me: Did I tell you about our lion stew?
Sherryl: Your LION STEW? (all clearly enunciated)
Me: You hear very WELL!
Sherryl: What? (The phone line is poor.)
We're talking about a showy sequined girl posing in a restaurant window.
Dennis: SHE was living in a movie.
Me: Yeah, but I'll bet her bodice scratched.
Dennis: Her twat is scratched???
KA = Egyptian soul
KARMA = Hindu soul-link ) Linked?
CHARISMA = American soul-quality )
3/19/80: Goodies from "Coal Age" 1979
Tailings subentry: Met coal extracted from Canterbury tails
Illumination subentry: Improved lighting aids stripping
4/17/80: goodie phone message from Dennis to my PHONE MACHINE:
"Hi, my name is Dennis Southers, and I just thought I'd call you and tell you that I DO love you a lot---and I haven't told you that very often---and---there you are, I'm very fond of you. Goodbye now."
4/25/80 observation: There are as many points of view as Points x Viewers. If you say, "I share your point of view," you simply don't comprehend the richness of the situation; it's not a simplification or a lie; it's merely inaccurate.
7/21/80 note: Twelfth Night, Act IV, Scene II, Clown says: "That, that is, is"---for what is that but that? and is, but is?"
11/9/80: What makes the TRUTH, the REALITY, of an event so compelling is the degree to which it does NOT agree with what we expected or predicted. If something came out EXACTLY as we had foreseen, we would suspect ourselves of having IMAGINED what happened rather than LIVING what ACTUALLY happened.
Bon mot pages, 13
3/3/81
Dennis: I'm into CORK! (with a wine bottle cork LODGED in his foreskin, sticking out in lieu of his cockhead).
Me: Cork's into YOU!! You're a CORK-sucker.
Dennis: I'll show you my cork if you'll show me yours!
From February 1981 EFA Journal: A REJECTION SLIP WORTH FRAMING (from a Chinese economics journal): We have read your manuscript with boundless delight. If we were to publish your paper it would be impossible for us to publish any work of a lower standard. And as it is unthinkable that, in the next thousand years, we shall see its equal, we are, to our regret, compelled to return your divine composition, and to beg you, a thousand times, to overlook our short sight and timidity.---Reported in Financial Mail (Johannesburg), September 19, 1980
Me: You're supposed to cook Alice. D: Well, she won't fit in my wok!
Me: Some comment. D: We could puree her; we could blanch or refresh her.
Me: Are you seeing Frank tonight? D: Probably. Maybe. I don't know. Yes.
GREAT comic-ballet bit, from Jardin Animée from "Corsaire": All girls have STIFF flower loops, but one has a LIMP one.
1021 atoms in a man's breath; 1019 pounds in earth's atmosphere; thus each pound of air contains 100 atoms from ONE of Buddha's breaths (enlightened atoms).
2x109 seconds in life of man; 2x108 breaths of Buddha; thus 2x1029 atoms in ALL breaths.
2x1010 atoms of Buddha's breath in EACH pound of air. Atom is 10-26 pounds; thus man's breath is 10-5 pounds; thus 2x105 = 200,000 atoms of Buddha's breath in EACH breath.
Dr. Moskowitz's secretary, on my appointment: "Just a second, I'll ax him."
Can't imagine why I noted the comment from Dennis: "Yes, I DO 6 plates 12 times."
Dennis: "I don't lie to you very many times and this isn't one of them."
Me talking to Dennis about Bruce's illness: "Yes, but can you make HIS "what-is"?"
Note with one of Sherryl's index payments: "Dear Bob, Thanks for Electronic Circuits and Human Error Reduction, Sherry!"
Bon mot pages, 14
11/19/81
For NEW YORK MAGAZINE contest: Jules Verve: By Disco to the Moon!
12/7/81: My message tape: This is a haiku; Bob will call you back if you leave a message now. Susan's doing a leg-and-arm pull on me and I say it's PROBABLY Dennis.
Susan (picking up phone): Hello?
Art Bauman: "obviously very surprised) Hello?!
SL: Dennis?
AB: Bob Zolnerzak? (Does she SOUND like me?)
SL: No, this is Susan; who's this?
AB: How did you get on the line? (rather humorlessly and bluntly) I just---I'm ready to leave a message for Bob.
SL: (clearly put off by his tone) Well, I just picked up the phone, so---
AB: Oh (puzzled) Is this a party line?
SL: No, no, no (laughs) I'm visiting Bob's. I just picked up the phone FOR him.
AB: Oh, I see (obviously he doesn't see).
SL: (turning away from the phone to talk to me) Art Bauman, Bob. (pause) Do you want me to bring the phone to you? (to Art, who's wordless) Hold on. (pause)
BZ: My goodness, long time!
AB: (matter of factly) This is the STRANGEST exchange, especially timed the way it was with your message. (And then my tape loops into the NEXT message!)
12/15/81: Me to Dennis 12/13/81: Being in love is being TOLD you're better than you'd dreamed you COULD be. Being taken for granted is fearing being nothing more than you fear you MAY be.
2/82: ME: I hate to be misattributed---I'd rather be Miss America.
2/82: Dennis: John's sort of president of the club. Me: Head jerk! D: I love it!!
2/82: Me: Did you save a copy of the index? Dennis: Ye-e-es. Me: What's the rest of it? Dennis: What's the rest of Yes? It sounds like the title of a book of poetry!
Bon mot pages, 15
5/8/82
He roamed his farf-
lung empire of unc-
harted wastelands to de-
liver his news and fil- (This is correct, however)
lips of humor, be-
sting his enemies! Mist-
rusting everyone!
7/6/82: After my HUGE vacation message: "Nemmine, I got the wrong nummer."
7/16/82: I say TACO PACO; Dennis says CASA RICO; it IS CASA PACO; next block is TACO RICO.
11/18/82: Arnold tells me that the tour of the subway repair shops is being given by the BRONX HISTORICAL SOCIETY!
11/9/82: Pope about my mother's "Heads" and Pope's "Tails, you lose," and my mother's, "No, that means YOU have to choose": "You COULD interpret it HER way, but NO one ever WOULD." And later she ADMITS she knew she lost and said that "for a joke."
12/1/82: Typing cards for HUMAN GENETICS I get fallopian tunes (b) and Siamese twine (s)
Bon mot pages, 16
9/4/82
Dennis (re cooking): I've never made any of this before.
ME: That's what God said, when he made Adam and Eve.
Dennis: Need I go on?
ME: No, but you will!
Scientific investigation has a BETTER analogy than my "destroyed watch" one: it's looking at CARBON (not vitamin C) and selenium (not dehydroepiandrosterone, which interact) and trying to find how the BODY works---ELEMENTS don't act singly, but CHANGE as their molecular NEIGHBORS change.
ESSAYS 1
3/28/79
THE PSYCHOANALYTIC VERSUS EST VIEWPOINTS
Dennis says (per "On Golden Pond") that when people KNOW each other through ALL the changes in their lives, they have a RICHER relationship, as I should "respect" him more because he moved from financial dependence on his parents to independence when I knew him. I say that I adhere more firmly to est's viewpoint that it's not what's BEHIND the action or the time or the circumstances that counts, but the ACTUAL circumstances and the ACTUAL response. He insists my mother is still with me, and I agree that I'm not ALL the way to the est side because I'm a great believer in CHANGE and PROGRESS, which admits of a KNOWLEDGE of the past, if only the present can be compared with it and the direction of the future determined. He says that the problems of childhood and the adjustments of adolescence and the trauma of adulthood are all things which have to be understood, and I say that's a way of abnegating responsibility: you are who you are REGARDLESS of how you got there: if you can comb your hair (short or long obviously based on the past, with equipment BOUGHT in the past) TIED to the idea that you ALWAYS have to get the pocket mirror from the cabinet, you may NEVER put a NEW mirror on the WALL, and FREEDOM from that habit, predilection, or taste could let you look at it ANEW. I've progressed along this line of viewpoint, and I hope to go FARTHER along it, while he seems a bit too stuck in the PSYCHOANALYTIC view that there's always something to talk about as forming a background for action. There's little SURPRISE there, I think to myself now, whereas someone acting FRESHLY, from a CLEAR view of what's so NOW, is much more apt to SURPRISE you, ENDEAR you, and make life more INTERESTING than someone who's rather predictable because he's frozen into his views, which IN FACT create his reactions to today's events, and even as he SAYS he can't change, or can't free himself from the past, he's binding himself to the past ever more tightly, while I, recklessly, throwing myself FREELY into the future, can have greater possibilities for pleasure (and pain) and unpredictability, yet hope to get far MORE of the RANGE of life than he might expect espousing the psychoanalytic viewpoint.
ESSAYS 2
3/30/79
POST-DESTINATION AND PRE-DESTINATION
Pope and I have a lovely talk, and he can't seem to understand my point: that the past IS there all the time and the PRESENT is all the time there and the FUTURE is all the time there, but that's not really PREDESTINATION. If X died last year, you wouldn't say it was PREDETERMINED, but it can be called POST-DETERMINED, since you can determine when he died after it happened. But PREdetermining it wouldn't be the same as PREDESTINING it, since the individual possessed freewill all the way along---if a person PRE-SEES his death, he would ALSO be able to see HIMSELF pre-seeing his death and going through all the antics to die at that time, INCLUDING the apathy that would come over him and the FEELING of predestination, yet it's only predetermined. The old analogy of a teacher watching a student adding a column of figures and getting a wrong units-column sum. The final sum WILL be wrong, though the teacher hardly MADE it wrong by SEEING that it was wrong. As far as "fate" or "destiny" is concerned, that's only a CONCEPT which has no determining possibilities at ALL, just as even GOD IN THIS SENSE, is only a concept, so God can't MAKE a person die or not, it's something which the current road, NO MATTER HOW MUCH IT TURNS, will lead to at that date at that place. Which leads me to mention to Pope my thought of "You die wearing a certain shirt, having eaten a certain last meal, having said a last word, but these "lasts" don't CAUSE the death, though they MUST BE there, and there's no consideration of IF or MAYBE, any more than you "doubt" the intersection of Amsterdam and 123rd Street, even though you may never have been there (hm, or does Amsterdam change to something like Lenox at 110th?) Nothing happens to the FLOW OF TIME so that 1980 would CHANGE anything, so why should a death in 1984 that is KNOWN differ from a death in 1974 that is KNOWN. Why should one be PREDESTINED and the other POST-DESTINED. They're both DESTINED, though that wouldn't affect what the person who died did. Read him Wheeler's quote of the "sacredness of the mile and the secularity of the foot" and then the religious machinations to "prove" the magic number of 5280, as we try to "prove" or "say why" for 3.1010 cm/sec. Good talk.
ESSAYS 3
4/3/79
"PARADOX" OF REALITY AND IMMORTALITY
Bruce and I are talking (see NOTEBOOK 5) about how Actualism seems to help the practical and gives some idea of the immortal, and I mention my typical statement that these two are paradoxical: one is finite, the other infinite; one is here-now, the other is everywhere-everytime; one is pragmatic and physical and testable, the other is mystical and spiritual and untestable. Then he uses the word DIMENSIONS and I immediately conceive that these do not need to be any MORE incompatible than HEIGHT is to LENGTH. They're quite independent, measured in different "directions," and from the point of view of light sources and shadows, a fruitful analogy, may be quite INVISIBLE one from the other. Project light from ABOVE and you get a PERFECT representation of the length and width but NO representation of height. Project light from the SIDE and you get a PERFECT representation of height and width but NO representation of length. So Actualism could be LOOKED at as a way of MOVING the light from above to the side (probably better to say moving the light from ONE SIDEDNESS to ABOVE the object---OUT OF THE PLANE of the physical and UP INTO the spiritual). Just as the shadow from INTERMEDIATE points may be confusing and unclear, so you have to REACH the "top," if only for a moment, to get a "picture" of the TRUE length, so that you can then JUDGE whether some particular view is "more from the top than from the side" or whatever. GREAT analogy, part of the article!! OUR view of OURSELVES is like looking through a TIME SLICE of a railroad track: the familiar I-beam shape. But if we can get OUT of the familiar, look ALONG time, we can see that the track goes on AS FAR AS WE CAN SEE, maybe taking courses including ups and downs that THE TRACK ITSELF CAN'T SEE---and maybe the tracks JOINED TOGETHER after great distances are different LIVES, just as the track may be under different jurisdictions as it moves from state to state. From the point of view INSIDE the track, there's a STOPPING AND A STARTING, from a point of view ABOVE the track, it's just CONTINUOUS, and what affects ONE section affects them ALL. This can be tied in with predestination and post-destination (ESSAY 2), too, since the tracks DO have stops and starts. ALL FROM A CHAT WITH BRUCE.
ESSAYS 4
4/4/79
ON WATCHING SHAKESPEARE'S "KIND RICHARD II"
Amazing how we know so much MORE about Britain's history, how we so much assume SHAKESPEARE is a great playwright (though there's no doubting this, since EACH speech, though boring in CONTEXT, is marvelously wrought, finely honed in rhythm and rhyme, and complexly thoughtful and so freighted with simile and metaphor that each speech is a seed that fruits in the mind), and how much we assume we should "be interested" in him and his plays. Which shows how ENGLISH we are still, how influenced by old-age thoughts we are, how willing we are to subject ourselves to the past. But there are hardly KINGS anymore, let alone people who use words so wisely. Yet with people seeing such POMP, they just feel THEY should have more; or alternatively know that POWER and WEALTH isn't an automatic solution to happiness, good living, and survival. And again I question my list-keeping: WHY should it be so important to me that I see all these (though certainly it's so far between that I DO see some of them that they're discoveries all over again), since it's not this century, this country, nor these morals, so it's quite NOT here-now-it. ACTORS as much as anything keep them going: if HE did Richard II and HE was historically famous, I want to do Richard II and keep my performance alive FOREVER on cassette tape, as I'd debated vaguely, but then how often would you PLAY it, you'd have an excuse not to see a NEW one, and it would be EVEN MORE a freezing of the past rather than an absorption for CURRENT enjoyment, to reflect CURRENT values, to evaluate from where I am at this moment, which is probably different from where I was when I enjoyed it the LAST time. What NEW connections can I make now that I've made these connections so far in my life? They're a MODEL against which thoughts on love, faithfulness, service, honesty, loyalty, humor, beauty, truth, will, and other ETERNAL emotions and values can be judged against FORMER values: just as seeing a MOVIE again can show you how much you've changed since you were a kid. So the SEEING is fine, the FREEZING OF ONE PERFORMANCE would lead to the stagnation, the repetition for the sake of repetition and list-making, the holding to the past at the expense of investigating the future.
ESSAYS 5
4/18/79
YOU'LL NEVER HAVE EVERYTHING YOU WANT
Tell Dennis: when I was rich at IBM I felt badly about Joan and Joe wanting ONLY $250 or $500 to do something, and it was NOTHING to me, but then I had to want IBM, their stock, and the worth of the US dollar to KEEP GOING, and became quite a CONSERVATIVE because I'd INVESTED in the future of the nation. Then when I QUIT, I wanted the nation to go UNDER, since I'd invested in the dollar NOT being worth anything, and I'd look rather silly if it SURVIVED and I'd bailed out because I thought it would FAIL. But now I don't feel RICH anymore, so I want DIFFERENT things. We looked at the RKO films with that in mind: did Astaire feel content with the tap dance number in "Follow the Fleet," was "Citizen Kane" a happy person, since he still wanted Rosebud when he had everything. When he paid a bill he thought he'd be happy, but he just wanted to buy something NEW. I'd wanted to be happy "just" indexing, then it got BORING and TOO CONTROLLABLE, so I had to open it up to training, missing deadlines, taking on too much, and generally expanding to keep the element of CHALLENGE. When I exhausted opera I went into ballet, and then into modern dance, and possibly theater, and then I keep lists of things that I want to keep lists of. Wanted to go to the Caribbean, and now I want to go BACK to the Caribbean. Went to 49 states, so that just makes the pressure to get to ALASKA that much greater, REGARDLESS of the intrinsic worth of a trip to Alaska, both cost-wise OR money-wise. Then I want est, then Actualism, then OUT of Actualism. If I get the computer indexing system, I'll probably want something ELSE on computers; I'd wanted the publisher of the indexing book to come to me, and he DID, at the Raven party, and now I have to get that out and want something MORE to happen with MORE of the books. When I publish 5 I'll want 10 more out, and then I'll start regretting that I didn't spend more time when I was ENJOYING myself writing, just as I regretted NOT writing after I took the LSD, when "not writing and recording" was one of the great DISCOVERIES of the LSD trip. So there's ALWAYS the need for the challenge, the surprise, that which is just around the corner, something new and different and exciting: ALWAYS!
ESSAYS 6
4/26/79
HOW HORNY I AM
Fascinated by the curving cock in the black leather pants leaning against a sign outside the St. George; mesmerized by the saggy crotch of the handsome actor reading Show Business with a fabulous profile and a somewhat debauched full-face; then totally captured by the full lump in the front of the faded jeans worn by a sharp-nosed blond who got off at Clark Street and was so good-looking that when he passed me on Hicks at a run I followed, only to see him sprint out into the street and look up at the house next to the house next to Love Lane to find someone was in (or out) and then sped up the steps two or three at a time and disappeared behind the black door. And I wanted, wanted, WANTED! Looked at people on 72nd and admired the time they had to wander at will and cruise at their pleasure. Still wanting to try the baths, the men in the advertising section of The Advocate, or even some of the JOYI people who might call now that they know my phone number. Sadly, Dennis doesn't seem to satisfy my horniness. I want something BIG to hold in my arms, some new sensation to thrill me with unexpectedness (though nothing so unexpected as fucking, however), some "conquest" so that I won't remain so hung up about my growing old. But still to take a lesson from Dennis: smile up at them like an eager dog, show pleasure in looking at their parts and happiness to be myself, and if that doesn't get them they're probably too constipated to enjoy me anyway. I may be a dirty old man, but I'm still a lot of fun in bed, and I don't want to end up the misogynistic Bill Hyde who refuses ANYTHING that comes toward him and pursues ANYTHING that retreats. Try some of my magnetics, exercise a bit to reduce my profile in jeans, and TRY something different from jerking off with the porno that's gotten so stale that I have to switch to different envelopes to provide the pleasant surprise of an unexpected cock, angle, smile, or body on a beautiful male. Probably spring has something to do with it, as does my long work-month of April and my eagerness for a vacation to ANYWHERE to get a change of venue. But I won't get anything talking about it; if I want it, I have to DO something about it---at least give me someone different to WRITE about!
ESSAYS 7
4/27/79
ROLF ON UNITED ASBESTOS
When I ask WHAT he's going to do with his time now that he's off the indexing project, he says, with me and Veneroso and friends and other holdings, he "controls" 150,000 shares of stock, so if it goes from 3-6 that's almost half a million dollars. Interesting, but he's not getting any of mine. He talks of the Asbestos Corporation wanting the company as well as ESARCO, and it might be UA can't get refinancing because people want to snap it up. Even the government of the province wants asbestos mines, and if they start a stock war (which entails ads in papers and stock scouts phoning and putting pressure on large shareholders to sell) one may bid 5, then the next 6, then 7, then 8, and everyone would really WANT to sell for fear of getting lost in the dust. "Most have invested around 1," he said, so if they sell at 6 and put their money into ANOTHER stock at 1 that's going to 6 ..." Yes, it DOES sound good. He doesn't want a job with the company, even the employment agencies have been after him but he waves them off with a bland hand. He's had dinner with stockbrokers, has been asked by the Maloufs if he wants to raise $20 million for their refinancing, and he says he might ask some investor fiends of his (that WAS meant to be friends) for the money and get a piece of the action. He said UA's sold this year's product at a 12% price increase, and another 12% increase's coming in June, that the debt has been lowered to $36 million from a high of $48 million and they're making $12 million a year, so for a debt that could be paid off in two or three years, they're in very good shape, but if the company's bought away from them, old Malouf would probably die in a year, being one of the millionth of one percent who thrives in business and will wilt without its stimulus because they'd find ordinary living too boring. Like Rolf? So I got whatever I could from him, had him say he'd bring over the SECOND shitload of material, along with lots of magazines, tomorrow or the next day, and suggested my next step would be to VISIT these people for demonstrations, though he said probably RPG could be got going on the Raven machine, and he didn't even seem to CARE what I'd be doing with the system next.
ESSAYS 12
5/15/79
FIRST EFLA MEETING
Herbert Mitgang, who's rather Jason Robards-ish, spoke from 6:05-7 pm. He's a publishing reporter for the New York Times, started as a stringer for the Brooklyn Eagle. Broken in on NY Times by LV. Updegraff ("Uppie") as desk person. Facts checked ONLY by PRIMARY (no World Almanac) PRINTED (no phone calls) sources. EFLA good for professionalism, respect, and increased pay! Everyone applauded. He's active in Author's Guild, best writers in a country of 40,000 books per year and 1000 publishers, but it's CHANGING. Emphasis on BIG books will HARM the industry. Medium publisher publishes 50/year, hopes for 2-3 biggies, 10 paying their own way, and the others that will fall by the wayside.
ITT tells Bobbs-Merrill: no more fiction, only Irma Bombeck and her ilk. Ilk!
William Shallcross, writing against selling of Cambodia, will NOT be sought by NBC's "Today" that pays 1/2 million to Kissinger, who's IN the book as villain. William Paley to Erica Jong on "Fear of Flying" "I like your earnings!"
Individual imprint books are a GREAT thing for imaginative publishing.
Conglomerates get REVENUE and EGO trips from owning publishing companies: "Erica Jong and John Hershey work for me."
American Express, buying McGraw-Hill: "We're big on coffee table books, buy 'em now on your card and pay for 'em later."
Don Fine, of Arbor, feels secure under new company (Harper?)
Yale MBAs insist on publishing house studies: Fire secretaries and have POOL.
Conglomerates to authors: Now give up ALL (world/reprint/all) rights to stuff.
Conglomerates have to come up with long- and short-range TARGET GROWTH, not imagination.
Author's Guild pleading with Antitrust Committee and Federal Trade Commission AGAINST conglomerate ownership of publishing companies. Cost cutting will REDUCE freelance work: as will more COMPUTER work. Author'll feed his OWN book into a computer. "We cannot resist mechanics/progress."
NY Times: "Yeah, I guess it is proofread---I guess SOMEONE proofreads it."
New York Times Book Review closes 12-15 days before published. Editors are now editing on machines. "We all work with green bugs---who knows where they go?"
Something that sounded like Teleram. Longman's puts in Production Staff on title pages of all books.
Mass-market racks are TEAMSTER controlled, and VERY rough to get best status for independent books, there are PAYOFFS for spots. See on newsstands: WHICH are in front and WHICH in back, from marketing. Then have to FIGHT your way into Walton and Dalton to CARRY your books.
Holt, Rinehart and Winston will NOT publish a CBS expose.
Nor will Times Books explore "How Times front page is made up."
Angel-Cameron and Little-Brown may have suffered during Vietnam, but not much now.
"I helped break blacklist on Pete Seeger" in 1966, 12 years after McCarthy, when he produced "Lamp Unto My Feet" and "Look Up and Live" for CBS against its "Program Practices" committee.
EFLA should write to book review editors and get indexes MENTIONED in reviews.
MANY reasons for acknowledging ACQUIRING EDITOR, but not for LITERARY EDITORS.
SOME CRT workers had cataracts, but it's not KNOWN to be a health hazard.
Since I left at 7:35 when the questioning was over, I didn't have a chance to join the meeting afterward of the individual specialties, but they told me there'd be another meeting sometime in June, they thought, and I filled out an application form that said indexes---all subjects---computerized and manual, and then brought back their March 1979 directory of members, which included 245 members through May, of which fewer than 1/4 were men: 56, and 19 MENTIONED indexing AFTER others, 8 had indexing BEFORE others, and only 5 had indexing ONLY: DeSpain "all subjects"; Palmer "all subjects," Reit; Rouslin "books and periodicals. Subjects: analytical competence in anthropology, linguistics, psychology, biology, biochemistry, physiology, and medical science fields"; and Saffir. No indexers NEAR Brooklyn Heights, and only Badendyk, Flanagan, Labrun, Moberg, and Tucker live in 11201 who do editing work. There just looks like LOTS of stuff to get together and DO!
ESSAYS 14
6/5/79
WHERE AM I NOW?
Confused, frustrated, verbally constipated, mentally awhirl! Wake this morning to have Dennis leave to work, and I start a quick session and then think that it'd be good to sit down and TYPE a session (it would clarify the Personality Recognition session, transcribe what comes up for me during it, help unblock the verbal constipation, and get me to the typewriter to DO something as everyone agrees I should DO), but then I perversely sit down to read long articles in New York Magazine which only serve to INCREASE the mental whirl. Then I shit and get a call from Don Cohen asking about indexing (and Elaine Claudio called at 9:15 to wake Dennis about the same thing), and I debate starting a list of people who call about indexing. But then LISTS AREN'T WORTH IT. I feel frustrated last night watching TV: Turn on "Royal Heritage" about "Victoria and Albert" and see from the teahouse that I'd seen it, yet don't really recognized the lingering look at their mausoleum from before: so I'd seen it, probably didn't record what I thought of the mausoleum (though there IS a chance, I suppose, that I'd watched PART of it and got drawn away from the ending for some reason or other, but what DIFFERENCE does it all make??), and then sat through Cavett talking to John Leonard (and was favorably impressed with his selflessness, charm, and wit and intelligence), and that led to OTHER thoughts about success, "making it," and talking about it after you've made it. Thoughts of becoming an "indexing power" float through my mind: the 32 people on the "want to index" list (and that's surely a list that MUST be maintained!---to which Al Rouslin was JUST added, and OF COURSE he wants to talk about my computer application, and he relieves me by saying that he's having many people read the chapters of his indexing book in the future, so he's not so far along with it as I may have feared) might BECOME indexers, and as now 5-6 people are kept busy, 20-30 might be kept busy in a couple of years, the computer application might grow, and I might find that a SUCCESS. But not without DOING! Phoned Winston yesterday morning and HE said that I should DO, processing the images that I'm stuck, and he says it with such sweet simplicity and sincerity that it actually MEANS something to me. And get teary-eyed when he DOES seem to care about me, that he DOES say that I seem to be making acceptable progress, and when I have the same conversation with Dennis, he of course reiterates that I'm being very hard on myself, and then proceeds to answer my unasked questions and tells me he's being self-disciplined, likes working on 2-3 indexes since it makes the boring ones less tedious, and DOES realize from the first that it's better to work freelance and enjoy the freedom and not hassle the difficulties of making the transition too much. Other things swirl through my mind: the Cousteau self-serving program on the "death" of the Mediterranean: showing rank seaweed just inside the Straits of Gibraltar contrasting with the dust-covered wreck just outside the effluent ducts of European industrial plants, talking to fishermen who say that species of fish have vanished, mentioning that fishing by lights at night has been outlawed by some countries, yet not BOTHERING to mention that of course fishing will CONTINUE because man has to EAT. Then showing the "waste" of fish (which were probably rotten though no one bothered to mention it) that were thrown to the gulls, but of course the gulls have to eat TOO, and even the FISH get so weighty because of the OTHER fish and plankton and algae and other living matter that they've eaten. But the swirl of laws and nature and progress and production and ingestion and excretion becomes turgid and reason-obscuring. Then I'm constantly berating myself for not catching up on my diary. But the diary's in different form now. but during this change is JUST the time that I should be KEEPING a diary. But what will the diary be USED for? For recovering the past in DETAIL---but I REMEMBER the detail that I want to remember and forget what I want to forget ANYWAY. How can I NOT remember the trip to the Caribbean, yet it seems it might be nice to RECORD what EXACT restaurants and prices and menus pleased and displeased us most for a RETURN possibility. I keep coming back to the thought: but it doesn't take that LONG to actually DO! Yet the psychic price of NOT doing it, day after day, is high also. Think of substituting the datebook listings, but they're not complete enough and don't say anything about my moods. And hearing that there's a 6-week mood shift doesn't help (an emotional, hormonal cycle in men only) my thinking that I can ALWAYS be on top by thinking hard enough about it. Left this and went to talk to Winston again, and he keeps talking about "letting it go, not hanging on, committing images to the fires, relaxing," and it seems SO apposite that I can hardly type fast enough. That's one of the things about the diary pages: though I KNOW they don't take much time, it's a problem when I want to HANG ON to what time I get up, what I did before noon, after noon, before dinner, after dinner, whether Dennis and I had sex. And none of that MATTERS!! The ACTIVITIES matter, but that's taken care of by memory. The MOODS matter, but those change so fast nowadays that it's hard even keeping up with them. It's interesting to keep a history of Actualism, but not in the terms in which I keep it: bodywork and lessons. Winston keeps talking about "almost getting to the point of feeling good, then drawing back," and I can feel that: wake in the morning and LOVE the silence, and then the huge dog starts barking and whining down the block, the doves start courting, and the woman upstairs starts tromping around. But the annoyance is all INSIDE ME, not intimately connected, irreversibly, with the sounds themselves. The fact of delaying buying the computer: first because of Mom's visit, then because of Amy's seeming reluctance to pass judgment on another date, is of course part of it. Whole hours can pass enjoyably, like the time at Doris Duke's gardens, and then I hassle the hours spent driving back through New Jersey. It's pleasant being with Susan and Dennis, but then I feel like it's a day wasted. And I still keep wanting to entertain myself (though I've decided to let the Soho Weekly News stop coming: I hear about ENOUGH to do that I don't do, I'm decreasingly interested in the punk-rock scene that they seem to cover so thoroughly, and I don't care about their style except for the male bodies, and I'd better spend the time in baths than looking at pages. Days with the car are nice, but I have to get money to support it, and not having worked during the month of May increases my feeling of guilt about wasting time. But, as I told SOMEONE, it at least gave me the time to think and build up a head of steam to GET something done. Dennis and I feeling increasingly separated is part of it: we're tired when we get to bed, then we feel we have to work in the morning so we're up and apart. I decided while shopping for groceries today that I should start keeping half-and-half in the apartment so he can at least feel free to have COFFEE here when he wants it. Susan invites me to Tai Chi and I refuse, Dennis invites me to Richard's monthly class and I figure there's nothing there for me, and the Scrabble games with Pope seem increasingly to satisfy him, and not me, though Simon was interesting enough last time with his beeping and blooping. But to get back to the CRUX: CAN I just drop the past---leave it go without wanting to hang onto it---see a similarity to my reluctance to drop THIS LIFE: I want to hang onto IT, which is SYMBOLIZED by my diary. But how can I live from moment to moment when I'm tied up in transcribing my life from day to day? Well, the answer to that is that I COULD, but at what COST? I don't CARE for the cost of nagging myself, feeling that I get THAT done and I can get to the rest of the things that I want to do. Lots of other authors keep journals, including Arthur Clarke, and THEY are hardly becoming best sellers. Yet I DO like what I do---though there's no reason I can't like whatever it is FOR THE TIME and then drop it in order to go on to something else! Everything seems connected: just as the fishermen-gulls-economies-progress-dying of the Mediterranean was connected through Cousteau's program. Seeing the Tony awards all going to "Sweeney Todd" which I'd just seen on Tuesday was interesting, but I couldn't remember enough of the play, or get away enough from Dennis's dislike of the play, to make any connection between what I SAW and what was winning all the prizes. Then the lists: WHAT GOOD did the lists of hours worked with various indexers do so far? I DID the work, the indexers continue or they don't, I make more or less money per hour working with them, and why don't I record THOSE hours in the job-money book? But the EARLY diary is a MUCH better record of what I do when I have NOTHING pushing me, and I have ENOUGH pages of being torn with diverse activities, so I can just LEAVE it go while I work on computer specifications, the indexing book, and keeping OTHER things in order. Something else seems consoling, too (though sadly there was no way of recording what I felt after the LSD sessions since I didn't write anything for a long time after them) (whatever HAPPENED to the strength which I gave to NO MORE RECORDS, NO MORE BOOKS, NO MORE LISTS???), about the thought that if I become MORE unhappy NOT keeping the diary, I can always go BACK to it. Take time now to identify that the whining dog is outside the construction site, that the fledgling sparrows are bigger than the mother clinging to the "rock face" of the parking lot, that most of the windows of the St. George Towers aren't new yet, to let out a fly that came in for the grass, to want to put the screen into the kitchen window but there's Mrs. Cray hanging out clothes for the second time today. And all this is trivial, meaning nothing, and I should let it go, let it go, let it go! So the only thing to do is NOT to catch up with the Actualism notes, ignored since class before last---but I can always keep up with the SHEET of SUMMARIZED lessons to keep track of what's done WHEN---and maybe come up with a new sheet when there's a new PROCESS series started. And the last in the notebook, interestingly taken down to the end of a page, is now May 25, almost two weeks ago, and I can forgo telling about Mom's trip---though something inside says NO, it was INTERESTING, TELL about it---but I have to stop SOMETIME, and it's too easy to catch up one more time, have another bowl of popcorn, neglect exercising one more day, rather than ACT in a positive manner. At least I have the Solar Heating index that I have to have done tomorrow, which I haven't started yet, to pry me away from this and into something OTHER than reading, or jerking off, or watching TV, or mooning about where I could go with the car, and it's probably true that I have a LARGE case of spring fever into the bargain, though I should have indulged LAST month of non-work, not into THIS month, too, and there's ALWAYS the joy of KNOWING that when I GET INTO work, it'll be pleasant enough on its OWN terms.
ESSAYS 19
6/16/79
LOOKING AT THINGS IN A NEW WAY
Note taken 6/7/79, sitting with time to kill on Central Park South and 7th Avenue, watching the horse-drawn carriages and passersby and traffic: "Looking new" involves MUCH more than I would have THOUGHT: I cruise (look for sex) from guys because I HAVE BEEN GAY. I don't even LOOK at women with the thought that they might be interesting to play with sexually. All my "directions" toward stimulation are centered about a man's face and chest and arms and crotch and legs, and nothing from a woman can compete so long as I "look from the old way" and really AUTOMATICALLY dismiss them from view. I look at people and cars and movement, but suddenly realize I'm looking at a STRIP of vision possible to me, and look UP to overarching TREES and towering BUILDINGS that would be MUCH more visible to someone from outer space looking at my 360Ε view with NEW eyes. True, these don't change as the traffic does, but we're trained so fully to "human" scale we RARELY look over 7 feet UP unless we're put into the position of a tourist and "free ourselves" from the old ways of looking at things and DO look at what there IS to look at, rather than what we've been ACCUSTOMED to looking at. Looking at books to read, places to go, people to talk with, even foreign countries to travel to are SO dependent on where we'd been BEFORE and what we'd seen before and what we HAD DECIDED we'd like to look at, rather than trying to look at something NOW from a new view and seeing IF we could like it as much as something we'd already decided we liked. Maybe this is why trekking in Nepal is so appealing: there's the chance that I would see NOTHING familiar (except blue sky above and green grass below) and then UNBLINKER my vision to look around more fully. But in FAMILIAR territories it's even MORE tempting to look at only what I'm used to: that's why the scale and proportion of my APARTMENT seemed to change momentarily (and probably why relatives seem AT FIRST to be older and different) when I've been away from it for a long time. Even in thinking what to DO with time, the old ways are so straitening, amusements so confined, appreciations so tutored that it's hard to BREAK AWAY and look at something TRULY new.
ESSAYS 20
6/16/79
A COMPUTER SAGA
June 15, 1979
Dear Mom and Rita---haven't done one of THOSE in a LONG time!
It's been such an interesting month I thought I'd let you know what some of it was like---also so that you don't think I don't know what I'm doing or can't make up my mind.
Rolf got out of the system on April 27th, giving me a summary of computer systems with Cromemco at the top, seemingly too expensive at about $12,000. I drew up computer specs during the next week and found out how much I didn't know about the system I wanted computerized. On May 2 I tried an independent consulting firm who said they could set me up for about $19,000, and talked to Marty Sokol who said he'd charge $25/hour for his time. Since I made just about that in indexing, and since I know indexing (and maybe even programming, but I've been away from that longer than HE has) better than he does, I figured from that point on that I'D be doing the programming. Since Rolf was no longer contributing half the price of the computer (for half the profits, of course), I found myself thinking about a computer that costs half the $12,000 Cromemco, but which wouldn't do some of the nice stuff. Then May 5th I went to my first ASI (American Society of Indexers) meeting in a couple years and found two things: (1) Everyone was TALKING about computers (though few were doing anything about them), and (2) NO one agreed on any ONE way of doing an index: each company had its own format and each thought it was the best. Even the "reference" and "text" books in the field (I put those in quotes because there IS no ONE acknowledged standard in the field, though everyone's looking forward to the next edition of the Chicago Manual of Style, which many companies follow and which I dislike because it's so OUTMODED. They like letter-by-letter alphabetizing (which puts Cashier between Cash Account and Cash Register, which I think is a PAIN) rather than word-by-word alphabetizing (which is what a COMPUTER would have to do), for example. But the new edition isn't due until the fall. (Just got a phone call from Eli, my "magic travel agent," for 2 weeks in Oslo, Copenhagen, and Stockholm, INCLUDING flight and transfers and hotels (and morning coffee) for $399! Only a TINY problem: it's from June 19-July 3 and we can't make it then).
Started talking to lots of companies about their formats, but no one of them seemed to know WHO they would accept as an authority except "the market" for, for example, medical books in general. So I went to the trouble of polling a number of people for "the best medical publishing companies" and took the time to get xeroxes of samples of 25 indexes, and was surprised to find that about 2/3 of them AGREED, but not with ME on a number of items. As an example, since I like word-by-word alpha order, I'd put Cash Account and Cash Register before Cashier, and I'd even made a MAIN entry of Cash and two SUBENTRIES of "account" and "register." Some large companies refuse to accept "single-adjective main entries," but I got many of the smaller companies that I work with to accept them. Then it turned out that the planning for the computer program was much simpler if I went along with the mainstream thinking and REFUSED to supply single-adjective main entries. Lots of conversations and plans and jabbering back and forth between me and the publishers I work for. In preparation for seeing a used computer that a friend of a friend was trying to sell, I went to 3 of the New York computer shops: two seemed small and amateurish; the third, Computer Mart of New York, seemed friendly, knowledgeable, and they were raving about a little thing called Sol---and the entire system would only cost about $7,000. On May 11 I saw the used computer, with Dennis and Sherryl (two of my indexers---and I neglected to say that on May 9, over lunch at Lutece, Dennis announced (no connection with the lunch, which turned into a celebration) that he'd quit his fulltime job and would devote fulltime to indexing), and the two of them caused the Ohio Scientific Computer and the owner SO much hassle and trouble that I figured THAT computer wasn't what I wanted. On the 12th I returned to the Computer Mart to inquire about pricing, found out more about the system, and left rather decided to buy it. Then I mentioned it to Amy (who's psychic, Rita, since you never met her), who said that she would look for a good day to purchase something big like a computer. She said that May 28 would be a perfect day. But that was Memorial Day, and Computer Mart is usually closed on Monday ANYWAY, so it would have to be Tuesday. Tuesday was a good day too. So I figured that I could make more plans for the advent of the computer and leave the time free when Mom was in town. Sol began to look LESS good when I figured that, if I charged a fairly nominal $10/hour for the machine (and less than that for people who were just learning: I thought that since the machine would DOUBLE their output, I could charge an average of 3/4 their regular hourly rate---but then some people started saying they'd RATHER work at home rather than coming here), even working TWO SHIFTS PER DAY of, say, 5 hours per shift from 9-2 and then from 2-7, that would bring in $100/day or $500/week or $2000/month, of which about half would go to purchasing the NEXT, larger, computer for about $12,000 at the end of a year. But then I'd probably have to do some of the programming over, and it might take a month or two for me to do the programming, and then not EVERY slot would be filled because $2000 from the computer would imply about $5000 in billing and there weren't THAT many indexes coming in. And I didn't like the thought of all those PEOPLE around all the time working in my apartment. Thought about what Rolf had said about getting an office and even a part-time clerk to handle deliveries and things like that, and wondered if I wasn't making a mistake---but I was going to buy the Sol and let things take care of themselves. The week before Mom arrived wasn't terribly productive: rather than finishing the flow charts for the program, I talked to prospective customers, read a lot of books I'd been wanting to get to, and generally paid myself back for the busy month of April.
On May 29 I went to the bank for a $2500 money order which would be the 1/3 down on the system, but Computer Mart was closed. Hm, so it's the day after a holiday on which they're USUALLY closed, so they gave their people a day off. Spent a nice day in town, then the next day Susan and Dennis and I had planned for Doris Duke's gardens in New Jersey, so we went, and then Amy said I should wait for another day. Got after myself for not working as much as I should have, but I wanted to get the computer, didn't feel like flow-charting until I could see how the memory was organized and what kind of operating system the computer had, so I played Scrabble and read more books and watched TV and enjoyed myself until June 6, when Amy said "nothing was going on," and in fact nothing DID go on: Computer Mart was still closed! Phoned them and their phones were disconnected. HM! Tried what used to be a branch in Long Island and it was closed, and then on June 11 phoned Processor Technology, the manufacturer of Sol, in California and THEIR phone was disconnected! Amy started congratulating herself for saving me $2500, Mom started congratulating herself for saving me $2500, and I began to feel that more happened to me if I just sat around and WAITED! Phoned Computer Mart of New Jersey this afternoon (oh, forgot a step: went to Rolf's on Wednesday and he handed me something that had just come in the mail: Cromemco's new multi-user system, on which I could get about 3 users for about $1200. When I told Rolf I'd want to expand to a new system with Sol, he said "Just buy a second computer." That seemed an expensive way to expand. Then it occurred to me that I could even do most of the PROGRAMMING if I could just get the manuals from the company FIRST, and not even HAVE to have purchased the machine first---maybe even use a Service Bureau to test the program on a like machine. Then I figured I'd now have the time to shop around for an OFFICE, so that MY place wouldn't have to be used for an office---so now the whole thing's WAY off into the FUTURE.
ESSAYS 22
6/16/79
WHERE AM I NOW?
Ten days since the last installment of this, the PRESSURE to retain facts for the diary is lessened, but I keep thinking I didn't record what I thought of the Rive Gauche (good), or Raoul's (poor) (though now I can go back MORE cleanly than I could have returned BEFORE), that I didn't say what I thought of the American Ballet Theater (mostly poor when the poor people were dancing, though Dowell had such unusual choreography done for him he usually appeared solemn and lacking in excitement when he danced his various Contredances and Desirs with Makarova), that I didn't record what happened with various body sessions, though I WILL record the dynamic lung Identity Freeing session with Alice (see ACTUALISM 16). So my "addiction" is lessening and I'm living more and more for the moment, even to lying down and berating myself for getting my eye infected (though it's not clear how), then getting up and exercising before I bathe before I put in the eye drops before I clear off my desk before I clear out my files before I start on the current indexes before I get back to the indexing book, during which I take as much entertainment as I can squeeze in, and I feel that I'm not doing much WORK but lots of STUFF, and in future I won't even be able to say WHAT I've done because I haven't recorded the day except for pages like this. How DID time slip by so that my desk was cluttered with all the clippings from the Sunday Times until this EVENING, just ready to get ANOTHER Times? Talking on the phone is also much fun, particularly with long-talkers like Amy and Pope who have no schedules to adhere to like me. But my fuzzy right eye gives me the right to think of vacuuming and filing so that I don't strain it, and it's more obviously fuzzy now that I'm looking at my typing than it was before. So I change sheets and wash dishes and cook foods and read the mail and do what I want, unrecorded, freer than before, living more in the moment, holding onto less and less of the past, looking dimly into the future with less and less daydreaming, though I still make up lists of 8 things that I have to handle on Sunday, then fix the car's tailpipe, then do more entertainment, see Muktananda tomorrow without ANYBODY for the four tickets, and see when I can see summer things in New York's fun city.
ESSAYS 23
6/27/79
NOTES FROM EFA MEETING OF 6/21
Charles Carmony was the chairman who didn't introduce himself, a bearded indexer who works for Rutgers University Press to whom I talked and sent a resume the following day. The board meets the first WEDNESDAY of every month, so there goes any possibility of my being on it, since Actualism is still there. He gave a brief history, saying that Cyrus Rogers brought EFA out of St. Luke's Church in the Village, now resigned. Benefits committee is looking into health insurance for EFA; Bias in Editing has sexism, racism, and ethnicity, which seems like a bore; membership was 110 last year, 250 now, with prospects for 500 next year. There'll be a new directory in September, with people organized according to specialty. Program committee is in charge of small group leaders and alternates, and I gave my name to the committee chairman for the indexing committee, saying that I wouldn't be able to make meetings held on Wednesdays. Told Ruth, the publicity chairperson, that ASI newsletter should be contacted---and I forgot to call her until NOW, leaving word with her at EFA to contact me!---and she said Charles wasn't a member because all they talked about was computers anymore. For the Rates Sheet there were 70 respondents to 1978 survey, with a total average annual income of $8,857, but for the 40% fulltime freelancers this went up to $13,400, for the 60% part-time it was only $5,722, and many of these might be moonlighters. Source of non-publishing income: 42% from family. Fulltime people had an AVERAGE of 9 years freelance and 10.5 years in-house; part-time an average of 6.7 years freelance and 8.3 years in-house, VERY old! For FULLTIME people, 7 paying categories (for only 28 people now!) WERE: Manuscript evaluation $20K/year; blended work $17K/year; writers 16.5K; rewriters-editors $14.5K; indexers $12.6K; copyeditors 12.2K and proofreaders 10.7K. I brought up that this might not reflect HOURLY rates, and EVERYONE said these should NOT be publicized or they'd NEVER use us again, putting quantity over quality. 122 responses to health questionnaire: 36 males, 86 females, 97 singles, 10 married, and 15 married with children. EFA income $2,214,000 per year! They give workshops, too, give and take, for freelancers---lots of cheese and wine.
ESSAYS 24
6/27/79
BABA MUKTANANDA AT CARNEGIE HALL
People filed in until 2:45, when someone familiar-looking came onstage and it was Marsha Mason with "her" story, then at 2:56 came on Paul Zweig, author of "Three Visits" and then he quoted the great "God dwells within you as you" before 3:03 when Baba came out, saying it was "Father's Day" and he was going to speak about "Love." "Without a father, no son. INDEPENDENT love depends on nothing, dependent love depends on form and beauty. Socrates: Love is yearning for the beauty of God. Ponder deeply: Without love, how can you enjoy sleep? In sleep, you renounce everything and everybody. He tells a (poor) Nasruddin story. At last, at 30 minutes, he stops interrupting her in the middle of her translation of his talk, which is VERY unsettling for his sense and feeling close to him. One loves OTHERS for one's inner self. When love is found, the mind stands still. Be happy; looking at people with joy. At 4:13 he started accepting questions: "How can I be of service: Make yourself happy, turn within, be happy, and THAT way you'll make others happy. There are no enemies, all can become friends. Act without expecting fruits from action. Maybe "few were chosen," but MANY MORE now would be chosen since there are many more people now. The world IS as you see it. Your own attitude produces joy or sadness; with love, improve your attitudes. He's almost finished at 4:35, saying "I'm an old person who's retired, I'm 71" and it's over at 4:40, he leaving quickly. I wasn't even MODERATELY impressed with him, as I was with Krishnamurti and with Werner Erhard, let alone TREMENDOUSLY impressed as with Carol Ann Schofield. But better to have found out in New York rather than to have gone all the way to South Fallsburg expecting some kind of miracle; though it's hard to say how much I may have been influenced by Bruce, who said he's sort of "Grown out of him" recently. And then I didn't get the touch on the forehead since there wasn't any darshan at all, which was too bad; I would have waited for it just out of curiosity, though I wasn't impressed by the touch of that Black Hat Tonkapa, either. Margaret Willard had just BEEN to an intensive and was in the audience, as it turned out, but I didn't recognize anyone.
ESSAYS 25
6/29/79
WHAT IS AND ISN'T PART OF "I"
How can ESP retain the E (EXTRA) if we don't know for SURE how many senses we DO have? If Amy's voice sees time as the whole worm"/"worm-whole" of each entity as COMPLETE from birth to death and can be CONFUSED about time, and Amy's voice COULD be some PART of Amy, why can't WE be said to see it all this way. Did I get another visitor in MY mind when I saw somewhat the same thing with LSD? Does LSD BRING a visitor or FREE a viewer from our OWN mind? Fortune telling and clairvoyance and PK powers might be OURS, merely hidden. Aren't there even BOOKS entitled "Boundaries of the I"? Isn't it connected with the Baba Muktananda type of mysticism which says "God lies within" to think that ALL knowledge and wisdom and time travel and memory and power is within EACH of us? If EACH is GOD and GOD IS ALL, then EACH IS ALL. Back to ELGIN AGAIN: EVERYTHING = LOVE = GOD = I = NOTHING. With est being in the forefront of saying if everything is ONE thing, there's nothing. If each of us HAS "complete records," then every one of us must have the SAME records, and it might not be TOO great a leap to say that the record READER is the same, too. Super strength? People have it. Reading the Akashic records? If Russell can do it, so can we all. Rising from the dead? If Christ can do it, so can we all, but did Christ DO it?? Being reborn depends on believing in reincarnation, and BEFORE when I ran in anti-reincarnation circles, there was no argument FOR it, and now there seems to be no argument AGAINST it. Read in these circles and EVERYTHING will seem to be various versions of the truth, which it probably is ANYWAY. So the cycles continue at a higher vibration, as Actualism would like us to think, and I get closer to Amy and a reading with her voice, and am thankful that SHE says she's frightened of the brow raising as I felt their changing subjects when I IMITATED a trance voice for Don and Ernie and Paul at Dennis's. And Amy feels that it's REAL and NOT her, since SHE didn't know the name "bunchberries" that she told someone to put on her teeth, SHE didn't know various things that her voice knew, and I feel privileged to be in on the "formation" of such a voice, though, with her, I can retain my skepticism and questioning and try to get MORE information.
ESSAYS 26
2/15/80
LES MOUCHES
The three sexy guys looked like neighborhood toughs trying to invade a private party, but ONE of them flashed a silver badge and I heard something about "fire inspection brigade." The doorkeeper at Les Mouches tried to tell them to come another day, whispering conspiratorially with them, but then he told the attendant at the admissions desk to phone upstairs to send down someone to show them around. When their skinny, earringed, leather-pants-wearing guide appeared, the flannel-shirted youngest of the trio whispered "Faggot territory!" to the badge-flashing ringleader. Though the desk attendant had made a telephone call and talking to "Captain" someone, I just couldn't believe they were fire inspectors.
Others arrived as I stood inside the lobby of the institutional ISCI building on Eleventh Avenue between 26th and 27th Streets, and it was hard to conclude what the final crowd would be like. I'd gotten a complimentary short-term membership in the mail, followed by a hot pink invitation slip that read "You are invited to celebrate Valentine's Day and join us for the Star Studded opening night party for "West Side Story" on Thursday, February 14th, 1980 at 10:30 p.m. Members free. Guests $5.00" Since I'd wanted to see the inside of this place ever since the apparently straight IBM salesman had driven us around in his Ferrari, talked about his other cars, and mentioned how he and his girl liked to eat in their black-tie restaurant. Membership, I'd thought, was something like $45/year, and despite their sexily-drawn invitation to membership which featured a shirtless muscular male torso of a spaced-out narcissist in the foreground, I didn't feel like I was THAT curious to see what it was like.
The yellow slip issued to me at the admissions desk---which I got in case they protested that my guest was a male, since most of the early entrants were elderly couples or at most trios with necessarily uneven gender distributions---said that 2 guests were admitted at $10, so my complimentary card entitled me to be a guest, not a member.
A family group of three assorted adults and three variegated children returned to the desk saying they had to eat outside somewhere (they were directed to the nearby Empire Diner on 22nd Street) since their garb didn't qualify for black tie. I wondered if my turtleneck and green velvet pants were sufficient entrée, but then blue-jeaned guys with closely trimmed beards began entering and I hoped there would be no problem unless some sort of appearance code were followed that I had no way of predicting.
The doorkeeper had also whispered that admission on Fridays was $10 and it was $15 on Saturday, and the black security guards grimaced and shook their heads and continued to direct people to the far-left door of the four, three of which were locked. The fire-inspection men seemed not to notice.
Dennis arrived about 10:40 and I beckoned him to the center of three elevators, where a uniformed black waited, and three people demanded that Dennis stop at the desk. I waved my yellow slip and assured them it was for 2 people, but only after they looked at it was I admitted upstairs. I had to sign an address card, as the two women did who entered with knee-length coats over what turned out to be costumes underneath. Since they had to be issued yellow slips I would assume they were guests?
We entered the black lobby to pay our $10 to a red-vested black at a desk, but he must have gone off the job early, since my adventurings later didn't encounter him. A crouching bronze-colored papier-mâché figure of some pinheaded creature with a male's muscles loomed beside a white Empire sphinx with an elegant woman's coiffure and a red ribbon about her neck. In the vestibule a huge vase of flowers that included one ragged Strelitzia and various budding twigs loomed behind a card rack proffering cards from the designer who did the work. Blocky aluminum-framed art hung about the walls, and a plastic-enclosed sheet of paper announced the artist and possibly the prices for the handiwork. Red glitter cushions were dispersed about built-in black benches lined above and below with blood-colored indirect lighting, and the ceilings were low but dark so that their details eluded me. Around another corner and there was the cavernous dance floor with various lighting equipment whirling and flashing above and around it. About six couples were dancing, half of whom were wearing red costumes in various states of undress that I assumed were Mouches-paid escorts to get the fun started. Down a wide black alleyway people filed to pay $1 for the checking of the two coats, though Dennis thought to keep his for a bit, and he offered one of his jacket pockets for my wallet and check placket since my pullover and pants offered not the slightest vestige of a pocket.
We stood at the margins of the dance floor, taking in the two facing mirrored walls, the dim lighting that made it look like the inside of an aircraft carrier with the airplanes buzzing around outside to the noisy but not overwhelming music. I remembered I'd forgotten my earplugs, but while I felt I NEEDED them at 12 West, I soon got used to the noise but not the torture of the continuous sound of the disco. Three-tiered black risers for seating, all carpeted in elegant clean black, sat below the mirrors, the disco balcony faced up, spotlights flanked the doorway, and mirrored columns formed what later turned into an "inner room" that took up about half the area of the dance floor. I noticed bar-like lighting through a doorway to the far left, and walked over to discover the free food and drink array: a fat blond in a black cocktail dress tried both coolers and said something about apple juice; I tried one and found it to be pineapple juice, then the other to agree with her that it seemed to be water, and followed her example by spilling what I didn't want into the baggie-lined trash can below the coolers. It would be a mess when they emptied it later, but I supposed they were used to that. The skimpy décor along the floor included green plastic kitty litter boxes that I thought might be filled with water for ashtrays but later turned into containers for used glasses. The ashtrays were the ceramic canisters in the form of cylinders just less than a foot in diameter and a foot high---no smuggling souvenir ashtrays from this place!
A pyramid of magnificent red and green apples and green pears took center stage, and we healthfully selected huge polished green apples to start our munching, settling down on the banquettes to watch the triple-framed slide show which included the façade of Dennis's favorite movie house: Variety Photoplays on lower Third Avenue. The majority of slides were time-lapse photos of sparklers being used to brighten the outlines of the Public Library lions, parked cars, curbs of slum streets, and sides of featureless walls at public places like Lincoln Center. Others were montages of series of shots of sparklers outlining reproductions of the Poseidon in the United Nations lobby, overarching hallways, running in neon puddles along stairways to various court and municipal buildings, and some imaginatively looped around the Lincoln Center reflecting pool, formed luminous pie wedges on sidewalks, and formed invisibly supported globes of light. Bridges were settings for effective streamers of light, loops of passage, and in one beautifully simple shot, double smoke rings of sparkler light progressing smoothly across the Randall's Island Bridge. The Cannon Shoe Factory lent its façade to window exhibits of surrealistic lighting. Naked women were shown holding shaded lamps that were reproduced into grids and perspectives of various colors. 42nd Street's marquees and Broadway's Fascination lights added to the glitter that changed each second across the three screens. I ate around the apple, which quickly browned at the flesh, then put the chunky core that was larger than most apples into a ceramic container, saying that I didn't need another apple for years. Dennis plunked watermelon seeds into the container, saying he hadn't had his quota for the year, and I enjoyed the sweetness of raisins with the salt of peanuts, fumbled for a handful of mixed stick pretzels and peanuts, and enjoyed the goldfish crackers and potato chips by the handful. Chocolate Oreo cookies were the most elaborate snack aside from the four-inch fruits.
When we tired of the slides, remarking that the paintings didn't change much though we kept expecting them to, we continued around the circle to the bar, impressed by the naked bulk of the muscle builder's chest behind the bar and wondered if his more normal companion didn't suffer from inferiority. As everywhere, black banquettes surrounded the walls, though there tables accommodated the drinks, which we didn't have so I sadly don't even know how much they charged. I couldn't even tell if there were waiter service. We completed the circle back to the dance floor by passing a sculpture noted mainly for chiseled abdominals and a tiny uncircumcised cock. When I pointed the cock out to Dennis he remarked, "Yeah, but they circumcised the head, referring to the shapeless morsel of flesh that indeed looked like the stump of a bitten-off lollipop. Another placard gave the artist's name, and we returned to the dance floor to watch the pudgy fellow in red gym shorts and sneakers boogie-ing past, dancing with a skinny leather-clad fortyish hood in heart-rimmed dark glasses that Dennis said gave him the creeps---the guy, not the glasses. The two women I watched pay to enter took off their zebra-striped coats to reveal flesh-colored tights with a red plush Valentine heart surrounded in vaguely pubic black right on her crotch, and the other wore a pink-red halter-top bathing suit above red spike heels.
Lots of men in black tails formed somber foils for women in various states of glitter and undress---one woman's tits were so tiny they were presented on a tiny corset-shelf with tiny lace doilies over them, and she had to keep stuffing herself back under her doily as her dance partners swung her out and back with a calculated downward motion of the arm as he turned her from side to side.
I had no temptation to dance, though Dennis later said he felt apart from the crowd, and when he wanted to leave after an hour I said I was looking at it as I'd look at Paris or Venice: as a tourist at something I actually WASN'T a part of, just something to occupy my sight for a few hours before going on to something else. A few others observed with us, but most participated in the sweaty dance.
Most were poor: lumpish bodies hopped and jumped and twirled about, executing no set pattern of steps in no discernible rhythm. At one point huge bass amplifiers were turned on that made the entire floor thump in time, like Sensurround, and the dancers would squeal and dance faster and somewhat more in time.
The "fire inspection" trio had been given drinks---free drinks were in opaque plastic glasses, bought drinks were clear glass. They didn't seem to be looking for violations, only for women who would dance with them. The simple-faced handsomeness of the youngest stereotyped him as a boy just in from the suburbs looking for a wild night. More people joined the dancing, white-tied men from the restaurant seemed to come and go, and the light show got more frenzied.
A "Close Encounters" array of lighting equipment spun constantly from a central fixture, spraying out looping spotlights as they twirled and bobbed up and down, green and yellow headlight arrays that rotated, strobe lights that flashed on and off, stationary lights that moved only with the fixture, and reflecting surfaces lined the ceiling recess so that each effect was multiplied. Shadows flicked in movement from the bodies but were multiplied and sliced and jittered as the lighting blinked on and off. Dennis said, "You have to be high on something, even if only yourself, to enjoy the show." I felt high on myself and observation.
Others in red costume seemed to know each other, companionably placing drinks beside each other on the risers as they danced and rested: cowboy in leather chaps and boots and vest over hairy chest, tart with a slit to her waist, tough with zippered openings at random on his black jacket showing flesh, dresses with enormous slits showing most of the back, most of the women with stiletto heels on which they dance with sureness.
Into the center of the dancers whirled a Valentine showgirl, feathers flying from headdress, heart-shaped body twisting, white sequin cape lying. A burst of confetti blurred her outlines and she began slipping on the smooth floor as she spun, and I noted that her heels weren't quite as pointed as most of the others. Her cape went flying, her headdress fell off, her silver-white curls caught the lights, her chest seemed curiously flat, she whipped off her wig to show a shaved head, and I asked Dennis, "Why would they assume that only a MAN would shave his head bald?"
Dennis still wanted to leave; he was bored. "Do you think that's the last show piece of the evening? I want to see how it ends." It was only 12:15, people were still entering. He grumbled and waited.
I was thankful the music didn't increase in loudness, only flamed in rhythms. What seemed to be a drunk in a tuxedo stumbled past, crewcut blond hair framing a pretty-boy face. With a whirl of feet, hands flying about, he executed a choreographed spin and stumbled accurately through the crowd. Either a paid entertainer or a guest with his own thing going.
Huge rotating chrome-covered triangular prisms effected movement in parts of the ceiling. Spotlights were turned on and I moved so that mirrored column prevented them from blinding me, though I'd get reflections from reflections out of the corners of my eyes. We moved back into the refreshment room, seemed to see new slides, found more people in the bar, walked down a red-spotlit corridor to find the men's room. Dennis had enough about 1, and I slipped my wallet into the back of my pants, hoping that 74 was my coat ticket.
I continued to snack: the beautiful fruit was replaced with supermarket fruit, oranges and apples and pears not deli-elegant. Two or three of the original dozen straw panniers of munchies were gone, but the pretzels were still good. Roller skaters appeared, not so skillful that they were steady on their feet at all times, though I didn't notice any collisions. Dancers on the top rank of the tiers were spotlit so that varicolored shadows appeared on opposite walls.
While Dennis was still there the opposite wall, behind the mirrors, erupted into cascades of orange and blue-green color, looking like intricate arrays of LEDs in tic-tac-toe patterns were moving inward and outward, and I marveled at the obvious expense of the array of lighting. He also saw the black window blinds lower to form an inner room within the mirror pillars, though of a transparent glittery material that caught the lighting and reflected back from all directions. Differences of lighting inside and out changed it from a sparkly jewel box to a hidden recess for groping. But there was no overt sexuality, few crotches. Men danced with men, women with women, and lines formed for what used to be the Madison and now seemed to be a vertical leap-frogging motion executed with dancehall steps of choreographed quickness and accuracy. No more confetti explosions made the dance floor slippery.
Guests from the shows appeared, though no one seemed to know who was who except in their appointed groups. And groups there were: the lowest who searched constantly, the middle who had fun, the upper who strained to make it clear they WERE the upper.
The lowest were old men graduated from Roseland who pushed their youthfulness by dancing harder and flailing wider and stretching their legs wider than their children; silver-haired grandmothers in black glitter who jiggled pathetically on varicosed legs; photographers who snapped picture of whoever they could; raunchy men who propositioned every passing woman to dance. A Chinese woman gave me her bag to hold as she danced with an old white man, and when she asked for it back she caressed my knees to let me know she was available.
