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Mish_Mosh

 

NOTEBOOK 415

7/5/81
WHERE AM I NOW?

I'm certainly aware that I'm typing fewer and fewer pages: none for January or February or June at ALL in here! Had THOUGHT to keep SOMEWHAT abreast of where I am! But then there was the huge (10,000 lines ISN'T that HUGE) Prokaryotes index for $7800 + $6250 = $14,050 for me and Allegra (and others) and now's my TRIP---I'll be in the air for Britain in less than 22 hours. Things seem to be changing THROUGH Actualism, though I don't know if I've actually RECORDED (as I didn't on ACTUALISM 167) that there have been MARVELOUS EXPANDED VISTAS of time in which the CURRENT LOCAL DETAILS don't matter so much, ever since getting the Atomic and Subatomic levels. I feel positively TRANQUIL next to someone like Bruce and Susan Lieber, and even next to Dennis. But then THIS week (particularly last night, between going to bed at 3 am and waking at 6:30 and lying and tossing until about 9:30) I got back into the old habits of not thinking abut the JOYS of the TRIP but of what could go wrong and the possible TERRORS of the initial PLANE FLIGHT. Crystal helps lots with talk of the Golden Javelins, and of course it's all INNER, anyway, so whatever SHE can tell me that'll help me is GREAT. It was ALSO nice having the TIME to do it NICELY: could have finished the index a WEEK early, so that when Allegra CRAPPED on everything on the Wednesday before the Monday due-date, I could handle it (correction: I could get Marge to handle it). It went VERY well, both getting in by noon. Then I had my lists of things to do before the trip, and they all got down to Monday, and I even have time for pages like this. Can think of almost INFINITE things to take along on this FOURTH LONGEST trip (RTW (1) 130 days; USA (2) 99 days; Eur/Mor (3) 85 days; this (4) 60 days EXACTLY): tiny screwdriver/scotch tape/knife with bottle opener/sewing kit with three threads, 3 buttons, scissors, razor blades/Band-Aids/LOTS of pills (Comtrex, Meprobamate, gas, cough, Ampicillin, aspirin, mosquito-bite (which I serendipitously find while filling drawers for Bunny Greco, serendipitously found while getting tinctures for Hansjorg and Christel recommended by Amy at Perelandra where I saw her ad for an apartment) / suntan lotion/etc.etc.etc. Rather a pain that Great Britain folders closed at 3:30 when I got there at 4:25, but we're planning on
"Superman" and folders IN tomorrow's last packing and banking and HOPEFULLY pill-getting and checking-account squaring. If not, then pill BUYING and check-SENDING anyway. Bed littered with stuff to be packed, though the paper-pile has been reduced considerably. Rehearsing angry arguments with Russians who want to take my Atlas-excised maps. BUT I have to remember that ANGER will get nowhere, but LOVE will work better. Hope I can remember it. Hope 18 rolls of film is enough. Writing the letter to Dennis's folks tonight it's NICE to know that I really don't know HOW the trip will end up: relaxed and rushed through all the North Pacific islands or exhausted and just skipping to Manila and Guam and Hawaii and San Diego WITHOUT Yap and Koror and Ponape (maybe Saipan??). But I ALWAYS find out more about a place when I'm THERE that I couldn't have ANTICIPATED. And I might want to go BACK, too! So it's 9:40, pity Dennis isn't home (I called him, he called me, I called him, I finally left a note for him, he hasn't called yet) (even more a pity that we seem UNINTERESTED in having sex; I'm even losing patience with him when he doesn't WANT to get something like Yahtzee (not the greatest game in the world anyway), but it leaves me open to move on to something BETTER---as John was better than Joe Easter, Dennis better than John, so X will be better than Dennis! Crystal seemed happy with the trip, will be getting into II's on my return in September (so she can do 10 (sep/oct/nov/dec/jan/feb/mar/apr/may/jun) on me before she leaves in July, and THEN there'll be the Autonomic Nervous System, and then something after THAT, no doubt. So there it all is, and here I am, and let's get on to something ELSE!

NOTEBOOK 417

9/16/81
BRUCE LIEBER'S PROBLEMS

He was fired from his job before I left, had been getting increasingly depressed and "closed down," and it had gotten to catastrophic stages by the time I returned from the trip: he'd moved out of his apartment back in with his parents because he wasn't feeding or taking care of himself or his apartment. He'd begun not sleeping, describing sleepless nights "writhing in agony and fear and tension," so that he'd phone Crystal, who was finally losing patience with him and saying that he might have to drop out of Actualism, or Richard, who seemed to be losing patience when he told him he'd be in this phase of elimination and processing for the next three to five weeks (so don't bother me before the end of that, seemed to be the message I got from it), and even his mother, who was "furious" with him when he woke her one night for comforting. He said he kept spacing out on subways, which made him fearful about RIDING on the subways for the danger of getting lost or going completely off the beam somewhere. He didn't want to visit because he would feel like vomiting. Finally he asked, on Saturday night, if there was anything I could have him DO so that he could begin structuring him and his time, and I suggested he could help me look for an indexing computer. He actually seemed to get interested in that, saying it'd help him find out if he could hold down a job by concentrating for any length of time, though I didn't care for it when he asked if he might be PAID for his work for me. So he phoned again Monday evening and asked if he couldn't start on Tuesday, so I said he should phone me after 9:30 and come over about 11:30. So he phoned at 9:30 and came over about 12, when I was eating, and he had some juice with me and talked with me while I did the dishes, but then rather than my doing the floor he demanded eye contact. So into the living room we went and I started "probing." HE led to most of the questions Dennis thought to ask: "What are you GETTING out of this?" and he didn't want to be led into saying he got ATTENTION, even though I asked him point-blank "What would you talk about if you DIDN'T talk about what was wrong with you?" He'd pretty well decided it was guilt, that he was trying to punish himself, that he hated himself, and he at last got to the point he REALIZED that he had to take responsibility for closing down ON HIMSELF, so that it was in like manner HIS RESPONSIBILITY FOR OPENING BACK UP AGAIN. He kept looking into the FAR future and I kept telling him to be concerned "about the next few hours, maybe tomorrow, and possibly a LITTLE bit of the next day, but it's nonsense to worry about what's going to happen over the next few years or for the rest of your life." He just DIDN'T want menial work of ANY kind, not even rising to the bait about scrubbing floors by asking whether it was TOO GOOD for him or NOT BAD ENOUGH for him---if he wants punishment, he got himself INTO this fix, so maybe washing floors IS not awful enough for him. I kept saying that BEING a waiter for a week would do FAR more good FAR more quickly than THINKING about being a waiter for a month or so. Then I hit on the idea that MOST of his symptoms (which he began calling "schizophrenia" from some data he was reading about orthomolecular medicine in a Rodale book) were probably due to lack of SLEEP, urging him to get a library book about what happens to the body when it isn't permitted to sleep. This afternoon, on the phone with him, I got him to thinking that, rather than being a failure, he's been a GREAT success in WHAT HE WANTED TO DO: GET AWAY FROM EVERYTHING and everybody---that's JUST what he did, so he HAS the power to do what he wants, now he has to direct the power in the POSITIVE way and build up MORE inches above the muck that he'd started building yesterday when he went through some of the computer stuff, said most of it could be thrown away, and seemed to get interested in it, then went to the Kenton movies (ignoring, I presume, the parallels between HIS sapheadedness and Keaton's "Saphead"), and he even said that he was sociable after the Tai Chi session, saying that I was the right person at the right time as far as turning him around was concerned. I said he should start thinking about what some of the positive steps might be: find some goodies for himself, don't let himself SINK into the spaced-out places where he doesn't know where he is or what he's going to do next. I sort of got him to agree that thinking of orthomolecular medicine, psychiatry, or even a hospital as becoming MORE passive, letting OTHER people do it, where the crux was that he had to become ACTIVE, DOING for himself, rather than thinking that OTHERS could MAKE him get well. I even talked about suicide, but he seemed pretty clear that Crystal insisted that suicide would be the worst thing: on the DOWNSLIDE he'd slip even FARTHER down in the next incarnation and have even MORE to deal with. He plays Crystal's advice off on Richard's advice, having heard them say they're only human and can make mistakes too, yet he hangs onto Richard's "Three weeks without thinking of work," as if it's the gospel truth. I suggested it would be good to see people, think of how he could ease his getting back into his apartment (he admits that life at his folks' house isn't the greatest: his father's very withdrawn and sits in front of TV most of the time without nothing to say---but then he's 70, so why should he be required to solve his son's problem, says Bruce) and into a job, and what EASY steps he could take, like coming back here to work more on the computer application, going to the library, seeing Margaret Meschio, and taking POSITIVE points of view rather than his consistent NEGATIVE point of view. He keeps saying that things "are getting better BUT," and then piles on more negatives than is good for him. I say he should stick to the positive, not resulting in HIDING the negative, but just building it up a bit more and making the positive stronger. He thanks me a few times, says that even though I'm rough with him he can sense the caring I have for him, and we can even begin to joke with what I call Dennis and my "Psychology joke," I have so little patience with anything wrong that if someone came to me with a problem I'd just tell them to go away and fix it up! He says my energy is extraordinary, he even said he wanted to come stay with me, but I said that I had so much to do after the trip that I was feeling THAT pressure, hoping he'd be better before he'd think of asking again. He's forbidden the healing group's company, they just feed off their illnesses. I guess he IS in serious trouble, but I can't see that he DOESN'T have the power to pull himself OFF it, if he only figured out what he really WANTED.

NOTEBOOK 420

9/16/81
WHERE AM I NOW?

Still not finished coming back from the trip (correspondence pile large, apartment filthy, black hair dye still remaining, movies to catch up with, various doorways and small things to clean up, then the LARGE task of typing the trip notes, sorting out the slides, and doing the two smaller indexes I have from Raven and McGraw-Hill before starting on the biggies from ACC and Garland. Already talked to Michael about going to Italy December 9-January 6, so THAT feels like the next trip, though $800 for APEX fare sounds very HIGH to Milan. Lying in bed one morning thoughts of WRITING came back, and I looked back on the successful pages of dialogue I'd written for the play, of the many more ideas I got for "Throwback" while watching a spectacular "Tannhauser" on TV on Sunday, and I could get into hassles about THAT again. Then there's all the STAMPS to be put away, lists to be brought up to date, and notes to take, though they don't seem nearly as important now. Souvenirs don't have any room on the shelves, so throwing away more books seems appealing, though I have no idea where to start. But that'll all be over soon enough and I'll be having people looking at the slides and planning for the trip to Italy, though I have to find out from Crystal when they leave for Christmas this year. Carol Ann's coming seems to have activated me, but I look forward to being astounded as I was the LAST time she was here. Mom seems to be still sick, but eventually she'll get the operation and be well until the next illness hits. I'm depressed about Heidelberg since every time I heard the German tongue on the trip I was impressed by how much I HATED THE SOUND OF IT. What a pity Springer-Verlag doesn't have a branch---THEY DO HAVE A BRANCH IN PARIS!---though the MAIN branches are in Berlin, Heidelberg, and New York, they ARE in Munich, London, New Delhi, Paris, Rio (!), Sydney (!), and Tokyo (!). Maybe I should TALK to someone about working for them---maybe starting OUT in Heidelberg but then MOVING IN TURN to Paris, Rio, Sydney, and Tokyo---talk about stuff of fantasies!! Now that I've hit THAT, I can hardly think of anything else, so it's a good thing that I'm down to the bottom of the page and ready to watch TV!

NOTEBOOK 421

9/29/81
"TARZAN" VERSUS THE CRITICS

The movie's pretty awful, but having READ the reviews, I'm amused to find that some of them are just plain WRONG: David Denby in New York Magazine ends his review with "Trying to climb on top of Bo in the end titles sequence, he's pulled off the nude and willing lady by a frisky orangutan, who then climbs onto her himself." Well, in MY end-titles sequence (Arnie DID say that four minutes were cut from the film to soften the sexuality) she was only nude from the WAIST UP, and the final freeze-frame was of the orang pulling Tarzan OFF, but without any credits or screen-motion LEFT to climb on himself. Both mention the slow-motion fight with the boa constrictor disparagingly: Denby: "the scene has all the overpowering excitement of a pair of overalls turning around in a Maytag," and Vincent Canby in the New York Times: "the quite amazingly silly encounter of Jane and Tarzan with the rubber tube that's supposed to be a snake." From MY point of view, in the close-ups of Bo with the same snake, the skin is SO convincing that I am positive it was a real snake, and during the water-thrashing scene (which I saw twice) there were times when I'm SURE the head of the snake moved about in the camera range, so I think the reason they shot it in slow-motion was to ensure the audience saw that it WAS a real snake they were using, though it certainly wasn't moving very fast, as a snake that large would hardly be prone to. But the "fausse naiveté" and "Little Bo Peep" comments by Canby are unfortunately true, there's just TOO MUCH of Jane, and since one always regards Miles O'Keeffe's TITS rather than his FACE (quite a bit smaller than either) I'm not even quite sure what he LOOKS like, though when he's smiling at the end he appears somewhat more human than he does when he's dour at the start. It's also true, sadly, that Richard Harris's performance is just plain awful, and there's NOTHING characteristic of EITHER the Seychelles (though the beach is admittedly lovely) or Sri Lanka, though it LOOKED as if some of the cliffs may have been photographed at Sigiriya, to make it worth seeing as a TRAVELOGUE, though the tree for the campfire was a real find---but how many DISEASES did they get from being in all that dirty WATER in these germ-infested places? Haven't they heard about Hepburn's eye disease from falling into the much more civilized waters of VENICE?

NOTEBOOK 422

10/3/81
TALK WITH SUSAN

She comes over for a body session at 7:30 and we end up talking until 11, when we break for her to see my slides. She starts by saying how DULL Bruce seems since he's started taking the Stelazine on Tuesday, as if there's no more energy or control left to him; he just keeps nodding out. He's got an appointment to see Dr. Schmertz (pain!) Saturday at 3 pm, and will return to the drug-doctor for his weekly appointment on Tuesday. She doesn't want to be taken over by him completely, but she loves him and wants to help him, thinking it might be good if he takes the est training again, which she'd asked Actualism about once before, and Richard gave some enigmatic answer about "three obvious reasons" why he shouldn't do it, and all she could come up with was the heavy field factors there. I said she should try AGAIN, now that they've "washed their hands of him." And now her MOTHER is breaking under the strain, and she proceeds to fill me in on the family history of hospitalization and depression: her grandmother, Kate's mother, worked until late in life, but after an accident had to move in with them and when she stopped working settled into a dreadful depression that lasted until her death. Then Kate's sister Sylvia went in and out of mental hospitals for schizophrenia (I remarked about Bruce's eagerness to embrace a diagnosis of schizophrenia after reading a Rodale book about it), and is now living alone and sometimes very fat and sometimes very thin, but nevertheless managing to survive. And then Susan told me her OWN story: how she got more and more depressed, couldn't sleep, started drinking up to a fifth of liquor every day and not even getting HIGH enough to sleep, finally getting it into her mind that it was either Janov Primal Therapy or suicide, so she asked her folks for $6000: her mother said "No" (she said her mother feels guilty because she couldn't do enough to help her mother and her sister out of THEIR depressions---and didn't do much good for SUSAN, either, so now she's panicking when it looks like Bruce is going in the same direction), but "My Dad looked at me and said 'Take it,'" so HE saw she had to have it. But when she flew the next day to San Francisco and took a bus to Daly City and walked across two parking lots and a dump to get to the Janov center, she burst into tears through the entire interview and said she couldn't stand to be here either, so the interviewer rather coldly said "We'll let you know by mail." She knew THAT was the end, went to about 15 bars to get very drunk, ended up on a cross-country bus so that she could think, ended up next to a black who bought her a bottle at every stop and finally offered her some barbiturates which she took, fell asleep under, and woke with her clothes disheveled and lots of her money gone. So she got off the bus and called Schmertz from Nebraska, phoning again and again as she made plane connections on the way back, and taxied from the airport to his office, where she AGAIN cried through the whole thing, getting out no better than she went in, and on the street, at the BOTTOM of her despair, she snapped out of it completely and said "How BEAUTIFUL the buildings are" and immediately noticed that she was hungry, something she hadn't felt for a month, so she ordered a steak in a restaurant, went back to her apartment, and got a call from Sonny who said "I guess you don't need me anymore." She detoured into the tale of Sonny: a pimp and hustler from the neighborhood whom she encountered and they'd have sex once a month or so, and she discovered he'd show up when she was at her WORST and pull her out of it, but she didn't want to have anything to do with him on a permanent basis even though he vowed to go straight for her. Then finally they had a showdown, she said she didn't want to marry him, he went off to fuck someone's wife, and that someone returned and shot him dead. I didn't bother to ask her if she felt guilt about THAT. She said "Brucie's really thinking about suicide," and I said that everyone could ALWAYS feel guilty about that for "what they hadn't done," including devoting the rest of their life to be with them every second so they COULDN'T commit suicide, which was obviously impossible. I described the relationship between my mother and me on that, distant but caring, and reviewed my relationship with Dr. Hammer so that she might steer Bruce back to him, since he seems to have made no move in his direction since I suggested it, as he hadn't made a move to look into what deprivation of REM sleep will do to the body and mind, NOR did he try a simple sleeping pill, though she said when he was sleeping over at his place that his FIELD was so sticky that SHE couldn't sleep, so she's not amazed that HE can't sleep. So that "miracle" on the street turned her around, and she'd still been wanting to thank Schmertz for her recovery, and now maybe Bruce's illness would give her the opportunity. She talked of the time she'd been thinking of dropping out of Actualism, when she kept asking for a meeting and Stan would tell her to blaze up and process, and finally Crystal called and Susan sarcastically said it was a bit late. But she saw her and Crystal gave the standard talk about the "rules being changed" a year ago Thanksgiving, so that "the dark-force channels would be weeded out," so that now she thinks Bruce just might be in the process of being weeded out, though the MOTHER is thinking of dropping out too, though Susan seems back into it. She started the evening talking about ROGER and the dark forces she felt coming through HIM, particularly when he'd go into his "moonie trance" and someone else would speak through him. Actualism had given her mechanisms (going up in frequency and saying "THIS is what you'll have to contend with, even though some of my unenlightened identities might be sucked in by you") to fight that influence, and she spoke of the evening that Pat Mandino and Dorothy Kent came over to help the both of them when it was clear their session had been taken over by paranoid voices saying "Play it close to your chest; you can't trust anyone." She also mentioned, about that time, that Arthur did the most remarkable hand session on her back, getting her to realize that one part of her back had "They're gonna do it to you," right next to "Watch out, watch out!" connected with it. She talked of Crystal's freeing her left arm (it was Roger's RIGHT arm that had had polio, but she said she was aware of the correspondences) with lightworker awareness which had been COMPLETELY cut off from the light, and now it feels better. I just sat and listened, aware that she was pleased to be talking this all out with someone, and remembering how at one point I wanted more excitement in my life, and I could hardly deny THIS was more incredible than any soap opera I could see, and it was being told for MY benefit ALONE. Susan also talked about her crazy relationship with Bill Solomon (who's been working with great DP jobs and sleeping out of his CAR, company furnished, and washing up in exclusive gyms that he belonged to), their best time coming when he was seeing HER on the side before marrying his second wife (first marriage of 9 years produced his two children, and he still sometimes hangs around that woman) back in May, though he doesn't like it because she blackmailed him into faithfulness by seeing other MEN. In the course of the conversation she exclaimed, "Why am I always the one who's raped?" She kept tugging on her hair, and I said it reminded me of Bruce, and she said they were VERY similar, though her motions were meant to be CURLING her hair, while he TUGGED on HIS. She sort of stopped later in the conversation. I found that she was very "up" during her talk with me, even when she was wiping her eyes with the emotions brought up by her last conversation with Schmertz and her "conversion" on the street in Brooklyn. SHE got Bruce the job in the factory in Manhattan where he's working, thinking it might be good for his orientation to be AWAY from the Island, which is now negatively loaded for him, and Schmertz is in Manhattan, too. Kate had an X-out about Bruce this evening, so it was a good thing Bruce was going to HIS place, rather than back to Elmont. Her birthday came up strongly, too, saying that the family ALWAYS tried to make a party out of it, but it always ended up strained and "trying," so this time she treated herself to a movie "Moscow Doesn't Believe in Tears," which she'd tried to get me to see with her, but I was glad she didn't because she said after she refused to go to the party she had a GOOD day, and returned ON her birthday (Monday) to find a cat-cartoon-cup gift from Bruce that shows he THOUGHT about her, $600 from her parents to buy a dynamite new cowgirl costume for fashion-wearing, and even interesting things from Roger, who still sticks around, though he's now disconnected from Moonies and into Actualism. I listened and hoped I could do VAGUE justice to the evening in these notes.

NOTEBOOK 426

10/4/81
WILLIE STARK

This Carlisle Floyd opera, based loosely on "All the King's Men" (based loosely on the life of Huey Long?), impressed me with its thoughtfulness and staging. The judge wasn't totally white (loving father, good rich man) or totally black (accepting bribes, forbidding his son to support Stark), Willie wasn't totally good (everything to all men) or totally bad (using everyone for his own ends), and the motivations seemed real (the secretary that loved Stark, the jilted lover killing Stark at the end). But as I sat watching the opera, my life came into question: like Willie Start, I didn't seem to devote time to anything PERSONAL, only business and things that DROVE me. Life was handling one emergency after another, playing a game of chess with activities without ENJOYING those activities AS a game, and then sitting with head in hands wondering where time, love, and affection had gone---or when there would have been a chance for it. After that program came a program on May Sarton, gay author and poet, lover of many, writer of many books, now living in countrysides and planting flowers and enjoying the change of seasons, the tides of the ocean and of life, and having the luxury to relax, work when wanted, not when driven; watch the sky and enjoy the weather and LIFE ITSELF. I wanted to drive my car somewhere, spend more time on my writing, and perversely to turn off the television set to do some of the things that only WATCHING the television set would have put me in mind of. Thought of yesterday: had planned to start on an index, but saw that this was the last weekend of a display of Blake's art at the Morgan and called Susan to see it, though I didn't meet her until 2 and didn't leave her until 11:30, but the day which included eating in a nice new restaurant, wandering a new section of town, showing them my slides, seemed a WASTE from what I WANTED to do; record the trip journal, do the index, keep up with lightwork. Again the pressures of TIME: if I DO return to gymwork, lightwork, indexwork, tripwork, there won't be any time left for anything ELSE. Have to stop seeing so many movies and TV shows, I think. Then wonder where to put THIS page, and the page of thoughts that would COME

NOTEBOOK 427

1/4/81
THOUGHTS ON ORGANIZING LIFE

AFTER the opera, and knew that I couldn't put "Willie Stark" in the entertainment section, because it was so intimately connected with THESE thoughts, meant for the notebook. I've spent less time on the DETAILS of writing, yet that still hasn't freed enough time for me. TRIPS certainly take a long time: planning for them, doing them, catching up from them, caring for the journals and slides resulting from them---though trips are a part of the purpose of my life. Getting a body session this afternoon from Arthur, and that's what the bell rings for NOW! Tell HIM that I don't think I use the city well enough, and he's flabbergasted, saying that whenever he thinks of someone who DOES use the city in all its aspects, he thinks of me, and I get philosophically involved with the idea that "the more you have the more you want," and it's part of my DEVELOPMENT that I think I'll have to work harder and faster to more or less stay in the same place of advancement. He gives a good combo, and that sort of defuses anything that I'd thought to say on here, except that it's now 5:30, I'm preparing to eat, thinking of watching TV from 8-10, and STILL haven't started on the index, though I figure I'll get to it as soon as I take this page out of the typewriter. Still feel the feeling of "everything's OK" that I felt after the first II, which was a good session, and the second one is coming up in a few weeks, which Susan said was very activating. Arthur talks about all KINDS of things, saying that when he was with Bruce twice a week or more, Bruce would be VERY seductive toward him, feeling his ass, coming to lie next to him in bed, wanting to be hugged and kissed by him, EVEN THOUGH there was always lots of repressed anger in what Bruce would be doing: when Arthur would ask "Don't you feel like crying now?" Bruce would answer with vehemence, "Tears don't seem to be called for now." I make a simplistic connection that Bruce might be so depressed because he's finally had to FACE his "gay identities," and when I mention to Arthur that Bruce told me about them, he says that Bruce never discussed them with him, but that he seemed to be waiting for Arthur to make the wrong move and then HURT him, either

NOTEBOOK 428

10/4/81
ARTHUR ON SEXUALITY

before or during or after any sex act which may take place. He said he's found that Bruce WOULD come to his place in OTHER bodies, either the human or the emotional (since they were both male) and have sex at night, and sometimes Arthur would acquiesce, and sometimes say "Not now, Bruce." I asked if he even came to MY place, and he said that Winston had put a ban on that long ago, saying that he shouldn't visit Actualism students, but that he could visit people he'd been to bed with before, since it was agreed on. He mentioned (for the second time?) that Alice once told him, "It's OK to come to teachers in the night, but be sure to UNIFY with them and ask their PERMISSION," and he said he remembered a few evenings before that he'd been FUCKING Alice in another body. I was flabbergasted, and then he told me of the "experience" he had of being in a bodyroom with Linda and Winston, and Winston smiling as he closed the door and Linda climbing onto the body table, directing him to brush down her leg to gain contact, and then arched her pelvis up so that he could look and see what she had and what she did with it and how she was happy with her female genitalia. He also mentioned the time he was taking a bath, in daytime, and MOST of the female Actualism students and teachers appeared before him, naked, one by one, saying "This is my body, my genitals, this is how we can relate and exchange generative energies WITHOUT having sex," wordlessly, and how they embraced from a distance and he could feel what THEIR genitalia would do with HIS genitalia as "a handshake" without any stimulation at all, and he could feel various differences and gifts of love from each of them in specific individual ways, even though he didn't know some of the names of the women in Basic who were members of the group. I thought of my dreams of sex with Bruce and Ken, and my desires for Bruce Swearer, and he said that he was careful now what he did with his eyes, because even if the other person's BODY eyes weren't looking, who knew what the other bodies on other levels might not be doing, and I had to admit that Arthur was always FULL of the most interesting incidents to make me think that I wasn't getting ANYWHERE in Actualism. How Bruce's FIELD would MOTIVATE dogs into barking so that Arthur would have to move in and QUIET them down again.

NOTEBOOK 429

10/27/81
DENNIS HAS GOT TO STOP INDEXING: 10/19

He phones and asks me---uh---er---and I say "No, I won't take your index." He's pissed, saying he asked me as a friend and I responded as an employer. In the conversation he says the fatal remark: "I HATE the job," and I decide right then that he's GOT to be eased out of indexing and into something ELSE. With his habitual "thinking about it" and not making a decision (though he certainly made a decision about Tree, I'll have to admit), I feel that I would have to be the one to decide that he HAS to phase himself out of it. Later he told me that he LIKES the idea of his parents being able to support him, so he's WILLING to spend more time on the jazz book, not do so many indexes, and get money from his folks. I resolve to wait until AFTER his operation in November, since he said that he wouldn't even BE here in three more weeks, so I decide I can wait three more weeks, let him get through the operation without having to worry about finding a new job, and then break the news gently to him when he's rehabilitated. That was my thought THEN, but NOW it's quite different timewise, since he's now taking Dr. Christopher's Eyewash and has CANCELLED his appointment in the middle of November, saying that he can wait for 4-5 months to SEE if the cataracts resolve WITHOUT an operation (something I certainly agree with), BUT that means he's "stuck with a job he hates" for a longer period of time UNLESS I tell him about it now, but it STILL seems like a messy thing to do. I SAID I didn't realize he was talking to me as a friend---and ANYWAY it turned out great that Sherryl took it over when she NEEDED the job and the money AND it got Dennis and me to TALK about his finances, so it now shouldn't MATTER to me HOW much money he earns: he can get whatever he needs in addition from his folks. And in looking through the Berlin index, it turns out that he DOESN'T do a bad job, that it's the EDITOR'S fault for most of the stupid changes in the index, and though there are a FEW things to show him, he's not to blame for the "mess" Ann Berlin says the index was. Not to mention the fact that I verified in the 3 hours I worked on it that the book WASN'T EASY to index, which gives Dennis even more credit for not coming to me and complaining about the difficulties involved in it: he decided what to do, and for the most part it was more than adequate for the job.

NOTEBOOK 430

10/26/81
DECISIVE TALK WITH BRUCE

Susan called last night and we talked between 7 and 7:45, when I had to go down to Dennis's for dinner before watching "A Town Called Alice" at 9. During that conversation I observed that she was picking up some of Bruce's worst habits: 1) She complained that HE gave her three different stories in as many minutes, so that she didn't know which to believe, and SHE gave as many different stories: a) That Bruce wanted to kill himself, b) That Bruce was making progress by interviewing, keeping himself in good physical condition, and sleeping, c) That she only wanted to live her own life, d) That she feared that if he committed suicide she would blame herself. 2) She seemed committed, as Bruce, to dwelling on ever-decreasing circles of self-involvement, seeming to find no way out, yet taking no steps to GET out. 3) Her concern came across to me and I started asking if they'd talked about committing him to a hospital. It came out that she thought that would be taking his freedom away from him; she didn't know how to balance what progress he MIGHT make against what regress might be caused by hospitalization. I averred that ON BALANCE his behavior was BAD for her: she wasn't ELATED about his progress, she was in a PANIC about the possibility of his taking his own life when she wasn't there watching him, staying his hand, at which point she'd condemn herself for his death for the rest of her life. I insisted that wasn't fair, that it was HIS life to control, not HERS. She GOT into the idea of control, saying she wanted to control everything, and that was a big thing for her to realize. She also mentioned that she'd talked to her mother, who was "hysterical." I said I had to leave; she could call me back between 10 and 11. She didn't. I went to bed, thought about it, particularly one exchange: I'd asked her a couple times what she'd think if she said "Fuck off, Brucie, I'm not spending any more time with you," and he then committed suicide. Then she turned it on ME: "What would YOU do if you said "Drop dead, Bruce," and he did? That struck me SO hard that I had to admit I'd better never say that, in case he WOULD do it, because I was SO hard struck by the QUESTION that I wouldn't want to be faced with the ACTUALITY. In the morning I tried to do a session, trying to tune in on Bruce's state of mind. I told Susan that it sounded like SHE (as Bruce) was trying to get (this would be 4) in the list started above) someone ELSE to take responsibility for his life by expecting RICHARD or CRYSTAL to "tune in" if he were ACTUALLY in danger of taking his life. I insisted that ANYONE here: Bruce or Susan or me or Richard or Crystal, was PERMITTING MISTAKES: NO ONE had a total command of THE TRUTH at all times. THE ONLY PERSON WHO SHOULD RETAIN CONTROL OF BRUCE'S LIFE WAS BRUCE. But he wasn't doing this: he was spreading it to Susan, who tried to spread it to Richard and me. When she talked to Bruce about commitment, he'd say he didn't want it. Then he'd continue to dump on her and change his story and wake her in the middle of the night in which she had a menstrual migraine and dump on her some more. I said that the response to her agonized "HOW would you kill yourself, Bruce?" of "Electricity," seemed more a MANIPULATION to me than something he'd actually PLANNED. He was a manipulative kid who found his circle of manipulatees narrowing (Pat Mandino just said she wouldn't talk to him; the teachers said they wouldn't take calls from him anymore) and thus had to increase the order of the manipulation to get the same sympathy and ear-space. Before he could say he felt awful; we got used to that; then he developed physical symptoms; Saturday in the car Susan said he just had to LIVE with them---no more sympathy from that. He talked of suicide---BAM, he got sympathy. The therapist Schmertz talked of his "acute anxiety reaction" about "needing to be with people." He found a way to keep people listening: "If you don't listen to me, I'll kill myself and you'll blame yourself over it." I didn't feel that was a livable situation. I felt I had to say what there was for me to say. I tried to tune in Bruce and got NOTHING. Phoned Susan at home to talk to her, no answer; at work, no answer. Bruce at home, no answer. Phoned Elmont and got "Database," which was Bruce's invented company; he may have been expecting a call. Positive. He's down. Negative. I start talking with him at 10 and end at 11:30. Afterwards I phone Dennis and give him essentially this summary; we talked for a long time, but the final upshot was this. He seemed to have four alternatives: 1) Suicide. This was not acceptable to anyone. He'd ADMIT this, but pull it out whenever he felt he needed more attention. I asked point-blank: "Bruce, can you say that ZERO percent of your action is manipulative?" VERY quickly and lucidly he responded, "Oh, no, I have to admit there's some of that." He keeps getting that HE shouldn't commit suicide for his KARMA, talking of it only as a "reduction of pain," but frankly can't come up with too many good ideas for not doing it to HIMSELF, except that he hadn't FULLY realized before this conversation that HIS suicide would DAMAGE his mother and sister, perhaps permanently. So that's no good on ANY level. 2) Committal to a hospital. BUT this shouldn't come from Susan or his mother, neither of whom have ACTUAL responsibility for his life, but from HIM. If HE can't get out from under his THOUGHTS of suicide, he should commit himself. In a session it came to him that "Thought directs energy," and I kept pounding on the AMOUNT of thought that he's directed to the NEGATIVE ENERGY that's now actually damaging his mother and his sister. He's NOT depressed, since depressed people don't have THAT MUCH ENERGY. He has to do an "instant transformation as talked about in est" to TURN IT AROUND and dwell on POSITIVE thoughts that will channel POSITIVE energy. He seemed to agree that he would be the only "proper" person to commit himself. Some of his shit came up: "Did Rolf have himself committed for the same reasons?" "Will I ever get out of it?" "Which one would I go to?" "Do people improve in hospitals?" I said I didn't know the answers to ANY of these questions, but maybe HE should do some research into hospitals on his OWN to FIND OUT. BUT I insisted that this was STILL "Him looking for change from outside, rather than INSIDE." 3) Continuing the way he is: alternating suicidal and positive, driving his mother and sister crazy. THIS WAS NOT ACCEPTABLE, and had to be replaced by 4) Transformation and improvement. I insisted that this did NOT mean burying his feelings and emotions: if he IN FACT felt that he was going to kill himself, he SHOULD talk about it, but the TRANSFORMATION would include not FEELING like killing himself. He seemed to follow me, every step. I said 4) was "guaranteed" in that if he DIDN'T live up to it, it would quickly revert to 2) and not to 3). When I told Dennis about it, he said he'd have to retract his statement about my making a lousy therapist. He said I had a very positive skill in bringing down situations to numerable alternatives in a very intelligent way. He though it was great. Bruce seemed to think it was very positive, too, and his mother agreed. I talked with her at the start, to sort of "get her permission" to be rough with Bruce, and I talked with her AFTER to get her agreement on "alternative 4)." Bruce brought up the idea of not being DEPENDENT, and I said there was a difference between being DEPENDENT and LEANING: throwing suicide-ideas out was LEANING; staying at home, asking advice, talking to friends, was being DEPENDENT but NOT leaning. He asked if he could talk to me a lot, and I said it would depend on the circumstances of my LIFE: saying I didn't want to twist the knife, but I was LIVING a life, while he was SPENDING ALL HIS TIME THINKING ABOUT his life, so he had far more time to be involved with that than I did. If he called me when I had 15 hours in which to do 15 hours of indexing work, he wouldn't be able to talk with me. In the course of the conversation he SAID that he loved me, which I'd mentioned he didn't seem to say very much: that it was very different to IMPLY it and to SAY it. So he DID say it, and it made both of us feel better. I kept INSISTING on the basic fact in all this: I had no direct connection with absolute truth: everything I was saying could easily be bullshit, BUT I had the advantage of being OUTSIDE the family and looking IN. I couldn't tell him how he'd have to REPAIR the damage he did to his mother and his sister with his threats of ACTUAL suicide over the past few days, that would have to be something THEY would have to work out in open conversation. But I KNEW repairing would not include his CONTINUATION of his suicide threats. He agreed. We hung up very amicably. Then I phoned Dennis, wrote this, and Rolf phoned about a bond purchase and said he'd call me back to hear about Bruce's threat of suicide and his committal to a hospital. He calls at 2 and talks till 2:15, having had 6-7 friends commit suicide, though he says many were friends from Austin-Riggs where he was for a couple of years, though current friends have done it too. So he said that LOTS of people who talk about it DO it, so they HAVE to be taken seriously. He suggested that a hospital was the worst place, and that other therapies, even heavily-laden DRUG therapies, were much preferable to the hospital, agreeing with me that he'd have to turn himself around ANYWAY. He said that he can EASILY commit himself to any of a number of facilities, that he doesn't have to bug his relatives, but he can't be definitive since he doesn't even know him. I get to the gym 2:25-3:40, Bruce arrives at 3:45 and stays till 8:30, getting pretty much nowhere except to find that I'm having little more patience with him, and Susan has even less. He "gives his word" ("But do you trust my word?" he asks, and I find I CAN'T) he'll only say "Hello" to Susan, who doesn't want to see him. He says "Hello" and Susan launches into a biting diatribe about telling him he should NEVER call her at work because she has NO privacy, gets tuned into his problems and begins shouting "Suicide!" so that the whole office can hear and treat her strangely about. He responds, which is the worst part, and then she refuses to "shake hands" with him, I hug him and he sobs, she apologizes for "acting the bitch" after he leaves, and I say that's exactly what he NEEDED, since he was reluctant to see the damage he was doing to her and his mother. Susan shouts at ME for a bit about his manipulations: she's talked to him for hours EVERY day so that she has no time for HERSELF, her lightwork, or her job, or looking for a new one, he's apologized SO many times she's sick of it, and I get a new feeling for how much he's fucked her over. She's given him VERY MUCH LIKE my four suggestions, so I intend to USE them, guarding as he slips into "alternative 3" (same old stuff) rather than "alternative 4" (positive direction and energy), so that he'll take "alternative 2" (self-commitment to a hospital) before he takes "alternative 1" (suicide), and makes his RELATIVES feel guilty about it the rest of their lives for not having PREVENTED him. Rolf agreed: get him to as many PROFESSIONAL helpers as possible and OFF the family!

NOTEBOOK 435

10/28/81
DRIFTING APART MEANS HAVING DIFFERENT PRIORITIES

Dennis and I don't seem to have the same PRIORITIES anymore: he knows that going to Great Adventure once in a year is a MUST for me, yet he doesn't want to go this year. He says no to most of the dance programs and many of the movies that I want to see. He says he has to index, but that's no real excuse: if he wanted to plan ahead, he wouldn't have to be so tied up with an index and a deadline. HIS priorities, on the other hand, are the components of his book: writing, transcribing, interviewing, hearing, and contacting people to publish it. When he wants to go to a jazz club, or says he has an interview with someone, I get as turned off as HE gets when I suggest one of MY things. As for sexuality, I noticed long ago that HE seemed to prefer sex in the evening, while my highest drive seems to be in the morning, when he exists in a fog until his first cup of coffee. This morning was a case in point: he said he had to work, so he set the alarm for 8 am. I woke before that with a raging hard-on, since I hadn't come in at least a week. I played, waiting for him to awake, and finally the alarm went off. He shut it off after about three minutes, then returned to bed to doze off again, despite the fact I was playing with myself (not that he noticed). And then his MODE of playing turns me off: he's more and more dependent (in the evening) on wine or joints or (in the morning) or rubber bands around his cock or dirty talk. And when the dirty talks turns into what sounds like ABUSE of the very act ("Masturbator!" in an accusatory, guilt-ridden way, or slapping his "fucking penis,") I have to wonder whether he's fearful of lessening sexual drive as he gets older, taking out his frustrations on the very organs of his pleasure. When I don't come for a week, on the other hand, I feel VERY erotic FOR SEX AND THE BODY AND THE COCK itself, and have long since learned that too much of ANY other stimulus leads to a turn-off rather than a turn-on. But that's not important this morning, as he merely looks at me lasciviously, is disappointed when I don't say anything, plays with himself and doesn't get hard, watches my spurting climax without a word (since I'm not saying anything), and at last reaches a hand toward my head before he gets up to make coffee and start his workday.

NOTEBOOK 436

11/5/81
GEORGE PLATT LYNES EXHIBITION ON 10/30

Photographs from 1931 to 1955, specializing in fashion, portraits, and nudes. The fashion shots seem dated, in that the women look frosty and remote, not like today's colorful, hot-looking, truly "beautiful" faces and figures. The portraits seem to capture an "era": Yves Tanguy looking like Montgomery Clift---ALL the gay young men: Christopher Isherwood and Paul Cadmus looking lovely when young; Pavel Tchilitchev and Marsden Hartley looking back on "what was." Somerset Maugham looking at a naked man. Who was Bill Miller, who was beautiful then and helped with the book? Surprising to find nudes of Nicholas Magellanes and Francisco Moncion in "Orpheus," though there were very few actual cock-shots. Interesting that what was SO erotic then is now rather tame and "amusing" compared with Colt and other pornographic images that are FAR more highly-charged. Took notes from the Bibliography: Lynes published male nudes in "Der Kreis" under names of Roberto Rolf and Robert Orville.
Homosexual Aesthetic in American Photographer Magazine Volume V, no. 2: August 1980
Donald Windham's "Tanaquil," Holt, 1977, is a novel based on Lynes (Joe Page) and friends.
I glanced through the book and decided it wasn't worth $25 either as an artistic investment (only 3000 bound) or as sleek pornography. What I DID enjoy was the DAY: 1) going to the bank and depositing enough money for NEXT month's withdrawals, 2) handing in an index at Raven and xeroxing 20 copies of my 16-page China log, giving one of them to Mary Rogers, who liked it, 3) going to the Lynes exhibit and ending up two floors down to glance at ANOTHER exhibit at a gallery called LIGHT, though the two people weren't very interesting: one on sunny Arizona backyards, another on California earthquake country, 4) meeting Dennis for dinner at Le Chantilly, a place I've wanted to get to for more than three years since it's opened, 5) then ending walking up Madison Avenue to the Harkness Ballet, which wasn't that GOOD (except for Wally Shives), but I saw the inside of Thomas Watson's house, saw the ballet, and enjoyed walking Lexington back to the 86th St. subway station, thinking that there's STILL lots of New York that I feel like a tourist walking through, and I should do it more often for pleasure.

NOTEBOOK 437

11/7/81
DENNIS AND I TALK ABOUT RELATIONSHIPS

He says he thinks we should talk about it, but I keep feeling that I do all the talking and he doesn't say very much. He counters that he DOES say things, it's just that I don't take them in. He DOES make some points: he doesn't think that I have the openness to sexual variety that I had before; though I keep insisting that it's usually I who make the overtures to sex, and not him: the few times he DID start playing with me, or really making out so as to have sex, were so few that I really REMEMBER them. I characterized our sex of about ten times since we've been back from San Diego, though that seems OFTEN for two months---though it WAS more often the first week---was successful four times, HE started it and I didn't feel like going along once, I started it and HE didn't feel like going along four times, and we both started and neither finished once. He didn't disagree. I said I thought of myself as having become a different person (particularly sexually, when I started with sex twice a day every day and now have gotten AWAY from "forcing" myself into sex---when I'd get hard in the abdomen, as he observed---every other day and will "feel driven" to sex about once a week, when I'll come with great enthusiasm) but not him. Well, of course I guess no one wants to hear they haven't changed, so he said he thought of himself as being more open. He described himself as a loner who was usually attracted to loners like Dick and me. I asked what he wanted out of the relationship with Dick, and he said he wanted more TIME together, whereas he thought the TIME we spent together was just MENTAL time and not emotional time, so that if we spent a week together, he'd be emotionally starved afterward. I mentioned Susan's suggestion that we could have a dynamite relationship if I made it so, which he didn't respond to, but when I brought up the idea that HE seemed never to kiss ME or be affectionate with ME (the only affection he brought up was when I reached over and touched and scratched his hair when we were watching TV here, and I asked when HE ever did that to ME?), he said that I gave him some sort of feeling that I didn't want that. He pointed out that I was sitting at the kitchen table, where we were talking, with my arms folded. Sadly for his argument HE sat with his arms folded after he'd made his point by waving ONE hand in the air and putting it back in the same position the other was in. I said that said something to me because at the end of John's and my relationship HE said that he didn't feel like coming close to me, like I was a sea urchin with spines that would hurt him. So I said that was more than coincidence, there must BE something coming from me, something that even extends to the gym where I don't interact with ANYBODY. But neither of us could say what it was. He said he had some suggestions about SOMETHING (I even forget what it was), but when I asked what it was, he said I should think of it for myself---I countered that I really get TIRED of not hearing responses from him no matter WHAT the reason, AND I got tired of his constant saying "I'll think about it" which meant that I have no idea whether he's going somewhere or doing something until a few hours beforehand. He said that because of the emotional starvation he felt when we were together, he was frankly waiting for something better, anything, to come along. I kept saying that we didn't have the same PRIORITIES: I was disappointed that I didn't convert him to dancing or ballet or opera, and he was disappointed that I didn't get converted to music and jazz and singing. During the past weeks I'd suggested lots of things that he said "no" to, including restaurants, while he hadn't suggested any. He seemed to be saying that since there's no emotion in the relationship, and since he lived in his basement thinking that he wasn't getting what he wanted out of life, maybe we should spend LESS time together. I said I liked the time we spent together, but he didn't respond further. I noted we didn't have the same GOALS: I liked pleasure, usually pleasures that cost money: entertainments, restaurants, travel; while he didn't have enough money to share those things, even though I DID take in what he said about his priority being on his book (while he said that I'd come up with dozens of creative projects that I wouldn't finish) and being willing to be subsidized by his parents when he didn't earn enough by indexing. I noted that THIS relationship, business mixed with personal, had been brought up often enough as a bone of contention, but it didn't seem like the right time to suggest he get out of it. He said he didn't think I could live with ANYONE, especially not here, or the other person would have to conform to my life, and I agreed with that, saying that it seemed like the relationship with John started downhill when I moved to the Heights and the relationship with Dennis started downhill when he moved to the building. He said I DEMANDED too much: like him looking over the books that I decided to throw out when HE had other priorities. I said it was merely to give him first choice of the books, so that something he might want might not be taken by someone else. He said I didn't take teasing very well (which Marg and Susan did), though there WERE times that I was fun to be with. I said that he's in the habit of going too FAR: a little teasing would be nice, but he'd REPEAT it and I wouldn't care for it, and when he KEPT ON, I'd get actively annoyed and irritated. He brought up my irritation, and I still honestly didn't feel like (I SAID that I lied when he tried to give me an out last night by asking if I were tired; if I'd said "Yes," he would have said, "OK, then why don't Susan and me go down to my place and continue"; AND I said that I didn't think the restaurant Sunday was the place to say "I don't like her poetry," though he said that came across anyway, that I was just eager to get everyone back here to look at the slides, rather than enjoying the moment---he was pissed that I threw the restaurant-choosing back onto him, when I again retorted that I'd said EARLIEST: I want Callahan's, if you want something different, say what it is, but if you leave it up to committee, we might have ended up at Henry's End which NEITHER of us wanted, (except it was closed) saying that I was put off by his constant bad breath, his addiction to morning coffee which helped it along, his promiscuity (though he said that he agreed with Dick when the two greatest things in life were laughing and coming---though he kept insisting that I was the one who insisted the point of having sex was coming while HE thought of it as playing---he thought of sexuality as HIS expression in life, while I said whether it was due to age or Actualism I didn't think that sex was AS important, particularly when it started with a joint and a popper and rubber bands and a verbal string of exciting words. He turned it back to me by saying that I'd introduced him to rubber bands and now he felt self-conscious if he used them with me---well, I didn't tell him, that's one of the things in which I changed: sex is better DIRECT, without all the appurtenances (and gives a greater kick, then, too), and his constant unwillingness to make a decision, though of course I had to praise his determination with the book, particularly compared with my LACK of determination in everything except the pursuit of pleasure. When I'd come up with the components of romantic love as sexuality, the body, and "can't get enough of a person," I was saying to Dennis that we were PAST that point. When the components of "true love" or "serious love" was the mind, goals, and contentment. I was saying that we DIDN'T have these in common. I said that I felt we were both reluctant to show any of our former affection because it hurt too much when we realized how far we've dropped from our ORIGINAL closeness and love. He said we might as well stop talking, since we were just being defensive. I agreed. He asked if I like sleeping with him, and I said the SLEEPING was fine, but at NIGHT we were both usually tired and not thinking of sex (unless I started---he'd taken "You'll feel better if you come" as a non-sexy non-invitation when I wanted him to jerk off for me when HE was sexy and I was tired and non-sexy at his place), where in the morning we were in different RHYTHMS: either HE had something to do and got up earlier or I had something to do and got up earlier, or we both just lay there until we BOTH had to get up. He laughed and said he was uncomfortable: since there was no emotion involved, it was just more inconvenient than sleeping alone. So he could jerk off when he wanted to, I guess. So it was a depressing conversation, but we agreed to meet at 4:55 pm for the Miss Marple movies.

NOTEBOOK 441

11/19/81
CLARITY

First there was the rush to finish with things concerning the past trip to Russia and China. Finally the log got typed and the trip-log typed and xeroxed and sent out and the calendar filled in. Then the books were thrown out and the floor vacuumed and the dishes washed and the laundry out and the refrigerator stocked, and as a last flurry I wrote a list of things to do, including looking into science-fiction shops and pornography shops and finishing sending out the "whisper" slides to be photographed, and even phoning people for the final slide shows---not to mention getting brochures and everything together for the trip to Italy. There were a few indexes in there, too, for money and good measure. Then I zipped through the lists and had a few days of being FINISHED with everything---but then NEW things kept flooding to mind: might as well catch the movie list up to date since it'll be ANOTHER fuss when I get back from Italy. Got letters out to the people in Europe I might be seeing. Even caught up on the Entertainment Absorption list. Reported (see ACTUALISM 204) that I felt, now that everything was out of the way, how much my life was my CHOICE! Though it feels good to BE caught up, my LIFE doesn't feel good IN BEING caught up. I go to the gym and handle the day's work and do the sessions and wonder where the CONTACTS are going to come from, though every time my phone rings I sort of don't WANT it to ring, and everyone's coming over for the slides in the next few weeks that I'm not taking them OUT. As for that page, I DID get to the gym and I DID finish with Arnold's TV tapes (for now, at least, since I want to go back next week to see the complete "Dumbo"), and in the evenings when I HAD NOTHING ELSE TO DO I sat down and finished reading "Expanded Universe" by Ray Bradbury and read a few books by Hesse to get me to sleep, and jerked off with movies after getting tipsy with late-lunch wine about 7 pm, and began to feel what happens when I HAVE been successful in at least clearing off the "things to do list" (Ignoring such obvious things as writing, either imaginary or on the indexing book)---I GET TIRED OF READING AND TIRED IN GENERAL SO THAT I START SLEEPING LATE and

NOTEBOOK 442

11/19/81
UP-TO-DATE

I JUST FEEL AWFUL (that CONTINUES from 441 and STARTS here!). Ordinarily I'd start going to movies and plays and the library, but I feel caught up in all that. I'd start something NEW except that I should finish something OLD except I don't FEEL like going back to the indexing book WITHOUT a computer to help in composing it. DO have an index from McGraw-Hill, but there are new pages coming in tomorrow, to replace outdated pages today. Typing these last pages (except for the last item on the list: telling the indexers I'm getting just about ready to put them off on their own), I keep thinking that there's going to be something to do NEXT, but I HAVE TO CHOOSE IT, as Crystal so skillfully says in class. In these cases in the PAST, I'd go back to stamps, or cruising, or start a new project, but I don't WANT to do that. Nor, however, do I want to end up in a hospital like Bruce! Dennis calls me for dinner out tonight, so I can talk about it with him. Have the apartment cleaner than I've done in months; have most of the correspondence cleared up, and if I read any more on Italy just now I'll go into overload again of not KNOWING where to go until I get the responses from the PEOPLE I've written to, though I have to plan soon what to do if they don't answer. When I go to bed my mind doesn't ease contentedly off to sleep, it thinks up NEW things to do: I COULD go through more drawers and throw things out; I COULD send around resumes to get more indexes; I COULD shop for the stamp-pages that would allow me to put away the mint stamps I've got left. I thought I'd go in for fancier cooking, and I really haven't done that. No new friends to really get IN to. Can't even schedule a new session with Crystal or Bruce because there isn't any slot left for my by-now low-priority tsurris. Less than a month left before the trip, however, and things can be occupied with indexes before that and plans at the last minute, and then there'll be the trip to catch up from again. And instant things like Mom calling last night when I was jerking off and telling me that Rita called her that her AUNT called her that Julia Zolnierzak had died on October 14! I'm just out of the family! What NEXT?

NOTEBOOK 443

11/24/81

TALK WITH SUSAN ON 11/22

This continues the ideas on NOTEBOOK 441-442. I told her where I was, saying that I'd ALWAYS been worried about death, but reading "Canopus" I was attracted to the idea that earth is GREAT for giving a LOT in a little time, and I was so proud of my "multi-stage" life: student, physics teacher, fellowship, IBM, travel-and-writing, editing, indexing, traveling again, that IF I was so grateful for "many lives in this life" why SHOULDN'T I put lots of power into CREATING the reality of "many lives for this soul"? It would make things MUCH easier in THIS life because I wouldn't feel the pressures of TIME. She was too quick to add "and just live from moment to moment, huh?" I said my trip to Italy was experimenting with this new viewpoint, since I usually cover many COUNTRIES, and now I was just covering many TOWNS in ONE country, though I said I certainly would have preferred to go WITH someone. That seemed to effect her perception of my magnetic and emotions, too. I DIDN'T get a chance to mention my idea about Bruce's coming RIGHT UP AGAINST the fact that "suffer to serve" just didn't work, since he WAS suffering and NOT serving ANYONE now---OR that when he DID start to suffer he REFUSED to serve by taking himself to a hospital or EVEN out of the world. Dennis and Susan and I had a GREAT talk after brunch at his place, not mentioning ONE WORD about Bruce. I'd even told Susan that I HAD to go to the gym, even brought my stuff downstairs with me, and then decided to stay "because I liked the conversation," refusing to admit to Dennis that he was right when he said "he probably just felt too lazy to go," and they both agreed that simple laziness or disinclination would NOT usually make me restrict my activities: I'd just push right through. And this was the feeling that I've been getting: NOT to push right through; if something doesn't feel right, just don't do it. Use your inclinations of the moment and FOLLOW them was the topic, and I noted to myself that that was what was wrong with keeping lists: I EXHAUSTED the time of the strong inclination by putting it on the LIST, and there was NO inclination when I went BACK to the list some time later. Still following it through.

NOTEBOOK 444

11/30/81
SEXUAL ORIENTATION IN EVERYTHING IS EVERYTHING

Watching "Paradise Alley" last night, disliking everything but the large soft body of Lee Canalito as Vic, wrestling, it again strikes me hard how much ALL of what I choose to see and do is determined by the possible sexual content of it. To repeat what I've surely written before, I started liking ballet because it gave me guilty views of crotch-tight leotards on bodies of more-than-usual athleticism and muscularity, particularly in the legs and thighs. When I found that opera sometimes had ballets with those same crotches, I added opera. Movies like "Paradise Alley" are chosen EXCLUSIVELY because of a sexy ad of a nice male body---or face, in the case of David Naughton in "American Werewolf in London," where I got a sight of his entire body as a bonus. Pornography is exclusively beautiful body, though it's nice to add a pleasant face and soulful, direct eyes. Even in reading: Burroughs I started certainly for his masturbatory intensity, though I can't see the connection with Watts or Chardin and Blackwood and Nabokov or Huxley, though it's there for Hesse's "homoerotic pairs" and Clarke's bathing-suited friends in his undersea books and even Ballard's teasing descriptions of smooth muscles and effortless sexuality. Plays are determined by somewhat the same thing: will there be cowboys in a rodeo, gays in a chorus, nakedness in bathhouses, beach scenes, bedroom scenes with pretty pectorals? There's even that in travel: how much of my desire for Yap and Koror was based on my desire for native bodies, and how much of my disappointment at Koror was its civilization as compared to the REAL native-dress of Yap---though Ponape was still lovely even though the male natives weren't dressed scantily. Certainly part of the thrill of Hawaii last time was the plethora of tanned muscles hidden only by shorts and bathing suits. Even museums are concentrations of naked marble statuary, paintings with erotic overtones, photographs of nude models of males, and phallic objects to be ferreted out. And in personal relationships! Would I be MORE interested in Eddie's friend Phillip last night if he'd been sexier? Would I be LESS interested in Ron Mlodzek if he weren't so bedroomy? Is my name Bob Zolnerzak? HOWEVER, since that interest is so determining,

NOTEBOOK 445

11/30/81
EMPTINESS OF SEXUAL ORIENTATION IN EVERYTHING

IS IT ANY WONDER THAT I FEEL VAGUELY EMPTY after spending time watching "Paradise Alley"? I didn't WATCH it for anything lasting: when "the body" wasn't on I was agonizing over Sylvester Stallone's incredible self-indulgence in acting, writing, and directing, though even HE had a nice body in places, AND when it was over I didn't feel as if I'd satisfied ANYTHING except to judge that Canalito's body could use a bit of trimming down and a bit more definition around the midsection, though the pectorals from below were as fantasized and better. No crotches, sadly. So I took my pleasure in the entertainment DURING the show, not AFTER. I should then just leave it alone, leave it BE in the past, rather than trying to construct some "lasting good" from having seen it. I can't complain when I don't remember what a picture was that's on my movie list from even a YEAR ago: I wanted to see it at the TIME, I DID see it at the time and liked or didn't like it AS IT WAS, and it doesn't make any DIFFERENCE now whether I remember it or not---usually I'm not watching for the PLOT, anyway, but the frisson, the tease, the crotch, the face. Again this is obviously connected with "being caught up" which I'll continue on NOTEBOOK 446. What's the point? Well, I REALIZE that I'm concentrating on the frisson, the momentary thrill, SO DON'T TRY TO STRETCH IT INTO SOMETHING LASTING. Does that have a connection with my worry over life and death? LIFE is a frisson, enjoyable moment-by-moment, SO DON'T TRY TO STRETCH IT INTO SOMETHING LASTING. Is THAT it? Overeating, over-reading, over-sexing, over-walking all lead to satiation; done in moderation, for the moment, they're pleasant. Over-living? Not moment-by-moment BUT IN THE LONG RUN? But I've looked at THAT, too: WHEN I'M CAPABLE AND ENJOYING I want life to last forever, but NOW that I get little touches of things going downhill (not NEARLY enough outside sex), I can pre-picture a time when I'll be READY to stop living, WILL be satiated, WILL have had enough, EVEN THOUGH it's actually TOO EXHAUSTING TO GET MORE, rather than exactly CHOOSING not to want more. Didn't PLAN to end up with life-vs-death, but it surely DID end there. Maybe that's a sign of completion in EVERYTHING noticed.

NOTEBOOK 446

11/30/81
(from 442) UP-TO-DATE UPDATED - 1

I REMAIN caught up (though I REALLY have to start on the index TODAY), but most of what I've done in the past week is read 19 (incredible number!) of the smallest books from the shelf---books that I wouldn't ordinarily think of taking along to read because they're too small, from xeroxed pages and unbound, or too large to carry. So I DID spend the "up-to-date time" in a typical way, BUT WITHOUT QUITE AS MUCH RECRIMINATION as before. And now I notice a "momentum": when I'm working on indexes, I'd really just as soon continue working on indexes: I'm "into" them. When I'm reading, I'd just as soon continue reading; stamps don't last long and I have to STOP at a point, though I usually end up doing MORE with them, organization-wise, than I intended to do. That applies to things like lists: I complete the lists then crosscheck them and cross-add them and make lists of lists to "keep working with them" even after they've been finished. I start at the shelves of books-to-be-read and count and re-count and re-reorder them, just to "go with the momentum." Even in typing pages, I sometimes come up with another page, just from momentum. So what's the point? Well, I didn't do anything "useful" like switch to working on MY writing. I DID get a cold, something that I'd fought off until it was there. I DID remain caught up so that I could continue going to the gym, though interestingly the lightwork sessions dwindled to nothing the past two weeks. Wonder whether my NOT doing lightwork might have anything to do with my increased listlessness or even my cold. Long talk with Joe Easter about "working things out through Actualism in life, including looking at reincarnation as an antidote to fear of flying and death." Maybe like Bruce (in a tiny way) I'm looking for REAL completion, which just isn't going to come while I'm still changing and looking and living. What more to say? I've BEEN up-to-date, CONTINUE being up-to-date, STILL not writing, getting BETTER with living with life, STILL want someone to share it with more fully in a sexual relationship (DO share non-sexual life fully with Dennis and Susan and Arnold and some others), and let's see if these sheets produce a CONTINUOUS series.

NOTEBOOK 447

12/4/81
UP TO DATE UPDATED - 2

First time I've written a "2" page NOT on the same day as the "1" page. I've continued to read, but the feeling of "nothing waiting for me" was VERY strong yesterday as I returned from leaving my index off. Debated getting a TKTS seat for something, or going down to 42nd Street to look at ANOTHER movie (silly, since I'd just SEEN "The Time Bandits"), but I came home and read some more and had dinner and watched TV and jerked off and went to bed to cough for an hour and a half. Woke with a STRONG impression that I should get back to the indexing book just to have SOMETHING to do between now and the trip, and will see what happens THERE. True to form of being caught up, I now have a COLD that makes it hard to do ANYTHING, and I even stayed away from the gym for four days, making it highly unlikely (unless I go FAITHFULLY every other day INCLUDING the 15th) that I'll get to 100 gym-visits this year. Now more than ever I'm getting that drowsiness when I read that makes EVERYTHING seem so useless: if I can do ANYTHING I want to do, and then CAN'T tolerate the activity (reading) I've freed myself for, THAT'S an unhappy-making situation! And then I haven't done the lightwork since Monday, which is quite a pain, since I feel that it SHOULD be done and I have the TIME to do it, but I'm not doing it. Even went to Arnie's yesterday to catch up on the last show I knew about ("Dumbo") and even saw the NEXT show ("Balloon over Africa") that he'd added since the last time. In the back of my mind I still have to get a haircut and pack and make last-minute trip arrangements, but there are probably NO indexes (unless Raven manages to come up with Antidepressants II as promised) to fill in the time and lots of DAYS, so it seems that I'm inclined to THINK of something "time-filling" like the book, simply so I won't get sucked into fruitless worry about the flight to Zurich during the night on the 15th. Interesting that I feel VERY antisocial during a period when I have nothing to do; as if I'm WORTHLESS and don't want to foist my presence on anyone---or don't want to exert the effort to ARRANGE something with Dennis or with the others to whom I have yet to show the slides. Working on it.

NOTEBOOK 448

12/4/81
OUTRAGEOUS WRITING

Remember when I was reading some of the Burroughs's books last week that I was "inspired" to write some pages of MY thoughts: he was so evocative of just sheer FANTASY that I was thrown back on my original ideas for "Luxury": writing of incredible opulence in a far-future where EVERY sense can be just SATED. "Melinone and Pellinor snuggled deeply into their bed of furs, caressing each other's flesh with balms designed to anoint the flesh and sublime harmlessly when it encountered the nonhuman hairs of the coverlets. Otherwise it got so messy! At will, a languid arm would reach around the reflecting mirrors swiveled out from walls and ceilings to reflect their luxury, reach around for a sweetmeat, a throat-sized globule of liquid refreshment held together by an adherent which would dissolve when it encountered wet mucous membranes (good for the throat or for more personal mucous membranes), obviating the need for awkward glasses that might spill. Will-records hummed in their ears, attuned to their mental volume-desires and libidinous though-content for sensational climaxes, lulling sleepmusic, or erotic foreplay rhythms. When they sated of each other's presence, they could go off, together or separately, into total-amusements in which they could be swallowed up by monsters, hunt and devour dinosaurs, extend their curiosity to other worlds and beings. Alternatively, after they felt glutted with input, they could program, effortlessly, output for the delight of others: sending personal fantasies to friends and lovers, or dreaming of wider-audience entertainments that they could will to be placed under any heading-index from Abyssal depths to Zoological curiosities, real or imagined. Contact with myriads of inhabited planets filled the files with creatures that were orders of magnitudes beyond earthlings' imaginings, yet fruitful human minds could still conceive startling combinations of characteristics which seemed to jolt other human sensibilities with more strength than seemingly random juxtapositions of features that other worlds supplied. Naturally the fictional monsters were all there: Burroughs's Martians, Heinlein's child-pleasers, Lessing's Canopean pageant, van Brunt's universe of whimsy. Or they could visit environments alien to them: flame-vortices of solar prominences; cauldrons of geysers, DNA uncurlings in the cells, adventures on any scale as their visions were boosted by psychic-telescopes or mind-microscopes to expand or shrink on any size-scale. Time-scales were variable, too, so that they could start at the Big Bang (or even before, choosing any of the convincingly-real scenarios for the Time Before Time which even their extraordinary scientific advancement had not yet succeeded in penetrating, since all of their many time-travel techniques frustratingly refused to return Before Time, no matter how the controls were fudged) and move to the present at any speed. But then psychobiologists agreed that the psyche needed SOME frustrations or else it would become numb to accomplishment after accomplishment and devoutly dream of inhibition or frustration as a relief from omnipotence which had components of ultimate chaos mysteriously embedded within it. Depending on the witness, omnipotence-trauma was exhausting or terrifying. Exhausting after attempts to thwart the dream-machines in supplying their paradoxical imaginings---after seeing fifteen "solutions" to a square circle as illusion, as redefinition of terms, as hyperdimensional reality, as semantic construct, as earthbound lack of imagination, as Mystical Rose, as trivial, as meta-mathematical formulation PROGRAMMED to be unending, as an actual child's toy, as embodiment of the satisfaction-frustration paradox, as source of poetic inspiration, as topic of creative endeavor for the NEXT "solution," as "reason" for a philosophy of total nihilism, as "determinant" for self-extinction, or as ultimate absorption of the psychobiological entity---to fulfill WHATEVER was willed from them. Terrifying when the trauma led to the realization and experience of Man-As-God and STILL the entity demanded more, and got more, and demanded more, and got more, until it was clear that the only three possibilities were continued contented use, or discontented disuse out of exhaustion or terror. Only IN an infinity of time and an eternity of space was this possible, but the fact that this WAS the condition of Mankind at this stage of their development led to what was considered the source of the experience of omnipotence-trauma: when future development seemed open-ended, Mankind was content to anticipate the unknowable with enthusiasm and joy. But when the present reached the state of being so totally encompassing, so completely fulfilling, embracing as it IN FACT did an infinity of time and an eternity of space---so unimaginably far beyond a MERE eternity of time and infinity of space---there was nothing left to ANTICIPATE: eventually all anticipations were satisfied, all whims quieted, all relationships so thoroughly explored that knowing another was like knowing yourself---and this in an era when knowing yourself was finally totally possible from any framework: from a total knowledge of each movement of each subatomic particle in any psychobiological extension, through any of the midranges of size and operation, to an instantaneous, complete, totally satisfying flash on the multidimensional totality of Existence. When it had been a PROJECT to be ABLE to experience these limits, it had been exciting to anticipate accomplishing these former-dreams. But when ACTUAL EXPERIENCE vouchsafed these very visions, totally compelling in their thoroughness, instantly understandable in their staggering complexity, the reaction was not one of joyful annihilation in an explosion of satisfaction, but the aforementioned exhaustion ("That's all I can want because there isn't any more") or terror ("There isn't any more" because that's all I can want"). And further wanting, in fact, produced no more except an exacerbation of the exhaustion to the nadir of self-elimination or an exacerbation of the terror to the apex of self-elimination, completing the final Ring of Experience. It was not that the DETAILS could not be infinitely attractive and compelling---many seemed content to follow and follow and follow, though when the Nadir-Reachers and the Apex-Reachers joined forces under the rubric End-Reachers, they were amazed to find that they were identical in feeling to those who had explored Time Before Time, in their minds, since the actual Time Before Time remained stubbornly closed to them, who through various groups such as the Pretime-Reachers, the Prespace-Reachers, the Prethought-Reachers, and the Prereacher-Reachers had become united under the rubric Beginning-Reachers. The End-Reachers could only unite with the Beginning-Reachers to form the Reachers, who had only one culmination to consider: that point in which those who were NOT Reachers, whom the Reachers called the Contenteds, would find they were NO LONGER contented, who now were Reaches. Here was what seemed to be the unbridgeable frustration: some Contenteds WOULD NOT become Reachers, so the Reachers COULD NOT experience Existence-as-Reachers. But WITHOUT the experience of Existence-as-Reachers, they were not content. However, they were not content with any of the so-few alternatives. They could annihilate the Contenteds, but all their data pointed convincingly to the experience of Existence-as-Reachers as one of Ultimate Duality: Reaching versus Nothing. Nothing had been dispensed with very easily: the Nothingness-Existence-Simulation was totally convincing. Presetting Time-Space coordinates for their release, Reachers could experience, in its black Nihilism, Nothing. Of course, being observed, it wasn't PURE Nothing; but that made no difference to the aghast experiencer. Stripped of all concepts, thoughts about, thinking OF, the direct experience of Nothing invariably convinced the experiencer of its undesirability. Nothing was NOTHING: (DETOUR TO NOTEBOOK 452) worse than being nothing-to-do (since there was nothing to work, or do, WITH) and nothing-to-observe, which took care of man's active-accomplishing/passive-observing nature, there was not even any TIME in which to expect Nothing to be replaced by something, and not even any time permitted to the (illegal) experiencer of Nothing in which to look for relief to the END of this dimensionless-componentless-timeless Nothing. Since experience had become the core-matter of existence (more basic than the ancient "I THINK; therefore, I am"), there was not even the temptation to brush off the no-time non-experience as taking place in ZERO time, therefore merely an ABSENCE of the TIME in which experience COULD take place, but it was deeply impressed as DENYING ANY

NOTEBOOK 452

12/4/81
CONVERSATION WITH DENNIS

Dennis interrupts my typing of NOTEBOOK 451 by phoning about our conversation last night about not going to Laird's party. I concluded that section of the conversation by complimenting him on following MY rule of "Say it, then say it stronger; if I still don't agree, say it stronger still." He usually doesn't do that: either he accedes to my wishes too soon or he gets very angry and storms off. Here he did it perfectly: got me to look at whether I REALLY wanted to go to Laird's, and I found that the answer was "No." Then he told me about his encounter with Michael last night: he answered the bell to find Michael in a suit, with a fantasy in mind, saying "I'm a salesman for Time-Life books and want to sell you some books," at which point Dennis shot out "You fuck, I worked with them for years and can't stand them, that's the worst possible thing you could do." "He was just BEREFT," Dennis told me with a laugh, while I could very well feel his (Michael's) intense SADNESS: He'd worked up this fantasy, dressed in a suit which he didn't like doing, told people at the bar what he was going to do (despite their incredulity), and had packed up pornography to show Dennis which he was ALSO going to be "selling" him in the fantasy. So Michael was bereft, wandering around the apartment feeling VERY sad, and Dennis was just laughing and laughing and laughing at his discomfort (this is what I say, not what Dennis said: I'm sure he didn't FEEL cruel, only "loving"). I said (feeling deeply affected) that this had MANY ramifications: not least of which was that Michael COULDN'T get into Dennis's HUMOR about the situation and Dennis COULDN'T get into Michael's BEREFTNESS about the situation. That led me quickly into the sadness that I felt about our relationship: I asked him what HE thought about phoning twice asking me down to dinner and finding me eating: he said there were circumstantial reasons: usually I don't eat until 10 or 11, and when he calls at 8 I USUALLY say "Fine, I'll be down." That's true. When I ask him for more, he doesn't say it, and with my preliminary "You won't like this," I say that he should have thought to phone EARLIER, which he said he'd THOUGHT of, and I tried to make THAT significant, but he didn't bite. HE said it was good to her me talk about my FEELINGS, ANY feelings, since I tend to objectify them and put them outside myself. I said it reminded me that I never liked my mother feeling SORRY for herself, which was NOT THE SAME as feeling SAD. He even said it was OK to feel sorry for yourself, like he feels sorry for himself about having to do indexing, which he doesn't like, but I don't agree with that since he should DO something about it! HE brought up the idea that we might have things in mind that we'd like the other person to CHANGE (when I said that I had to deal with "Dennis as he was" that he wouldn't make plans---including agreeing with him when he said "Sometimes spontaneity is GOOD"---rather then trying to change him into something I wanted to have a relationship with), so I asked him what he'd change in ME. He thought for the words for a moment and said "You're sarcastic, which I don't like, and I don't like it in ME. SAY what you FEEL, don't make comments ABOUT it by being sarcastic." He brought up my "Please don't chew gum" again, saying that if I'd talked about my FEELING tense, it would have been OK to END with "stop chewing bum." But just ordering him to do it was like ordering "a wife" around. I said that part of the sadness about our dwindling relationship was our refusal to get into each other's fantasies: I would like him to "get into" what I was writing when he phoned, he would like me to get into his trashy movies and jazz performances. He said he agreed with my judgment and perceptions, but just wanted me to be more open with the FEELINGS behind them. "You don't have to prove you're BRIGHT, everyone knows and can see that, but you have to be more open with your FEELINGS, with me and with people you'll be meeting." Then I brought up "Torch Song Trilogy," asking whether we wanted to see THAT or just TALK tonight, and he said he was in the middle of an index he had to finish, so could we talk when he got back about 4 or 4:30. I said the show was at 7:30, remembered I had chicken in the fridge and could make dinner for HIM, and came back to type these two pages, stopping to put on fish for MY breakfast at 12.

NOTEBOOK 454

12/4/81
OUTRAGEOUS WRITING - 5

POSSIBILITY OF EVER giving way to experience. So that cancelled "Nothing" from the Ultimate Duality of Reaching versus Nothing, leaving only "Reaching." Those who argued for the alternative of Contented were dismissed as youthful optimists. Being one of the Contented was only possible when a desire was fulfilled. Ancient religions that had believed in a Cycle of Reincarnations capitalized on the feelings of being that had a short life. When life was extended, and literally included all the riches postulated for the Cycle of Reincarnations: learning ALL the lessons, experiencing ALL the feelings, making ALL the mistakes, enjoying ALL the pleasures, and finally made, with complete certainty, endless, there was a possible dichotomy between Contenteds and Reachers only for a time. Protons had been proven to have a half-life of 1060 years, but this was merely a lightning-flash in the darkness of eternal time, less than noticeable in the illimitable expanse of infinite time. Cosmoses could be brought into existence as playthings, projects for learning and understanding, studies even of eternal time. But over the expanse of infinite time, the burdens of eternal time seemed less than the thickness of a sheet of paper in a stack that would bridge the gaps between the stars. Mankind never truly experienced abundance until there was too much of it to handle fruitfully. The bitterest paradox of all was that the vaunted advice to "live each moment as if it were new-sprung from eternity" fell under the hollowness of "live each day as if it were your last" when days ceased to be when suns ceased to be, when eons stopped when matter sopped, and still the hypersmall particles, under the changeless rule of hypergravity, moved frictionlessly through a dance with NO possibility of completion short of total, timeless Nothing. So the Reachers, who knew only that they Reached, not for WHAT they reached, looked disdainfully at the Contenteds and merely said "Wait!"

NOTEBOOK 455

12/4/81
NOTEBOOK 454 introduced "hypersmall particles under the changeless rule of hypergravity." Subatomic particles, mediators of matter and energy, however basic, must have SOME weight (not zero), SOME charge (not zero), SOME difference one from another (at the VERY least all could have the SAME weight, the indivisible unit-weight, but there must at LEAST be unit-weight-charged and unit-weight-UNcharged). If charge is only a function of gravity, then at least there is a "graviton" and a "not graviton" of the same weight, since weight IS a feature of the world that must be "there," as is energy/charge/gravity. Even if the "graviton" is "real" substance and the "not graviton" is "anti-" substance, since energy/charge/gravity may even include that "dimension" of existence. But existence at LEAST is "there" versus "not there," so there must be AT LEAST TWO KINDS.
But Hypersmall particles are those which would remain changeless even after the Law of Maximum Entropy was finally fulfilled: no more matter, no more energy, only totally empty space AFTER the present, so that IF there were a clock there would be an AFTER. This distinguishes Time Before Time as the ineluctable mystery that still exists APART FROM hypersmall particles, which DID exist Time Before Time, but since they don't AFFECT either time or space, it doesn't MATTER. Just as they don't affect time or space, they don't affect matter or energy/charge/gravity/anti---but THEY ARE THE UNIT OF THOUGHT. They have no anti-unit, since Nothing is the alternative to hypersmall thought-units. Their size is zero, a TRUE point, though an easier way of saying that may be to specify that they don't exist in ANY space dimension, just as they don't exist in ANY time dimension. Their number is infinite, which means they COULD gather "together" (in one place, and/or at one time, both are meaningless) and be "infinitely dense" (though density is "number per SOMETHING," and there is no SOMETHING to which this number applies) or they could spread out (though there is nothing for them to spread out into), but STILL remain "infinitely dense." They move (through non-space) (and non-time) infinitely fast. They ARE (there is no past or future tense for them). Even "they" is a slight misnomer: back to the est sophistry that if there is no time and there is no space, there can't be two, since one would be "here" or "now" and another would be "there" or "then," and since neither of these applies, "they" could just as well be "one." So the complete, total, absolute definition/description/law of hypersmall particles is "ONE IS." Well, that would be the "end" of the Ultimate Duality: when all Contenteds become Reachers, all Reachers become ONE, and ONE IS---would it even be possible to say that it REACHES?? Maybe then REACH merely becomes IS. Which is the way out for the Reachers?! If a Reachers just IS, however, the Reacher sounds strangely like a Contented! ONE IS certainly sounds more like a Contented than a Reacher! Yet it must be stipulated that the Contented IS, really IS, and cannot be sophistried into Nothing. Interesting how "reaching" seems incompatible with "is." "Reaching" wants, agitates, moves, directs, yearns, FEELS---none of which is truly IS. Contenteds DON'T want, agitate, move, direct, yearn, or even (negative?) feel. Contented just IS. So maybe it's not the CONTENTEDS who have to become REACHERS but the REACHERS who have to be CONTENTEDS! So if the reachers stop reaching, they don't just CEASE TO BE, producing Nothing, wherein EVERYTHING ceases to be---they just become contented. WHATAWAYTAGO!!!

NOTEBOOK 457

12/11/81
GETTING READY FOR ITALY TRIP

Not yet REALLY affected with sleep-time worry about flight, but there's a solemnity and non-ease through MOST of these days that causes me to wonder why I'm not happier, and it MAY be "subconscious" tension about the trip OR it's just sadness about the climax of the relationship with Dennis, ending with his telling me on December 6 that he's even thinking of being "temporarily monogamous"---with DICK! Can't feel too great about that! Felt sick from the cold BEFORE Amy's wedding, and felt sick from drinking too much on Monday AFTER the wedding, but waited for pages before starting on the last Raven index, but haven't started YET (Friday, and will do a session, then eat dinner watching TV 10-11, so it'll start on Saturday). Got everything out of the way and even started on the list of things to do before the trip, now that it's 4 actual days left, assuming the plane leaves on time at 8 pm Tuesday, hoping the awful weather predicted for the middle of next week holds off until I leave. No return from Jean-Jacques or ANY notice from Laura or Marcello with only 3 more mail-deliveries left. Don't FEEL that I have much to do before trip, but even as I type I feel an agitation in my stomach. Spent the past two days looking at finances, and even miss the relationship to TELL Dennis I've paid off Rolf's porno "fee" for United Asbestos and have ALMOST taken as much OUT of the account already as I'd PUT IN! Watched TV the last few nights from sheer laziness: First "Entertainment Tonight" when OMNI was the same, then "Penguin Summer," really fabulous, then "The Patricia Neal Story" not THAT great even with Glenda Jackson and Dirk Bogarde until 11, then Benny Hill, then "Saturday Night Live" rebroadcast, then "Star Trek" of "Tholian Web," yet, getting to bed at 1:30. Turned OFF "Star Trek" last night, just didn't NEED it. But the time passes quickly, the trip will be here, then it'll be catching up again, a meeting with Actualism about sexuality, discreet cruising, trying to meet someone, and trying to do something USEFUL to have the goals and excitement that a "health update" said EVERYONE needed if one wasn't to get OLD before one's time. Having a relationship would work WONDERS, no doubt!

NOTEBOOK 458

2/4/82
AFTER THE ITALY TRIP

I've been back just over two weeks now, and am STILL not caught up. Got the bulk of the newspaper-magazine reading out of the way, as well as most of the bills and typing the journal, but still lots of things left, like seeing the doctor for my hemorrhoids, checking my IBM months, working on indexes to get desperately-needed MONEY (won't have any CASH to spend by the end of this weekend!), and showing the slides of Italy, and typing out three "Christmas" mailings: 1) a correspond-once-a-year sheet of 1981, 2) a "Merry Christmas I was in Italy" sheet of the trip, and 3) a journal for FEWER people this time. Still lots of movies and plays I want to see, but seeing "Pennies from Heaven," "Reds," "Sophisticated Ladies," "Days of Heaven," "Gallipoli," Riverside Dancers, "Taxi Zum Klo," and "Entertaining Mr. Sloane" in just six days, interrupted by an entire day spent organizing the Italian slides, is a bit overloading. And lots of little details like looking up Matta, writing to Paul about France this summer, finding the dates Don kept saying I should visit Atlanta, and putting Italian books on shelves, still bob up to be considered. So I haven't nearly gotten to "nothing scheduled to do, so I can just float," nor have I alleviated my tension about feeling that we should really be getting MORE business and MORE indexes from MORE companies. And writing and computers are still far in the distance, as is another lover. Sex great with Dennis for one whole time on January 20 for the month of January (and the year of 1982?), but I've been jerking off just a bit too much, feeling just a bit too horny and sorry for myself in the gym (which I've got back into the system, more than I can say about Actualism sessions), and would like to MEET someone to CUDDLE with, yet still can't say that I KNOW the Actualism guidelines for meeting someone outside the PELVIC BOWL. AND would like to get JJ's cigars and bidis for various "light" highs for entertaining times. But the main thing is MONEY, so I'll be getting to the two little ($235 + $332 = $567) for FEBRUARY bills, a bit late, though the $399 from McGraw-Hill any day should help with that, as should ANYTHING I can pry out of Andre NOW. And still ACTUALISM pages to type.

 

 

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