SUBJECTIVE 87 pages
SUBJECTIVE 87 pages, from 1/1/77 to 3/27/79, from DIARY 11543 to DIARY 14210, when I decide to STOP Diary and go to Notebook; real MELANGE of subjectivity.
DIARY 11543-11544 DARK-NIGHT-OF-THE-SOUL THOUGHTS 1/1/77
At times I feel very into light-work; at other times I think "This is really silly, one of the least productive things I've done, who do I think I'm kidding?" Remember Bruce Leiber saying that my mind will do funny things, but that I'll be convinced after the 5th, 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th. Bruce Jaffe saying that I should take nothing on faith but let things HAPPEN in my own experience. Then to the "Dark Night," the idea that the soul must DESPAIR before (even though Despair is a Capital Sin?) getting the goodies: how can MY soul get the goodies if I'm so hopeful that it WILL get the goodies? Do I have to PRETEND to despair? But the soul would KNOW it. Another painting into the corner: I THINK I might have to despair, THINK about despairing, but I'm actually HOPEFUL. If I LOSE hope, I'll just drop out of Actualism and that'll be that: I'll find something else, get interested in that, then drop that and continue to something else. But if I despair in THIS, without dropping out, merely staying IN will show that I still have hope. A no-win game! That I'm setting up for MYSELF, of course. Interesting how I thought to finish the page with the thoughts that I HAD, but I've gone through them now (except for the onion-like STAGES of despair: I think I'm feeling bad, then nothing happens, and I REALLY feel bad. Then what do I do, kill myself? But if I have to ACTUALLY kill myself, what's the point? Back to the story of the mysterious suicides again, while no one on THIS side can ever be SURE what's happening on the other side --- even the "visions" of the "dead but now alive" might be only some sort of hallucination, working of the brain rather than reality, game the mind plays to CONTINUE with hope. Abraham's quandary: if he doesn't actually DETERMINE to kill Isaac, God won't have reason to commend his perfect faith. There's no hiding from the REALITY of feelings --- but WHO or WHAT is this that's TESTING the reality of feelings before "awarding" the prize of faith or enlightenment? If there's only ME, only ME is testing the faith of me, the despair of me, the readiness of me. Do I WANT to renounce the world? NO, and that's all there is TO it. So I still continue with the wheel of Karma, continue not to die or to even WANT to die, and so I'm never enlightened. Again, is this the way it IS (for everyone) or am I just painting an awful box for MYSELF. But everyone IS everyone and everyone (me) paints EXACTLY the kind of box they FIND HARDEST TO GET OUT OF!! Even in the most "INEFFABLE" experience there's always (in me) the mind possible of saying "Oh, but that's just a trick, that's just happening to ME, to my MIND, what has this got to do with REALITY?" As if I had nothing to DO with reality, as if reality was something that I was "in," rather than "BEING" it MYSELF. WHO will award me enlightenment if not ME MYSELF? Will there be some "Blast" from the "perfect-me" that will so totally overwhelm the "imperfect-me" that there's no resistance left? No fight left? I can't relinquish the world from the point of having HAD ENOUGH (I, my body, my eyes, my senses, my cock, will always want more, while I live, I hope --- isn't this parenthesis full of it? Of what, truth, the problem, or shit?), while being "happy," so I'll have to relinquish the world VOLUNTARILY, when I CHOOSE to. But that means I have to CHOOSE saying "I've had enough; it's all been very nice, I'm not unhappy with it and could accept more, but I've had enough." THAT'S ONLY A TRICK OF THE HEAD, THINKING "GEE, IF I SAY I'VE HAD ENOUGH, I'LL BE ENLIGHTENED AND GET MORE AND MORE AND MORE." [LOVE that cartoon "MORE"; it's so ME.][with the HAND at the end MINE, too]. So it would seem that I have to have TRULY enough, EVEN ENOUGH OF ENLIGHTENMENT, before I can willingly relinquish this piece in the game (the idea of transferring to another piece with no memory of what THIS piece has done just doesn't appeal to me AS THIS PIECE; if I had an OVERVIEW, it would be OK, but I can't BELIEVE the overview until I EXPERIENCE it; yet I can't HOPE for that experience AS enlightenment, because then I'll NEVER see the Dark Night of the Soul, NEVER despair enough.). But then, "every path is the right path," and maybe I'll be the first to HAVE IT ALL: this piece, enlightenment, all pieces, and still be here, talking about it, writing about it. Well, if I have to choose what I WANT, wouldn't you know that it would be everything? Now all I have to do is GET it. Get it?
DIARY 11548 PLATEAU OF CALM IN INDEXING 1/3/77
Lie there doing light-work after having come (see DIARY 11547), and suddenly it feels that all the anxieties and tensions drop away: I'm working on the index to the extent I want to, doing the editing I demand as a professional, and even though it'll be later than I'd said it would be because of the facts that (1) I have to answer all my questions myself, (2) Dorland's gives me the chance to KNOW what the right answers should be, (3) I'd started typing pages too early in order to fulfill an unreasonable demand on ACC'S part for 1/3 the pages by today and I'd been silly enough to try to do it for them, (4) I still demand to take the time for the small amenities: the Times puzzle, light-work, the diary, mail, eating. But I've gone beyond the anger I felt Friday night, the impatience Saturday, or even the pleasure Sunday: this is the way it is: I'm doing a good job. If they run into difficulties because they don't get it from ME but two days after I said I would give it to them, it's partly because I didn't get it from THEM for two MONTHS after they said I'd get it; they manage to operate with the first, they'll have no trouble finding a way to operate with the second. If they don't want to take a chance with me in the future, they lose a good person, that's not my problem. I actually make more money on the smaller ones anyway. Though there's no doubting but that this was a GREAT experiment: I find how I operate with 21,000 lines and 2,000 pages, I find that I CAN'T do less than my best with comfort, I find that I SHOULDN'T go outside the normal order of marking, typing, sorting, editing, and typing pages: it just adds to the time and does NOT add substantially to the time SAVED. I just hope that I can keep the air of equanimity when I talk with John. But there's no getting around the fact that this is the way it IS, and any energy taken with wishing or hoping or arguing or excusing or lamenting or agitating just goes to waste. And I have the time to make out these extra pages, too, and though it's a bit too chilly in the room (though the heat's just come on), all's right with the world, and I wonder if it was John who called before 9:45 when I put the phone back on and didn't leave a message.
DIARY 11558 THE JOLT OF THE SUBWAY 1/11/77
Maybe it's because I've been spoiled in my apartment, wearing earplugs when I sleep, keeping sounds low (except for the typewriter), but when I get on the subway (and I DO think it was an exceptionally bad one) I'm so VERY struck by its extreme noise in moving, the screech of the brakes when it stops, the uneven rumble of the doors when they open, the shouting unclarity from the loudspeaker that's more static than verbiage, and the shouting of the people to make themselves heard to their neighbors. Then it's dirty, papers all over the place, and the floors are worn and scuffed, and even the graffiti looks old and dirty. Some of the direction signs are blank on the train, and it's older ANYWAY, so I keep checking, thinking I may somehow have gotten on the wrong LINE. But worse than all that are the people: it seems that the blacks and the drunks and the bums have taken over completely: even the black couples on dates seem shoddier than I remember them have been, and there are lots of single people with no one to talk to and nothing to read, not even a newspaper, one of which is spread all over one part of the floor for people to shuffle through. Kids come careening through the cars with scuffed cuffs and open jackets, swinging umbrellas belligerently, and those who are whistling are not whistling from happiness but from a sort of challenge. Someone sits and twirls an umbrella in the last seat, thumping it against the floor and walls and making people around him look at him nervously. I sit sunk in the book, trying not to be there, but wondering (it MUST be) if this is how the subway hits people from out of town or out of the country: the noise, dirt, LOWNESS of the people. It sounds snobby and snotty, but that's how it IS, and the noting of it is so strong that I keep wondering how much was the chance of the train (coming back, everyone of "note" seems to get off in Brooklyn Heights, and the people left on the train seem to peer after them, almost as if drawing a bead on the next target: an enclave of "someone different" to be brought down to the common level by infiltration, violence, and degradation) and how much my new perceptions, or how much it's just the way it always was, but I hadn't noticed. Or IS it changing into a ghastly parody of Soylent Green" already?
DIARY 11603 WHERE AM I NOW? 2/1/77
Haven't done one of these in ages, and I seem reluctant to leave the typewriter once I nearly get caught up. Sorry about catching a cold, though when I told Dennis this morning, watching "Rains of Ranchipur" that I felt quite good, it was the truth. That's not so close to the truth now, even though I've been moving through the day with winter underwear on, to combat the living room temperature which got down to 60°, and Dennis has the heater. Have enjoyed the pleasure of nothing definite to do for the past week, other than answering Dennis's questions about his index, worrying about his line-length and completion time, and using up TDF vouchers. But on the horizon loom many things to do: the job for McGraw-Hill, answering the indexing letter, renewing my driver's license, doing income tax, transcribing the datebook and sorting pages and catching up on movie lists. Of course, Dennis living here for the past three weeks has been quite a change too, as was the typewriter breakdown. But good news in that I seem to be getting paid for BOTH jobs at a higher rate than editors expected. At this point I feel like nothing more than sitting in a hot tub, smoking, and cuddling with Dennis, but he's not going to a tryout tonight to try to finish the index by Thursday, noble to the end. Irked by having to edit all the pages that I type, but that's what IS, so I'm seemingly OK with that. Running a temperature of 99.5, feeling good at last that the evening heat is coming up now at 7:40, as opposed to the chill during the day, but feeling sorry for poor Dennis, who hasn't come in about three days and is humping the chair in back of me every time he comes in to ask me a question on his final editing of the paperclips on his cards. I just hope he can get to 1800 lines! Should get back to exercises, too, and turned down an offer from Ginny to work in the office for her for, now, $7.50 per hour. Now Dana and Jody are coming for dinner on Saturday; hope my cold's over by then. Why the hell doesn't my Being of Light do something about it?? Wonder how the light-work would go if I tried it in the tub? Get electrocuted? This page wasn't a smashing success, but I guess I'M not feeling like a smashing success, either. The return of the stuff, refused, at last, from National Lampoon may contribute a bit of downness, too.
DIARY 11645 MY HOUR'S DEPRESSION FOR THE MONTH 2/21/77
Know that it's futile to keep searching for the two black brackets that have obviously disappeared (but how and to where?), but hunt in places I'd looked already until I actually feel physically exhausted and drained. Sit in the chair while Dennis sorts cards and try to take hold of myself. It's only an APPEARANCE of defeat that makes me think that my entire life's organization and control is out of whack. I save and save and save UNTIL I need something that I've saved, and then I can't find it. Dennis suggests "You CAN buy some at the hardware store," but that's not the POINT. Why keep things and organize things and keep track of things if YOU CAN'T FIND THEM WHEN YOU NEED THEM? But that's the same ineluctably bad thing about death: life isn't there when you really NEED it. Time isn't there when you really need it. That's IT. Thoughts of quitting the diary float through my mind: I'm many days behind, Dennis has been typing cards, I have to catch up on the journal pages for the half-year, want to catch up on correspondence and do my OWN cards for the econometrics index --- maybe I should just leave it slide and write for publication. But then the same saving thought: it doesn't really take that LONG to write the page per day: it's OTHER time that I waste that should be more strictly controlled, not THAT writing time. Still the depression sits (thanks that the TV program pulls me out at 7:30, so it only lasts for an hour), and I'm so drained that I don't feel like doing anything. Contemplate light-work, which ironically (though I suppose there IS no irony in light-work) is about organization and structuring this week, but don't do it. Don't DECIDE not to do it, just DON'T DO IT. Didn't DECIDE to stop being depressed, just turned on the TV and got involved in something outside my petty problems. Though the PROBLEM was petty, the THOUGHTS and the LIFE they were about weren't petty. It bothered me, but I could come to no conclusion about it, which added to the botheration. Again think of Arnold and his rat's-nest, random-access mind and apartment and don't want to be like THAT, but my saving HAS served me in the past (never thank my organization when I HAVE found something that I need, only kick it when it doesn't WORK), so I moved through the depression and out the other side. When next?
DIARY 11689-93 IMAGE OF A BABY CRYING / ULTIMATE FRUSTRATION 3/3/77
Lying in bed this morning after the alarm rang at 8, I felt too tired to get up and too mentally active to stay in bed. Thoughts of what I have to do (vacuum, take laundry out, let Dennis use the typewriter, write letters to Mom and Rita and Bill and Grandma, work on the McGraw-Hill shorthand letters, send checks for various bills, write (and the first shall be last and the last first) (since I'm NOW writing)) filter through my head and then I come up with an image (OR set of images) so strong that they won't leave my mind and thus serve to get me up at 8:30 and to the typewriter. I think of a baby crying, not in a way to get attention, or in a way that shows he's bored, but in a frantic, all-out, strangulated series of screams that don't destroy the world only because the frustration of the baby doesn't have that force as yet; he doesn't know HOW to adequately express the frustration. The cries may be characterized as being so intense that the pure scream of frustration becomes interrupted by coughs, chokes, and gasps for breath. It's not the long line of practiced crying, it's the staccato uh-huh-huh, UH-huh-huh, UH-huh-huh of sobs so deep that the lungs have to strain to get even to the MIDDLE of some of the deeper-lying strands of sadness. I see the image (of myself to my sister or of someone else to myself, and I wonder at the emotional burdens the hidden memories of such confrontations that might still drag down the very soul-action of the individual) of a baby crying for some legitimate reason (hunger, pain, need for assurance), and a mocking face suddenly being thrust near, antagonizing with an equal-strength shout to be quiet, a sneering echoing cry that says "You'll NEVER get what you want; you can scream like that until you DIE and I'll never give you what you want and can't get for yourself." At some level, I fear, the baby would READ AND KNOW the imports of such a message, know and absorb and hate and feed fuel to the unquenchable fire of frustration that continues to erupt from the pit of the gut. I see myself nose-to-nose with my sobbing sister, shouting at her to be quiet, shut up or I'll hit her, and then possibly carrying out the threat, adding present pain to past frustrations. I wonder at my mother or my father doing that to me, planting the seed of an infection that lasts, even grows, to and past the present. Could such images arise unless there was a like image buried in the past? But rather than dwell on the distant past, my mind swoops to the immediate past: my frustration of yesterday KNOWING that Dennis was using the typewriter TODAY, wanting to type SO MUCH, and STILL doing NO typing yesterday: merely reading, which should have been postponed to today; merely loafing, the ultimate sin in a life of limited hours. That, ineluctably, leads to the PRESENT (no, not ineluctably; in the past the PERSUAL/PERUSAL of the past could have gone on MUCH longer with no effective outlet in results) frustration of lying in bed, SHOULDING to be up (haven't invented a new form for an irregular verb for awhile), yet NOTTING/KNOTTING up. So I used the image of a baby crying as a lever to pry me away from the warm sheets and the warmer body of Dennis lying comatose next to me. (And as I suspected, once I got up, Dennis then got up and started making coffee, reading Soho News from December while waiting for the coffee to perk, saying he'll relieve me here when he's ready to start.) But I knew once I got here the REAL topic would emergy, (emerge with energy?), and that would be the INESCAPABLE frustration of the pursuit of the ULTIMATE QUESTIONS OF LIFE: The "What's going to happen to me?" of the individual, the "What's going to happen to the world?" of the ecologist and economist, and the "What's going to happen to the universe?" of the philosopher. Stapledon, in the three books of his I read the day before yesterday, ended in the core of all frustration: KNOWING that there could be no ULTIMATE answers with certainty, yet KNOWING that life had to be continued in as positive a way as possible with whatever solace may be drawn from whatever PENULTIMATE conclusions he'd reached (since his ULTIMATE conclusion, agnosticism, isn't terribly emotionally satisfying: the core agnosticism of every life, reachable by going deeply enough until the depths forbid further exploration. Maybe the depths ARE unplumbable in that as soon as some satisfaction is found at depth, question as to the validity OF that satisfaction arise, causing a plunge deeper in search of new satisfactions, hopefully resulting in deeper satisfaction, which in turn can be questioned at a deeper level --- leading one into the vortex of DESIRE (for satisfaction, or for ultimate answers --- they're the same thing, I suppose) that most religions have recognized as the core-seed that must be extirpated before any kind of equilibrium with the forces of nature (which, I guess, must be characterized as DESIRELESS, since it would make no difference to NATURE WHAT happened, including total annihilation) --- if DESIRELESSNESS is a characteristic of PASSIVITY (as seems equivalent), and passivity is a feminine characteristic (as seems appropriate), I can NOW see why Nature in the LEAST CONCERNED SENSE would be cast as feminine, even though a lack of concern doesn't seem to wed with the idea of MOTHERHOOD --- though the possible resolution of that paradox floats through my mind as the idea that the MOTHER gives birth to the children DESPITE some fleeting knowledge that the children will be miserable and unhappy at times: she's not only creating a new life, she's creating new SUFFERING (as well as new happiness, but that doesn't yield the bitter fruit which is being dissected here), yet she does it ANYWAY. So possibly the image of the totally passive, desireless mother isn't far from the EXISTENTIAL truth of motherhood, as opposed to the EMOTIONAL truth that people would SEEK: that mothers embody hope and love and total protection from the frustrations of the world: if that would be the case, arises the image, the mother would never give birth, never expel the baby from the carefree placental days into the world where everything is NOT provided. Then the step to looking at Nature as a mother follows: since the baby doesn't really BEGIN to live until it's born, until the mother relinquishes her total care of the fetus and, BY her expulsion from the Inner Garden of Eden, DOES give permission for the child to grow and be free, with the NECESSARY PRICE OF FREEDOM THAT NOT EVERYTHING CAN BE GUARANTEED!, so Nature seeks mindlessly (but perhaps not unemotionally, not UNlovingly) to push men into an unproviding world, so that an EQUIVALENT growth and freedom may be experienced. Now the point is to LEARN from the experiences and frustrations, whatever they are. In my case, the lack of typing yesterday, which produces the frustration today, SHOULD lead to the learning that things should be done when they're convenient, not postponed. But this seems to be the ultimate lesson that I can't learn: working at IBM I was frustrated by not having the time to write; quitting IBM I was frustrated by doing other things and not writing. Yesterday, a good day to type, I sat reading. Not that reading is BAD, but it's not convenient if I don't want to feel more frustrated than life would ORDINARILY be. If we're going to be frustrated in an ULTIMATE sense, at least we can make things easier and ease frustrations on a TEMPORARY basis. But I don't learn. I read in the Sufi book that it's not LIFE that's upsetting, it's OUR REACTION to life that's upsetting. Life will continue as it is (unless we change it) REGARDLESS of our reactions. The woman upstairs will tromp around regardless. I have essentially three alternatives: move from under her (solution by vanish), continue to be annoyed by it (which doesn't change a thing, only increases frustration), or stop being annoyed by it --- nothing I can do SAVE moving is going to stop HER moving about (well, I CAN live in a constant covering wave of sound from a typewriter or humidifier or radio or record, but THAT gets tiring, too), so I can only stop my MIND from MINDING her moving. (And I must remember the fear of the UNKNOWN-MOVER-ABOVE that enters my mind when I think that she may move out; I could get someone with kids (though Mrs. Johnson doesn't want anyone with kids: she doesn't want anyone with cats and the people have cats, why should I figure that because she doesn't want anyone with kids, someone won't move in with kids and defy being put out on the basis of some anti-discriminatory law?), someone who plays a radio or hi-fi constantly, someone who has parties at 3 am, or, worse, simply someone who walks heavier and more constantly than SHE does, doing NOTHING that I could legitimately complain about. But after est, after Actualism, after Actualization, I still agitate at the sound, still am frustrated by WHAT IS, though I can't change it. And the union of the image of myself as a frustrated person as the baby crying melds into one: I, the infantile, scream and scream and scream what I want (silence --- a silence OTHER than death, however) and do nothing inside my OWN mind to make that possible --- and that's the only place to MAKE it possible, since obviously the world isn't going to do it FOR me: there will ALWAYS be something out there that various of my senses will continue to take as unwanted. So I have the choice of doing it HERE AND NOW, or of doing it LATER (which is the same as not doing it at all, because it ISN'T here and now), or of doing it ONLY when it's done to ME, when I'm prohibited from sensing at ALL with my physical senses because the physical body dies. Which isn't a choice. And there's really no CHOICE between NOW and LATER: as long as it DOESN'T happen, I've AUTOMATICALLY made the choice of doing it LATER. So it isn't, as everyone continues to say (even GOD in the Koran says "Be," rather than "Be a little later," or "You're GOING to be" or "you WERE"; no, it's the "instant, eternal 'Be'"), a matter of DECIDING to change, or of TRYING to change, or of THINKING about changing, (or, in my case, of making lists of things that have to be done BEFORE I change), it's a matter of CHANGING, instantaneously, of BEING rather than becoming. As this morning: as long as I lay in bed unhappy, nothing was changing. When I got the lever of the image of a baby crying, THAT (though only me) got me out of bed and doing something. Result? For the past hour I haven't felt the frustration that I felt while laying in bed. As imperfectly as it may be, these pages have been DOING, BEING something --- though the image floats through that these pages are only the COVER-UP (like the music covering the tromping upstairs) for the DEEPER frustration: I know I can't live forever, but rather than dealing with THAT I deal with things more IMMEDIATE --- but EVERYTHING is immediate EXCEPT death: when DEATH becomes immediate, there's not a thing ANYONE can do about it, even the person who creates his own world: when a person dies, he MAY AS WELL create his own death, since any OTHER kind of creation isn't going to do anything about it. And ONLY then (IN NO WAY before) can the questions ABOUT the ultimate frustration (what happens NOW?) be answered.
DIARY 11729 I SIMPLY CAN'T WORK NORMALLY 3/16/77
This episode: the writing of 61 letters for McGraw-Hill, points up as plainly as possible the fact that I can't do ORDINARY work in an ORDINARY way. I'd have the assignment for about 6 months, but then the Pediatrics index took me up to the middle of January. That was still all right with Lauren. Then the Econometrics took another week, which I didn't tell Lauren about. Then I got into an entertainment whirl: not NECESSARY things, but things that were nice, like the Flash Gordon serial marathon, the Rock Follies marathon, and this culminated yesterday (I HOPE) in "The Magic Christian," finishing "Imperial Earth," in watching "La Boheme" followed by the "Eleanor Roosevelt Story" followed by "Laurel and Hardy." Lay in bed this morning and thought about it, and TWO points seemed so clear that I had to type them: 1) I have so much reluctance/inertia/laziness/drag on changing ANYTHING that I'm slow to switch from "entertainment mode" to "word mode," and thus tend to delay it until I really HAVE to do it. As a corollary, if I compress the work into the fewest possible DAYS, I have to get into the "work mode" ALSO on the fewest number of days. And maybe that's connected with point 2) My productivity goes up so much when I get into something that it hardly seems worth doing ANYTHING that I haven't REALLY GOTTEN INTO. When I GET INTO these letters, the THIRD one goes VERY well and quickly, and talking to Lauren NOW about having the letters CHECKED comes ANOTHER point: if they get 10 at a shot, I'm SURE THEY will hussle and change LESS than if they got 3 at a time, but the FIRST is the worst and the second is intermediate --- it's like my idea of a FAST: MY worst fast would be one-day-a-week: the first day is the WORST, and the rest are so easy that on the 5th or 6th day, it seems more natural NOT to eat than to EAT, just as when I'm INTO work, it seems more natural to WORK than to be ENTERTAINED, just as when I'm entertainment-oriented it seems more natural to PLAY than to work. With these realizations, AGAIN two things: 1) I'LL TOTALLY accept this way of acting so that this way of acting will VANISH, and I'll be able to establish a more "normally normal" way of working. 2) I'll understand this way of acting and so PLAN that I do two jobs at once to get "a normal day's work done for BOTH" without hassle, or tell people like Lauren that this is what they can EXPECT, as I hope to do for her TODAY.
DIARY 11730 THINKING ABOUT WRITING AGAIN Also 3/16/77
Like the previous page about the impossibility of writing normally, this has two points: 1) I'm thinking about writing because I've come UP TO THE LIMIT of being able to delay on the 61 letters for McGraw-Hill, which means that EVERYTHING ELSE is finished in the line of entertainment and "must-do" and I CAN work on the letters, but it's JUST AT THAT POINT that I tend to think of writing: Writing is ALSO something that "the deck has to be cleared for," which tends to fall to the bottom of the priority list (since the things that have to be cleared off the deck ALL take priority, and the DECK means that there's nothing more to DO, so it's AUTOMATICALLY the bottom of the priority list). So I think about writing and my frustration builds because now I have to WORK. 2) People ASK me if I'm doing any writing; Dennis is saying that if I dislike plays I've SEEN so much and I think I can write better, why don't I do it a) for HIM for a starring role, b) for ME so I'm not frustrated anymore; Mom is sending me articles on Scott Meredith; I'm again thinking of the idea that if I REALLY WANT TO BE PUBLISHED THE ONLY THING THAT STOPS ME FROM BEING PUBLISHED IS ME. That a sufficient amount of follow-up (in other words, I'm talking about getting into the WRITING mode so that I can slip into the PUBLISHING mode --- the SAME LAWS will probably affect both these modes: when I GET INTO THEM they'll work far better if I have a LOT to do than if I just have a LITTLE to do. So I lay in bed this morning, debating doing light-work, and BOTH these sets of thoughts (DIARY 11729-1730, THIS page) were so uppermost in my mind that I just HAD to set them out. And since I work better under outrageous deadlines, I just phoned Lauren and committed myself to doing TEN letters in time to BRING THEM TO HER tomorrow, and this will be the BEST way of doing it: which comes out to 10 on the 17th, 10 on the 19th, 10 on the 23rd, 10 on the 25th, 10 on the 29th, and 11 on the 31st, to get the 61 in according to the schedule AND as evenly distributed as possible in the time LEFT to me. And now that I SEE that, I can play (HA) plan my OWN time around them, and so can SHE, and it'll get done in a high level of productivity and I can progress to my NEXT crisis of understanding in life.
DIARY 11739 EATING AGAIN 3/18/77
Just can't work that through, particularly now that I'm upset about my life and Actualism. Sit in front of the TV set after having roast beef and beans for dinner (after downing about 6 chocolate chip cookies while watching Monty Python), and then get thirsty and have some of the limeade. Then get out the fruit cake and have one of the sections, then the brownies and have about three of them to emphasize the pot high which is wearing off when I jacked off earlier. Then I still want to feed my face, so I toast one half a muffin with butter, but that's not enough, so I toast the next half with butter and peanut butter, taking a bit of peanut butter on a knife while waiting. Then I think of the raisins, and eat a handful of those, and then have some more limeade, and still want to stuff my mouth, so I get out the cream cheese and eat lots of that right out of the package. Finish by eating the last of the chocolate chip cookies and having more limeade, and by then I'm thoroughly disgusted with myself. I'm tired, I should just go to bed, but there's not TOO many chances to watch "Killdozer," even though it ends with the "blue-spirit" just LEAVING the bulldozer after battling with the crane, without any real explanation of why --- like Arnie put it, "Just like the battery run down." I KNOW I feel guilty about it because I'm feeling guilty about everything now that I'm on an energy dealing with my Mother, who's coming to town tomorrow. I KNOW that I shouldn't do it but I'm doing it anyway. I remember myself thinking as a solution to people's problems: "Well, if you don't want to do it, then don't DO it," forgetting the trouble I had in the past when I wanted to stop masturbating, stop smoking grass, and now stop eating. Or, from a positive thing, I wanted to meditate, exercise, or do light-work. It's just not that simple: the time doesn't fall into the right place, and there's an infinite number of "Well, this is special, I'll do it just this once and start tomorrow." But that never comes. Even when I DO either NOT eat or DO exercise, it just lasts for a few days or a few weeks at best, and then the inertia (and the benefits from the joy of DOING it) cancels out the good intention, and I'm back to the SAME OLD HABITS. If this is what Actualism can help root out, I'm for it. If it's telling me that I AM like other people more than not, I SUPPOSE it's good for me, but I don't have to LIKE it, do I?
DIARY 11750 THOUGHTS ABOUT STOPPING GRASS (more on DIARY 11753) 3/22/77
In the mid-basic Actualism counseling (see DIARY 11748-1749) they said that I'd have to give up grass if I wanted to get into advanced. They said it made the energies fuzzy and difficult to concentrate on, and they predicted that my problems with scheduling, organizing, priorities, and time (even to the extent that the grass-soaked person wants more to absorb entertainment than to do anything else) would solve themselves. At first I bridled, then I thought it would be a good idea, then I thought of Dennis. He reacted less freely than I would have liked: he refused to think of the possibility of smoking while I wasn't, saying it was something shared, and NOT like coffee. I tried to talk him around it, but got nowhere. Told him that I didn't appreciate his holding grass as something so SPECIAL, nor his mistrust of my being able to "be with" him if he smoked and I didn't. The IDEA of stopping was good, but the PRACTICE was bad for the first night: it was a good thing that dinner lasted so late that we could easily just get to bed after it, though I tossed about a bit longer than I think I ever did at his place, but the morning was rather sad: we just lay there, hardly hard, and though we hugged and felt close, there was the barrier (constructed by me?) of divergent interests between us. He got up quickly, and I went through the rest of the morning with a vague headache, probably caused by the about three glasses of sherry that I had last night WITHOUT the tempering qualities of marijuana. I think of myself as being free of it in about two weeks, but behind there hangs over the Actualism-promulgated belief that the effects linger for from 6 to 24 months. But there's no doubt that I HAVE felt more short of breath in exercising than ever before, that I HAVE picked up a rather persistent cough that I don't care for, that my body and head ISN'T where I'd like them to be, and though it would be easy to say that grass doesn't AFFECT any of these things, it, DAMMIT, IN FACE, IN MY MINE, DOES seem to affect these things. It's a dependence I don't want to continue; the feel of smoking before I go to sleep IN ORDER TO GO TO SLEEP is a poor one that I'd pushed into the background until an opportune time --- and THIS IS IT. So I'll continue my abstinence, see what happens with me physiologically, and with Dennis, sexually, and see if it's automatic enough or IF I have to decide BETWEEN grass and continuation with Actualism.
DIARY 11753 MORE THOUGHTS ABOUT STOPPING GRASS 3/23/77
(Continuation of DIARY 11750) Talked more about it with Dennis lying in bed: coming up with 4 alternatives: either it comes between us, we step back and look at each other and never come back together; I declare defeat and go back to smoking (both of which I don't want, the first less than the second); he continuing in EXACTLY the same way (smoking); he stopping and we BOTH get to new places (much to be preferred). He said that SOMETIMES he had the feeling that the grass was weak and he'd like stronger grass, which I said I'd thought might lead to stronger DRUGS, though in fact it didn't in me OR in him --- yet. I brought up the bit about not being able to sleep WITHOUT it, which happened a couple of times here and at least once at his place, to be sure he was aware of it, and I reminded myself and him of the weekend when BOB couldn't smoke between est, and I couldn't do ANYTHING until at LAST I smoked and it was somewhat better. Then remembered the terrible hassle with EATING, which has MANY references in the diary, the latest on DIARY 11739 from last Thursday, and I told him that there WERE facts: 1) I felt that I'd be eating too much with the munchies (didn't tell him that I'd decided to get no more cookies), 2) felt about 10 pounds too heavy, 3) felt a couple of inches too big in the belly, 4) felt weaker than I'd felt before: when I was 25, I could hit level 5; when I was 30, I was content with no higher than 4; when I was 35 I very rarely got to 4, but pooped out at 3; and now at 40 I find myself pooping out at 2 and seldom getting to 3. So there's all THAT. I insisted that I thought of it as more of a problem for US than for ME: I would have no trouble with it unless HE had trouble with it, and then we stopped talking and started necking and he was quite hard and he rolled over onto my chest and started getting into his cock and I pinched his tits and he kept on spewing juice and finally he just sat on his cock, pressed forward, strained and clenched, and ONE huge glob of come strings out of his pink slitted purple-and-white cockhead, and he groans, and then a SECOND huge glob of come strings out, and I dive onto it, sucking and tonguing, pressing down on his bulb, which spasms again and again and he twists and gasps and grunts and loves it. The NEXT morning I jerk off with some trouble and he has fun, but doesn't come, so it SEEMS as if the problem might be solving itself: I crowed MORE THAN ONCE "I was hoping we'd get to new places, but I didn't expect to see it TONIGHT!"
DIARY 11768 CYCLES IN "MEFISTOFELE" 3/28/77
The program mentions two cycles: the ENCOMPASSING of earth and heaven in a giant CURVE of the poem, and where the "man-pendulum" returns to the ignorance of childhood. All the sets are backed with broken circles: the wreath frayed by the earth itself, the garden bower broken by the gate, the prison curve by the door. Even the babbling woman behind noticed the vortex and whirlpool on the scrim. Then the MUSIC is presented in the prologue, repeated and developed in the opera (doubly, since Mefisto repeats phrases from the three loves to tempt Faust one last time at the end), and then repeated and augmented in the epilogue. Then I talk to Dennis about the cycle of reincarnation: how the "Arrestati, sei bello" would say THIS is it, I don't NEED anything more, and at the same time stop the cycle of rebirths that result from the Karma of everyone getting all that they want being played out. (And if this IS true, that means that the earth will have to DEVELOP to a prosperous golden age, or else no one will be able to GET all the luxury they desire!) Lots of places I whirl my fingers to indicate the spinning motifs in the music, and remind him of Marguerita's spinning song in "Faust." Then the Wheel of Fate in Carmina Burana is mentioned, and I just now think of the circling of the records to pour forth their sounds, like the circling of reels of tape to spin off what THEY have recorded on them. Then there are the circles of orbits, nebulae, and cosmic-sized objects in the projections, over which are flashed the circling, cycling blips of lighted dots that could stand for the circling electrons about their round nuclei. I RETURN to see the opera, bringing someone younger, who one day will introduce OTHERS to it, continuing THAT cycle. The BALL of my typewriter responds to my back-and-forth fingers, powered by my circulating BLOOD, which is nourished by the cycle of eating, assimilation, and excretion. My LIFE goes through the cycles of repetition, too: too much entertainment, too much sex, then too little of everything. My mind spins in circles, the energies of Actualism whirl clockwise and counterclockwise, and even time is marked by the circling hands of the clock, as the cycles of the seasons repeat in the circling of the earth about the blazing sun, that started at a low-point of energy, rose to a blazing high, and will sink to a low-point at the end of ITS cycle, and maybe EVERYTHING that cycles is only an element in a GREATER cycle that we have no possible hope of realizing; or if we do, of expecting a SUPERCYCLE beyond.
DIARY 11769 AGAIN MORE THOUGHT ABOUT STOPPING GRASS Also 3/28/77
(Continuation of DIARY 11753) Dennis questioned farther, saying how could I think about stopping grass for Actualism if I believed in "both/and." Then he repeated the thought from Mefistofeles: the devil is he who says NO, so where do I profit from accepting ANY no? I think that I CAN have it both ways: I HAVE cut down on grass (smoked MY GRASS (not Azak's or the brownies) on Sunday for the first time since the PREVIOUS Sunday), and it might be good to CONTINUE the lower rate of consumption. And there's NO doubt that I felt spaced out this morning compared to the other mornings. He didn't want to affect my decision, but I think he could tell I was rethinking it. Even this morning he said, "Cut DOWN, sure; but QUIT!?" I thought of the lack of desire I had to refuse Azak's grass, and the problem would have come up on Friday if Art had brought stuff to Dennis's for dinner (which he didn't). And then even ACTUALISM said that I could slow down gradually, and we'll see how the chances of smoking and not smoking might turn out. There's my fantasy that they'll be able to tell from "reading" me that I might even be able to go into the first level of advanced (and I DO think they're worried about legality; if Carter makes it legal, would ACTUALISM think it's so bad?) And it IS the weak grass that I myself grow, not some grand stuff from elsewhere, and there MUST be a difference in KIND. And then why shouldn't I be one of the first to experiment to see how far I can get in Actualism WHILE smoking, though not while lying to them, it just isn't worth it. And then there's the thought that (sad as it is) Dennis won't be around FOREVER, so that there might be a chance of getting into a group of people where smoking isn't so much a PART of their socialization --- when it becomes as COMMON as smoking, it will be more of a kick to NOT smoke, perversely. Just as one can lighten booze, why can't one lighten grass? Additionally, I'm NOT fooled by the "false highs" of grass; I use it for SEX and that's that, so why can't they allow that AS they allow sex, even SEX (though that's an ANTI-argument, isn't it?) that isn't strictly legal. But if THAT doesn't harm (wasting "that reproductive urge") why should grass do so? One ALWAYS has to consider the source, consider the HUMANITY and error-proneness --- and the changes wrought by TIME --- of ANYTHING human, which, not to be forgotten, is what Actualism IS. And who's to say that I do NOT have more advanced ideas on EVERY plane than someone like an older Russell Schofield has?
DIARY 11774 JUST LIVE THROUGH IT 3/29/77
Walking to the session past Central Park, I got the strong image that for MOST moments in life, there were VERY FEW DECISIONS to be made: either I was going somewhere, so I couldn't be going somewhere ELSE, or I was doing something that prevented me from doing something ELSE. So there was NO use in fretting ALL the time (as I was in touches) when I was in the movie that I SHOULD be working. If I should to THAT extent, I should leave and work. If I don't leave, stop THINKING about it. Then, nearer the hotel, it came to me that when the decision left me VACANT, I could just as well do light-work, in the case of lesson 13, just "trilling up and down the scale." Then Tuesday morning was pretty bad: felt lousy getting out of bed, probably due to the psychological strain of the grass when I think, I shouldn't. But here too: if Dennis seems SET on having grass to make sex successful, why then I'll have grass. If I can gracefully avoid having grass, I will. I got a call from Madge yesterday and sent off my resume again to Oliveri, but didn't really concern myself about whether I would get an offer or not. If I get one, I'll probably WANT to take it, which would wreck the plans for England and/or Africa, but that's the way it goes. Dennis has told his folks he's saving up a nest egg for England, so we might do THAT (though that's a bit frightening now that two 747s have just collided in the Canary Islands, killing something like 580 people!) But if I go, I'll go: no amount of worrying about it now will send me or keep me from it. Anyway, Dennis doesn't have his passport yet! I just keep going, avoiding phone calls to Lauren to say I'll be late, because I suppose I fear she'll say I CAN be late, which will make me later. But today DID work: I felt awful, I did light-work, and then I felt like sitting down and doing this (and checking "Nature of Personal Reality" to see that Seth says marijuana is OK), and then will follow by SOME work on letters, even though it's already after 4 pm and I have things to do before going, so I won't be able to work for more than a few hours, but it'll make up for the two days in which I haven't done ANYTHING on the letters, which is I guess the REAL thing that I feel guilty about! Still working on lesson 12 of Actualism, I suppose?
DIARY 11776 LETHARGY 4/2/77
Lethargy! The word slants across the mind with an indolent pace, echoing the feeling that the meaning purports. I read through Ballard, sunk within the slow cadences of his sentences, laden with multifaceted adjectives and convoluted phrases. I read, and read, and read; and as the cadence in my body slows with lack of exercise, lack of movement, I sink into lethargy. Increasing the sensation with food, I can feel the weight, now, in my stomach from what I've eaten, listless too much to dress and go out for groceries, overwhelmed by the quantity of disorder about me to begin to pull things together; wondering about Dennis yet relieved that he hasn't called, hasn't put any obligations on my time. It's so GOOD to read, to immerse myself in the convincing fictions of someone like Ballard, rather than to work, to type letters or transcribe tapes, to index. And Ballard is so evocative of ideas (see DIARY 11777), making the reading feel "worthwhile." But still my mind circles back, thinks of the time I'm wasting, thinks of the things that it should be doing, and I do them slowly, luxuriating in the time at my disposal, thinking paradoxically of the RICHNESS of my absorptive life and at the same time of the contrast of MEAGERNESS of input when I'm reading, hermited in my apartment, which leads to this feeling of lethargy. I'm glad to find that it's just as willingly broken: that I can sit at the typewriter when I feel like it, phone for reservations tonight at Riverside Church, call Dennis to find that he's eating breakfast at 1:15 pm, and feel that I've at least accomplished THAT much today. This is the reflex action that I feared would fall when, IN FACT, I found that Lauren was willing to give me even THREE more weeks to finish the letters for her. So the time passes in the magically smooth way it does when I'm doing exactly what I want (disturbed only by the trompings of the cat upstairs), and the books flow under my eyes and threaten to encase me in a glittering tomb just as those described in Ballard's "The Crystal World." His descriptions are so LUSH, so DECAYING, that it washes over the reader, leaving a putrescent slime that one is loath to touch, yet the action following the lethargy adds another touch of contrast (see DIARY 11778) to the ideas that whirl through my dizzy brain.
DIARY 11778 CONTRAST Also 4/2/77
Interesting mistype on last page of DIARY 11777 on Ballard: CONTRACT, as if it were the nature of the CONTRACT that God made with himself in becoming Man that he was doing it for CONTRAST: to contrast his perfection with man's imperfection, his eternal orgasm of self-love with man's fleeting orgasm that dangles away like a carrot on a stick: but if the donkey is full, he doesn't CARE about the carrot. SURFEIT desperately needs the contrast of WANT, just as the delirious happiness of Thursday (see DIARY 11779) needs the dreary self-castigation of Friday evening to heighten its brilliance. Ballard's "Crystal World" becomes the brighter for being contrasted with the drabness of the forest outside the influence of the crystal-front. And the obvious play on words: something that's a CRYSTAL is FROZEN, and FROZEN is the proper antithesis of the warmth and fire and movement of life: those who want to be FROZEN want to DIE, want to STOP the rush of life: "Arrestati, sei bello," as the CONTRAST to the marvelous flux around them --- but the next step would be "Eppur, it DOES move," by ANOTHER wise old man who knows what is real and what isn't. So, too, I have the contrast of being saved and being damned, being up and being down, being under- and oversexed, being too much in the world and too much out of it, too mental and not at all, too physical and not at all. I read too much or not at all, collect too much or not at all; clean too much or not at all. Love too much or not at all. X too much or not at all. Eat /sleep /fuck/ moviego/ musiclisten/ paperwrite. I lag behind in the diary or speed ahead. Contrast brings the light from the dark: contrast IS creation; creation IS contrast: separate night from day to CONTRAST them, time created as a contrast to timelessness. Faith versus nonfaith, god-worship versus atheism. Joy versus sorrow, mind versus matter, rich versus poor, knowledge versus ignorance, and the ever-shifting ground of contrast between all of them. The positive and the negative, the plus and the minus, the start of ANY cycle which is the end of the previous cycle: Ouroboros, black/white holes, music returning to the basic chord, man returning to dust, the cycle of rebirths and karma and Nirvana: it's ALL CONTRAST!
DIARY 11779 TOTALLY ECSTATIC HAPPINESS Also 4/2/77
I call Dennis on Thursday and say "I'm so happy I could SPIT," and then reel off the causes of my joy: heard from Lauren that my deadline has been extended by three weeks, so not only am I NOT offending her by being a week late already, it's OK to be LATER; I just got the films in the mail (though there are things that later go wrong: the bulb burns out, some of the film gets stuck in the "self-threading projector."); I'm getting another index from ACC so they're REALLY not mad at me for my enormous bill from January; I've found the review of Bejart's "Notre Faust," we're seeing the last performance by Kathy Posin, and my birthday dinner at Tavern on the Green had been transformed by Dennis's dinner-dessert for me: the incredible banana fritters with hot chocolate sauce, cinnamon sauce, and lots and lots of schlag. With the enormous strawberries and hazelnut cheesecake that HE got. And then finding it was a GIFT and not part of what he owed me! And then hearing from Paul just as I was wondering what his brother thought of the baths and if he were leaving without being in touch with me (and even picking up my Statistics book, though that didn't happen until Friday); and even George Allen's getting a job through me with Dick Sime, DESPITE the fact that he didn't call to tell me that. Still with the overload of getting the free projector (WITH all its problems) from Rick, the films at a bargain price, and the renewed possibility (though the letter Friday seemed to say no) of a job with Madge at IBM. Mom seems to be OK, Rita seems to be OK, and even Grandma seems to be OKI: THAT is, going downhill and will probably soon be dead. Dennis and me doing well after ups and CONTRASTING downs (see DIARY 11778), to the point of HIS smoking grass and coming EVEN THOUGH I'd not be smoking and had come myself four times that afternoon with movies. And even the purse-lipped "hms" with which my news of being ABLE to come four times in one day brought to friends. And Rolf and Theo and Dennis and Arnie and even Bob Grossman saying they want to see the films, and Bob G making the joke, EVEN the joke "We can go to bed now, we're no longer sisters," is a kick! So I watched movies, jerked off, then met them for the dance, and only LATER got into the negative feelings about the damn CAT upstairs (see DIARY 11780).
DIARY 11780 ANGER WITH THE CAT UPSTAIRS Also 4/2/77
I sit last night listening to her party upstairs with laugh-shrieking women until I can't stand it, and then put on "Mefistofeles" to drown out the sounds until they appear to stop, and then someone takes up the guitar and plays and THEN the cat starts its bouncing around. I almost get up in anger to call her until midnight, but then the sounds die down and I continue reading in peace until 2:30, finishing my fourth book of the day, which of course increases my irritation as it increases my joy (see DIARY 11778 on CONTRAST). Then up in the morning at 9:30 with a CHORUS of sounds: guy downstairs singing and shouting, other repairmen shouting somewhere, the woman upstairs walking around, and the cat bouncing and scratching and scrabbling, and the doves cooing outside the window, wondering where their feed had gone. Into the living room to read and the sounds CONTINUE up there until I go to the phone, restrain myself enough to say "This is Bob from downstairs," and then ask "WHAT is wrong with the cat that it's making such sounds?" Well, SHE lapses into anger quite quickly, talking about my "writing nasty letters full of UNTRUTHS" (yet they were ALL true things, I took pains to detail). "You call only when you're on the verge of a nervous breakdown," that I should talk when I'm calmer if I want to have good relations with her, and I say I ONLY bother people when I'm PUSHED to holler at them, that I'd RATHER leave her completely ALONE if she'd leave ME alone. "I spent $150 for you" (on rugs that should have been there all along). "Nothing wrong with the cat" (but then after my call the sounds from the cat STOPPED COMPLETELY), and she mentioned "your neuroses" (brought on by her CAT!), and "We won't talk now," when I say that if the cat doesn't keep quiet I'm going to come up and THROW IT OUT THE WINDOW. She says a few abrupt sentences and hangs up, but THE CAT DOES STOP! Then I get down to typing JUST as she comes back up the stairs, and I'm sure she thinks I type to annoy her just as I think she has a cat to annoy me, but SHE'S the one Mrs. Johnson and Mrs. Gray want to get rid of, not ME, and I didn't even COMPLAIN about her party, and I even think of writing ANOTHER letter based on this conversation; maybe I WILL.
DIARY 11797 BEAUTY AGAIN 4/5/77
DEVASTATINGLY handsome black-haired fellow with pale skin, perfect eyebrows, an incredibly masculine chin-line with no trace of beard, and slender jeans that showed a NICE bulge as he slouched down reading, with LOVELY level gaze when he felt me looking at him --- but he didn't stay with me. I just then read in "Zen Mind" (p. 21), "In the beginner's mind there are many possibilities" and I add, "And NO established criteria of beauty," hoping that some sort of enlightenment would get me OUT of this fascination with the INDIVIDUAL EXTERIOR beauty and free me to see the INNER beauty of even the AWFUL-looking people. Then this morning I read p. 65: "We should not attach to some fancy ideas or to some beautiful things." My God, that's my LIFE! All my writings are the writings of fancy ideas, all my desires are centered around what I judge to be beautiful: whether in people, bodies, cocks, food, places to visit, books to read for fancy ideas. I seek and seek, but for the external, the transitory. That black hair will fall, the chin line will sag, and the crotch become unappealing as the years pass --- BUT THAT DOESN'T MATTER TO ME NOW: I WANT THAT NOW! I suppose Zen would say that I should just see that I want that, realize that I'm not having it, and that WANTING it won't get it for me, so unless I ACT toward getting it, I won't have it, so why think about sit. Except for self-torture. Sweep it away with light-fires? But it's so BEAUTIFUL. But beauty, I realize now with some bitterness, is CERTAINLY NOT TRUTH, and truth has NOTHING WHATSOEVER TO DO WITH BEAUTY. Truth is transience of one aspect and permanence of another; and the sooner I can break myself (that's too strong) from the one and non-attach (watch it, there) myself to the other, the better I'll feel. But THE TEST of my enlightenment would be when I can look at someone PHYSICALLY beautiful and judge them SOLELY on what they have inside (kidneys, gizzards?) in the plane of the spiritual. I can't AT ALL see that coming --- in fact, I can see it getting WORSE: is it equivalent to MY body getting less and less pleasant as I get older, until even I am finally willing to say it would be better if I died? So my desires for masculine physical beauty will mount until I have NO chance of seeing or feeling or receiving affection from it, and I'll in disgust QUIT searching for it? That would have to come in a time when my frame of mind is NOT the one that I have now, that's the most precise way I can describe it.
DIARY 11818 DIFFICULT TO BE POSITIVE 4/11/77
Read the article about resorption of jawbone that makes teeth loose, and felt that I should ADD that to my list of overweight, athlete's foot, more exercise, lockjaw (that I'd forgotten about in the dream, where my mouth just wouldn't OPEN with comfort, and I had to watch my teeth so I wouldn't CLENCH them too hard), meningitis, gray hair, corns, hemorrhoids, sore muscles, too-long hair. And how impossible it was to think of HEALTHY teeth, TOGETHER feet, a SLENDER body, YOUTHING rather than aging. Everything tells us to worry, giving us the symptoms of what's WRONG. Soap-opera plots are filled with suicides and diseases and operations, but where are the happy people, the smiling faces, the optimistic outlooks, that could act as an antidote to these? "The Wild Duck" had a catalog of negative people (see DIARY 11809), the "best" plays are about the unhappiest people, and even "Ladies at the Alamo" didn't dwell on the aspects of being rich and famous and possibly talented: it only looked at the back-biting, the nervousness, the drinking, and the agony. Even funhouses are full of hacked corpses and disfigurements, while amusement parks are considered childish and puerile. Reading should be for enlightenment, not entertainment, and I watch TV as if it were some sort of classroom, criticizing myself when I watch something like "Nabonga" which is admittedly trash. Even Ernie Kovacs has to be thought of as "classic" before Channel 13 would deign to show him. But I must admit the Carol Burnett Show, deemed greatest, was piss-poor in its selection of high spots. I prefer opera to jazz, tortured ballet to ballroom dancing for personal pleasure; so that can't help. Classical music impresses with angst and even pop songs dwell on unrequited love disgustingly. Where is the REINFORCEMENT for the POSITIVE, the POSITIVE role image to counteract all the "better not act like THIS or THAT will happen" in the theater? No news programs about happy people, no special features about delight, no Times headlines about a happy family --- even COMEDIES show how people who COULD be happy get themselves bound up in artificial problems. For positive role models, this place LACKS: except for manic Carol Channing, pushed Barbra Streisand, and macho Paul Newman. Bejart has critics, Nureyev had detractors, Cavett isn't working, Muktananda is in India, Erhard is castigated, and people keep telling me that I'm not doing what I should be doing to be AS PRODUCTIVE as I can. What's POSITIVE??
DIARY 11827-28 INTERVIEW AT IBM 4/15/77
The calmness that comes from the confidence of being on time and vaguely read up on Assembly language makes it fun, and then I pass TV Learson coming out of IBM Headquarters (Madge saw him later almost getting killed crossing Madison against traffic) and he looks at me as if I MUST be IBM, and I feel good about that. Up to 11 after having to sign in at the receptionist's desk, impressed by ALL their professionalism, and in Central Employment someone's talking on a phone at the receptionist's desk, I glance back at an Italian who smiles self-consciously at me, and then who turns out to be a pudgy graying Nick Oliveri hangs up and asks me to sign in "right on time at 10." He asks me to wait for Madge, I look through "The Black Collegian" to which IBM has the inside-back cover ad, and she's in at 10:05 and we go into a room to talk. She's looking great with longer hair and a gray suit, laughing at the idea of her interviewing me, and she gives me a quick outline of the department: David Pitou has about 100 people in something like Marketing with IUP's (Installed user's programs) and PP's (Programmed products that are forever maintained by IBM), Stockholder Relations (mostly PR and paperwork), and Programming under Felix "Phil" Abate who has almost 2 shifts of operators under one manager and 9-12 programmers under Madge. She banters about CICS, and IOCS with monitor facilities, OS/VS (Virtual Storage), and I say that it's all to be transparent to the user and she brightens for me. She says I'd have to come back as a Staff Programmer with a salary in the 20's, but not to talk about salary, that Phil's easy and OK, will do what Madge says, but that Dave is argumentative and self-defensive. We agree that she's given me the technical interview, and then she goes to Phil about 10:55 and takes me in to him. He's friendly, inquiring about why I quit and why I want back, and everything I say he says HE believes: you should find what you want, you DO change, you're not as regimented anymore, he's fairly sure I can remember things from before, I'm eager to come back. He can't think of much to say, so he phones Dave's secretary, tells me how to get there, and I close by saying that I'm looking forward to more responsibility and he seems to REALLY like me. So I'm out and over to the Corning Glass building and up to 6th floor to sign in, get a Visitor's pass, and his secretary escorts me though lots of locked doors to Dave's office, and he's a pudgy Walter Terry type that I like immediately. He apologizes for three interviews in a day, but I say it's all been VERY pleasant, and he jokes about stress interviews where the front legs of the chair have been shortened an inch and bright lights are behind him to fluster me. I talk a lot: about how sad I was to find a lack of professionalism in publishing, how there was no challenge after a bit, how he'd certainly question why I left and why I want to come back, how great Madge was to work with, and he says something that leads me to ask about the "paper blizzard" and he's very positive about it, almost as if it were a field HE wanted to conquer; talking about monthly status reports to which I enthusiastically reply "Fantastic!" He emphasizes the privacy that the company allows. "Your life's yours after 5 pm," no longer paternalistic, no longer forcing you to move around (Phil volunteered the no-longer "I've been moved," and he agrees), and I'm SO pleased with the whole thing that I end up by saying, I HOPE not too effusively, "Gee, I'd really like to come back to work with IBM," and Arnold later said that it was one of the best things I could have said. He stabbed and GOT science-fiction, to my surprise and pleasure, when I talked about writing, though I said it was more from the social-comment point of view, and we talked about the old days of Service Bureau and the emphasis now on quality rather than quantity of coding. I felt so good toward him that I wasn't even concerned when he made a point of his last words being "Bye-bye," rather than "I'll be seeing you," but he said they have more people to interview (which Madge confirmed), but that "for both you and us we'd like to see it decided soon," and I assured him I was available for work immediately. Good firm handshake, good vibes when I said I wasn't worried about the fingerprinting, having done work with military in Army and with SBC, though still worried that they haven't gotten my files yet, having been transferred to California, and there's still the "Do not hire" possibility by the miffed Gladys, but I HOPE she said I was being groomed to be a Manager, I was so good, and that's just what they'd WANT now. As I told Arnie, it was hard to be pessimistic about anything but it's being so PERFECT!
DIARY 11829-30 THOUGHTS ABOUT REJOINING IBM Also 4/15/77
Partly stemming from the SUCCESS of the interviews yesterday (see DIARY 11827-1828), partly from my eagerness to still prove that I have EVERY flexibility to do WHATEVER I want, partly from an attraction to the ORGANIZATION, the EXCELLENCE, the BRIGHTNESS OF PEOPLE, partly from the money, I REALLY NOW WANT TO GO BACK. I lay in bed this morning thinking of ALL that could be CHANGED if I return: I could get a new apartment in midtown to avoid the awful subways, maybe even BUYING a place as an investment; I could get into a few articles of GOOD new clothes that I desperately need; I could rent a car for weekends of pleasure, travel expensively to all the places I still want to go (it seems MUCH more reasonable to travel three weeks to all the places I still want to go, rather than charting a LONG time away, which takes me away from New York, makes it hard to find anyone to go with --- and then in the back of my mind is always the possibility of transferring to World Trade and getting PAID to relocate for a few years in places like Tokyo, Kyoto, Rio, Madras, Paris, London, Sydney, Moscow --- another reason for BUYING a place: I'm sure IBM pays expenses for HOMES and not for apartments), catch up with the newest elegant restaurants, and feel easier about paying $15 for Broadway plays. I'm actually EAGER to exchange auto noises for the woman upstairs, dogs howling outside, and the inconveniences of windows that won't wash, toilets that won't work, and falling ceilings. Think of sharing a place with Dennis, making togetherness easier; walking to work, having a GOOD life with PRODUCTIVE days, rather than these spates of self-castigation about not writing or doing anything productive. For the time being, I can even look forward to long BMT rides to get my reading done. Pope JUST calls at 9:45 (I call him, rather) and talks of the pointlessness of his rich friends' lives: having lunch with the faggy photographer Christopher at Warhol's Factory, going to Regine's with the Ambassador of Kuwait, who gave her an electric incense burner, and someone's "Extraordinary!" when Pope said he'd never met Andy Warhol. I was thinking of the pointlessness of MY life: I DO work, but it doesn't ADD to anything: I work ONLY for the money --- though there IS a kick in knowing that I'm being paid over $20 an hour for the writing, but the ANXIETY about the writing isn't WORTH it. I recall how marvelously challenging and productive the days were at IBM, and want more of that. I QUIT knowing that it needn't be permanent, so why can't I go BACK with the same idea, though my ORIGINAL idea for wanting to go back (how STRANGELY things work!) was that I wanted to grab my vested interest in retirement for TEN years of service, but it might be FIFTEEN years of service or FIVE years of service, and I'm NOT about to ask NOW. I think of what I'LL LOSE: daytime TV programs, which I generally consider a waste anyway; 1 am TV programs, which I hardly ever watch NOW; afternoon movies, but who needs to save $1.50 when I'm making over $20,000 a year? I do NOT, NOW, go for walks in parks, sit on the Promenade, use the outdoors at ALL, or WRITE during the day, but surely the WISH to do so will come up with IBM, but I should have the SENSE to know that I didn't do it at HOME, so why should I want it at WORK? I can see myself MORE easily getting into a ROUTINE of good eating habits, exercise habits, light-work or whatever, and even WRITING if I have the framework of the day to operate in. (I suppose I should even have a typewriter if I want to type my DIARY page during the day!) It just FEELS like a step in the right direction, and I'm building up so MUCH on this that I hope I DO get it, or I'll be VERY disappointed! Or, possibly, will there be a subtle feeling of relief if I DON'T get it? Maybe I'm just working both ends against the middle, which is what I usually do, but I certainly won't DIE no matter WHAT happens! And now I can afford GOOD films, EXPENSIVE photography, and even to buy the Reich records that I want --- and how about a MOOG, how about BUYING a cheap car and garaging it, living with Dennis, eating at the Palace and Windows on the World, and getting ORCHESTRA seats to the ballets that I really want to see? And traveling QUICKLY to FAR-SCATTERED places rather than getting into the area of spending 8 weeks and doing LOTS of things, where the impact is diminished by the quantity of things absorbed, not broken enough by assimilating things in New York. And I can PAY Meredith to look at more things, and can even SCHEDULE the continuous rewriting of "Acid House" and "John" and whatever may follow on a REGULAR basis: new swat at discipline.
DIARY 11847 MY IBM HOPES ARE QUITE DASHED 4/21/77
Madge calls and I laugh about my calling her yesterday to find if anything was scheduled for today, but she says she read my file AFTER Nick Oliveri read it, and she says that there are some VERY bad things in it: (1) It looks like I quit THREE times, though she thinks the third time is a misreading for a long vacation that they gave me to think over quitting (but they have the record of the FIRST quit, which we'd both hoped they'd lose); (2) The formal final interview with the personnel person (whoever THAT was, and I sort of remember the fag, but I don't think it was, Madge said someone like Cuomo or Como) was very damaging, saying that I'd quit at a time that was IMPORTANT to my project (which it was NOT), that I put my personal wants above the responsibilities to the company (the most damning point of all, which leads me to think that I would probably STILL do that, so should I want so much to GET into IBM?), that I took LSD and ALSO smoked pot to the extent that I got visions of things that I had to write (Madge said that by LAW, now, nothing that personal could be included in the files; that she would have destroyed a lot of it had she gotten it first, but Nick saw it and said did she really thing she should push this through her boss, HIS boss, and two managers up the line in Corporate who would have to sign off on me?), and that I "understood that I had minimal chances of ever being re-hired by IBM" (which I probably did, and it might be the only thing about the whole schmear that I really regret doing --- though there's nothing to do about it NOW. Madge suggested I write to Gladys and ask HER for a job: hoping she'd SEE my file, get RID of lots of the stuff, and make it better for me to GET a job in the future); (3) There was a lot of old correspondence in the file, correspondence between me and Andy Gyenes which makes me out pretty bad, and it's probably something about job-cards or management or something that will sound pretty bad now. She said that she didn't have a chance to read it in DETAIL, but she doesn't mean to be DISCOURAGING now, but she even had to talk NICK into continuing to consider me. I KEPT thinking about the intense personal satisfaction I got from the interviews, hoping that would help. But she said that the final letter from Gladys was QUITE good, so it wouldn't have been her that made it all so bad. But I, with a crash, came back to "well, maybe I'll get it and maybe I won't," which I SHOULD have had through the whole thing, save for the INTERVIEW!
DIARY 11853 COINCIDENCES IN 24 HOURS Also 4/21/77
The coincidence-machine operates overtime: Madge calls with the bomb about my IBM files; I get depressed, call Dennis, but 5 minutes later Bruce calls and wants to see me, sympathizes about IBM, says we'll talk about it after est, which he'd forgotten about. I get there: there's MATTHEW, who I didn't even know had been through est. I mention IBM and he comes up with PMI and the fact that he thinks I cold get a job WITHOUT working full time, leaving time off for vacations, wants a copy of my resume. Meanwhile, Bruce told me to sign up on the rides list; never did before; he said he'd get a ride to Park Slope; I got a ride, almost alone of people in group; and he DIDN'T. Toni has to wait for friends while I stand and talk to Matthew about good lovers, IBM jobs, death of a parent, liking for Actualism. Then I get home and ROLF is on the phone with HIS idea for forming a new company with me in it to work as I wish for lots of money (see DIARY 11854), talking from 11:30 to 12:55, and I go to bed with my head SPINNING from the overactive day. Then the next day it keeps on going: phone Marty about 1, he can probably (Oh, don't forget that Rolf KNEW ALL ABOUT PMI and its history and founder!) get us tickets for "Trilogy," and then I say, "Well, since you suggested it, I told Dennis and he said he wanted to see "Rigoletto" on Sunday, and Marty is teaching a COURSE about it at 5 pm BEFOREHAND, with Regina and Mike and Emile Renan and his wife as guests (he was the FIRST person onstage in the FIRST New York City Opera production); and "Carmen" lecture flopped because Rudel asked first-opera attendees "Any questions"; "Fledermaus" lecture flopped because Brenda Lewis ranted against female Octavian, where NYC has MALE, and told all funny lines that NYC CUTS; so he's got the third, with a 15-page set of notes, with photographs of the REAL Rigoletto, and the best living baritone in the world today: Pablo Elvira, the ruined 38-year-old voice of DiGiuseppi, and a marvelous Gilda (Rolandi?) who won't work, and a scheduled conductor (Campanino) that Niska stalked out on who Rudel later substituted for, and I phone Dennis and burble that I LOVE him! THEN just as I finish off the McGraw-Hill and prepare for my LAST index, GINNY calls while I'm out and asks me to phone her about ANOTHER index, so it's probably GOOD that IBM may not come through, anyway, it'll be an adventure and a game EITHER WAY!
DIARY 11874 WASTING TIME AT DENNIS'S 4/26/77
There's no good reason for limiting the topic to Dennis's, either, which builds up the frustration even more. I go there, skim through New Yorkers and Smithsonians and Art in Americas, read the Times, watch TV, and sometimes just sit behind the table and eat slowly while he cooks, washes dishes, or shines his shoes. I don't feel often like bringing a book to the table because that really smacks of using him to serve me. But I lay there when he sleeps longer, listen to his conversations, fail to concentrate when he recordings are on, and don't feel like taking notes or writing because he doesn't have a typewriter there. Now, maybe that will be remedied by his GETTING a typewriter. Keep wanting to take Updike's "Picked-Up Pieces" there so there will be something in short snatches that I can read --- and turn to see that this would also apply to the "Introduction to Philosophy" and the "Nature of Personal Reality." So there IS a way to get through all these books. He doesn't bother against bringing his various books to my place, so I should take them THERE, and one goes into my bag at this point! That's a good example of "The setting-out of the problem encompasses its solution." But I should examine my OTHER wastes of time: my riding on the subway while rapt in contemplation of a beautiful unattainable man, my incessant talking on the phone with Rolf, Pope, BobR, Arnie, Marty, Dennis (interesting through it may be), my mooning about book-lists and lists of things to do --- which should all be severely differentiated from writing in the diary, washing dishes, cooking, vacuuming (though once in 45 days hardly counts as over-vacuuming), or light-work. Still there's the idea that there aren't enough hours in the day, yet there's the feeling that I'm not putting them to best use. Maybe there should be fewer movies (doesn't this sound familiar?) and plays and operas. There's something going on EVERY night, it seems, and it would be nice to spend an evening typing, or reading, or sorting through things, Again, it just seems that there are so many things to KEEP UP WITH that they constantly expand, until at last they'll fill all my time and I won't have time for anything new unless there's a drastic weeding out of trivia.
DIARY 11876 WHERE AM I GOING? Also 4/26/77
Almost tempted to use the worst statement to summarize where I was last night: "Something's WRONG!" But there's not really the feeling that something's WRONG so much as that "something's CHANGING, something's going to HAPPEN." At least, soon the IBM decision will come through, and THAT phase will be over. Soon I'll be finished with the index, so THAT'LL be through. Then I'll clean up some old stuff that I want to do, indulge in more book-buying to assuage THAT pressure (after all, I haven't checked the 4th Avenue shops for, I think, a half-year since October), and maybe even play with my stamps. Undoubtedly, Actualism is playing a large part in things: where est came with a flurry and petered out, this is coming in gradually and having a larger and larger influence on the way I look at things: my brain emptying out dates from that (see DIARY 11872), and I might get more into the body-work, which will take up MORE time from my scarce supply. But possibly the thought of forcing myself to write WHEN I'm working for IBM (as sounded so nice), might come about if I DON'T work for IBM, but there's just so much to DO before the deck is cleared for writing. And the pressure for travel is building, if Dennis will EVER go for his passport application! What a pity it would have been to get sucked into IBM BEFORE going on a long trip; what a joy working for Lambda would be if they DO pay good wages for a short period of time and then give me a lot of time off. Think of poor John C and Ivan being separated for 7 months, earning "enough for the next 200 years," but neither of them having the time to ENJOY it --- until they're too old to do anything else, I keep telling myself, and I DO find myself thinking more about the FUTURE at a time when I'm tending to stand more in the here and now, so how's THAT for a frustrating paradox? Then there's the background thought of (gradually growing) going into Actualism advanced and thinking of BECOMING A PART of that family of light-workers. Certainly there isn't any of the back-biting of recrimination of est, isn't any of the lack of support OF THE MEMBERSHIP of it (though there's not much support from the real world yet, though wouldn't it be a kick to be in the forefront of a real WAVE of Actualism activity?), and ONLY TIME WILL TELL, and that's what I'm complaining I don't have enough of, but LEAVE IT ALONE, AND IT'LL COME HOME, AT LENGTH!
DIARY 11890 MORE THOUGHTS ABOUT WORKING AT IBM 4/30/77
Just the ability to watch TV until 2:45, then sleep as long as it feels good, schedule whatever I want to in the evenings (like est on Sunday, June 5), and have time for almost an hour in the morning for light-work --- I'd have to get up at 7 AM if I wanted to do that when working for IBM, which would mean I'd have to get to bed at MIDNIGHT at the latest all the time, which would be a great pain. Lots less TV, lots less evening entertainment, and then when would the hour always spent (as an average) on the diary come in, and when the mail, and talking to friends? It could be at work, but then I'd have the same pressures on intense concentration as I experienced marking the Pathology index, where I chewed at my finger-ends and my cheek-insides while I went through it, consciously lowering my shoulders every five minutes as I typed. And then I'm rewarding myself on Monday with a trip to the library to check on books, and maybe that afternoon down to 4th Avenue booksellers, so when would I do THAT except on weekends, when everyone else has time to do it? Frustrated that I could think about working on sending out "JOHN" while I was working, and when I'm NOT working, I don't have time for it. So many things still on the list, which would be harder to do when I'm working 35 hours a week as opposed to the 25-30 that I work as a MAXIMUM when I'm hard at work on indexes, and then there's no gainsaying that I make more per hour working at HOME, and then don't have the problem of the time it would take to COMMUTE, or even to find a new apartment that would enable me to walk to work. And then the week with stamps, the catching up on my various lists, would seem to take up the rest of the time, and then when would I READ? At least the ODD times that I take the subway gives me a chance to do that, but if I walked to work, I'd have to schedule TIME for that, and there'd be none left. So why can't I SCHEDULE the time I'm spending now? I say that indexing has lost its challenge, but I still get to READ good new books in areas I know nothing about, which is more fun that dealing with the SAME ASSEMBLY LANGUAGE all the time, which offers even LESS of a challenge at IBM, unless I'd go into management; so I'm appearing to be resigned to getting a NO from IBM, though I'd still like my immortal to work on a YES, or at least "whatever's best for me," which in the Zen world would be "whatever HAPPENS."
DIARY 11916 WANT TO DO EVERYTHING 5/8/77
Have the indexes (one on English, one on hyperthermia) to do, have the Times to read, haven't done light-work yet, tell myself I want to phone Mom on Mother's Day, and want to put down thoughts on all sorts of things. Bruce calls and puts the idea in my mind that I'll walk over the Brooklyn Bridge with him instead of sitting inside and talking, and I read in the Times that computer experts are debating whether machines/computers can be made to think or not. If we don't know precisely in what manner the BRAIN can think, how can we SAY whether (or when or for how much money, or for how great an interconnecting network) a pile of machinery can do it. When we know enough so that we can duplicate in machinery everything in the brain, we can answer that question, and in the posing of THAT question, the answer is obviously "Yes!" And Bruce talks about the mental-emotional-perceptual levels and I say that what I think of as MY mind, emotions, and senses are DIFFERENT from these things, and he has to satisfy himself with "And all these things shall be revealed to you." Then I watch a Camera Three with the increasingly unpleasant Faubion Bowers looking at the court of the King of Solo, with their extraordinary dancers, and how can they look at this same dance "which represents the movements of the soul" year after year, when I get tired of going to NEW dances all the time? And maybe THAT question contains the seed of the answer, too: if I get tired of watching DIFFERENT dances, they DON'T get tired because the dances they watch are the SAME! And then a fleeting advertisement for stamp-collecting comes on and I think of the stamps waiting for me, and the other things on my do-list (and there's thanks to Lindblad at the end of the Solo program, which brings up the whole field of travel), and the involutions seem endless. I recall that I ALSO wanted to develop the idea that DOGS looking around for improvements would hardly be able to think of THINKING about death and love and past and future as an "improvement," no more than WE can think of a GREAT agglomeration of neurons that will represent the NEXT step in evolution (maybe with a fantastically elaborate "Glass-Bead Game" which WILL be similar in complexity with life on earth), and believe that it will represent an "improvement," as life cycles onward.
DIARY 11934 LAZINESS 5/16/77
How bizarre it is! I have no trouble spending the entire day on stamps, but when it comes to DOING something productive, I just stand around, staring into spaced, wondering what to do next. I KNOW that I'm hungry, KNOW that I have to finish up the diary pages, but I just don't START MOVING, I just stand there, knowing I'm wasting time, and nothing gets done. Only the idea of myself standing there IN FACT wasting time gets me to move at ALL. So what IF the sun is shining in the kitchen window, I can at least put on the chicken to give me my second meal of the day by 6 pm. So what if the socks ARE in the tub drying, I can merely move the stand out and take a shower that I need. So what if stamps DO appeal to me: I now have TWO indexes that have to be done by the end of the week, so I'll just have to DO them. There's no use thinking about the tape that should be typed from Bill, the stuff that I have on the list to do, because thinking about them won't get them done, so why not do something ELSE? But the frozenness of the inability to act impresses me: it borders on severe depression where people don't do anything at all. It started while I watched Dickens's "Hard Times" on TV from 4-5: I felt that I SHOULDN'T be doing it, then told myself that I can't work ALL the time, then rightly reminded myself that I did NOTHING in the line of work ALL DAY SATURDAY, SUNDAY, AND MONDAY, so it's more laziness than anything else. Not lack of energy, since I have the energy for the things I WANT to do, but lack of energy for PRODUCTIVE things. I think of the direction and "Higher Will" that Actualism has been intended to give me, and think of the wings for a second, then think of just simply SCREAMING for some sort of release, then wonder if I'm hanging onto sanity by some grim fingernail's edge, kept from blithering lunacy only by the force of my will. But then, isn't everyone? I think of the generally happy framework of my life, and wonder how people can stand it who HAVE to work to support wives and children, and it occurs to me that they don't even have the time to DEBATE not working, DEBATE what to do next, they MUST and MUST and MUST, and in a certain way the problems of indecision are TAKEN FROM THEM. Or worse.
DIARY 11937 THINKING 5/17/77
Again the misery. Thinking about it doesn't change it: in fact, since it's "thinking about it" that's the problem, thinking about it PERPETUATES the problem. I sit before the typewriter loathe to start typing in the diary. I really want to be doing my stamps. I'd come home by 10:30 and sat down and done them, and done them, and then finally dragged myself out of the chair at 2:15 and put the chicken leg into the oven to warm for lunch. But then I sit in the chair, cursing Watson upstairs for playing the thumping bass with the screeching soprano of her recording of "Three Penny Opera," cursing the workmen at the building they're rebuilding on Love Lane, cursing that I have two indexes sitting on my desk, both of which should by rights be done by Friday but I'll be lucky if either is done by Monday. I HAVE to work, now that I have them, and almost (but really try not quite to) envy those people who HAVE to be at work: they HAVE nothing to think about, they just go to work like they have to unless they're sick. If they stay out to play with stamps or go to movies or catch an afternoon TV show, they wouldn't be at their jobs long. I don't have those problems: I have OTHER problems. I'd like to read (which I wouldn't be able to do if I worked, so I shouldn't want to do it now, but I do), and then there IS the problem of the telephone: Arnie calls to talk (argue, to be more precise), about junk, and just then the phone rang and it was Bruce Lieber to talk some more about Actualism, and I wouldn't have the chance to DO that if I were working for IBM. So I should congratulate myself that I AM free and "pay" (how I HATE the use of words like that) or "trade" a bit of discipline to GET work done for the privilege (don't like THAT use of the word, either) of the free time that I DO have. So to stop the flow of thoughts, I sit down and type this page, then have lunch, and then return at 3:15, much too late in the day (the worthless image as talked about in Actualism on Monday, indeed), for my own good, but it IS the fact, and what I will intend to do is to finish these pages as quickly as I can, seeing as I've DONE the stamps for today, and get into one or both of the indexes before going to the play tonight.
DIARY 11952-54 CHANGE OF LIFE!! 5/26/77
Whatever is the (was the) REASON for it, the final effect is too strong to resist writing about. I DOES feel like a change of life, and I phone Pope to tell him about it, but he's busy listening to a Carter press conference so I take the time to type. I'd been running behind in my diary. I'd had not enough time to work on the indexes I had to do. I'd worked on my stamps without getting a feeling of DOING anything valuable. I'd gone through the numbers of Alvin Ailey and Martha Graham to painstakingly choose a performance with numbers I hadn't seen, and BOTH of them change two numbers to ones that I'd SEEN already, and NEW numbers were taken out. BUT with the Ailey I settled down to enjoy "Blues Suite" and "Revelations," and they WERE enjoyable. With Martha Graham I barely got ruffled about it, and looked at "Diversions of Angels" and "Deaths and Entrances" as if I'd never seen them before. I checked back and found what I was doing on October 4, 1970, but confused what I was doing between 12-1 on May 27, 1977. All these items were input, along with a glimpse of Dennis's "Wisdom of Insecurity" that read (p. 78) "To hold your breath is to lose your breath." This morning I woke, thinking, and found that I'd been holding my breath for the past ten years. I'd been writing in my diary, collecting stamps, organizing lists, working on indexes, going to entertainments, collecting books to read, doing things, but NOT writing, NOT putting anything OUT from all that which I was taking in. I remember numerous pieces in which I'd expressed the same statements, but this time it FELT right (I even turned on the Wisdom Light). Then I recalled one of the brilliant breaks in my LSD session, when I realized that "RECORDS" were just not necessary. But that was at a time when I was keeping for FEWER records than I'm NOW keeping. The idea (often stated) of going into a camper was always foiled because I had so many books, papers, souvenirs, programs, tapes, files, records, and lists that I would want to take along --- there just wouldn't be enough ROOM. Then the thought floated through my mind: SOME day would have to be the last day on which I recorded my "journal day," so why wouldn't it just as well [added in pen: 6/26/77---JUST one month later, it's JUST not working, so I go BACK to day-pages, May 20 - June 11 (23 days) in 19 pages.] be THURSDAY, May 19, which I wrote at the top of DIARY 11951 and didn't finish. That was a WEEK ago, and there's so much I WANT to do now that it just seemed that I didn't NEED to take the time to do a JOURNAL day any more --- though I admit that I thought back that if I went until September 19, 1978, that would have made EXACTLY 10 years of a diary from September 20, 1968, when I started, BUT I ALREADY have a volume for 1968, and I ALREADY have a volume for 1977, so that makes TEN VOLUMES RIGHT THERE, and there's a niceness in thinking that the "just under ten years" of working for IBM would be shortened into "just under nine years" of working on the journal, which would continue with "just under eight years" for the next cycle, which would take me to 1985; 7 years to 1992; 6 to 1998; 5 to 2003; 4 to 2007; 3 to 2010; 2 to 2012; 1 to 2013, at which year I would be 77, ready for ANOTHER kind of cycle. What "just under 11 years" would be going retroactively to 1947, may be the age of adolescence, and "just under 12 years" back to 1935 would of course be childhood, even including gestation! And of course the "just under" would have to take out a few days, just to even up cycles. So, I STILL can't help thinking of LISTS and PROGRESSIONS, but at least THIS one is FUN! It even brings in the Chinese concept of being ACTUALLY one year older than WE say we are, since now at "41" I'm ACTUALLY living out of the womb for 41 years and almost 2 months, and I lived in the womb for almost 9 months (actually, almost 8 months), so I'm ACTUALLY 41 years and almost 10 months old, which is closer to 42 than to 41. ANYWAY, I decided to STOP insisting on a journal page each day, to START clearing things out of the apartment (starting with the boxes in the front closet, some of the cards, making the closet a repository for card-boxes into which I can file all SORTS of neat things in a very ORDERLY way --- and maybe that's even a BETTER way of keeping the TRAVEL INFORMATION, freeing me ANOTHER bookcase, and "coincidentally" there are 55 countries marked (though some would have such LARGE pieces that I'd keep them on the shelves, since ALSO coincidentally the LENGTH of the boxes is very close to the HEIGHT of the shorter shelves on which I HAVE the travel stuff) and I have 61 boxes NOW! So THERE is the travel filing system that will be better than the bookcase, THERE is what to do with the cards-boxes which are VERY neat to use, and THERE is a way to use the front closet very nicely: this line of files in the BACK and a whole NEW array of whatevers IN FRONT OF IT. Keeping the boxes in which the file-cards came was a good idea, too, since they'll support the SECTIONS of cards-boxes, in case those that aren't filed would tend to buckle under the weight of the boxes on top of them. NEAT IDEAS! Also, now that Ron Greenburg is moving to California, I can take the VERY obsolete "Whaddya Know?" off the list of things to do, incorporate those pages into the diary, and start directing these pages TO volumes, possibly, rather than having to do them all LATER. It might make the WRITING of these pages more DIRECTED if I think of the VOLUME into which they're going BEFOREHAND. So what turned out to be NEW insights on filing STARTED with the idea that all records are SILLY. But I STILL want to have ideas of places to go when I want to travel, will still keep notes when I travel, will still write DIARY pages, even though not JOURNAL pages. Thought back to how the journal started: it STARTED as a COMPLETE journal, started when I forced myself to write something every day. But then, in the years, WRITING turned out to be WHAT I WAS DOING; what I WASN'T doing was PUBLISHING, but I've not done anything TOWARD that since I made that insight. That's because I spent so much time MAINTAINING (hm, sadly, Playbills will be JUST TOO BIG to go into the card-boxes, but I can just ACCUMULATE these things, and let the DATEBOOK pages keep a better track (with the job-money book) with my daily activities) the lists and rosters and files that writing, which always took the lowest priority, was NEVER DONE. NOW I'm about to get into it (also, writing was to serve as a MINE of information for fiction, but what good's a mine that no one ever enters?), with hopefully the same persistence that permits theater and dance companies, after years of trying, to succeed JUST BECAUSE they keep on trying, keeping on trying --- even though it might be rather expensive to keep trying through Scott Meredith, that SEEMS to be the best way to DO it of the many I've tried so far. At least he makes MONEY at it!
DIARY 11955-56 NARROWING THOUGHTS ABOUT LIFE 5/30/77
Reading "The Astral Plane" finally gives me the impetus to get to typing. The discussion in the book about the levels of inhabitants of the astral plane again repeats ideas about choosing one's own level of development, one's surroundings, one's life, coupled with the force of Seth's "Nature of Personal Reality," coupled with Actualism, concentrates my thoughts on the conflicting drives in my present time-space. I'd decided not to continue my daily journal, but in the absorption in my habit, I find myself now feeling CONSTIPATED mentally trying to remember what I WANT to write, rather than what I'm not PERMITTING myself to write. Though last night I suggested to Dennis that my next page might be a list of reasons why and why not to continue the Journal pages, I didn't do it. I have to wash dishes and shop and exercise, but reading exerts a greater influence. I read through the relatively minor thoughts of "Daedalus" and "Icarus" to get to "The Astral Plane," and it might be that my reluctance to "doing" has permitted me to get to this point at this time, so rather than blaming myself for NOT dosing other things, I should be pleased with what I HAVE been doing. But again there's the growing dichotomy: either I think of myself as continuing to absorb (and how this is jelling even as I type!) experiences of as pleasurable a type as I can (sex, travel, pleasurable reading, various mental exercises, restaurants, movies, plays, people), I ALSO have the urge to LET OUT the absorption --- and the only way I know how to do that NOW is either by talking with people (which quickly becomes boring: with Bruce I get tired of his eternal Jewish nattering on the negative; with Rolf I get tired of the eternal financial absorption in details; with Arnold I weary of the irrelevant details thrown in merely because it was remembered; with Dennis I tire of the impatience with anything touching the mystical; with Pope I sense that too often he wants ANYONE to talk with, though he's more "valuable" than most; with others because I don't know them well enough) or by following my bent toward "enlightenment" and "liberation." And I now get the inkling that I do NOT want enlightenment since it would show me that all my self-directed activities (stamps, movies, journal-pages, lists) take valuable time away from what I COULD (with no idea of should, except as the "should" comes from a genuine feeling of accomplishment and fulfillment --- now maybe THAT'S the word to concentrate on)! Enlightenment sounds too much like "something that should be good for me but doesn't seem like that to me," "liberation" would necessitate the crushing admission that I HAVE BEEN a captive of my senses and desires, where "fulfillment" would MELD "what I want to do" and "what I feel good doing" with "what I actually DO when I feel good." There's no DOUBT that days of reading Ballard and Clarke leave me weary when there's nothing ELEVATING (i.e., leading toward fulfillment) in the particular thing I'm reading --- as I nodded toward sleep yesterday in reading the CRITIQUES of Ballard, which I turned out REALLY not to be interested in. And I DO feel better when I finish what I SAY I should do, like write letters, catch up with the diary, or finish an index. But just going to movies and having sex leaves me with a sense of wanting to do MORE. Maybe my desire to WANT to do more is the only infallible sign that I'm not doing enough. That would be nice, if I could only relax into believing it --- better still, to WORKING FROM that place. But now that I've gotten INTO typing, it's exactly the idea that Dennis said: THINKING ABOUT IT isn't nearly as satisfying as DOING it. But, REGARDLESS of how I direct myself, there are STILL things that I "must" do, and only by DOING them can I get to the point of doing things MORE in a moment-to-moment basis. I guess, then, that I WILL make that list of reasons for and against the journal, just to see what it looks like (see DIARY 11957), then I'll start on one of the first pages of ACTUAL Journal pages (see DIARY 11958), to see how THAT works out: an increasing flexibility in time-recording may be AS liberating as NO time-recording, and now that the pages ARE destined to separate volumes, I no longer NEED to end a day at the bottom of the page --- how these ideas COME TOGETHER! --- and I can TAKE AWAY a restraint, which will be better than not. Now if I can only break myself of the inordinate compulsion to reach the exact bottom of the PAGE!
DIARY 12017 ON THE EDGE 6/14/77
Again it's a time in which everything seems to IMMEDIATE (though as I write THAT, it blows my mind, because that's what I'd been aiming to get to, had not at this point realized that I HAD gotten there, and found out only when I WRITE this!). Talk about instant reversal from something to be unhappy about to something to CROW about! I'd BEEN thinking that the numbers of things that I had to do crowded on me as usual: write Bill, transcribe the tape from Leonard Orr, catch up on the diary, write, exercise, do light-work, write letters, finish indexes, read, go to TDF dance performances to use up my vouchers by June 30, read the Times, phone Paul and Arnold and Lauren Bahr, get jobs for Dennis in indexing --- but then THOSE THINGS THAT HAVE TO BE DONE DO GET DONE: I get out of bed at 8:45 and do light-work until I DO feel that my low-frequency vibrations which had kept me in bed from the time I woke (judging to be too early, yet I thought of Seth's admonition that 6 hours of sleep should be enough, and I probably read Lem until about 1 am) have been transformed into high-energy vibrations --- at least enough to take me out of the gold of the Cosmic Father and take me to the typewriter at 9:30. Then there are the new things: talking to Mark Elliott about the "pilot" for "Whaddya Know?", getting out the resume of my travel background to take to Joyce Palmer (which I get out just now so that I won't forget it) whom I see this afternoon at 2:30, idly thinking about my personal counseling with one teacher at 1 at Actualism, and other things on my do list. But at least I refused the job from Rachel In for indexing a 600-page Polymer Chemistry book in 600 lines for "way under" $200, and I WILL probably finish the index that I have outstanding for Harper and Row by Thursday or Friday, which is as good as they needed it. Then I want to get to the index, but decide that the diary is slipping away again, so I have to do that, and AGAIN, as I write, the conviction is so SOLID in experience: I'll do what I do when I do it, and it does NO good to worry about the things that I'm NOT dosing, because when they HAVE to be done, I'll be DOING them, so there's no reason to complain, feel guilty, or worry about it, and it's almost DONE, rather than something to be concerned about DOING, which is the ONLY way to do it, and the way I've DONE it. Done!
DIARY 12032-33 NOW! 6/25/77
I now that I have pages to type with more productive headings, but I've just finished a lovely meal (hard to say what a meal from 4:15-4:45 should be CALLED) which had two glasses of wine imbibed with it, and I'm feeling that I should get to the typewriter and tackle NOW! There's the increasing feeling that, though I have MORE to do (vacuuming CRIES to be done, the pots for transplanting the pot have stood there for a couple of days, the avocados desperately want to be put in earth, the diary must be caught up with, and I've just about decided that the elimination of the "one-page-per-day-for-each-day" has been more HARM than good (it's not gotten me TO writing anymore, and it's caused me to fall MORE behind in the DIARY!), and letters want to be written and the whole do list sits there with the book list, taunting me), I'm getting CLOSER to a place in which LESS needs to be done. I have the things to catch up with, but somehow (despite the fact that HISTORICALLY things have NEVER been caught up with) I feel that I'm coming to some kind of END (though I saw it would end that way and started thinking how I could word it DIFFERENTLY), and I insist that I have to be careful (and non-melodramatic) and not think about an ACTUAL end, but (DESPITE the fact that Dennis said he doesn't want to do the Pathology II index, so I have ANOTHER job waiting for me to finish!) (and I take a detour to say that during the SUMMER there are fewer evenings of things to ATTEND, that the TDF vouchers are NOW impossible to complete, so I've donated $12 to DTW, which makes everyone happy, since I have more hours to spend doing what I want to do. That there DOES seem to be a pressure TO finish things, TO get to zero, TO finish with everything --- yet things DO come up: I finish with one phase of the book-want list, and ANOTHER phase comes up. Dennis finished with ONE thing and comes up with the Jazz Festival or the TV shows. I now want to finish "Whaddya Know?" for Mark Elliott OR Ron Greenburg, since Mark says it would probably be better for me to send it to CALIFORNIA to Ron. And the things I have to do still remain: writing the letter to Bill, transcribing the tape from Leonard Orr --- and I ADD things, like the mushroom ordering and the photocopy inquiries for the book list: but the book list IS getting smaller, the jobs outstanding ARE getting smaller (finished with Harper and Row for awhile, only the ACC to do), yet things like the upcoming trip to England get closer and demand more time with none being scheduled for it. But I DON'T work that much time, DON'T waste that much time (even coming less), but still don't have that much time LEFT. But the temptation to analyze the time to see where it GOES is known to be fruitless: lists from the past attest to the fact that I can SEE that I spend too much time reading and absorbing entertainment, but I don't do anything to CHANGE it. But there ARE, FRANKLY fewer things to DO (yet, paradoxically, lists of museums of New York come out, and I check 9 that I want to see; there are dozens of restaurants I want to attend, and there's still the idea of "Slipping through the Cracks" that I want to pursue (so let's get OUT of this and say that'll be on DIARY 12034). There are also places I want to go, friends I want to call, and jobs I want to check up on both for myself and for Dennis.), yet I always find MORE to do. So where AM I?? Read back and find that I'm in a parenthesis) restrict my parenthesizing and define EXACTLY how I'm coming to the END: (1) I get FEWER authors to read since I have a stack of books TO read so that I don't HAVE to search for new authors at this time; (2) I'm seeming to use Hegel's dialectic in Philosophy (and have to write a page about this, so Philosophy is on DIARY 12035) and find that forces pulling ONE way are countered by forces pulling the OTHER way and producing a SYNTHESIS. Like what? Like I think about the cacophony outside while I'm doing light-work (see DIARY 12036) and my need to control it (see DIARY 12037) (and write a note to that extent which I'm getting rid of now), but since I DON'T control it, it produces a feeling of UNPRODUCTIVITY (see DIARY 12038) which IS IN FACT NOT TRUE, SINCE THE CRUX OF WHAT I WANT TO SAY IS THAT WHAT I PRODUCE IS WHAT I PRODUCE, and no amount of head-shaking, self-castigating, or WRITING is going to CHANGE that, so there's NOT EVEN ANY USE TO RESOLVE TO DO ANYTHING ELSE. AND THAT'S exactly why things seem to be coming to some sort of end --- NOW!
DIARY 12034 SLIPPING THROUGH THE CRACKS Also 6/25/77
This is one of the topics that talking with Rolf last night (see DIARY 12038) has produced in my mind. I said that "I was doing not what I wanted to do, but something else, but it all works out because I do everything ANYWAY," and he pessimistically (as is characteristic of him) said that HE didn't do what he'd planned to do, since he found things "slipping through the cracks," which immediately led ME to think if things were slipping through MY cracks. The most obvious thing is the GETTING WRITINGS PUBLISHED. So, to finish with THAT; yes, THAT is slipping through the cracks. Next? Entertainment things (double features of "Carrie" and "Audrey Rose," and of "Star is Born" and unworthy double, and of "Beatrix Potter's Peter Rabbit" and unworthy double, and of TDF offerings, and off-Broadway plays, and dance performances, and TV shows, and TV movies and series --- ALL of those) can ALWAYS be caught up with later on TV, in movies, or in theaters. ALWAYS. And if I FINALLY miss them, there's nothing lost. As for "Capturing now," I'd thought to let the details of the DAY-PAGES slip through the cracks, but I'm finding (1) that I'm not keeping up to date AT ALL (and I DO miss the brackets for something OTHER than parentheses!) [so, dolt, why not use the Courier ball, which is quite adequate for DIARY work, for the diary work to keep the []s?], and (2) that I'm getting more pressured into keeping up to date without SATISFYING it, so it's just NOT GOOD, so even though May 19-June 10 are on JOURNAL pages, I'll go BACK to the day-pages to hope to GET me CAUGHT UP. (per DIARY 12032-2033). BUT I HAVE TO GET CAUGHT UP BEFORE I CAN WORK ON GETTING THINGS PUBLISHED. I KNOW I've said that before, but lets put some CONSCIOUSNESS and LIGHTWORK behind that and see if something can't COME of it!!! (Forget where the ! is on the old ball!!!) Lightwork eventually evens out: underwork gets caught up with. Figure I have to make ANOTHER do-list of the things that I have to get finished with IN THE NEXT FEW DAYS so that I'll have the directive to finish THAT and not get caught up in another spate of reading, which is an IMPOSSIBLE thing to get caught up with, with 160+ books to contend with.
