1979 5 of 5
SUNDAY, 11/3/79: Recorded EARTH POINT LETTER 2:
October, 1979
Dear Carol Ann:
Earth Point activates me. When I process one level of activation, another level arises. Earth Point, for me, brings up conflicts about long-range planning, interpersonal relationships, and the purpose of my life.
PLANNING. On the one hand I tend to feel guilty about not planning for the future: making financial investments (self-employed, at 43, with retirement savings, I am tardily considering a Keogh Plan), contemplating job changes (indexing, my current occupation, will surely be automated within a score of years), and accepting death fully (I know that it must come, but I still don't WANT it to). On the other hand my concerns for the future take away some small percentage of enjoyment from my day-to-day living. I feel that I am never precisely "here now" when I consider what may happen in the future and what plans should be made for these possible futures. Earth Point forces me to consider a distasteful future in a financially or geophysically chaotic country where the civilization that I love has essentially ended.
PEOPLE. On the one hand I feel self-contented. I have a job that pays very well for a minimal time investment, I have satisfying relationships with a few carefully chosen friends, I greatly enjoy the cultural and social benefits of New York City, and at times I can be tempted into luxuriant self-satisfaction. On the other hand I feel selfish, more egocentric than is good for me, and too demanding of friends: after all, aren't we supposed to love everyone for what they are inside rather than judging them by what they are outside? Earth Point forces me to consider living among families and children (both of which I dislike), slaughtering animals (I eat meat but wouldn't knowingly slaughter them myself), and giving up the sexual freedom of a large city.
PURPOSE. What IS the purpose of my life? I tend toward a disbelief in karmic influences from past lives that we must atone for, yet I feel there is some truth to the idea that as long as people DESIRE there will continue to be frustration, disappointment, and the prolongation of separation from some kind of ultimate unity that lies beneath our current "reality." If I WANT, and want MORE, I feel that I'm going away from enlightenment. Yet when I try to strip away, or give up, I get to the point where I feel that I'm being asked to give up ME, and I still like me and want me to continue. Yet my enjoyment seems grasshopperish while there are ants storing away food for the winter and helping their communities selflessly. Earth Point would require my transformation from a grasshopper into an ant.
None of these conflicts has yet been resolved. If our economy collapses, or if the terrestrial disasters that seem widely predicted take place, of course I would THEN be grateful for a haven at Earth Point. But I feel that the possibility of my benefiting from Earth Point seems small: either "it won't be so bad" and I'll be happier to remain "in civilization," or it'll be SO bad that even Earth Point won't survive.
MONDAY, 11/4/79: Recorded EARTH POINT LETTER 3:
Dear Carol Ann:
This is the third letter I've started in as many months. I've worked through many levels of activation about Earth Point, yet it seems that many remain. I FEAR that a future of economic chaos impends, and it may seem wise to plan for such an event, yet I have so much faith in my own abilities to work things out that I resist the implication that Earth Point is "MY" solution.
New York City has such widely published disadvantages as a place to live that my remaining here voluntarily proves its continuing lure: I love its cultural advantages, its opportunities for meeting people, its sexual freedom, and its constant excitement. Earth Point seems to offer none of these for me. I enjoy living to the fullest, while Earth Point seems extremely limited to me. Alternatives mentioned by friends of "mini-Earth Points" near New York would seem better to me if such a retreat is needed at all.
VARIED POINTS OF VIEW:
I visited a farm but didn't care for it.
I don't find the students of Actualism, for the most part, stimulating people to interact with outside class.
I enjoy eating meat but would not enjoy slaughtering animals.
The proposed operation of Earth Point may appeal to the proposers but not to me.
I have no ill will against Earth Point's success, though I would resent any implication that I'm not a member of the Actualism Family if I choose not to participate in the project on the outer.
Thank you for the opportunity you gave me for looking deeply into my own thoughts and feelings about planning for the future, economic catastrophe, and support of a project that doesn't personally interested me. I've donated to the Christmas raffle because I like the idea of a Christmas present to an organization that benefits me, but I do not plan to tithe. I already more than tithe my earnings to pay for various Actualism activities, currently spend more time working with Actualism than I spend at my own employment, and fervently hope that the desperate situation that would make me NEED Earth Point as a haven will not transpire.
Very truly yours,
Robert Zolnerzak
TUESDAY, 11/6/79: ASSERTIVENESS TRAINING: The woman's pretty awful, and certainly a self-assertion-taught individual, but some of her notes were pretty good and seemingly possibly valuable:
Non-assertive behavior is "I don't count; I don't mind; it's OK with me."
Indexers in the crowd are Sidney Cohen who has the group and has another as typist and likes it, and Elliott Linzer the bushy bearded one on the panel.
Aggressive behavior is saying "You're ALWAYS late; You're WRONG." Insecurity underneath.
Assertive behavior deals with "I think, I feel, I want, within an E-DERM:
E = Empathize: You BEND: I see where you're coming from.
D = Describe what's happening: (Aggressive: You didn't ask me; Assertive: I'm confused)
E = Express how you feel with an I statement---ALL THESE ARE SPECIFIC
R = Request: formulate it and MAKE it.
M = Motivate the person to GRANT your request---make it a win-win situation.
You need to LISTEN to what they respond, to HEAR what affects them, to STUDY them and OBSERVE others dealing with them. Do they PICTURE or HEAR? Hear their verbs and mirror them.
Add to basic human rights: be independent, earn a good living, be successful, enjoy what I'm doing, being myself.
EXPERIENTIAL ASSERTIVENESS TOOLS
1) Be careful what you PRETEND to be---you'll BECOME it.
2) PRACTICE, ACT changed, and then you WILL change and then change BELIEF SYSTEM.
OVERVIEW OF COURSE
AGGRESSIVENESS versus ASSERTION (full adult behavior)
What to do with fear, anxiety, and guilt.
Exercises in assertion skills
1) Learn to say positive things about someone
2) Learn to accept compliments
3) Learn to say no.
4) Learn to GIVE positive feedback.
Assertion strategies:
1) MAINTAIN position;
2) broken record (KEEP to the point);
3) Hooked on Approval (go for RESPECT), Kowtow to authority? Say "Time out, I'll get back to you."
Anxiety-reducing, skills-producing, behavioral rehearsal:
1) Role play: one plays self, other plays prospective employer, employee, or mother-in-law, and then REVERSE roles and apply what you learned.
2) Reverse
3) COVERT rehearsal (doing it successfully)
4) Interview again
5) Ask person working with you for POSITIVE feedback, NOT negative feedback.
Presentation is 80% of success, content 20% in interview.
Tension is ENERGY in search of an application.
Assertiveness is SITUATION-SPECIFIC (I AM assertive with children, NOT with doctors.)
Positive statements EVERY day when brushing teeth!
The WORST risk is not to take any risks!
1. Workshop---tell YOUR good points in YOUR area.
2. Fantasy: Choose a perfect right, take it; how do YOU feel, how do FRIENDS feel toward you; LOSE it, and repeat same questions. I need NOT make people hate me or envy me.
IF you are an adult, you expect others to be a competent and coping adult.
You can be ASSERTIVE even if you don't GET it. If you don't ASSERT, you turn hostility toward yourself.
WHO gets the job? Who has CONTACTS and job-hunting skills---NOT REALLY COMPETENCE!
3 tracks to a career: 1) Hone your skills; 2) Improve your contacts; 3) Reduce your obstacles.
One of the rules of the game: Don't tell the rules of the game.
Researching and role-playing reduced anxiety from a score of 8 to a score of 3.
Get everything into SPEECH before you PAUSE for the first time.
TELL people: 1) Your project; 2) Action you took; 3) Result of your actions.
And then I had to leave because the place was becoming chaotic, I had to get to Actualism, and it started turning into an est seminar where everything seemed much too simple-minded and obvious, so I was glad of the chance to leave.
WEDNESDAY, 11/7/79: Recorded SAFIRE-LETTER FROM WHICH HE PRINTED NOTHING
167 Hicks Street
Brooklyn, N.Y. 11201
October 11, 1979
Mr. William Safire
The New York Times Magazine
229 West 43rd Street
New York, N.Y. 10036
To Whom It May Concern:
1) Always address letters to a specific person.
2) Don't use double negatives no more.
3) Ain't just ain't used in good writing.
4) Don't touch a cliché with a ten-foot pole to save your soul.
5) NEVER use italics for EMPHASIS to EXCESS.
6) Well writers who write good never confuse GOOD and WELL.
7) Redundancy is a very extreme error. (or)
8) A person using "A cliché should be tried and true" knowingly would be aware of the redundancy of saying the same thing twice---that's a consensus of opinion.
9) It's most worst to use a superlative modifier with a superlative.
10) Make sure subjects and verbs agrees.
11) Sesquipedalian verbosity is linguistic horribleness.
12) It is bad if you use a lot of wee words all in a row.
13) The writer should use pronouns in the writer's work so that the writer doesn't constantly use the same noun in the writer's sentences.
14) A good writer avoids sexist pronouns in his sentences.
15) Sentence fragments, as bad as they are.
16) Confusing is inversion in sentences.
17) As they say, too many extraneous comments, you know, break up a sentence, can't you see.
18) A subject at the start of a sentence, from the verb, which may be at the end of the sentence, should not be separated.
19) Never never never never never never never repeat words excessively.
20) Studious stylists simply shun successive sibilant sentence sounds.
21) You must remember one never mixes uses of YOU and ONE in a sentence.
22) Punctuation. to be effective, must be checked carefully,
23) Write out numbers of 10 or less.
24) Demonstratives and nouns must agree in these type of writing.
25) A comma splice is a common fault, avoid it.
26) Coming at the beginning of a sentence, you should avoid dangling participles.
27) They say it's bad to use indefinite references.
28) Run-on sentences are bad don't use them.
29) Avoid, excessive, commas.
30) Be careful when using apostrophe's.
31) Except the fact that words are confusing accept for good writers.
32) Take care so that the affect of your writing is not effected by poor usage.
33) I all ready know usage and am already to start.
34) Avoid excessive exclamation points!!!!!
35) Use dialectical forms nowheres in your writing.
36) For clarity, sentences should contain less mistakes with fewer frequency.
37) Street language is usually not acceptable in formal writing---dig it.
38) Always remember that ITS is a contraction of IT IS.
39) Let's us not be colloquial.
40) Never use a preposition like a conjunction.
41) ONLY should only be used only once in a sentence.
42) Avoid mispellings.
43) Never crowd the bottom of a letter.
44) Simple complimentary closings are best.
45) Never write up the side of a letter.
46) Always sign a letter in black ink.
47) Make sure every letter in your signature is clearly evident.
48) Never type a line that runs off the edge.
Your terribly sincerely
Robert Zolnerzak
P.P.S.: I just indexed a novel entitled "Handbook for Writers!" (find six (!) errors above)
THURSDAY, 11/8/79: Recorded 9/6/79 QUESTIONS FOR AMY'S VOICE:
1. Can I do anything to increase my sense of PHYSICAL WELL-BEING?
a. Why do I get so many COLDS and sneezing and have so much nasal and sinus CONGESTION?
b. Anything helpful to suggest to me about my SEXUAL practices?
c. Anything harmful in my use of amyl nitrite?
d. Anything about my EATING habits: pork, beef, chicken, other? More LIQUIDS AND MUNG BEANS
e. Anything about my EXERCISING (or not?) or what kind?
f. Is my consumption excessive of VITAMINS: A, C, E, B-15; MINERALS: calcium, magnesium, zinc, selenium; OTHERS: lecithin, brewer's yeast, grape juice, gotu kola, ginseng, garlic oil, golden seal, cayenne?
g. Anything to suggest about my LIVING or SLEEPING habits?
h. Anything about my apartment, air conditioner, plants, NYC environment?
i. Anything about my relationship with Dennis---he continues Actualism?
j. How can I best IMPACT mankind?
k. How can I experience more major psychic experiences?
l. How can I increase my sensitivity to my human and field?
m. How can I increase my chances of being a successful published writer?
n. What BOOKS could I most valuably be reading at the present time?
2. How ACTUAL are energies and techniques of Actualism, and White Star?
a. How beneficial is Earth Point to concentrate energies on?
b. What "dimension" or mental body---or "angel"? do you operate in?
3. What is the relationship between YOU and Amy's immortal?
a. What is it about Amy that permits you to choose her?
b. Anything more about her going to Mexico---would I have a place there?
4. How do you KNOW what you know? How is it ORGANIZED: instant KNOWLEDGE or through PROCESS? Through SEEING the actual? Through experience with similarities? Through faith? Through some HIGHER SOURCE?
a. You had only three earth-lives and are not committed to Earth-level; what level ARE you committed to? What is it like where you are? Are you working elsewhere, too? How can I help you?
5. Do you know the entity Seth? Opinion of Jane Roberts and her work?
6. Anything to suggest about the bone chip in Regina's neck?
7. Are Viva's "entities of darkness" self-created? In Mineshaft! If not, what are they, how powerful are they? If so, CAN we make problems via "sigils on subways"?
8. Someone asked: How far can the Russians be trusted?
9. Earthquakes in our lifetime, in 1980's, at the end of 1981?
10. What can you tell me about the ACTUAL nature of reality and time-space?
11. "Many people who come to me" with different brands of enlightenment. Here in NYC? Can we join with THEM?
a. How can I help Amy with group?
b. Any DANGERS in her "becoming public"?
12. MY filters?
13. Spending time in different tunnels---I FEAR losing control to momentary interests and not concentrating on WRITING---what could I BEST WRITE?
14. Do you move AS easily in space AS in time?
15. You say different FREQUENCIES---
a. FASTER or slower-moving ATOMS?
b. Non-atoms?
c. "Higher-order solutions" to KNOWN equations?
16. Christ through church or ASIDE from church---which WRITINGS best sum up the ASPECT of Christ you follow?
17. How would you SPELL Love-Desire to Serve??
18. Good to publish THESE readings, or would they be misunderstood or damaging?
FRIDAY, 11/9/79: LAST PAGE OF LETTER TO BILL; READINGS FROM RUTH MONTGOMERY'S "STRANGERS AMONG US": Because the dire events in Guyana tend to make us look upon all cults or religious communes as potentially dangerous, I asked Michael how a sincere seeker could delineate the good groups from the bad ones. This is his reply:
Before joining I would watch the group to see what the stated goals are, why it was formed, and what purposes it intends to serve. Then, in light of its stated purposes and goals, I would look to see how well the individuals were hewing to those precepts. I would next study the leadership of the group, to see if it was sincerely committed to those goals, or whether the leaders were on an ego trip and using the efforts of others for their own personal benefit. Are the leaders willing to listen to the followers? Is the group self-governing? Do the members work willingly with their leadership or have the power to replace it if they are dissatisfied? If individuals within a group are denied the right to think for themselves and make suggestions for improvements, they are being brainwashed, and I would have nothing to do with it. But if they are quietly working together to make themselves more self-reliant and less dependent on today's complex social structure, that is good, and you're going to see a great deal more of that in the decades ahead." (from pages 184-185, if you see the book)
Other comments I'll repeat from other pages: 191: "The needless war of the 1980s can still be avoided if we learn to live cooperatively with one another. World War III will be set off around 1986 by Ethiopia, spread throughout Africa, and engulf the world. Watch the Ethiopian strongman Mengistu Haile Mariam, chairman of the Dergue (military junta) (page 193). 195: President Carter will be succeeded by another Democrat ... 196: fiscally irresponsible Democratic President will not be Ted Kennedy, Walter Mondale, or Jerry Brown. ("She" sort of laughed and said "Not Ted Kennedy or Jerry Brown, that's not right, but I won't take the excitement of the future away by telling you.") There will be economic decline, continuing inflation, large-scale crop failures, and "The Shah and his family will eventually settle in Europe." Russia will sweep across into Paris, China will attack Russia in the east, Latin America and Asia will have uprisings. Nuclear weapons will be used, but there will not be an all-out nuclear holocaust. Food riots in cities will be common, in the early 1990s a tenuous peace will reign." But then comes the earth's shift on its axis in the late 1990s: "the survivors of the axial shift at the close of this century will number in the millions, rather than the billions. (p. 228) The shift will have its warnings. The weather will become increasingly violent, with heavy snowfalls, strong gales, and increased humidity. Shortly before the actual shift, there will be two specific types of warnings. The eruptions of ancient volcanoes in Mediterranean islands, South America, and California will result in pestilence, and shortly thereafter earth tremors of major proportions, affecting wide land-masses in northern Europe, Asia, and South America, will provoke tidal waves of monumental scope. For days and nights beforehand the earth will seem to rock gently---increasing earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions in flat areas that had previously shown no signs of cones ... In daylight areas, the sun will seem to stand still overhead, and then to race backward for a brief period while the earth settles into its new position relative to the sun. Those who are capable of reaching safety will see the earth's surface tremble, shudder, and in some places become a sea of boiling water as the oceans pour upon the land ... bring new land above the surface of the waters as other areas are swallowed by the sea ... in torrid areas, it will feel like refrigerated air sweeping all before it. But if the area was cold beforehand, the winds will feel like blasts from a fiery furnace ... Those in caves and low-lying valleys between hills will have the best chance of escaping unscathed ... safety is west of the Appalachian Mountains, Florida will scarcely survive except as scattered islands, southern states drastically altered, California gone, Canada "not a bad place to be, for those wishing to stay on in physical form" and "Virginia Beach will strangely survive, as most other seaside resorts disappear." So I'll be with my aunt in Virginia Beach rather than with my sister in Florida, thank you. And with THOSE lovely tidings, I'll wait for you.
MONDAY, 11/12/79: GIVING GIFTS TO MYSELF / DOING THINGS FOR MYSELF:
During my meditation (during which I thought that organizing the ORGANS might be as bad as getting me to admit of the Being of light, and the CELLS might be organizing to prevent CANCER, which is DISORGANIZATION of cells) I thought AGAIN of living in New York, but I DON'T go to that many plays, haven't used TKTS in ages, haven't been to a gallery or art exhibition in months, and fantasize about taking a subway to a random stop and wandering the streets to see just what I SEE: If I would have been a tourist in New York I would have seen far MORE than I did in the past few months (and don't even have the visitors that I used to have to TAKE around!), and think that I should ALSO treat myself to more elaborate frozen food in the supermarkets, rather than just settling for the same old stuff (cheap, too) all the time, and then I thought of giving myself ONE treat in a day, whether it be a play or a restaurant or a gallery or a museum or a movie or an opera or a dance performance, and I should USE New York more, and that's when I decided to see "Time after Time" this afternoon at the local theater, since I should finish off "Coal Age" and get started on the Raven index which should be finished (and probably won't be) by Friday, but I can't take it in Tuesday when I see Paul Merritt, whom I finally called, but it's now too late to phone Larry Meyer to ask if Tuesday's OK, which is sad, since this is the first index I've done for him for AGES. But it feels GOOD to be treating myself, since I think so much about the WORK I have to do and the things I have to do for OTHER people, and I was so snippy last night to the index that Dennis brought up that I have to treat myself nicer to feel better. And going to more porno films and baths and orgy bars, to keep up with them, too, and just getting BACK into New York: ALL I did in the past 12 days was Amy's group on the 1st and 8th, Man's Country on the 2nd; "Meteor" on the 3rd; Thalia on the 4th; Henry's End on 6th, "Last Licks" on the 10th, and "Time after Time" on the 12th: no restaurants (except dinner at Dennis's and Rolf's), no porno movies (except the ones here), and nothing new in the line of INVESTIGATION of the pleasures of New York City, the greatest in the world.
WEDNESDAY, 12/5/79: RICH IDEA: Astoundingly rich idea occurs to me (combined with the fruits of living (where DID that "loving" come from???) for the past few years) as I exercise the Mental Magnetic during a session today, so rich that now, at noon, I start to put it down, and hope it ends somewhere near the richness I perceive. A glass-bead-game at its best, the idea combines (and why not call it IDEA, I Dea (I am a goddess); Id Ea (the id is that which is); Ide (for idle) a---though I'm tempted to embrace THAT under the JOYI rubric: Joy of Idea) the burgeoning computer-games fields that produced Adventure, and the humanistic joy with games that increasing leisure makes possible with the tantalizing tidbits I've heard about "Dungeons and Dragons" WITH the field of books that I'm so spellbound by WITH the field of mysticism that has led me into est (with its processes and endless mind games), Actualism (with its endless centers and levels and dimensions and egos and fragment of aspects of personality), Theosophy (with its verbiage and confusion and dozens of already published books), knowledge (with EB III and its Circle of Knowledge), craftiness, with so many ways of confusing issues, lying, and change, WITH a dawning concept that all of LIFE IS A GAME, which IDEA would only symbolize, but with such increasing exactness that people who have nothing else to do would find IDEA more vivid and captivating than real life itself! At the first blaze of inventiveness I'm thinking of COMBINING, somehow, the mechanics of computers and programming, the moneymaking possibilities of publications, and the wealth of knowledge ALREADY around us to make endless codes and treasure hunts IN THE REAL WORLD necessary for progress through the game, with the GAMESMASTER keeping only one step ahead of an increasingly organized horde of GAMESTERS close behind. Then an article for something like Omni that would DESCRIBE the game, and how to get into it, and make available subscriptions to the IDEA-LOG, and copies of the IDEA-LOG for various computers---and I don't know if anything has come close to this before, but it seems suspiciously connected to my request that something SPECIAL occur to me, so that I could be a ground-breaker just as Jane Roberts and Seth were that paved the way for Amy and SheLAH, and while for awhile I wished for a voice of my OWN, that would only be following someone else's lead, as I realized, and thought something could come through in a NEW way, and I riffled through a being communicating through smell and sight and touch, rather than the sound of a voice operating in words, but IDEA would go far beyond this with almost endless permutations, and I feel the urge to start covering MANY pieces of paper with the TITLES of lists of permutations that I could add to as the inspiration hits. But first would have to come the flowchart!
RICH IDEA - FLOWCHART
Later versions of this page will connect these following components logically:
1. Macroscopic/telescopic versus microscopic/quark dimension of SCALE.
2. Future/fantasy versus past/historical dimension of TIME.
3. Universe-expansion-contraction-wide versus stasis-freeze-narrow dimension of INTERVAL.
4. Angelic/good versus devilish/bad dimension of MORALITY.
5. Add-another-dimension-unlimitedly versus flatland-point-nil dimension of BREADTH.
6. Ordinary latitude dimension in this world or another of NORTH-SOUTH.
7. Ordinary longitude dimension in this world or another of EAST-WEST.
8. Ordinary altitude dimension of this world or another of UP-DOWN.
9. Ordinary time dimension, only variable (within 2 and 3) of DURATION.
10. Mental-activity dimension of CIRCLE OF KNOWLEDGE (from EB III).
11. Emotional-activity dimension of experience/sex/sleeping/eating or BEING.
12. Perceptual-activity dimension of problem-solving/puzzles/cryptograms or FIGURING.
13. Random-chance-activity dimension of CHANCE by random numbers from 14 or 15.
14. Practical-limitation-activity dimension of an inexorable CLOCK.
15. Practical-limitation activity dimension of an inexorable COST.
16. Practical-limitation-activity dimension of an inexorable EXPENDITURE OF ENERGY.
17. Enforced time-out dimension of REST.
18. Periodic time-out dimension of DEATH/REINCARNATION.
19. Self-perpetuating dimension in which player must contribute OWN IDEA.
20. Mirror dimension in which almost any other dimension can be REFLECTED ENDLESSLY.
21. Outside-generated bad-news dimension of CATASTROPHE.
22. Inside-generated bad-news dimension of BREAKDOWN.
23. Outside-generated good-news dimension of ECSTASY.
24. Inside-generated good-news dimension of HAPPINESS.
25. Outside-inside-generated bad-news dimension of NIHILITY.
26. Outside-Inside-generated good-news dimension of TRANSFORMATION (in which IDEA has to become LIFE and LIFE has to become IDEA, at which point both IDEA and LIFE have actually become something else, totally apart from the ideas above and obviously included in the infinitely-expandable dimension NEW-IDEA.
27. Dimension of dream.
28. Dimension of reincarnational cascade of lives.
RICH IDEA - FIGURING (12)
12. PERCEPTUAL-ACTIVITY DIMENSION OF PROBLEM-SOLVING/PUZZLES/CRYPTOGRAMS or FIGURING. (or possibly better, the NEED FOR LEARNING IN ORDER TO PROGRESS!).
1. Solving problems in existing world-languages to get new clues.
2. Inventing world-languages to make clue-solution even more difficult.
3. Random-generated computer-number displays where the player has to choose a direction through the display to determine his next step.
123
456 would have MANY directions possible:
789
123, 456, 789, 147, 258, 369, 321, 654, 987, 741, 852, 963, 159, 951, 753, 357, 16, 61, 18, 81, 24, 42, 26, 62, 34, 43, 38, 83, 48, 94, 68, 86, 67,76, or THE solution: 234698741!!!
4. Treasure-hunt clues like: first, third, and fifth letters of those respective words on those respective pages of yesterday's New York Times.
5. Clues that would force a person to buy a particular book to count the number of words on a page, a random number that would change each day for the number of days that there were numbers of pages in the book.
6. Bonus points for the best scores of the day, subtractions of points for scores below a certain value for those who ENTERED the contest for bonus points for the best scores of the day.
7. Rolls of dice that change in numbers of sides AS they roll.
8. Clues based on maps that have to be reflected in mirrors, folded and viewed between a strong light source and your eyes, that depend on the USERS' names.
9. Severe penalties for transmitting unearned clues, turning pages before their times, attempting to get listings of programs or codes, theft, loose talk, and unproductive playing that goes on for too long a time without points.
10. Rules that change periodically: where something was once good, now it's bad and vice versa.
11. Points for PREDICTING when the next rules will change: investments and interest and bankruptcies of the game-tokens.
12. Musical clues in which notes become code-numbers.
13. Codification of tastes and smells and touches into clue and catastrophes.
14. Players who attempt to become God will have to put up with the consequences: either unlimited power or most-tortuous penalties including exclusion from the game!
TUESDAY, 12/11/79: ESSENCE FROM 11/26/79 and 11/29/79:
1) Books in a library, filling the walls, LINING the walls like gastrointestinal cells line a stomach wall, keep IN the words and keep OUT the rest of the world. A real BARRIER to interpenetration of EXPERIENCE.
2) What do I GET from going to plays and reading and dances and opera:
a) Moment-to-moment pleasure that there is NO WAY to save, anymore than I can save the gardenia-blossoms from my PLANT.
b) Anticipation of seeing (mainly for travel, but one can't LIVE in anticipation).
c) Memory of HAVING seen, which things can REMIND of, but it would be better to ADD NEW than wallow in the old stuff, like in bathwater.
3) I can so easily see I've AVOIDED being sucked in by ads for this kind of mouthwash or those kinds of clothes or that kind of haircut or makeup or automobile, but how I HAVE been sucked in by books / reading records / classical music, things / intelligence, clippings / science, stamps, coins, money / status, arrival, accomplishment.
WEDNESDAY, 12/12/79: Note from 11/29: I'M STILL SO CHILDISH!!!
1) I want to be TOLD to "do sessions" and "clean apartment" and "take shower" and "work" and "write" and "don't eat so much."
2) In lessons I want to INDULGE in "feeling sorry for myself" and "weeping" and "this isn't working" and "I've got to DO things."
3) I'm STUBBORN in resisting and non-perception and boredom and feeling bad about myself.
WHEN WILL I GROW UP??
4) Does it have to do with RETENTION of GAYNESS?
THURSDAY, 12/13/79: LARRY PRICE ON FIRST VARIABLE RATE FUNDS & S&L: There are no costs from his firm, but the company itself takes out about .4%/year from my benefits, which they say is 11.7%, right around the 11.5% Larry said it would be, and SURELY more than twice the 5.5% of savings banks. They hold government paper, versus the Dreyfus Income Trust that holds Eurodollars that's more risky, and it seems they ARE down (and no longer advertising with big ads in the paper) from the 13.6% they were at just last month. Their costs reduce 12% to 11%, approximately, also. First Variable is the best of 60 or 70 of them around.
As for S&Ls, they're a money market that's great to be in BEFORE the short-term interest rate has peaked---THEN they can double and triple in 4 months, but they're an INSOLVENT INDUSTRY, though they'll probably make money. That double and triple is in STOCK in S&L's, since the companies themselves are insured by the government and won't go under, holding mortgages and loans. A 50% decline can happen ANYTIME, for example it's dropped 50% in the last year. The short-term interest rate has peaked and the long-term is ABOUT to peak. S&L's climb VERY quickly and bottom BEFORE the market does, and then they do go DOWN before the market does. If I DO go in, I'm better off in HIGH quality FIRST CHARTER ones, which may go up 6% in one day! on a day that the market's only up 2%. United Asbestos is $4.50 Canadian, which is 25% off high for the year.
THEN Rolf tells me that THIS bus had passed, but he'll tell me about NEXT.
NEXT he told me (12/10) about Hays-Albion, automobile-parts casting firm from Ohio, from a high of 26 and an average of 20 is down to about 8, ripe for the "rotten vegetable" bin that institutional buyers will throw it into for a GREATER loss during December, but when the automobile market eases, which it has always done, despite the effects of a possibly unique oil problem, THEY will be all set up for better business, and a possible rise to 25-28, though not quite up to the 45 or so that Value Line says they're going up to, because they're usually optimistic. He had another one, too, and I said to keep me informed, and when Hays-Albion goes down to 7, maybe I'll buy.
FRIDAY, 12/14/79: Note from EFA MEETING WITH AGENTS: "It's harder to get an agent than a publisher."
New Yorker, with 150 stories per year, published more than ANYONE ELSE in world.
The bottom line is a serious problem for us.
Book clubs give half the money to publisher, half to author.
Foreign sales: author get 75-80%, publisher 20-25%.
ACCLAIMED Mahler, Volume 1, sold 5800 copies, so MOST DON'T SELL!
Author (contractually) can make only 10% of the SETTING cost worth of galley changes.
Delius' elaborate index is 32 pages for 1000-page book, allowing an extra MONTH.
Of Knopf's 47 books, 2 are super heavy, 14 are good, and the rest are NOT booklist items.
VERY SERIOUS editors work on 8-10 books/year, OTHERS as many as 25/year.
Fiction versus nonfiction question for Acid House: GO WITH YOUR WRITING STRENGTH: NON fiction.
Getting published? Depends on who you KNOW---submit to ONE person THROUGH someone.
Required: outline and several chapters.
Sales: Is the author an AUTHORITY? Better be able to prove that it's yes.
Status of women has improved since the 50's. One of the topics that I HATE to hear time devoted to!
SATURDAY, 12/15/79: Note from TALKING WITH MICROCOMPUTER PAUL 12/4: He mentions his company uses Ohio Scientific Computers, so I ask him how they are, he says fine, but upon being pressed he says the documentation is lousy and maintenance is VERY difficult since they refer EVERYONE to the dealer, and then give poor cooperation to the dealer. Then he goes into computers in general, asking if I'd ever played "Adventure." "Is that the game with the levels and the treasure?" I ask. And he proceeds to tell me about the 15 treasures that can be found with a maximum of 350 points, which he's gotten, so the only problem NOW is the timing. He tells of the Room of the Twisty Maze, which you can map by dropping parachutes and returning to them, and all the directions of N, E, S, or W until the LAST room where the exit is to the NW, but if that direction is tried in any OTHER room, you get the message, "No such direction." He tells about the dragon that can't be killed, but it CAN be chased, but when you get something that can chase it (no, I guess it's the SNAKE that's chased by the BIRD), you have to have something to put it in (cage, probably), which is somewhere ELSE. There's a stalactite you can slither down, a secret way BACK to the exit, and time limits that proclaim that the mine's closing in a short time, and various ways of getting killed. The Source has it too, but the guy talked about getting killed and he's terrified of it. THEN, after he's said he plays with people up at Columbia on computers, he asks if I'd ever played "Dungeons and Dragons" (which Margery at Amy's has heard of!), and he says it started with a basic board game that you can buy the rules to, but you have a referee (everyone calls him God) who makes up a planet and laws of nature, and you roll a 20-sided dice (no one I talked to HEARD of dodecahedrons) for advancement and 6-sided dice for tools and aspects and attributes, and he talked of the battle-ax swinging dwarf that swung wildly and his friend behind him, who had a protection factor of 15 that God raised to 17, got it in the back when he missed his original target and he was standing too close. I'm invited to play December 16th, Sunday, at 11 E. 33rd St., from 12-5, bringing pencil and paper and my wits, and I'll probably love it, and I come up with the idea for the BOOK (Rich idea, NOTEBOOK 154-157) after this most STIMULATING talk.
SUNDAY, 12/16/79: Note from MERCK MANUAL AT ASI MEETING 12/4: They used stand-alone adjectives because it HAD been done and Gloria Hamilton was a new indexer who thought it was fine, but they'll change TO phrases.
NO page ranges, only first page listed, though THAT will be done in future, though the largest page range is 3 pages and no one complained BEFORE.
See alsos came after the entry in parentheses, which was a pain, but there wasn't any end-entry separation punctuation EXCEPT the parentheses.
2080 pages in text and 80 pages of 120 lines each, less than 5 lines/page.
It was LAUDED as an index. bf for Figure and bt for table.
12th edition sold 700,000 copies, it costs less than $10, on bible paper
Lovely entry "shits, the" see Diarrhea (in another book) with NO mention in diarrhea.
Lower-case main entry, and subentries to 5 levels, which everyone said could be REDONE by making subsubs into main entries.
When I mention "Birds, for the, 1-1248" the president said that Nelson's DAUGHTER did that in his Pediatrics book and it went THROUGH everything.
They used a computer system called EVOCON by INFODATA punching onto IBM cards for thesaurus handling, alphabetizing, boldfacing, subsubs, and t and f, and indications of broader terms and narrower terms for see alsos.
Thumb-tabs restrict output to 5000/week, but 90% of the users LOVE them.
They were indexing from galleys in September 76, got the computer to get a page-number from galley line-number, and in January 1977 the complete book was typed onto mag-card 2's, and on April 25 they finally got the PAGES and on May 5 they finished the INDEX. The Addressograph-Multigraph word processor used floppy disks and a printer, was reliable, though he says there are many OTHERS that are good too. The whole book is on a LARGE computer in Rahway (is this where the ASIS speaker's computer was?), and he has NO cost figures for what I figured would be about a $3500 index, since EVOCON was free in their company, computer time was bootlegged, and people were salaried and kept no time of their work on the index, so there's no way of establishing HOW expensive it was to do it this way just to get the index 11 days after the pages were obtained.
MONDAY, 12/17/79: I DESIRE COMPLETENESS (notes from 12/8 am): Suddenly the WORDS fit:
I desire completeness.
Russell had said before on tape that we could only find our PURPOSE when we were COMPLETE, and I said (to Alice's praise) that "Completeness sounds to ME like a PERFECT purpose for the time being." Then on Center 14 tape Russell's insistence on "actual need" and "all desires wedded to purpose" (which I hear as singular and capitalized---Grand Purpose, High Purpose, the Immortal's Purpose---just as Winston agreed that HIGHER Will is "thy" will ONLY when Copilot talks and the Immortal is "thy.") but that sounds FUNLESS, all in ONE PURPOSEFUL direction---when's travel and fun and sex and dreams and ice cream cones and seductions and writing? Amusement parks and jerking off and TV and movies and restaurants and plays?
Dennis and Ken Miller and orgies and cheesecake and vitamins and SheLAH?
Desires, to me, aren't NOT and have to be made ARE, they're MANY and I LIKE the many. Talk with Bruce about RE-LOOKING at desires to KEEP being random to want MORE and MORE and MORE. But what I WANT (Desire) is everything: both/and. I want ALL restaurants and countries and bodies and tastes and sights. Everything. But I look CLOSER. People! I DESIRE people I think BETTER than I FOR THAT WHICH IS better than I. I admire X's writing and Y's knowledge and Z's beauty, not really CARING about X's learning or looks or Y's style or sexiness or Z's adequacy or acumen. I want the BEST OF EACH, ALL in ME.
Now, which I? Obviously since I DESIRE more, I SEE I as incomplete, imperfect, WANTING, DESIRING completeness and perfection. But if I SEE "me" as perfect, I don't desire MORE THINGS, just more OF the SAME thing: ME!
But I DO want more of SOME things since I don't want to DIE, want to continue FOREVER capable of more. And hate irritating noise and junk because it's NOT perfect silence or order or neatness and want to get RID of imperfect, too!
So I DESIRE because I sense myself as NOT complete. But PURPOSE of Actualism is to actualize FROM me MY innate perfection and completeness.
Love of EATING and DRINK is desire to be FILLED, deliciously, inside.
Love of SEX and BODIES is desire to be TOGETHER, COMPLETE, around sensual OUTSIDE.
Love of personal health and beauty is to make GETTING my completeness easier.
Yearning for knowledge is to make me like myself better so I can "sell myself" better to GET what I want (who I want) to be complete.
Est and Actualism and reading are ALL for looking toward completeness---from completeness of KNOWLEDGE of quarks and black holes and everything between. An INTERESTING parallel of quarks as entities that CANNOT be extracted while black holes are entitles from which light cannot be EXTRACTED?? THEY are ULTIMATE COMPLETES!, as GOD is ultimate complete; each of ELGIN is, also!
PERFECT EXAMPLES OF COMPLETENESS
a. completed "things to do" list
b. complete "countries seen" list
c. no need for ANY lists
d. anal-compulsivity SATISFIED
e. entire universe UNDERSTOOD
f. EVERYTHING written down
g. stomach-cravings SATISFIED
h. love-with cravings SATISFIED
i. Actualism completed
j. all processes spontaneous
k. all desired fulfilled
l. all pieces unified
m. all puzzles solved
1. crosswords filled
2. dimensions interleaved
3. jigsaws interlocked
4. frequencies aligned/nested/continuumed
5. puzzle-games written in book form
n. all problems solved (economic, scientific, political)
o. this list exhausted
p. all knowledge indexed
a. EB circle of knowledge
b. all my writings
c. all future learning
d. all people's characteristics
e. all experiences experienced
f. all word-nuances dictionaried
g. all poetry accessible
h. all cleverness immanent
i. all books read
j. all illustrations quantified
k. all smells quantified
l. all tastes quantified
m. all music categorized
q. all categories eliminated!
r. all words eliminated
s. all completeness-desired SATED!!
t. all list-needs fulfilled
u. all strivings attained
v. all instants perfect
w. all analysis accomplished
x. everything ended (?)
y. Nirvana ? !
z. Time??
All time---what?
Present? Ended? Endless? Guaranteed adequate?
Heidegger sure SAID it: "BEING and TIME"!
I seem to have spun FROM dream TO confusion TO writing THROUGH clarity and BACK to philosophy and confusion (or exhaustion!)
Exhaustion = weary / can't do versus completed / done ???
I can choose:
a) this is just word-play and I cycle in CIRCLES, REPEATING, or
b) this is GOOD WORK and I cycle in SPIRALS, MOVING ON.
SAME CHOICE AS REINCARNATING! BUT IS there a "moving on" from earth?
THIS IS WHAT I DON'T KNOW! (or won't have faith in, won't trust, won't believe)
What I don't know causes problems.
So I can sit on them or solve them!
SIT on them REPEATS
SOLVE them MOVES ON.
Like with Ken (moving from COSMIC to CURRENT): I am (and at THAT moment the PHONE rings and it's KEN, trouble with pain from orthodontia, canceling body session that got me UP this AM to WRITE and would have STOPPED me now at 9 to shower for session at 10!).
a) I can let it ride, and wonder, or
b)ACT to clear it UP, and then 1) succeed, fabulous; and 2) fall, what big deal?
So that HAS to lead to---"Who's running the universe, anyway?"
Leading to SheLAH: "Treat life like a STORY you're writing, and ENJOY it." And her "It's only STARTING, it gets WILDER!!"
So I lay back DOWN, structureless, and what happens NOW?
a) Arm sore from writing
b) Hungry
c) Directionless.
So I lay and think a bit more, rehashing, thinking what I should (or could) DO, and write this at 9:17 and decide to get up and DO!
NOTEBOOK 169
WEDNESDAY, 12/19/79: PARODY ON RAVEN'S MEDICAL-BOOK PROCEDURES (11/19): Investigating RADIO operating by:
1) Freezing it and slicing it with a dull hatchet.
2) Putting it into a blender to get nice pieces and
a) separate by weight, color, or length and analyze
b) chop it uniformly and feed it to a robot and analyze robot
c) soak with various substances each piece and analyze under:
(1) water
(2) milk
(3) piss and see how the radio works
3) Pour gold paint over it and study the results with a telescope.
4) Study TVs, wrist watches, and oranges and compare with findings from the radio.
THURSDAY, 12/20/79: NEW BOOK IDEA: WE, THE CONSUMER (12/9 AM): 1/3 text; 1/3 photos; 1/3 drawings
ALL INPUT TO HUMANS
1. Water
2. Food
3. Medicines
4. Beverages
5. Vitamins
6. Minerals
ALL PRODUCTS CONSUMER BY HUMANS
1. Furniture
2. Lodging
3. Dishes and glasses
4. Paper and pens
5. Shoe polish and wax
6. Haircutting equipment
EVERYTHING.
1. Proposal to publisher/agent about it.
2. CURRENT approaches to this??.
FRIDAY, 12/21/79: Note from TALK WITH AMY ABOUT FUTURE: I'd played "Dungeons and Dragons" over the weekend, have been thinking about Amy's prediction of future disaster for civilization, and then this morning read in the December Omni that a nuclear war could be such a disaster that the world would return "to the medieval period," and it struck me SO clearly that "Dungeons and Dragons" might be the younger generation's way of PREPARING for bartering, banding together under the protection of fighters, protecting adepts who can wield spells and extrasensory perceptions, hoarding gold pieces, and meeting monsters (mutants) which might be guarding the sole remaining treasure (food and potable water). So I phone Amy and tell her about this, and she says that only this week has she had the courage to talk with HER trance group about the "paralysis in the face of the future" that's been gripping her recently. She said WHY should she be spending $7000 and 2 valuable years learning Alexander Method, and THEN someone told her that it might be possible to set up a radiation-neutralizing field by doing certain Alexander postures on an adept's body. She said she thought of herself as a survivor, as she DID NOT THINK of Adam, who'd rather die than put up with the destruction of civilization. She repeated that every time she thought of California she got the shivers, that something was going to happen there SOON. I suggested that maybe such a calamity would turn Congress around to ACT, but she said they'd just go on after sending in the Red Cross, and I added that I always made all sorts of good resolutions when I was SICK, but when I got better I forgot all about them. She kept fearing that Susan and Bruce and Kate and Pat and Ken weren't the group she wanted to live the rest of her life with, but that she wanted me to meet her Alexander friends that she felt better with, and particularly her two cousins (lovers) from Philadelphia that she felt a great kindred to, particularly after going into a trance and finding that they had ALL been children to their parents in ancient Indian times. She said how remarkable it was for us to be talking about these things so calmly, and I said that ANOTHER thing that Actualism had been teaching me was to look at things with MORE humor, and even got her out of her despair about her teeth ("Ruined because I was fed nothing but SUGAR in my youth") and how she could survive without root canals that she'd need, then pictured herself as a gap-toothed old lady asking if anyone wanted a reading, and I said, not to put it into the WORST light, that there would be far MORE and GREATER things to worry about, like survival, food, clothing, shelter, than what she LOOKED like. She agreed, saying that she didn't like the idea of being in this worst of all generations, and I said it was a PRIVILEGE to see this enormous change, which MAY have happened only once or twice before, if we can believe the "myths" of Atlantis and Mu being highly developed cultures that were ALSO destroyed, with remnants scattering across the world. "I like to walk," I said, and she said "All the way to ALBERTA?" I ALSO mentioned two formerly unconnected recurring themes in my life: at 20 and 25 and 30 and 40 watching people who were crippled or blind or in other way disabled and thinking "Well, I've had a VERY fruitful happy life to his point, so if for the SECOND half of my life I had LESS, I could still live with my memories and FIND something to concentrate on to survive"; and how I'd clean my plate thoroughly, idly thinking that this last calorie or molecule or atom might SOME day make the difference between my starving to death OR surviving. She came back with looking at her closet and saying "I need more clothes," and realizing that in 15 or 20 years she might give ANYTHING to have "that awful pink dress" back to wrap around herself, AND saying that she worries about her weight, but maybe in the future she won't have to WORRY about it at all. I suggest, and we agreed, that we're not just being depressed and MAKING it come true, but everyone seems to be tuning in that it WILL be true, even Russell and Carol Ann with Earthpoint confronted with her "coincidences" that convinced her maybe YEARS before. So I suggest a QUICK meeting with SheLAH in which we both write down questions, and she says she'll write some, I should call Bruce, and maybe THIS will be the Second Advanced Series that the three of us had discussed so much, and at LEAST we should realize that we WERE doing what we could, living as well as we may BEFORE what we've invested in and lived for vanishes in cataclysm.
SATURDAY, 12/22/79: Note from SESSION WITH AMY, SHELAH, AND BRUCE ON THE FUTURE (12/20): She doesn't know how much to charge at first and then GIVES it to all three of us at the end, since the MAJOR thrust was that catastrophe is 10 years away, after a decade in the 80's of "bloat" which presages the "lean" years to follow in the 90's when things start going bad. "So for the investments, you don't have to worry about selling them until 1989," which makes me feel better about actually investing, about staying in NYC, about looking into computer processing. I get the thought that SheLAH has SAID that sometimes she fibs for good reasons, and when both express amazement afterwards that we have SUCH a long time, I'm about to say "She might be saying that only to prevent us worrying about something we can't do anything about ANYWAY," but I think about it for another second and decide not to say anything. Now I know how Amy must feel to know things about other people and not feel that it would be right to tell them. SheLAH insists that we should all "sharpen our swords," but that "that doesn't mean you can't have fun, just ask yourself the purpose of each thing you do." That's good from the point of self-attention, as Amy points out when she mentions Bruce's arm to him when he starts pulling his hair, and reminds me by telling Amy of his sessions with Alice when "This hand betrayed the king." She plays her Salsa song for us and I don't THINK she was lying when she said that I didn't spoil it for her when I read that "where he went" was what she had taken for "where he wept." So SheLAH remained humor-filled, sharp on personal corrections (MUCH better than Amy was when SHE was talking to Bruce), and both rather jumped on the idea that it was MY lack of faith that I was indulging in when I mentioned the Randi offer of $10,000 for a psychic occurrence, and she insisted that he might be so DOWN on it that it would effectively SQUELCH any attempts to be receptive in HIS presence. She even said that I wasn't "the easiest" person to read, that I DID keep a bit of openness but that I was also very skeptical and difficult to deal with because of it. But Bruce said he now felt he "knew" Amy; SHE said she felt she progressed with someone she hadn't originally liked, and we all thought it was a great, productive evening, and let's hope we DO have 10 years left! She DID mention radiation, which "chilled" Bruce, but didn't talk about everyone "dying" but people "leaving," and NOT in the starships "Links with Space" implied.
TUESDAY, 12/25/79: Note from DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS SESSION 1 (12/16): The place is jammed for Paul's universe even when the store opens late at 12:15, and I'd talked with him on the subway of the fact that he'd worked about half his waking hours for the past two years either playing D&D or working on his universe, which stretched out for 26 miles to the south. Some LOVELY kids there: the guy across the way who enjoyed just LOOKING at me, without that accusation sexy kids can get, and engagingly being both a child and an adult at the same time: about 17, yet still with the innocence of still-at-home; the cute brash kid who ended the game by barging in, tripping on his weapon, killing Skyrider who grumbled "Nice guys can't win," and two other guys, saying "My intelligence is only a 9, I'd DO such a thing." Indeed, one of the charms was the FITTINGNESS of the game: elfin faced Skyrider was in last a half-elf; Brian the Brazen was a slime-trailing spider on the ceiling above his loud-voiced daughter Dahl who looked about 8 except that she had prominent breasts under her pullover. Loudness was a problem: the attendant came in dozes to times, saying "While I'm still smiling, you're OK," and then the shorter, more responsible guy would come in and raise hell, but someone else excused him by saying "He doesn't want to work today." Perceptive. I created Watam on the second try with a Strength of 12, Intelligence of 12 (rolled up from 7), Wisdom of 14, Constitution of 10, Dexterity of 11, and Charisma of 14, though it turns out to be "dex" that's checked all the time by dice-rolling God. I took sword but couldn't because I was a lawful-good cleric (though he went against the book by saying "first level clerics have no spells"), so he gave me a flail to lash out and pass the dying giant toad. Didn't corrode in the Grey Ooze, didn't turn to stone when touching the Chrome Turkey that killed everyone, but since 15 survived MANY points, I got 1787 experience points and immediately graduated to the second level, which made me feel GOOD and like tying it again! I started with a fairly large 90 gold pieces, paid 10 for the sword (and found I was naked when I had no clothes!), then forfeited 1/2 when a thief took everything when we weren't looking in a melee. Sad to find the referee is ALL monsters, that "You chicken" is a taunt often flung, yet laugh that the Monty Python "Run away, run away" is used maybe even MORE often. Buy a $12 Players Manual and read bits of it, getting more turned off.
WEDNESDAY, 12/26/79: Note from DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS SESSION 2 (12/23): Larry (Burroughs?) universe (GOOD universe in that you START SUPPLIED with armor and weapons, depending on strengths) is even MORE pesky than Paul's, which took a LONG time to get started because of squabbling factions and because the leader and caller had been in his universe before and DETERMINED not to go downstairs. So they knew about the pie-shaped series of rooms that revolved without letting them get anywhere, KNEW that downstairs was too advanced, but we had the benefit of his 18 strength, which he used to crash down innumerable doors. But all the haggling about listening, testing, trapdoors, paranoid bickering made me wish for the group he told me about at Columbia who have played together for a long time, attained immortality, and play very esoteric games. Most often-heard complaint: "But we're not GOING anywhere and nothing's HAPPENING." Then people got killed. I entered at 12:30 to find cute Greg playing in Larry's casino with his 13,000 gold pieces (kept!) from when he helped destroy a dungeon last time, and find that you CAN'T keep characters who die, so even when you GET to 100,000 experience points, that character may GO and you have to start from SCRATCH again! But with the menu (with Elurian golden, Velantian violet and various other mellifluously named (from his book on antique names) wines, plus many breakfasts and dinners and serving wenches and visiting clerics that just seemed to STAND THE GAME IN PLACE) and the horse-shop and the church and high-level clerics messing about (one kid killed him, got mercy of God, who time-warped 10 minutes back and revived him), and Greg knowing his universe and saying "NO, NO, DON'T follow the cleric!" Even for 90% of the loot. And tales of other universes abounded, and there were STILL cute kids: Greg with his wide blue eyes and leggy jeans, and sexy-as-hell Vic with a 201 area code, last name Canada, barely capable of shaving, baggy pants, but a puppy-dog face with a lantern jaw with sexy smiles and teeth. We didn't encounter ANYTHING after finally entering his mountain with two huge rocks (obviously testicular) which everyone kept shouting "Zapoof" at until he came around and whispered the one-word hint "Touch" and I lucked out by touching BOTH and saying, from hints by the others, "Open Sesame Zapoof," and we JUST got into a room in his dungeon when the time ran out and he said we got NO points, just play next time (talk about BLACKMAIL) and took down our phone numbers. I read the book and got a "Cure Light Wounds" spell that I could use 20 points of, which I used twice to the pleasure of my comrades, but AGAIN there were awful jokey, pokey, eating kids who would get JUST at the edge of playing and play a joke, turn the subject, talk ABOUT extraneous subjects, and generally wasting time while complaining about wasted time. If I needed reinforcement that it was a low-level waste of time, I was granted it, and I can't imagine being tempted to a RANDOM group again.
THURSDAY, 12/27/79: Note on MAIL-ORDER DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS?: In my session yesterday (see ACTUALISM 42) I though of the way to AVOID the worst things I'd found about D&D: the random crowds at the Compleat Strategist who take hours getting started and then don't MOVE; the low-vibration owners who keep checking and harassing; the awful universes that have more stalling than action; the tales of the AWFUL melees and the concentration on evil rather than good, the emphasis on craft rather than knowledge and skill. I figured that WITH the JOYI name I could simply use 167 Hicks as the address without committing my name to an ad which I could put in the D&D journal offering PRIZES for those who would identify my sources for the QUESTIONS asked them: Scientific American, EB III, and for advanced people for higher prizes use EB II or even the 1911 EB, all of which would be hinted at by the type of question to be answered, FORCING kids to look to their libraries and find where information can be found, and emphasize WISDOM and INTELLIGENCE and CHARISMA rather than strength and constitution and dexterity. Advertise, get them to send a dollar with the chances of winning $10, or $5 for the chance at $100, and publish lists of winners with their winning times, building up to a system of knowledge that I could work on bit-by-bit as I did on the J/O material, and end with a book that I could publish. Advertise it as BEING with a master Dungeon Master, WITH monetary prizes so they could get gifts for themselves, and xerox things at the local place since there wouldn't be so many, they wouldn't be X-rated, I'd be sending them out more often, and they could even send more checks to JOYI so I could build up that account. But even lead the more spiritually oriented ones (not operating in dungeons but in higher and higher heavens, using the Tibetan Book of the Dead and the Lucis Trust material as test-material, turning the kids ON to mysticism) into something like Actualism if they live where a center is, and have them AID each other rather than killing each other, making the rewards for GOODNESS rather than slaughter, and have ANGELS guarding treasures of KNOWLEDGE, which is just as much experience as gold pieces or strength, and I think it could WORK, though I have to resist the temptation to get sucked into STUDYING THE COMPETITION before starting.
FRIDAY, 12/28/79: Note from CHRISTMAS EVE: After spending the day in session and on the phone (see ACTUALISM 42), I got to Bilqis at 6:40 to find Susan and Julie, then later Bruce and Kate, and then B.R. and Goldie, later Ray Espino, and then in come Ken and Arthur and Joanne, so we're 11 until 8:25 when half walk and half drive to Bargemusic where I move Lieber names from bench and put Wetterson names there, from chairs in which we sit. We got the good Brandenburgs: 3, 6, 5, for the days of the year, and the flute was great but the harpsichord messed up on 5 and demanded VERY feminine drawn-out endings and TOO long between movements. Wander the foggy 53 pier in the second intermission and back at 10:30 to finish at 11 and eat fruitcake (paid fragments of everyone's bill at Bilqis, having two bites of a blackberry crepe I got everyone to taste, and Ken said he has FOOD afterward, too!) and walk to Ken's, when at 11:50 we do a gathering that annoys me because no one ASKS Joan and B.R. and Goldie if they really WANT one. But I look at my annoyance, then glance through his print book while the mass blares from St. Peters, but Bruce shuts it off about 12:30 and the eggnog's a success and I have about 6 glasses, pushed by Ken, and love his cold cucumbers and have some cheese and more fruitcake and lots of broccoli and carrots and potato chips and dip, and I'm getting more and more tired (and Arthur's almost falling asleep, staying at Ken's at last to prevent his having to take a subway back into Manhattan that late at night, poor boy), and Joanne's flaked out in the bedroom but the Liebers are just going strong, and I center attention for a bit giving them what little I remember of palmistry and Ken's invited Amy "special" and she doesn't show, of course, and I just HAVE to leave at 2:30, Ken laughingly blocking the door for my coat and Goldy inviting me to her New Year's Eve party and Ken sexy as hell with his lost weight, and I get off a few good puns and Bruce is activated about my getting after him, and I get home at 3 to feel SO bloated that I keep drinking water and brushing teeth, and settle in bed to read Omni until 3:45, when I set the phone off and thereby missed Edgardo's call, waking to hear it squeaking about 11:10 with Adam's call confirming my being at Amy's at 2, and I decide to treat them to Hubert's vegetarian dinner for the Christmas present, in return for Amy's reflexology session on Friday and what's probably a datebook under their tree.
THOUGHTS ON ENGAGEMENT BOOK: Amy's gift of a beautifully photographed Sierra Club Engagement Book leads to my thinking about combining THREE lists into that one, during my session: on the left it can contain the future appointments, in the middle it can become my ENTERTAINMENT LISTING, with evaluations of what I've done, so that I don't have to worry about missing what ballets I went to see if I don't type out a page of review of them OR keep the program. Then in the right third I can put the data for the work-schedule book, so I don't have to keep TWO of them in my drawer, leaving everything in the ONE book. Then I start thinking again about codes to say what I DID during the day, and I jot down C=come, B/ L/ S = breakfast/ lunch/ supper; Notebook writing; Exercise; wash dishes; Haircut; Vacuum, and Dream page written. But that smacks too much of LIST AND RECORD KEEPING, though I encourage myself to include WRITING in the WORK section, rather than just doing and checking indexes. But it becomes silly: WHY do I need to know how many meals I HAD, when the time colud be devoted to making the meals BETTER? Who CARES how many times I came in a month if they were pleasant or unfulfilling on their own? I'd be TIED to the book, or regret when I DIDN'T fill it out, though it's a QUICK way of saying how OFTEN I do things like come and vacuum and get haircuts and write pages. So maybe I'll try it and if it fits, do it. But it WOULD be nice to have it READABLE so that I wouldn't have to RETYPE it: the original document would become the thing to be saved itself, rather than retyped at the end of the year. There's a disadvantage to having only one WEEK on the page when it comes to looking ahead, but maybe that can be changed to an ADVANTAGE if it would teach me to look only a BIT ahead, and not try to plan out the whole next month or year. And IT DOES give me more room to jot down more things, and it WILL be sad if I can't look back to SOMETHING when I want to re-see a movie to find what I thought about it the first time around---though maybe if I CAN'T remember something, it means that it wasn't very engrossing so there'd be no reason to see it again---even "Gay Puree" this morning was SO forgotten it was like seeing a different rather uninteresting movie, though some of the four-black-cat-menace drawings were fun.
SATURDAY, 12/29/79: Note from FOOT REFLEXOLOGY SESSION WITH AMY (12/28): Forgot about this, even forgetting to tell her until Saturday MIDNIGHT that my feet sort of SANG me to sleep, tingling and twitching and moving ever so slightly from the moment I tuned into them to the moment I fell quietly asleep. She confused me by saying "Lay on your back with your soles up," since I think of my soles UP when I'm lying on my FACE, but I guess she meant the soles up ON THE PILLOW at the foot of the bed. Then she said that I should have a SMALL pillow under my head, getting a tiny one---about the size of my sofa pillows, saying that put my head in the right position. At first, when she pressed in, I figured it was like Rolfing, intense, but to be suffered without saying anything. She briefly stated "This is your backbone, this is your knee, this is your pelvic bowl, the top of the crest," and THEN I felt a stinging in my foot, when the pencil she was pressing into the nerve against the bone felt that it couldn't be tolerated a micron deeper, and I said that I felt something there. Then the neck of the big toe got a twinge for my adrenal gland, and then she PUSHED in on the left of my left big toe, bringing back whole HOSTS of pains from my ingrown toenail that I'd gotten cut out of the RIGHT foot (and she didn't bite if there was a coincidence that I hurt the next-little toe on the right foot, also), and she said that was the pineal gland, which would properly bring up things about my childhood, and that it was good to get all that pain out of there. I felt better when she took it away, and then she pressed up and down the spine and remarked that I was remarkably free from much, but she found a few places and pushed in on them, saying that she wasn't too strong of hand as yet. When she really GOT into my neck and shoulders she said she'd quiet down on the next foot, but there were places that she seemed to delight to press, saying "it crackles" and I could feel tissues and nerves moving around inside, however AFTERWARD it DID feel that my neck and shoulders, tense after 2-3 days' work, felt MUCH better, and all the next day I felt better than I had previously, so I had to admit it was a very good session, even though she WASN'T thoroughly tuned in to where everything was, it was EFFECTIVE!.
SUNDAY, 12/30/79: EDGARDO'S PHONE CALL AT 7:30 AM
E: Bob!
Z: Edgardo!
E: How are you?
Z: Fine, and you?
E: Good! I called you Christmas!
Z: Yes, I got your message; sorry I wasn't here!
E: Happy New Year!
Z: Happy New Year to you, too!
E: Hello to Dennis.
Z: He's in California, with his parents; I'll tell him.
E: Here, I give you Sandra; Marina says Goodbye.
S: Ciao, Bob!
Z: Hello Sandra, good to hear your voice.
S: How you?
Z: Fine, and you?
S: (Laughs) Oh, say "Goodbye" Dennis (mumbles in background; laughs) Oh.
Z: Dennis will be glad to hear you called.
S: You have good Christmas?
Z: Fine.
S: With parents?
Z: No, but with friends.
S: Oh, I give you Edgardo.
Z: Ciao, Sandra.
S: Ciao, Bob; thank you.
E: Ciao, Bob; I write you letter.
Z: Good; thank you for calling.
W: Ciao, Bob.
Z: Ciao, Edgardo.
E: Ciao. (Click)
MONDAY, 12/31/79: Note from PENULTIMATE ORGY OF PENULTIMATE SCORE OF MILLENNIUM: Load up a box with porno, wine, one of the metal trays that Arnie turns out to want, and popper-juice from downstairs when I check that Dennis's apartment is fine (except for a burnt-out light in the alleyway) and can't get in touch with Rolf, and remark to Bill Wolf, who's actually there first but upstairs second, "Think this is enough poppers for the party?" Arnie looks through for stuff, then John gets there and looks, and older James places himself as doorman, not doing much ELSE in the evening. Joe Farinas looks older but his friend Bob is cute and black, and I offer them BOTH neck-spine and hips for the obscured spinal channels. Art participates a lot, as does Arthur Whitfield, still looking like a pixie. Paul Bosten shows up in time to talk to a little nest of Puerto Ricans huddled in the corner, said to be shy, but one of them, plumpish, starts off by fondling me and I turn to him and suck and suck and suck, but he doesn't get hard, so I sort of stop, jaw-tired, and then a second one stands around smiling and fetching in a white pullover and I press his front and he's agreeing and undemanding, so he takes his cock out and I start sucking, and it's a stiff little member with him seeming to want to come, so I work on his cock standing, then take him to the bed and he finally takes his pants down and helps a bit with his own hand, and then I get into a sensuous slow motion and he comes quickly and then proceeds to moan and groan very fetchingly as I work him over at his most sensitive state, and he and I love it. Friends of Malcolm from America (as the 5-6 PR's were his friends too) Richard and John would seem to be the best bets, Malcolm saying they have big cocks, so I start in on Richard when Arnie seems to be having little luck, but he's full yet not hard and he unblamingly pulls away, and then John goes down on Malcolm (who left earlier with the weightlifter friend of Arnie's, the beauty of the party---so he may have come already) endlessly, then goes into the bathroom to retch violently and flop out on Arnie's bed at the end. Don comes in about 11:30, made up and furred, and participates with fatty and possibly the sexy Parris and maybe Paul and the Bill Hyde-like Bob, and we leave at 1 after the plump PR returns the popper he borrowed from me. So there were about 23-25 people, not bad, demolishing TWO cheesecakes and lots of booze, and I end up drinking quinine water for the last 3 drinks so I DON'T have a hangover, am only TIRED!
LIFELIST ENTRIES FOR JANUARY 1 - MARCH 21, 1979
B 79-01-01 Sheckley: Futuropolis
R 79-01-03 Pirandello
M 79-01-05 Lord of the Rings
R 79-01-05 Tavoos
E 79-01-06 Fleeting Gesture at ICP
E 79-01-06 Met Mus for Kitchen prints; Dresden, Diaghilev Costumes
M 79-01-06 Handle with Care
R 79-01-06 Colonnade
M 79-01-07* Mourning Becomes Electra
M 79-01-08 Sin of Madelon Claudet
M 79-01-08 White Sister (Gish)
R 79-01-08 Susu's Yumyum
E 79-01-09 How to Get a Book Published
R 79-01-10 East-West
E 79-01-11 IBM System 6 demonstration in Queens
R 79-01-11 Gino's (Queens)
M 79-01-13 Death on the Nile
M 79-01-14 Midnight Express
B 79-01-15 Sheckley: Robot Who Looked Like Me
I 79-01-17 Cold for 3 days
M 79-01-20 Luisa Miller (Met)
O 79-01-20 Luisa Miller (Met)
M 79-01-21* Black Sunday (Dern/Shaw)
R 79-01-21 Tramway
B 79-01-23 AAA(unk): Bantam Story, The
M 79-01-24 Museum Exhibition Films
M 79-01-24 Simba, King of Beasts
M 79-01-27* Frankenstein: The True Story
M 79-01-27* Rise and Fall of the Third Reich
M 79-01-27* Sentinel
O 79-01-28* Sutherland-Pavarotti Recital
R 79-01-28 Hubert's
M 79-01-29* Corn Is Green (Hepburn)
R 79-01-30 Hicks
M 79-02-02 Last Wave
R 79-02-02 Le Quercy
M 79-02-03* Strange Case o'th'EndofCivizatn(AsWeKnowt)
E 79-02-04 Walt Whitman reading by John Vinton
O 79-02-05 Katya Kabanova
R 79-02-05 Ballroom
R 79-02-05 El Charro
E 79-02-09 Arcane Society for Full Moon
P 79-02-09 Wings
R 79-02-09 Joia
D 79-02-10 Farrell/Martins at BCBC
R 79-02-10 Arthur Treacher's Fish and Chips
M 79-02-15 Joseph Andrews
M 79-02-15 Pretty Baby
M 79-02-16* Julius Caesar
M 79-02-17* Man on the Roof
R 79-02-17 Coach House
I 79-02-19 Cold for 5 days
M 79-02-19* Superman
R 79-02-19 Famous
M 79-02-21* Fidelio
O 79-02-21* Fidelio
M 79-02-23 Invasion of the Body Snatchers (Sutherlnd)
R 79-02-23 New Carnegie Tavern
B 79-02-24 : Science Fiction in the Cinema (skim)
M 79-02-24* Donkey Skin
E 79-02-25 Art Ostrin in Ballroom
M 79-02-27* Midsummer Night's Dream (IanHolm/DianaRig)
M 79-02-27* Search for Atlantis
R 79-02-28 Souen
M 79-03-01 Unmarried Woman
D 79-03-02 Elizabeth Keen
D 79-03-03 Dance Theater of Harlem
D 79-03-03 Orlando Ballet
R 79-03-03 Museum Cafe
M 79-03-04* As You Like It (BBC)
E 79-03-06 Donald Windham at bookshop
I 79-03-07 Get Susan's car, drive through Red Hook
R 79-03-07 Minsky's
M 79-03-08 Deer Hunter
M 79-03-08 Movie Movie
M 79-03-08 Ritz, The
R 79-03-08 Healthworks
R 79-03-09 Dan for Don's birthday
D 79-03-11 Bat-Dor
M 79-03-11* Bell from Hell
M 79-03-12* Flight from Destiny
M 79-03-13* Zorro
R 79-03-14 Chun-Cha-Fu
M 79-03-16* America at the Movies
M 79-03-16* Romeo and Juliet (BBC)
M 79-03-17* Bandwagon
B 79-03-18 Fowles: Daniel Martin
E 79-03-18 Drive #1 to Staten Island Conference House
M 79-03-18* Blockheads
D 79-03-20 Bejart Ballet: Gaite/Duo/Life/Bolero