Studying Hunger Journals, page 43
Teaching the minister, writing in public places, there’s a man on t.v. says that that is an example of nihilism, that song about American pie. He mentions Camus and Sartre. I think of Charlotte’s neat handwriting, I think of how I always persist in what I am doing, I think of Meg always keeping a letter in progress in the typewriter to Mary and of meditation before sleep and Ullman’s idea of vigilance, sleep then dreaming as looking for solutions to problems, of Fern and her love letter, of Memory and the right to be lazy: get up to teach the minister at 2 p.m., have some Turkish coffee and a beer, work with David to get up a lecture on Marxism, of Fern fixing me coffee, meet Meg to get some keys, try to buy Cassis and buy Campari, drink two of them, read Ullman and fall asleep, dream I’m dreaming, sit around and eat, talk on the phone, of stimulation for Meg, of stopping smoking, of washing clothes, of Grace, do a crossword puzzle, read more, watch t.v. and drink beer, of needing to write in my notebook, should I keep the dreams separate, sun’s coming out, will Belial take a cab to the hospital, all the time of how other people live and where I’ll go in September.
July 2
A place where you can climb through triangles to school and grandfather says he’ll be a hundred next birthday, he’s marrying D.
July 3
Stanislaus writes: “Am I trespassing. What next. You are now sleeping in the next room. Shit, only what, no, sleep well women are lucky, or, most men think that women, or, a woman’s body, or and so on. But this was a spring night, and the sky was gusting red, warm orange, the sirens, Pittsfield, Lenox, and Lee, neighbors stood out on their porches to stare up at the shower of sparks falling down the mountainside…like a meteor shower, they said, like cinders from the Fourth of July…”
July 4
Massachusetts. A crowded house again except it’s everyone I know, a shady place. S. says it’s about time I stopped treating him with such rancor (in public!). I’m with M. Then a long t.v. movie, bound to become a series, in four parts beginning with part four. In colors of tan and bright sun in/on it. Something about it is extraordinary. I think it’s about the hotel above, in the other dream.
Then I take Max to Emilio’s garden, I insist on the garden. We are lying together in bed, the same movie comes on. It’s about people being shot up and kept in a hospital. Two investigators come and one “gets” a young boy but they don’t fuck. It’s a place near the water. Someone says, “How many places like this could we find.” There’s an exchange of shirts or something, it’s some kind of exposé. Twice they spread the women’s legs and they twist their fists around. Toward the end Max says, “Are you watching this?” and turns it off.
All the while I think I’m awake. I do see the dawn and wake at seven having dreamed it was eight, or, read my watch wrong. Keep a really simple journal of what happens, like, I noticed when I saw the cat that I had stopped sneezing all the time. Except nothing simple happens: leave out everything not-simple: if I hadn’t dreamed I was awake I wouldn’t have awakened. Another CCLM meeting in my sleep.
July 5
Edwin, posing as the Rat Man, made-up, fucks me or maybe he’s just hitting me, a lecherous grin on the red lips of his face as he pulls down my pantyhose (?), I am dressed in my old red suit, the one I gave a recital in at New Rochelle College. Something about, “I must’ve been nervous about playing the piano.”
July 6
Max and Beth and something about moving into a new, maybe unfinished place. I sit on the steps, stoop, in my (not Japanese) “house-dress” and someone calls me a whore. So I introduce them to the people who are helping me move, the ones I’m “whoring” for: it’s two groups, Stanislaus and somebody and two others, we look at the details of the house. Also, something “must” be silver and gold.
July 7
Survivors of an (Andean) crash show up at my house, I remember there’s a store open around the corner (from Macdougal Street). I ask them if they want beer, coke or cheeseburgers. They say they don’t but I do. An artist who imitates everyone else in his life but his work is totally original.
July 8
To not remember another dream: the dream workshop is overcrowded, I say to somebody, “What the hell are we going to do with all of them.” Ullman hands out a form to be filled in, on one side are descriptions of events or just phrases, like, “She said she swore.” On the other side is space for you to identify how these situations came up in your recent dreams, if they did. Then you sign it, like an (repeating series of) affidavit(d?)s. I fill in every day so I figure I must be lying (The Boy Saviour Movement!). The workshop’s being held in an art gallery, in an adjoining room there’s a shoe and boot show. All of a sudden Larry Weiner comes out driving two horses with a giant ten-foot pair of Bean’s Maine hunting boots. (As I joke, I’d just given blowjobs to two young boys, people keep asking me about it and I keep repeating of course, the blowjobs, feeling pleasure, maybe rubbing up against a banister. I go back to some strange basement apartment.) Every body seems to have a way of keeping contact with someone (or the outside).
July 16
Aspects of Select: Three hours to go (Stanislaus). It was some other kind of loss I was talking about, I was meaning to talk about, so take the dream and retype it, putting the rest of the stuff in, it’s the father-out-the-window dream. Cab driver knew enough not to talk to me. I take money from him, Max, and “Kept them sane,” what does that mean, kept them from sinking, or, doing damage, that is, sinking ships. Therefore, since Stanislaus is sane, in the present moment, I don’t have to worry about driving him crazy. Aspects of select. Let me put it another way: they were crazy a long time ago. Then, they seemed sane. Now they are acting crazy. Stanislaus is not crazy. I have not driven anyone crazy. Therefore, he will not be crazy. Now, this is work. Is this like studying Egyptian hieroglyphs. “If I were working I would feel a lot better. The absence of writing in a house full of reading.” “I keep my household sane.” Saner than in a banal way. Picaresque or picturesque, two work spaces, it wasn’t picturesque. The psychotic detective, his hallucinatory leaps and now he’s in great demand. Funny, Stanislaus wouldn’t mention it.
Feeling, expressions of feeling. There are some dangerous and some not. There are some intense and some not. There are some adaptive and some not. Enough of that. Feeling expressions of feeling. No clues! Who can work can express feeling and who cannot, no way. Could that be the solution or lead-in to the diadem of proposals presented in the mystery novel-set, as in set theory. You get lost in the sentences, even simple sentences. You are anxious to read my writing. Is this why we are off on crime and a solution. The detective has no stance, he’s not against anything—doesn’t your hand hurt when you write those long sentences that please him so much and I’m jealous and I’m out the door but can’t go out—he, the decorative detective, only presents a solution, possibly not even honest. The detective is ashamed of dates and delays his proposal for a public reading. He opens with “You are the sunshine of my life,” an address to his mother, thanking her in some way, probably for simple exigencies. It’s the way he lives in a wall, so insolated, isolated, insultated, insult-laden. And yet so shy that gives the secret away: all of his affects are mine and this is besides “twins.” “I must have more friends.” So, it comes up again in a different way: what you (don’t) owe to who you can change. I don’t, no, immigrant, I don’t only I don’t put it right. They must fuck fast, I am thinking of somebody else now. Perhaps I meant change the language of. Perhaps I meants involve in a situation complex enough for “them,” or, for the first time. Reminds me of my time I have no time. My time is my own, or, all the same my time is my own. I don’t worry about eating. Someone’s glasses beside the bed or besides the bed there are someone else’s glasses beside the bed. A stranger’s, I’m caught into calling them spectacles and I am more distraught, no, I am more expert at this than you. A new pronoun. Aspects of select, secret title, keep it down, don’t underline or capitalize it. 4:30, time to get up and be clear, communicate with the masses, or show them how, if they only knew. I write bigger than my mother and father and uncle wrote quite small and neat. Grandfather wrote with German letters in English or American language. Also, I fill up more pages than them, accountants, secretaries, secret diarists, artists and electrocutions, plumbers and janitors, or, proudly, elevator repairmen. Repairmen especially of really old and decrepit elevators that the Otis men couldn’t touch. Not a janitor, then, no doorkeeper. Helpless, I write. Kept helpless, I write more and more till I write self out of helplessness. Kept helpless out of pure invention, invention of motive for purpose in the house as opposite to on the streets, endless (to me) invention, seeming to be back where I began, I carry beers around as I used to and still complicatedly must have paper and pen and a book that looks like school—it must be necessary. I don’t outline their professions for you for nothing. If I can’t get another one done by Friday I’ll have a way then to do another one by Tuesday. This is speaking of dreaming. I am a dreamer, not involved in this profession. I simply present the dreams and store them. I do not exhibit them further, as, for example, the monkey who said he was a psychologist and a philatelist, when in fact he was a pugilist. Or the great red painting with color down the middle which was so obviously a representation of the female sexual apparatus, but, you see I don’t have to be responsible for this transparency, I am only the dreamer, no more to it. Or the many dreams of Lisette and her apartment becoming a congruency of lovers and strangers, another, and I remind you I’m not responsible, absurdly banal image, representing itself in Lisette’s helicopter pilot landing in the large loft-house which had been taken over by strangers and when she gets in to go to the airport (I’m just going along for the ride) he tries to kiss her, they’re having an affair, she complains it’s too sticky and he should wait until she stops sweating at least. Now you see, I am sitting in the front seat, just for the ride. “I think I’ll do a Max on Lisette,” I would never do that. But, there’s a thin person underneath here. But, everyone enjoys my big belly. And so, I’m sure it’ll all work out. Like the other dream of Lisette’s house I can’t remember so I must be conscious of where I am so why bother to mop the floor. I do more for Lisette than the men I do but they’ll get their chance. I’d say the monkey was a philosophist and not a serious psychologist. Left out of the gist of it, at the least. Now what should I read of what am I reading, why not What Entropy Means to Me. But first darling, I’m glad it’s cool and I need some tide, but that wasn’t first darling.
11:30: “There sure is enough room for everybody,” to work but not to fuck: as, one in each room, a comfortable situation. The calls come in or go out barking. Piano, no, some kind of piano music. Charlotte Bill Meg Stanislaus and I are all misfits, or, what did I call us, the dregs, meaning of the Poetry Project. Ullman: “Excuse me, can I bring my daughter?” He understands the looseness of the situation, he says, if not the jewelry (there was another word supposed to come in here from Pat’s black dream). I wear all my jewels to class to provoke dreaming and so stares.
July 21
Had Stanislaus’ busy checked: I should be blunter and admit: if you aren’t staying over I’ll call somebody else. Plus all the guilt of course. But, they would never believe me and they even revel and maybe I revel in thinking I’m “on my own” or whatever. Whatever’s covering your bets. I certainly do admire everyone’s present in my past total bravery, I should never have left Max, it was a very mean thing to do, “said in the house.” But, I saw so many things today, new colors, new sky colors, colors never seen in the sky by anyone but me, against yellow light and the smallest sliver of a moon ever seen was seen by me, the newest moon not even rising but setting, just a line of a circle.
And, my “favorite” flowers, Queen Anne’s Lace, and green of Glen Cove covers up the good part of the sunset, Max tells me a story about D.D. who just appeared on the socialite page of the New York Post. And, the lump in my throat that Fern caused in a dream, Fern is Lisette. I call her baby when she leaves, because she enjoys it.
July 23
Belial says not to drink. But Belial, how am I more “phallic” as you say, than Fern or even my own mother, what does that mean? And what is this “material” you say we need, you are looking for? Am I being too “spiritual” at the same time that I am being “more phallic?”
July 25
Belial, then a man whose made a circle, like sand castle moat in the mud, they drive their motorcycle around in it. When interviewed Belial says there’s nothing to say about it. His friends, he says, are all foreign so they cannot speak either (about Fern?).
Tennis, something about even teams, a problem, so, we never get to play. I dial Florence’s phone to call you about our session, it won’t work. I can’t arrange to meet you and think I’ve slept till Friday now and missed you completely. As in the beach house, we had a 5:15 appointment. Rico introduces Beth to Teresa, Beth has her mail in her hands. I notice it’s mostly from “suppliers” that sell pens and art supplies, as a character in Simenon. Teresa is very uncomfortable. Someone, a man, stands behind her and asks her questions or makes suggestions. She seems to know everything and he keeps saying in amazement, “You mean you did that already?” Meg and I are packing up the car outside Florence’s, what car? The rooms are different. Meg has put a bureau in the back seat, it’s the yellow car Max rented to take me to the beach. I turn and a mau-mau is in the car, not a real mau-mau but a man with Haitian designs carved into his legs, he’s white. He claims he’s harmless cause he can’t steal the car without the keys. Meg comes out, leaves the keys on top of the hood and he drives away (as if in Philadelphia).
Then the women are playing a basketball game. We have an appointment but we have it there because, you say, I wouldn’t want to miss anything. I’m angry and keep trying to reset it or get you out of there, off the court. We sit on couches and try to talk.
That’s all the dreams, so, I’m losing racetrack, I don’t care, I don’t understand why every one is about you, again, I’m leaving. You left, I’m leaving, all exigencies, mine, yours, Marie’s. Let’s see about Marie and Fern: just let’s see. The pen nearly broke, at least it closed down, closed up, it got tight-fisted, I got tight-lipped, I became distraught, I said, I got angry. Gone fishing. Fern said to me: you’re not feeling lusty today? No, I wasn’t. Now the pen’s closed up more, almost can’t write, what if I were caught with it, my only pen, you see, the point, real appropriately is pushing further and further back into the pen. If only I had a tweezer to pull it out again, but then the pressure of my words would only push it back in, yet it still makes a slight impression.
Such a green color, I chose it. I fix it, I got it out with a pin, no wonder it was such a tight-ass pen, and now it scratches, makes a little noise with each motion. Metaphor, if this were only not so, is that enough for you? Now my hair is caught on the ball of Fern’s desk drawer, I can’t move, I can’t stand living in her house! A story about a house left just as it was, as this one is, for good. And thought I couldn’t stand living with a woman at all. Since New Rochelle. But that aint it. Something about a special kind of murder or object choice, I can’t remember what that is, something clear. I’m losing track and I wanna get drunk and make some scenes. Meg asks me to move the phone before I go to sleep. Stanislaus suspects that I suspect him of something I don’t even know what is. Max is afraid, anxious, at being alone, nothing to do with me, he says. So I form an offer to help him with the loft. “I’ve changed.” From July 26 through August 2 I am going to need more energy than I ever had to need. Except to ford that river. I think, I must think I made (forged) the river, which was not a stream. The Swift River, up to our shoulders, in Massachusetts, with a rope across it and some men fell downstream.
Dear Belial, who can be any body (that’s a question). I am not brilliant yet, I am only slightly torn. And, too small. Fern wouldn’t be so careful to be quiet, while she was working, as I am, for Meg asleep. Next room. Something about people I can control. Fern I can’t control. Marie I could except for her schedule, her regular doings, about the house. Also I must stop something, I am not going to say what it was. So, there’s a revolt against Fern, maybe it’s not a real one, maybe made-up for your sake, maybe just ingenuous, or, seeking more, could there be more, privacy. Do you mean then, I bring out the helplessness in her by my amusing tactics, the ones I learned (acquired) long years, etc. of pleasing, giving pleasure to, to women especially, especially when it worked, when it made them cook you dinner, is that what you mean? But, the revolt then is against her very own armor, armor that she wears of a prince of the doings, no, I am confusing it, I am the prince, armor that she wears then of holding back in a small cynical way, I am still waiting to see if this is really so, I’m waiting for more, and so I won’t speak up or reveal myself to you at all. I used to be able to write beter, that is, I am only going on, I am not continuing on, I am broken off, forcibly so, and I’m sick of this. Being comfortable comes to mind, it’s like the first journals I presented you with. How now do you become the you again? Steering. Getting high, or, no more fear. Getting paid. You have a friend in getting off. You fuck like a Chinaman, you fuck like a madman, like a black man, you look at the genitals of all (three) sexes. Now you know everything. Something to leave you with, part of my privacy, when I go away, what? You want some dreams? You want stories? You want more “material?” You’re in no fucking hurry, it drives me crazy. I say to Stanislaus, we have plenty of time, he’s confused, I would be, I am. I won’t eat in the morning, I’ll feel sick and to die, I don’t have to do anything, it’s the price of this prose, I’m under no pressure. Will they, you, write to me. Will Stanislaus and I be forgotten forever, will be lost, will never be heard from again, it’s tempting, could be, under, sick and die, take her, sorry. The trees even here are elaborately rescuing me, even in this moment and I succumb to a fantasy I would never credit in a human being.
