Studying Hunger Journals, page 45
August 17
An ugly day. An “Elizabeth:” an Elizabeth Nietzsche, an Elizabeth Hawthorne, an Elizabeth Peabody in your life, all sisters. Hawthorne ate dove, dove, and would like to have intercourse with some beautiful young children, young girls…Sophia, Queen of the Journalizers, like a picture of the dove he ate.
August 20
“Turn over so I can finish the other side, I dont wanna get up till I’m done. I’ll just rip off a wing, the dark meat too.” Stanislaus becomes a cannibal and Spider a paraprofessional.
Getting up earlier and one meal a day, no dream about Alger Hiss I dream, there isn’t that much to do, just at the center of the notebook, Hawthorne and Sophia could never get away with it yet I am the transcendental social worker, no. Nothing from Belial. Picking berries I begin to shake, in chronology: stay up all night, Meg and I talk about sex, look at stars in the bat field, look at flying saucers in the eastern sky, demonstrate walking on knees for S., look for smokes, thanks for closing the door, go out, Pittsfield smokes for directions to Balance Rock, rock-climb then down Hancock Road which turns into dumb dirt all the way through, one-way, Pittsfield State Forest, winding, up in Lebanon Springs just north of Sedgwick’s thinking all the while, we’re sure to be killed, sharp cliff on right, no, left and I’m in charge, muscles ache from curves and we eat breakfast and pick up the mail, some film. Berry-picking, everybody bravery. Sole isolation scared, so, hands, allergies, scratches, bees. All this ends at 9 a.m., spider’s giant web. Not wanting to leave and still alone, Joe finds a piece of my writing “healthy” he says, “Come to Cherry Valley,” my reward for writing a short innocuous poem. Surely Sophia would leave all this out, she’d say, “I must fix dinner.” The cat ate the mouse and leak is bad, the tire has a slow one too, what’s peace.
August 21
Dated June, now. The spotlights are on in error, all these entries are August and if I were to write you a letter I would address it to you who so innocently craved my dreams and then, systematically…I can’t say that. Could that be sent to anyone then but Max and could that be sent to everyone and Max and could send it to me, all powerful and strong, I could have done anything, some dream of you? Now I roam from house to house, let’s take a trip not up the hill but down, the authentic figure that was identified as me is to stop. But the other you, the usual you has left already, true with the possibility of being more intact in some distant future but now quite lost within I entertain it loose within the universe, the flying saucers get cold, I rebuke them all suddenly and refuse them anything, even little touches, I can see it happening again, she goes to look at her eyes in the mirror and is used at least to a pretence of worldliness, from others, too much is given then as in the many dreams about the great and big house, yes that was exactly my plan, don’t suggest it to me. The shrimp angostura dream: I give Meg shrimp angostura, to have it with her. The rolling up the workshop dream: we are rolling up the workshop in sheaves, all different lengths in a raging river, towards time, either 5 or 8 or 11 but whatever it is we’re late and nobody dares to enter the river but two of us and it’s difficult rolling up the sheaves with no one in the middle to secure them. Another bakery item dream: my sister Louisa Hawthorne has decided to die and so, she has left her clothes in the river. I pick out what I want to save but, or, even though, she is not dead at all, the news of her death was delayed. So I am in this bakery picking out, even on a weekend, the very best pieces of cake and you want some too, when you see they aren’t stale and when you anticipate what they might bring in next. They bring in my notebooks, all of them, in a pile (the owner) and I say something like, “I must have made a big mistake.” Upstairs my mother is waiting with rice for me, it’s too soft. I hesitate to ask her and I don’t but I want to, “How are you feeling?” She looks O.K. but I know she’s dead. I don’t want to see my notebooks but I revel in the bakery, as seems usual.
I almost had a house today, two large rooms for $250 a month overlooking the back gardens of the church. “We’ll never leave you out on the streets,” Florence said.
August 22
A spectacular day. We’ve already gone to the post once for film but it isn’t there. Carrots, beets and ten pounds of potatoes, “a good deal” from Mr. Sedgwick so we spread them out in a path to a note to Meg to wake us at 4 p.m. Bringing in the sheaves and corn and scallions and summer squash but, it’s already Thursday. Twenty bottles of beer a day. Hooch. Dream to Chicago by bus, no manuscript with me. All the usual fears of how you get treated while “performing,” Stanislaus is with me, I have nothing to read, must write something quick.
August 26
And if I had to give this up, I would give it to you
And it’s so simple, sucking is simple: Albany to New York to Buffalo and whatever, happens. Imminently being caught in the act of being happened, people the invisible world with spirits, whatever cars they drive
All the long list plus Madame Cadillac plus Madame Tonti with her perishables and the drug abuse trucks and the border patrol with their vertiginous perishables
I would surface
I would surface and breathe
I would surface and breathe wrapped in three sweaters with my abuse under my arm, intact
She never invoked the law against anyone
She was naming, sucking is naming and whatever, happens
Listen, they’ll read it or hear it: it’s from, doors open and private, a private, the privates, conversation:
Naming, from On the Mountains, Ga a no geh, and the need for privacy, something about a princess who marries an old man, bent on self destruction, the need for privacy and then, the need for naming: A, B, N.F.
A writes my autobiography and B. Buffalo or N.F. Niagara Falls is a local call, smells of electric petroleum leaked into the ground I inerhit inhabit from electrically created, made of the stench of the mist, petroleum products or perfumes. These are the petrochemicals that, if I were to give this up, I would not give it up to you, those then that give you a headache, a blissful dream and an inability to dream, that is you dream that you do not have to breathe, you continue on
When I see someone, I will ask the elevation, perhaps at a gas station
Breathing as an elevation, a higher one, in feet
Above fiberglass reinforced polyester vinyl ester and epoxy tanks and stacks, ducts, hoods, fans, pipe and related equipment
The nickel-monel-Inconel-stainless steel fabricating of a military road town and the Iroquois beer
The fabricators of aluminum tanks and weldments, are you scared yet?
Breathing is easier at a higher elevation, in feet
Fabricators of pews, altars, pulpits, rails, kneelers and swimming pool chemicals, we are here
Do you see the naming, and do you see the imminent walking and the chance, just the off-chance of being alone, abandoned, and of being continuously the child
As no one, not even the Redskins, can put up with the silence of Duane Thomas.
August 27
Imminently being caught in the act of being happened
That sentence repeating, like, what’s coming out of the stacks,
What hops in the garden, I’m sure of it, moralists, we can’t, wait, I was coming to sit in your room, in your garden, almost a slip, hops like Jack Kerouac here, we’re writers here, we can’t breathe, smoke or swallow, our throats are coated, like factories can, we can’t
All of a sudden it’s noticed—there’s something wrong with me
Speaking: supposed to be and supposed to be and supposed to be and letters
Smaller than a Kerouac, some kind of pattern, some kind of repeating thing.
Grasshopper, at least one I’ve seen. Some hops. A cricket
Skin is not red or reddish
And if I looked fine and if I looked fine and so on
Maybe the fine of the code is for the performance
Still the English notebook in French is English
Not accessible, inaccessible, unattainable, must be impossible, must be chased, or celebrate or celibate
Next door perhaps
Looking up and into the eyes. Then changes of light and color without source: she fell from the falls to the bridge
Still night, still air
There is no continuous change
You move you move into the whorehouse
It’s the pits, good morning, you go to the falls
To compete, no pressure but there was a plan: the systematic reclamation of the land by extensive processing facilities, scheduled pick-up services through custom distillation and disposal, are you scared yet? And the water so that the water becomes green and the land is red for you, like chemicals named for the sun, there is an artificial one, it’s aerated, quite Seneca
This is not the lodgehouse, this is something you saw in the mirror when you were putting it together. Give something away, maybe, and then it will happen. This is being afraid that someone, mounded ghost of her on the knoll, will wake, will wake and being frightened, will awaken you, are you scared yet?
Record their ignoring it, ignoring sound, maybe the sound of a watch in bed while you are sleeping
Restless sound
Being watched
Some letters are written slow enough in the garden to wonder, am I being watched. The police come, the customs come
Vacation vegetables are sorry and drive the road along, 8¢ an ear
Worst. Letters written this slow
You are so tired and there are letters written and names begging to be beginning with E, A, L, M, R, L, R, N, J, B, M the president, the fat man
August 28
You keep your life in your breath when you panic even in the presence of home-grown, in order, the fear, say, of the supermarket, the eyes, the skin, the hard-working sculptors, the wine, the beer, the cognac
Who wants to have fun or who can have fun on the hard cliffs of not seeing people often enough and not preparing, in private, to see them, like, I know who that is, or will be
The stench almost of the perfume air
Oil, and they use barges, floating down the upstream overcurrent of the river to deliver the water, power, to the, I guess, petro, noise, chemical, plant that makes the smell
A gingko tree, male and female here, acacia, aspen and hemlock
Absurd to think these notes of a diary noise are waiting for all of us, You, but charming, as a dancer, you are waiting for rain
And when I sleep I am not waiting for rain. Oil and the portage
And when I give this to you there is nothing chemical about it except my confusion, is it not enough affection
I will try to be a mouse drinking milk but rain will give me no vacation like you could score on a hill
Much more
The energy to burn by looking in the mirror
She’s still asleep and when I give this up to you I haven’t wakened her and I’m proud of my continuity, that is, lying in the grass
There is no sun and the trees are overtaken by a giant city of pale trees
There is guarded sound
There are dogs who keep still
We mention them
I sink a pack of silver-gold-sounds along the glass to John and seed the bed for air and dynamite proposals; the police come and say come here, they say think clearer, just, who, are, you
We are martyrs from Lithuania who will become gypsies for the Redskins
And what are your needs, they say. It’s so simple
One who thinks he can live forever, can you find us one One
who has these ideas and doesn’t suffer, one who’s beautiful and has the legs. Can you find us one. Milk, we need milk in the orphanage, we don’t get it. And one who’s as simple as this
What are you saying
Cool air rises, stale smoke, a weekend, nothing is important
It’s difficult to find and identify the cool air, the police
Find us one who puts these beads together, one who makes a find with no paint on his shirt, one who relaxes and isn’t cased, or one who makes you feel a presence like an ancient president moving, one who milks and crows, one who is deliberate, one who spider-weaves, one who hardly moves at all but gets all over, one who isn’t restless and one who stares
Who is listening
I want big quarters and a samovar and this one
No electricity
No fucking music, nobody digging up in the air
No nerves and no style
August 29
Is it a castle or a prison: a minimum security prison is escaped for a fuck after sixty days of mortality
One who sits in there, one who waits and is always there and one who has gray hair
I’m in a hurry, less or more use of language and of words, or waking and sleeping and all the rest. Space, you suppose. Poets, you suppose with one thought, there is none, there is nothing new to do
But share quarters
And smells and the look of hands
I had to do this to keep alive
Car pulls in, is less accessible, is new, turns over and covers up
Has a routine, and therefore, is unable
If I must end here
Causes dog to bark and milk to show, causes Cadillac to be your favorite
Passages, like I am so involved with you
I will give this up to you
Are you scared yet?
It doesn’t look, it doesn’t look it
It doesn’t look, like anything, now it does
How many weeks and how many days, dressing in the quiet
And eyes are clearer as the scene steals in and of course night falls
Which is easy
If I were to give this up, I would give it up to you and eyes are clearer as the scene steals in and of course night comes which is so easy
Then he woke up and all the ghosts of the mountains woke up and all the Indians, mean and women waken as I work
As the river rises and begins to pour rain
As you wake up and eyes begin to clear, as sex is drawn from the magnificent newspapers and dimmed for our benefit
Beneath, above, below, beyond, anyway, falls
A Fascist monument or
A building of Fascist design
Like Wittgenstein’s house in Vienna that had nothing in it
These are simple things like tombs, you can’t get out, do you agree
If I were to give this up, I would give it all up to you
Listen, some things must be repeated and they are scarce
I watch and stare with eyes and I will never invoke the law against anyone. I will look at colors for you before the mirror and keep records, some of whose words or phrases will darken the color and make it seen
Still it is inaccessible and withdrawn
If I were to give it up, I’d give it to you. Like steel getting trees as a gift.
Or carbon monoxide or a story, whatever
The list of chemicals:
photofabrication of small metal parts
photochemical fabrication
heat exchangers, examporators, driers, pumps
fiberglass reinforced polyester, vinyl ester and epoxy tanks
chemical resistant ducts and tanks
march magnetic chemical pumps
steel and alloy vessels, shell and tube heat exchangers
special process equipment of nickel, monel-inconel-copper
stainless steel-clad
steel-steels and ASME code welding
pressure vessels, heat exchangers
fabrication and installation of piping systems
corrosion resistance for the chemical industry
ampco metal sewage equipment
fabricators, aluminum, stainless steel
asme, code welding, steel and all alloys, pressure vessels
chemical resistance coating
dyes for all industries, specialty chemicals
petrochemicals
aromatic, aliphatic, solvents, aromatic chemicals, butadiene, isophthalic acid, MEK, Olefins, resins, surfactants
ascension chemicals
petroleum solvents and chemicals
tank wagons, drums and carboys
sodium hypochlorite, caustic soda
swimming pool chemicals, muriatic acid, sulphuric acid, nitric acid, ammonia
metal treating chemicals
commercial and proprietaries
alcohols, acetates, amines, aromatic and chlorinated solvents, ethers, glycols, glycol ethers, ketones, naphthas, plasticizers, resins, terpenes, waxes, thickeners
metal cleaning compounds
cleansers, fertilizers, ammonia
industrial reagent dry and liquid chemicals
industrial and heavy chemicals for every purpose
raw materials
diamond shamrock chemical co.
coal chemicals
chemicals, solvents, plastics, metals, packaging, adhesives, anti-freezes, anti-knocks, dyes, explosives, fabrics, coated fabrics, fibers, films, paints, pigments, plastics, propellants, refrigerants, rubbers, solvents
peroxygen chemicals, acids, alkalis
industrial and laboratory chemicals
oxygen and acetylene order department over 1,000 items available
chemical surplus salvage residues
pigments, fillers, resins, pails and drums serving paint and rubber, plastic
ink, adhesive, coatings industries
