|
February 12, 1968 The cover of this notebook grabbed me and I just had to buy it. After I had bought it I had to use it; so here it is. Monday of course is a very rough day and I have a feeling that it is just a preview of the entire week. I've got a history report, a math report, an English essay, and 70 trillion odds and ends. I'm not in a very fluid a state of mind tonight, so this is going to be short. I've nothing to say, at least my mind doesn't. I'm not so sure about my tongue. Goodnight. February 13, 1968 I'm going to be up pretty late tonight. I've got another history abstract to write. Everything is status quo with me right now. One thing I've got to complain about is my religion class. All we do is play records by some marriage counselor. He talks about marital communications, child education, and, unfortunately, sex. three very tiresome subjects. I haven't learned a thing from it yet. One comment. The one subject I have never seen covered in a religion class is religion. Several of my teachers have made bold attempts, but for some reason, sex and civil rights always win out. I think lots of kids would agree with me in silence. That is, they would agree if they knew the subject would be made interesting. God is a very interesting topic. It's a pity we never get around to him in our classes. I don't need a sociology or biology course; I already have one. Oh well, that's it. Nothing is really happening to me. Next year is a far planet, my technology does not yet allow me to venture near. February 14, 1968 I have done it. Victory is near. Fr. Bill is going to give me an application form for Mt. Carmel tommorrow. Three months of hell, all for one day, one moment, in February. I guess it's kind of immature for me to make such a big deal over this, but I can't help it. Any simple glancer-over would think I'm insane. Someone who has wandered into the dark pipe with me is more likely to understand a little. I wish I could let forth a great yell, or something, on paper. But I can't even do it out loud. I was up 'til 1:30 last night. Earlier than I expected. The report wasn't very good, with luck I'll get a B. Dylan Thomas is an adverb. He is an adjective. His pen to paper blossoms into the unknown or almost non-existant beauties of the dead, the living, and the inanimate. A genius. How does a person come to write like that? If alcohol does it, hand me a bottle. I must resort to explitives; hell, is he great. I wish. I wish. There's a poem by Marianne Moore called "O to Be a Dragon". It's something like I feel now.
Pretty good. good night. February 15, 1968 Thursday. I don't work on Thursdays for a while because I'm taking a reading course after school. I need it. If I could read 1000 words a minute I could begin to knock off some of the books that've been piling up for the past month. It would be nice to pick up a book and finish it in a day or two. At the library we got a replacement for the kid that got fired. First appearances are kind of shocking. That is, he's a typical nice-looking kid that any girl would fall for, except he's a fairy, to put it crudely. At least that's first appearances. I don't know him very well yet so I shouldn't say anything. He seems to be pretty good. We'll probably end up the best of friends, so I don't want to say any more. It's pretty late now, goodnight. February 16, 1968 Friday. I've been working my rear end off all week and will undoubtedly continue to do so 'til the end of the year. Homework is piling up. I've got to put things off 'til the last minute while I'm catching up with what I should have done yesterday. Everything is dull. School, work, home. Sometimes it picks up but that occasion is becoming very rare. I can't wait to get our of school, then I'll have two or three months before I start all over again. Everything repeats and repeats until we've got repitions piled on each other like bananas on a tree. Even before the primeval age, the genesis of slimy creatures and sludge, there were repetitions; only more so today than ever. And moreso tommorrow than today. I hate people who say that history repeats itself, simply because the truth doesn't need any advertising. It exists and that's all that is necessary. Things are pretty mediocre. goodnight. February 17, 1968 That library has got to go. The earth should rise and swallow it, books and all. Ker plunk. And there we would have a great gaping hole - a monument to last out the strongest steel bridges. A memorial to the mediocrity of everything that could have been something else. I'm in a kind of neutral way. Clocks don't mean much and the institutions all over every inch of the world are very ineffective. They claim that Bufferin is 50% stronger than aspirin, and then they state that aspirin is Hercules reborn in pill form. There's an inconsistency running today and I think its the only thing that keeps us going. We've got censors to protect our minds and soldiers to protect our wives - we cry freedom and peace up our shirtsleeves and wander all over the globe stirring the masses from their graves. Sometimes I think we should give it all back to the paramecia. At least they know when to quit. Call it social consciousness - a phase or what have you - but I'm convinced that withdrawal is the only solution to anything. Let the Commies and Chinkies take the whole damn world - its dead anyway - and theres not much you can do about it once the first shove-full has been thrown in. On and on the raving idiot wanders. Over the roaring cobblestones he walks a straight semicircle and halts when he remembers he's been here before. "If this makes any sense to you, send a stamped self-addressed envelope and I'll send you my dissertation on the lost cause and the doom of the individual" (I've been talking on all night. I just felt like saying a few things - they overlap at times and sometimes are completely incoherent, but its my worry, nobody else's) goodnight. February 18, 1968 Sunday. So what? The McCarrens came down from Chicago today. They're my cousins, aunt, and uncle. They hung around 'til about 8:30 and then decided "it's time for the little ones to get to bed." So off they went. Thank God. that's all that happened today. Right now I'm the only one who's still up and its only 10:30. Everybody's got to be so "get to bed early" around here. Night-life is non-existant in this house, even the cockroaches get bored. I once said that I thought "The Waste Land" stunk; well, I've altered my opinion. Its a little better now that I've been reading it out loud. I think it was meant to be read that way because it opens itself up for all kinds of strange interpretations. I must be pretty strange. I like to do things that the generation disapproves of. And what is that? Well, I read a lot (that's pretty bad right there.) I like to read poetry and plays out loud. I like modern poetry. I don't go to basketball games or out on dates. I wonder if many other kids are like this. Excluding the social part, I wonder if anybody else ever tried to get "culture". I hate that word because its phony. Holden would blitz it completely. I think I do a good job of reading Eliot, even though I don't really care for him. Dylan Thomas is it. I'd like to get ahold of some of his stuff, but I can't find it anywhere. Culture is the word for it, but I only like it because its good. Its something new in a very stuffy world full of phobias. I was just thinking that when these diaries have to be graded again, somebody's going to have a lot of reading. if it was just myself it wouldn't be so bad but the whole class has probably got about 50 or 60 pages written by now. That's quite a bit. I'll stop now. goodnight. February 19, 1968 I just finished watching "Lord of the Flies" on T.V.. It was O.K. but I liked the book better. the photography was very good, the acting very average, the soundtrack terrible. The acting sometimes verged on the mediocre and the lines were inaudible. One of the most important scenes in the story, the killing of the sow, was almost totally left out. The photography was brilliant, though. It brought across the mood of the story. The silence of the actors was much more impressive than their lines, which were almost taken verbatim from the book. In all five books we've read I just realized that there is a shadow over them all. It's less noticeable in Gulliver's Travels than the rest, but its still there. All, except maybe "The Power and the Glory", contend that the soul of man is blacker than the night through no fault of his own. I could talk in some very pedantic way about the structure of it all, but I wont because I don't feel like it. Its interesting and all that, but it just doesn't seem to be the most stirring topic for conversation. Nothing much happened today. We had a thimble-full of snow. Nothing that mattered. You know, I keep trying to say something, but I just can't. Maybe its because I don't know what it is. But I think I might. There must be something of importance I can say. All there is in the world are tiny heaps of garbage when we bump into a pile we brush ourselves off and enter the occurence in our diaries. I finished reading "Ape and Essence" today. Its a lot like "Brave New World". What I don't see is why Huxley would bother to write two different novels on the same theme. I think he's kind of obsessed with the downfall of man. goodnight. February 20, 1968 Tuesday. Garbage day. The trucks come around through the streets absorbing the waste of our rotting civilization. Sure, I'm preaching; but there isn't anything better to do. People moan and complain when America is compared with the dead Roman Empire, but there's a lot of truth in it. Can America master history, before the patterns of the past gobble us up? I can't really believe it. America is the strongest power ever to exist on earth so I'll give it another 50 years before it grinds, and manufactures and legislates for the last time. Some people say earth would be heaven if there was no opposition to the true and just American way. Many forget that such competition has proved to be a spark in the engine of America. the ideologies of evil; facism, communism and nazism; are all that is needed to provoke the national beast within us all. I've talked enough about that. It's starting to bore me. Nothing today was happening. The crack in the purple dirt, the abyss of shame, is in control. The gears inside my watch just wont stop, regardless of whether I wind it or not. I feel like writing very ritzy tonight, but I wont because I can't. There are too many papers to fill out because that's all the world is, a heap of papers. Sign on the silver X. This must all be pretty boring reading. I don't go anywhere. I simply make statements about any ridiculous nonsense and take it from there. When I say it's dark, I could write on for two or three paragraphs about the transcendent qualities of the absence of light. Yeah, I'm kind of weird. But we all have our little faults. Even the bronze bust on the slightly faded pedastool. goodnight. February 21, 1968 Everything's a pain. School, work, home, everything. Even sentences are a pain. It must be a natural problem this time of year. Nothing is normal. Balance is not. The weird way to look at things. I don't know what I want. Things just aren't solid plaster anymore. they're fog. You can see, but never really know. Above the ink, beneath the pen, a point of contact which isn't really here. Where? Some red pencil will take care of all this and clash with this black ink. If this is un-understandable don't worry its only me. I can't say it with words, its too weird. Nothing can fit and I'm making myself sick of myself on the mirror. The ramblings of a sophmoronic mind. But it's weird. Sure am sounding strange lately. that's my problem. This is the only place anybody could tell from. On the outside I shut up so I don't bother anyone. All of this is the result of nothing happening. If something happened I could write about it but since something never happens, I'm stuck. I'm incoherent. IIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII go crazy with that word.. First person repulses me. You'd never guess it though. The dawn darkness, the darkening air, cool dark tombs. Black. I think I need an analyst. I can't write about anything decent. There's really nothing else to say because there wasn't anything to begin with. goodnight. February 22. 1968 Thursday. Washington's birthday. Big deal. I've been taking a speed reading course. I don't know if I've mentioned it before. I probably have. The problem is, I don't have nay time to practice. Oh yes. It's weird, but nothing has happened in quite a while. It's beginning to worry me. When my biographer writes of me, this period will become known as my level-even-and-steady period. It's maddening. February 23, 1968 Today is Friday. The day the birds come out. Things are going along throughout. Nonsense. You know there isn't much to keep me on the beaten path of conformity; at least not in this diary. If I go off on a binge in my speech people start staring at me like I'm the type of person who talks to you on the bus. I sometimes got to let loose. I suppose everybody does. It comes out of everybody in a very strange way. Everybody is strange in their own unique way. Me, I like to say things that don't really make much sense. I'm just tired of the fiction that everything's got to be or mean something. When I say something perfectly ridiculous there are some people who take it to be a profound statement of human understanding and intelligence. Bull. There are some things, like nothing, that just cannot be said in coherent ways. So we have nonsense. Ridiculous. Yeah there's all kinds of strange impediments to my most precarious situation. Lugubriosity surrounds us all. We can't hardly see through the tears of God because there is no sense to apathy. O this has got to stop. Agreed? Maybe. Goodnight for now anyhow, because there isn't anymore. February 24, 1968 Mary Kay's grandmother died today. She's been dying ever since I first knew Mary Kay. It could be the best thing that ever happened to Mary Kay, or it could be the worst. It all depends on how her aunts act from now on. She could turn into a regular Cinderella. Worked today. Did nothing. Really. The boringest, longest, tediousest place. I'm getting so mediocre I can't even think of a good nothing to say. It's very painful. I've got nothing of any importance to say. There's just nothing. February 25, 1968 Sunday. It's now about 10:00 P.M. and I can't even remember whether I went to church or not. O yes. I've been in a real good mood the past few days. there is totally nothing inside the day's container. A few void hours and that's the sum. I guess I should stop talking about the emptiness of this thing and say something constructive. "Archaic developments of the new existentialism have proven that the consequences of primordial reversion are most severe." How's that. Not well. Hell. goodnight. February 26, 1968 Everything is painful. Nothing seems to matter much. I don't know what's wrong. I should be perfectly happy. All this garbage makes me sick. I can't stand writing about this junk; it's really driving me crazy. I'm not in any mood to say anything besides there's nothing to say. I wish I could get into a mood of some sort, but there isn't one around anywhere. good nacht. February 27, 1968 Here's Tuesday. I didn't have school today. The underclasses are having tests or something. The life of a senior. Loafed around all day, except I worked tonight. I'm watching Johnny Carson right now. It's kind of mediocre. Nobody special.. The Academy Awards are coming out in April. It's going to be a real fight between "Bonnie and Clyde" and "The Graduate". I didn't see "The Graduate" so I can't really say anything about it. But I hope "Bonnie and Clyde" wins for the best picture. It's bound to win best photography. I don't want to say anything here because I don't have the need. I don't feel like communication. right now I'm squeezing out every word, and it reads like it. good night. February 28, 1968 There's nothing for today, so I'll expose a few choice pieces of garbage.
I don't see any reason why I should apologize for my vanity. It's my diary, written on my terms. sure I think this garbage is worth something, but only to me. I haven't yet expanded enough to include the passions of people around me. There's a lot of garbage like this being published every year. Publishers don't use much of what used to be called discretion. Today it's so easy to get published. Whatever became of the good old days when art was an essential part of poetry. O to be a dragon. the power and the beef steak. The genius of writing lies not in the attempt but the flashing image at the instant of conception. We are all geniuses in every field, whether we understand it or not. Because our minds are geared to the abstract, whether we admit it or not. Things are pretty late. good night. February 29, 1968 A hobbit is a small, peaceful little creature who is an intensely magnificent idea. Tolkein's little people have become famous all over the world. Next to Christ and Buddha they reign supreme among the true hippies. I read "The Hobbit" during the summer. I don't know what made me think of it. They are a nice idea, not just a fad. But they don't belong in this time. I've been reading McCluhan again. He's my man. Maybe its rationalization but I've adopted his probes to my life. And it's working. With the invention of the printing press man began to break from society, or the tribe. Because he could read there was less need for oral communication. He could obtain more information, not through personal contacts, but through the medium, print. McCluhan proposes that with the advent of the electric age man is once again becoming that old familiar tribal member. Through the mediums of television and radio man's audial senses are once again called into the act. Print is dying. The electric circuit and light bulb live. Thus, the global village. What does this have to do with me? I'm not really sure, but it's all kind of frightening. McCluhan's is a world of total involvement. the eye and ear become the entrances for all information, with an increasing amount of emphasis placed on the ear. As McCluhan puts it, "It fills the John Birchers with horror to discover they live in a world in which they have to be involved with other people." there are all kinds of "McCluhanisms". You see, he is no longer a person; he has been titled with an ism, an "auspicious degree indeed". He's pretty neat. that's all anybody can say about him. It's late. The molding forces have vacated the office, the wash-women take over and the day is darkness is night. goodnight. 3/3 - A |