I don’t write in a journal everyday, but I have accumulated many entries over the past 50+ years beginning in 1966. Some items evolved into longer works. Among the leftovers little pieces survived. I thought a collection of these with a piece culled from the same date in a past year would make an interesting yearbook. The consistencies and inconsistencies of mind, skipping back and forth across time, provide varied perspectives. It is difficult to remember the context of the past we’ve lived; we also make suppositions about times that predate ourselves.

The few alterations from original drafts were to improve clarity. The worst of my work is not included. There remains enough mediocrity and immaturity to make me feel humble and you feel smart. There are also moments of accidental insight and incidental humor.

Author Stephen Crane referred to his little pieces as pills…apparently they were small and somewhat hard to swallow, but good for you.


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Friday, October 15, 2021

Long Tom

 

October 15, 1974  (I was 29)

 

Long Tom,

What ever became of intellectual clarity?

 

It was not so long ago

that we survived all the shit going down

by understanding our ultimate righteousness.

 

We knew it was advantageous to be firm and correct.

Our lives were all sixes and nines.

We mused on autumn afternoons;

 

you knew about Sufism and dervishes and Essenes,

and I knew about Emerson, Thoreau and Ahab.

We were focused on the whirl of transcendental possibility.

 

Now you have died privately

and I have stepped through to uncertain ground.

New ignorance is the product of old truth.

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