now here I sit in this place with woman and child and I am not any different than I was then, I wonder if they know this? the girl-child simply does not care, they have not gotten to her yet—she is sweet honey on the side of my hot brain. but nothing much helps. Mac says, “write a novel.” “just for me and Blaz and Richmond and Want-ling…”: well, look, I don’t believe much in this groupism, but I do BELIEVE I COULD WRITE A NOVEL FOR 4 people to read??? maybe what kills the novel is that you are writing into a tomb-mouth. think of it, the title and the atrocity: A Novel Written for 4 People to Read. I ought to do it.

Stravinsky, Percy Grainger, hell, Mahler, the world was is and remains full of good men who fall dead across the doorsteps, and if they don’t kill themselves some son of a bitch will do it with a mail-order $12 rifle, or like with Gandhi, or like with Christ, let’s laugh, it is not a game to win, it will never be a candy christmas forever, and sometimes the guy with the $12 rifle belongs, we no so little we know so little of how it works, and now believe me I do not mourn Kennedy anymore than I do Caesar because it seems that to get to the SO-CALLED TOP, it is most evident to me that you have to kill a lot on the way to get there. but I am speaking more or less of the working sadness of everything—how everything never seems to work. and why should it? we’ve been given minds and bodies and a love that will not last. how long can a man try before he gives way to death? why does Want-ling discourage me when he becomes so drab about capital punish.? shouldn’t I expect the drab? now they give me Madame Butterfly by Puccini. where are the people? where are the beautiful women? all these women reach up into their asses and wipe away shit. I am discouraged. I can figure it out. it is the education, the lore that this society has yoked me with and the things that I have found out do not fit with what I was told. and, please believe me, it is not just the female race who reaches up into shit, it is EVERYTHING…and, I cry too much like a disturbed man, but what do I hold onto?

now that, hell, you’ve told me this, and, now, that I am so very much here?

well, kid, they’ll soon be back from reading their poetry to each other, and so I’d better think of hauling in the string, shit, I am like at the bar in the old days, really gone but my fingers insisting on the keys for the hell of the lonely blues and hacksaw evidence…. my god, umm. [* * *]