“I don’t know. 4, 5, 6, 7…I don’t know.”

“how much did you PAY these people to publish your work?”

ummm, ummm, umm.

[* * *] have really been in very strange mind state lately. seem to be frozen. can’t move or write. 25 or 30 unanswered letters in big coffee can on shelf. Harold Norse seems to be in this same deep freeze—the inability to do anything. shot to shit, sick, weak. it might only be a refueling period. or maybe we’re both finished. difficult to tell. strange that we should both be in the fix at the same time. I consider Hal a much better writer and person than I am, more human, and getting a letter from him is always a big event to me. I hear Anais Nin is trying to get him a grant so he can come here to Capistrano Beach, where he thinks there is a doctor who can cure him. that’s a place down about halfway to San Diego. it would be good to see him. no need to talk. we could just sit around the same room for a couple of days and look out the window, or walk along the beach, say about 6 p.m. among the insane and wild-eyed gulls, we walking along wondering wondering what went wrong with the machinery of everything. [* * *]

met Neal Cassady before he died, up at Open City one night. I had some beer with me. have one, I said. he drank the thing like water. “have another,” I said. he was crazier than I was. it was beginning to rain and we all got into the car, Bryan, myself and Cassady. we got one of the famous Cassady rides on the rain-slick streets. then we ate together at J.B.’s and had a few more drinks. Neal was the hero of Jack Kerouac’s novel On the Road. about a week after I met Neal they found him dead along some railroad tracks in Mexico. he’d mixed too much booze with nembutal. deliberately, perhaps. [* * *]

[To Thomas Livingstone]

February 26, 1968

well, Mahler’s 10th on and I’m hungover and climbing out, climbing back in again. I read your fuck-piece and that boy is a master-fucker, man; I guess every man wants to be a master-fucker and that every woman wants to be fucked by one, and maybe a few men too. well, I have never been a master-fucker; I am usually too drunk or disinterested or cold-hot; a task, you know. and fucking often turns out to be a dirty task, a trick to do. and, in a sense, I think any man’s crazy who does it with real Art. 2 dogs fucking outdo anybody. so, still, yes, enjoyed your piece.