I made these notes, composed these words, wrote these thoughts and put down quotes, aphorisms, lines from songs, words, and anything else important to me between 1954 when I was twenty and a senior at college, and 1961 when I was already working full-time. I wrote these words mostly in dozens of notebooks of all sizes, usually small enough to fit into one of my pockets. I carried them everywhere. Sometimes I transposed the notes onto single spaced pages using my first Remington portable.

September 1954. Easton, Pennsylvania. I laughed and cried last night in the Circle Bar in Allentown with Arlene. I must find out more about her, although I probably won’t. I told her she was wonderful. She is a light in a dark world. She has pitch black hair, white skin, blue veins crisscrossing her small hands. I loved her, for the moment. But I tell all the girls I love them. I wonder if she will answer the note I scribbled her at the bar on a paper napkin? Could she read it? Will she write me? How agreeable people are when we are all drunk. I gave her my dorm address.

Saturday morning laundry list: Six shirts, $1.10, underwear, $1.50, trousers (for a change) $1.50. The grand total was $4.10. Pick up my shirts and the socks that are coming to me I lost in the U-Launderette.

Get blades, toothpaste, ink, notepads, the small pocket-size ones. Get a card for my father. His birthday is soon. No homeward bound to Brooklyn this weekend.

I must take off some weight: getting too heavy. I need to restrain myself from overeating. No sweets or potatoes, especially fried anything. Cut down on bread. No evening snacks, except coffee. No candy or cake. I’ve said this in the past and it didn’t work. I have to put in a strong effort, just the same. It will save me money. Drink no more strong ale. Who am I kidding?

Why hasn’t Ellen written? Why is it all the women seem to stay away when I’m getting too close? I can’t understand it. I’m not bad looking. I have a strong personality. My blessing is my mind, although at times it seems latent, not yet fully alive. What is it? Am I a poor risk? Do I appear so unsure these girls don’t want to chance anything with me? I shouldn’t feel too bad. My day will come again, soon, very soon, when I return to the city and get my teeth into something I want, the call of my future. It will be the eventual stepping stone that will put me in touch with the places I want to be.

Sunday out hunting the Snark for a change. I didn’t find it. I never do. Almost found something else equally almost as worthy. I will return because she, Maddie, really interested me and I sensed I interested her.

Friday night at a local bar in Easton I saw Maddie again. It’s where the pickups go looking for Joe College. Only this time, this one, this Maddie, Miss Warsaw, found Abe College, a Jewish boy from Brooklyn in the wilds of Pennsylvania. Pretty thing, Maddie. Beautiful body. Older than I, but oh, so dumb. I should get something out of this one.

Wrote a narrative letter to Ellen in Brooklyn about my life, a short, pointed letter. I told her we could be lovers but it would take guts and concentration. Thank you, Ernest Hemingway. The word guts came to mind but I don’t think it a question of guts, more of pride, maybe fear that once I fall hard for her there is no way out. I said I could fall hard for her. No fear bubbled inside me. I knew when to come up for air. I could not define what I wanted from her. I filled my letter with despair and I did not believe I had been honest, even to myself. My excuse: a brain fogged with overwork from school. Took a break and jotted off a bit of a love tract. Originally I didn’t mail the letter. Then I became courageous. Out it went over the weekend after mulling it over. I didn’t hold it for better days.

I saw Maddie again at the Polish-American Club. Vicious body. My exploring hands were exploding outside her body as I touched her. Dave drank at the bar. I owe him money. I ignored him. Also saw Arlene again, still an intriguing chick. Damn it, if I only had a car I could have had one of them. Oh, well.

Ellen answered my letter. She is no more. We do not click probably because of my intensity. My self probing scared her. I’ll miss my dreams of what we could have been.

Moderation at all costs this weekend. I’m low on funds. I bought a gallon of Gallo red to drink by myself. Now, the big test. How do I handle the weekend? I sat, the radio on, twisting the knob for New York and Philadelphia jazz stations but the many clouds reduced a sharp signal, to static. I consumed bag after bag of salty potato chips followed by one plastic cup of wine after another. Finally, ready for bed, I started thinking, but very little came into my head. I wondered about jazz, women, wine, love, lust, peace, freedom, education, the masses, me. All in no particular order.

I read in the New York Times that jazz great Hot Lips Page died. His trumpet still forever. We gathered and then jumped into a car, drinking beer all the way, drove through the rain and fog of Pennsylvania and New Jersey to the Lower East side and the Stuyvesant Casino. It cost a few bucks to get in for a memorial concert in his honor. The atmosphere was remarkable. Crowds kept piling in. Most of the people were white and young, looking like college, just the same as us. We flipped. The overexcited audience couldn’t keep the noise down. We had a rollicking time. Almost every big name in New York Dixieland music appeared. There were also some modern sounds. Most of the people were there for effect, to say I was there, and you were not. I felt an emptiness coming from the crowd. I had a wonderful escapist time. Photographers were everywhere. The night, hot and sticky, gave us a taste of New York humidity at its worst. Our folding chairs were too hard to sit on for very long. Someone filmed the concert. Dancers filled the aisles. The stage held as many as one hundred musicians in the two huge, open rooms. I didn’t drink too much. After the concert we went to nearby Chinatown and the Chinese Rathskeler filled with a big date crowd. The lousy food reminded me of neighborhood joints in Flatbush. We found our way uptown to Broadway and Lindy’s for cherry cheesecake and endless cups of coffee. Our waiter forgot to charge us one cheesecake and I claimed it for the highlight of my night. Did it mean my luck would change? Hardly. We slept in the car back to Easton. Home without incident.

I received a letter from a friend today. “I toast your effort in your attempt to find your true self. Your faith in yourself will put you to work on realistic and productive tasks.” Those words make me feel good. They give me incentive to go ahead and show the world that I can achieve something. Yes, this god damn confidence is doing things to me. But I waffle. How long can it last? Why doesn’t it last? Not in making me study but in my thinking of the future, toward opportunities, toward lifting the pressure I get from home. Maybe then I can make the scene, any scene on my own.

Campus is very dull, dead. Hit the books today. First time this year spent all Saturday in the stacks.

What is the most important part of an education? Is it the memorizing of the minutiae or the understanding of trends, the ultimate whys and wherefores of events? I sometimes wonder why men defeat their own purpose in doing the opposite. Is it spite or downright nastiness? Strange. If there is one thing I will do I will try to figure out this paradox.

So much doesn’t last. It’s now four a.m. on a nasty morning. Again thinking of Carole. Damn. Not enough to drink and as usual I’m having difficulty falling asleep. Study tomorrow for a test Wednesday. Get blades so I can shave now and then and not cut myself with dull, jagged, pitted edges. I do enough of that in my mind. Completed my paper on the Middle Ages. Two hours of planning. Wrote the final pages in little more than an hour. I think it’s good. I’ll be home in Brooklyn soon.

Thoughts: “When you have to kill a man it costs nothing to be polite.” Winston Churchill.

“Knowledge is power for good or evil. Confusion is created when it is in the hands of the few or the grasp of too many. Education is an important stepping stone but it is only the beginning.” Who said that? I can’t find the attribution. I would love it attributed to me. Fat chance.

Richard Wright’s, “The Outsider.” Painful, searing book.

Bismark once called the English and their imperialistic wars, “sporting wars.” Maybe that’s why they couldn’t hold on to their empire.

“Here sit I, forming mankind /In my own image, A race to myself,/
To suffer and to weep, /Rejoice, enjoy, and heed thee not, as I.” Goethe, Prometheus.

“. . . the delighting in man as man in man’s body as well as in his mind.” Boccaccio. Neo-paganism at its best.

“A military triumph is the most obvious form of national success.” Of course. Who owns this line?

“Si vis pacem, para bellum.” If you want peace, prepare for war. And who said this?

Words: Harbinger. Penurious. Eleemosynary. Recalcitrant. Iniquitous. Desiderata. Ebullition(s).
Psychic, psychical, fear, love. personage.

Existentialism. Organized religion. Personification of the self. Isn’t that a tautology?

Heard on the radio: “Fortune In Dreams,” The Marquis.

“Bobbie,” The Marquis.

“If Love is Good to Me,” Nat King Cole.

“Penthouse Serenade,” by anyone, anyone at all.

Chet Baker and his beautiful, liquid trumpet.

Woody Herman’s great recording, “The Story of an Itinerant Musician.” Woody’s gravel voice, “. . . when they first met, they gassed each other.” Have another beer. It’s so great. I want what he’s talking about.

More Woody. “I’m Sorry About The Whole Darn Thing.” Last line, “You goofed baby.” How true, how very true.

“Saturday” by Sarah Vaughn. “Weary as a party girl in last years clothes. . . “ Terrific line. It implies so much.

Gerry Mulligan’s marvelous baritone sax.

“Take The A Train,” Duke’s great piece played by Dave Brubeck and friends. Great immersion.

The Dave Pell Ochtette, a fine group, chamber in its makeup, almost symphonic with its bell-like horns.
Sauter-Fiunnegan big band sound. Very clever musical arrangements. Who will recall them in ten or twenty years?