Someone said, “My friend, never indulge in any follies except those that will bring you great pleasure.”

“Virtue is synonymous with enthusiasm.” Who said that? Was it Galiani or Nietzsche?

A bunch of us jumped into a 1951 Chevy, drove to New York, dashed into P.J. Clarke’s at 3rd Avenue and 55th Street and got very drunk. That’s all I recall of the trip.

How is this for a jawbreaker of a thought. “The earlier 14th century Slavic nationalism of the Pole, Lithuanian and Czech directed against the first onward march of the Germans must be kept in mind when considering the recrudescence of the Slavic nationalism in the 19th and 20th Century, again directed in large part against the Germans.” That comes from a text I happened to pick out of the stacks in the library the other night. The library is my home. The stacks, my refuge.

I’m making an honest effort to do some work. Making Dean’s List again is important. Why is it when you try to be sincere, you meaning me, do barriers fall in place to continually thwart your effort? I don’t know, but someday soon I may start to think the odds are against me, although I realize I have so much going for me that I’ll survive it all despite the nasty bastards who keep getting in my way. Someday soon. I fear I hope in vain. Someday soon.

Letter to the History Book Club.
Dear Sir,
You probably are wondering why this book, being one of my bonus selections on recently joining your club, is being returned to you so quickly. When I received my first three books for your delicious low price, I decided to naturally read one, A.J.P. Taylor’s The Struggle for Mastery in Europe before I started the others. I immediately inscribed my name on the first page so in the event it was stolen from my dorm I might have some future luck in ultimately getting it back. I then moved into the book and read the introduction. Then, due to a reasonable curiosity concerning a certain major event I went to the index, found what I was looking for and turned to the page in question. Lo, much to my surprise it was missing. The page was missing! This has happened to me in the past with other books but I was even more shocked when I discovered one set of pages repeated twice. Pages 446 and 479 are missing and pages 425 and 446 are in duplicate. I know this is not your fault and I would appreciate another copy of the same book. Payment for the three books is being sent to you under separate cover. Thank you for your prompt attention in this matter. Sincerely, etc.

No mail yet from Bess. That does it. I tried and failed.

My room off campus will cost six bucks a week. That will be one hundred eight dollars for eighteen weeks. The room is at 229 McCartney Street with Mrs. Brown. Pay the rent and start to move my things slowly but steadily. I have to get out of this goddamn dorm quickly for my sanity and privacy.

“Martydom is the only way for a man to become famous without ability.” George Bernard Shaw.

Cut. Scene ends. I’m in no mood to write tonight. I don’t have the emotional strength to hold my pen.

January 22, 1955. First final exam is now over. Cross the date off my calendar. Only five more exams to go.

Bobby is really in a bad way fighting himself and his parents, yet he seems complacent in his misery. I would very much like to see him ten years from now.

Discipline in action— up every morning early.

Time is but a fleeting thing while life is time in passing. Someone must have said that.

Women are strange beasts. They are the one thing man’s ego cannot conquer. I love them all, no matter what.

Music is the supreme relaxer. In any form, it diverts one’s attention from the tediousness of everyday life.

Song, “Getting to be a Habit With Me.” Momentarily reminds me of Carole. It is wonderful how I can look at her almost objectively. It’s a good feeling.

My hands are shaking more than usual. Probably the pressure of the exams period. I haven’t had any ale in two weeks. I can’t wait until this is over.

Still haven’t heard from all those graduate schools I wrote. Maybe they forgot me. Who knows? Ha! That would be a laugh.

Surprise of surprises. Got a letter from Bess and a very nice one, too. I am just a bit relaxed and a bit happy. Damn happy, to say the least, which is the most.

But with it, some depression. Today I spent six dollars for my room, five dollars for books, four dollars for cleaning bills and one dollar for other small items. Now I have eleven dollars left for the week. I still have to get a comb. I keep losing combs. And I need a styptic pencil for the shaving cuts on my tender skin. Take my one good tweed jacket into the shoemaker for leather arm patches. It will add to its appearance and make it last longer.

“The mood and surroundings are air-conditioned Jean Paul Sarte.” Now, who said that and in what context? Can’t seem to remember. Which brings up an idea.

There I am, floating. But why am I in a place like that, I’ll never know. I could have only been in one site and strange as it appeared, I recognized most everything. I looked at my guide and asked him if we were in the right place. Sure enough, he replied with some pique. I haven’t been doing this for too long, but, well now, I am considered an expert. I don’t make mistakes, my friend. I smiled, then laughed. Nerves in action. The test worked. Momentarily happy, pleased because I finally made it. It did not come easy because my work did not lead to an end. It was not conducive to joyful fulfillment. My location is difficult to describe but I am in a black pit with flashing lights. Despite my position, I could finally be an individual and exist among those who cared little for others. I had made it and so I laughed loud and true, thus perplexing my guide who looked at me as if I were not all there. He probably thinks I am out of whack, unbalanced.

That power feeling is recurring in me . . . This . . .

Then you awake and you walk into a real world with its smells, its dark hues, its despair, its ugliness, its haunting air of defeat, its solitude, its loneliness. All are parts of the real world, parts we are unable to escape by closing our eyes. Some of us do escape because we are unfortunate. Again we face the real world increased one thousand-fold by the unreality of the reality. We again relive what has gone before. We cry. We struggle. We are unable to rest spiritually or physically. We envy those who do. But should we? You who suffer know its consequences. You are among those who continuously fight it. Realize when you do, if suffering departs your heart and soul, what then remains? Peace? Only fools know peace. Peace of what? Heart? Soul? Mind? Spirit? They are nothing compared with the very act of existence. Lives are not all struggles. Neither is life all pleasure and love, although some seem to feel it acutely: that is unreality. Those who think only with their emotions are the fools in our system. They continue sleeping. Some say reality is only definable according to the individual. This makes little sense unless I am becoming too dogmatic. When one looks at the world through objectively colored glasses, he can see the truth on the other side. If he cannot, then a new set of lenses or continued sleep, with no chance to wake up, would be his best alternative. He would, under those circumstances, continue his merry way until he is ever so gently, so mildly, thrown to the lions where he will be in no shape to fight off the resulting, life threatening attack.

“A man is nothing but the ensemble of his acts.” Sartre and his obvious emphasis on action.

Love is a sudden sting, the bite of a bumblebee. Love is missing a step going downstairs and falling flat on your puff-eyed, sleepless face. Erotic pleasure is having it all. Eroticism is the fusion of two soldering irons. Love is agony and reverence.

January 31, 1955. I took an upper at five this morning to keep me going while I study. There is no immediate effect, down or up. No lift. After ten minutes I still feel nothing. Another ten minutes passes and I feel no change. I’m waking up, though. Possibly I’ll never notice anything. Fifteen minutes later I feel a small, dulling on the left side of my head. This feeling comes and goes. I’m very cold. The room is cold. Outside it is between five and ten degrees above zero. Thirty minutes later and I’m thinking clearly. The feeling in my stomach is nothing more than my normal morning ache. It’s now twenty minutes later and I’m still awake. I yawn. But there’s no adverse effect. My mind is clear and my body is my body. They say this pill usually works between fifteen and fifty minutes. It should be affecting me now. It’s not. It’s now six in the morning on January 31, 1955. I won’t do this again.

February 1, 1955. I don’t miss her enough to go permanently blue over thinking about her, dwelling on it. I’ll be back in school in a few days, curious and apprehensive, and, honestly, worried over my marks, especially that philosophy course I took. We shall see. I have the prediction marked down someplace, elsewhere, wherever. It might be lower than what I expect. I’m also apprehensive regarding my many applications, what they are doing and when and how I shall hear? I imagine those, too, will come soon. Yes. Everything shall come in due time and under its own volition. Little can speed the march of fate, my fate. It falls where it will and leaves its most lasting mark where it may. Ow.

In these last few evenings I’ve put many words on paper. I use real ink. The ink is black. Words on paper are pretty things. My thoughts have been hasty, confused and I can boil them down to a few choice sentences. Where am I? What am I? Why am I? Why do I think and act the way I do? Why? The puzzle of me is my destiny.

My room is bitter cold. There is no heat after ten at night. I wear my overcoat and stare at the radiator. The bed is so hard a dead man could not tell it is old and stiff like a board. My desk is a bookcase sawed in half. I have three square feet to walk in the middle of the room. A full pack of Camels is to my left. The lighter is to my right. My old, worn watch works and loses little time. The floor is very dusty. Even the creatures living there, demand a rescue. Soon I’ll try to sleep.

Easton, Pennsylvania, still early February. Received a letter from N.Y.U. They want me to write back and ask for an interview at my convenience for their convenience.

Two more marks back. One to go and its solid, an A, Dean’s List, and freedom. Come through, baby, for the folks and me.

Get ink. Get stamps. Bring in Laundry again.

Sell an old textbook for beer money. Get some more dough from home. Tend bar at a frat house or two. Get Valentine cards and save money for transcripts.

Pickup “Russia” by Pares and Tawney, both in the Mentor series.

Buy “East of Eden” by John Steinbeck.

Time for rejoicing. I made Dean’s List again, well above my target and with some to spare.

Back in New York I’m on the subway reading the racing results on page 32 of the World Telegram & Sun, the finals from Belmont, the sixth from Saratoga. I don’t know why I’m reading the results. I never bet, have no interest in horse racing. As life goes its merry way, a fight breaks out. People stop what they are doing. They lift their eyes. They heave a sigh. It’s outside their business. It has nothing to do with them. It’s for the two who keep screaming at each other. They are only doing what they have done in the past— perhaps that very morning. A morning so rudely passed by.

Interview at N.Y.U. On February 15. Write this afternoon to accept.

Add plethora.

“The Hunting of the Snark” by Lewis J Carroll.

Read the “Rennaissance Reader” and soon.

White snow falls on dirty sidewalks cracked from wear. People hurry by, immersed in their thoughts. The subway is hot, crowded, dank and musty, though deep in winter. I see soggy shoes everywhere. Once clean fingers, some just washed, now blacked from damp newspapers carried under arms or opened to the sports pages. Where else? People squeeze together into subway cars. The odor of wet wool and damp souls fills the nostrils. The train is like life: It moves, stops, jerks, opens, closes, comes and goes. I look out as I pass houses with their window shades up exposing ruffled beds from the early morning. There’ll be no starched sheets in those homes. Ozzie and Harriet really do only live on television. But mussed sheets are better than none. The train never seems to empty. Passengers sigh in unison.

February 15, 1955. New York. For N.Y.U. When I visit and have my interview: I would like to be in a position where I can coordinate and originate mass media (radio and television in particular) with education and present it to the public. My purpose is to give people a brighter perspective and broader idea of relativity.

Or: I would like to be in a position where I will be able to coordinate educational facilities with the mass media possibly to create a greater perspective and relativity among the masses.

Do I know what I am talking about? No matter. Refine this.

Not a good day. All sorts of the unexpected hit me squarely. I had an interview at N.Y.U. I goofed badly. It’s the only way I can put it. The simple questions asked of me by the head of the graduate study’s department were things I should have known, period. I don’t think, he will accept me into his vaunted course because I lack many prerequisites he seeks. I believe I didn’t impress him. We shall see. He said he’s strict and that he demands utmost fidelity to his structure and beliefs. And I thought an open mind was important for a liberal education.

December 23, 1954. Words heard in clubs, heard on the radio, heard on bar stools.
Land of Oobladee.
Feeling the worst.
Real wild basket of ribs and a bottle of juice.
Joint. Three meanings with each in hand.
Lay it on her.
Skin, as in, gimmee some.
Pops.
She’s feeling kind of beat.
Wild.
Fall in.
Fall by.
Crazy.
Pad.
The same old jazz.
It’s a gasser.
The most to say the least.
How do you come on?
The greatest.
Somebody goofed.
The swingingest.
Cut out.
Don’t hand me that jazz.
Your timing was like the end.
Are the lowest, like in you are the lowest.
Broad.
Crack. A sexy broad.
Forgive me for coming on so square.
You are out of your skull.
Weirdsville.
The whole thing is real nervous.
Let’s fall upstairs and find out the skam.
Somebody has been making it.
There’s been a scuffle in my pad . . . Too. The three bears in 4/4 time.
Take it from the top.
Jack, don’t bug me. I’m beat.

December 24, 1954. Brooklyn. Life twists strangely. Nothing new. Definition of terms is important. Something will develop, of that I’m sure. Time.

Bought a paperback book of short stories by Damon Runyon for 30 cents.

Reading “The Moon and Sixpence” by Somerset Maugham.

Finished reading “God or Ceasar” by Vardis Fisher, “The Short Story in America” and “The Literary Situation “ by Malcolm Cowley.

December 26, 1954. Attempts to get good marks are driving me nuts. It’s my plague. Achieve, achieve, is all I ever hear no matter what I do or try to do. I wish I could just quit but you don’t throw away twenty years of life and internal pressure. At least I don’t, at least not now. So I’ll keep on pushing, keep on trying. Finals are coming and they still play a big role in the last marking period. The two weeks before finals I’ll read, study and go into a general all-around prep for the big push. I’ll send applications for grad school and I’ll sweat those. I’ll even have some interviews. It’s coming together fast.

December 29, 1954. “It might strike you as something out of the blue. It may be complete nonsense. It might have much truth. Even an underlying meaning. A strange motive? Yes. A frank meaning? Yes. Where does one begin and the other end? I don’t know. Or maybe I’m not saying. Send me a picture and then we’ll be on the road to being even. Thank you. Please.” From a letter to Bess.
I worked Friday night in the library and then did myself one better. I worked Saturday morning and into the afternoon. In my last semester I’ll take 20th Century Europe, Government and Labor, Renaissance and Reformation, and The Age of Satire. Four courses and out.

From “Beyond Good and Evil” by Friedrich Nietzsche: Intransigence. Tartuffery. Pariahs. Rococo-taste. Nuances. Minotaur. Exoteric. Esoteric.
Lassitude. Insidiously. Debilitates. Attenuated.

My education continues with these words. Where and how can they be used to best advantage, if at all?

There is so very much I want to learn. Where to begin? Where is the time? I’m not a scholar, yet something drives me on to read all and everything. Why? Perhaps I shouldn’t care.

Two more for the list: Epistemological and iridescent

December 29, 1954. Wrote Bess what I said I would write. Just curious to see if and what kind of answer I’ll get. I’m really curious to hear what she says and I hope she answers me soon or at least in a reasonable length of time. I can use nights like those again.
Two more: Ambergis and accoucher.

It is either Nietzsche or he has one hell of a translator.

“Where there is neither love nor hatred in the game, woman’s play is mediocre.” Nietzsche, again.
And, “In revenge and in love, woman is more barbarous than man.”

“To vigorous men intimacy is a matter of shame—and something precious.” This, more than many other things that Nietzsche says, requires an explanation. Why? What does he mean by vigorous, intimacy, shame?

There’s something in me I can’t explain, that defies definition. I do too much on impulse. Or better defined in an egotistical way, as an almost practical impulse—whatever that means.

I have no date for the New Year. This will be the second year in a row I’ll be alone. I know I’ll drink more than I should. And then the old year will pass.

January 6, 1955. Easton. It is now two in the morning. I wrote 1750 words tonight for class and myself. I read for a while, and now I yearn for bed. I find it hard to fall asleep. Once asleep, for me to wake is even harder. But there is joy in starting a new day. It has no peer. My lust for life is the act and ever growing art of living. Living is joy and sorrow, pain and pleasure, liberally mixed with too many cigarettes, cheap booze and beer, foul food and unfulfilled lust.

January 7, 1955. Easton. I’m sitting and listening, trapped in an eternal void. I wait in a vacuum. Dreaming. Wishing. I want something that’s almost out of reach. It’s so near, yet so far, but something I can’t find. Is it the unknown? Is it the knowledge of the transcendent being? Is it the ultimate step of achievement that will be mine forever, whether it is material or abstract? Shall I be the skeptic and say, who knows? I realize I don’t really know much about anything. Then, again, I may know what I want. And it’s not too much to ask for— peace, security and the opportunity to rest. No worries. To see myself set free and emerge in the greater world around me.

January 12, 1955. Easton. Add two more to the list. Abnegation and unctuous. And a third, emoluments.
Write Bess. Problem: Should I wait for an answer (if it ever comes) to my startling letter to her or should I beat her to the punch and say what I really do not know? I think I’ll wait. She should get my letter by today and if she writes I’ll get one by Monday or Tuesday or Wednesday or Thursday. Shove it. What’s my hurry?

Expenses: Books, $4.50; Shirts washed, $1.05. Do I clean my windbreaker for $2.50? Can I afford it? Add more shirts, $1.50. The books are payable by the week of January 24. That will take pressure off this week. To pay for this, I’ll have to cut down on my food bill, if I can. Eat only what’s necessary. No night snacks. Cut down on bread, my favorite lament. When I’m less full, I definitely work better. No more eating downtown. Too expensive, too greasy, too Pennsylvania cheap and mediocre.

I wanted to write Bess tonight. I did not. Why? Well, she’s on my mind only during those moments alone . . . and lately even when I’m among people, I sometimes feel I’m by myself. It’s hard to explain. So I won’t. I know that I had to write her a letter filled with self pity, shared pity. It’s good I didn’t. Instead, I’ll continue to wait and see if she answers my last effort. This, by the way, is my theme whenever I talk to anyone: Bess, and how I met her. Her red hair. Me, different. Am I really different? When Monday comes or maybe Tuesday, I’ll write her. Here I am. I know almost nothing about a girl. Yet she’s given me something. And all I want to do is know more about her and get inside her thighs. Ask her for the weekend of February 4 and 5. Song, “Return to Paradise.” I need a haircut. Why does she hound my thoughts? I like her. I’ve practically had her. I’m curious. Do I love her? No. At least I don’t think so on such short notice. I have been with her under the most ideal of circumstances. I will have to be with her more to really understand our relationship. Take her out more, spend what little money I have and try my hand with her again. Yeah. Are you a fool? Just listening to a new rendition of “Black Magic.” He talks it, whoever he is. Really crazy. Different. It sounds strange to my weary ears. It is. The song has achieved its effect.

More for my growing list of words that someday I’ll find useful, or not: Annotated. Anchorites. Marmots. Effete. Effulgence. Effeminate. Antinomians. Requital. Mendacious.

Friday, November 19, a beautiful day. A really lovely look and feel to the sky. Wet and misty like England and Northern California. Everyone is running. They are hustling and bustling. My how they run. I wonder why.

Now I have one more day of classes and then home for eight days. Yes, sleep and eat, drink and try to get laid or at least a touch or two of bare skin. It will be good to be away from here. Then, my last battle. Once I define it, though, I’ll know my tactics.

When I get home, I’ll try a new approach with my mother. When she says something I will try to do as she wishes. I can also pass it off as if she never said anything. I have several days at home to try this out. If it works, it can improve our much strained relationship. Strained or not, there is a definite breech between us. We jump down each other’s throat too easily. Is it because, as my father says, we are so much alike? Or is it that we really don’t understand each other? It could be that we are so opposite nothing can ever get us together. My mother believes she’s a perfectionist and everyone in her orbit must be perfect. Perhaps if we both give a little, we can solve part of the problem.

At home Jack, an Israeli friend of the family, had some advice for me. He said there are three ways people see you. One is how other people see me. The second is how I see myself. The third, and most important, is the way I really exist. He also said, “when a person is measuring you, be sure you know what type ruler he is using. You can’t measure the ocean with a twelve-inch ruler.”

Mike Todd is dead. One minute of silence is in order.

Finished reading “The Delicate Prey and Other Stories” by Paul Bowles. Also completed “Point Counter Point” by that fraud Aldus Huxley. Bowles is a wonderfully slight stylist and Huxley is a writer with too much fat in his brain.

The time is five seventeen in the afternoon on November 16, 1954. The day is dreary and it smells of coming snow. I close this, the first notebook with some sorrow, for it has been my most intimate associate.

December 4, 1954. Easton. Today I was called a “spiritual and physical wanderer like Thomas Wolfe.” I like that. In fact, I love that. It’s one hell of a compliment.

December 12, 1954. Easton. This should be very cute tonight at the Plaza Sho Bar. Angie, the vocalist, is at odds with her former boyfriend. Lee-Ann wants to talk to me about something and I am feeling very good for a change. So, La Ronde and away we go . . . for sheer joy, happiness and the like. Jump for joy. Just a little jump. Enjoyment plus and it figures to be quite an interesting evening.

Later. It didn’t happen. It just did not.

12—where is the 13? I can’t understand that entry. I can’t figure it out. I wrote it last night but where and why, I’ll never know.

December 14, 1954. Easton. The music from La Ronde is haunting. The constant refrain is beautiful in its simplicity. Margie from Morristown, New Jersey is a student at Centenary Junior College. She does not smoke or drink. She has that smell of money I don’t often see. Though strange, she is far from inhibited. Her eyes are hazel and her hair is black. She has dimples and causes the people around her to laugh.

The strength of our national fervor may keep our unrealistic pride of unbridled chauvinism in its rightful place. Just a suggestion. All the help we can get, should be the motto of our State Department.

December 15, 1954. Easton. In my writing I want to pursue a series of events rather than a complete and formal 19th Century novel.

I tore up all the replies I’ve received from my inquiries about the rest of my life. None of the respondents answered my basic questions. They seem not to have the answers or they are negligent. Maybe they are plain stupid. Now I’m waiting for the remainder to come back.

“As the arts proliferate with prodigious fecundity, his lot is an increasingly hard one.” Learned Hand.

Spots on the wall can mean many different things. I see five. They are ink-spots and blots. How or why they got put there is something I’ll never know. Or really care about. But, wait! I must care if I am to find out why they are there. Take a closer look. Come on, don’t be afraid. That’s better. Here I am at last, nose to nose with the wall. Strange place: four walls, a bed, a chair, a desk, dirt on the floor. No. Not real dirt, but plain, old-fashioned dust. My desk has the litter of writing tools. A bottle of ink half to three quarters full, an ashtray with three butts, two scarred matches, stale ashes, a half filled bottle of beer, a radio.

December 16, 1954. Easton. Reality. It’s the end of the week and I figured out my budget. Man, what a flop. It cost me double what I tried living by for six days. Well, almost double. Leisure surprisingly cost me less than I anticipated. I even put some money away for a future blast. My laundry cost too much. I didn’t splurge on luxuries. At least I tried and it does show that without denying myself anything I can live within $25.00 a week easily, including meals. It’s too high but if I can keep to that I shall make it, at least until I reach twenty-one.
I so want of free time. I want to think and read what I want. I can almost cry. If I have that time then I can see where I am going. There are many things I would like to do but I guess time will tell. I graduate in six months. Perhaps there is less time than I think. I am beginning to believe I am out of place in our motley society.

Calderon says, “ The greatest of man’s sins/ Is that he was ever born.”

Othelo to Iago, “I’d have thee live/ For, in my sense,/ ‘tis happiness to die.”

Palmira to Mohammed in Voltaire’s tragedy: “The world is made for tyrants; live and reign!”

December 17, 1954. Easton. I have a god damn cold that is eating my patience. To the infirmary.
Schopenhauer says that egoism is the form of the will to live.

It’s late, dark and wet. At two in the morning, with the sparse light, shadows and gentle noise, it is a wonderful atmosphere.

December 18, 1954. Easton. I went drifting down the avenue. It makes little difference where, I thought. What else did I think? Of birds and bees, of fishes and travel on the sea. So broad, wide, wet and salt filled.

I am adrift on the oncoming tide.

Angels and lovers, heaven and earth. Damned to eternity, yet it seems like hell. If it is hell, what is a pure life? What is existence? Is life continuous? I sympathize with the view that the afterlife is a paradise with women and wine running free but you have to be a believer. In a case like that, if one really was certain of what existed after life ended it would not be hard to believe. No, it is easy to understand. But I can never become a Muslim.
I’m rushing things, rushing myself. Take it easy. Slow down. Matters of importance, of relevance will come. I know they will. I have the confidence I once had at 16, at 17. My faith has returned. I feel there is little that can stop me now. So if I feel that way, why all the doubt?
“Neither good nor bad can men be deemed. As they can, they live one day at a time.” Strindberg and his brilliant pessimism.

December 19, 1954. Brooklyn, New York. Im headed into the city to pick up some information. See what develops. Going Snark hunting again. Maybe soon I’ll find part of the Snark, but the whole Snark? Never. Then, the joy of life will be gone.

At Basin Street. Duke Ellington and Don Shirley. Duke is sensational. Shirley is light, refreshing, delicate. When I get the money to finally start collecting records I must get some of both. The music is fine, the beer is good, the place is half empty. I need a good laugh.

Play on Channel 4. TV Playhouse. “Class of 58.” Point: little or no hazing in colleges any longer. Point: atypical character. Too strong. Point: too much J.D. Salinger. Point: arrogance is too personified. Point: they don’t call teachers by their first names where I go to school. Point: maybe I’m reminded of college.

December 20, 1954. Manhattan. In a bar on 47th Street. The juke box has a choice of rhythm and blues, mambos and pop tunes. A woman stands at the entrance selling pencils for a penny. Two men come inside selling toys for Christmas. “For the children, mister?” Pictures of navy fighter planes line the walls. Paint is peeling from the ceiling in large pieces. When I order a drink, the bartender tells me he’s a college graduate waiting for his break. I graduate in six months. He’s a confidence builder. Sure.

December 22, 1954. Brooklyn. I finished reading James Hilton’s “Lost Horizon.” I stayed in the perfect mood for its extreme romanticism so for the moment an excellent story for me. But not forever.

October and November, 1954. Easton, Pennsylvania. It is another rainy night. Lately it always rains. It’s late, dark, wet. A few lights across the way burn. What are those people doing who are up? And why? Rain makes a beautiful sound. Staccato: Ta DA, To-Da. It’s good to sleep by. So peaceful, yet paradoxically it’s a restless noise that continuously beats a strange, unreal melody. The rain provides a curious thought. It is a mystical sound permeated by a feeling of being lost in a void.

I’m in a bar having a beer. My new motto. Look, watch, do not touch, observe. Always take care to observe. Think, and then act.

Learn myself and use the knowledge to further the search for what I want.

Looking at my handwriting (this is all handwritten) makes me laugh and think of a quote. “All great thinkers have never had a good style of writing.” I don’t know who said it but maybe I have hope. Here’s another quote. “All Jewish doctors have illegible handwriting.” My mother.

This is an age of conformity. Damn it. It’s now Sunday two a.m. morning. Hand shaky, head spinning: too much ale and my feet hurt.

As usual I’m at a point of indecision about my future. What is my field? Where am I to go? Do I have a talent for any one thing or what? If only there were a simple answer. If I knew, then everything might be better off for me now and into the future. I try fighting these question marks that march in my mind but they won’t go away. No man can exist alone. He needs others. He, I, me. They can exist as a part of society. Character rather than personality. I can lose the latter but never the former. The former may change. It may be altered but I can’t lose its essentials. It may have additions or subtractions, whereas a personality may grow and grow: it can blow up or be smashed. And then where is the inner being if no character or semblance of the same exists?

A desire I have is to leap to a position on the ladder where I’m not subordinate but when I’m a definite part of society. I’m not a reformer. I am an individual who feels there is something better to strive for in this life. This is the problem with me and why I think others see me as an enigma. What am I striving for and why? Am I a humanist as my Middle Ages professor recently called me in class? It sent a chill up my spine. His statement made an impression on me and that’s not bad. I decided I didn’t want a career in medicine. I change my major often and even at this late date I haven’t settled on a future. I dropped pre-med and despite my father’s wishes, I did not become pre-dent. I decided I had no interest in the so-called healing arts. I saw it as better healed than to be a healer. On second thought, in truth, it is better to be neither.

When I work or drink or smoke or play I always think of myself and I can’t decide if that’s good. Mostly I don’t have that sorry, hangdog feeling toward my psyche I had during my first years at school. I think about my future and I still dream of wondrous deeds but now I feel I have the necessary equipment to accomplish something for myself, by myself, most of the time. It’s a new feeling, unusual and filled with elation. I’m doing something I haven’t done since a freshman: I’m making a budget for time and money. I’m always low on money. I can’t get the courage up to ask my father for more than he gives. This latest move on the regimentation and the budgeting of my time is the best thing I’ve recently pulled off. I think it will pay dividends and I am looking forward to them. I can use a payoff.

*
Ilene, an Easton chick who hangs out at the American Legion Post dances with me and allows me to hold her close. Is my luck changing? Also, buy Milk of Magnesia. Damn, I’m breaking out again—probably because of my lousy diet.

*
In exactly thirty-nine hours I’ll be on my way home. In almost forty-two hours, depending on the speed of the bus, I’ll be home. It’ll be a good change for me. I must discover many things and besides, I’m anxious for good food, a place where I can sleep, my own bed, and drink, away from the solitude of the campus where I feel increasingly isolated.

If Ellen is there, I will rush to her tenderly, once I find her. If I can’t find her can I guess where she reigns? She is supreme wherever she may be. Just allow me to find her and then perhaps, together as one we can be king and queen our own kingdom.

Dave is finally leaving Sunday. Now, we can see if he’s really what he thinks he is and how others truly see him.
I wonder if Ellen has read Richard Wright’s, “The Outsider?”

What is Carole doing now? I’ve just had one cigarette and I am about to light up another. I need another drink. That’s the easy part.

I have to fix my watch.

Will my mother answer my letter?

My father. He has this wonderful, too fatherly caring concern for my future and me. It makes me tense. I would expect nothing less. But I wonder what is going on with my father. I write him a hurried letter in reply to his questions. No answer. Doesn’t he realize I’m human and striving to be the individual I want to be?

Time to shave again, even if it’s almost dawn.

I hope more mail comes in the next week.

Listening to the radio and a show called, “Jazz Corner.” It’s filled with the sounds of Lee Konitz, Gerry Mulligan, Oscar Petersen and others. Listening to them with a glass of cheap red wine helps make my day.

“The Moldau,” a symphonic poem. Powerful and moving. It is the theme for Hatikvah.

World War I. The French are at Verdun February 21, 1916 through December 1916. The French and Germans are in a long, brutal, bloody battle. One million are killed. 1,000,000 killed! How long, under normal circumstances would it take for one million people, mostly men, to die? Petain was the commanding general for the French. The French were “sustained” (sustained!) by the famous battle cry, “Ils ne passerant pas!” They shall not pass!

“Pain is necessary for nobility.” Nietsche.

“Man is nothing but the ensemble of his acts.” Sartre. In other words, emphasis on action.

Charles Erskine Scott Wood’s “Heavenly Discourse” is very funny.

“You Better Go Now,” by Jeri Southern

Song: “This is You.”

Robin’s Nest is a good disk jockey show.

“Gather ye rosebuds while ye may.” Carpe diem. A wonderful practice. I am trying very hard, although it is frustrating but so are many things.

Numerals are written as numbers (1,2,3,4,5) and not as words composed of letters.

Memorize: CH2-CH3–OH. Repeat. CH2-CH3–OH.

“No man is an island unto himself.”

“La Ronde” is a satirical French film about sex. Different and well done, it is something that could never be made in America.
Mickey Mouse. Minny Mouse. John Paul Jones.

Nothing.

The exorbitant cost of psychiatrists, and psychologists, too.

I live in the library. Without it, I’m useless. If I have a love at school, it’s the library. Last night I got angry with five WASP slobs, the legacy mites who inhabit the school. They came into the library making noise, continued to make noise as they pretended to study and departed making more noise. What fun? They exhibited the lowest form of intelligence. No wonder I don’t hang with them or join their fraternities. They have no respect for others. They pretend they know how to drink and smoke but they look like fools. They don’t even have the power to be uninhibited. They are weak and can only move in a mass, a shape forming one unseemly body. They are the ones I have to lead. They have no power to lead either themselves or others. If we are to be lead by them our affairs would be in a worse state than they are presently. Their intelligence seems hardly above average, a take on the true quality of this college. Immature fools. But they aren’t for me to worry about. Not really. No. Politics is for someone else. There would be too much pain in trying to be someone I am not. Politics will have to be for someone else.

Over the Thanksgiving recess I must check on opportunities for my future. It’s far off, yet very near and time is moving fast. It means I have to start looking now. Getting into graduate school is a step of some sort but what do I want to study? I am looking at Columbia, NYU, Syracuse, UCLA, CCNY, and USC. Write a paper or at least prepare it. Possibly do some other work, too. Try to find a girl. I need one.