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.