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.