In the Shadow of the American Dream (10 page)

October 17, 1978

Sections of letter to Dolores

RE: JOURNAL WRITING

Keeping some form of journal is important for both the practice of writing and the slow articulation of thoughts. You grow so much over a period of time in writing things down, you don't have to necessarily keep a daily journal, it can be composed of ideas, plans, future projects, emotions, things on the mind, places to visit for the purpose of photography, what in certain photographs excites you (when you get into this it becomes very helpful for learning how to articulate your senses and also creates a definition of what you are trying to do or what inspires you and from there more ideas spring), what mannerisms or qualities people have that you respond to, why this kind of light as opposed to that kind of light is more appealing. Continually define for yourself what you sense. Most of us respond to or are struck by things first on an intense emotional level and though that is important still it is better if we try to define the senses, for then we learn what our critical outlook is composed of, why it responds to certain things rather than others. We in effect learn so much more about ourselves and also map our elusive selves … and a sense of groundlessness, of diverse chance. I try to accustom myself to this sense: trust it and accept it without resistance, as change keeps our senses alive, keeps us coasting and viable human beings …

I may burn out before long but in the meantime I go on … like sometimes I'll be hit with a feeling, I stop everything I'm doing and with cigarette in hand I'll pause long enough to be overwhelmed at the enormity of what my life is or has been, all of it suddenly catching up like a huge line of shunted railroad cars to the main engine … the realization of it is not slow and does not give me a chance for adjustment but rather it comes rocketing out of the night with an earsplitting jar—crashing into my head and heart … and I'll have to shut my eyes and push the entire image away so that I can breathe again, because it overwhelms me so severely that all the sense that I've made of it, all the reasons for it being the way it is, suddenly become quite meaningless in the face of the knowledge that I'm just one of the millions or billions of characters rushing, spilling, groping, pushing, shouting, laughing, crying, dying, heaving, tumbling, gesticulating, and clambering through the air and space of what we have come to call earth and body, the marketing rocketing meat-machine motion, each one of them similarly intent on finding purpose or creating change. I don't think I could ever come up with a word or phrase that could define the emotions that arise at that moment other than that it's utterly frightening and enigmatic …

RE: THE “VEIL” SHE SPOKE OF BETWEEN US IN OUR LIVES

I might as well go one step further. In your last letter you spoke of a veil having been between us for a long time. Aside from the things which I need to keep private, the aspects of my life which are intensely personal and which I share with few people, there are areas which I have felt unable to share with you because of the fact that you are my mother (I hope that doesn't sound like I'm saying it's a fault). I mean that I have in my head an idea of what it would be like to be a parent and to see your child grow up, to see him grow up outside of the personal hopes or expectations you might have formed for that child and I see the chances for both unexpected pleasure and equally unexpected pain within the eyes of the parent as he or she watches the child moving about (the child being four or twenty-four). So far my life has been filled with a variety of situations and circumstances where I have ended up roving through scenes that are very removed from scenes most people commonly go through and as a result of this I have developed a keen sense of awareness of the darker areas of society and its characters. I have also developed my own sense of moral outlook that has been fused with the outlook I have learned from social institutions like school, etc. I end up having more of an acceptance of characters and styles of living that seem to go against the established order of the church and society—these people and the ways in which they live do not frighten or disturb me. At times I find myself picking up some of the things I see and trying them. It is in the very midst of this that I see chance for pain in you if you were to see this happening or if I were to tell you. Not only that, but there is a tremendous amount of confusion in these times when all that I have been taught collides with what I am experiencing … sometimes things are very exciting or pleasurable and all my past teaching from school, etc., tells me that it is neurotic to experience or even enjoy such a thing, thus a confusion comes about as I rapidly try to assimilate the experience and decide for myself (regardless of what I've been taught) what it is I feel in regards to that experience. Now to place that confusion in your hands or heart could very easily create a concern or pain when connected to your possible hopes for me. I couldn't chance that or I should say, I wouldn't. I think every person has this vacant space with his or her parents and it is not meant to exclude because of lack of feeling but on the contrary because of love for the parent. So when you experience this veil it is not because I am intentionally excluding you; it is because I must, it is because I, as the person moving through the experience, will almost certainly see it differently from you, as you are unable to see it below its face value (I am not casting doubts here as to the quality or openness of your perceptions, just that in certain areas that I move there are great amounts of socially produced misconceptions and you cannot help but pick up those misconceptions in order to try to understand the action, we all do this to a degree). I don't think anybody is able to see more deeply below the surface of the experience than the person going through it, so therefore I might be past the experience and moving through the stages where I decide if it's valid for myself and worth going on with while you are still seeing the visible aspects of the thing and quite possibly being upset by it. It's funny because my writings reflect a great deal of these experiences and awarenesses and you can't help but at one time or another see and read those writings … so I am always aware of the eventual possibility of your reading about my life or senses of it upon publication and it's strange to wonder what your feelings or reactions will be. Though I am concerned about them still I must continue to write what I feel is important or necessary. So as usual I must just grin and bear it and hope for the best …

October 21–November 24, 1978

Normandy–Paris

This journal is dedicated to Jean-Pierre Delage

[No date]

Met with Jean-Pierre sometime in the evening around eight o'clock at the St. George metro station. Me, standing around with fists in lonely pockets, wondering if I got times screwed up maybe I was supposed to meet him around six or seven instead and all other sorts of last-minute nervousness one has when meeting with a new lover: all notions of love and romance for the future perfecto are thrust and projected and yet there's that minute fragment of fear that it will all be swept away in a strong wind my real sense of the lover waiting is the Sisyphus stone poised for an interminable moment caught between the push upwards, the elevation, and the gravity pull downwards as in unending search, that flight of hands beneath the cloth of the trousers in the hidden pockets wondering if that rush of heart-speed will once again face an empty bed of noncommunication … more days of sub-vocal speech to whirl and drift 'cause there's no one there to talk with … He shows up and says, Ah ah I'm sorry I'm late and with all the cool of Marlowe I shove my sleeve up to reveal my bare wrist and take note of the time on my imaginary watch and say, Aw no you're not at least not by my watch, and he laughs and with a slim hand propels me along with him in his chugging vehicle and we're off into the Parisian night talking madly in half English half French between gesticulations and sign languages composed on the spot. I'm learning the famous French sign language originated not by the French but by lonesome men and women of foreign countries meeting in the night and trying to erase the silence. We head over to St.-Germain to a tiny restaurant where just an evening before some ratty dog jumped out from the door as I passed and yap-yapped at my retreating mysterious figure in the night causing me to turn and fake a Frankenstein movement at it just to send it into a nervous tither: giving it a chance to work out a year's supply of anxious vocals … But tonight the dog was gone and the place was a huge rosy kitchen of French characters like Mom's dining room and all these lovely people all chewing away at various foods and yak-yakking and looking up as we walk in and some young woman in a ratty sweater a waitress who's definitely gone through some kinda war with hair all sweaty and dripping across her forehead and smudged and with a pile of greasy dishes in her hands drooling down her sweater and thick glasses yellowed by heat or age and a weary face but smack in the middle of which is the greatest jaw-creaking smile ya ever witnessed and she shows us a table fulla bread crumbs and stained wineglasses and we half-crawl over a business couple to get into the seats and the meal is great original home cooked with no trimmings or fanciness and bowls of steaming veggies carrots all huge poking out from under hot cabbage and a bone and pieces of beef and turnips and with all that there's wine and bread and yogurt and cheese and Jean-Pierre alternates between explaining the dishes to me and talking to the couple at the next table who are interested in us and what we order and we talk about surrealism and certain modern arts and when the meal is over we head back to his place and get down on the tiny cot, this time he's taken it off the springs 'cause the neighbors downstairs suffer when ten consecutive movements are executed on the thing and anyway it's late and we undress and fall into the mattress and make a cool and at the same time frantic love and he shows me afterwards a copy of
The Yage Letters
in French, which I had told him about. He says that he's almost done reading it and he says that he feels very different from Burroughs 'cause Burroughs always has this need to go into bed with young boys and I laugh about that 'cause I realize that my attraction to Burroughs is based on a great deal of his personal mystique, that which has been built up around him by biography and accounts of Burroughsian madness in old letters and magazines and descriptions and the culminating sense of wild head drug stuff that I get off on for the satisfaction of knowing and learning of scenes that connect with maybe unexplored desired areas of sociological truths that are clearly spoken in some of his books and so the letters fell into a perspective that didn't really take heavily the yak about young red-gummed Indians that he wanted to make it with … it kinda fell into place with adventure in a mythological and extremely interesting country. And we fell asleep in each other's arms with the window blowing cool winter air into the room and the sleep was strongly horrible with the jumps and turns of bodies on small mattress … we woke several times each during the night and in the morning after six hours of half sleep we rose at seven and he sat on the edge of the mattress whispering into my ear and nibbling and smooch in my throat and I asked him if he had difficulty sleeping and he said, Yeah but I understand it is because we are not used to sleeping together and the bed is small and much later he sheepishly said that it was the first time in a year or years that anyone has slept with him overnight in that room … he jumped up and so did I hustling on our clothes and rubbing each other's backs and shoulders and warming up to the day … the first light of dawn creeping over the roofs and behind the heavy gray curtain of imminent rain.