Bright Unclouded Symphony
With one month left before Virginia I want to become a writer. I had a dream of Michael, with marvelous mechanisms of transportation, inventive tinkering: he created a motorcycle, a jet ski that could go across an ocean bay. I had a glimpse of what a sea voyage would be: a changing grey, clouds and water, how water behaves: churning, slopping in its basin, a grey slopping and tumbling loneliness and salty bitterness. And I forsook the idea of long sea voyages or circumnavigation of the globe. Because of Melville I realize I am missing the calms, good breezes, and sky colors–but what myth could entangle me in Melville’s fantasy–rich and varied characters formed that. The sea from the shore has been rendered by Camus in his lyrical essays, and as a field for the human spirit by Whitman.
Action and Rest–the beautiful sleepiness of an animal–with good things happening in the blood. My fresh-squeezed orange-juice on Nelson D’Avelli in Sâo Jose–in my Kitchen there–Reading Shakespeare and looking out over the tangled green–Voluptuous women–almost all of them–any Brazilian woman voluptuous, alert to love and beauty, to sensuous pleasure, to warm good things like motherhood and making meals.
A writer to draw on his past must relive it–and he must, I think, draw on his past–but to get a mask–what would that be? To make a shift so that what is known isn’t needed and new things are formed from a different point of view–is this possible?
I have been waiting for these days of my development because I know I would be rich with what I had persisted in obtaining. I continue that way–with persistence–for the future–as I have done that, and the future in relation to the past–is always arriving; I am always now reaping the corn I have sown–even as I am always sowing more, and superior, corn. This image of ascending development sustains my instinct against decay: alcohol abuse, tobacco and drug use, lack of sleep, poor diet–these are vices which are meager barriers to my ongoing conception of development.
I have the urge to read more Nietzsche today and probably I will.
Last night there was a vortex of emotion and strange consciousness. I felt drugged and wondered whether I had been slipped something. It must have been my sleep chemicals–dream chemicals–in a higher concentration mixed with being a little wakeful to notice the effect.
Tracy, the girl I waited forever for at the Italian festival last week–will be giving me a call about going out on a double date with her and her friends and maybe her brother. I flirted with her at the beach. She has nice breasts and a tall tanned strong body and wild sun-bleached hair and a marvelous face with soft-brown eyes.
I want to keep constant journals at Virginia–of thought and experience–though I want to talked to people of course, as I have been doing. All of myself on the line with active alert conversation.
I want to increase my mass–what I have to talk about–and I always want to talk about (just) what I know about. However this seems awfully un-Wildesque–he advocates lying–however–his reviews all betray familiarity with the work in question. I believe it’s largely a question of style–for which fancy is the wings and speculation the delight.
Listening to others will often hold me in good stead–but it is never enough–an active dialogue, one bright idea suggesting another is the best. Let me always strive to encourage bright dialogues.
Let me do my work for long and well–keeping up with the reading–and doing more–forming notes constantly–like Philip did at Oxford, by page and line, by verse–hard work it is and sometimes tedious–but ultimately great–because it puts one in the air of 1st rate creations–to breath there and peer into golden secrets of art.
I want to read Huckleberry Finn this summer and every summer (today?).
But I love the bright unclouded symphony of thought that reading brings me to.