=au050217 Autobiography, Noes written 17 Feb '06 ------------------------------------------------------------------- Do you recall the elegaic tone with which Durell begins Clea, the first volume of his Alexandria Quartet? I would like to imitate that now. Clean short sentences. It's great fun to run where the winds of thought take you. One stumbles across all sorts of interesting effects, incongruous juxtapositions of idiom etc. But I can't imagine anyone wanting to read it, least of all me. My mother once told me: Someone turned a bon mot, and Wilde said, 'I wish I'd said that.' Someone replied, 'Don't worry Oscar, you will.' These will be, at best, scattered snippets, indifferent to chronology. Too much work to be sequential. At the end of high school, I found (in Harvard Square of course) and bought a book og Menken's aphorisms. Or maybe I asked for it as a birthday present. Can't remember what he said, and scarcely cared then, much less now. They say he was a reactionary curmudgeon. But a nice economy of phrase. Barry Seidman read Shakespeare for pleasure, in college. And then became a professional air force officer, fought in Vietnam, got a silver star for flying as a forward air controller, went into SAC, and retired as a Colonel. Maybe it was my mother who said -- most of my more serious conversations would be with her -- that he had wanted to make General, and found his way blocked. Maybe they didn't like Jews. Seidman was not especially religious -- certainly not in the 1990s Israeli context; he was not orthodox -- but for some reason he was clearly Jewish, and I would say proud of it. It was he who introduced me to Judaism. I first went with him to Temple. An orthodox shul was all but unheard of in my world, tho of course my father had been brought up in one, and thought to spare us that burden). This wass 1956 I think. It met then in a nice old house in Belmont. Later they had a building drive, and built something fashionably atrocious -- a cross between a gymnasium and a nice clean plasstic widgits factory. With a very large parking lot. They had a "mock seder". It meant a lot to me. We did not have a seder at home. My parents used to have one, they said, mostly with the Cauman's. But then the Caumans broke with us, in the aftermath of the witch-hunt. When I went to Columbia grad school, I of course looked up Leigh Cauman, who waa editting the Journal of Philosphy, and sat right up at the top of the Philosophy building. I scarcely knew that our familiiee had broken. I suppose Sammy Cauman was one of the names my father named. Well, little loss, Sammy Cauman was just an unemployed artist. My father or mother once said, the only names they ask you for or names the know already. I had thought to maybe shield unpleasant or embarassing truths from this. But really -- what is there left to protect now. I have suffered my first attack from old age, which I deeply resent, since I am entering second childhood, and feel younger than maybe I ever have. So finding oneself old feels like an incongruous accisdent, like being side-swiped by a truck while jaywalking. And anyhow, who will read this. "They calls me a rummy and a gin-sock too; but what cares I for praise" "Tom Brown, old Tom Brown, in the days of '49." Damn; I just dumped my last coffee-filter into the trash-can. Only re-used it 3 times. Woke up this morning about 4 o'clock, put on my shoes and walked outside to piss. Gusting up to about 60 miles-per-hour; below freezing. I should title my next collection of poems, "Pissing Against the Wind." Too much wind-chill to walk down to Olivone this morning, that's for sure. Yesterday I finished another PVK transcription -- verbatim, notes (which I write once and never read -- you'll maybe find most of my autobiography in such notes, unfiltered anyhow) -- and a 'Flying Edit', which I just dash off. But it's likely more conservative and better than whatever a professional editor would do at great lenght and much expense. I'll post that to my Web-page, I suppose. Park it in Cyberspace. Some worry that the half-ass black-magician wammabe's who sometimes buzz about us like mosquitos could find it an make misuse of it. Great battle of Light vs. darkness and all that. But really, there's little or naught there to cojure with. And anyhow, what can they do. Somoene got an Aleisteir Crowly Tarot deck, because it was on throwaway sale for only a dollar. She said, he was a great black magician. I said, he wasn't a great anything, he just dressed up in a cape to impress the girls. The beings of light speak so softly, one often walks right past them, being always in a hurry of course, because otherwise how can anything get done. The dark shadows make much noise. PVK once remarked, at Zenith, it's true, "one bad apple can spoil the barrel." I was speaking of the witchhunt. This is 1952, you can find my father's picture, with that of Ted Martin and Norman Lewvinson, as the banner story of the Boston Globe that day. Herald Traveler too, as I recall. The reporters came to our front door, and rang the bell. I was told to answer it and tell them, "No Comment." I was 12 then, and had never heard of Commuinists or communism, except in passing from the newspapers. We had not discussed it in our home. There would not have been any occasion to do; my father had dropped out of the CP before I was born, I think, although my mother once remarked that he had not formally resigned until a good bit later, maybe during the war. So I had the typical USA 1950s attitude toward Communism I suppose, and so it took a bit of inner adjustment for me, all of which I did more or less upon the spot, and kept to myself. My mother once said, on several times in fact, that the trauma of the witchhunt killed my father. He did later suffer from a range of ailments, some maybe with a pswchosomatic component. Hives, and some sort of back ailment for which he was advised to stretch his spine, which he would do in his clothes closet when he came back from work in the evening. And later divericulitis, for which he had a colostomy, with which he was burdened for about a year. He was a person of throough personal neatness and dignity, always went to work in a suit, with a vest. So no doubt that was most humiliating, but he kept all private. He did once remarked to me that he would not go through it again. He was a man of very strong principle. I recall at the time that he was under subpoena to appear before the U.S. House Unamerican Activities Committee -- the House Unamerican Committee, many called it, at least later -- someone remarking, I think it was to my mother and a few friends, that obviously the right thing to do was to refuse to name names and go to jail. That really would have happened, of course. One would be cited for contempt of Congress, and jailed. Even Brecht did not refuse to answer questions, he evaded them and left the USA. Dashiel Hammett refused to name names, and was jailed. Lillien Hellman writes in 'Scoundrel Time' that she had wanted to take that path, but that Hammett talked her out of it; he said she could not take jail. My father was then an Assistant Professor. That means he did not have tenure. That means he would have lost his career if he had not appeased those vultures. Wendell Furrey, at Harvard, refused to name names, and Harvard stood by him, but he had tenure. And this was considered a very exceptional case. Dirk Struik, at MIT, also refused to co-operate with the witch- hunters, and as I recall reading, was suspended from MIT -- I think for many years. And I think he was eventually vindicated, and re-instated. I think it is clear that my father did not want to co-operate with the witch-hunters. And it is my guess that he gave them as little information as possible, and shielded as many people as possible. I once -- only once -- asked my mother if she had been in the CP, and she said, "Do you think I would let your father go through something like that alone." In 1970 I was breaking down at New Buffalo, and Susie, whom I was rejecting, called my mother. I was surprised when my father came with her. He said, "Do you think I would let your mother go through something like that alone." They immediately took me back to Massachusetts. They did invite Susie to come with us, but she was burnt out by that point, and did not. She remarked to me as I was leaving, in apology I suppose, "I thought your parents would be more cool." Well, it most likely saved my life, I had a very badly infected leg at that time. I had stabbed myself in the leg, intending it merely as a gesture of pique, barely piercing the surface, when Susie said she might take LSD with Chuck, who was an essentially harmless good-natured alcoholic stud, and surely had no animosity toward me. But Leary once said, the only ground for divorce is if your old lady takes LSD with someone else. Well, Leary had excellent intuition, and could turn an aphorism with the best of them. My father did most of his own work for his research work, and could handle a lathe very well. And also blow glass. It's about 7:00 . Just walked out to the privy to poop; it's below the Restorante, I'm in a "Carvan" behind the Restorante. Reluctantly. But I tell myself, as long as you can work productively, put up with it. It's a solid 10 below , Centigrade. Won't be much sun up here at this time of year; maybe two hours at mid-day. It's a narrow valley, and the western ridge completely blocks the sun from 6 December to 6 February. So this anomalous landscape is great for cross-country ski-ing, there is no sun to melt to the snow. Not so great to live in though. I'm the only one who voluntarily stays here a night, except for occasional visitors. I can't imagine anyone freely eating in this Restorante a second time. It's under new managment, a scoundrel from Olivone who seems to cut every corner imagineable. And a few that stretch the imagination. This week, at least for the first half of it, they have pork. No chicken, no beef, just pork. Well, at least it ain't horse. Sometimes that has been the entree. The Swiss apparently deem it rather a delicacy. There's Minestrone, which looks like a solid vegetable soup, but I think it's microwaved. "Nuke'd" as people say, even those who do not find the notion of microwaved food repugnant. When the insides are hotter than the outside, much too hot to eat, you can reckon its been nuked. Ag says, of course it's not good for the food, and not good for you. I am quite attatched to Ag, Agnieska Ledwon, and it would be my will that she get some of my money "if the unexpected unexpectedly", as my mother once wrote. Well, trying to care for her gives me something to live for, to hold onto. Not that I don't have other things to live for and hold onto too. The beauty of Swiss landscapes, the challenges of the little hikes I sometimes too, and whatever work I set for onself. Loyalty to Israel, and participation in it, is an obligation, and a welcome one. I mean, we are the first generations in 2000 years to have the opportunity to do so. So really, "a decent respect" for the accident of one's historic birth obliges one, I think, to avail oneself of that opportunity. I mean, for 2000 years my ancestors have longed for it. I don't really want to be superstitious, but -- what would they say if they can see and saw that I was given that chance and turned my back on it. In fact, living in Israel, except for the underlying inspiration of being part of a great historic event, and the interactive animation of land with religion, is pretty dull. And no lack of pettiness and melodrama at Moshav Meor Modi'in, where I live, for all that we try to put on a good front as the Moshav of R. Shlomo Car”ebach. But that's another chapter, and rather comedic I'd say. Ag scarcely needs my help -- except that she does live, and with great decency and much nobility, on practically no money at all. Her English is ok, and she has undetaken to do a bit of translation from English into Polish. PVK used to say: If They ask you to do something, it doesn't necessarily mean you're qualified, it just means they couldn't find -- or maybe he said, 'get' -- anyone better. She translated a few of my poems, and I hope to post that to Website. She chose the poems, most but not all of which I like. I can't guess whether he translations were good. Quite possibly some of them improved on the originals. Although some of the originals could scarcely have been improved upon -- as Jack Benny would say. Jack Benny had great charm. A self-deprecating pose, but without viciousness. "An agreeable fool" as T.S. Eliot once said, but Eliot was vicious, in a petty little way. To himself, to his wife -- a fine example of an anti-Semite. "Hiccktown bigot, upmobile". In Jerusalem there is lovely walkway into the Old City named Ma'alot Benny. "To Be and Not to Be" (Ernst Lubitsch) is a charming film. "Did he say anything to you?". "No, he just walked in, blacked my eye, and walked out." Well, I am branching. Ag is a very gifted person, a sort of knight errant , to some extent unnbeknownst to herself, bearing, with the usual parephenalia that I suppose us knights must schlep, a few unwanted crosses. I think it's in large part that she was born in a very industrially polluted section of then-occupied Poland. If she chooses a public rather than a spiritual path, for a while anyhow, she may yet do some things that will impress the world. She seems one of the few people, outside hoi polloi who look upon me as the Abdominable Snowperson, who only slowly concluded that I might be intelligent enough occasionally to talk to. Like many Polish people, she usually takes the defensive pose of a peasant. As I often play the part of a fool. Keeps the bastards off-balance, so you can get in a quick shot under the ribs if need be. Or so I fancy. Well, I was speaking of the impact of the Witchhunt -- that is, the opportunisitc USA retroactdive anti-Communism of the 1950's, termed the 'McCarthy era.' It happens that many of my subsequent closest friends came from families with some sort of CP background. Almowt all Jewish, of course. Well, Jewish-Americans -- eecular, that is: this neo-traditional religiosity -- and for most it is neo-traditional, nott so many are "frum from birth" -- is an aspect of the USA post-psychedelic era. Leary saw that. He said, before you can move on to actualize your universal identity, you must honour and live out your historic identity. So Leary said to Ram Das, don't play gay, if you're born male, live it out. Tho Ram Das became practically monastic. Again, R. Zalman, with his precision of phrase, once remarked, 'Judaism disapproves of homosexual acting-out.' In the 1970s, and still today, pop culture assumes that acting out one's impulses is the be-all end-all. So it becomes a matter of 'sexual preference'. But as I say: I would prefer half my neighbor's wives and two- thrids of their daughters to my old lady, but what can one do. The bible clearly says , "Thou shalt not lie with mankind as with womankind." Obviously the Bible is Divinely inspired, more or less. I mean, how could it have gone through so many reprints otherwise. Celso, of Celso's bar and grill in Arroyo Hondo, used to say "more or less." Of course the fairies -- no offense intended to real fairies -- should not hide behind the ladies petticoats. Let us have no more talk of "gay and lesbian"; homnos is homos and who cares what the old maids do on a cold winter night. I always say: Sleeping with women is normal, everyone likes to do it, from little bitty babies to old King David. Sleeping with men seems a bit queer, tho some women seem to find it periodically bearanble. And in some movie Henry the VIIth says, I do have a well-turned leg. "Narcissus ponders and polishes his well-wrought phrases: then wrapt, seals his soul and falls into a love gazes." I wrote that in my early 20s. (I put it here in the sort of terminology PVK would use: Leary's language was much more down-to-earth.) And that is the sort of conceptual style of nested sub-pointes that I intend to avoid now. I was trying to speak of the Witchunt. A few points quick, it's an hour past daybreak, when usually I walk outside and knock off a very quick condensed Shaharit from memory. Darned near the fikr of davening, which is not done. Oh well. So: First of all, the Witchhunt was anachronistic, and they knew it. The CP USA petered out into the united front phase during World War II, and really never recovered. By 1948 all that energy had gone into the Progressive movement, which ended with the candidacy of Henry Wallace. Well, maybe that was what provoked the witchhunt, evidence that the USA Left really could challenge the status quo -- lawfully, not illicitly: lawfully being the real threat. Secondly, joining the CP USA in the 1930s was a very justifiable, even patriotic, thing to do. As my mother explained it to me, and it makes sense -- the capitalist system had clearly failed in the 1930s, so the only reasonable thing to do was to go to sociaiism. And since the Democratic Socialist parties had shown themselves too weak, one had to go into a non-democratic socialist party. Ie, the CP. (I never heard the Trotskyist movement taken seriously, until I got to UC Berkeley in 1961, where the Garsons, and Horowitz, et al, led a small, very intelligent, quite New York Jewish chapter. Barbara Garson once shamed Cousin Joyce (Wallace) the heterosexcual-transmission AIDS pioneer, written up in The New Yorker -- oy, apotheois -- out of a fur coat. Cousin Joyce rather resented seeing her subsequently walking around in it. The Garsons wrote MacBird, which even made it to on or off-Broadway, an attack, tho innocent even compared to Mailer, on LBJ's support for, or being dragged along by, the Vietnam War.) And Albert the Alligator says, in Pogo Comics, "Amazing how a good looking man looks handsome in whatever he happens to put on. I mean, how could you not be fascinated by whatever I happen to illuminate with my portable intelligenvce, and wrap in my long- learned wit. Like I say, I write this stuff, but I'm darned if I'll got back and read it, not even for typos. Just Post it to a Website and go out looking for a hotdog. I mean, I can't even find peanut butter in Switzerland, let alone an all-beef hotdog with sauerkraut. My impression of the CP USA was that it was culturally almost entirely a USA thing. I mean, Pete Seager, following Woody Guthrie. Earl Robeson. "The Lonesome Train." The CP USA could be very patriotic toward the USA. And I think sincerely. It was a very naive movement. They really believed in and wanted to reclaim the old USA values. The CP group that went to the Spanish Civil War called itself "the Abraham Lincoln Brigade". As Lincoln freed the African-American slaves (tho apparrently mainly as a tactical move, in 1863), who were economic chattles, so the CP preoposed to socio-economically free the citizen slaves of capitalism. And much fine, tediously heroic art came of that. Diego Rivera and the Mexican realists. Too, in the 1930s, it was only the USSR that was standing up against the onset of Facisim, particularly in Spain, against the insurrection against the Democratic government of Spain, but the north-African Spanish generals, led by Franco. Remember, the democracies, of wesern Europe and the USA, continually appeased that unspeakable half-hung house-painter. (This is one of those barely-mentioned secrets of World War II. Secret in establishment writings, tho apparently quite known in plebian communication. Recall the words to "The Bride on the River Quai". Ag mentioned in passing, maybe it is common knowlege in Poland, that this was the result of a wound in World War I. I'm sorry to talk roundabout: I'm told that the Lubavitcher Rebbe once said that there are two names which one should not say. And HIK, and I think Harry Potter too, seems to say, one does not name evil, for fear of evoking it. And the Indians too, were circumspect in how they spoke, for fear that evil spirits, homeless ghosts maybe, might overhear. The other, incidentally, was Chairperson Poopooface, who was ushered off the stage of history with astounding consensus. Well, squirrelling away a few billions might have had something to do for it, may Suha and the test-tube baby never lack for diamond fingernail files. "Say what we feel, not what me ought to say." That's old Kent, at the conclusion of King Lear. Or should be. I rather think that Uncle Peter was in the CP -- he would have been a student in economics at Harvard at the time . I suppose this impression is based on something I heard my mother say, tho I can't recall what. If so, it never came out, as far as I know. So it may well be that my father shielded him. Peter always had the highest regard and respect for my father. He once remarked that my father had received several nominations - - rather a few, if I accurately recall my impression of that remark -- for the Nobel Prize. My father once remarked to me that he wished that he had gone into physics, not chemistry, but that this was only a matter of , something like I recall his saying, having now only 80% happiness rahter than 95%. He was a very well-regarded teacher: I suppose he was charismatic, tho I never attended one of his lectures. He was surely charismatic when explaining something in physics to me. So much so that I suppose I rebelled against it. Oy, Oedipus. To this day I seem to have a block against comprehending physics, and even math, tho I did slog through sophomore classes in both at Oberlin. I mean, even Ag, who has little technical education, can more easily turn her mind to technical matters. But she has a gift for mental shape-changing, especially with her personality, in subtle ways, that I most likely never would even have glimpsed, for all that PVK points to the conginceny of the personality, had I not taken a few half-doses of LSD et al. in my 20s. My impression of the CP USA, although this is not true of all those who I later met socially who had been close to it, was that Russia, or the USSR, played very little part in it. Of course there was some romanticization of the USSR, and Stalin has a well-polished image behind which an entire nation conspired to hide his horrors -- I mean, recall FDR sitting next to him, smiling in a lawn chair, at Potsdam -- and it is true that Nazi- ism broke itself, as Napoleon had done, against the vastness of Russia -- and one might say that Ulysses S. Grant -- "Butcher Grant" they called him then -- was as callous with his own troops as Stalin was -- and with far less justification. I mean, how could the states of the former Confederacy, having voluntarily joined a United States, not have had the right to seceed. That does not address the question of slavery, but the Civil War was not fought to free the slaves, as I say, that was merely a tacticasl afterthought in 1863. Of course my father did military research in World War II. I think practically all scientists did. This was universal military service. One was in effect drafted into military research. It was not like the Vietnam era, where one would wangle an academic exemption. I doubt that scientists even had the choice. My father worked on the Manhattan Project. On a few occasions I asked him about it, and he told me quite little, and I think even that with some reluctance. He said he would not talk about much, because it was still classified. Incidentally, my father much admired Harry Truman, and voted for him in 1948. My mother voted for Wallace. My father received a citation, though I think it was rather a routine one, from General Leslie Groves for his wartime work. I chanced upon it one in the attic of the house in Belmont: he had never mentioned it. He received substantial funding from US military agencies, but I think that was the way of the game -- MIT could not fully fund the research expenses of its scientists, so they took whatever money was offered. I recall that once my father had completed some phase of his work, and given a talk on it, and it recieved a minor write-up, I suppose in the New York Times, and he remarked to me that, although of course it was pure research, undertaken in response to the demands of the science, not for possible application -- he remarked that it had two possible applications -- one was military, and the other was in interstellar astronomy. Amd he remaked to me that of course it was the latter possibility, and not the former, that pleased him. Well, one point I am trying to get at, is that if would not even tell me what he had worked on, it is practically inconceiveable that he would have told anyone else. It has occurred to me, though whether as intuitive insight or merely intellectual fancy i cannot say, that my father may have been at desperate risk during the witchhunt. He had, I think, been a member of the CP (albeit inactive, and with the CP then in a strictly united front mode) while working on the Manhattan Project. Yet nothinig was ever made of that. I recall my father's lawyer being reported as saying to the press, he would not have taken him as a client had he not been convinced that he was truly repenant (and by implication, quite willing to co- operate with the Congressional investigating committee. Well, that was all hogwash. There was nothing to repent -- membership in the CP USA waa a matter of seeking social justice, it had less to do with Russia than the SO has to do with Islam -- that is, it was little more than an historic quirk. Had it not been for his intellectual commitment to his research, and his loyalty to his family, my father might have refused to co- operate with the Investigating committee, and maybe even left for Israel. Though that may be merely my fantasy. I don't suppose that with one's subpoena under the headlines one could then have taken the subway out to Logan Airport hopped on a plane, and found a good alternative casreer in Israel hoeing potatoes. And perhaps dropped a note to the wife and kids saying pack up the China and the fur coats and come on over. My father went on to quite a successful career, and gradually academic salaries reached middle-class levels. In those days Lecturers started at about $2000 a year if I recall, tho in those days chopped sirloin cost 99 cents a pound, which was extravagant. We never became rich, though. He always did a bit of commercial consulting -- all faculty members did -- but I don't think it ever brought in much money. Subsequently he would travel abroad to foreign conferences, including some in the USSR -- so clearly the CP involvement had been dismissed for what it had been, an incident in an idealistic youth. Well, I suppose that's much more than enough for this for now anyhow. So -- one lap around the outhouse, then out to the road, which gets maybe 4 cars an hour except on weekdays, to make a semblance of shaharit unless I can convince myself that it's now past the first quarter of the day. And then maybe over to the Restorante, where every day Honest George takes a little more coffee out of the cappucino, and covers it up with a bit more froth. ----------------------------------------------------------------- sa Campra 17 Feb '05 -- 7 Adar A --------------------------------------------------------------- Walked out my front door -- only door -- had to hold on hard to keep it from blowing away. Pulled it back closed -- it's a good double-door, and closes firm -- key alone cost me SF 20 to copy, for all that it looks like a rinky-dink padlock key. Just an old remade Container, like you ship computers and imigrants from whatever we left of Southeast Asia in. But Vanzetti does not cut corners when he fixes things up. Might not give you the time of day for fee -- that seems to be a part of the Swiss Credo -- but he does love life, and loves hard work. Once when I cam back he picked up two of my heavy bags, one in each hand, and carried them up for me. And stops on the highway to offer me a ride. A millionarire no doubt -- I suppose nowasays a million is peanuts, so maybe he's a multi-- -- tho I fear he's gone in debt to Honest George. Taken him on as some sort of partner, that is. The Preacher once remarked, having worked as such, that a good Hotel manager treats even a pauper like a king. Honest George and his pet pouf, if I guess right, tho I doubt it, do rather the reverse. I mean even sitting down for a bowl of soup is such an ordeal that I usually just eat a bit and take the rest to my room, where it may sit until I deem it a potential health hazard and put it out for Charlie and the Wolf. Drunk gets up in a bar. "Hey buddy, where you going." "Going to take a piss." "Take one for me." "OK." Drunk comes back. "Hey buddy -- you take one for me?" "Nope. Forgot." Drunk goes back. Drunk comes back to the bar. "You didn't have to go." Drunk gets on a streetcar. "Hey buddy -- put your token in." "Urrp -- that thing hanging out again?" Those are both jokes I heard my father tell. He had a robust sense of humour. I mean a bright young Jewish boy with an immigrant father, making his way in the world, needs one. I once, as an adolescent or less, asked him to explain the second joke to me, but he seemed to imply it was esoteric. Drunk in Roxbury Crossing (well, I once had and blew off a job there as an Assistance Payments social worker, and the location fits) hails a taxi. "Driver quick -- Hospital." "Peter Bent? [Ie, Peter Bent Brigham Hospital, which is the nearest to Roxbury Crossing] "Nope, just caught in the zipper." I have a friend, or acquaintance, in the SO, who now goes by the rather exalted name of Hassan Suhrwardi Gebel, presently USA National Secretary of the the SO(W), that is, the Sufi Order in the West. They've taken to calling themselves the Sufi Order International now, taking over that name from Suresnes, which is fair enough, tho I doubt many of been east of Provincetown except to watch whales. I prefer to think of it as the Appalchian Chapter of the SO(W). Well, maybe to think that was funny you have to have put up with how precious some spiritual folks sometimes get. He's Mezrich, according to family tradition. That means, from the shetl of Mezrich, but if they bothered to retell it, it maybe means, a descendent of the Magid of Mezrich, a foremost student of the Baal Shem Tov, founder of Hasidism. I mean, about as high as you can get in hereditary Jewish aristocracy. As it is said, you know you're assimilated when more than half your ashram isn't Jeiwsh. His first name, that he grew up with, is William. Gebel is an odd last name, it's Arabic for mountain. So maybe they were north African Sephardim. Anyhow, so the realworld name comes out Bill Gebel. Trader Horn once wrote, a boy is given two names: one to get through life with, and once to announce himself when he knocks on the door of Heaven. That is Jewish custom. Maybe Trader Horn was Jewish. Everyone else is. My uncle, who married my father's younger sister, was Jack Sack, zl'b. As a college student he was an All-American football player. He went on to business in Pittisburgh, Pittsburgh Office Supply, and apparently was rather a philanthropist, and very well- regarded in the Jewish community. I met a chap who lives in Jerusalem, with a nice family, and was named after him. His name is Yakov Sack. That is the proper Hebraization of Jack. But he said that bearing the name 'Jack Sack' had really bothered him and still did -- the easy alliteration. I never thought of that. So -- take the name Bill Gebel. I mean really, how unrefined can you get. Well, with a name like that you could land broke in Des Moines at two o'clock in the afternoon, and be drinking whiskey in the Parker House by evening. I mean, there's a name to make your way through life with. A very strong name, can cut through any obstacles. So his father must really have cared for him, to give him, as a Jewish boy, such a strong name. Well, I've not had the nerve yet to tell him that, so I write it here. And Jesus said, "My kingdom is not of this world." And PVK said, someone invented a game of 3-dimensional chess. So if you're blocked in the usual dimensions, you can always move in another dimension. I've always considered myself a citizen primarily of the world of ideas. Too, there's the spiritual world -- that's what Jesus was speaking of, of course, tho Judaism has survived in its intellectual dimension, when in the others it was compressed into ghettos. But in the spiritual world I'm still a newcomer almost afraid to put my foot down for fear its a lilly-pad. At an Abode Camp someone once said to me, you walk around as if you were in an antique shop. Must be because I drink coffee and beer and bourbon instead of meditating. Must be. Well, it's 09:52 and the sun just showed over the ridgeline. Shines in the window and makes it hard to see this half-screen Dos window. I slipped in the shower a few weeks ago. Like, the Alps are dangerous. I mean, I can explain. Like it was a sloping 2-inch rim, and the shower curtain gave the illusion of support, and the instant hotel shower gel probably did it, maybe I slipped on the paper, and they should build those things for safety not for ease of cleaning, and anyhow it was all because of the Avalanche but i haven't written about that because really, avalanches are just too common. Or something. So anyhow, there I was with this beautiful chick on the ridgeline about 2000 meters up, and the sun comes out and she decides to ski topless, but that attracts the Abdominable Snowperson, so quick we shuss down to the valley and duck into the hotel because fortunately I happened to bring my electronic key, so we go up to my room and are just relaxing in the hot shower when the Abdominable Snowperson who came down the mountain in three strides kicks open the door, and I say have no fear, and fetch him a great kick out the window which fortunately I had left open because we are rugged outdoor types, but unfortunately the recoil as he sails out the window causes me to slip. But please don't repeat this, because it won't do to sound arrogant. So anyhow, that's the truth, whatever truth is. "Or something." And it still hurts a bit when I sneeze, but no problem, I just try not to sneeze too hard. As I've written in a poem: Norman Levinson, zl'b, was dying of cancer. He had continued his career in the mathematics department at MIT, as did Ted Martin, who also served later as chair of it, and then retired to Block Island off the Rhode Island coast. They have lots of wind turbines there. He built a house and called it Aftermath. So you see, we did all survive the witchhunt, tho not unscarred. So anyhow, as my mother told it to me, Norman Levinsion said to the surgeon, "Cut out whatever you have to cut out and let me get back to doing math." Feigy Levinson later was in for a critical operation, and the day before, had her hair done. My mother said, I'm not sure that if I was in that situation, that is what I'd spend my time on. Well, I do a bit of rewrite here and there when I can't fully recall the verbatim, but that was the gist of it. Sun's coming in pretty strong now, I have to offset my gaze to eee the screen. Don't want to curtain the window, not after all the sun went through to get here today. "Amaying how a good-looking man" etc. ----------------------------------------------------------------- Took a nap and copped a cappucino from Honest George's. He also has slices of pie, lemon meringue sweetened with something that has not long been known on this planet. The aftertaste stays glued to the tongue for a half-hour afterwards. One of the cooks -- from Macedonia maybe -- cut his finger, and one of the Italians wrapped it many many times in adhesive tape, so if it keeps bleeding no-one will see. Once when I had a bad toothache I asked them if they had any aspirin or such, but they didn't. Nor gauze, apparently. Up on Oberalp I asked for antiseptic from the kitchen -- my skin had cracked on the right thumb and got a bit infected -- this is why one should wash the backside before wiping it with paper -- I carry a small plastic bottle for the purpose. But they had no antiseptic. And this on a deserted mountain pass hotel. Israel should liberate Switzerland. Eliahu could manage one of the better Zurich banks, it might last him a week. What a gloomy Gus old Hemingway is. And Thackeray is so flacking florid: the dude needs a good editor -- some tough chick who dresses like a man, with spectacles. It's quite the look nowadays I guess. If they ever outlaw alliteration I won't be able to write at all. Hemingway teaches you how to be a man, but he don't go that far. My mother said, it was said of Herman Wouk's heroine Marjorie Morningstar, that she ran the gamut of emotions from A to B. Roger Zelazny also writes of the manly virtues. In a context of science viction. Or rather, he did in his earlier work. If I recall, Zelazny is one of the great hasidic names. Don't offhand know who else does. Avram Davidson is a great stylist. Also within science fiction. One of the few writers with the chutzpah to flaunt being Jewish. Woody Allen and Mel Brooks use it to make themselves into fools. Stepin Fetchit in his limousine. Oy, The Sweet Smell of Success. Like carrion I reckon. Wouldn't know, I hardly ever have had money.Fun to fake it though. Ussed to go to the New York City Ballet. Sat up in the 5th Ring, which cost about $1.25, this was in the early 60s. Partial view, by so lordly. Sometimes I'd move down. Loved Firebird, with those Chagall backdrops. And all the arehctypal romances of Tchaikovsky, mostly Swan Lake. Moves you to tears when that poor birdy takes a bath in the salty ocean waves -- there's a Nuryev film that does it thus, this is the doom that is prefigured even in the first chord of the overture. Anothers end merely with an apotheosis, where the faggot floats off on a cloud with the chick, both of them posing for a Rotary Club figurehead on next year's Cadillac. Gevalt, talk of tacked- on happy endings. I mean, this is a mythic doom, tho I don't know why. Something about Icarus maybe. All those men who love the lesser angels, and are turned into trees for daring it. Back in Boston I snuck down into the orchestra once to hear Beverly Sills in the second act, but fell asleep during her long slow solo. Most embarassing. Saw Sills on TV once, singing Queen Elizabeth, something about Sir Walter Raleigh. Next day I remarked on "the tragedy of the love of an older woman for a younger man." I used to sneak into the boxes on the loge of the Boston Ballet theatre -- I think that was the old Metropolitan movie house, where once I saw one of the first 3-D movies, House of Wax. Always wanted to go wash their dirty gilt cherubim, beside the stage. Anyhow, nobody objected, tho once someone said, "But Duchess, must you really go." Well, better her than me. I have always deemed myself part of an as-yet unidentified aristocracy. (Aw shucks, it's the intellectual aristocracy, but that ain't got no assonance.) Ciel was too, of course: Afro- American aristocracy. As she pointed out, she was more light- skinned than I. When first I saw her, I thought she was maybe Jewish. She had an Afro, of which she was quite proud, but which, to my disappointment, she often cropped very short. Like me, she could of course have passed , that is, by-passed identifying with her people, and chose not to. This is Ciel Metoyer, and I think I am still in debt to her -- not financially, something more serious -- so if anyone can ever make repayment on that debt for me, that would be well, and might even soothe my soul a bit. Who knows. It is said that charity saves from the grave, that is, relieves one from the pangs of hell. So a rich man gave a beggar some money and went to the Rabbi and said, I just gave charity but I don't feel any better. The Rabbi says, idiot, it doesn't save you, it saves him. In other words, tzdaka is its own justification, regardless of fringe benefits to the giver. And the giver may take satisfaction in that. Satisfaction is not pleasure, but it is a nice thing to have a bit of. Especially in the damp & clammy grave no doubt, may we all live forever and to heck with the kids we owe social security too Amen in Bushie Heaven. But I digress. "Now Dooley joined the army, got to feeling sick He said, I think I better make my will out quick He said, Look, before the angels come to carry me I want it down in writing how they bury me: I'm wearing Tam shoes and pink shoe-laces a Polka-dot vest, and (man of man) I'm wearing tan shoes and pink shoe-laces and a big Panama with a purple hat-band." That's something I learned once on LSD. I you must make serious announcements, have the grace to veil them in irony. HIK says, 'Take the greatest care for your reputation, or else no care at all.' Carley Simon has a record album called 'No Secrets', with her nipples front and center. "He who pays less heed to the tora of women than to the tora of men will in the end inherit gehinnon." I said that, almost 2 decades ago. Only with "the indignities of old age" do I begin to see what I meant. For the longest time I took my body as only a taxi-cab. And was appropriately rude to the driver. I mean, this is the most inefficient sexual-pleasure machine imagineable. If this is evolution of the fittest, we've got a long way to go. I mean, has anyone considered that the theory of evolution, far from proving that man is in his proper place and Bushie is our leader, proves that man is a failure. Enough of this "every day in every way I am getting better and better " bit . (And even PVK seems ot endorse it.) Once theyx re-elected Bush I decided we're still back in the Dark Ages with the rack, and so things will never get better. It must have been Jane Norman who wrote me that at the end of World War I they really believed that things were finally ok. And how disillusioned they became when they saw that was not so. "With all the bad news, the only good news is sex." (Marshall McLuhan) Ciel was about to leave the bedroom, and said something like, Please don't touch my wallet. And then she remarked, This is silly, I'm trusting you with my body but not with my money. This was well before the AIDS epidemic, I don't but once recall having been asked to wear a condom. Never could handle the ruddy things anyhow. First of all there's no arrow to tell you front from back, so half the time I'd start by putting it own backwards, which, (not to put too fine a point upon it) rather defeats the contraceptive purpose. Contraception being against the canons of the Catholic Church, which rather dominated Massachusetts, condoms were piously marked, "sold for the prevention of disease only." Also, one tended sometimes to leave them behind, which rather detraced from the aesthetics of he matter. The first time I caught the clap, I asked the doctor -- this was Dr. Shorter, a fine man, whose ran in the Olympics -- if I might have caught it from the hot springs. He said, I hope not, I go there all the time. That was in northern New Mexico, he worked in a charity clinic especially for hippies. I think he had founded it. The second time -- unless this was the same case and another doctor -- he squeezed my member and intoned, 'That's the price we pay for -- PROMISCUITY.' But then he didn't charge me for the visit. Even bastards have their virtues. Lionel went instead to a medicine man at the pueblo, maybe Sunhawk, who put him on an herbal regime, which took longer than antibiotics. Lionel remarked something like, "Yeah, if your c--k doesn't fall off in the meantime." That was also at New Buffalo. Robbie Gordon said to me something like: You never said a word, so of course we all knew. Justin Case once said, Steve's the only one here who works at being a hippie. The rest of us more or less figure we've got it made. It was my birthday, and when I walked back to the back of Mary Mitchell Famous Gypsy's Model A pick-up truck, where I was sleeping, Helen was waiting for me. I had gone almost the whole day without telling anyone it was my birthday, but then I did, and Bob said, Well, it's your own fault, you know how the people here love to have a party, so then he told it, and there was some kind of celebration.ů That was Bob "Wertz" Armitage, who is buried at New Buffalo, and I'm sure I tell that story in my first autobiography, which is =auto1.zip on my Website, I've not reread it since I finished it in Hanburg, just before the first Gulf War, just before I flipped out. It was lost for 5 years, from '99 to '05, but the Vanzettis saved all my backup discs and so I recovered it. I had called it =PACKOLYS (as in "History is a pack of lies that we play upon the dead") tho it holds no intentional invention. I constructed it quite elaborately at the end, divided into 4 suits. By a quirk of the ASCII system on that computer, I could even show the symbols of heart, club, diamond, and spade; tho that does not copy. Susie Harrison died, of cancer, at her home at 1400 Greenview, in La Habre California. She had finally gotten to the Far East -- Japan, I think she married some Japanese guy, but apparently he didn't come back to the USA with her. My guess is that she got it from bad soy sauce, I recall reading that they had rather a problem with that in Japan. I suppose some bastards used a toxic chemical to make it, cheap grades that is. He father wrote me, in 1997, that she had died a few years before, after rather a long illness, and was buried, her ashes I suppose, by a tree in their back yard. As I lay out on the beach on Rodos, flipped out and psychologically unable even to cross the street, it occurred to me that maybe I should visit her gravesite. I don't really know why, maybe she should be re-interred up at Lama Foundation or something. Or maybe it's all ok. I guess there are people in the SO who might be able to say. She must have heard PVK at least that one time when he spoke at Lama and everyone who wanted got onto the flatbed truck and we drove up on Sunday, when they had open house. Susie loved anything mystic, and liked Lama. She loved children, and worked for a while as a volunteer at Dana Hazlie school in Taos. Someone once asked her if it was hard to find a job in Taos. She said, Well, I've been working for free for - 3 years, I think it was -- and I just got fired. We never got married; I backed out several times. I don't think she ever tried to get pregnant, but I never took heed of that stuff. At New Buffalo, getting pregnant or being pregnant may have be deemed rather a virtue, but it was not like Meor Modi'in, where it is assumed that any married woman will get pregnant as often as possible. Though I do think that there some put a stop to it. At Mevo Modi'in it simply would not be done for an unmarried woman to get pregnant. Or even to consort. But a divorced woman, especially a grandmother, is more or less considered to have done her duty and have the equivalent of a Senior Citizen's free ride card. At New Buffalo, there was a very nice couple who couldn't have children, so Pilar gave them one of hers. She had plenty, though no husband, at least not at the time. And lots of nice turquoise silver jewelry. They were Scandanavian, both tall blonde and handsome. He chopped a lot of wood, but slept late and couldn't be bothered to do much else, so they chased him away. Justin Case, who was as strict a taskmaster as one could imagine, except that we had no bosses, remarked, I hope those who want him to leave have given some thought to who's going to chop the wood. Justin was goal-driven, but certainly fair. Once, I suppose maybe 1973, I had just come back to New Mexico and went out to New Buffalo, where it was the solstice New Buffalo birthday party. I was hanging around the circle, and an inner voice asked me something, I don't know what, and I answered, aloud, Oh, one of each. Shortly thereafter I walked over to Kathleen, and we walked over toward her Hogan -- that was the one Pisces Paul built, single-handed, of aspen logs that he fetched from the mountains, late in summer when he decided to stay for the winter. So I lay without Kathleen, outdoors, just once. She was a handsome woman, of good character, strong. I don't recall seeing her much thereafter. So one sometimes wonders. Whenever people ask me if I have any children, I answer, Not that I know of. As I rewmarked to Ag, that answer consoles me. Well, maybe someday someone will find out. Well, nothing to do about it this afternoon, so maybe I should walk over to Honest George's for a plate of sphaghetti, if they'll serve me. A nigger could starve to death up here, if they was still unfashionable. I was walking up a mountainside with Ciel, near the Sub Sig cabain, at the start of our relationship, and she was discussing her brother, who is or was a lawyer in Washington D.C., and I said something like, "Oh, then he's not just some dumb nigger." She very gently indicated that that had not been an appropriate turn of phrase. I realized then the meaning of the Yiddish phrase, "Beis dein tzung" --bite your tongue. Even my mother once said, when I first brought Ciel to our, or her, house for supper, "Well, it depends on what race you want your children to be." To which I immediately replied, "Human, I hope." Much later, when I suspected but did not - and to this day do not, though I'm not sure now that I dare to -- know that Ciel was pregnant, I mentioned that to her, and her immediate reaction was one of great pleasure. I once discussed intermmarriage with my father. He simply would not entertain opposition to it. He remarked , but very much as a joke, as he immediately made explicit, "But if you ever bring a non-white woman to this house -- It happens that I must first have crossed paths with Ciel, tho I did not then notice her, at a seminar, the only one I know of, that PVK gave at MIT . So, as I once remarked to Ciel as we were together in my room on the 3rd floor of the house in Belmont, while my mother was away -- tho I doubt she would have raised any objection -- I wonder if my father's spirit had been behind our meeting. Which Ciel acknowleged. My father also had remarked, that he would have married my mother whether or not she was Jewish. Well, he did not practice Judaism as an adult, that I know of, and I don't think she ever had -- growing up New York Ethical Culture Socieity -- but still, I doubt it would have been that simple. Three is cultural identity. I once asked my mother, and she told me, that my father had never formally proposed, it was just that at one point they decided to get married. So I suppose they had lived together beforehand. I think she had had one affair beforehand, in Paris on her college year abroad, with a chap who seemed to have turned into rather a reashing bore, but never quite got passed that one -- breath of liberation, for him, I suppose. He would call from time to time, when he was in town, and when I answered the phone he would simply say "Alice". A bit rude, even for a Harvad alumnus. And I suppose ignoring the existence of an ex-lover's subsequent children bespeaks a certain denial of the passage o time.