July 20th, 1971

Sunday Evening, Dupont Circle

It’s summer, Larry.

It’s the middle of the summer– you’re twenty years old.

And scared half-crazy of getting older.

You’re sitting in a park– just at the beginning of a long, cool stretched summer evening.

How are you, buddy?

What are you up to now, Lar?

I am being tossed and thrashed across the mindless waves of the summer’s madness. 

I am twenty years old, unloved, and a virgin.

Life. I find

painful

and sad

and beautiful 

and I often wish I were dead.

We are instructed, I have been told, in pain and contradiction– not by revelation.

My instruction should be complete. 

Life is a kaleidoscope of excitement, discovery, and experience.

and confusion

uncertainty

loneliness

I cannot allow these to defeat me.

I must fight the good fight to be great

and free

and honest

and saved.

Sometimes I long so intently for the security of Maya.

and cry out in my fear that even that which I value as not being Maya, but that which I trust as real, may indeed turn out finally to be Maya.

“It loved to happen…” -Marcus Aurelius

I, too, shall love to happen!

and shall value reality and experience as rewarding in and of themselves. I shall be daring and brave and courageous and happy.

Can I not see that there can be no other happiness for me? Have I not always been this way?

I feel as though I am being pressured to make a decision in my life. The issue is whether I have the basic guts to get over my impulses toward herd instinct– and all the security and contentment that a social position of mediocrity can bring.

No!

No!

I am not that person–

I cannot live that lie–

I must break out in this incarnation and live, experience, be–

Survival, and as graciously, as possible is not my rap.

My rap is survival!

and greatness!

not one without the other!

There can be no other way.

Editor’s Note: The reader, at this point, will be rather interested, perhaps, to note the obvious mental transition that has taken place since the particular neurotic in question began writing.

The handwriting does a complete revolution from straight slant– indicating uptight inferiority and a definite down trip– to the elegant looping and flamboyant style of this type– with a strong unbroken slant to the right– which indicates a definite ego-trip and a euphoric up attitude. 

________________________________________________

So much for the results of intensive inner-personal analysis.

If nothing happens with this cruise number beside me [who just this second walked away] I suppose I shall go home and study, like a good star–

Of course I may stay long enough to have one cigarette and check things out! 

[oooweee honey, you sho’ are coooool]