March 29th, 1972

Late afternoon– at home

My battle the last few days has been a royal fight to the death with the warring angles within my brain. On the one side folks– we have the White Angels, the shy boy from Missouri with a real yen for strange things and inquiry whose wings and feathers are dripping with the beginning of a long summer night in Springfield– cut grass and slow sad sunsets and hot beer breath and fights and Canasta games– filled to the gill with wild stories of heaven and hell and strange body needs and lust and dark rooms of the mind. The White Angels’ weapons are fashioned of some dark brooding guilt and eventual need for destruction– it’s dark and fearful weaponry that leaves scars that never quite heal. It’s Tammy and beer joints and truck drivers and waitresses and hamburger America and just about anything you would drive into when you get 50 or 100 miles outside of any big America. The White Angel is a powerful force of reality lying just outside the limits of the tender urban centers. A giant force that controls its own reality.

and on the other hand folks, we have the ever-popular red angels.

The Red Angles are the powerful, passionate openings and flowerings that have widened and spread the mind open. The Red Angels are formed and created of serious intellectual inquiry, of religious hankerings. Red Angels begin to grow inside the brains of TV controlled American robots when they begin to make a few neurological connections with the forces within them and begin to see a few cracks in the lining of the television stage set drama of American space-time reality. There is indeed something else– something powerful and big and although not explored and condemned– still promises of great value– of real life. 

I have reached a crisis in the evolution of my life. I am standing back– viewing myself in a certain nakedness– did quit my job– have started living a certain way that takes courage. 

There are so many fears, but the adventure is too great.

Life is like sitting down to feast with panthers…

…the danger is half the fun.