November 28th, 1972

A basic assumption underlying most of my social ideas is that the middle-class world I was raised in is a horrible death trap. Mom and Rene. Aunt Cat. Uncle Johnny. Uncle Leroy. Aunt Ann. Lives of desperate mediocrity. Maintaining ever rising suburban standards with tedious unskilled jobs year after year after year. Build a new house. Buy a new car. Buy a speedboat. Buy a horse. Buy new furniture. 

Reared on rural depression America these people slaved their lives away on raising their standards of life. Their children went to high school. College– the blue-collar labor force of America produced an army of high school spoiled white-collar office workers who filled the ranks of industrial bureaucratic America. Allen. Larry Waite. Margie. 

New York is full to bursting with great talent. Exhibits and symphonies and plays and recitals that three months from now will never be remembered. People who exhaust their life force in artistic zeal to die by the thousands unnoticed, unrecognized– unremembered. A year after death even the names of our great are lost. 

Realizing that in all probability nothing of any great worth will ever result of my life– I curse the system that created me.

***

If all social ambitions are lost– what is there?

Perhaps personal fulfillment.

Who am I to say all those persons are not fulfilled? I’ll bet Aunt Ann is high as pie about how her life’s turned out.