Notebooks part 9 by Ron Steinman

• Posted by Roger on September 24, 2008
• 32 comments

“A man’s rhythm must be interpretive. It will be, therefore in the end, his own, uncounterfeiting, uncounterfeitable.” Ezra Pound.
Someone else said “Each line of a poem, however many or few its stresses, represents a single breath, and therefore a single perception.”
And “The poet must forge his rhythm according to the impulse of the creative emotion working through him.”

Some outside reading:
“Rats Lice and History,” Dr. Hans Zinsser
“Post Mortems,” and “Mere Mortals,” Dr. C. MacLaurin.
“Anthropology and Primitive Culture,” Sir Edward Taylor
“Mind of Primitive Man,” and “Anthropology and Modern Life,” Franz Boas
“Early Civilization,” A.A. Goldenweiser
“Racial Basis for Civilization,” F.H. Hankins
“Wandering of People,” A.C. Haddon.

“To melt and be like a running brook that
sings its melody to the night.
To know the pain of too much tenderness
To be wounded by my own understanding of love
and to bleed willingly and joyfully
To wake at dawn with winged heart
and give thanks for another day of loving;
To rest at the noon hour and meditate love’s ecstasy;
To return home as eventide with gratitude:
and then to sleep with a prayer for the beloved
in my heart and a song of praise upon my lips.”
The Prophet, Gibran

Idea. Idea. Idea. Idea. Idea. Idea. Damn it, none. Pray it through.
So near and yet so far.
Finders, keepers, losers, weepers.

Political nature abhors a political vacuum.
“Cynic: A snarler, a misanthrope. One who believes that human conduct is motivated wholly by self interest.
Cynical: Given to contemptuous disbelief in man’s sincerity of motives or rectitude of conduct. Characterized by the conviction that human conduct is suggested or directed by self interest or self indulgence.”

Read more of the following and in a hurry.
Emily Dickinson
Sidney Lanier
William Dean Howells
Edward Rowland Sill
Stephen Crane
Edwin Arlington Robinson
Robert Frost
Ezra Pound
Amy Lowell
Wallace Stephens
Robinson Jeffers
Gertrude Stein
T.S. Eliot
Hart Crane
William Faulkner

Man-environment; Environment-man.

Rip the paper. Go on. Tear it. Leave it lifeless. It’s dead. I have killed it. No one else has. No one else could. It was lifeless anyway, for the moment. For one brief moment I had the audacity, maybe the guts. The courage to transform it, the paper, into a living and monumental entity, is mine for the asking, for the doing. Well, possibly not monumental. That may be going too far. Not monumental to others but to me because it represents something I did, something I feel is more than another person has done. After all, what does another do? In reality, they do nothing. While I attempt to do something I create even if the creation is weak and not as good as something someone else is doing or has done. I, at least, try and don’t sit back to wait for things to happen to me. That would be the easy way, the simple way. It isn’t difficult to be lethargic. I must admit it’s fun. It presents no problems. I can hear the cheers: Way to go! I’ve often thought it the best escape from reality.
I sit and wait during a night’s vigil. The world lies before me. I wait for something to happen. It doesn’t. I must make it happen. I must cause the action when the opportunity arises. Arise, opportunity. Please. It’s the only way I have of testing my true nature.

I’m sitting in a bar in Easton where prostitutes were once available to Lafayette College students in the nineteen twenties. My half-full seven-ounce glass of beer is losing its edge. Empty pages in a book, my book, my notebook. Fill the empty pages---for kicks, if for nothing else. It matters little how many words appear as long as some do . . .

I have to start thinking about a job, any job, since it’s work that will put bread in my mouth, food in my belly. Make a list of employment agencies and go begging for work, any kind of work. There are ads for college grads for executive trainees, whatever they are. They want college grads as trainees in sales, advertising, public relations and promotion. There are openings for recent college graduates in television administration. They have ads and ads and ads---for everything, for anything. “Come and register at our agency,” fee paid by the employer. Sometimes I must pay the fee, me. Lose your dignity, my dignity, and line up at the slave auction. Sell your skills, my skills, whatever they are, to the highest bidder. Enter the land of the employed no matter how hopeful, no matter your dreams. Soon you will be in a place where they subjugate the self as an adjunct to the imperial might of corporate America. Shit. But I guess it has to be done if I’m to survive, especially since I don't know what I want to do, what I’ll do, how I’ll do it.

When reading short stories or novels, I usually find women, men, buildings, places, drunks (hard and soft), junkies, scenery, stock characters, some thinking people. Duds, all. Almost. All the fears expressed are the same. All the misgivings are the same. All the worries are the same. Hot dog! Am I reading the right books?

When is this nonsense going to end? There is desire but where is the drive? My drive? Even these notebooks concern me. Sometimes they are silly. Often they are unreadable in the original. I write in them, the scribbling flowing over the lines, the letters crabbed or too large, sometimes smeared with beer or ringed from the wet bottom of a glass. I don’t review what I write to see if they have any strength, if the thoughts make sense. Can the ideas and descriptions that fill these many differently sized sheets be anything more than squiggles of ink on the page. I am most inclined to think the notebooks are useless. Yet they do serve a purpose. They use time and they are good for introspection. They are wonderful for show (and tell), especially around women. The small books work in my favor in bars and mainly in fraternity houses when on the honorable mission of bird-dogging, the surreptitious hunt for another man’s chick. The books help create some suspense in my life. They give me the space to write the many questions I enter each time one comes into my head, drunk or sober. The books enlarge on the mystery I face daily. Lately the notebooks have been taking longer to complete than when I started. Is it because there is less to say? Have I recognized the value of quality over quantity? Is it because I have become lazy or am I too busy with other things, such as comprehensive exams, and I don’t have the time to devote to them? Or is it my slow realization they are truly useless. Is what I write without talent? Are they a waste of time? I suspect this musing is premature. I damn well hope so. I’ll have all summer to see if there is anything inside me worth bringing out. My byword for the moment is time. My by-phrase for the moment is I want to see what happens. Am I anticipating fate? Hoping vainly? Hoping against doom? To an extent, everything plays a part. When any one piece of the puzzle becomes the dominant factor, everything could collapse as evidence of weakness or the self will rise like a totem pole, evidence of untapped power. Son-of-a-bitch. Dance to a different beat. I graduate soon and then I’m off and running. I hope I get my second wind. Easton, Pennsylvania. May 31, 1955. It is 10:30 p.m. Time for another beer and maybe some fried clams. Both will be great for my stomach.

June 1, 1955. Easton, Pennsylvania and Brooklyn. “Modern Man In Search of a Soul,” Carl Jung. “The Rebel,” Albert Camus. Old Testament. Numbers R, XIV, 10.

I graduated from college. My parents and sister were present. Nothing special. I just graduated. No school. No future. My sheepskin is still rolled, tied in a ribbon. No job. Nothing. I now have my degree despite everything. And yes, that includes me. I have a near useless degree in history. Oh yeah. Pack up my bags and head home, home to Brooklyn and the end of everything or the start of something new. But, what? Don’t want to teach. I want to make some money. I want some freedom. I want time to think without external pressures. I’m moving home for the duration because I have no place else to go. I don’t feel sorry for myself. I’m just in a kind of limbo. After a week of doing nothing, I’ll start looking for a job, something, anything, to keep body and soul together until I discover what’s inside me.
The graduation was strange. We were all in ill fitting mortarboard flat tops, wrapped in black bird-like cloaks as if we were disguised refugees from a police lineup. I was damn hot. I sweated. My mind wandered and I barely heard my name called to get my diploma. There were the usual pictures. My parents wept as much for themselves as they did for me. Then I changed into real clothing and brought my bags down to the car. We drove home in silence, still unconnected. There was more but that is all I want to say about the day. Perhaps there isn't anything else that warrants comment. Except. Except I managed to escape the campus without saying goodbye to any classmates. I’ll probably never see any of them again and it’s just as well. I doubt any of them will miss me. Most of them had very little to do with my life. Looking at them seated under those crisp blue, cloudless skies, sitting there in static rows, their WASP selves encased in amber, dressed alike, combed and cut alike, smelling alike, thinking alike, it’s no wonder that I had very little to do with them.

Symphonies and poems. All are beautiful. They bring flights of imaginary sounds to me, to you. They bring songs and pictures to me separately. Yet they seem to come together as they twirl their mystic tops, as they spin and spin. Sometimes they spin ferociously. Sometimes their magic spins calmly, almost like invisible spirits. Imagination, mine and that of everyone else, holds important hope for survival in the world. The final hope, though, is still up for grabs.

©2008 Ron Steinman