Three Journals (eBook)

I come home after the reading and there’s heat. I’ve never been so happy about heat before. All day I was dreading the cold night in the apartment and worrying about Karen being comfortable. I walked Gyorgyi to the bus stop at 14th and 3rd and really became involved with that no-heat dread. I walked up the stairs with the juvenile delinquent on the sixth floor who’s always screaming at his mother and beating his friends up and I’m explaining to him the court action that’s going to happen on Friday and how the tenants are organized and we’re trying our best to get heat for ourselves. Even the lawyers are always saying what a good group we are, but I’m not sure he knows that everyone at those tenant meetings is a poet, so some of that fraternal determination is due from our being glad to see each other.

In through the street door, noticing in the hallway and then on the walk up five flights that it’s not as cold as it should be. Karen is walking around in pajamas like Doris Day, blowdrying her hair after a bath. Heat. The bathtub in the kitchen has some water in it with her underwear dangling over the side. I’m typing in the bedroom after thinking I’d have to type in the kitchen because it’d be so cold that Karen would be in bed already avoiding the cold; under the two blankets – the new one she bought, her realizing that we/she needed a second one and I probably would never get around to buying it (a bargain she assured me), and the old one I got from my mother at Thanksgiving along with a pot. My old blue blanket, slowly over the past three months, got increasingly torn and shredded. That one is down at Steve’s now.

My eyes are hurting because both pairs of my eyeglasses are broken. I thought I’d fixed the old plastic pair with Super Glue but they fell apart at the Museum of Modern Art. After a slightly paranoid meditation on the street in front of the museum in preparation for the Cezanne show – how do you meditate unobtrusively on 53rd St.? – I entered the bookstore, pulled out my glasses from my shoulder bag and they fall apart again. Oh, not now. I get some tape from the bookstore cashier. “So I can see Cezanne,” I say humanly to her, and amble over to the admissions cashier. It is here that I realize I’m still stoned from this morning’s joint with Michael and Gary at breakfast (my giant omelet bubbled like the geyser waters at Yellowstone). I am greeted with a similar lack of pleasantness from that teller as from one earlier at the bank. There it was: Have a nice day, as she continued talking to her friend a teller booth over. Things were slow. No line. But I’m confused. For this show, entry is by contribution. After I give the cashier $10, she looks at me expectantly and utters: “Well?” I pause trying to figure things out. Oh, well the cheapest, a buck, I volunteer. I get my change and try to make her human in my eyes. I have to ask her for a ticket. You took it, she says. Yes, in my wallet.

It’s a matter of I don’t have the time to bring the glasses to a place that will fix them. I even know a place pretty close to work, the place that fixed them three months ago – fragile stuff these gold rims. But how much can be accomplished on a half-hour lunch break. Today, for example, was taken up by an emergency purchase of a book and trip to the post office. Chrisi called from Connecticut yesterday to ask where is the book you promised, and then new sneakers at Paragon and arrangements made with Karen for her to pick them up with her discount. And here they are, over on the floor. After having needed them for these last six months. There was talk in June of a new pair for my trip out west, but I didn’t get around to it. My old pair will hold out, I thought, and they did – through holes in August and paint in September until they were beyond wearing to work. With a glance, tomorrow’s feet will be shining.

The day is waking up to the old clock radio my parents bought me when I was in junior high school. They had to take back the first one they bought, an AM, because I wanted FM. I’d heard the Young Rascals. For the last three years, it’s sounded like a speaker is cracked. I brought it in once to a repair shop, paid $5 and it came back exactly the same. Then I was off to the Catskills for six months.

The alarm goes off, which at first is music, usually classical – that being what WKCR plays in the morning, though it’s contemporary jazz at night and most of the time that I listen to it now that I’m working and don’t hear the afternoon classical shows like past summers or some season. Lately it seems, either me or Karen have been turning it off and falling back to sleep. If she does it, not resetting the alarm, but we’ve not been late to work. So, eventually out of bed. She’s up first to use the bathroom. I lay there not wanting to go to work like everyone else. Everyday. To the stove and light it for heat, a bath if there’s hot water, cloth on the pits if not. I get a little upset when Karen lights a cigarette, but don’t say anything, except here. Sometimes, if there’s time, breakfast. I try for orange juice anyway. Nice slow rushing. This morning, I played a Bowie ballad that I sang all day long. Twice out loud, once past that new woman upstairs who has been talking to me. I think she invited me to a music bar, but what a rushed conversation that was. No time to go out to bars, even for music, even with a new woman that invited me. I’m intent on writing every night and, so far, two days in a row, have been. A reading coming up in two months at the Poetry Project and I don’t have much new material. Those who’ll be there heard my newest at my last reading which was the cable TV show [Public Access Poetry], and most of that has been revised or scrapped to be worked on, which is someday. Over all, I’m disappointed with these last six months’ production.

I’ll get an hour to lie down and watch the Paul Simon special on TV before going off to the cable TV show. Tonight, Tom Savage and Tony Towle are reading. I’m particularly excited about hearing Tony as I just read his latest book and all his other poetry that is readily available, which is one other book here and then Gary’s collection. I’ve never heard him read live. I’m looking forward to hearing Tom as he certainly is always an affecting experience. During supper I read The Philosophy of Andy Warhol, marvelous and clean in the muddle.

At work I continually seek diversions. I do what’s expected of me, which is keeping the rows and counters stocked with books, making up endless inventory lists on scrap paper, helping customers (which is the most enjoyable part – when they’re not idiots). That’s about it. Then comes the diversion stuff. Standing closer to the record department, which is a little out of where I’m supposed to be, but not far enough away to make me look like I’m slacking. That’s a simple diversion. I can hear the music they play all day, mostly classical music, The Four Seasons over and over again, but that’s always pleasant. A lot of Bach. Today, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony for the first time, Klemperer conducting, too slow, too slow. They play The Greatest Jazz Concert - Charlie Parker, Charles Mingus, Dizzy Gillespie, Bud Powell, Max Roach – Toronto, and I can always stop everything and listen hard to Bird’s solos. That’s as modern as they get. Once they had Shostakovich on and one of the guys said, “Now that’s as 20th century as you can get.” I didn’t bother to argue. It’s pleasant enough though. I’ve always liked the cellar jobs I’ve had where I had control of the radio.

Then, it’s looking over at either Joan or Ruth. Joan has long black hair and has a little growth on her right eyelid. She sings opera and wants to be a soloist. Once, in the cellar, I listened to her through a partition sing scales and phrases. Ruth is more attractive and I’m interested in her. Just from appearance stuff. What she looks like she is. Soft. A little more flesh than I’m used to in bed. Wet lips. The works. The clothes she wears hide the form of her body, I guess she feels she’s chubby. She’s one of those women who’s quiet until you get to know her, then she reveals everything and it’s either tender or boring, you want in or out. Maybe. She never comes over to talk. A polite, shy hi when she passes. I, on the other hand, don’t go over and try to start conversations with her. It seems awkward. One guy in the record department was supposed to start work as Virgil Thomson’s secretary, but that was a month ago, maybe it fell through. As for the other employees, most are not friendly or even decent courteous. All uptight New Yorkers. That attitude made me ignore a hello from someone today, just didn’t look up, faked it. The woman who invited me to the bar wasn’t in today. Tomorrow I’ll explain to her that I can’t go for a while because I’ve not been going out. I wonder if I’ll tell her it’s because I’m a writer and spend my evenings writing lately. Not even to movies or to go see Barry or Regina who’s seven blocks away. Just to readings and will be cutting them down these next two months.

A trip to the cellar is a major diversion. I can always...