We never know what will save us (Bob Dylan).

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Today it’s The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan. Specifically these songs:

Girl from the North Country

Masters of War

A Hard Rain’s A-Gonna Fall

Don’t Think Twice It’s All Right

Oxford Town

Corrina, Corrina

And now I’m thinking about college: about Charles Hartman, and Jen Superson, and Andrew Oedel–about second semester of senior year, when Winged Nike was right outside the window and my refrigerator had only pickles & cheese inside it and my jeans got lost in Sam’s room for so long that when I got them back, they felt new. And dinner was a far walk away but at least we never had to cook it. And we did this on the streets of New London:

Now Andrew’s in his own real band and doesn’t have to pretend anymore. Now Jen is somewhere in NY gesturing excitedly, I’ll bet.

Now I’m in a house that smells of sweetgrass, with a lot of papers all around that mean I’ve done hard work, and also that I have all of it to do. Robert Hughes once said, “The greater the artist, the greater the doubt. Perfect confidence is granted to the less talented as a consolation prize.” God I hope so.

Connor (March 14).

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I keep hearing O’Hara in my head–

There are several Puerto
Ricans on the avenue today, which
makes it beautiful and warm. First
Bunny died, then John Latouche,
then Jackson Pollock. But is the
earth as full as life was full, of them?

 

But is the earth as full as life was full, of him?

 

Poem (mine).

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How it happened

I was free to choose me here or me in Colorado but
California wins I’m hurt while he makes his decision
then reverent when he comes along I write it all down
to remember the ways we might have done it otherwise.
We go to California stay in a mansion the people
are related to me but the carpet’s too thick gets stuck
in our toes we’re there for 3 weeks which is just
the point they start to tire of us our sleepings late
our books around and computers we smoke in the guest
room bathroom after they’ve gone to sleep, towel
the door like teenagers I’m waiting to like someone
I meet but I haven’t met anyone yet only
seen them at grocery stores not yet at my school
where I’m supposed to love people for three years
minimum then we finally find a house buy a spatula (two
by accident!) and a broom and at the beginning
life is slow and I organize the shoes a lot then
I become a shopping bag the type that’s the only one
you brought to the store even though you bought
a whole week’s worth of groceries and goodness
then I’m all purchased bagged and overfilled and the shoes
get sloppy but the days get good

Literary love (Baldwin).

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I’m in the middle of my fourth reading of Giovanni’s Room–the third reading this year. I don’t think there’s much left for me to underline, but I’m sure I’ll find a way.

“People who believe that they are strong-willed and the masters of their destiny can only continue to believe this by becoming specialists in self-deception. Their decisions are not really decisions at all—a real decision makes one humble, one knows that it is at the mercy of more things than can be named—but elaborate systems of evasion, of illusion, designed to make themselves and the world appear to be what they and the world are not.”