you can never really take a good picture of the moon. there is no point in trying. you must have a good time with it while it is there.
Back in the Bay Area
Yup: still sucks
well i’m terrified
“Real weird— not ‘dye your hair purple’ weird”
A great deal of what I have written here has been morose but if you met me you would see that I am quite cheerful.
New Orleans, baby
The week before last: Oregon, and parts of Washington. Ashland, Eugene, Salem, Portland, Tacoma. Saw Crater Lake, the Oregon Dunes, Mt. Hood National Park, Bagby Hot Springs . . . took the 101 down the coast through small sea towns and the Redwood Forest and slept outside many times.
Last week: New Orleans. Lord!
This week: . . . New Orleans! I have not yet got enough of the damn place.
When I return to Oakland later this week I have to work for two months straight in order to afford to leave it. Oh god! It’ll be all right, though. I feel fine.
That night at the hotel, in our room with the long empty hall outside and our shoes outside the door, a thick carpet on the floor of the room, outside the windows the rain falling and in the room light and pleasant and cheerful, then the light out and it exciting with smooth sheets and the bed comfortable, feeling that we had come home, feeling no longer alone, waking in the night to find the other one there, and not gone away; all other things were unreal. We slept when we were tired and if we woke the other one woke too so one was not alone. Often a man wishes to be alone and a girl wishes to be alone too and if they love each other they are jealous of that in each other, but I can truly say we never felt that. We could feel alone when we were together, alone against the others. But we were never lonely and never afraid when we were together. I know that the night is not the same as the day: that all things are different, that the things of the night cannot be explained in the day, because they do not then exist, and the night can be a dreadful time for lonely people once their loneliness has started. But with Catherine there was almost no difference in the night except that it was an even better time. If people bring so much courage to the world the world has to kill them to break them, so of course it kills them. The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places. But those that will not break it kills. It kills the very good and the very gentle and the very brave impartially. If you are none of these you can be sure it will kill you too but there will be no special hurry.
Lord!
no doubt about it, i am a person who has to be alone
all the cities are rotten and the people in them are rotten too. i am talking about the great invisible sickness of the twenty-first century. it is all rotten because the same awful message is beamed out around the clock around the world. to hell with this place.
