Studying Hunger Journals Read online

  Now Max won’t be back till tomorrow night, so here we are again. I’m tired, tired of drinking, tired of wondering whether to take some pill or smoke or be tired. I slept three hours last night and was coasting toward the finish and the kind of real despair I’ve been avoiding by covering up with sheer nervousness is showing up now. So I started spending the day just doing things to the house for Max and now I feel angry, no knowing he’ll be home tomorrow night either or the next night. I eat all the soft foods, I find myself thinking I’ll never see you again too. Everything goes on as usual, I can’t believe it, the t.v. It should be all news about me, instead it’s very hip, I’m watching whatever comes up on channel 2. And then I think it’s possible this Max doesn’t even exist, now that’s a fine example for “want to be crazy.” Last night I asked Grace, I begged her not to get drunk so we could talk. She got so drunk she couldn’t stand up when we got home. Is this way of feeling what people mean when they say they’re bored? I just had this fantasy: Andy calls and I tell him I’m not feeling too good cause Max was supposed to be back and he isn’t. Andy doesn’t think that’s such a big thing so I yell at him, this time for sure, hang up and vent my rage on this chest I wish didn’t exist. Is the bravest thing I could do go out for a walk? Fuck this scene. And fuck Bartholomew pretentiously learning to draw among his servants. But making a mess with some pastels makes me feel better, I’ve got my clean adult clothes all dirty. All fuck channel 2, channel 2 really must think I’m a maniac. Is it me or is it them that always wants to fuck? Talked angrily to Max, not at him, wrote angrily to this Bart shit and what do I do now! Fuck! I will write in my book till pen falls from hand. Goodbye, I hate this shit. Sorry, David, but you get the picture.

  Sunday Noon

  Dream of an odyssey, another one, alone or was Bartholomew there. The t.v.’s been awake all night. Funny taste in mouth, as if infection’s curing, my tongue is a month of Sundays. Did I tell you about the muscle I pulled to give me a focus for real pain, it’s all these heavy boxes I’ve been lifting. Whether Bart was in the dream or not, I don’t want to admit it, I was alone. I flash on Sunday mornings as a child, Mass, what’re they like for Jewish kids, are they like this particular Sunday? I eat breakfast: a notebook, coffee and an egg. Fern seems to be leaving for South America today. And hide nor hair of Andy as they say. So I slept in my clothes again and this morning I wouldn’t change them because they’re so full of colors from the pastels I was dreaming with “like a child in a condition of neglect.” Ha ha.

  A ha ha is a breather, ah! Like, this is all very interesting but ha ha, I have the answer, no dream will tell it so far. Friday when Fern was fixing me and a thousand other people dinner, but I thought it was just me, she left the refrigerator door open at one point. I stared unconsciously into it, hers, and she surprised me when she said, “Is there something you want from the refrigerator?” Oh Fern, I do adore you.

  6 p.m.

  Knock knock that must be her at the door, no it’s no one. I know I’ll go from rags to riches, if that’s how it goes, before the sun comes out again like it did today, that one was on me. I keep discouraging people from coming over, John and Edmund, there are others I wouldn’t discourage… Cleaned and rearranged the house again, rearrangement a tradition with us or with me, I made some “improvements.” Max does come on the 11:30 p.m. plane. I hope. He said to me: “You can stop feeling bad now.” I felt some small resentment and one more thing, or so: in the last few days ideas come to me with such suddenness and when they come I am absolutely sure of them, maybe it’s not so new but it’s new for me to recognize it this way. So I sat on the fire escape in the intermittent sun and made up a few sad songs that I could weep to if I would.

  Hannah’s coming over, finally a visitor I don’t mind having.

  Monday Noon

  And Max home and before that I went out with Hannah and ate a fish. So, thank you very much. I dream an extravagant dream, a genealogical show, and something else begins. I can stand on the brown and green ground.

  I wasn’t going to write any more to you but I feel an incredible anger now as though I’ve been cheated today, Max is at Hilly’s, and it’s not any different from before, just as hard going, blah blah, but the anger, maybe it’s because our idyllic relationship, yours and mine, is over. This being home is a let-down, you understand how I mean that and there’s a distance I’ve created between me and the Max I don’t want to deal with at all and I feel neglected and that’s all. One more thing, why don’t the sun come out and now I’ll stop for sure, that’s all.

  Bernadette Mayer, 74 Grand Street, New York City 10013. I’m coming in the door, there’s gonna be water there. Saturday or Sunday, mescaline’s on the route. The counterculture is baby girls, it’s home-ostasis. You see I’ve gotta stop and make magic, I get out of the code beyond the secret code which would have worked, it would have worked anyway but since I am you, now, a part of the supposed fusing, the confusion of possible yous, I will milk, impose, I will come out of hiding in impossible daily language about food and it’s time, I’ve already begun anyway which is why my knife drills into you… Defend the states of consciousness, spend gold and silver paper routes and yes, that’s the trap door to America under the rug and Jack Kerouac and I go down there and giggle a lot all the time. You can’t realize, I mean relate, tell recount remember, but you can address, love, vision, vision of any kind, vision your house on a street, Jack and David is your penname SHUT and who are you and we are equals coming in the door when we encounter culture in the name of baby girls. Something about a cockpit on the moon, the sun shines, begin. It’s March or April, it’s a man with a peace sign for a mouth, it’s Max he bows and Bernadette, Max has big blue arms and purple legs and Bernadette long pink hair and a green signal for a face, or eyes race, it’s April, I know it.

  April 1

  I dream a piece of pie for ninety cents, custard cream yellow pie, remember the placement of events in a dream, what was happening was happening on the left side of the screen, Max says: “What benefits do you want from your employer?”

  I have my intentions: to record states of consciousness, special involving change and sudden change, high and low food, levels of attention and how intentions change. And to do this as an emotional science as though, I have taken a month-drug and work as observer of self in process, to do the opposite of “accumulate data” (Memory). Yes, no. A language should be used that stays on the observation/notes/leaps side of the language border between observation and analysis (just barely), but closer I guess to analysis than “accumulate data.” To use this to find a structure for Memory and to do this without remembering, what’s the danger? What states of consciousness and patterns of them are new to language? What is the language for them. Answer “all” upside down. What is the relation of things that stand out, things that seem interesting like a sentence from the tape: “The food of the mother is better than the food of the fatter father;” like poem titles and poem ideas, to the rest? To develop moments, to see and feel consciousness like anyone does, as “standing out” like language does, ideas do. A portrait by Gina of a man on a camelopard with one house in the distance and another a profile, the man in a dunce cap, a portrait by me of two men playing cards at a table, a light above their caps, a portrait by Neil of a woman with eyes and teeth.

  April 2

  You wait. I dream two boys and in trunks and closets and I feed them. There’s a shot through the bar sign which is a guillotine, zooming in. And three men are pushing me on the streets, one is John who’s gone to the Ranger game. And everyone’s being guillotined, especially someone like Holly. We all drink wine in a bar, we travel all over. At 12:20 I wake up in the bed by the window, it’s 3001. Parents are in but parents are out. I set two watches last night at the head of the bed to check on them. Review: one, two, three, four, you’re a jerk I’m a whore; about intentions, add, to be an enchantress; about sentences, add, the chest of chicken, that’s how Big Max refers to the breast, and, “How
long have you been head of this business?”

  At 3:35 a.m. I record I ate too much food. Food weight is family food; I take in, I take over power, money.

  April 3

  The massacre of the house. Bill Berkson’s rooms and Frank O’Hara’s book are destroyed. Gerard is the queen of the parade. Instead, they follow me, I lose my knife. The man in the room takes his corset off. Bill’s rooms are at the top of the house: there are warm spots and cold spots and books, it’s a kind of paradise. When they follow me I’m on a motorcycle, like a fool to be followed. The man in the room has breasts but he could still be a man because: “He developed them.”

  In the morning stillness of the house I think what do I want to be doing, I upend the records and put on one. Visiting Pierre seems like a good idea, entering the P-phase of existence, phase with many rules I have to even think to remember: you can be hungry at Pierre’s but you can eat! And when Pierre tells us about being sick and a fear unlike, lucky strike, my own, I sink into that state for a Monet of water lilies again, for a moment I drink coffee will my heart stop beating right then from it and there’s the damp air: a slice of your own head, you can’t cart anything away from Pierre’s for free without the sun going down on your conversation, I stare at lights behind the heads I’m looking at, it’s the head and neck of a man with all the parts of his brain quite clearly coming to an animal-like center of control at the base of the whole thing.

  April 4

  Hashish at the basketball practice with cheering cherries and group readings and performances. There’s a little nun outside the door. I am waking up and going back to sleep starting at eight a.m. in a delirium remembering the alarm, remembering dreams: I think of a word, like, hashish, like group: the word brings back one scene of a dream when I am awake, one center of a fantasy but what predominates is was this: it’s Tuesday the day I get up at ten. What am I hiding? Is was this and is was morning. It’s one o’clock now. This: I’d like to be a basketball player, one of the players, I include no description of their movements; left out of the group reading, I fantasize in dream around the periphery, control those feelings in dream again of refusing to admit to the denial of being left out, I create a paced and rapid movement in around and about that event, event of being left out, I synthesize a dance that is for me alone, that is I’m active I’m looking through windows, I don’t speak I preserve the sheet surface clean white sheet of my presence in the room when I get out of bed, I move I don’t want to move to the instant where details and foods accumulate later in the day, are the foods I ate late last night digested are they gone am I this clean surface or does all the work come later like practice, you’ve seen it, you’ve seen the other team play now so… I calculate people and their diseases as numbers to come up with a figure and do all the work later for corrective calculation on my own body today. Again Père Pierre was sick. Again Max will never die. Outside the performance area I exist. Outside the process the arena of real activity a space for existing, I might float around, or, am I going too far. But no it makes sense. In this way from the outside I put everything in, take in everything, I must spew it all out, what prevents me what seizes me gently when I try to emerge is that nun outside the door, she has a purpose, I put her there: let nothing myself get out of this room, let no judgments be made, let no law and order exist except this: nothing escapes from here. I gladly stay inside to observe, what? To melt with love over…you’ll never know.

  Maybe to be in a prison like this is to refuse a guide, to refuse a direction, a person who has used the word human as a lie without levels and that one might say I’d rather be in prison where I am different. My responses I want them to be automatic, my physical movements, indifferent, undifferentiated, uncalculated, cool, almost unnoticed, calm must be calm for this activity, inner motion, emotion, design. Yes it’s a surface, you can draw on, out from it, anything, everything, I know what’s going on.

  It’s not the whole story I’ve left out the psychology of it the motives the history and memory of myself the parts that have direction, I’ve left them out because in that way I could be pinned down, possibly tortured.

  3 a.m.

  When all the colors are available I don’t spend much time thinking about them, I just use them all. …in your normal voice and with your small hand just write small, write this. And this writing or this diary throws me off or away and I have no advice to give, nothing wise to say, I’m writing a history is all. I try, I tried to move slower in around a review: Harris: backtracking on the phone, Sjöwall: existential, Paul: “Do you wanna play cards?” Max: “Was that what you wanted to do?” I don’t know what I’m thinking about, got a lot of food in the house but I doubt it. And vitamins too.

  Pleasure in time or in order: coffee, a pile-up of words, I sit at table, Max sweep bed, mice. Pictures, walk streets looking up, breathe, predictions, fruit and vegetable, Knicks game, wine and Harris poem, Max looks rhubarb sex strange, read and tea and subject (this).

  And pain: coffee, Vito influence, Paul malaise, Barbara and Neil, Max is high, why, someone pretends she doesn’t know where to go, I scream “What?” People just talking. L: “I always keep my promises.” And stupid Stanislaus. And politics and some real feelings are pain. People want to talk, just arrange, just plan, just not go at all in the end. So choice and chance.

  Sentence: David moves in my room—“emergency.” Is it of interest?

  Note: No color little color in this yet.

  Definition: analyze—to separate whole into parts to find nature size function and relationship; to examine parts, analysis a loosing. Up—loose, throughout—loose analysis. Inductive—from particulars to a general conclusion and inducing, lead-in. Deductive—from a known to an unknown, from general to specific, lead away.

  Detective deductive. High stakes of consciousness: thoughts feelings impressions and the whole, plus, hilarious elated drunk and intoxicated, or, knowing and feeling that something is or was happening or existing. As, pleasure, poem, healthy high and hollow, point, then to write is wrong, this is basic English, humor ice and idea, or, digestion direction discovery. A yellow wash or a yellow mountainside.

  April 5

  The mountainside is yellow. Hitler is in Notre Dame. “The movies were a good hiding place.” “Will you be sitting here during the intermission? Will you watch our coats? Do you want some coffee? Vous-êtes juif?” Marlene Dietrich sings Lily Marlene.

  Colors of a black and white movie 4 1/2 hours long, a light from the projection booth falls on my seat I cast a diagonal shadow, it’s the yellow mountainside, a suggestion of hair tumbling down it. And of the street when we emerge, look at those red lights, red lights are bright late slanted rays, cloud hovers over color, holding it in, bright as blue pants green sweater. And of Fanelli’s yellow light yellow beer yellow Max in clothes that place him in a yellow parched field, I feel. And of Clark’s reading: language demands its form maybe language demands its form, in bed head down muscles arched color of readers plotting the outline sound of a language yet unmarked, not controlling it, forget any substance or substantive of (too noun) many meanings and get it gradually paler. And of loft spot-lit inside out. And of “Secret of the Incas” too, advance red green and blue of gold.

  Note: I can hear the log before it falls or is it still falling when it hits and I hear it hitting, seeing sound vibrations in sleep closed eyes, a sound is a lamp hanging, it lowers and disappears. Another shaft of light on the side of a screen, another yellow mountainside. Red and gray complements.

  April 6

  Up in the morning for no reason, where’s your sense of humor (of interest) a bracket of folding chairs.

  12:30 p.m. breakfast work quiet work quiet Chris alone, that’s description, this is this: I try to predict something: I try to remember if I will be tired if I get up now, so 45 minutes goes by fast and all this still has to do with remembering, later. Now: reflection all around. What do I mean by this: a sound an image there are no real reflections but I am refle
cting and it’s painful without, the presence, of other, people, thus the “all around” and this boundary between reflection and surrounding. “A peninsula is a body of land almost completely surrounded by water,” I said. She said, “There’s no such thing as ‘almost completely.’”

  Analysis of abstraction and the system for a process distract me. They move and reflect the needs, the needs arise out of information much more toward motion, the need to do something and the emotion like of singing down a lane in effect but needs arise and we fill them out since everyone knows everything, remember, and feel free and this is called you’re having no excuses today and excuse is as much an object as meat of course but why not but why. It’s the same thing for everyone, a level rest or a level nest but please perhaps a chance a choice, let there be no levels no plural levels you are bleeding right on Freud, I take that back, enter. I mean, come in.

  Review: is a disguise: this end up, no mail. What’s the danger? Anyway you wa-a-a-a-ant me well tha-a-at’s how I will be-e-e, I will be-e-e. A big brown window.

  April 8

  Max dreams he realizes I experiment in “garbage.” Ha ha, he’s right. I have to get to the bank by three: but I dream a guard outside my house in Ridgewood, I ask to see his identification, people rarely do that, I think he falls down. And now it’s getting later, hands on a clock quarter of then ten to it’s just the bank on Canal Street I’ve deposited six thousand dollars (six thousand hours of (cinema?) memory in bank?) in the bank and we need cash realization, I can see I have seen the actual bank statement in my dream. At some point, I haven’t gone to the bank to announce the banns of marriage yet, David comes and tells us we have to turn all our bodies (selves) superimposed on paintings on the wall to face in, we must look into the wall, genitals face the wall. And will we someday have to look out, out the paintings? out the windows? everything turned to the inside? Something about a pool.