3-18-00

They were all the way out in Arizona under blue skies and orange trees planted in lawns of stone. The mockingbirds mocked the calls of different birds than they did in LA.

Reg liked jazz. He listened to Miles Davis. “In the Village, you know—Greenwich Village, one day, years ago, I walked past a church and heard a sad horn inside. I went up to the doors and peeked in. It turned out to be Miles Davis playing at John Coltrane’s funeral.”

J nodded, feigning belief. Reg talked about taking acid in Columbia in the sixties, and partying at Carnaval in Rio. He talked about not being “accepted.” J didn’t know what he meant, and didn’t seek clarification.

“You know, you look like Van Gogh,” Reg said to j.

Judy loved crossword puzzles. She made copies on the fax machine, and they sat on the patio and worked them with their glasses of wine.

 3-19-00 2:59 PM  Su

On the road again.  Passed the shell of an old gas station.  Phone pole Ts diminish down the highway, the old exercise in perspective.  My stepmother-in-law made eggs bearnaise with Black Forest ham for breakfast.  It was delicious.  We sat out back with citrus trees and did crossword puzzles.  Neighbor Frank, a gregarious Kansan, came over and talked about the motorhome odyssey he and his wife were planning for June or July or January.  Around noon, Rochelle and I decided we better get going.  Jodi and Reg gave us a card with a check in it for a thousand dollars and a sort of miniature grandfather clock (a grandson clock?) that chimes ala Westminster Abbey at each quarter hour.  Marriage gifts.  We drove through Phoenix.  I read Mike Davis' assertions of genius, of European war exiles' who despised L.A., bitter intellectuals, who envied movie stars and "cowboys with flat stomachs"--the opposite of Eve Babitz's relation of her parents' relief about being anywhere away from the war and who loved L.A.  We stopped at Burger King in Quartzite, a graveyard of old mining equipment and withered old timers.  I wrote a little paragraph to put on Jim.  Read the rest of Watt's introduction to Marmaduke Picthall's translation of "The Meaning of the Glorious Koran."  Mohammed is supposed to be "the seal of all prophets," the affirmation and be all, end all of prophets from Moses through Jesus.  I wrote fifteen minutes in the other notebook.  Read aloud to Rochelle Kate Braverman's "Palm Latitudes."  I don't know if it was a short or an excerpt.  The ocotillo look like coral on an ocean floor, the little red flowers, polyps.  "The imagination is not a state; it is human existence itself."  

"There is a moment in each day [red ink sketch of Blake's "My Son!  My son!]  that Satan cannot find but the industrious find this moment & multiply it...it renovates every moment of the day if rightly placed.  Shudder not, but write & the hand of God will assist you!"