Salamanders Green part 2B page 22

Self prescribed therapy or life prescribed. Only those willing to learn are able to teach. Only those willing to change can understand change in other, to make allowances so ones self as well as others can change. Freedom, self liberation - work at creating ones own soul - respect your dreams eventually all planes all levels of consciousness must balance.

“A dream two people dream together is a reality." Yoko Ono, Grapefruit. 

Perhaps but one must also learn to depend on oneself for dreams as well as companionship....

One must also learn how to write smaller so as to conserve paper and too, remember how to decipher ones own handwriting. Time to go in. Not much of a day this day, almost sunshine but the sky is still not free from last night’s thunder which woke me from a sound sleep. So loud and long I thought for sure the end of the world had come. Mumbling short breathed heart pounding Sanskrit while waiting for the big flash smashing apart every atom of my being into a bursting match stick made of my own flesh. But all that came was this almost day inevitably leading to this evening humidity thick like a piss soaked cotton diaper wrapped tight around my face. I'm upstairs in my brothers room some cool jazz on the stereo. I first began and did much of my own writing on this desk here (it was my mother's desk before she was married) in this room here (when it was my room). Now the desk cluttered with brother paper and a turn table. I sit on the bed, note book across my knees, fan humming, cigarette smoking.

Been feeling pretty down the last days, slacking off on my therapy, at times it's tuff to beat this loneliness, this physical loneliness combines with lack of freedom and sense of failure... it's tuff and no matter how much one tries to philosophise there's still no cure for loneliness like a lover.

Little things have been getting at me lately, things like it's difficult to write with out a table, or like should I try to contact someone, or should I or shouldn't I get out of bed, being irritated about everything!

Today I drove my mother to Hartford for a Doctors appointment. It's about an hour trip each way, she let me drive her '73 Riviera all eight cylinders of it. But the highways out here are a real drag, a series of frustration. I mean they sell you these monster cars that can fly, give you a wide open three lane interstate and then say but you can only go 55 miles per hour then to top it off they plant a bunch of state cops with nothing better to do than maintain their salary by issuing speeding tickets. Frustration. I mean I just wanted so bad to kick into that sucker and fly, if not for my Mother being with me I'd be going to court now for sure. It's just so damn typical American, give you all the power of freedom and then forbid its use. Some American dream.

 Don't think it's really a good time to write, just too damn tense. I thought writing would help me feel better but is just the opposite. I'm bored and really lonely, can't stop hating my ex- wife, can't stop being angry with myself for letting shit get to me and I just want to smash this fuckin' humidity. I just want to fuck some pretty little girl into being cross eyed for a least a week, I just want to get behind the wheel and punch it, smash it, rip it right up the ass of some fuckin' ass hole cop and smash through those American rip off speed limits. The fuckin' American dream, promise you everything and let you have shit, a fuckin' donkey busting ass for some carrot on a bloody string.

Angry, miserable, smoke too much, eat too little, too horny, too tired, too far from the place I want to be, too fuckin' young for these good ol' days blues - I am an angry young man, I am so mother fuckin' son of a bitchin' 

Tomorrow I'm gonna' paint. I will be up early tomorrow, borrow my mother's car, stop off for a real breakfast and be the first customer in that god damn art shop, come straight home and work I'll get at least two canvasses done. Gonna' check my paints right now, see what I need so tomorrow I'll be ready to go and work in the hopefully sunshine of the day.

salamanders green (part 2A) page 21

I have moved my self out side to the pinc nic table under the patio roof, hoping to be quick enough so as to not interrupt my grandmother thoughts. I've also just put some bread for the birds and a pile of unshelled peanuts for the squirrel. It's still a mellow pace nothing threatening rainy day. A pair of blue jays just flew in for an argument over a rye crust while the other birds just hang out of the rain like little discreet decorations placed in the shrubbery that surrounds my Mother's yard. I’m remembering a dream from last night, a dream about my sister well about her tomato plants as she wasn't really in it but I knew it was her who cut down all her five foot plants, cut them in half and then transplanted them to the other side of the tool shed and I thought to myself that it must be too late in the season to transplant and besides who ever heard of pruning tomato plants? And when I looked at the ground where they had been the grass had already covered where her garden used to be.

I just lit a cigarette and about 25 birds went up with the smoke. The squirrel is still eating his peanuts; his tail laid up over his head umbrellaing him from the rain. He looks ridiculous. The Siamese cat I call Maggot watching from under the table, too lazy to risk the rain for either squirrel or bird. The rain harder now, the last few bits of bread aren't worth it for the birds but the squirrel is strung out on peanuts. As for me it's time for a fresh cup and a piss. Now even the squirrel is gone, maybe his umbrella got a cramp?

"It is only when we can believe that we are creating the soul that life has any meaning...." May Sarton. Journal of a Solitude

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End Part 2A, Salamanders Green.

salamanders green (part 2A) page 20

Pigeons remind me of my grandmother’s house. Her house was pigeon grey and shared the same flock of pigeons with the church right next door. The white clap board church with the black slate roof - every so often a bit of slate would slip off and smash to pieces on the cobble stone driveway; a friend of mine would gather these pieces and try to make arrow heads, spear points and other projectile weapons. Slate weapons to be used on the rats which inhabited the rubbish heap located in the far corner of our immediate world - where we were never supposed to go. The friend was the son of one of my grandmother's neighbours, the Flaherty’s. His mother had the mustard yellow house closest to the church driveway. I can not now remember his first name but he was my friend and we were true boys together - catching grasshoppers in coffee jars, making weapons and fighting wars, climbing in the branches of the huge forsythia patch in the middle of the back lot, playing with dead rats, being envious of each others toys, discovering that old bones tasted like salt, teasing black dogs chained to iron posts, exploring the abandoned house on the lot, trying to steal grapes from the fruit mans wagon, making fun of the rag man who came shouting "Rags, Rags, Rags" every Tuesday morning.

I'm stuck now. My memory races, there are so many things which haven't surfaced since so many years....

There was a woman down the back who taught dance to children out on her huge sun porch, I absolutely refused, I wouldn't even go "just to watch". There was Mrs. Macrey who lived next door to my grandmother’s house; she shared a wall with my grandmother a wall that if you sat in the kitchen and held a glass to your ear against that wall you could hear Mrs. Macrey talking to herself or to anyone else for that matter. She was my Grandmother's best friend and mine too. Was it her husband or her brother - named Red who lived with her? I used to sit outside with him, sometimes in his lap, he was in a wheel chair and he'd tell me stories and give me candies, hard sour candies sometimes flavours with sharp cinnamon. He was the first person I knew who "went to heaven". He was a good friend and loved him dearly and though I knew he was dead, I also knew that as a child they wanted me to say he went to heaven. I wanted to ask why did Red die? But instead I asked if I could go to heaven and visit Mrs. Macrey's Red.

There was another family who had the house on the corner of the main streets; they had this strange thing called daughters. Daughters were mysterious and odd, this I knew to be true from the way the grown-ups spoke about the matter - always in hushed and serious tones, whispering about the activities of these neighbours daughters as if frightened that some one would hear what they were saying.

These houses faced a main street and were separated from that street by a long bank of weedy grass and many steps of concrete steps railed with black iron pipes, steps that hardly any one ever used, even the post man would drive up the drive way that paned out into a dirt track which semi circled to each back door of the 5 houses. Down one end of Thomaston Ave., still criss crossed by silver trolley tracks were several mills and factories (Anaconda, Scoviles, The Buckle Shop etc.) the other direction lead to a main intersection leading into the centre of town or out to the interstate highways. My Grandmother and I would sometimes sit on the front porch or sometimes in her bedroom looking out the window - to watch the trucks for the mills go by. At my age they were as if some wondrous beasts, strange huge dinosauric animals which at times would screech and bellow as if calling out to each other or else hiss and whine like giant cats and some would belch out thick clouds of black smoke a mighty dragon angry with the traffic on Thomaston Ave. My Grandmother was also of the right age, hers being the age of horse drawn and trolley cars, so that she too could be amazed at the antics of these fabulous beasts. To go along with our ritual there were certain necessities: a box of Mr. Salty pretzel sticks, a few bottles of Hires Root Beer or Diamond Ginger Ale and of course a box of Dog Yummies for Tuffy the copper coloured canine who shared this all with us....

My Grandmother and Aunt taught me how to play cards and how to smoke, first corn silk then Pall Malls, they taught me not to play with the gas stove because if you turn it on without lighting it then the smell of the gas would make you throw up and die. From them I also learned to love dill pickles and ginger ale - that special kind of ginger ale - Diamond, the kind that was so sharp and bubbly it brought tears to my eyes and tickled my nose as I drank it. They also taught me how to transfer the grasshopper from the little coffee jars into the large pickle jars which they had set up for me on the back porch - and not let them escape! All these important things for a boy to learn I learned from them - like Superman, Rin Tin Tin, Popeye The Sailor Man, Rice-A-Roni, wagon wheel pasta, and what happens when you put the Silly Putty in your pants pocket rather than back into its little plastic egg like you're supposed to. I received instructions on the protocols for dealing with dogs, how dogs with bones from the butcher are definitely not the same dog that wrestles with you in the back yard - even though they look the same, each needed different handling and no matter what the dog under no circumstances was it considered good to pull its tail. I got my first cat from one of grandmother’s friends and I loved it! My mother as a bit nervous about it but I was very proud of the fact that despite my knee high years I already knew to not make a big fuss over it if the cat should scratch you in the activity of play. And more slate: - deep black slate basins cool black even in the hottest summer, I would just run my hands along them savouring the chill that seemed to tingle all the way down to my toes on those days of wash when my grandmother would remove the white enamelled metal covers preparing to do the laundry. Then there was the large slate black board on which I would "make fires" by rolling the chalk along it creating flames and then smoke until the whole board eventually covered by chalk dust....

The attic of her house that I can never forget, that attic filled with strange things. An attic of two landings and numerous rooms with things from my father’s childhood, and from the grandfather I never knew there were things from him up there too! Rooms, many rooms and shadows and yellow glass windows veined with black strings of dust some of which would break free and move under a power all its own as if waving as if reaching wanting to wrap itself around you.... I remember a slate back wooden chair angled by a gable window, a chipped in the handle pitcher sitting in a matching pale green bowl flecked with old gold paint bits, set there on the chair positioned to catch the drop by drop of roof water long sense over flowed from the pitcher into the bowl from the bowl a brown wormy liquid catching the pale sunlight as if a sleeping copper eel coiled all the way to the floor.

 

In the cellar  was a cask of fuel oil; I would sometimes go down with my grandmother as she took a little can to fill with the oil, oil for the space heater upstairs. I remember the red rail-road lantern which she used to see her way down into a cellar of no electricity and didn't she light that same lantern every night setting it out on the back porch rail and why?

Salamanders Green (part 2A) 19

It's impossible to swallow without pain today. Getting through breakfast required a real effort. I'm just waiting for the coffee to be ready - need a few cups then I'm gonna go and lay out in the sun. I wonder if my tonsils are due?

Screwed up on the coffee - put enough in for 8 but only 6 cups of water! Haven't even dared a taste yet.

Now the bitch has arrived but she has been friendly since yesterday when she got wind of me having some cash.

You: saw you last night in full moon light, walking in the ball field by the reservoir, to talk, to wrestle, to laugh and I still don't know what to do with you Maureen...

Stayed in bed all day so I could listen to the rain - there was no way I was going to walk to work, this non-depressive lacy summer rain was just too good to miss. Made orange juice, coffee, and peanut buttered toast for a mid afternoon breakfast - the toast a little burned, the juice a little warm the coffee a little bitter - just right for this little rainy day.

There's no one here today except my sister, she's watching soap operas and sketching pictures from fashion magazines - drawing during the commercials I guess. Of course I'm here in the kitchen at my favourite table writing and watching the rain through 3 different windows.

A cardinal in the maple, a grey squirrel up and down the fibreglass patio roof, the pearls of rain tipping needles of evergreen, It's a day for dreaming, a fantasy day, a wish away day.

Wishing for someone to dance in the rain with, that Denise won't be fool enough to get married, that I had a publisher, a friend a gallery, a place to live wishing I could reach out and touch you Mary, it always ends up you Mary. I couldn't have you so I broke my heart looking for you in other women until I had my life turned night mare by my "wife", heart numbed by these stone cold women but still I'm wanting, still I'm wanting to find you somewhere Mary.

There are 3 black birds playing in the grass, they play the serious game of feeding while I play the hilarious game of self therapy in hopes of liberation. Is solitude symptom or cure? Must one be alone to learn how to deal with others? Can it be that in seeking solitude one has given up, gone into exile, attempting to create an environment under ones own control?

Poured another cup and threw some seed out for the birds - sparrows, starlings and my favourite blue jays. There was quite a crowd then this pigeon flutters down and scares the rest away. The sparrows are the bravest they are always the first to return.

Salamanders Green (part 2A) page 18

 

I am stifled by this house that once was but now is not my home. I am lonely but not alone which is a very hard way. Alone I am in bliss and can work my ass off but these days with all these people and upheaval I feel lonely and must devote much energy to fending off depression rather than towards creating. To solve the financial problem yet remain true to my self. The fantasy is to have enough money in order to work on my art.

The sun heals, it works it's wonders on me, beating the bar scene and no longer crying myself to sleep, emergence from the dark into the clear starlight of the day - the sun heals me from my own apathy.

I'm thinking about Autumn and winter and how I'd like to hibernate on Cape Cod.

I'm going to meet a girl at the park by the reservoir. She's young and brown her name is Terri and she plays tennis and we are friends. We met because I was trapped by the way she moved on the tennis court and so stood there leaning on the fence watching her and smoking cigarettes for an hour, until she walked up to me and asked me what my name was...

The kid is here this morning and also his mother. She wants to lie in the sun here in the back yard because today she must go to work early and won't have time to travel to the beach! Can you believe this shit? Anyway she can do what she wants, I'll be taking Sean to the park and maybe we'll swim in the reservoir. The day is sunny but I wonder if even the sun can bail me out from the bad feeling I get when I see Suli. She has ruined sunny days before with her sour face and sarcastic bitch tongue - I suppose she's just part of the therapy a lifetime throws at me. There are always things one must overcome in order to liberate oneself and find happiness. I must free myself from the annoyance of seeing her or else miss the opportunity to have a beautiful day with my son. We shall overcome!

My throat is killing me. I can't swallow a thing without extreme pain. Odd because it's only painful on the right side - maybe some glandular thing? Maybe I need some vitamins?

The little boy is playing in the green turtle plastic pool right outside the kitchen window. I look out over my coffee cup watching the beautiful golden hair boy who is my son reminding me every few minutes that he has not forgotten bout going to the park. Yes, yes , after breakfast, after breakfast.

Was quite happy about having written yesterday. I walked down the street so excited I just wanted to tell somebody - "Wrote six pages" "Wrote three poems!

I'd like so much to know someone who would appreciate the way I felt about having written a few things... I thought of you Maureen but you weren't around so I spent another afternoon talking with Terri, Terri of the tennis courts.

Just can’t seem to find the groove today. Yesterday I got a real joy from the act of writing but today... Perhaps it’s the pain in my throat or the pain in my ass Suli or maybe just too long a night before. Anyway am still feeling 100% better emotionally. Still at work on the therapy both prescribed and self induced and they are teaching me well.

Going to try and pass a cigarette past this throat of mine.

Yeah oh yeah breakfast is over and we go away....

Salamanders Green (part 2A) page 17

"I have written novels to find out what I thought about something and poems to find out what I felt about something" - May Sarton, Journal Of A Solitude, Norton 1973.

A quote from my new love. except for Henry Miller and Richard Brautigan, all the writers I love are women: Anais Nin, Colette, Annie Dillard, Edna O'Brien Joyce Carrol Oates, Ursula LeGuin, Nikki Giovani - These I love for their work I do not "study" them, I do not try to "know" them but I love their work. There are others I read and enjoy but these are the ones I love as surely as if I'd given birth to them or made love with them - my literary lovers.

Anais is my saint. She has had the most influence on me. Through her I met Miller and Durrell and others and then through them more. My first lover introduced me to Anais.

Miller, Henry is the only male author whose work aroused in me a love. Not only for the work but for the man, for the courage of the man behind the work.

Picasso - The ultimate creator, the man who knew more about giving birth than any woman. I have tears over Duncan’s photographs of him; I stand in awe and quiet hysteria before his work in New York City. I think to understand him is to understand art. One must not be too serious, too reverent, but rather take fist fulls of flesh and guzzles of wine. Art is like a dog if you approach it with fear you get nothing.

I wonder is it healthy to love people who are dead as if they were living?

The cat wanders around the house whining in his Siamese language. He is restless for the fish in the pan. He is up on the counter and almost into the frying pan before I can catch him. He is rambling incoherently now, but when I ask him if he wants a piece he calms down enough to remind me that it needs rinsing in cold water so that he won't scorch his tongue. After lunch he gets me to open the door for him, he won't be back again until he's lonely or hungry...

I need a home. I need my books around me, my typewriter fixed and a desk to put it on. I need my easel in plain view with a clean blank canvass set up on it - after looking at it long enough it's blankness will annoy me to the point where I must attack it violently with colour. A place to be, to work, to explore myself and my world. A laboratory to experiment freely without people running or phones ringing, door knockings or T.V.ing. A place to be bold with a woman, a place to hide away from those days that make me fall apart. I want my own kitchen table to write on and to be able to breakfast out in the sunshine with my own friend who has come to visit.

Salamanders Green (part 2A) page 16

Made the coffee extra strong today. Deep black hot the simple exotic imagery of fresh coffee. I'm just cleaning out the dreams. Just realised that it's eleven thirty and I didn't go to work. My ex-wife just picked up the kid a little while ago. It seems that she and I got along better when we were still married. I think I'm past the pain and loss but then sometimes I can't help but feel hate towards her. It's not even so much for the things she's done but rather for the things she is doing. I never had to deal with that feeling of hating that steady sturdy kind of hate that only pretence makes seem other wise. I'd like to get rid of that feeling but every time I see her... Maybe it's a negative approach at keeping myself connected with her? I mean even though it's negative it's still an intense emotional involvement or should I say attachment? Maybe it's that I still can't or won't let go and admitting that I still love someone who doesn't want me, must have some effect on the ego. Past the pain? I think if I had someone who was close to me right now I could cry for days but it's too sad to cry alone... and if one can't deal with the pain then it can be buried, avoided - This day is too nice to get into being miserable, all I need is the sun, (those rainy days are the killers) the sun is my meditation, my healer, my direct link. Here I am in the sunlight, with eyes closed, brown skin and my hair wild in the wind ready to enter the breath taking void...

Starting to eat better. Bought some groceries and even ate breakfast this a.m. The simple things eating, swimming, sunning, writing. I'm proud of myself; I am making good recovery - staying out of bars, staying out in the real world, the green wet bright world. It's pleasing to be alive, to just breathe is great! I'm not trying to be what I'm not, I don't spend myself trying to change for a woman who doesn't want me anyway. I may not have much but I have my self, I have the freedom to be that. Finally for the first time in years I'm living up to the responsibility that I have neglected for years, neglected for marriage, child, lovers, parents, bosses, friends - that major responsibility is to live up to myself - To Be My Self. The true responsibility of the individual.

There are 6 packages of birthday cake candles, 3 boxes of Bicycle playing cards, a stack of pot holders, yesterday’s mail, some paper napkins and a dish towel on the kitchen table. The proceeding still life has been brought to you courtesy of my sister cleaning out the kitchen drawer.

From where I sit I can see the flower box on the back porch window, the little things have handled the drought quite well, ( no thanks to us) the big evergreen it's friendly shadow of protection extended to those geraniums and whatevers, saving their lives, killing the grass. I want to paint. I think that will be the next step in my self proscribed therapy. I've got my easel and stuff but I need to go down-town for canvass and with the temperature not being bellow ninety for the past weeks I just haven't been able to work up the ambition to go bus riding. Also I think what to do with the finished paintings? This is not my house I don’t even have a room of my own. In fact the last time I left a painting here someone poked a hole in it. I think that I'm thinking to far ahead. I'm not gonna let anyone talk me out of painting in - especially my self.