Now I enter the final stage of our union, or rather ‘dissolution’.
“August 13th Sat. 6:30 A.M. Up all night after another coke party at Brigitte and Ed’s. (just Dale and I were there. They were out of town and lent us the house again). Now it’s over, my infatuation with Dale, a love affair ended. I have some scars and some present pain, but it’s a memory, her and me. I have some new clothes which she picked out. I’ve spent most of my petty savings. I’ve had a good time, most of it spent partying. But now it’s over, by mutual consent. She wanted good thoughts from me as we parted. She thinks it would aid her Karma”. If only she could have seen the poems.
“But I shall give her what she deserves, some hate, some love, some reproach and some compassion. She taught me little directly. By example she taught me more. I am a changed person to some degree. I don’t know how much. I want to spend a while alone, and I shall.
Aug. 13th Sat. 7 P.M. After sleep, a balm I did not expect in this wretched state, I have a resolution to sit here and wait for her call, though I don’t know what I’ll say. My emotions have never been so tossed before. I almost feel seasick…I would make myself comely and a fair sight for her though she could not see me on the cart to the guillotine…I shall compose my future. It will compose my mind… Plan to get a typewriter… begin little stories, not private but for other readers. Private and public writings are sometimes worlds apart.
Remember how mad you were yesterday walking up Telegraph Ave. to get your hemmed pants. How full of declaiming against womankind, how ready to make a scene, a verbal war and stab other’s hearts right and left, full of fury and venom, thinking only daggers”.
Then I settle down again. The next days I write down some thoughts, poetry attempts, quotes. Here’s one from August 23rd. “When you’re in that kind of cesspool, you really start swimming”. Then August 27th a terse note: “Dale left today, about noon”. And right after that a piece of a poem:
“The fact that she’s gone sinks in and with that a calm envelops me and I’m finally able to analyze the situation from a safe shore, and recount the events of the last few weeks, which I couldn’t as they happened. They were too traumatic.
Sat. Aug. 27th, evening: A warm, serene summer night, and the daily traumas, pleasures, ecstasies, reverses and anguishes with Dale are finally over. Since ten days or so we were reconciled and madly in love. But the last three we argued and felt terribly, off and on. Thursday I was up all night on coke with her and Maggie talking drug induced madness, contradicting myself totally every other hour…But I tried to point out some faults in her, just little ones, (with Maggie as arbiter, sitting at her little kitchen table in her apartment, the coke spread out in front of us). What a grand mistake. I ended up recanting and bowing down to a perfect woman. Such is the tyranny of love. We argue, say mean things and apologize profusely. I have not apologized in my whole life half as much as this last month, exclusive”.
The next day calm philosophy sets in: Sunday. 8–28. “As love is mostly a creature of the imagination, I find that I am in varying degrees of love at different moments of every day. And the range is huge and distressing to think upon. When I was with her, as she provoked my imagination and I used little control over myself, I was as one tossed on a stormy sea. Now that she’s gone I shall at least regain my ancient dominion over it and smooth the seas for my own good.
Just a few minutes ago, walking back home from the café Med., I felt my heart broken, until by chance I thought of Pat and that others have a far greater right to feel that depth of privation than me. So I felt better and soon far better upon realizing that more than half my thoughts did not concern her at all, indicating that I really must not be affected that much”.
The next remark deserves to be in textbooks in bold letters: “We love so much more strongly before we really get to know the object of our affection that it’s obvious that the imagination has the major role in the drama. In fact, the consummation of a love affair is often the beginning of the end of it. But this is partly because, basically, sex is swinish and a thing too close and real for the imagination to decorate”.
Next follows what I consider a beautiful and compassionate sketch of her, like an epilogue, remarkable in that it was written in haste and only one day after she had gone away. But then, among her many gifts, the foremost was the power to inspire poetry: “Most of the deeper thoughts in her head were born of the fear of growing old, and most of her acts were an attempt to get me to contradict and efface this fear. She wanted to hear that she was young and lovable, in words and actions, in a thousand different ways. I care nothing for ‘young’, thinking that I’m looking and actually growing better each year. I only needed feeling lovable, and not half so desperately. This made for a vast difference between us.
But she was never feeble headed, a thing the vast majority on womankind are. What she had besides a physical beauty, a compactness and proportion, though starting to fade, was a young heart, which shone in the smiles of her face, and in the dim lights of night made her look like a young girl. Her face could radiate pleasure then.
