October 1971. Been out of the USAFSS for a while and lost fifty-sixty pounds. I was a Facilities Protection Officer at IBM headquarters, Old Orchard Road, in Armonk, New York. Newly married to a blonde Italian co-ed, I was taking classes at Danbury State College. Studying philosophy and poetry. Mostly worked nights and played a lot of basketball at the YMCA. Drove a green VW bug, I bought new off the showroom floor for $1700 cash. I was making real good money without getting sweaty. That’s philosophy right there. Life was moving right along and about to take a big turn. – JDW
From Start To Finish
Only those are fit to live who are not afraid to die. – Gen. Douglas MacArthur
“To me, both as a writer and as a citizen of a free country, the most important thing is the survival of freedom in the world.” – Helen MacInnes
Woe unto him that is never alone, and cannot bear to be alone. – P.G. Hamerton
“All effective fiction, of whatever altitude, selects, re-arranges, exaggerates, even deforms the raw materials of experience. The successful artist or craftsman is he who most plausibly, by an inexplicable legerdemain, devises a fiction that somehow both reminds us of ‘real life’ and removes us from it.” – Clifton Fadiman
10/3/71
The only freedom which deserves the name is that of pursuing our own good in our own way, so long as we do not attempt to deprive others of theirs. – John Stuart Mill
10/7/71
“My poems are my own voyages over the world.” – George Seferis
My poems are letters to myself.
10/7/71
his life had been
of symphonic potential,
yet in retrospect
he knew,
he had mostly whistled
in the dark.
10/7/71
When you know a thing, to hold that you know it: and when you do not know a thing, to allow that you do not know it; that is knowledge. – Confucius
10/13/71
“To know how to free oneself is nothing; the arduous thing is to know what to do with one’s freedom.” – Michel in Gide’s The Immoralist
Our own cities are our own animal factories; families, schools, churches are the slaughterhouses of our children; colleges and other places are the kitchens. As adults in marriages and business we eat the product. – R.D. Laing, The Politics of the Family.
10/15/71
One can write nothing readable unless one constantly struggles to efface one’s own personality. Good prose is like a window pane. – George Orwell
The thought of writing for the rest of one’s life is a nightmare. – V.S. Naipaul
Commitment is an act, not a word. – Jean Paul Sartre
10/17/71
efforts which always end (culminate?) in success are merely those which did not seek the ultimate victory. Occasional failure is indicative of one who would strive always for the greatest treasure.
10/19/71
A poet who does not keep in step with the struggles against offenses to humanity is not a poet. He is only a showcase puppet for slick magazines. – Pablo Neruda
All intellectual improvement arises from leisure. – Samuel Johnson
Poets don’t really contribute anything to the world, they just pick up what’s going by. – Eugene McCarthy
10/22/71
As far as I know/ There is but one/life for each man
and it is this/which he must live. Live life,
not it you.
Don’t figure on a second chance.
10/31/71