Sat 20 Jan 68
Give me the earth! Give me the world! Will there ever be a book in which I am born on the first page and die on the last? Where if I wanted to know what will happen to me I can just read ahead? Rattling back in the station wagon I was stupid with desire. Sun 21 Jan 68 “We are but a moment’s sunlight fading in the grass…” Jesse Colin Young Casey & I took a 2-hour walk past the Granolithic into the orchards and fields. Now I sit at my wobbly desk looking out of the window at a world warped by radiator fumes. Where will I be a year from now when some other poor wretch sits chained to this piece of lumber? Already I’ve escaped, imagining its spring and hot, and I’m wearing a short blue dress. It’s the tea party at Master Gwill’s after Hamlet (I played Gertrude) and Shawn and I are in love. Ah, memories. McKenzie compliments me on my dress when I go into dinner – did I just buy it? God now, I said. I’ve had it 2 years. Lucky you, she says, to have a closetful of beautiful clothes you never wear. I remember when you used to pull out eight things and ask me what to wear for Beales… Shudder at THAT memory! Beales was constitutionally unpleasable. He used to get so angry! I now see that is a pathetic state of affairs. Wed 24 Jan 68 Diaries are a horror. I could write and write and write and never get it all said. Plus I sometimes feel like a Current President forced to continue the policies of the Last President. Why can’ I be completely fresh & new? Original? Well, it wouldn’t be a diary, that’s why, it would just be a Notebook and guess what? I have plenty of those. Three tests in my next three classes. I don’t have to worry about French – no matter how poorly I do everyone will always do worse - but History – “Manifest Destiny” – I have not studied at all. Then there’s the outrage of philosophy where I have to pander to a lot of theories I can’t accept. Contrary to Plato there is no actual “truth”. Some things are just truer than other things. It is truer that I am at Plumly than In Paris, for example. Also, meaning changes – a fact that bothered Plato but does not bother me in the least. I mean of course. Plato is deeply obnoxious. He says somewhere exists a “perfect” everything – a perfect cat for example – yet “beauty” is a matter of opinion. This makes my brain bubble. I suspect my perfect cat and Plato’s cat are different animals. My perfect cat would eat his perfect cat. Don’t even get me started about math; the only part I respect are Imaginary Numbers. Socrates said it best: to hell with the universe. Reading Huxley’s Point Counterpoint about which the only thing I like is its name. He falls into every literary trap there is; too many places, people, names. Everyone seems to want to write a Panorama of Modern Civilization. This is Tolstoy’s fault. Cakes & Ale made me gnash my teeth. Yesterday I finished Been Down So Long It Looks Like Up to Me (Shawn’s recommendation). Feel sorry for the guy; a brilliant boy suffering from over education. He seeks freedom, meaning and – women, who have to wear high heels while they make love. They HAVE to! Otherwise he’ll TANTRUM! Dinner at Master Gwill’s. The boys are punishing me for what I “did” to Dan. Except for Ed, Chip & Martin. They are always nice. Unfortunately my efforts to become a Noble Savage fail. Can think about nothing but food & sex. Worked Miss Lissome over at coffee, disagreeing with everything she said. Sat. 27 Jan 68 – Pewter Hill Movie orgy! Casey and I awake to NO bells, NO workjobs, NO faculty screams of abuse. Instead, peace, classical music, fresh grapefruit, good coffee, English muffins. (At Plumly only seniors are allowed to have coffee. You wait for four years lusting in you heart and then when you get it you realize it’s AWFUL. But you’re too proud and exhausted to tell the others.) Last night we saw The Graduate – true true true plus wild & romantic. (Dustin Hoffman dead ringer for Beales.) This afternoon How I Won the War with John Lennon. Then Casey wants to run around Rittenhouse Square Seeing and Being seen and I want to sit in a café and stare. I don’t get my identity back that fast, is all. “You always ruin my fun,” she pouts. Mon 29 Jan 68 Listening to Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream Casey starts sobbing incoherently. She says she waits and waits but no one ever comes. I know what just what she means. Instead of protesting my fate I draw thirteen flowers on my upper thigh. Thirteen. “The thing of it is” – fine Pinteresque phrase – the thing of it is I should be DIETING but my only joy is food. Conundrum. Trying to do my senior thesis on Sex Offenders (Kinsey) but they are the dullest people you can possibly imagine. (Psychopathia Sexualis way more interesting.) “6% attempted intromission”. Learned one good word: “pudenda”. “Dearest Theobald, the spring pudenda are in full flower! How I wish you could be here to see them!” Or possibly, “Pudenda Pottencrest felt a premonitory shiver as she crossed the threshold of the old house…” Bertrand Russell says we need sex so we can concentrate on our studies but who listens to him? Insomnia. Ginger Man nauseatingly self-conscious. Tried Growing Up Absurd but Paul Goodman (author) told me it was only for boys because girls don’t have problems. News to me. He keeps wailing about advertising but in my view (judging from New York Times Mag & New Yorker) the ads are a lot more interesting (and subtler) than the articles. Several interesting letters from Devon in one envelope. The first, “written in a moment of weakness” looks like he was drunk. He’s romantic, I’ll give him that, in an Elvira Madigan kind of way. Dad was furious that those two committed suicide. He said if you really loved somebody you’d do anything to keep them alive and I think I prefer his philosophy. For Devon everything is Hopeless. Hopeless, hopeless, hopeless. He is in search of Plato’s perfect mountain, perfect skis, perfect run, perfect physical conditioning and its nothing but failure, failure, failure. Cheery. Do I love him only because he’s beautiful? No, he’s intelligent, too. (Amherst.) But he’s TOO beautiful…I don’t need to pursue Plato’s Perfect Skier. Think I found him. But can a boy from an all-boy family and a girl from an all-girl family be friends? I think I want to love someone who knows nothing of my past. When I say, “I was such an ugly child,” I don’t want them chiming in, “You sure were.” I won’t write back. (Tactics.)
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Alysse Aallyn
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