December 23

I think I have figured out at least two reasons why I could never write poetry.

1964

Two more days! I’m acting like a kid. Isn’t it wonderful? D and P [the Sophomore Talent Show chairs] want S, T, M and me to sing “The Merry Minuet” in the Sophomore Talent show. I guess that will be fine if I can get up the nerve! We played volleyball for the last time today in gym. Finally! Maybe we do tumbling next.

Comment 2022

If anyone wants to get inside the psyche of a Baby Boom teenager, the lyrics to the Kingston Trio’s “The Merry Minuet” reveals our worldview in a few short lines:

They're rioting in Africa. They're starving in Spain.
There's hurricanes in Florida and Texas needs rain.
The whole world is festering with unhappy souls.
The French hate the Germans. The Germans hate the Poles.
Italians hate Yugoslavs. South Africans hate the Dutch.
And I don't like anybody very much!
But we can be tranquil and thankful and proud
For man's been endowed with a mushroom shaped cloud.
And we know for certain that some lovely day
Someone will set the spark off and we will all be blown away.
They're rioting in Africa. There's strife in Iran.
What nature doesn't do to us will be done by our fellow man.

The best years of our lives, indeed!

1975

I think I have figured out at least two reasons why I could never write poetry.

1) I always fantasize about people reading it and paying for it

2) I always believed that serious poems couldn’t rhyme, and funny poems had to.

Perhaps  the first is my main problem. As I write, even in this diary, I am too conscious of “posterity”, instead of writing for me.

Being stoned makes soap operas seem REAL!

(A poem follows, on the next page)

A Fine Romance

Romance?
Not ours, I’m afraid.
We had a nothing.
Nothing done and nothing said.
So much talk, and yet
Things I didn’t say
Won’t let me forget.
Things like “fuck yourself”
And “shit or get off the pot”
And especially
Most especially
“Do you love me or do you not?”
It wasn’t ladylike.
So give me credit.
If I weren’t stoned now,
I’d never had said it.

2012

Just had a lovely nap featuring a conversation with Mom (d. 1997). It's 60 degrees in Heaven, she says. It's ok, though; she's never chilly up there.

2021

Thursday. Baltimore Sun discoveries: 

There was a Steamship Barraclough in the1890s. Also a baritone Sydney Barraclough.

I made snickerdoodles and listed to “Gaudy Night”. I also knitted a bit.

2023

After a week of Getting Things Done, I took the day off and went to see Dunki on the big screen, take myself out to lunch (pizza, beer, and a classic brownie sundae!!!). Feeling very mellow and content. Go me.

Now that’s a classic!