Notes from a Long-Ago Journal

I go to the past as many people go to the grocery store, frequently and for the purpose of seeking nourishment. And thus did I today find myself back at the relatively short journal I kept while on a find-myself trip following the death of my mother in 1971.

12-12-71
52nd Day, Houston, TX 10:48 a.m.

Sunday, and it is (surprise, surprise) raining. The ghosts of a thousand mad drummers beat on the roof, apparently having a very good time. And I sit and read words other people have written—not of themselves, either—and grudgingly acknowledge the fact that I really can’t write.

2:30 The rain has stopped, leaving the day languorous and grey without being gloomy. I am currently in Memorial Park, a bit of comparatively unspoiled wilderness not unlike Griffith Park, the similarities extending to its attraction for gay nature lovers—a fact which indeed drew me here in the first place. Even on a wet, rainy Sunday afternoon there is a surprising amount of traffic. I took a walk through the woods, as delightfully refreshing to the soul as a nice long hot shower is to the body. The ground is the moist consistency of newly-made fudge and covered with the mysterious remains of trees & leaves from which the earth is built. The trees do their best to keep out the city noise, which only now & again intrudes in the form of muted auto traffic. I am happy to learn that birds still sing and streams still go about their duties in busy whispers.

Have I aged so fast? Am I suddenly out of the game? My experiences—or lack of them in the past few weeks would certainly indicate as much. Still, ever the optimist, I keep trying.

12-19-71
59th day. Gulfport, Mississippi 3:47 p.m.

Today’s impressions: a roadside sign proclaiming: “Reptile Farm! French Fries, 20 Cents!” A scale model of Tara serving as a bird house in the yard of a neat but tired little farm. Scars of Hurricane Camille still present along the gulf in the form of gutted, windowless houses, empty lots overgrown with weeds, where foundations lay like skeletons & steps lead up to nowhere. Reading the chronicle of another beach—a barnacle covered beer can, a dead German Shepherd, and the jigsaw-puzzle pieces of debris that tell the story of the sea. Two sets of lovers—one a boy-girl set the other two boys, walking together, heads down, and very much in love. Two other boys sitting on the broken end of a stubby little pier, one dangling his feet (shoes on) just above the water, the other sitting cross-legged on the grey boards playing a flute. Beside them, two jars of jam and a loaf of bread.

The greyness of late afternoon is beginning to flow in from the Gulf, and soon it will be dark. I’m not going to go out tonight, having been up until 5 this morning (and gotten up again about 9:30). Had a most pleasant time, most of it after 2 a.m., talking with two bartenders I’d met earlier.

There are some magnificent homes along the Gulf; graceful old Southern demi-mansions with the confidence of their own beauty. The roads of Mississippi, however, are very bad. Even the good roads are bad.

*****

I'm sure it speaks to the degree of my self-absorption that I do, somehow, find comfort in rereading these words, and in visiting the me I once was.

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