THE SPRING OF THE YEAR

An experiment conducted in the early sixties involved lab-rats housed in a utopian(contrived) environment
with just one glaring flaw; unlimited food and water allowed for the population to increase until the finite
size of their utopian ‘Rat Run’ gave rise to all kinds of behavior, needed to keep a generation of Social
Scientists safe from the peril of remaining unpublished.

As overcrowding(Urbanization) increased the stressfulness of the artificial environment on the individuals,
they began to observe ‘fighting’ for the first time, which left observable physical damage on the
combatants. This ‘warfare’ was not driven by any commodity-related shortage or scarcity. In time, this
overcrowding not only lowered the live birth rate, but in concert with the cannibalization of more new-
borns, served to stabilize the effects their indiscriminate breeding had on the increased crowding.

By the time that the birth-rate had found a new norm, the shocked young observers had noted the
appearance in the ‘colony’ of a completely unexpected new(previously unobserved) behavior. There was
now homo-sexual activity in a surprisingly large fraction of the population! ENOUGH.

In an opium-induced dream(c. 1974), I learned the thinness of the membrane separating ‘dream’ from
waking-reality; in 1984, I once again stood in the ineffable place that I had dreamed for myself so many
years earlier. Now, through Duncan’s hyper-symbolic prose, I’m once again transported to southern
Washington State, confronted with an Everett Chance ‘created’ epistemologically to lure Natasha, and
looking forward to the inEverettable crucifixion denouement, which will complete the pattern I can now
use to instruct my desperate attempt to feel what a LOVE-object must FEEL!

There was a strangely erotic dream, in which I was drinking with some ‘local’ fellows at the Yacht Club,
when one of these non-descript fellows became embroiled in a vicious-sounding argument, with a
diminutive ‘boyish’ man in a short skirt, flattering sheer stockings and expensive ladies’ high-heeled
pumps. She jumped into the middle of our pilsner-strewn table to gain the upper hand; she squatted low
in a ‘suggestive manner’ to stabilize the teetering table. That’s when I, ever the peacemaker, intervened
by wrapping my arms around him in my most protective manner. All the yelling ceased, as the embrace
endured. It was the way the unexpected physical contact felt[to us?], that prompted a memory of just
such an experienced pleasure!

An additional NOTE(from p, 404) on The Brothers K:”An epistolary romance between two people who bear
no resemblance to either person…” I should draw a comparison to that mass of correspondence,
between yours truly and Karen, hastily written the week before I left for Holbrook, AZ to meet the
‘mentally-ill’ reality, and which will likely be included in Homeless In Arizona.

Letter to Kade on p. 409; dream-like new continent was a result[?] of a new kind of LOVE; can that dream
and its import be a foretelling of my ‘discovery’ of my #7?

9:47 AM, EDT, APR 29, 2017

This ‘New Continent’ that I’m itching to explore could be fixing-to-be discovered at this Department of
Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities ‘resource’ that my quavering X-mark should transport
me unto. Also, if I begin now, writing about this December romance-created opportunity to fix what has
been broken, I will acid test my pen-power.

On p. 411, find the following quotation:

Suffering is above, not below.  

And everyone thinks that suffering is below.

And everyone wants to rise.
-Antonio Porchia

The unexplored ‘continent’ has always been right there beckoning to me; exploring only ‘conventional’
continental land masses is what has made that nearby one heretofore invisible. A new technique;
another way of exploring will now be ‘called for.’ A new way of exploring where up is down, out is in and
the first shall be last; a fervent desire to please; no thought of becoming pleased.

3:45 PM - APR 29

I was much like Everett in those bumbling days when I came of age; hadn’t a clue what I wanted, but
often thought that I did. When I was twenty-one, I married a girl that was still so young, that we required
her parents’ permission to marry[this sounds a bit like Irwin and Linda]. Quintilla was a debutante, and
lived in a Tucker, GA subdivision much ‘nicer than’ the neighborhood I grew up in, and she was exactly
what I thought I wanted in 1971!

At age sixty-seven, I have doubts now, about so many of my most cherished memories; carefully-
catalogued(chronologically) recollections containing ‘fatal errors,’ that are vital and fundamental for
knowing who/what I am. Yet, if I’m not so far off base, that I’ll be easily thrown/tagged
“OUT!” - Dear Quintie must have been the youngest freshman to matriculate that year, at UGA! I carried
a glamour-shot of her in my wallet for years; snapped without her glasses and retouched to tone down
the freckles(that I was quite fond of).

In no time at all, my influence had ruined everything; I had turned a Lafayette, LA beauty queen into an
Atlanta, GA hippy chick, with wire-rimmed frames on the eyeglasses that she now always wore, no
make-up, raggedy bell-bottomed bluejeans and virtually no objectionable pretensions.

I would end up trying to complete myself in this fashion five more times, as forty years ticked off my
tradesman’s life clock; when those paychecks stopped showing up, so would the gals. Still, I believe that
lucky(for me) #7 is out there someplace; trouble is, life-partner means something different when your age
begins to approach seventy, you already feel like eighty and have started looking like ninety!

Yet, I have a lot to offer…  -I could do the laundry, cook our meals and take care of any light house-
keeping and necessary yard-work…  I’m still able; but $831/mo.; we’d need two of those.

The perspective that advanced age lends to a wide and varied experience, combined with  a childless
man’s resulting lack of maturity and the spiritual insights beginning to accrue with the nearing proximity
of his physical death, all begin to factor themselves in, there is an expectation of a maximizing effect on
that curious alchemy a writer transmutes his thoughts with,...  if this whole literary ‘jag’ is not just the
deluded misconception of a sad old man. Add the fortuitous bonus, that I grew up and practiced my
‘trade’ in the theater, majored in Anthropology at university and was in the dubious habit of spending all
my cash, to save up only memories for my twilight years, and I believe you can see that the stage has
been carefully set.

Unfortunately, whatever comes next is pretty much completely out of my hands. Judge Steven Goss,
Assistant District Attorney Victoria Johnson, Public Defense Attorney Elyce Hargrove and the
Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities will conspiratorially determine my
immediate future, with no reference to my desire to write or to find a needy companion. Secret
combinations may just be the death of me.                  - DC

I think that the rednecks that I worked with, ‘down in Georgia,’ thought that a good round of queer jokes
was tantamount to a vaccine for HIV/AIDS, because they were always on about ‘these things.’ One old
guy was not to be confused with mere bi-sexuals, because he was a proud tri-sexual; able and willing to
try anything, once! Another said the only thing he ever turned down was young boys; and of course, he
would turn them face down! The deadly apartment fire, where all but one resident had succumbed, when
they re-entered the blazing structure to retrieve valuables, legal papers, etc. had been on the news; when
interviewed, the obviously-gay survivor said that his shit had already been packed. This one I wrote for
my cell/pod-mates:(delivery is the KEY here)I ordered some of those disposable vinegar douche-medicines
for my LOVER.        ...It makes him taste like pickled chitterlings.(Staff Psychiatrist asks, “Waddaya think your
cell-mate means, when he says ‘it is what it is’?”)

The elixir of youthfulness is truly that Holy Grail, which the British alchemists sought, searching in their
secret lairs. I have seen the concoction described as a salt with healing properties. I believe that this
‘compound’ contains a molecule with Phosphorus in it.

Those fumes from Mercury being heated, in the attic-spaces where Isaac Newton stored his apparatus,
probably put the experimenter into an ‘early grave.’ He was also known to have ‘abused’ his eyes with
certain metal implements, while experimenting with light.

But what of whatall transpired in those secret spaces, where his Royal Society contemporaries ‘drank the
phosphor’ and refused to age normally? I ask you?

In the erotic dream I had, the transvestite had a face that had not been drawn from memory. Several
weeks had passed by, during which I remember hardly any detail from any of those nightly dreams; then
an inmate, who was far too young to belong in G-200, got himself assigned to #203 over here next to me.
Imagine my surprise, when I saw the boyish face I had dreamed. There’s one other prophetic dream
included in this ‘journal material,’ and when that one proves out…  the whole damn world will know about
it! If I ever run into that young inmate ‘on the street,’ with eye-liner on and some of that ‘flounce’ from
my dream, he and I might never reveal the outcome of that meeting.