WALKING ON THIN ICE

breakfast plate in mountain village - foto by smith

more shame from the past - my journal entry from april 4, 1973 - back when i was miserably married to robin redbreast, unhappy with my life and her infidelities, and still massively depressed 2 and a half years out of prison. this will be the last journal entry - i’ve read enough of my old life for awhile.

april 4, 1973

I’m becoming uptight when Robin touches me lately. I find my self becoming tensely irritated when driving along she lays her hand along side my inner thigh and inevitably moves up to my crotch. She also makes throatal noises she believes to be sexual but again turn me way off. It is difficult to live with a girl whom one does not respect intellectually or morally, whom one does not love, know, or care to know.

I shamed myself yesterday. The girl upstairs is a dealer and she left for Florida for a week a few days ago. So I, having a key to her place, went in to look for her stash. I found her bag with almost no difficulty in the window closet. In the bag were four ounces of grass and a black book with sale records and $140. So, I opened up the plastic baggies of dope & took a little out for me from each bag, put the rest & the money back. I went downstairs with about $4.00 worth of bad grass ( I know it’s bad cuz tis the same as last which was bad – in fact, all of her dope has been weak or medium mediocrity. Then I felt so bad that I stole that I went back up and put it all back. The worst of it all is that I wasn’t even tempted to steal the $140, but I stole $4 worth of bad grass. That is sick. I am sickening. Moralistic poet steals. To make it worse I once again onaned this a.m. Robin wants me sexually 2-3 times per day – I frequently find masturbation more attractive because I don’t have to lie next to me afterwards, lying, “I love you.” Lizard shit. As of now, no more masturbation – she would say it was a waste of the creative force. No more soda pops. No more Gino’s hamburgers. No more candy bars. On we go.

cracked dinner plate - foto by smith

oaxaca city graffiti - foto by smith

lady’s reading my private journals. 1968 - 1974 so far. i was 22 thru 28 years old then. she’s 35 now. sounds like The Time Traveler’s Wife (a good book). lately there’s three of us in the room - her, me, and young-me. kinda kinky.

lady’s mining them for excerpts we can include in our badman manuscript.

a lot happened those years - i was kicked out of the u.s. naval academy february 1968 for smoking grass, and two weeks later was living in a drug house in baltimore dropping acid and shooting speed. my journals document it all - including the year before, the 5 years of, and the year after my first marriage to robin red-breast. lady knows more about my past than i do those 7 years. which is odd since the first journal entry was 4 years before she was conceived..

i don’t like my younger me. he was sneaky, sly, shallow, selfish. lady calls him “duplicitous.”

but he did know how to suffer. here’s a heavy excerpt i wrote a month after he married.

June 15, 1969

I trust a person completely until something shakes me and then I’m never sure… after our first year together I trusted Robin completely – never once did ever doubt her… never once until after we were engaged and I called her, found her gone and half an hour later found her at Joe’s, caught her just as she was going up to his apartment. She said he only wanted to talk about his problems – she finally convinced me that it was on the up and up which is a lousy cliché and I drove home after she said she’d be about 15 minutes… she was up there over an hour and a half finally coming out and convincing me that for 90 minutes she sat and listened and he never touched her… I finally dropped the whole thing and actually forgot about it – until… until… wonder how many more untils… until on our honeymoon I got in bed after she was asleep whereupon in her sleep she snuggles up to my warm body and sighs “Joe, Joe” which sent me through hell… finally drop that only to come back and hear her say “Joe this…” and “Joe that…” everyday – I would call from Hershey sometimes and she would be out or she would promise to wash her hair on my night out of town only to come back to find she hadn’t done anything, nothing except maybe my mind thinks seeing Joe… and now today she says Joe calls and needs to talk with her about his problems – it doesn’t hit me until later this is sposed to be my night out of town… I wonder if I’m upsetting her little schedule by staying in town tonight… perhaps my mind is working a little over actively in filling in the blanks – yet, I do know she has called him often before we were married and he has called her as well. I do know that on one of my out of town nights she went riding with him until way after midnight – I do know she kissed him one night – I do know I caught her at Joe’s apartment one night when I wasn’t sposed to know she was there and I do know she was up in his apartment from a little before midnight until one thirty and it was just the two of them… I also know that ofttimes the most guilty circumstances arise out of the most innocent occasions and I know a suspicious mind finds always more to be suspicious about and that if my doubts continue I could finish us – I know also that I keep forgetting about Joe and my suspicions but somehow she keeps bringing up his name in such a way as to inflame my doubts all over again… while I’m sitting here writing she keeps saying how wonderful it is that I’m home tonight and I don’t believe her… I will later though because I want to – I want to believe she’s faithful even if she isn’t – what I don’t know can’t hurt me and what I do know can’t hurt me but what I suspect may destroy me… soon I’m going to tell her I’m staying overnight in Hershey and am coming back instead and telling her I finished up by chance – and I hope I catch Joe up here or her down there because I will beat Joe almost to death and don’t know what I will do with her.

oaxaca city graffiti - foto by smith

graffiti - foto by smith

a lot of people down here don’t keep their word, or appointments - except for our spanish teacher.

we’re moving into our new apartment in this building on sunday, the apartment we pre-paid 4 months rent on so they could buy the stuff to finish. we agreed on two things before we took it - there’d be a bed and a dining table. yesterday we were informed the mattress got wet and smells bad, so there won’t be any bed. and of course no table. for some reason they’re including 4 hard wooden chairs, two outdoor chairs, and a midget fridge. so we’ll need to buy a bed, mattress, blankets, couch, dishes, table, refrigerator, and who knows what else.

the landlord’s philosophy seems to be “well gee, i tried, but something went wrong so i’m no longer obligated to deliver what i promised.”

the new apartment will solve some current problems - it’s too dark down here to do our art, the toilet doesn’t always stop when you flush it (a no-no in a land of water shortages), the shower head is old and plugged up. in the new place, everything is fresh, unused, should work well (but of course no promises), and it has a 3rd floor open patio so we’ll have tons of light. be good for mood and light, bad for comfort.

we don’t want to buy a bunch of stuff until we get our one-year visa to stay. we’re already into our 4th of 6 legal months here.

as for time, mexicans have 3:
buenos dias (good morning - from dawn to noon)
buenos tardes (good afternoon - from noon to 6)
buenos noches (good night - from 6 pm till dawn)

if they say they’ll see you at 1 in the afternoon, it comes under “tardes” and can mean anything from noon to 6 p.m - that is IF they come that day. we agreed to have some stuff delivered at 10 sunday morning - they showed up 26 hours later, with no phone call. theoretically ‘mañana’ means tomorrow or in the morning, but it really means “not today, maybe tomorrow, but don’t count on it.”

i’m in a bit of an emotional slough today for a plethora of reasons.
1 - no coffee.
2 - have to buy a bunch of stuff for the apartment (i hate stuff).
3 - i destroyed my large assemblage, the first art piece i made here - tried to spice it up and took it the wrong way, then tried to remove what i’d done, and my original graphics disintegrated in the soap and water.
4 - i turned over my edit of my memoirs to Lady K, and i miss having a project to work on.
5 - we both stopped blogging on myspace, so i miss the hourly checking to see what comments folk had left. it’s odd - i only got 100 readers a day on my myspace blog, but at least 10 of them left daily comments, while we get 1,500 readers a day here on walkingthinice, and usually get zero to three comments. of course here you have to register to leave a comment, which i refuse to do on other’s sites, so understand when they don’t.

but all these are part of life, so i just gotta get on with it. they say life is what happens while you’re planning what to do with your life.

think i’m also a wee bit off-key because we’ve started our 4th month here, and we haven’t stayed in one place for more than 3 months since we sold our studio flat 22 months ago. since then we’ve lived in each place from 1 night to three months. this will be our 50th move in 22 months - thru 10 countries (4 of the countries we lived in twice - england, france, spain, and the u.s.).

also low key because one just can’t stay up all the time. life is cycles. if you’re happy all the time, even a slight dip in happiness comes across as less than was. i’ve been consistently happier here than anywhere I’ve lived since leaving home in 1963 when 17. but still, daily life has to be taken care of . . . gotta eat, sleep, provide, create, do, be day after day after day. all getting through one day really gets you is the chance to do it all over again the next day. seems to me you should be able to eat a fantastic meal and say “wow, that was a great meal - now i don’t have to eat any more ever again.” i’ve awoken to 22,670 new mornings so far in my life, eaten 68,000 meals, pissed shit showered shaved again and again on and on anon. not sure i like this human body design - too much like a rechargeable battery without the wires.

graffiti - foto by smith

it’s easier for a camel to pass thru the eye of a needle - foto by smith

Sham of Mammon

The void between the is and am
is worse than would and could.
The voiced belief we’re best of can
reeks of mould and shame.

Money whores hoard executive board
while sniffing alpha dog anus.
They mark their set in limp dick wet
and measure love with penis.

Rich man sham betraying should
would
could
good
all
for a few dollar$ more.

than for a rich man to get into heaven - foto by smith