COVER -> RECOMMENDED DAILY REQUIREMENT
THE LETTERS - SHE SAID: This is from a children's poem. I thought you needed it now.
In dusky pods the milkweed
Its hidden silk has spun
You certainly are having trouble getting comfortable. Take it from one who knows, you can't seem to "find the center of your ch'i". I do not understand how you live in the city. I do not understand how you write out all that is happening to you, within you, on the net. (Well, NOT ALL) I don't know what you're looking for.
HE SAID: It's kindah like Brando in the "The Wild Ones..." I mean that most people used to ask me "What are you rebelling against?" And I would answer: "Whaddaya got?"
Looking for? Well, quite obviously The Last Woman. My anima. Wholeness. Home.
SHE SAID: So, why New Orleans?
HE SAID: Maybe because I've never been there. It's cheap. It's romantic.
SHE SAID:You're like a black walnut, it takes a hammer to crack one of those things, but you're all liquid center. I guess I don't write more often because
- some days you seem so harsh, you're so way masculine and abrasive, sophisticated, brutal, what's that hunting word?
- I still become confused when I read your "maunderings", and I assume you have cool people around to council you, people who can keep up. that's some of it, anyway.
HE SAID: A "tough nut" with a liquid center. Now there's a good metaphor and a good laugh. I was always "way masculine and abrasive," no? At least the first half. The abrasiveness came after a lot of the pain. Don't know the hunting word.
I have to tell you that it's wonderful to "hear" you again... Especially now when I'm trying to decide what I'll do next with my life, it's a blessing just to have someone to "talk" to who isn't part of the equation of the magazine or some other agenda.
Back to New Orleans: I've always hated Baltimore. I only moved here because of work-related stuff. I'd love, most of all to live in Manhattan, of course, but don't see that I can afford it right now.
So New Orleans. I have a friend there. My slacker buddy Matt who needs a roommate and who is a friend. He's a twentysomething, though, so that will be interesting. AND I need to start anew as I start anew. Maybe there I'll find "her." Maybe the southland ambience will do me good. Maybe the smell of a bayou will rock me to sleep and the Cajun lifestyle will feel like home.
Maybe my Huron dreams will be nicer...
SHE SAID: Hello, earthling.
It's true that different regions of the country are strong places for different people. Ole Edgar Casey didn't have too much promising to say about New York or the West Coast though.
Manhattan! Too much static, man, at least down south maybe you could think straight. We're probably so bombarded by radio waves by now it doesn't really matter where we are on the globe....
I must admit the steel and glass and humanity of the city do provide me with a frisson of sharp beauty and danger, but to me
"everybody's saying that hell's the hippest way to go well I don't think so an I'm gonna take a look around".
When I think of Manhattan I do think of
"acid booze and ass, needles, guns and grass; lots of laughs,"and people clothing their very souls with Versace designs. Yuk
YOU, however, seem to be still a romantic, as in "marked by the imaginative or emotional appeal of what is heroic, adventurous, remote, mysterious or idealized".
I mean there's gotta be SOME reason all that jazz comes out of the Crescent City. And certainly the tired, heartless whorish fleshpot aspect would appease your bestial side, while the Marie Leveaux-hot blossom-history laden-ghost inhabited-voodoo side might soothe you in some way.
Before I have to go, I just wanted to say that I envy you your voice. I'm 44 years old and I STILL feel like there's SOMETHING I'm SUPPOSED TO BE DOING. I SEE things, man, I've been listening too. It seems like I might explode but I don't....I don't know what it is, procrastination, crippledness, immaturity, weakness SOMETHING keeps me waiting and day-dreaming into the middle distance and this is for YEARS now. But you are getting out there on a limb and just singing your little heart out. You have so much energy! oops gotta go
HE SAID: Whoa! Thank you! Then you do like my scribbling!!!
[TO BE CONTINUED....Ed. ]
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