“Well what? What should I wear?”
“You should have jeans. That’s what men wear, low around their hips.” Jingle never had raised any fashion issues before, for herself or me. She was an incredibly capable seamstress who had already made me a couple of western shirts, without even using a pattern. She had never before had a fashion fit.
“Okay.” It made no difference to me. I got into my jeans. They weren’t as comfortable for driving. We were a day and a half from Winnemucca. Jingle cheered up. In those jeans, driving the popular car of the Third Reich, Steve and his happy wife crossed The Little Bighorns. They rode into Nevada. They rose up the dirt switchbacks to the cabins on the mining claims. It was Buckskin Mountain. They got out of the little car. It settled onto the Nevada mountainside like an odd button of mining equipment. There Steve met Forrest Bell, his wife Marian, Woody, Jingle’s brother, a real buckaroo and professional rodeo cowboy. He was wearing jeans. They were slung low on his hips.
In fourteen years of marriage, and subsequent years of strong friendship and mutual parenthood, that was the only time fashion and taste ever became an issue. Since then we’ve been free to be comfortable in all situations, for any encounter.
137.035999679(94)/FEYNMAN 084(51)
0: for Wendy Rogers once I wrote “The Wendy Rogers At A Glance Dance,” and she performed the dance so terrifically, and tried to keep in touch with me, but I was too confused tangled in an inappropriate, unhappy marriage, I didn’t… if only…
..3: Peter Campus, video artist, photographer, wanted to make videos of myself reading some “Mythologies” from my Creamy and Delicious. They would have been great. They could have been shown at Castelli. I should have… Why didn’t…?
…5: Random House came up with a terrific jacket design for Creamy and Delicious, that would have attracted notice on the shelf, but I rejected it in favor of my own bland idea, which didn’t work, just to assert my dominance over the project. That was my…
….9: grace to be born and live as variously as possible, except next time a better education, some richer understanding of what I am doing, and the gift of playing music…
…..9: so San Francisco again and I wonder again why I never ended up living here. It’s probably because…
……9: and even now embarrassed that it took me so long to realize that the pretty woman who sat down to flirt with me at the cafe near Termini in Rome was actually an Aussie guy. Big hairy hands should…
…….6: that once in Provincetown I had dinner with Robert Mother-well at B.H.’s, and Motherwell said all the interesting modern minds in the arts were painters, no interesting modern writers. I should have flown my Beckett up his nose, mummied him in Thomas Mann, stuffed his pants with Edward Dahlberg. But I kept my mouth shut, as I too often do when I hear stupid…
……..7: I believed the witchy woman I danced with at a loft party for Donald Judd in 1971 when she told me I would be famous, but late in life. It’s almost too late. When…
……..9: My oldest son has just now begun to pay back the 30 grand I lent him a decade ago to buy the land on which he now farms. He works hard. I love what he’s doing. It gives his kids the privilege of mud and goats, but this confirms the universal advice not to lend big sums within the family. It inevitably creates bitterness, and the lender becomes the villain for wanting the money back. I would love to give up my feelings, but they persist. His wife does acts of kindness, particularly for my ex who functions only vaguely in the present world. The daughter-in-law was raised an upper middle class girl who feels entitled to any money that comes within her purview. She has the fiduciary heart of a neocon. If only I…
………(94) too long before I really understood that the world won’t bend to my predispositions, but skillful means can make…
Feynman……084(51) I’m sorry. Forgive my presumptu…
INADEQUATE THEMATIC INDEX
compiled by Ted Pelton
Art & Artists
Clarence Schmidt; Clark of it; Drowning Kids; Forrest Bell; How Bilbao; Massacio and Me; Name Dropping; Poles; Preface:137.n; Rencine; Starting Artist; Stove; T-Shirt with Pete Dean; The Champ; Working Longchamps
Family
Birth/Bris/Theft; Busting Pots; Bypass; Chipmunk Man; Chungking Mansions; Claire; Critters; Dad; Drowning Kids; Eating Dog/Talking Turkey; Fifteen and Texting; First Supper; Forrest Bell; G’Ma Dies Again; Gallileo & Tot; High Train; If Milk; Luna di Miele; Mom Dies; My Speed; Oxygen; Ozark to Avrum; Patriot; People’s Republic; RIP; South Corn Street; Stream; Sunday Morning in the Afternoon; Trap Tourists; Us in Texas; Wan Don; Whacks the Chick; What Hannah Knows; Whitecaps
The Movies
Crow-Dog; Drowning Kids; Grassland; Hey Suicide; Name Dropping; Stove; Toussaint’s Turf; Wheel Me Out; When China Talks; Writing Toussaint
Music & Musicians
Babbadoodoo; Dubble Bubble; In India; Inflamed at the Y; Kathakali; Name Dropping; Reich; Skirt; Starting Artist; Stove
New York City
Big Flub; Caffeine; Crosby Street; Dubble Bubble, First Book; First Supper; G’Ma Dies Again; Gallileo & Tot; If Milk; Inflamed at the Y; Jewboy; Linebacker; Lost Paradise; Mom Dies; Morton Street; My Bridge; My Speed; Nicotine; Our Bomb; Patriot; PIIF; Preface:137.n; Publishing Uptown; Science Plus; Skirt; Snows of Yesteryear; Starting Artist; Sunday Morning in the Afternoon; The Champ; The Volley; Working Longchamps; Wylie
Spirituality
Almost Moves; Crow-Dog; Kathakali; Look Out Look In; Out of Mind; Poles; Septua-Dude; Sex + Diplomacy; Shattari
Travel & the World
Almost Moves; Arunchala; Belgrade Whoops; Birth Bris Theft; Chungking Mansions; Darmstadt Without Spargel; Dispatch from a Water Tower; Dresden Resurrection; Eating Dog/Talking Turkey; Eating Out; Goats and Krauts; Gunga Din; Hammam; How Bilbao; In India; Istanbul; Jerusalem; Jewtown; Kathakali; Loutro; Martha and Megaliths; Massacio and Me; Our Rockefeller; Oxygen; Preface; People’s Republic; Rencine; Slave Husbandry; Snake Alley; Some Ports of Call; Stowaway; Then Nicaragua; Toussaint’s Turf; Trap Tourists; Vatican Hotty; Vonneguts; Woman with Fruit; Working Longchamps; Writing Toussaint
The West
Almost Moves; Chipmunk Man; Critters; Crow-Dog: Death on Layaway; Fifteen and Texting; Forrest Bell; Getting Up; High Train; Jewboy; Licks; Noogy; Out of Mind; Ozark to Avrum; Paul; Sex + Diplomacy; Us in Texas; Wan Don; Your Pants
Writing & Writers
As Bobby Goes; AWP Amp; Baxter; Big Flub; Buffalo Dreamy; Burroughs vs. Williams; Coda; Cornell Swan Song; Crack of Dorn; Dad; First Book; Gossip Smudge; How Do; Imagery Aggie; Jewboy; Look Out Look In; Luna di Miele; Martha and Megaliths; Morton Street; My Bad; My Nabokov; Name Dropping; Notre Dame; Now and Then; People’s Republic; PIIF; Publishing Uptown; Rabbit Wind; Science Plus; Starting Artist; The Berryman Blot; Then Nicaragua; Tonkin Toddle; Vonneguts; Whacks the Chick; Wheel Me Out; Writing Writing; Wylie; Young Artist Finds His Joint