1972 - As Still I Do

I loved you, Ron
As still I do
I miss you so
My heart is blank
Without you.
Why can't I hate you, feel anger or offense
Because I'm a fool, a loving, losing fool
And because I take as much as I give ---
Far too much.

I loved you so --
You never loved me
I know that now --
There was no time I meant ought to you
You took & took & never gave
You never learned to love or give
& I was only nuisance, patting you & touching you
And hoping to get love from you,
I watched you from the corner of my eye,somehow & some -
why, devouring every sight of you & what & why? Why? I loved your lankiness, your tall, slim body - your darkness in mood & color -
Somehow for some twisted reason within me I think I even loved your abuse of me. I was so willing to do it all for you. Oh, my God, how I tried for you. Even now, the memory of how I tried to show my love for you pulls tears from out my eyes. I ache & feel not the fool because I meant so well - and you sat there sullen or asleep, escaping your own particular hell with head in hands & darkness in your look. I didn't see it then, I was so full of steep feeling for you - I ate you up, I absorbed your presence like a sponge s0 full of wonder somehow, I was awed by you - I felt your torturedness, your far-away-ness, your deep & old lost-ness - I ached for you & loved you more for that ache, wanting so to share your pain if only you could speak it out & open up your closed self to me - who opened up & exposed my very bone & heart & center to you tho your blinded eye could see not my pain, my love, my need, but only your own & this is what I yet understand & blame you not for, for you are blameless. You are twisted out of shape through others' faults & thus your own were formed & striking out & searching out, you hunt & took & never felt the harm you did.

But still I love & feel for you & always shall - all my life I will carry through to death the sweetness of a word here, a look there, a touch - all whose meanings were the richer for their rarity. I will & can & have fooled myself so completely so I never never shall believe, no never shall I ever feel that all of it was sham - no, those moments were true, the true you, the light shining through - the pure water bubbling up thru the hate & abandonment & resentment, what did I do but give you more of the same & what penance shall I pay for all my life for writing you the truth about yourself in my hurt & my abandonment. My only justification is my mind, reminding & pounding into my heart the certain truth that never did you care.

Oh, my dear boy, if only you could have given me, loved me - but naught is naught & hurt is hurt & on you go to other sources, which I'm sure you'll find - your "charm" & "good looks" will not fail you for so long a time but know I this & you may know it, too, that no one will ever love or need or want you more than I did = for 4 months - a whole lifetime of joy & misery, of love & confusion hoping true was false, & you were as I thot & wished & still believe a deep, down lost layer of you were & was & is --

1972 - Calculations

$15 for income taxd
20 for license plates
75 for rent
100 for " & etc.
$210
$250 owed
$460

$564 from IRS
460
$104 back to Ron

-------------

March 13, 1972 today - no, tomorrow
April 27th check back maybe = 6 weeks

$250
75
$175

April 1st = $75 $75
41 82
33 66 250
$149 $223 223
27
$250
150
$400

Random Page - Gravedigger's Thots; A Good Job

...returned because his wife wanted to be back among her kin. He said he "came back to die." Being a gravedigger perhaps had made him preoccupied with death - he commented when he showed us the newly-dug grave that that was how & where we would all end. He offered us a drink of his iced tea which we declined. It was thru him we learned that once a church had stood, red brick & sturdy, where the small park now was but he said, young people around there no longer go to church so it'd no longer been needed & had been torn down tho he himself wondered why they had not slavaged the good, deep well there had been in the basement. We waved goodbye to him as he sat, resting, on a gravestone.

(At another roadside I sat at a picnic table & absorbed & swallowed & drank in the space, quiet & solitude of the Iowan spring countryside, drunk with it, while Doug drove the car around the turn-a-round. He drove around & backed up & around the other direction & back again. He did well, I was relaxed & didn't even turn around to watch. As I took over to head on home I told him he'd done well. In a few minutes he asked how he'd done and I said kindly I'd already told him what a good job he'd done and he said, "I know. I guess I just like to hear it said.")

June 10, 1972 - It Is Very Late

I am home in bed and it is very late and I was feeling strong-ish and rather proud of my holding the line & not giving in - feeling a little "dead", a little dried-up, realizing I really would rather be able to allow myself to feel something but thinking no, I must not feel sorry for myself. I must grit my teeth, so to speak, and better not try to feel anything which is what it amounts to. It is not me & it does not feel "right" but perhaps "they" are right and it is the way it should be. And I was making plans & determinations & declarations and positive statements and suddenly from nowhere Ron appeared to me and the dam broke & I covered my face with my hands and realized what I wanted to do was to comfort him - to hold him & comfort him - as a mother? - evidently so. I'd just been thinking how much I love Doug - how good I feel about him - how well I have that boy in my heart and mind and was smiling at the strength & impenetrability of my feelings for and knowledge of him when this other boy crept up to me & I remembered those nights with him here next to me in this bed - his arm around me & the warmth of him so near making me forget all the un-good I knew there was about him & our relationship. And the tears welled up as I longed to have that feeling again - and I thot: there is the best in me & there is the worst in me. There is the best in him & there is the worst in him. And my best wants to communicate with the best in him as we used to do & I want to mail this letter to him - to set him free - to let him know love can do this. Then though tomorrow the worst in me may remember the worst in him and I'll feel not to send it - not to expose my foolishness again to his hardness & coldness - and so it goes, so I go round and around - the good & the bad - the strong & the weak - wanting only to love and to feel. Is that so much? It seems to be too much. Strength is happiness - but strength is un-feelingness and I don't want that. I am afraid to give one up for the other. Must I?

June 10, 1972 - Remembering Memorial Day 1972

I have got to record what a perfect weekend Doug and I had here 2 weeks ago Memorial Day, 1972. I will never forget it. He was so great a companion and we had as much fun together, walking, talking, hiking back to Baptism Falls on Sun. with his new bright orange backpack heavily on his back and, for a spell on mine, cooking, eating & cleaning up together, clowning around & laughing and Doug's unexpected spurting shows of affection and our warm touching & companionable "good-nights" in the darkness of the cooling cabin with the full moon sponging the black water & the gentle water sounds coming thru our window. We walked along the road enjoying the birds & flowers and the railroad tracks which we walked back along. Doug doing a fast little one-tie step running while stepping on each & every railroad tie while I tried unsuccessfully to find a stride that worked - put my feet evenly on every other tie. We (I think it was mutual) felt as close and happy together in this place doing our thing that it was all very precious to me - a threasured memory of a wonderful & feeling, loving & fun-feeling 14 year old boy. My boy, my only repository for my love in this whole damned world, my son whom I feel so lost, so taken away, from - but no one & no thing can take him away from me - can erase the joy I feel at the sight, at the thought of him - that is eternal & omnipotent - and only mine. It is something for which I would trade nothing - not everything would I take for what he has been & is to me.

June 10, 1972 - The Rocks Are Cold

Cloudy when I 1st got up at 7:30 - then cleared - quite cool. Came in just now from a spell on the rock. There's a comfortable right angle broken out of the rocks that makes a convenient sitting space - I put one folded beach towel under me as cushion and another at my back.

(Duluth)
9:30 a.m.
56*

The rocks are cold yet so I read my book against my raised knees to keep as much of "me" up off the cold surface as poss. I watched the sun-sparkles on the water and through the tinted glass of my sun glasses which screened out most of the glare, I blurred my eyes slightly and saw with delight each sun-reflecting facet become a tiny sailboat - an ovalish base with a sharp spire pointing upward. These small shapes danced about - appearing, disappearing, reappearing - as in a very-much sped-up cartoon feature - hundreds of brilliant diamonds here & there and everywhere - until a cloud interceded and the dancers subsided as the lights went off. The cold seeped into me and my hands became chilled so we came in again tho here my face is much too warm - afire from yesterday's sun, eyelids swollen - thanks be again for sunglasses behind which so much can be hidden = tear-filled or reddened eyes & now my sun-punished lids swollen with fluid so I look as tho a refugee from a fight. The oval lake air fooled me.

I must mention briefly the timeless beauty of what I see out my window - a recurring and annual show of perfection of color & texture - simply this = a pattern of small ovulate shapes in a tender new green, textured against a pale blue lightly wisped spring sky. There it is - out there now - unmatchable & permanently etched in my mind.