Letter: January 20, 1963

                                                            Sun. Morn, 1/20/63

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            Tamara Dearest: 

            It’s letter time again.  Here I sit, listening to Miles Davis’ “Miles Ahead”^[1] record and dear mother’s eternal, Christian bullsh*t line, drinking Lapsang Souchong tea, listening to my watch tick, looking out the windows at this beautiful day.  Mother just came in telling me she had a picture for my scrapbook, one in “National Geographic” Magazine.  Never mind.  Her empty verbal chatter still continues.  EMPTY. IS MOTHER. MOMMY OF MINE. [special typography]

            Now Barney Kessel^[2] is playing on the stereo.  It’s an easygoing, lights-winging guitar record.

            I have been playing easygoing records all morning.  It’s that kind of day.  Beautiful springtime-like.  With sunlight resting easily in the living room, and dust particles swimming in it.  I love these days.

            Mother is outside in front of the window and yanking dead leaves off jacaranda bush with a distasteful look on her face.

            The only thing that mars my perfect happiness of the day is dear-damn mother’s presence.  I leave off writing for a little while to just sit and relax.  I shall return to the letter in a few minutes.

            Now it is about an hour later.  I’m sitting out in the sun in the front yard digging all.  In the field across the street a kid of about 7th or 8th Grade was kicking a football around (No, wait, he’s back.  He went inside for a few minutes).  I had relieved mommy at the jacaranda bush and was pulling off the leaves and listening to the music from the stereo speaker propped up in the window when suddenly I noticed him over there, and he saw me looking at him.  I could tell from the outset that he was a crewed-up kid—inferiority feelings and all that rot—and so it came as no surprize [sic] that he kept glancing my way to see if I was going to come over and push him around.  It’s terribly funny.  He just went in as I wrote that last sentence.  All the time he was out there I kept looking up every few minutes to keep him nervous.  I remember the little bastard from once before when we met: I was walking down to the mailbox when suddenly I saw him com-

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-ing toward me on his goddam bike.  He was immediately apprehensive when he saw me, even though we were complete strangers.  I must admit I was rather like him at the time.  I didn’t feel inferior, but it was the first week of school (Saturday after) and four days of freshmanism had made me suspicious of everybody between 12 & 18 years of age.  He tried to avert his eyes from mine but it only made things more uncomfortable for him.  Sensing this, I relaxed and stared at him and smiled, making him feel utterly absurd.

            “Hello,” he said.

             “Hello,” I said

                        and passed.  How amusing.  People are.

            But the thing that really gets me on to him today and makes me wish I had walked over and made him even more uncomfortable, was a little incident I remember seeing one evening from my rooftop and which I wrote about in my journal, from which I now quote:

            “I have just witnessed one of those touching scenes of childhood:  a ball game involving a dozen or so members, each

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insisting on his own rules.  It ends with the kid who own [sic] the ball crying and riding off, ball in hand, on his bike, in his wake jeers from the trouble maker, a fat, yellow-shirted pre-adolescent.  Then al except 3 or 4 kids go home.  It looks as though there will be a fight between the yellow shirted fat kid and another kid in a white shirt.  They’re pushing each other.  The white shirted one walks over to a rock garden, picks up a few stones and walks back, now about 30 feet from yellow shirt.  Yellow shirt’s little friend, though, comes forth with a surprize [sic] move.  He had a rock hidden all the time, and throws it at white shirt.  A full scale battle seems imminent, but white shirt jumps on his bike suddenly and rides off.  this is, of course, yellow shirts [sic] chance to prove he’s a big, brave man.  He runs after white sh*t, and yells (from a distance, of course): “Sissy!,” etc., at him.  White shirt, I suspect, is in tears.  Exit yellow shirt, the little bastard, into his well-lighted, autumnal house, where I am absolutely positive that his mother scolds him “for playing with those bad street gangs who are such a bad influence on you! Ha.”

            The reason I include that here is

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that that kid out there today was wearing the same type of yellow shirt, and, judging by my knowledge of his personality, I’d bet it’s the same one.

            But all of that is meaningless.  Here, in what is supposedly a lettered to you, I have used up too many lines on that.  Still, though, I en-joyed writing about it and I trust it didn’t bore you too much.

            As I said before, it’s a beautiful day.  And I am in love today.  With you, with myself, with life, with the wind in the trees, with the sun, with the sky, with the dog howling across the street, with my shadow, with my hand writing these words with spider webs, with the smell of cooking steak which reaches me from the kitchen, with music, with sand, with dust, with kit, with night, with dark, with with, with the distant mountains, with the clouds, none of which are in the sky today, with the present, with, the past, with my eyes which are playing tricks on me, suddenly making the colors around me seem ethereal, with out, with in, with bravely with all.

            A dog (collie) lies in the yard across from

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me, sleeping.  He is beautiful.

            And I see on the chimney cover a haiku I wrote several months ago:

            “The ever moving leaves

            shine right back

            at Ra”

            Oh yes.  I wrote that on that chimney-cover, September 24, 1962.  The date is there.

            The wind is here.

                        Beauty is everywhere.

            Leaving this letter now to exult over beauty while joyously wolfing down a steak dinner with mashed potatoes and gravy and listening to music,

                                    LES.

            Your always-faithful psychoanalist,

                                    nut,

                                    &,

                        most of all,

                        loving friend.

            Zeng Yes. [special typography]