In the Shadow of the American Dream by David Wojnarowicz Read Free Book Online Page B

about it any longer really.
    Met Ken in the evening, went to fantastic Animation Film Show. Ken touched me throughout the film putting hand over mine massaging it, his arm around my shoulders. The light on the screen alternately plunging the audience into discreet darkness and illuminating them/us. I felt a variety of changes in my head, at times extremely self-conscious of the moment other times feeling fine about it and glad of the changes I was working in.
    We went to Sandalino’s for salad and I talked a bit afterwards as we walked down Bleecker about what I felt as far as open affection in public places, that it was new to me, scared me a bit at times but that the embarrassment or fear was good for me to go through/handle/work with. Immersing oneself in one’s fear produces opposite results—that area where it produces neither anxiety or ego-excitement. Don’t know what the fuck to say about all this—

September 1977
    New York
    Human Head II
    First-draft poems and other stuff …
    â€¦ While I searched continually to find the place and the formula .
    September 10, 1977
    Walked through Soho and over to Christopher Street, went to the big pier past the old truck lines and Silver Dollar Café/Restaurant where I spent many a night on the streets. Funny I see it all different—no longer a rush of (many) sad weird feelings hanging out in old areas. Feel real good today—kinda sad—good like a backwards glance over everything and seeing it all as okay and good vibes for the future it seems. Walked onto the pier and sat at the very end with my feet dangling like Huck Finn from his eternal raft with waves plash-plashing beneath every once in a while a great SWASH of water from a passing party boat or tug. Sunlight drift over New Jersey cliffs illuminates sparse architecture and great warehouses and piers and ships all shapeless from the blinding show of sun making it all look like India with orange postal card skies and you expect a huge herd of cows to be flat-walking over the river surface—where’s the Taj Mahal!?
    Came home and walked the Promenade a couple of times, the night sky clouds still slightly illuminated. Ghost whites beyond the night (sunset long gone) and met some fella named Bob walking through the streets a commercial artist and also artist/artist in the personal sense. He was out for a break in work—working in his own apartment/studio on some whiskey ads for Monday morning. We yakked awhile before retiring. He was wonderfully honest about his head and feelings—nice nice evenings of which I hope there will be more. I’m gonna get into weight lifting with him on Tuesdays and Thursdays 8-10 o’clock. He’s got a healthy build and was previously like me in terms of skinniness so finally I’ll have a chance to work out without hitting some gym.

    Coming home on Montague Street. I stopped by the homemade ice cream parlor and ordered a vanilla-banana scoop with whip cream—sugar addict’s delight. Real sweet girl behind the counter now recognizes me in fact two of them do. Said hi and all that and gave me a huge sundae for 85¢. NICE DAY—
    September 19, 1977
    SEEING MYSELF SEEING MYSELF SITTING BY AN OPEN WINDOW
    When dawn comes on after a night that has spent itself by the window, dark ships ease into the frame of sky taking the place of clouds. Upside down they are sailing on and on toward an imagined horizon where the seekers of love stand to the side of the curtains peering out. There is great mystery, one of foreign soils and oceanic breath disappearing beyond the fine line of water and sky. We are growing steadfastly, fingernails and hair and subtle gray curves in the head. Lessons come in all forms from every direction, out on the bench by the river an old man sits swayed by neither water nor air, yet from this porthole several stories up I am seized by a continent of my own making.
    Death and birth are just so much seawater