slickers bloom like synthetic crocuses on campus: yellow, blue, red, and god knows what else. buds on trees are most bucolic and sylvan. rain could be parisian if it cared to.
I have glimpsed NYC for but one brief weekend in my locally anesthetized life, and spend most of my time in intellectual dishevelment in the rustic Smith pastures; hence anything you care to tell me in advance about the civilized customs of the city will be inordinately appreciated.
march 24
friday I got an idear. I am now in the midst of writing the biggest true Confession1 I have ever written, all for the remote possibility of gaignigh (that word the lady said is: gaining, as in weight) filthy lucer. a contest in True Story is in the offing, with all sorts of Big Money prizes. being a most mercenary individual, because mercenary can buy trips to europe, theaters, chop houses, and other Ill Famed what-nots, I am trying out for it. all you have to do, the blurb ways, is write the story of your life or somebody else’s life from the heart. and a sexy old heart it is. grammar and spelling mistakes won’t count in the judging, says the rules, only it must be written in english, and not on onion skin paper or in pencil. I dunno why that last rule. mebbe people have been gluing onion rinds together and getting a large purge out of writing from the heart on that with a stubby pencil. anyhow, sylvia just finished the rough draft of a whopping true Confession of over 40 (you can count them) pages, trying to capture the style, and let me tell you, my supercilious attitude about the people who write Confessions has diminished. it takes a good tight plot and a slick ease that are not picked up over night like a cheap whore. so tomorrow, I rewrite the monstrosity I have just illegitimately (everything gets done illegitimately amid great conflict) delivered.
sunday night,
april 5, 1953
life is amazingly simplified, now that the recalcitrant forsythia has at last decided to come and blurt out springtime in petalled fountains of yellow. in spite of reams of papers to be written, life has snitched a cocaine sniff of sun-worship and salt air, and all looks promising.
april 9, 1953