In the Shadow of the American Dream
The Diaries of David Wojnarowicz
Editor’s Note
Of the thirty-one diaries excerpted here, this selection represents perhaps ten or fifteen percent of all the writing. I have organized the journals as chapters, with dates and a title when there is one. I have made some notes within the text in brackets. Some of the entries I have introduced with notations in italics if contextualizing seems useful. I have tried to keep footnotes to a minimum to avoid interrupting the experience of reading the entries fluently. For the most part David Wojnarowicz used first names only of the cast of characters in his life. The last names appear here only when he made a point of using them. Drawings and photographs, expecially photo booth strips, postcards and letters, labels and ticket stubs, receipts and notes of things to do—all these items were filed within each diary. Near the end of his life, the author intended these totemic notebooks for publication.
Introduction
This book of diary writings by David Wojnarowicz comes from over thirty journals he kept from age seventeen, one summer in 1971, until another summer, in 1991, a year before he died. In the first diary (he saved, that is; there were probably earlier ones that weren’t saved), David is on an Outward Bound expedition. He has high hopes for solitude and discoveries in nature but is then thwarted by severe conditions and physical hardship. He is unable to endure the diet and isolation, and he desperately wishes to get off the island, to return to the city from which he had wished to escape. Strangely, the end of his life reads similarly. His health deteriorates, and he feels more and more isolated and alone. With anguish he describes himself “disappearing.” He realizes that, having gone through the experiences he has with AIDS and a culture that never deals honestly with death or dying, even if he were to survive, he would be filled with anger and hopelessness, anathemas to him. “I’m empty, other than of illness and dark thoughts. I want to die but I don’t want to die. There’s no answer right now” (August 1, 1991).
Anyone who turned the pages of these diaries would make different selections than I did, so it is important to introduce this set of writings, made from thousands of pages, as very much my own assemblage. I decided to follow a number of threads throughout David’s journals that I believe are illustrative of the values he cherished, the struggles he endured, and the pleasures he sought.
The adolescent in the first diary is a typical boy fascinated with snakes and insects and what his body will do when put through an endurance test. But he is also a loner, not able to assimilate, a boy not fully aware of himself except for that queer feeling of not belonging and not particularly wanting to either. Expressing an interiority to the extent that he does in his diary is the first sign we have of David’s literary talent for inscribing his condition on both a quotidian and a profound level. What he doesn’t describe in this early journal, or in any of the subsequent chronicles that go into depth about who he is and what his dreams are, are the hardships of his childhood. In the biographical time line he provided for Tongues of Flame,* David gives a personal account of his youth: He is born in Red Bank, New Jersey, to a sailor from Detroit and a very young woman from Australia, in 1954. His parents get divorced two years later, leaving David and an older brother and sister in a sinister orphanage. His father visits occasionally, a year or two later kidnaps the children from the orphanage and brings them to Detroit, where they live with uncles and aunts in an unstable household until his father remarries a young woman from Scotland and moves his children back to New Jersey. His father is away sailing most of the time. When David is seven, his father forgets him and his brother and sister at a shopping center miles from home the day before Christmas. There is a blizzard, and his father is drunk.
David spends most of his time in the woods looking at animals. He starts hanging out with teenage boys in a local gang. An older boy tells David to play with his dick. A year later, another boy tells David to put his dick in his mouth. They do it to each other. By now he is eight years old, has taken up smoking, and his father has become more brutal, shooting off guns in the house, killing family pets.
In 1963, soon after Kennedy is assassinated, David and his brother and sister find their mother’s name listed in a Manhattan phone book and secretly meet her in New York City for a few hours. She takes them to the Museum of Modern Art, and David wants to become an artist after that. His father finds out about the trip, and one day when he is drunk, he puts them on a bus to Port Authority, where their mother meets them. They live in Midtown next to a Howard Johnson’s where later Angela Davis will be caught in a wig and dark sunglasses. David is approached several times by strange men before he finally begins hustling. Living in Hell’s Kitchen, discovering his homosexuality, and being encouraged by his mother to paint and draw, David, at age twelve, shows signs of depression and considers suicide.
In 1968–69 he lives on the streets in New Jersey, Long Island, and New York City, sniffs glue, smokes pot and hash, attends Black Panther Party demonstrations, and meets a married lawyer in Times Square who takes him to his home in New Jersey when his family is vacationing elsewhere. This relationship helps David regain some self-worth, and after nearly starving for a year, he is taken care of. In high school David becomes acutely aware of the inequities in society. In 1970, he drops out of school, where he studied art, and lives mostly on the streets. He is drugged once, raped, and beaten while unconscious. He leaves New York City occasionally to escape his life, works as a farmer on the Canadian border, gets a job as a bookstore clerk (in a legitimate bookstore) in Times Square, falls in love with a woman, has a relationship with her for six months, realizes he is truly queer, and goes freight hopping across northern states to San Francisco, where he lives openly gay for the first time and realizes how calm and healthy he feels as a result. He also realizes that being queer is “a wedge that was slowly separating me from a sick society” (Tongues of Flame, p. 117).
From 1974 to 1978, David reads avidly, Genet and Burroughs in particular, and he takes several hitchhiking trips between coasts, interacting with the poverty population and growing more and more angry about the greed and disproportion of wealth and privilege in America. He begins writing street monologues based on the stories of people who live and work on the margins of society, and taking photographs with a camera a street buddy has stolen for him. He keeps a diary regularly, recording the things that happen to him and his feelings about them, letters he writes but doesn’t always send, and art projects he plans to make.
In 1977 David goes to Paris, where his sister lives, and he plans to stay there. After a magical time in Paris and Normandy with a man who speaks little English, David decides to go back to New York City. In 1978 David’s ideas about art making shift: he becomes interested in constructing with words, drawings, photographs, and objects an alternative version of history that disputes the “state-supported” form, which doesn’t take into account how minorities survive. David’s father commits suicide. In 1979 David begins working on a Super-8 film in the abandoned warehouses along the Hudson River, which is also where he spends much time exploring sexual possibilities, creating stencil murals, and gathering stories that he later documents in more monologues.
The 1980s were a cruel time for the poor in America, thanks to Reagan administration policies. Social structures that protected minority populations were dismantled, and any vestiges of humane public policy were abandoned. David becomes more and more invested in documenting these realities in his work—the images, words, and objects he creates have deep meaning to a thoroughly divested underclass, who have less and less access to cultural production and mass media.
Despite his brutal upbringing, and perhaps because of it, David had an invincible will to take control of his life and make of it what most deeply reflected his ideals. Hanging out with junkies and aspiring artists on the Lower East Side, David always resisted their lethargy and nihilism.
Working at Danceteria, taking heroin and speed, he never lost his drive to make work, to understand the world around him, and to improve his self-awareness. He had and wrote about countless sexual encounters, and almost always described these scenes as “lovemaking,” as expressions of himself moving toward another, of gestures, however anonymous and arbitrary, with potential to change him forever.
Memory figures large in David’s life: As a young adult, because of the images he has to overcome in order to heal from his past. As an artist, because his memory is the basis for connecting personal history and social conscience. And, once he becomes ill with AIDS-related symptoms, memory becomes his lifeline. At twenty-one, while hitchhiking, David reflects, “I saw a face in a passing car that looked like someone I once knew. It’s like that when you move on to other places in your life—memories of faces fading like thin ice sheets in winter sidewalk puddles, they melt, become only a part of the water so you can’t separate them ever again, but they do remain there” (July 25, 1976). Memory is also a path to thinking about mortality. As a teenager, he wrestles with these thoughts: “If I turned from twenty-three to eighty in the simple sway from window to bed what lives would remain in my heart, what answers to the questions of solitude and movement?” (September 19, 1977).
David was preoccupied with death and dying long before his peers began to succumb to the AIDS epidemic. But once he loses his friend, mentor, and onetime lover Peter Hujar, and receives his own diagnosis, his visions become overwhelmed by disappointment and rage. It is an intensely creative final period for him, and the diary entries are stricken and mournful:
I’m afraid I’m losing touch with the faces of those I love. I’m losing touch with the current of timelessness.… I won’t grow old and maybe I want to. Maybe nothing can save me. Maybe all my dreams as a kid and as a young guy have fallen down to their knees. Inside my head I wished for years that I could separate into ten different people to give each person I loved a part of myself forever and also have some left over to drift across landscapes and maybe even to go into death or areas that were deadly and have enough of me to survive the death of one or two of me—this was what I thought appropriate for all my desires and I never figured out how to rearrange it all and now I’m in danger of losing the only one of me that is around. I’m in danger of losing my life and what gesture can convey or stop this possibility? What gesture of hands or mind can stop my death? Nothing, and that saddens me. (no date, 1989)
In 1987, I was editing a selection of writings on AIDS for City Lights Review (I had been working as an editor there since 1984), and I invited David to contribute to this forum. I was familiar with his visual art and had not been aware of his writings until he sent me a piece called “AIDS and the Imagination.” This work later became part of his book Close to the Knives. I was awed by the power of his writing, and in our correspondence we became friends. Not until after he designated me to edit his diaries and any other writings that could be collected posthumously, after he died and left his estate to his lover Tom Rauffenbart, and I moved to New York from San Francisco, sublet Tom’s apartment, and read through all of David’s journals, did I discover David’s dream to be published by City Lights, and why he’d responded so openly and generously to my query years ago. That request for material on a subject few of us had been able to articulate: What is the impact of AIDS on the arts? The culture had been altered dramatically by 1987, most abruptly by the loss of great and potential talent, and in a subtle and pernicious way in which a youthful generation became enraged and grief-stricken, seemingly isolated from history and biological families and a dominant culture who for the most part felt exempt from this tragedy and blamed the victims for their own devastating fate.
It has been difficult for me to finalize this manuscript. As a work in progress, it has been a way for me to hold on to a set of feelings and a sense of reality that are perhaps no longer current, but relegating them to the past is like saying it’s over, and it’s not over. Thinking back on five or ten years ago, I realize how different my world was, knowing dozens of people suffering with AIDS-related symptoms, going to hospital wards and memorials, and considering estates of artists who left behind unfinished work. Most of the people I have known with HIV are dead now, and thankfully the few people in my life with AIDS who have survived this long can afford new treatments, and are responding positively to them. (No cure is around the corner, but what a difference it makes for people with symptoms suddenly to feel better for a sustained period of time.) My experience with AIDS now feels falsely part of my past, but I am more than haunted by a decade of loss. How to express the ways in which the images of young people dying in great pain have affected me and my generation? Nothing equips a young person for the horrors AIDS induced, through illness and prejudice and cultural neglect. In retrospect, the eighties and early nineties feel like a Poseidon Adventure some of us survived, and yet I know that many, many more people will lose their lives to AIDS-related diseases, and that my experience in urban America is altogether different from what is going on globally.
How do we in this culture responsibly reflect on and honor the lives lost? How do we prevent ourselves from collapsing so many memories into a totality that effaces the individuality of each person we loved and now miss? These are some of the final questions David engaged in his work, and his frustrations in the end were compounded by his inability to overcome what was taking away his life. Most of us are bewildered by the enormity of such experience, and inaction is often the result. But David continued to write and make art and confront his feelings as long as he could. When he was no longer able to work, his alienation deepened:
I feel like it’s happening to this person called David, but not to me. It’s happening to this person who looks exactly like me, is as tall as me, and I can see through his eyes as if I am in his body, but it’s still not me. So I go on and occasionally this person called David cries or makes plans for the possibility of death or departure or going to a doctor for checkups or dabbles in underground drugs in hopes for more time, and then eventually I get the body back and that David disappears for a while and I go about my daily business doing what I do, what I need or care to do. I sometimes feel bad for that David and can’t believe he is dying. (no date, 1989)
David faced his own mortality with remarkable insight. In completely original terms, he invested his personal explorations and observations with fierce political analysis. In the work he produced, he shed light on facets of experience in America in the late twentieth century for an underclass who will forever be invigorated by his legacy.
Amy Scholder
September 1997
*David Wojnarowicz: Tongues of Flame, the catalog for a major exhibition of his work at University Galleries, Illinois State University, Normal, Illinois, 1990.
David’s first journal, his record of an Outward Bound expedition, was written when he was seventeen years old. The diary is illustrated with maps and drawings of the terrain.
August-September 1971
Hurricane Island Outward Bound School
Grenfell Watch
P.O. Box 438
Vinalhaven, Maine 04863
Thursday, August 19, 1971
The first day we were coming over by ferry. It was foggy and the mist whipped at our faces. I was cold as hell. I started talking to my friend next to me whom I met at the airport. Soon he left with his friend and I sat behind a car to keep out of the cold. I began a conversation with a boy who was to be in my watch; his name was Tony. He is from Long Island. He lives there in the summer with his parents, but during college term he studies art in Sweden. Soon after, we reached Hurricane Island. Our watch officer’s name was Charlie. We immediately went to our assigned tents and changed into running shorts. We ran once around the island and went to supper … a very small meal. I was hungry as hell afterwards. We went to sleep.
Friday, August 20, 1971
We got up and ran around the island. Very exhausting. I finished a cigarette I had and was going to smoke one last one before we signed a pledge to commit ourselves to do to our best ability the challenges and feats. And to stick by each other. Well I had the cigarette in my mouth and a lit match, about to light it. Then one person in my watch said that he feels we should all stick together before we sign the commitment. So in fewer words, I should not smoke my last cigarette. Well, I argued and everyone except Tony sided with George (the guy who started the whole mess). I said, Lordy, Lordy, I’m cured. And turned around all disgusted and walked away.
The kids then came up and apologized about it and said that they realized one last cigarette couldn’t hurt. It was too late anyway since I broke up the cigarette. We went to sleep after supper and after signing the book.
Saturday, August 21, 1971
I learned the first steps in rock climbing. The man who teaches it hit me on the top of the head for doing a wrong signal at the wrong time. I was really pissed off. I am drawing the steps of preliminary rock climbing: Ombeli means I’m hooked up and ready for you to follow. Uprope means Pull up slack rope. The man situated on top of the hill pulls slack. When the slack is pulled up all the way, the man at the bottom shouts, That’s me. The man at the top then says, Climb. The man at the bottom begins to climb and says, Climbing. The man at the top says, Okay, and pulls in the slack as the man ascends. If you kick off any rocks you can call, Below. If you feel yourself falling you call, Tension. The man at the top will immediately brace himself for the impact of the rope when you fall.
We ate lunch and got our swim trunks on and went for a swim in the granite quarry. We ate a lousy dinner of boiled ham and sweet potatoes. Ugh! I began to get tired. Sleep.
Sunday, August 22, 1971
We walked up to the freshwater pond and I caught a snake. A little garter snake. He started puking so I tossed him into the bushes. Imagine that, a sick snake.
We had to tie this rope around each of our waists and one by one crawl onto a little rope over the pond. We had to get to the other side. If one fell in we all would fall in. I was scared because my nice work boots were on. Thank Swami that we made it across and just in time for lunch. I ommmmmed in my mind all the way through the ordeal. After lunch we went on a real rock climb. I was first to go up since I had a dentist appointment. I made it up with very little trouble. I then left on the M. V. Hurricane to get to the dentist in Rockland. The M. V. Hurricane is a tugboat or a type of ferry. I felt seasick but here was my chance to eat all I wanted. I had half the pot of stew and ten oranges. The most I ever ate in my life!
I didn’t get my tooth pulled. Back at H. Island, we began to get ready for the trip tomorrow. We leave on a pulling boat and come back Saturday. Nightfall came quickly. We had a big curse-out fight with another watch. The stars were really bright.
Monday, August 23, 1971
Camp Island
I left early this morning. The swells were about 5 ft. high. I threw up so many times. Finally I passed out. I woke up as we drifted into a nice quiet cove. It was beautiful. I had a nice dinner of burnt macaroni, steamed mussels, and carrots.
Tuesday, August 24, 1971
I slept badly and woke up with a cold. I ate breakfast. We boarded the pulling boat and set sail for the next island. We learned about mainsails, mizzens, square knots, Boling knots, etc. Soon I fell asleep. Today I did not get sick. We sailed farther and farther. I was the bowman. We soon sailed into Bartlett Cove. This is the Girls Island. Unfortunately there were no girls today because they were out on expeditions, like us. I slept soundly.
Wednesday, August 25, 1971
We sailed all day long and all night, we sailed in around 1:40 to Orono Island. We cooked stew and woke up around 4:55 A.M. When I got up this morning …
Thursday, August 26, 1971
I blew my nose and then I lifted a small rock to throw away the tissue. All of a sudden there were two beautiful snakes curled up. One was a green snake with white-green skin and milky white underbody. The other was a common ring-neck snake. Very small, with maroon underbelly. Must have been to the point of shedding. What a find. I let them go. My cold was worse. The sunrise was beautiful. We ran 6 miles afterwards. My legs were about to break. We soon left to sail again. Again I wasn’t sick. We arrived very early at the most beautiful island I have ever seen. The name is Isle au Haut.
There were brine shrimp in the water and crabs running around in the seaweed. Deer were on the island. We found part of a skeleton of a deer. We had a good dinner of stew. (Good night.)
Friday, August 27, 1971
I woke up and walked around for a few minutes. It was very depressing out. The sky was very cloudy and dark. We got on the boat and I became very seasick. I ate some raisins and soon felt better. All of a sudden a report came over the radio about a hurricane which might hit New York and the New England area. We got scared. So we decided to get back to Hurricane Island.
We made it back and had a good dinner of two hamburgers, a bowl of soup, oyster crackers, and pears. I had a great sleep.
Saturday, August 28, 1971
We went rock climbing again and I learned rapelling. This is when you walk off a cliff backwards with ropes attached to you. If you let go with one hand you are going to fall and kill yourself. I remember having dreams of falling off cliffs as a little boy and the sensation was like this. I almost started crying.
The people who contribute to this island are here today. We are having a fantastic meal just to show them how good the camp is run. I am now going to sleep. I have been eating green apples so I have lots of gas. Ugh!!!
Sunday, August 29, 1971
I think that since I have quit smoking, my appetite has grown immensely. I eat and eat, then 15 minutes later I’m starving again. This morning we had like a junior Woodstock. Guitar and flute playing. Tonight I am watching a movie, The Living Desert. It is about all sorts of animals. We went on an ecology walk for preparation for our three-day solo, which will be in a couple of days. I think around Tuesday. They will take us on the M. V. Hurricane (ferryboat) and drop us off one by one on each uninhabited island. We have to live off the land for three days. This will be my chance to get some sleep and rest.
The movie was kind of funny but I was so tired that I slept through the last half of it. I am now in bed, I am very drowsy, so I will be signing off. Good night.
Monday, August 30, 1971
Every morning at 5:30 A.M. we get up, run around the island, and then take a jump into the cold, cold ocean. Brrrrrrr …
Well, this morning as we were running, three boys decided to show off their athletic skills and took off faster and soon disappeared. We have a rule, to stick together while doing everything. Some other boys and I have already hurt ourselves falling while running, so we had to take it slow. Well, we had to do five pull-ups. Those three guys who ran ahead had to come all the way back and do the five pull-ups. They started bitching about having to run slow because of the slower guys.
I was elected as first mate next to captain so I stood up and ordered them to quiet down as is expected of me. One guy, a very good karate pupil, told me to screw myself and to say shut up to his face. I had been fed up with everybody, so I walked up to him and said, Shut up. He did a karate flip on me, but I grabbed onto him before I fell, so I broke the fall.
We will be going on a ropes course which nobody has completed without falling at least once. I will try to do it without falling.
I just took a short walk into the woods. I found a small freshwater pond with a granite rock wall around it. Nearby was a little frail bird’s nest. I picked it up.
I am feeling really depressed. I just caught another green snake on my way to the rope course. It was much smaller than the other one I had caught on Bartlett Island.
I just finished the first part of the ropes course. For some reason my kneecaps hurt so bad that I can’t jump or do anything like that. I got into another argument with a stupid kid named George. I caught a frog in the quarry.
I am seriously thinking about leaving sooner than planned. I hate this situation. I have stuck it out to my fullest capacity. But there is only so much I can take from some people. The course isn’t hard but the people are lousy.
I had a good lunch and am now ready to take over the watch from another crew. The emergency watch is when you serve the meals and stay up all night to make sure that any ships that crash in the dark can be rescued. You also do any job on the island that needs doing.
I helped scrape all the paint off the boat that was washed up on another island. I will be leaving in two days for my solo. Solo is when they take you to the island and let you stay there for three days. I will enjoy being alone and having to find and prepare my own food. I will write recipes for the meals I will have had. I get worried that the maniac might come and kill me in the dark while I am on the island. For some reason I am not afraid of monsters in the dark, but I am scared of maniacs and insane people waiting in the woods, in the dark. I get scared that they will grab me and kill me. I don’t know why and I can’t shake that feeling. I am very anxious to get back in the city, where the cold gray buildings are of some comfort and the lights make me feel safe.
I ate so much at dinner tonight that I am busting. I can’t eat another drop. I am finished with my section of the watch and am now going to sleep. Good Night!
Tuesday, August 31, 1971
I did not have to run and dip this morning. Instead we set up the dishes and silverware and served breakfast. I am on duty again. (The time is now 8:39.) So far no calls have been made except some lady telling her husband’s friend that her husband was sorry about not calling because his mother forgot to give him the message.
Breakfast was the usual oatmeal, 2 slices of bacon, 2 pieces of corn bread, and milk or coffee. I sneaked a peanut butter and jelly out of the kitchen. I am really hungry. Maybe it’s all this exercise.
I am now waiting for my friend to get back from reading poetry at the morning meeting. Tomorrow I go on solo. Hmmm …
I just found out that I am sailing tonight and camping on an island until tomorrow, when I will be placed on an island for three days (solo). I am generally excited about what type of sleeping spot I will have. Where I will eat. What I will eat. And how the weather will be. Will I be able to start a fire, etc.
Well, I am now packed and am ready to sail as soon as everyone gets together. A boy in my watch caught a garter snake. It got away. I feel weird because I want to leave as soon as I get back from solo but I still haven’t spoken to Rafe, the director. I think I will speak to him as soon as I get back. I will continue as soon as I eat dinner or else find out where I will be soloing (which island).
We just finished getting under way. One boy fell overboard. I will be writing a letter for Charlie to give to the director (Rafe) while I am away since I did not have a chance to speak to him before I left. I am going to ask him to telephone my mother and get her permission for me to come home. I hope she says yes (as I really know she will).
It is dark now and I have just set up my tent. I am damp and slightly cold but this night we had steak and baked potatoes and fruit salad to eat, sort of like a last meal. Happy that I am on solid land. I had a few more arguments with some kids in my watch so I will be glad to get on solo.
Wednesday, September 1, 1971
I am now up. Today I shall be put on an island by myself. The name is Babbitch Island. I am cooking breakfast for everyone else. It is now 5:10. I just finished breakfast and am cleaning up. I found out that I will be going to my island by powerboat. Thank Swami, because the pulling boats we use are so damned slow. Ugh!
Well, I am about to have hot cocoa in a pan, what a way to live. I finished getting checked to see if I or anyone else smuggled food with them. Well, I will soon be on the island.
Are you alone?
Are you alone? asked the man and his wife as I trudged past their trailer.
Are you alone? asked the gulls.
Are you alone? asked the ocean.
Are you alone? asked the frogs.
If a man is alone in this wide earth, then a neighbor is of no help.
I am on my island and have set up my tent. I have already eaten a lunch of stewed raspberries. It could have used some sugar, but I was quite contented with it. I am on my way to catch some clams and limpets for dinner. Dessert will be some glasswort (seashore plant—edible). I have found an incredible clam bed about halfway around the island from where I live. The clams are about five inches long. I found that it is easy to get to clams and limpets only when the sun is over behind the raspberry patch.
I will draw a map showing what I know of the island. I really enjoy watching the seals swimming about the cove. I was quite shocked to find out there were seals up in Maine. I thought they were in Alaska, etc. But they swim back and forth and occasionally will climb a rock and rest. This morning we saw ten of them on our way to the islands. I will now go and cook my clams, using a cup of sea water for the salt flavor. I am using a huge mussel shell as a spoon or small dish.
There is an abundant supply of rose hips, a plant that bears tomatolike fruit. It tastes like a mealy apple. The petals of the flowers on rose hip bushes are tasty also. Rose hips are the chief source of vitamin C. So I will eat a few every day.
I am now eating dinner. The sun is as high as ever. I am now doing a drawing of a limpet after being boiled.
I have finished dinner. I had raspberries for dessert. I don’t enjoy eating these wild foods. I keep thinking of Blimpies, Cokes, ice cream, candy. Oh, how I wish I were home.
It is strange but for some reason I have changed and I know it. I have taken for granted many, many things. I will be happy to go into a food store and buy an apple or a cupcake. I will be more than happy to be walking on streets where people sell plastic flowers and pretzels and jewelry. Where the days are darker than the nights at times. To be able to come and go as I please. No island to restrict me.
Thursday, September 2, 1971
Well I am up and ready for a day’s work. This morning I will not eat but will take a walk around my island to find more sources of food other than glasswort, rose hips, limpets, periwinkles, clams, and raspberries. I have found a plastic jug which might prove to be helpful. If I cut it in half it could be a bowl. I will try to think what other uses it could have.
Last night I was feeling pretty sick for some reason. Not my stomach, but my head. It was all cloudy. I went to sleep at approximately 6 o’clock.
The checkup men in the powerboat just came. They come once a day to see if your signal flag is up. If it isn’t up and you don’t wave to them then it means something is seriously wrong.
I must really be psychic because I was walking down to put up my signal flag when I saw a long board. I went over to it thinking there might be a snake under it. Well, just before I got to the board something moved on the grass. I thought it was a toad, so on a close look, I saw part of a snake gliding through the leaves. I caught another green snake. I was tempted to keep it but I let it go.
I just found a huge supply of glasswort past my clam bed. Glasswort is tender, juicy, and already salted with healthful sea salt. Continuing past another cove I found an excellent cattail supply. Cattails can be husked and boiled ten minutes to produce a delicious meaty substance. Cattails grow in freshwater marshes so I will see if I can find any freshwater things to eat.
I have ended up on the other side of the island. I have tried fishing, but there is no luck. I am getting dizzy from time to time from need of food. It is difficult to get used to some of the available sea plants, etc. I dropped my roll of fishing line and it fell a long ways and started to sink. I started pulling in the line as fast as I could which brought the line spool to the surface. I grabbed it. It was hell trying to wind up all that line but I managed it.
I think I will go for a swim later on when I get back.
I feel so sick I can hardly walk. The sun is too strong. I have a terrible headache.
I am about a quarter of a mile from my tent. Thank Swami.
I will cook my food that I have gathered and eat as soon as I get back. I am famished.
I have finished eating and I feel like throwing up. I can’t wait to get back to Hurricane Island and to the meals they serve there. I feel like taking a nap which I think I will do.
Across from my cove is another island. I see a signal flag. One of my friends must be on it.
I just woke up and feel a bit better. I am not so hungry so I will fast until tomorrow. Then that will mean one more day and I will be back again. It is very strange when you don’t use your voice for a period of time. You begin to realize how quiet things are and how beautiful nature is. I hear all kinds of birdcalls while I am writing this. At times I try to answer the call but some are too beautiful which makes it difficult.
I am going for a short walk to find some more curios. I have collected some already. It is fun to find something different from anything you have ever seen. It is low tide now so I can get closer to the water. I finished looking because my strength seems to be draining. I threw up already. I don’t know what to do.
My curios are just the regular things I have been finding. I do not have any feeling or urge to draw in my sketch pad. I keep thinking of good wholesome food. I can’t stomach all these foods out here. I am stomach-sick of clams, limpets, raspberries, and Christ knows what else. I am at this moment sick of every goddamn thing in this world. I wish I were home. I will try to leave right after solo.
I have been throwing up left and right. I ate some cattails and clams. That’s when I started getting really sick. I will see if they will let me go back tomorrow morning. I can’t eat any of this food. I need the normal food they serve at H.I.O.B.S. and at home. I am going crazy. I absolutely have to leave.
I was getting used to the course but I have had enough. I had enough a week ago but I stuck it out until solo thinking I would enjoy the rest. My stomach is killing me. I can hear the juices gurgling inside me. Today I made contact with the island across the way. After the boat left I heard shouting. It was Ricky, my friend. I could barely make out his words but apparently a boy named John in my watch was put on the other side of the island. He made his way to Ricky’s camp and stayed there all night. Apparently he is very scared and homesick. He was going to leave about three days ago but Rafe the director talked him out of it.
Anyway I heard him blow his whistle so he is trying to make contact but I feel too sick to go all the way down to the beach and shout my lungs off. I’d probably end up puking. I think I will go to sleep in a few minutes.
I would rather wake up in the middle of nowhere than in any city on earth.
Friday, September 3, 1971
Last night I went to sleep just before the sun went down. I was not scared. I had quite a lot of trouble getting to sleep because I was getting cramps in my legs and stomach. Also I was extremely hungry. I had about one hour’s sleep altogether.
Late last night my plastic tent was illuminated by light. I thought it was an unusually bright moon. About a half hour later the light was in the same position. I wanted to see if it was a full moon so I put on my glasses and poked part of my head through the opening. It was not the moon, but someone’s flashlight. I was terrified. So I did only what I thought of, and that was to call and say, Who is that?
The light switched off and whoever it was walked down past my tent and onto the path leading to the cove. I am still very frightened from that. I poked my head back into the tent and remained barely breathing for about twenty minutes.
I vomited twice early this morning. I am writing this while waiting for the boat to come. I did not put up my blue flag because I want them to stay ashore so that they can take me away from this place.
I am still very frightened. Tried lighting a fire, but I used up the rest of my matches. I keep thinking I am hearing things. Like walking around in the woods. I am seated on a homemade bench by the sea. The waves are coming in faster and the birds are beginning to chirp. Thank Swami.
If they don’t take me off this island this morning I will swim across to the next island where my friends are. I mean it.
I just finished packing all my things. I have had to. I am going to leave this morning. When I get to Hurricane Island I am going straight to Rafe and demand that he call my mother for permission to let me go home.
I can’t wait to get back to New York City again. I keep thinking about the 8th Avenue Bakery, the candy stand in the drugstore, and Smilers food store sandwiches. I am driving myself crazy with the thought of good food. So far there are only signs of lobster boats. The Meka powerboat is not in sight. When it comes I am going to explain what happened last night and tell them that I can’t stomach the sea plants and animals. I pray to Swami that they will take me back. I don’t care what anyone thinks about me. I’m just sick and tired of all this. I want to be able to eat when I want and where I want. I want, I need time before school starts to adjust myself to the city. It will be bad to be depressed and then go to school at the same time.
My legs are feeling like lead weights are draped around them. I can barely walk. I keep thinking what I am going to say to the people in the boat or back at Hurricane Island. I keep thinking of the city. And all of the food stores. I also think how the children starving in India, Biafra, S.E. Asia, and the U.S. feel. Here I haven’t eaten in two days and I feel this sick? Imagine what they feel.
I will be so happy when I am at the airport ready to board the plane. I JUST CAN’T WAIT. I keep hearing jets and planes passing by and it is nerve-racking waiting for the Meka powerboat. The sun is 1/8 across the sky.
The Meka boat appeared and went to my friend’s island to check if everything was okay. He did not come here. If anything happens to me I am going to bring charges against the Island or H.I.O.B.S.! I think this is pretty sickening. Here I am getting cramps, starving, and throwing up, and the boat misses this island.
The sun is getting stronger. My head is getting cloudy.
Excuse me, but the Meka just came. They said for me to sit down and drink water every once in a while. They said that they were going to check the north islands and would be back this afternoon. If I thought I could stay until tomorrow morning, I could, or else if I didn’t think I could take it, they would bring me back. I am definitely going back. I really couldn’t take another night of staying awake and having cramps.
NO SIR, NOT ME!
I need some good normal food in my stomach. I’m not going to feel bad that I am going back early. I have to if I want to feel better. Some solo. Here I thought I was going to enjoy myself. What a laugh.
No sign of the Meka yet. I really do hope it comes back for me. All my stuff is on the beach and I am lying here writing to pass the time. I keep thinking about food and I am going absolutely crazy. You know that you can have food just about any time you want in the city. If you are starving, you can steal some. But, out here on an island there is no packaged food, only what you can find. And that makes you sick. If they don’t return for me then tomorrow I am definitely going home after a meal on Hurricane Island.
I am feeling worse and the water I have been drinking feels sloshy in my stomach. The bees are buzzing and landing on me. The spiders are crawling around on me. Also the sand fleas and strange insects. I am waiting to see that boat zooming in to pick me up. I feel like crying but I don’t have the strength to. I also feel like cursing out the world.
I don’t know what is happening. I feel like I am about to burst inside. I want to scream and curse and yell and stomp and cry. I could never fall asleep tonight unless I had some good food to eat. Please dear God or Swami or Buddha or whoever is watching, let them come back and pick me up. I can’t take another hour of this. Please.
Where are they????!!!!!!
THE MEKA JUST ARRIVED. They told me that in order for them to pick me up off the island when it isn’t an extreme emergency they have to pick up a license, which would take about four hours. They gave me two slices of bread and a nectarine. I am eating slowly. I will go to sleep as soon as I am finished. They will pick us up tomorrow. Thank Swami!
I just ate another pail of raspberries. They make me nauseous but I have been drinking water and eating a piece of bread. That is so I will be full and then I can sleep. I have not eaten my nectarine. I am saving that until just before I go to sleep (which will be soon). I just saw a man and his two kids walking below on the beach. I suppose I could have said something but to me they represent freedom from this island and I can’t have that freedom until tomorrow morning. So I don’t enjoy looking at them much less speaking to them. I will continue until tomorrow morning. Good night.
I fell asleep and just woke up again. It is still daylight. It is an amazing thing how just a flutter of a bird’s wing or a chirp can wake you instantly if nearby. I have forgotten the city sounds. I feel pretty good right now but occasionally think about tomorrow and a Hurricane Island meal. Also about the airport and its coffee shop and candy stand. Also the donuts and coffee before I board the plane. Yum! Yum! I wish tonight will go very quickly for I am going to get grumbles from my stomach.
It’s funny but I can tell the kind of boat out here before it ever gets into view. While waiting for the Lurcher to appear today, I knew it was a lobster boat when I heard its motors. Well, I will soon try to go back to sleep. I hope I get to sleep. OOOOOMMMMMMM.
The sun is a bright orange ball sinking quickly. I still can’t get to sleep. Maybe when it’s dark the birds will shut up and I will fall to sleep. This light is going to be unbearable. I can feel it in my bones. I did not throw up the food they gave me. It just goes to show you that it is only this food that I am not used to that gets me sick. I am sleeping in a new spot overlooking the ocean. It is getting very foggy out. I can hardly see the other islands. The birds above me are still yakking away every once in a while. The fog is covering the sun but it is still light out. I am getting gas. The sound of the small waves breaking gets to be monotonous but I keep hoping I will soon get to sleep. When I lay down I feel wide awake. But when I sit up I feel sleepy. I am starting to get cold. I shall soon snuggle back into my sleeping bag.
Good night for good!
Saturday, September 4, 1971
Thank Swami, I finally got to sleep last night after about an hour of tossin’ and turnin’. The mosquitoes are biting the hell out of me. It is still very early in the morning. I could not get to sleep so I started dreaming of eating licorice (black). It was very filling and I finally fell asleep with my stomach “full.”
This morning is very foggy. I hope it clears up so I can see the ocean again. Damn those mosquitoes.
I just busted a rock that I found on the beach and inside are little crystals. I don’t know what kind, but I imagine they are quartz crystals.
The sun is starting to come up. I hope it is going to be a beautiful day. The mosquitoes are lessening. But the bites are itching like hell. I have washed them off with alcohol, but it doesn’t faze them. I think I have a long wait for those boats.
I am starting to get hunger pains again, but I can put up with them with the thought in mind of going back to Hurricane Island. I hope they have a meal waiting for us back there because I am not going to do any work without eating first. I am thinking about what is going to happen to people around home now that I’ve decided to come home early. Will Jerry Baron ask why did I give up? Are they going to lose faith in me if I give up? I don’t really care what they say or think because it is I who has made the decision, not them, to come home early.
I felt it was best for me to start the school year with a happy (not depressed) mind and on the same day as everyone else. That way there is no reason for me to mess up. Plus, I am really longing to see the city for the first time in my life. Amazing! Any other summer and I would hate to go home to those dirty streets. But I realize how much I have taken for granted. In fact how much everyone has taken for granted. I think everyone should go to a course like this. It makes them appreciate the freedom they had at home. There is an incredible amount of freedom in the city. Stores when you are hungry. Movies when you are bored. Bookstores when you feel like reading. Bars when you feel like drinking. I could go on for days writing about the things in the city that people take for granted. I just can’t wait to get back to it all. I will enjoy every speck of dirt on the streets and buildings. I will be happy to see all the old bums again. The pimps, prostitutes, and whores. I will be extra happy to see the Broadway Game Room. I will be happy to see my mother and brother and sister and Johnny and James most of all!
The seagulls are fishing right now. They follow the lobster boats because when the lobstermen pull up their traps they throw away the crabs that have gotten inside, so the gulls dive for the crabs. AM I GOING CRAZY? There are what appear to be hummingbirds on this island! They zoom from flower to flower getting nectar. I have to ask about this.
Lobster boats in the distance …
I just thought about one of my friends who wanted to see a green snake so I decided to try and catch one for him. I realize that these uninhabited islands usually have many snakes roaming about fearlessly because no one is here to bother them.
Well, I started looking and pretty soon something flung itself into the taller grass nearby. (I imagine?)
It was a snake but it was too fast for me. I was pretty well pissed off for not being more alert and having seen it before it saw me. Soon I was walking on the other side of my little field and I said to myself, There’s a nice quiet swimming area, and I walked over and what do you know? A little green snake was sliding out down the tiny pathway. I caught this one!
The Meka or the Lurch is not in sight or hearing distance. I’m getting sick.
The Meka picked me and two other friends up and left us on another island while they go pick up more kids. I feel more sick.
Well, we are on the pulling boat and waiting for twelve more people, then they are going to tow us in. It’s a one-hour ride. But the sooner we get started the better I will feel.
My snake almost escaped. I don’t blame him for trying. I realize how it feels to be locked up. He will soon be free.
One more group of people and we are on our way.
My snake got loose on the boat. But I caught him all the way up in the bow. That poor snake is in the hands of Cricked and some other asses who, thank Swami, are not in my watch. I hope he gets back to me alive without any broken ribs.
The man in the lobster boat is talking about homemade apple pie with a scoop of vanilla ice cream.
I met Dr. Spock today and his wife, Jane. He was tall and bald with a little fuzz around his ears. His wife had long brown hair. I was quite shocked speaking with them. I had tea and donuts.
I have had my evening meal and it is a strange feeling eating so much. I am glad to be back on the island where there are three meals a day. Good night!
Sunday, September 5, 1971
After a long run and cold dip I have just finished eating breakfast (delicious pancakes and hot maple syrup). Yum, it was very good. I am on my way to clean up the tents. I will soon speak to Pete Willauer about leaving soon. Everybody tells me that I am going to have a rough time talking to him. But he is only a human being and I feel I have made a decision so things should work out. They better because I have a dollar bet on it.