Can't describe this better than Jay himself. The following from Feb 27th entry in "Hello, NYC!" as he debates the pros and cons of participating in the trip:
"...One thing for certain: if I do go, I will not, under any circumstances, try to participate in the extrava-nonsense, but instead I go as the OBSERVER… nothing more! I will linger in the shadows, the outskirts, the background, the fringes. Turn around, there I am… watching. I embrace my role as carnival correspondent and spy. It suits my temperament. And besides, I know better than to try to integrate in a more participatory way; for I would doubtless fail."
And we think that sums it up pretty well.
--Eds.
x
Spring Broken (10/13)
March 23, 1991
Choose a different dreamscape
Spring Broken, like an old windup watch. A Mickey Mouse watch. Or like a burnt wooden match, snapped. Listening to Poi Dog Pondering with their mellow, Dead-like vibes from stereo speakers.
Key West turned rapidly to Ft. Lauderdale to Coach’s house to Alex’s car to this apartment in Washington DC where I sit my sorry ass and scribe it down: M.M. and the mysteriously invisible (or more likely absent) T.S.F. Slept some superhuman duration. Still woozy and cotton-brained from it. Mañana, in theory, NYC through $25 bus ticket at, say, 11:30 or 1pm. In preparation, MM and I gonna see New Jack City. But for now, quick scribble herein.
I bid (past tense) adieu to the others – C.B., P+A.S. et. al.
[Um… there is rain. And it sprinkles then darkens and rattles ‘round the toys in the yard of this peeling house. The toys rust, presumably. Hearkens me back to happier days of youth and yore when a sudden rain like this would find me bolt upright, wondering if I returned my bike to the barn or left it vulnerable in the yard. Odd the way a sudden rain will still spark this vague anxiety, probably always will… A dog sniffs disinterestedly at a tricycle on its side in the dark grass of the yard. Tricycle = child. Behind the glass, on my side, the room is dark but dry and quiet except for the rain on the pane. Warmth = summer. A summer rain, we’ll say. The child watches the dog circle the yard pausing, sniffing.
Spring Broken. NYC is where I return to where I now call home, for better or worse. Cement + damp in the rain. And I picture it silent also. Maybe creaking a little, but relatively silent.
I return to NY full of fresh resolve, full of intent and ambition. Enough of this sitting around idly contemplating my navel. Hellz no, up! Fist raised. Gonna make something happen, this boy, this time, of the literary sort. Spring Broken or some kind of extended prose poem. Gotta write something of breadth, depth and, most importantly, substance! Don’t know what yet, but that matters not. Gotta scribble scribble scribble, that much is clear. Under the auspices of my new semi part time job which leaves me mercifully free to pursue that which not so mercifully (mercilessly?) pursues me.
Maybe the ski story based on numerous Lake Tahoe experiences and adventures last winter? All I really picture is the rim of Thimble Peak, at Kirkwood, just catching a rose-gold hue in the first sun of morning, wisps of snow breaking off the cornice and crags and drifting away like clouds caught up there and trying to tear free.