High School Writing From Memoirs of a Yogini - 1966-1969
April 3rd, 1966 It was foggy all day. I watched television and wrote songs. I've written three so far--"The Dove," "Liberty" and "The Fisherman" and I will probably write another tomorrow. Corinne and Carol are also writing songbooks. We will put them all together later on.
The Dove
I walked down to my garden A dove on the ground I did see. I picked him up very gently And held him close to me.
Little bird, little bird, Come back to life again. Little bird, little bird, I'll keep you until then.
I set him in the shade Of a weeping willow tree. And the weeping willow's branches Wept over him with me.
Then I heard some singing From the tree above where he lay. A dove was sweetly calling To her mate to fly away.
The bird could not answer But still he tried to flee. Though the grasp of death is not gentle A flutter of life could I see.
His eyes slowly opened And gazed up to the sky. The garden was full of sunshine And gave him strength to reply.
He spread his wings to the breeze; Life in him flamed strong. I held him up very gently To the heavens where he belonged.
A song sprang from within him. He sang for all to hear And as he rose higher In the clouds he disappeared.
Little bird, little bird, Life flows in you again. Little bird, little bird, I'll leave you to the wind.
The Liberty song was written as a way transmuting my angst into sorrow and hope for the world. "We have always fought
to be free," refers to a striving for awareness that needs to be taken
to a higher level, from the heart, the real battle being for freedom
from our self-limitations--anger, jealousy, greed and fear.
My most hopeless child thoughts and feelings were assuaged by making up tunes to go with my poems and playing them on my guitar.
Liberty
Had I the wings of a bird and could fly,
Above this world would I wing, For it is said that men down here Would rather fight than sing.
Only birds are truly free; They live upon the wind. But people are trapped in their own misery For few wrong ways do they mend.
We lose our lives in war, in war, But what have we to win? In the streets wander orphans, more and more. When will they stop wanderin?
To a bird above this all, Is there happiness to see? Or do we all love so to quarrel That peace will never be?
Though war is raging ore the land, A beauty lingers still-- In a blooming flower or sun-bleached sand; In a love that war can't still.
This is love found deep in our hearts For something we cannot see. This love was born when life had its start And will last eternally.
What love is this that has no end And is felt so violently? That has been so long in the hearts of all men? It is the Love of liberty. We have always fought to be free.
November 21,1966 Dear Diary, My English teacher told the class what an excellent narrative writer I am. I didn’t feel too dumb!
She had given the class a creative writing assignment. I like poetry and crafts and so made that my topic.
The Potter
The potter
arranged his ceramics on the counter--glazed mugs, urns, a few carefully
molded statuettes, and turned to his first customers sheepishly. His
hair had fallen forward over his face as he bent down to gather
together pottery but he did not notice. He peered at the waiting couple
as one would gaze through a keyhole.
Both
were appraising the simple beauty of his work--gently rounded and
uniquely textured mugs that invited handling, smooth intricately
painted urns, marvelous, expressive figurines that appeared to be both
joyous and enraged, depending on the play of sun and shadow.
The potter became intoxicated with every word of praise, every muffled exclamation.
When
the wife finally spoke to him he remained strangely still, unaware that
he had been spoken to. Her husband repeated their choice. The gruffness
of his tone startled the potter into wakefulness--they wanted to make a
purchase.
The
potter bowed awkwardly, apologetically, "No, no, I'm sorry, they're not
for sale. I'm very sorry--excuse me." And in a sudden, resolute flurry
he began to remove his ceramics from their view, cradling each object
as though it was a frail nestling fallen from a tree.
December 6, 1966 Everything's so freezing cold and wet and windy--I luv it! I feel like running away or writing a poem or something that doesn't seem dumb now but will tomorrow. Instead, in Physic. Ed. class we saw slides of Drill Team and my rank looked worse, not better, and in English we had a class by lantern light. In Biology I got an A on a quiz and in French we had a sub. That must mean something!
Today
Today offers happiness (a flower) Today offers sorrow ( ) Today offers hope (a candle) Today offers tomorrow (a setting/rising sun)
Love, Remembering Death
We love a rose Because we know it will soon die. But who ever loved A stone?
Dear Diary, This isn't the end--it's just easier than making a fat book!
I went shopping all day with my little sister. We were supposed to be out only a few hours. I took $30 out of the bank and spent most of my time looking for size eight black kid gloves, with no luck. Same with a car coat. We had fun though walking around and trying on clothes--until I got home! At the moment I can NEVER drive Mom's car again. Gracious! I sewed a skirt tonight, played bridge and lit a sparkler!
Dad made a Grand Slam at twelve midnight!
My Five-Year Diary's 1966 New Years Eve Memoranda - On Time and Timelessness:
I haven't written a memo for a long time so I guess today is as important as any. I thought of the moment: I don’t think that there is any reality of time passing. The inventor of time did everyone a favor by regulating our lives--but it is an invention, a toy to explain something that no one understands. It's knocking on the door to the truth--a tick tock knock! Time is infinite—a moment is infinity. The door goes on forever. The word "time" can't explain anything because time is too complex, or too simple to be defined.
When I'm faced with abstractions my mind plays games hoping to think something profound--but what I am struggling with is so profound that nothing I can do will ever have comparable meaning or unmeaning. This book is simultaneous time. In a way--is it a door? I really do not know why I am knocking.
January 22, 1967 We didn't go to church because the car won't start in the rain. I did my homework all morning--just Algebra though. I still have to study for French and Biology. I wrote a poem about fantasies making people blind to reality. Fantasies conjured up by adults that hide the often bitter facts of life from the adolescent. Fantasies are pictures on a wall surrounding them.
Squiqqles on My Wall
I left my squiggles on my wall For everyone to see They may not understand them But they laugh and cry the same.
And now I try to erase them For they no longer speak true for the wall But people need something for to laugh Until the stone forms are recalled.
In the natural hewn rock of me In the dusty cracks and crevices In the colors of the earth And texture of all You’ll find my wall With possibly a few scribbles now and again But you may laugh and cry the same… Perhaps more heartily.
January 24, 1967 Live is so short that it should be made as beautiful and worthwhile as possible.
Life is So Short
It is a dark world to me.
I enter and do not know
What is to come.
Dark for you also--
You have come this way
And left it cold.
Our love alone
Is our warmth
And our light.
April 6th Fast the frothy ocean reaches out to lick the sunbleached sand...I gave Lark a present, a box of green drawers filled with: 1. A card and candy. 2. Seven pennies and a note to invest it in a purse she hasn't gotten yet. 3. A bunch of gumballs and a one-inch by one-inch Peter Parker the Spider Man book (oh well!). I failed an algebra final. Stayed after for a cheerleading practice--it's just really fun! No HOMEWORK!!! Went to bed at 11:00 though--I wrote a poem for Mrs. Hollander, my English teacher, entitled "The Undulating Sea":
The Undulating Sea
Fast the frothy ocean reaches Out to lick the sunbleached sand Fingers grasping, slipping, falling, Yielding to the deep again.
Sound the seagulls as they soar Screaming, crying while they prey High above the surging waters, Vanishing at the end of day.
Broken shells upon the rocks Evade the surf that sweeps the sand Forgotten they lie picked, untainted, Taunting the sea to reach again
April 22nd 1967 Got up about 10:00 and all morning just cleaned my room--that's almost everything. Then I finished reading Jean Dixon, which makes me feel for sure that I'll die before or during the 1980's. Nice to know. It's a good book though. It says that everyone has their own eternal flame (!) and individual greatnesss lies not in money but faith and development of divinely granted talents. Which are...(?)
April 23rd 1967 We went to church. My only emotions were boredom and hope that it would end. The church tries to give to the group--not to the individual and his own needs. Morning: I made a pizza and then Mom started driving me and Bob and my Siamese kitten to a cat show far away to let the cat get used to people and loads of other things when we had to go home because the car wouldn't stop unless it was turned off. Home to homework, washing my hair and playing guitar.
April 26th 1967 Mrs. Hollander talked to me about Honors English today—she thinks I'm IT. That's probably because I gave her that IT like poem. She told mom the same things and a lot more at Open House tonight. She adores my every word. That's why I spend so much time on my homework in her class: tonight it came to three and a half hours.
"Satori" Poppycock
During 1968, my Junior year, we poets freely expressed ourselves and compiled and marketed a book of our original work named “Satori.” My PR contribution to Satori was a poster of a hand, whose fingers were people, thoughtfully posed and bearing a crucifix. My entry in Satori was "Poppycock".
Poppycock
I Dusty Beetle on the trail Squiggling, scrubby clown Ceaseless struggle, silent wail-- Twisted circles upside-down.
II Buzzing madly against a silent light, Against the barrier that bars them from The heart of warmth and divine glare, Flies drop in perfect peace To the foot of brilliance which lured them there. Undaunted, the blinding eye burns on Until I flick the switch.
In my notebook I sketched a bird in a nest with one eye open and thick wings and tail, chisled to look like rock. This is what I felt highschool did for me--still a bird, free in my sight, too heavy to fly, with heavy expectations that I fulfill what is expected of a young women.
While my older sister, Carol, was away at college I wrote her a letter about the final days of my Senior year:
Letter to My Collegiate Sister
Dear Carol,
Guess what! I only have to take three finals. Senior year is so easy. I was half expecting an onslaught of grueling exams to test my aptitude for college, but nothing is happening except a Physical Ed. final, Year Book, which doesn't count toward my grade, and Speech. If it stops raining I'll go to Pioneer Town right after finals as usual.
I've decided not to apply to San Jose. I have two applications because I wrote asking for them so often, and one is filled out. Seems like a waste, but I think that if I do get accepted somewhere else then I'll probably go there instead. I if do decide to make journalism my major permanently then I'll be sure to go to San Jose later on unless I'm accepted at the University. I sent my application and transciripts to UCLA but Dad just said I could go to Santa Barbara if I want.
In my English class we just finished reading Dante’s Inferno. We wasted all our discussion time debating the existence of God and other circle subjects.
A circle exists but you can't prove where it began and where it ends and and because of that you can't really ask why without burying yourself inside your own circular mind. What ever is in the circle is, and you can look at it from different angles and see it in different dimensions, but all you are doing is looking through it like a magnifying glass or a mirror or however you think you should be looking at the time. What you see is the same. It's just seen through a different lens.
That's the way God and religion are. That's the way man and his environments are, and it's the same with good and evil. Even this letter is turning into a circular subject!
I've had this idea ever since the second grade when I surprised my teacher with a note that said, "God is a circle. He has no beginning and no end O. Man is a line. He has a beginning and an end--"
Later I put the line in the circle and now I've taken it out temporarily and am seeing the circle from another angle. I'm finding new ways to elaborate on this during my English class final period while everyone is quietly studying.
My girlfriend just asked the guy on the other side of me if he remembered "that circle--the one with the line through it?" They're studying for their calculus exam--wow, another way to look at it! There is probably a different circle for everyone in this room, maybe a few oblongs. God--I better stop now before I go on forever.
Love Always, Nancy
P.S. Write back whenever you get around it.
Graduating Leaving/Going Poetry:
Sundial
Come with me to the round island Where birds fly in circles And every rock upon the shore Is a moment in the time of day.
Rise There is a force willing in me But to bring it forth with no purpose Ah, it will die slowly then.
But just give it a word or two to carry And it will rise with the burden of ages.
Nature Loves I. Slipping, shod Pony climb the muddy mountain.
II. It feels good to wiggle your toes And stretch and yawn And look at the space in front of your face That you made with your morning eyes.
III. I found a tree A snake goddess And she never says a word But lets her snakes bask Silver-lined In the sun.
Astral Projection -- Our Teen Flick
Just before the end of my senior year while digging through my locker I was approached by a longtime classmate who suavely asked me to star in his film. Hmm! about astral projection! Finally something I could relate to!
I wrote in his Senior yearbook,
"Vip, I can't believe I just met you a couple weeks ago. It seems like I've known you at least all year. I really like talking with you--you say things and communicate. I'm so sick of some people that I've known because I can't really get to know them. It's terrible!
I hope your film comes out fantastically. If it isn't, the cast party should be! Sometime I'd like to astral project myself for real. Wow--I tried self-hypnotism last night and the wall almost fell over on me! Was really a trip.
It's unbelievable how you've managed to stay so natural when everyone is losing their minds. Hmm--that doesn't sound right. Anyway have a beautiful, mind-opening summer. Hope to see you--I'll project myself some way....Luv, Nancy"
Vip and his film crew started shooting our movie that summer. Acting meant walking dreamily through the woods and across ocean cliffs through thick morning fog, collapsing as I left my body. It was a fun summer because of the great buddy rapport amongst the film crew, the lunches at McDonalds and our searches for cliff top filming locations. And none of the guys made any moves on me.
There were no pits to fall into, just the penciled dots on my diary pages--my secret method of recording smoking marijuana, representing the black dots on the white sheet of my soul.
I ceased pretending to conform.
From our backyard on the peninsula could be seen the Los Angeles basin up to the mountains, encompassed by the blue of Redondo and Torrance seas. In the mornings a brackish brown cloud would slowly rise from city streets, filling the basin, until even the mountains were obscured from view. And in the blackness of night the basin filled with glorious twinkling, moving stars. To me these lights represented vehicles, streetlights, homes and signals, longing, hope, loneliness, abuse and urgency. I felt the joys but also the silent pain of people, and vowed to go into that smog someday, the false stars, and help others rise above it. But how??? It was a challenge to my soul, and my life's goal.
The following entry fills the last pages of my five-year High School Diary, yet is a glimpse into my life after my first semester at UCLA. I had been living in a dorm with my sweet hippy Jewish roommate from San Diego, whom I visited over the New Years holiday.
I Got to Go My Own Way
December 28th 1969
Today's January 13th (sorry!) but the last few days of December I
remember. I drove Carol's car to Anaheim. Slept over at Linda W.'s,
took a train to San Diego, met Hen, Diane (Diane on the train) &
Hair. Stayed at Hen's. Went to a party, seemed to have fun the whole
week. Spent a couple days more in Anaheim, riding horses with Diana
after January first. I went to a party in Pasadena the evening of
January but was martyrly sick the whole time (I didn’t announce it cuz
Hen felt so crummy with her tonsils out. I got to know people better
though. . .)
I would have written in here sooner but I kept
waiting for a convenient time. I didn't want to write while I was in a
mood that wouldn't let me feel comfortable with myself. This is the
closest I've come I guess because Hen left for the weekend and there's
no pressure on me to be anything. Still--I might feel the same thing but
be in a different mood tomorrow and maybe read like a different person.
I hate to say it but I don't believe that there is very much of
me in this five-year diary. It's a record of my hang-ups and my
illusions. I've always been so overwhelmed by other people and
influences whom I am over sensitive to, that I have put up defensives.
Even in here you can sense that I've been afraid to open too
often--afraid of overwhelming myself with me.
That is something
I'd begin to do now but writing down what I go through everyday is not
what I want to do. I reflect too much as it is--I was a walking
diary--only a few notes written--never seeing myself whole. Five years of
having tiny spaces to write in kind of gets to you. It became an
influence on how I think.
I
might do a diary of drawings next. Depending on my moods I can express
myself better that way. Words are incapable of feeling
and when I really want to say something it is a feeling, not some
intellectual conclusion. This diary is so bare of drawings--I can't
believe it! I'm going to change and open myself a lot more but it's not
going in a diary that has an inch a day. Like this really is the end.
Writing is beautiful and free and revealing when it isn't so structured
as this. I hope that I have come through occasionally. Me, Nancy. Who I
am matters to me--so I can matter tomorrow.
