Self-indulgence

3-30-2014
Poems are on their way to Eric and Jim Standford. Eric sent a poem and 20 stunning cards with examples of his photographs on the cover of each note. He has gone into business I think, hopefully, to supplement his income, now that he no longer has a full time job. He calls himself "The Monkey Mind Press." I sent sent more samples to Jim because he needs to see more of what I have been doing. Decided to tell him I was madcap surrealist who uses illogic and humor as weapons. The two of them are the first people to read my poems. I have no idea how they might react.

Skip was writing me every day for 2 wks than he dried up. He's funny dude, very idiosyncratic. He has has his own ideas about art and if it ain't funky it ain't art or at least not to be taken seriously. He gave the painting I gave him years ago to young Mike Pitt. Sharon's son. He didn't want me to know he did that. From that I assume he isn't that impressed with my work. It made me think of Scott Bell's comment to me when I first started made the turn in the early 70s. He called my work self-indulgent, a notion he got from one of his Berkeley art profs. Then this morning I read in the NYT Magazine an interview with Barbara Ehrenreich whose new book is titled Living With a Wild God. A big surprise coming from her, something she is aware of, too. It harks back to an experience she had when she had when she was 17, one that was "spooky" and maybe even "pathological." She never thought she'd write a memoir because she views them as "an exercise in vanity." She described her experience this way:"The whole world came to life, and the difference myself and everything else dissolved...it was a world in flames."She was honestly worried what people would say, particularly on male friend who she thought he might call her a "petit-bourgeois self-indulgence."However, the friend surprised her by saying the book would reach a lot of people with similar experience. "You are not alone." God, do I understand her dilemma. I felt in the quandary while I was still teaching. Fred Spratt led the way by thinking my work showed traces of pathology. Then I discovered James Hillman's books that said we can work with that condition and I believe I have. But my books have gone nowhere, maybe because they seem vanity-driven.