I have two bound pocket notebooks, 3 inches x 4.5 inches, filled in 1977 and 1978. The 1977 notebook is from the American Farm Bureau Federation, the 1965 edition, which is set up as a diary with space for short entries and on some pages extra space for a “Memo.” The introduction states: “If you carry this book, you are one of those who are active in making Farm Bureau what it is: an effective business, social, and political action organization.” This belonged to my father, who worked in the wool industry in Massachusetts and California in the 1960s. I don’t remember how it came to me, but it was a perfect tool for my writing on the run. In the back is a basic U.S. map with the locations of Farm Bureau offices. On the cover I put a label that reads: Paul Marion, 1977 Notes.
The second notebook, same size, is titled Diary, 1953, from L. C. Anderson, Inc. of Boston, a General Electric Distributor of Air Conditioning Products. The tiny book is loaded with “reference information and convenient tables” covering Refrigeration Pressure, Motor Wiring, Melting Points, Measures and Weights, Population of U.S. Cities, and more, with color maps of the U.S. and world. On the cover I put a label that reads: 1978 Notes, Paul Marion.
I filled both of these with every kind of information coming my way or springing from my mind to my hand. Among the entries are ideas, phrases, sentences, and images that worked their way into various poems of mine. But there is plenty here that never went beyond the small paper workbench I carried around for a couple of years. At the same time, I had other notebooks and large-format bound sketchbooks that I called Workbooks. In those years, I lived with my parents in a two-bedroom apartment at Whitecliff Manor, a fairly new complex, off Mammoth Road in Dracut, Mass. I had a job and got around to Boston and Cambridge, Mass., the Atlantic coast, and Downeast Maine.
I was 23 and 24 years old when I filled these notebooks. I was trying to pay attention to and make sense of what was going on in my life, although not in the style of a diary. The excerpt below amounts to about one half of the 1977 notebook. I’ll transcribe more as I go along. The entries are selected (for length) and slightly edited because I’m reviewing them so many years later. Many entries are not dated, so I used the existing dates in the notebook to group them.—PM
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Hampton Beach, Atlantic Ocean (2-11-77)
A fisherman in yellow rubber overalls on his knees digging clams, filling a red pail. Calm inlet, cluster of boats at anchor, gray-blue sky, one boat starts its engine, the agitated seagulls screech, not excited or scared sounds, but as if in conversation, not a song — the metal-blue water in Hampton Harbor — snow, sand, saltwater — in one boat a man feeds gulls. Smells seawater here, the air is cold, sun is hot and white.
The clammer leaves a trail of sand, a trench line. A white boat with aqua trim heads out to the ocean, chugs contentedly, glides forward. The gulls react noisily as the boat passes under them. Far off, gulls cry like whining dogs, a repeated “einh, eihn!” A piercing sound in the still day.
I walk on the hard-packed snow and ice out to the tan sand, the small beach.
From The Boston Globe, (2-11-77)
Old German farmer in Nova Scotia tells a story about being in charge of all trucks on the Russian front during World War II. Says the water was so polluted that soldiers could not drink it. They all drank vodka. “We were drunk all the time. Why do you think we lost the war?”
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From TV
In New York City, 2 men were arrested for trying to squeeze thorough a subway turnstile at once. Police found $40,000 cash on them.
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Picked Up Along the Way
In one legend, the Indian says to the Grizzly: Your heart is black, your blood is black, you kill at night. There is nothing in you that can stand the light of day, you who walk like a man.
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Attila the Hun was from Mongolia
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Darwin sailed 5 years on The Beagle. Natural selection. Darwin read Malthus on population. Origin of Species by Darwin, pub. 1859.
To know a person, know their social circumstances. Species are affected by their environment.
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Aristotle is used as a cover for dogmatic repetition. Beware of common sense. Sun and moon look the same size. Galileo claimed Earth moves around the sun in support of Copernicus. Aristotle taught that the planets and heavenly bodies were perfect and the Earth was imperfect, Earth was at rest. Copernicus theorized that the universe is heliocentric with the sun in the center. He used a telescope. Galileo said, “Wine is air held together by light.”
Nature is inexorable and immutable, although Scripture can be misinterpreted by humans.
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Snow: coarse, granular, corn, powder, hairy, icy, packed, crystal
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A mouth tasting like wild strawberries and honey — “She moved to a man like a mountain lion, smooth and swift — I almost drowned in the taste and feel of her” — (from TV)
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a widow’s walk by the sea
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The photographer’s box, a black eye in my hand
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“I feel like I fit right here,” she said. We want to be judged by our loves.
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Nothing is easy, is it? Nothing is easy, is it?
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Valentine’s Day
Swans mate for life. Heard on the radio that a swan died on Valentine’s Day after pining for weeks for a mate who had been killed.
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Bits and Pieces
Action people read periodicals? Thought people read books?
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On Tyranny by Leo Strauss. Xenophon’s Hiero or Tyrannicus. “Don’t be selfish, don’t do for yourself, do for people and the city, and you will be praised and honored and loved,” says the poet Simonedes to Hiero in the dialogue.
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sui generis, a unique individual
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glabella: the smooth area between the eyebrows just above the nose, from Latin, glabellus, hairless
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higher and higher, what we acquire
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Like a choir, her moving parts — her hands like cavalry rescuing me
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His poems have a vigorous gait.
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“Pigeons on the grass, alas.” (Gertrude Stein)
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nihil novi sub soli (nothing new under the sun). But there is something new under the sun.
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In times of stress, people make pilgrimages, seek serenity in the wilderness — rain, earth —
Old Ways revived — Oglala Sioux holy man Black Elk prophesied that the “Indian” would be reborn 5 generations after his death — legends, deeds, honors on a totem pole — Indian ecumenical council — 5 generations would bring “back” new spirit, pride — tipis stand in meadows during the summer hunts in Alberta, Canada — search for revelation, inner certainty, worship the creator — generosity brought honor to the giver of presents, canoes and blankets — the wealth of the chief is shared with his people — what matters is what you give to life — remote eyes of old men enter mysteries — pipe smoking, all night long prayers, sweat lodge, peyote ceremony, chants, dance, intertribal pow-wow in Windowrock, Arizona
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This has been the coldest winter in 190 years.
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Wincing from headlights all the way home.
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Rosy sundown behind white houses in white yards. Mixing enough vivid colors will produce Black.
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Gadgets including smoke-smelling machines — if there’s a fire, just wait till I grab my jeans
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syzygy, canal, truculent, innate, make-and-break engine, Baboquivari (mountains, Arizona desert), tannic acid (lustrous yellow to light brown),
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boiling water swarms the tea
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A library is like a clock. You want it to be there when you need it.
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Impermanence dogging me until I accept it.
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“Take it easy, but take it.” (Woody Guthrie)
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That is why she is she and I am me, and both are better for it.
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She said, “Yeah, if you ate a telephone booth full of yogurt, it would probably kill you, too.”
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A straw bucket of yellow daffodils near my plate of scrambled eggs and home-fried potatoes.
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Poets are crows stealing rag bits to build nests.
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The kind of weather that would speak with a drawl.
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quark: smallest bit of matter
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Two tigers cannot share a hill (Chinese proverb)
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Dream (5-7-77)
I’m knee-deep in a pond with a vacuum sucking up algae.
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Saving String
Good is that space we can’t cross between us & IT.
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Shooting in the dark with a scatter gun.
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We were more than fluent together. Our fluency was ease.
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(5-13-77)
The blue sky and green trees are so pure that they appear to be false.
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Astronauts record that the moon has a tone like chimes or glass tinkling.
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All I can say is that the junction of the two doesn’t equal the correlative of the ancillary.
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For the Heart
I would like you to be eager, but love’s velocity strikes me out.
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Every time she comes in, I feel the room tilt.
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Useful Scraps, Small Observations
The preacher chewing on a hangnail; the carpenter lighting a fuse.
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American Education: The Declaration, Reynolds v. Sims (one man, one vote), and time out for the National Hockey League.
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Those cadets, their shiny buttons say press here for death.
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Two inspiring women whom I met: Katherine Ann Porter and Hannah Arendt. From them I learned how a story is made and how to recognize evil in the world.
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Wet mornings when I’d soak my shoes in dew.
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“You must submit to vulgarity or cease to be the Prime Minister.” (Lady Glencora to Plantagenet Palliser, PBS TV series)
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A person who loses someone important is like a place whose landmarks were torn down — what’s familiar is gone, and you are lost when you try to go ahead.
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French Intensive Farming
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archangels: the best, the ones with the biggest wings
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the topography of actions
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Schumpeter: creative destruction in the economy
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Try to coexist with the hornets
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What it’s like to have lots of money — there are people around us who are very powerful, who would kill to retain power — when reform is impossible from above, revolution from below is inevitable.
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Stung by fever on the last voyage, thirsting for a frontier to witness or be swallowed by like Jonah in the dark gut of the whale, alone with his prayers and counting the ribs.
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