What do you think of the four highs? Well, I'm glad to be here. It's sort of a part of the Dharma, aren't we? It's a good way of integrating it in. The original title of what I was supposed to talk about was cocksucking and Dharma, or a Dharmic approach to lovemaking, or relationship, I guess. And what I would like to do to begin with, or to start it off, is read poetry, which reflects different changing attitudes over the years, but mostly recent years' poetry. But I'll start with much earlier. My own relation to coming out, actually, was odd, because I knew that I liked men, or boys,

[01:06]

since I was eight or nine, or earlier. But it seemed... I felt too sensitive to tell anybody, because I was afraid I'd be mocked or put down, particularly by the grammar school and high school kids that I had crushes on. So actually, I never said anything to anybody until I was 18. And I'd been in college for a couple of years, and the first person I told that I liked men was Kerouac, who said, knowing there was going to be trouble, because I told him I was in love with him. Another tragedy coming down the road. But the reason I was able to talk to him was that he was so totally permissive and tolerant, and basically tender, in the sense of seeing the eccentric oddity

[02:10]

of almost all the people that he knew, maybe in a little bit of stereotype or caricature, but a kind of dear caricature, rather than an ugly one, an appreciative caricature, so that he knew a lot of odd people, like huge, ungainly fairies, and odd, thin, skeletal dope fiends around Times Square, or like Burroughs. And he appreciated everybody for their particular taste or individuality. And even though he came from a Canuck, peasant, Catholic, macho attitudinal background, and he still carried all those, there was a sort of a larger side of him that was a secret side, which was a totally high teacup amusement at everything. In fact, that phrase, high teacup queen, comes from some gossip in New York that he used in his poetry a lot. He has got a poem in Mexico City Blues, it says,

[03:12]

let's see, I'm one of the great bullshit artists, girls, that kind of camping I don't object to. Then the poem begins, I'm one of the world's great bullshit artists, girls, that kind of camping I don't object to, as long as it's red hot. So as long as it was like a real passion and a hard gem like flame, I think he dug it. And the way he dug, people's desires and passions turned me on, I felt permission for my own individual weird lonesome fire to show it to him. And actually what we did make out, as the years went by, on and off, so actually under the exterior of a tough guy,

[04:19]

he was real tender and actually quite open, but inhibited himself, because he always had his mother yattering in the back of his brain, who yattered at his girlfriends as well as his boyfriends, it didn't matter. So he had a very difficult time, and I think because of that, probably drank himself to death ultimately, having to deal with his mother and internalize her redneck views, and at the same time, understand and appreciate his own and his friends' mad life, and understand how real it was in life to be hung up on shit or animals or people. But there was always a funny little edge of sanity in them that would bring it back to the norm, which almost everybody had, to see things through bourgeois eyes as well, as a kind of balance. So my own openly homosexual life grew from that,

[05:27]

and then Burroughs was around, this being around 1947, 46, 47, and with Burroughs, nothing human was alien. In fact, Karawack's provincial machismo was a constant source of amusement to Burroughs, and Karawack took it. He respected Burroughs as someone whose mind was cut through bullshit. And so with Burroughs around as a kind of anchor man for homosexuality, and me as a kind of puppy dog trailing along, Karawack sort of opened up quite a bit in terms of his appreciation of the possibility of anybody being all right, as they were. The weird thing was that there was one night that Karawack went to see Burroughs in, I think, 1946, and Burroughs was warning him,

[06:30]

listen, Jack, you better watch out. You're tied to your mother's apron strings, and there are long strings now, but as time goes on, it's going to wind around closer and closer, and you're going to be stuck with her, and then you'll never be able to get away. And it actually struck him, the little prophecy struck him, and it made him shudder. I was living in Hartley Hall at Columbia University, and he came uptown about 11 o'clock at night to see me and tell me about the conversation with Burroughs, and I had just finished a long juvenile poem called The Last Voyage, imitating Baudelaire's Voyage and Rimbaud's Bateau Hiver, which are two big classical poems about a mental adventure. And so I created my long poem, and Karawack told me this long story, and it was one in the morning, and it was too late for him to go back home, so he stayed over with me in my room at Columbia. And I had never made it with him, and I was, in fact, a virgin.

[07:31]

And I think he had gotten some blowjobs as a sailor and something like that. He probably actually had more experience than me, but boasted of it in such a way that it wasn't open. So we lay down with our underwear on, went to bed, and fell asleep. That he had been banned from the campus at Columbia had been a wholesome element. Because of some other scandal prior, a couple years prior, and he had quit the football team. The assistant coach was named Furman, who is now dean of students, or was an assistant dean of students. And... Yeah. Do you want to move over? Any questions? Yeah. Yeah. And maybe Phil would like to come down also. Michael. So there's room there now.

[08:51]

Is that supposed to be my tree? It's supposed to be my tree. Friendly. Finally. Well, it was a long story. You should tell us how it started. Well, it started in bed in our underwear. And we fell asleep because I was too scared to make a move and he wasn't that interested, obviously. Or he wasn't obviously interested in that. However, about eight in the morning, there was a bang on the door, which was unlocked. It burst. Assistant dean Furman, who was in student-faculty relations, what I was saying was, Carrick had quit the football team to read Shakespeare and he hurt his leg and he thought it was too macho a scene and he didn't like it and he wanted a big sensitive Shakespeare play

[09:56]

as his object of study when he was a student. So Furman came in having... because there was some other scene that had led him to come visit me and check me out and found me in bed with Kerouac, both of us sleeping innocently. So Kerouac took one look at him and jumped out of bed and ran across the room into the adjoining room where my roommate lived and got in his bed and pulled the covers over his head and went back to sleep immediately. He didn't want to have anything to do with it. And Furman said to me, the dean will want to see you. So I went downstairs and I found a note in my box for a guest saying that the price for an overnight guest, $2.98, 1946, and a note saying that the dean wanted to see me at two in the afternoon and I went to see Dean Nicholas D. McKnight and came into his office and he looked at me and I sat down in front of the desk and said, Mr. Ginsberg,

[10:56]

I hope you realize the enormity of what you have done. And I flashed onto a book that Burroughs had loaned both of us which was Louis Ferdinand and Céline's Journey to the End of the Night where Céline is sitting getting drunk in a cafe with his friend Robinson talking about how all the intellectuals are all fucked up around World War I and it's time to for people to wake up and be themselves and they get drunk together and they see a parade coming down the street of soldiers marching to volunteer for World War I and they're so drunk they join the parade having a good time saying, I'll show everybody what it is to be men and pretty soon they're on the outskirts there's cheering crowds and pretty soon they're on the outskirts of the city and pretty soon they're sobering up and they're in a lonely place way on the in the suburbs and he's about ready to say, what am I doing here when a gate clanks behind him and he finds that he's been inducted in the army and the next scene is

[11:58]

he's on the battlefield and there are bullets whistling by and officers raving about charging and take this message to the general and bombs exploding nearby and he suddenly realizes he didn't know how he got there but he's in a place where everybody's absolutely mad and trying to kill each other and realizes he's surrounded by people who are completely insane and he should get out of there immediately so when the dean said to me Mr. Ginsberg I hope you realize the enormity of what you've done I suddenly realized he was stark staring mad because I hadn't not only had I not done something but even if I had done something so what whatever it was he wouldn't have understood so I realized the authority structure around me at Columbia really didn't understand any human situation much less the fact that I was a shy trembling virgin and had sort of crept to the other side of the bed and left lots of space between me and Karawack so my reply to him was

[13:01]

oh I do sir I do I understand completely what I had to do to make up for it acting as Celine said in as cowardly fashion as possible to appease whoever it was I was dealing with and not to offend any further so I wound up getting into another you know cycle of activity but from then on I felt that I'd have to trust my own senses and trust Karawack's senses and trust Burroughs's senses and trust my friends with whom I had some sense of rapport rather than trust some invisible structure of ideas and morals and authority that really didn't seem to fit or relate directly to my direct perceptions so I took that for granted for a long while and by the time say twelve years later we had written

[14:02]

a lot of texts and there was a censorship scene in Chicago in 1958 with a magazine called Big Table which published the first of Gregory Corso's long poems and the first long passages from Burroughs's Naked Lunch and some inspired automatic babble prose by Karawack called Old Angel Midnight that had been stopped by the University of Chicago censored and then we formed a magazine called Big Table and it was published in that and we went out to Chicago me Corso Orlovsky went out to Chicago to give a reading to raise money for the magazine so it was a big reading which was actually quite inspired because everybody was turned on we were by the occasion and after a lady in the audience after I'd read Howells and Kaddish or portions of the poem to Kaddish a lady in the audience which was an audience that was the mentality of the late 50s

[15:02]

raised her hand in the question period and said Mr. Ginsburg why are there so many homosexual references in your poetry so I didn't quite understand where the question was coming from so it was very simple so I said because I'm queer the mentality of the time was that one would never put such stuff in unless one were trying to shock or one were trying to be provocative or one were trying to be goofy or surrealist or set off a stick of dynamite or do something funny but never because it was just simple ordinary mind just a straightforward ordinary mind so my reply was actually kind of overwhelmed because I'm queer it wouldn't be any other reason but I didn't say that so that immediately became twisted slightly in public reporting as because I'm queer madam instead of just straightforward bewildered because

[16:04]

I'm queer so there still was that shadow of some kind of an Oscar Wilde front array if not a Dadaist Surrealist Anarchist bomb-throwing shot or mental bomb-throwing shot so I guess the best approach toward being queer is as with ordinary mind which is a traditional Dharmic approach which brings up another aspect of it I ran into Peter Orlowski a friend who was very beautiful and young when I was 28 and he was 20 down on Polk Gulch at Foster's around Foster's cafeteria in 19 which was then I guess the burrito which was at that time somewhat a bohemian and gay center Polk Street was even then it wasn't like now but it was just sort of on the edge of anything goes

[17:05]

nothing human alien there were a lot of old European bohemians painters kind of a nice intellectual old-fashioned atmosphere and Foster's was an all-night cafeteria and you could sit there and have coffee and meet artists and talk and so through a painter Robert Levine I ran into Peter Orlowski and we within a half year or so we had settled down together the terms of our settling were interesting I had had a girlfriend the first year that I was here and had an apartment in Nott Hill and a job on Montgomery Street in marketing research and several secretaries and it was all set up as a good almost playboy-ish existence and also I was being taking psychiatric lessons and being psychiatrised at Langley Quarter by an intelligent guy actually Dr. Philip Hicks who worked out of

[18:06]

St. Raphael and if you've got psychic problems I'd recommend him Washington School and that was the end of about five years of psychotherapy he was the last of the doctors I had and he was very straight and a family man and agreeable and very open-minded so my girlfriend put me down once I fell in love with her and so there was a little some kind of disturbance and I wound up meeting Peter and digging Peter and he dug me but we were uncertain as to whether we really wanted to commit ourselves to each other or even just live together that was the basic thing live together and make love so that was what I wanted to do but I realised if I were able if I was able to get that the only way it would be worthwhile having is if it were free as if it were uncoerced by me because he was younger and if he was interested because if he wasn't really interested then sooner or later

[19:06]

I'd be begging for a drink again or something or in a scene where it was painful and not getting and I wouldn't be getting my rocks off anyway and it would be emotionally disturbing and I'd find myself sort of trying to pressure him so there was a kind of waiting period of engagement engagement period almost we didn't make it we had made it once and then we didn't make it and we were trying to decide where we were in relation to each other I talked to my psychiatrist and he he asked him what do you really want to do so I said well if I really had my way I'd move in with Peter and I'd stop working forever and I'd write poetry and not work anymore in regular jobs and just go off on an adventure so he said well why don't you do that is that what you really want to do I said I really do want to do that but he said so why don't

[20:07]

you do it so I said well what would the American Psychoanalytic Association say and he said he said there's no party line which left it wide open it was really amazing from a psychiatrist because I still was somewhat stuck on sort of approval or some authority figure approving or giving permission and that left things pretty much open actually so I did that so then there's this waiting period for Peter where I found a hands off approach was better than rushing or pushing or grabbing and that worked out because he was uncertain what he wanted to do and he really liked me so we finally made a kind of compact basically in another cafeteria downtown which was sort of a marriage of minds or something which was a promise to

[21:07]

let's say that I could own him and he could own me completely body speech and mind and part of it oddly enough was a little sort of inkling until because I was more hungry than he sexually because he liked girls primarily so until my craving was satiated by satiety by by complete permission but I remember there was that built in clause sort of a prophetic clause until my desire was so satisfied that it was alright I didn't have to worry about it anymore maybe you know wear it out but the basic thing was permission for us to have each other in any way we wanted then part of that was he liked girls and one thing I found that if he went out

[22:07]

with girls a lot he came back exuberant and very sexy so the more he made out with girls the more he made out with me so that I found it was to my best interest that he make out so that immediately ruled out a grasped and possessive exclusive monopoly shot because I found that he was more than enough for me and all of his girls and so for a while actually we used to go around together and take off our clothes at parties and try to seduce girls because I enjoyed that also because I liked girls a little and also because I found that in the course of a tiny orgy I would also come so the basis of our relationship was non non-monopolistic possessiveness but non-monopolistic possessiveness there was no exclusive shot and that made things much easier both for him and for me because occasionally

[23:08]

I would meet somebody that I liked and wanted to make out and actually he felt a little relieved at that because all the weight of my heavy unsatisfied desire didn't fall all on him and so that was sort of the basis of the relationship we had and it seemed to stabilize things so that we've been together ever since 1954 Christmas 2 1981 now then about 1970 I began doing a lot of sitting with Swami Muktananda and then with Chogyam Trungpa in 72 and went off in 73 to a long session or seminary situation and Peter visited and sat a couple days then by 76 he found it useful to sit also so he went off to the same seminary to become initiated into Vajrayana practice and

[24:09]

he's taken to that so now it's kind of dharma companionship as well as erotic as well as sentimental friendship the basis was trust I think that we trusted each other not to not to short change each other ultimately emotionally and to take care of each other and so what developed was like out of the trust and out of the original impulses erotic desire or whatever in his part I think it was admiration for me it was what developed was a trusting friendship so that actually by this time we've more or less outworn the sexual but we get together we've been absent for a while we do get together and make love er this year he was talking about getting married and getting a kid because he's 48 now if he doesn't we'll be a little late

[25:09]

and I thought that'd be a good idea actually by this time we have enough money and enough mobility that we can afford several legs to stand on in a larger situation and I think probably he'd be happy with having some a wife to rely on and also a child so the where I started from originally was total love hunger and unsatisfied love unsatisfied homosexual love he more than satisfied that and so that the actual anxiety of the craving wore off to a point where it's possible for any open situation to happen so he thought that he probably will get married this year in a large enough house for all of us to fit but the trust got to be of such a point that whether we were together or apart there was still like a

[26:12]

sense of security because we separated for a few times over the years for different things he wanted to stay in India a half year more he once had a problem with boroughs not liking him for a while so there were there'd been problems and then there was a long period when he had he went out on amphetamine and became a real mumbling crumb comics meth head from about 65 to 68 so that was at that at that point I was beginning to worry whether my sexual demands were driving him to drink or math and so I withdrew completely for a few years because it was more important for me for him to be to get to be seen and be with me as a friend than for me to just fuck him and that worked out and right after he got off the meth the erotic thing rose stronger than ever oddly and I found that it wasn't just my it wasn't my sexual

[27:14]

relation with him which was the problem at all fortunately so now things are on a kind of even keel and the best part of it is having a friend who you know completely or I know completely and who likes me and whom I really like so that's about the basis of that relationship and I think with non-grasping attitude non like hands off and letting him do what he wants and him letting me do what I want because the older I get the more I like to make it with younger boys which sort of tickles him at this point I think he'd like to see me happy as I would like to see him pleased with the situation so sort of prefatory I guess the dharmic point there would be non-grasping attitude and a kind

[28:14]

of mindfulness about the passion realizing it's a transitory matter doing it when you're doing it completely without hesitation and without fear giving yourself and committing yourself completely committing yourself to the point of not worrying about the consequences no neurotic anxious worrying about the consequences laying yourself out in trust and accepting somebody else's trust or looking for that as a possibility and trusting sufficiently so that each of the lovers has freedom to fuck up or to make out or to travel or to wander I guess you have to have some kind of confidence or self-confidence for that so you have to trust yourself to begin with trust

[29:15]

your own feelings how you get to do that I don't know maybe sitting long enough or loving long enough or getting into despair long enough there's nothing else to trust but your feelings so what I wanted to do was read some poems from early period and then from recent times there was one poem that I wrote around 1956 around the period of Howell in San Francisco that I never published because it was I thought at the time too compromising or too dirty or the boy it spoke about was married and had children and I couldn't publish it so this is a long description of the first time I slept with Neal Cassidy which I had typed up I was typing my notebooks in the mid 50s this year at Naropa Institute and I'd forgotten about the poem but so

[30:15]

looking over I found it and I paid a lot of special attention to it to get it straightened out finally so I sent it to Ken Kesey for his issue of Spit in the Ocean which would be about Neal Cassidy so this was a bit more naive than I am now but it's kind of honest and interesting and has a nice breath passion flow Neal Cassidy was my animal he brought me about to my knees and taught me the love of his cock and the secrets of his mind and

[34:23]

solitudes on curves musing fist in cheek ass of a thousand farewells ass of youth youth lovers ass of a thousand lonely craps in gas stations ass of great painful secrecies of the years ass of mankind so beautiful and hollow oh ass of mystery and night ass of gymnasiums and muscular pants ass of high schools and masturbation ass of lone delight dowry of mind and angels ass of hero Neal Cassidy I had at my hand my fingers traced the curves to the bottom of his thighs I raised my thighs and stripped down my shorts to my knees and bent to push them off and he raised me up from his chest and pulled down his pants the same humble meek and obedient to his mood our silence and naked

[35:23]

at long last with angel and confess years later he thinking I was not a queer at first to please me and serve me to blow me and make me come maybe or if I were queer that's what I'd likely want of a dumb bastard like him but I made my first mistake and made him then and there my master and bowed my head holding his buttock took up his hard on and held it feeling a throb and pressing my own at his knee and breathing I showed him I needed him cock for my dream of insatiety lone love and I lay here naked in the dark dreaming it was the notation of 1956 of meeting of 1946 ten years later and recently

[36:24]

growing older and I finding it more difficult to make out well not actually but psychologically more difficult to make out in a way feeling awkward I felt kind of awkward and ungainly and ugly when I was a kid though looking at photographs I realized I was good looking and smart and probably a good piece of ass but I didn't realize at the time as most young people don't because young people apparently everybody has a feeling of in inadequacy so it's the inadequacy of a bony thin kid who doesn't realize they have very thin lenses of beauty or potbellied old man who doesn't realize that might be interesting too to somebody sorry so in the last

[37:27]

few years while I've been sleeping with a lot of different younger people particularly as a teacher out in Naropa well from the ancient academy in the gardens of Socrates love and teaching go hand in hand and actually the best teaching is done in bed really it might be laughable in the 20th century but it won't be in the 28th and it wasn't in the 4th BC so the ladder of love the platonic ladder of love I explained in the symposium is a genuine genuine academy so sleeping with a lot of younger people

[38:28]

occasionally I got really moved and had been writing doggerel instantaneous doggerel spontaneous poems on the spot actually the doggerel form is skeletonic John Skelton's early poetry the early 15th century there's a poet called John Skelton who wrote fast rhymes interesting fast rhymes short lines which is a really good form for quick notation so these poems are mostly unrevised and they're written on the spot maybe in the middle of the night like love making and then going into the bathroom writing something down or actually doing it in bed or earlier in the morning or in anticipation and it's a series of poems this form this kind of form short lines fast rhymes which are in mind breaths and then I have a new book that I've been working on the proofs of which has a series of poems continuing the same style same method so I'll read those

[39:29]

in series and this series begins in 1977 I lay love on my knee I nursed love where he lay I let love get away I let love lie low I let my love go I let love go along I knew love was strong so I let love go stray I told love go away I called love come home my tongue wasn't dumb I kissed love on the neck and told love to come back I told love come stay down by me love lay I told love lay down love made a fine sound I told love to work as musician or clerk I sent love to the farm he could do earth no harm I told love get married with children be harried I said love settle down for the worms in the ground I told love have pity build me a good city I taught love to sit to sharpen his whip I taught love to breathe mindful of death I showed love a straight spine energetic as mine I told love take it easy manners more breezy thoughts full of life make love last all night I kissed love

[40:30]

on the brow where he lay like a cow moaning and pleasure his heart happy treasured I kissed love's own lips I lay love on his hips I kissed love on his breast when he lay down to rest I kissed love on his thigh uprose or turned to lust and different relations with it so different relations with different people as time changes and as my uh upaya and as well as uh physical set up changes uh how to uh let go easily the key being I've come to be this way

[41:39]

through many loves of youth that taught me most hard truth now I come by myself in my hand the pot-bellied elf it's not the most romantic dream to be so frantic for young men's bodies the fine sugar daddy blessed respected known or left to bed alone how come love came to end flaccid how pretend desires I have used for decades as I cruised from bed to bar to book shamefaced like a crook stealing here and there pricks in buttocks bare by accident by circumstance naivete or horny chance stray truth or famous lie how come I came to die love dies body dies mind keeps groping blind half-hearted full of dust to wet the silken dust of men that hold me dear but won't sleep with me near this morning cigarette this morning sweet regret habit of many years wake me to old fears under the living sun one day there'll be no one

[42:39]

to kiss and to adore and to embrace and more lie down with side by side tender as a bride gentle under my touch prick I'd love to suck church bells ring again in Heidelberg as when in New York city town I lay my belly down against the boyfriend's buttock and couldn't get it up spite age and common fate I'd hope love to hang out late I'd never lack for thighs I wish to sigh my size this day it seems the truth I can't depend on you I can't keep dreaming love I can't pray heaven above or call the powers of hell to keep my body well occupied with young devil tonguing at my navel I stole up from my bed to that of a well-bred young friend who shared my purse and noted my tender verse I held him by the ass waiting for sweat to pass until he said go back I said that I would jack myself away not stay and so he let me play allergic to my cum I came and then went home this can't go on forever this poem when my fever

[43:39]

for brown-eyed mortal joy I love a straight white boy ah the circle closes same old withered roses I haven't found an end I can fuck and defend and no more can depend on youth time to amend what old age has portend love's death and body's end and that was followed a day later well this is December 15th 8am we have on December 16th love forgiven which was a sort of song straight and slender youthful tender love shows the way and never says they light and gentle hearted mental tone sing and play guitar and bright day voicing always melodies please sing sad and say whatever you may righteous honest hearts

[44:40]

forgiveness drives woes away gives love to cold clay I think that brings it up to date there was one poem sort of tying things together that tying sitting and confusion why I meditate why sit am I going to find it that I read at Dharma Art I'm a little confused where it is in this could we take a break for about a minute I found the poem

[45:42]

I was looking for which is July 19th which is the beginning of an epic but then I decided to leave it as it was like a little lyric why I meditate so just the thoughts I had immediately at the moment when I was scribbling I sit because the Dadaists screamed on mirror street I sit because the surrealists ate angry pillows I sit because the futurists got shot by the past I sit because the imagists breathed calmly in Rutherford in Manhattan I sit because 2400 years I sit in America because Buddha saw a corpse in Lumbini I sit because the yippies whooped up Chicago's guys once I sit because no because I sit because I was unable to trace unborn back to womb I sit because it's easy I sit because I get angry if I don't I sit because they told me to

[46:43]

I sit because I read about it in the funny papers I sit because I had a vision I also dropped LSD I sit because I don't know what to do like Peter Orlovsky I sit because after Luna Charski got fired Stalin shot Zhdanov I sit inside the shell of the old me I sit for revolution and that could go on and on and on there's one other short little thing that I like that I love it's sort of a well it has a reference to one's cock so I guess it's within the subject it's on a lecture of Trump and it's in the form of a Doha or a four line poem which is supposed to be written when you attain some little realization because I just cooked it up anyway and this is he was lecturing on Dharma art and he was using the example of the bow and arrow and the sacred relationship or the serious direct relationship

[47:49]

of the bow and the arrow and with the mindful relationship and with the brush the calligraphy and the teacup now that bow arrow brush and fan are balanced in the hand what about a glass of water holding my cock to pee the Atlantic gushes out sitting down to eat sun and moon fill the plate so that's enough of the poetry except for one haiku which I showed to read to Katagiri Roshi upstairs an hour ago it was a full spring fashions full moon over the shopping mall in a display windows silent light the naked mannequin observes her fingernails that was probably

[48:57]

the first clear void haiku I've written where there's a little empty glimpse like the scarecrow haiku where the scarecrow is sort of like empty head and beard so now the next thing is conversation or if you have any questions look at seven ten or so there's a lot of people here and it's hot so I don't think we ought to go on too long but we've got some time have you ever had any or written about any group experiences I mean the one of the things about me is the fact that we sit together and hopefully not stare at each other's crotch but of the other times when gays are together and sing the Star Spangled Banner together or hold hands march sing or cry have you had those kind of feelings experiences about big gay marches

[49:58]

or communities or orgies I've written about orgies not totally gay orgies I like orgies where there's some girls because I like heterosexual men so it gives everybody a heart it's just girls the question is what's the question the question is what is the difference between a purely gay scene and a gay meditation scene or how do we have you experienced have you experienced any strictly gay situations that have moved yeah the gay march in Washington I think was like a colossal group of people very gay in the sense of light hearted and very much together and proud in a nice way you know like uninhibited uninhibitedly proud self permissive permissive to being everybody was giving each other permission actually giving other people permission not so much self but one thing

[51:00]

I'm not sure what it's like but it must be interesting for gay people to sit together because the erotic preoccupation would constantly be cut through by forgetting about it by accident so you'd be sitting there maybe fantasizing but then all of a sudden you might follow your breath and then the next minute you might be thinking about a crotch and then actually literally forget about it in the fashion of the sitting so it probably would be a great experience particularly for gay people who are upset and more well I don't think everybody gay is upset more than everybody heterosexual there's lots of very cool gay cats who have both form and emptiness so it would be a great way of gay form and emptiness of experiencing like discontinuity of passion the discontinuity of craving craving is discontinuous even if you wanted it to be

[52:00]

continuous it's pretty hard to sit long periods of time and just think about cock or cunt or whatever it is you want to think about I mean it's still it would be hard to forget your breath if you're sitting so it would be probably a good medicine particularly for gay people who are really hung up and disturbed by the very fact of being gay seeing it in that space of sitting I think it's done a lot good for me and Peter since we've sat 8 years he's a little more advanced than me actually he sits more than I do now more advanced than his body and studies and practices and I noticed it's cooled him out a lot sexually in the sense that he still makes out as much as he did before but with much less fuss and much

[53:02]

less worrying about it and anticipation and disappointment but the idea of a group of people who are famous for their obsession sitting with their obsession altogether is terrific you know sitting with the obsession gay sitting group would be amazing it's like gay nazi meditators or something like or whatever you know like you might have broken down the S&M gay sadists session or it would be just the same you know like wall street brokers session or or you know giant military brass session anybody but particularly people sharing the same preoccupation it might optimize it all into like a great humor and great comedy and great availability and openness rather than

[54:03]

as in at bars great anxiety and claustrophobia just the opposite of the bar scene might even make you be able to understand a bar scene just go in a bar and start breathing you know being self-possessed in a bar wait wait long enough to settle down when I go to bars I stand and breathe for a long time because I don't know what else to do so it's a great way of dealing with the situation for a while until I figure out something or until something happens by itself I found good on television in between questions I don't know what to do with myself I just come back to myself we were taking we were visiting in Minneapolis and somebody took our picture together and said while you're standing there what are you thinking about I said oh I just come back to myself does it mean you're paying attention to your breath yeah so actually

[55:05]

in any situation claustrophobia is good as long as you have this mask thing as you have here a mask so in a way it probably would be amazingly catalytic for the whole attitude of openness anybody else yeah I've got a question about what you're saying about you went to a person and you decided to simply wait well no invited him and waited rather than invited him and then went up every day are you ready are you ready are you ready what to wait sit it out it was sort of like intuitively sitting it out I stayed home paid attention to my business didn't think about it all the time broke up my thoughts with working on poetry or whatever I had to do just sat patiently and knew I was waiting and that if he didn't come it was alright if he did come it was joy but if he didn't come no heart beat it was great

[56:05]

my question is if you shared your particular attitude or strategy with him no I told him I told him that I moved to a room nearby where he was staying and invited him to come and stay with me or else we'd find a place to live together or whatever set up he wanted he was thinking of moving in with me I bet he said he could make up his mind whether it was a good idea or bad that's what he really wanted and I don't know what was the cause of this confusion actually it was fidelity to an old lover he was jealous and upset and he didn't want to do anything that would hurt his friend by making his wish to change and so he wanted a waiting period and he also wanted to settle down and feel a little sure about me and I trusted him so I was willing to wait without too much anxiety male well he was an old lover

[57:06]

that actually had introduced us and arranged it all but then when it began taking place he just got upset so it was a delicate situation from a lot of angles he was an old friend that we still know and work with yeah well my father was a poet and so I was brought up in the house where my father would recite poetry aloud a lot and so it was sort of natural so I started writing kiddy verses when I was about 13 or 12 to publish in the Patterson New Jersey newspapers but I didn't really conceive of myself as a with the sacramental vocation of writer I didn't take refuge as a writer until I had met Kerouac and he was the first person I met who took refuge as a writer

[58:06]

so to speak who had that same serious commitment as when you take refuge and that inspired me it turned me on to the fact that that was a way of life that was possible and that seemed like the most beautiful thing I could do like the most terrific romantic sacred way of living my life the blindness 17 year old 18 kind of blind and not knowing quite what it meant but knowing it was sacred and reading Rambo and wanting to be a visionary seer slightly earlier I had a similar about when I was 15 I made a similar commitment to a funny kind of socialist communist labor leader Bodhisattva Val and the reason I went to Colombia is that I had a high school boyfriend

[59:06]

that I had a crush on who didn't know and he had gotten to Colombia a year before so I went to Colombia to take the entrance exams though I was supposed by my family to go to a smaller school in New Jersey and I remember crossing over the ferry from the Hoboken to New York based on

[60:53]

a alchemizing or transformation of the old me or of the self or of awareness so a revolution that would be conducted by the citizenry each one within himself to begin with cell by cell rather than directed from above by law or generalization like that everybody wants a giant revolutionary democracy or a democratic revolution but what could be more democratic than for each voter to start checking himself out and altering himself as a way of altering the entire society than if there are enough of a sangha of awareness they could work together as there are little groups here and maybe larger groups but I would start with the particular and work toward the general than to start with the individual and work upward also I wrote that

[61:54]

because I was figuring out all the different motives or all different rationalizations I had for sitting and one definite rationalization is that sitting for revolution that's a way of starting revolution beginning at one specific spot the shell of the old me and I thought that was a funny well turned phrase I said inside the shell of the old me for those who were aware of that IWW and that old radical rhetoric yeah in your book you seem to play lust and love off on each other back and forth constantly you make a distinction between the two and you do it to change the leaders not that much I don't see that I find my lust to be identical with my physical admiration and I find my physical admiration to be pretty much identical with

[62:54]

my spiritual admiration so I don't but then I keep running into young kids who say oh you just want a piece of meat not too often though actually people are hipper than that nowadays and also I'm not that hung up on a piece of meat it's kind of the interesting once in a while but it also is not such a good fuck I mean it's nice to make love with somebody who's really there and it's brilliant too you know awake I mean it's just more fun you get more more to weigh on you so I don't make that much distinction actually except I do realize that I got this repeated pattern of constantly wanting the different form of the same angel all the time so that's

[63:56]

beginning to look at that and wonder what that's about why all the time do I have to why do I have to fall in love all the time why do I have an urge to fall in love all the time I have a heart drop it seems to come naturally on the other hand I did spend the first night in town I spent all alone wandering around North Beach and I went into every one of the peep show 25 cent movies and saw them all through on the whole block so that wasn't just old normal heart drop rising out of the immediate situation that was a mental masturbation but I had a good time shows were good and I saw one great one I saw so yeah speaking of

[64:57]

North Beach I'm curious about your thoughts on Arthur and Gary yeah perhaps the last movie in the book yeah yeah I once said we ought to sleep together and he said that would be very interesting if we had time and space and room enough and so we left it open actually he's a bit chubby not quite except

[66:00]

it would be sort of really interesting to see what it was like naked in his bed the idea was well I was talking about the mic that he shot as good as any other facets basically friendly relationships like that and sort of open wide open in fact well there are a number of I can say crucial little moments that I got some kind of awareness hit from him but first was the first and most potent meeting was we had met I met him in San Francisco I think in 1970 I met him before we had a date in San Francisco I was going to see him and he came into a

[67:01]

motel where he was with his wife and new baby completely drunk stumbling up the stairs assisted by two disciples who were still there tearing his pants and stumbled into the motel where his wife as he stood over the baby breathing then we sat down and I said I just came from he taught me how to sing with the right tune an old Tibetan tune so he said let me do it so I took out my harmonium started playing and going OM ANI ANI

[68:04]

ANI [...] I got to, he just pushed my hand aside so that the cord stopped, and he said, don't forget the gap, which is important, and I tell you, I didn't quite understand what he meant at all at the moment, however, I was so amazed by his boldness, you know, I assumed

[69:11]

he knew what he was talking about, I mean, I had that much intelligence that if you like to listen instead of jump to any kind of conclusion, you ought to stay open and inquisitiveness, what is he going to say? And then I asked him where he was going, he showed me where he had been and where he was going, and it was a long tour of, ITF, intensive reading and discourse, so I said, don't you get tired of doing that? I've been on the road for about a month and I'm a little tired of what I'm doing. So he said, oh, that's because you don't like your poetry. I said, I didn't know I don't like my poetry, and I did like my poetry, sort of, but I was getting tired of reading it over and over, because I had over the years developed the practice of always continuing to write new poetry and only reading new poetry rather

[70:11]

than reading old poems, so going out on the road I've been reading poems of this year as I read here, more or less. So he said, oh, that's because you don't like your poetry. So I said, what do you mean I don't like my poetry? He said, why do you have to read it off a page? You have your own mind, don't you? Why don't you be like the great poets of the old days and trust your own mind, like Miller and Renfrow, just get up on the stage and make up a poem? Well, that made sense to me. I mean, it seemed like he was talking in a straightforward sense, and it was exactly what Kerouac was always telling me. In fact, actually, when Trump was timpsinist and Kerouac was timpsinist, I felt there was a tremendous affinity. I felt the same thing out of him. I mean, there was a kind of a, I dug him like I dug Kerouac. There was the same home wit and intelligence and sharpness and straightforwardness and slight outrageousness, shocking, but smart and learning immediately for me. And that very night I had to do a benefit for Tocqueville and Tocqueville arranged.

[71:13]

So I went up on the stage with my harmonium when the time came and delayed things by chanting mantras forever too long. But then finally launched off on a, whatever was on my mind at the moment, which was a kind of half-half blues, how sweet it is to be an American during the 72, during the Vietnam War, with a long blues-like list of all of the sorrows of America, beginning how sweet it is to be living in America today. And actually it amazed me. It was slow and there was time, there was slowness and there was time, and I could think of things to say in various, in music, and I really dug that. And it was the first time I actually had the boldness to get out up on the stage without text. And then I realized from now on I was safe anywhere I went. So in a poetry reading, even if I lost my luggage in the airplane, I could always just get up and do something. And this phrase was, why do you depend on a piece of paper?

[72:16]

Don't you trust your own mind? And that was Karolak's suggestion also. So I figured anybody that could teach me something about poetry, then I better check him out more. And that was the first really helpful suggestion I had gotten for a long time. You know, that really blew my, blew my, the doors of my art wide open. It opened and let in something new. It gave me some more space. It gave me a whole new space to work on. And what I've done over the last ten years or so is really just the development of that one little seed to the point where I'm singing rock and roll with a band and putting out records and saying with a clash. Exactly the same sort of permission. Singing with a clash. I realized nothing bad can happen because I would still be able to stand up there and breathe and think of things to say. And at one point I forgot the words. And so I just started in a banding run in front of three thousand people and realized

[73:19]

I was just fine. Forget your words. So it got me out of kind of a rut. And I figured if he was, if he could get me out of a rut like that, or show me a rut, which I wasn't aware of, and by making me aware of it and showing me some space to move into, then I got more interested. And then a year later I read him a lot of Kara White and a lot of Whitman. And he loved Kara White poetry and laughed all the way through Mexico City Blues and said at the end, that's a great manifestation of mine. And then a week later he said that he couldn't forget the voice that night. And he began writing in open form American style. Influenced a lot by Kara White and by Anne Waldman's open form and by mine. So one day in 73, or maybe that same year, he made a funny little bargain that he would

[74:20]

like me to be his poetry guru. So I said, okay, you'll be my meditation guru and I'll be your poetry guru. I mean, I was obviously seducing him. But he did learn a lot. In the case of the momentary deferentials on poetry. When he's not bragging. Yeah, one more question. It's 735. You've laid your life out in a very public way. Do you feel that you've done that sort of asking permission or great hypocrisy? Or do you feel that you've registered what you were just saying as a poet? Because that's the way of laying out stuff and letting it come out. Well, all different reasons. First of all, it was a mode of the time. Say, Cowart writing autobiographical novels after Thomas Wolfe, Selene, and Henry Miller.

[75:26]

So there was a time for that when it was like a social gesture that was maybe necessary. Because the only thing I knew was myself and the phenomena around me. As distinct from some kind of official knowledge of the 50s, which led to the Cold War. Where it was like a pseudo knowledge. The only real world I knew was the world I knew. In the world of the media, which seemed to dominate most everybody's lives. Something I didn't know and didn't understand. And so saying, America, go fuck yourself with your atom bomb. Which is a very personal expression. Was a way of just laying out what I was thinking in actuality as distinct from what I was supposed to think. Or like answering the lady, because I'm queer. Being straightforward in answer to a question that had a tremendous cultural prejudice behind it. Or misunderstanding, I'd say. Yeah, well, once I saw it was an interesting field and I just went on and exploited it. Or used it.

[76:27]

For a lot of reasons. One, because I'm too dumb to figure another way. I'm quite literate. I can't figure any other way of doing it except relying on what I know about already. The other is, there seems to be a social function. That seems to be the rationale. That there is at the moment, or was for 20 years, a social function in personism. Or confessional. Or self-revelation. In the mode of Whitman, or in the line of Whitman, in the tradition of Whitman. That I celebrate myself and sing myself. And what I shall assume, you shall assume. Because it sets some standard of what real life is supposed to be like. For other people that are so lost in their dreams of what it's supposed to be like. As they're told in school, or church, or time. So it seems a reliable way of communicating whatever there is that I do know. To other people who may be confused. So there's some little bit of Bodhisattva notion involved with just opening up on person.

[77:34]

And allowing person to be the subject. And the other is, it's a kind of an investigation of person. Because I'm not any one person anyway. And more than anybody else, there's no permanent identity anyway. So it's kind of amazing to see all the different manifestations of a supposed person. And then allowing it to change from one poem to another and contradict itself. Do I contradict myself? Very well, I contradict myself. So it's sort of like a good way of laying out the idea that Keats proposed of negative capability. Which is very similar to Buddhist tolerance and open-mindedness. Which is the ability to hold in the mind contradictory notions without freaking out. Or without an irritable reaching out after fact. An irritable reaching after fact. You know that phrase, anybody? Negative capability. Anybody? Who knows it? That's all? Well, it's a terrific word.

[78:37]

It's sort of a... It's the English language poetry equivalent of... I guess what in Buddhism would be... I think they have it in Vajrayana, which is the emergence of two... co-emergent wisdom. Co-emergent wisdom. That may be a very specialized area. Co-emergent wisdom, which is the recognition... I suppose you could oversimplify the recognition of form and emptiness simultaneously. There's form contradicts emptiness, and emptiness contradicts form. But there it is, and they're both there. So in poetry, negative capability is the ability to maintain in the mind the appearance of directly opposite or contradictory polar polarities or opposites and contradictions, to allow them to rise in the mind and to entertain them without necessity of judgment,

[79:42]

but allow them to rise and pass or rise and appear without puncturing them or without arguing with them, without dragging them in. You used the expression, freaking out, would that have been a big setback for you? Pardon me? You used the expression, freaking out, would that have been a big setback for you? Not very big, not really. I just used the common word, freak out, for meaning. There's some people who say, for this situation, say the Maitreya situation, somebody who grows up primarily heterosexual but likes... sees some boy he likes, but can't stand the idea, or some gay man who prefers boys, but sees a girl he likes and doesn't stand the idea, says, well, that's the issue, I don't want that. On the other hand, why not? Because almost all gay men have at one time or another had heterosexual fantasies, and almost all gay women have at one or another had heterosexual fantasies, and all heterosexual men and women have had homosexual fantasies. So the allowance, the negative capability is the allowance of that to rise,

[80:47]

and be entertaining, and not grab it and not push it away. And that's similar to this poetic notion of Keats of negative capability, which is the allowance of contradictory, opposite... conception's opposite from what you thought you were supposed to have, or passion's opposite from what you thought you were supposed to have, and not to get freaked out. So he's just freaked out because it's white.

[81:12]

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