The Cambridge Chronicles

I have been reading Solzhenitsyn's memoirs. An anti-communist, religious mystic. Or so I've always thought of him. Vague memories of his early books. Not a bad writer. This sets me to thinking about the American experience. He lives here now, somewhere in Vermont maybe. I can't write about my struggles with the bureaucracy as its possible to completely avoid it. One can survive with no contact. But I am trying to describe the emotional analog of such a system. A system that promises unlimited opportunity, but in fact, all we get is a shadow of our dreams.

I am feeling this right now. Linda and Nadine were here earlier. When Simone entered the room the air got thicker. She was obviously tense and anxious. Everyone could see this. The purpose was to get rid of them. She has been here many times with some number of men, and this is the key point. When it is people that she feels in control of it is ok. When it is someone with more attachment to me then then they are either consciously or unconsciously made uncomfortable and unwelcome. This dream of hers, for everyone to love and accept each other is constantly tangled in her own personal bureaucratic nightmare. She responds to a thousand little creatures and rules put into her by a restrictive life. Not that she wants it to be restricted for herself, but mainly to protect herself. She wants to keep them away. She wants to avoid the feelings bound to come up when confronted by an ambiguous situation. Her dream is to be always without the tensions she gets. It is everyone's dream. We all want just what we want. We learn that others getting what they want is a potential danger to what each of us wants. In this lies the death of our dreams. We move to protect ourselves and destroy what we want. I can't possibly be happy that she has forced them out. I can't, in turn, be happy with her. I can't contribute anything to her happiness in this state. I don't want to. I don't want her to be happy. Not when she does this. In fact, I want to punish her for it. I can go elsewhere for the night. I may do it. I find her quite ugly. It leaves me with a violent, disgusting, pissed off feeling. On the other hand I can also say that I did not act directly enough to halt it. Nadine and Linda slowly noticed what she was trying to say, indirectly, to them. I did not act myself. And so it goes for many of the things that happen to me.

Edwin describes how Otto has created a completely new planet for himself from the inside out. He feels some disdain and admiration. I tell him how envy is what he really feels, and the disdain is to make the envy palatable.

He met someone on the subway tonight. Do you want me to walk you home tonight, he asks. Oh no, and da-da-da da-da-da. I always get the oh-no's and da-da-da's, he says. I told that I engineer that sort of response. Its not just your engineering, I respond, but the direction of the tracks.

Most people will only accept a very narrow part of the world. Today Jonathan was rejected by a group working for the ERA because he wasn't political enough. He sent up a postcard for Christmas about how he would be going to whatever state needed him to work for the ERA. The ERA may lose because of this.