In San Francisco Ginsberg saw a psychiatrist, Philip Hicks, who asked him what he would like to do with his life.
"Doctor," as Ginsberg recalls his answer, "I don't think you're going to find this very healthy and clear, but I really would like to stop working forever — never work again, never do anything like the kind of work I'm doing now — and do nothing but write poetry and have leisure to spend the day outdoors and go to museums and see friends. And I'd like to keep living with someone — maybe even a man — and explore relationships that way. And cultivate my perceptions, cultivate the visionary thing in me. Just a literary and quiet city-hermit existence."
Then Hicks said, "Well, why don't you?"
Sometimes I feel this way, too.
Saturday, December 03, 2005
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5 comments:
ha, i always feel this way.
We're a quartet, then.
peter-
this has been stuck in my head since i read it, because it resonated with something i've been pondering a lot lately—how wonderfully simple and complete a dream this is. how, if it weren't for financial responsibilities, it could easily be ours.
then i read the koudelka interview that i recently linked to . . . everything is converging. c'mon lottery ticket.
It is possible. I have had it for years at a time. Sometimes I work jobs for enough months to make it possible.
Now I am looking at other ways to make money. Other ways to live.
Thing is we are in a different reality than Alan.
Peter, do you know how Alan made money in the early days?
AD: Yes, if there were no need for money, how would we choose to live? And what keeps us from doing it now?
Pirooz: did Ginsberg teach to support himself? Or sell hooch? (~grin~)
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