[…]
ron has done an excellent painting of giant gap while i was away, in morning light.”
[Russell Towle's journal]
“12/23/77 [...]
Cloudy but no rain since dawn. A leak has appeared that drops onto the kitchen counter, which is mahogany plywood that I have not yet sealed with varathane. The top veneer bubbled up, damn.”
[Russell Towle's journal]
“12/23/79 sunday morning. another storm on its way in.
[...]
later. storm moving in. snow forecast for tonight. i've plenty of firewood this year. snowing now.
[Russell Towle's journal]
“December 23, 1985
[...]
I cleaned up the cabin the other day, and it is so much nicer. Washed the dishes; now the spiders, which have appeared in droves during the warm weather, get trapped in the sink each night, and I wash them down the drain. Six spiders have been washed down in three days. Or, perhaps, five spiders, in two days. One very evil looking black one; but it is I who am evil, washing the poor spiders into that slimy pit where the sink water goes. I know it is very slimy, even though it is covered with a nice large granite slab.
[...]
Well, with the cabin clean, the decks cleared, I should begin on the write-up of my polar zonohedra. But I feel dull and uninspired. The warm weather and holiday season conspire to convince me to play, play, play. Also, I've been finishing up at the McClungs, and
Later: just returned from the Vista, and spent the day at Sugar Bowl. A good day of skiing, and I feel that I am making progress on my telemarking.
[…]
Now, I am extremely concerned that these journals shall become a part of “the literature” and be read centuries hence; that the readers (you, for instance, dear reader) will follow my thoughts and impressions with bated breath, and with an expansive supplemental imagination that will fill in the interstices and descry just exactly, or very close to exactly, what it was like to be Russell Towle in 1985 at Moody Ridge, California, listening to a rather fuzzy radio station, football talk fading in and out (now they're winding up a segment involving a conversation with the place-kicker of the Rams) is it so very earth-shaking that we indulge in the same happy? sad? angry preoccupation with sports, “games,” as the ancients would have it: what can be significant about that? Only: I regard us as apes, as organisms and therefore organic and of this world and therefore animals and therefore, since we are intelligent animals we spin remarkable fancies out of the competitive urges that race in our blood, we enshrine and ritualized these “games” and we are human: and now, nowadays, we have these devices, these electronic technological devices, and the “games” are spread so far and wide, embrace so very many people: McLuhanite Fullerite attitude and perspective, or, should I say, should I be so bold, dear reader: Russellite, or Towleite, or what ever: and if you read it all, all the material, a composite may well arise, an image of who I was, what I thought, and so, I write: because of all that I have read, these kinds of glimpses into the minds and souls and times of people long gone have so entranced me, so pleased me, that I would wish to supplement the abundant records of my time with this testimonial (“this” referring to the aggregate body of all journals, notebooks, tapes, and so on): I hope you enjoy it. I intend to reveal perspectives not usually found, perhaps, in the twentieth century literature…”
[...][Russell Towle's journal]
“12/23/86 Tuesday evening. Today I wrote checks and bought groceries and gas and stopped by the Dutch Flat Mobile to visit Dave B. who ended up giving me some wiper blades and then I got into washing the station windows, which were impossibly crusted with the slimy filth of ages, and needed to be washed and washed and washed and washed and washed and washed.
[...]
Darkness has fallen and Earth has fallen into darkness's embrace… Earth: where, they say, some two or three or four (each number has been cited recently) babies are born into the world each and every second [… ] ”
[Russell Towle's journal]
“December 23, 1989
Dawn. My poor journal has suffered long enough; it is to be revived, immediately. One other time since 1970, well, one or two other lapses exist; otherwise, I have a continuous sequence of journals going back to then. I kept journals during the sixties, but lost them all. Well, I buried some, on Coyote Hill above Palo Alto in 1963, spring, Ben Moll in attendance, with some half-baked ideas about new beginnings, literally burying my past.
So, ok, I have a daughter, Janet Julia Towle, otherwise known as Impling. She was born here on November 13, 1989. She is nearby, in Gay's arms, on the couch, gazing about, waving her wonderful little hands, so delicate and expressive, everyone has said from birth itself, she's to be a piano player. Hope so. At any rate she's a pretty little thing with graceful hands and I love her dearly. I take her on walks and sing little ballads to her, such as:
Impling, blimpling,Now, after some heavy storms in October and November, December has been one prolonged Indian Summer, golden days counting down the rosary of this year, while remarkable developments take place around the world. It seems the various Communist peoples have been fretting under the yoke, only natural, and have been rising in tremendous demonstrations and actually toppling governments all over Eastern Europe. Notable as well were the demonstrations in Beijing and their bloody put-down by the entrenched Old Guards. Now, these Old Guards, wherever they may be found, may well be entrenched, but, they are also Old. The days of Stalin and Mao have come and gone and now they're long gone, almost out of sight. Those who preserve their memories and methods will themselves soon be dead and gone. [...] ”
Over the deep blue sea;
Hundreds of thousands
Of colorful dinosaurs
Flying through the trees;
But then the mousies ate them,
Chomped them into little bits;
With the dinosaurs gone,
We're at-the-end-of our song, ah ha
Impling, blimp.
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