January 9, 2015

Dreams now vanished in detail, but they were all about discerning, between two things or individuals that seemed very much alike, which was evil and which was good.

Sudden sharp memory of first grade. I get “poor” written on a homework paper, which I, through careful manipulation of a pen, change convincingly to “good.” Father and I are in Indian Guides at the time, and he takes the paper to the meeting to brag on me. The other fathers show him where I have altered the actual text. The result of that was–nothing. Did he admire my ingenuity? Was he too mortified to say or do anything? Had he recognized the caper from the first, and decided to humiliate me in public? Oddly, if I rightly remember the moment, now more than 50 years in the past, I felt nothing but small pride that cleverness had carried me that far. I never took it as a judgment on me, assuming “poor” reflected Mrs Rock’s faults more than my own.
    I had great teachers. Impossible to test what difference that made, but I assume it was tremendous.

Slept last night under a comforter that Dale Allemand knitted for me. The idea of a man in new Orleans knitting a comforter struck me funny then. I don’t know whether AIDS or leukemia took him first. The ardor on that first night--