Last week I went upstairs to the Bancroft reading room to borrow this book from our Philip Whalen collection. From Joanne's author's note: "Shortly after arriving in Japan, interrupting a bout of culture shock, Gary asked me, 'Don't you want to study Zen and lose your ego?' I was utterly shocked: 'What! After all this struggle to attain one?'"
Joanne Kyger, 3.9.1960:
Gary has me over a barrel. It is difficult being here such a short time to be left alone for 13 hours a stretch for 3 days out of the week not yet understanding the system of transportation and being such an ass I haven't realized and prepared for such a position. Yet I can scarcely say don't go sit in the evenings since that is the purpose of his being in Japan. I refuse to be forced into sitting until I freely choose to do so. At any rate he has not yet bothered to show me how to reach Daitoko-ji and I am too proud to ask. He seems to have plans for me, although he claims no—and I will not fit into them.
Also I wish I weren't married at all I feel trapped.
At the Yase Zoo all the animals seem incredibly bad tempered.
(From my own journals in 2006: "Wrote a new draft of 'SelfPortrait as a Meadow,' and read Anne Waldman. 'Not that he held her back exactly. It was a condition of the times. You merged with the man in an imitation of enlightenment.' – from 'Feminafest'")
