The White Album by Joan Didion (1979)

The White Album by Joan Didion 1979 1.

we tell ourselves stories in order to live the princess has caged in the consulate the man with the candy will leave the children into the sea

the naked woman on the ledge outside the window on the 16th floor is a victim of accident or the naked woman is an exhibitionist and it would be

interesting to know which we tell ourselves that it makes some difference whether the naked woman is about to commit a mortal sin whereas about to register a political protest

ore is about to be the aristophanic view snatch Back The Human Condition by the firemen and priest's clothing just visible in the window behind her the one

smiling at the telephoto lens we look for the sermon in the suicide for the social or moral lesson in the murder of five

we interpret what we see select the most workable of the multiple choices we live entirely especially if we are writers by the imposition of a narrative

line upon disparate images by the ideas of which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which

is our actual experience or at least we do for a while I'm talking here about a time when I began to doubt the premises of all the

stories I'd ever told myself a common condition the one I found troubling I suppose this period began around 1966

and continued until 1971.

during those five years I appeared on the face of it a competent enough member of some Community or another a signer of contracts and air travel

cards a citizen I wrote a couple of times a month for one magazine or another published two books worked on several Motion Pictures

participated in the paranoia of the time in the raising of a small child and in the entertainment of large numbers of people passing through my house

made Kingdom curtains for spare bedrooms remember to ask agents if any reduction of points would be Pari pursue with the financing Studio

put lentils to soak on Saturday night for lentil soup on Sunday made quarterly FICA payments and renewed my driver's license on time

missing on the written examination only the question about the financial responsibility California drivers it was a time of my life when I was

frequently named I was named godmother to children I was named lecturer and panelist colloquist and conferry

I was even named in 1968 Los Angeles Times woman of the year along with Mrs Ronald Reagan the Olympic swimmer Debbie Meyer and 10 other

California women who seemed to keep in touch and do good work I did no good works but I tried to keep in touch

I was responsible I recognized my name when I saw it once in a while I even answered letters addressed to me not exactly upon receipt

but eventually particularly if the letters had come from strangers during my absence from the country these past 18 months such replies would begin

this was an adequate enough performance as improvisations go the only problem was that my entire education everything I had ever been told or I

told myself insisted that the production was never meant to be improvised I was supposed to have a script and had mislaid it

I was supposed to hear cues and no longer did I was meant to know the plot but all I knew was what I saw

flash pictures and variable sequence images with no meaning beyond their temporary arrangement not a movie but a Cutting Room experience

in what would probably be the middle of my life I wanted still to Believe In The Narrative and in the narrative's intelligibility but to know that one could change the

sense with every cut was to begin to perceive the experience as rather more electrical than ethical during this period I spent well worth

for me the usual proportions of time in Los Angeles and New York and Sacramento I spend what seemed to many people I knew make Centric amount of time in

Honolulu the particular aspect of which lent me the illusion that I could any minute order from room service or a visionist theory of my own history

garnish with a Vanda orchid I watched Robert Kennedy's funeral on a veranda at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel in Honolulu

and also the first reports from me lie I reread all of George Orwell on the Royal Hawaiian beach and I also read in the papers that came

one day late from the mainland the story of Betty Lansdowne Phuket a 26 year old woman with faded blonde hair who puts her five-year-old daughter out

to die on the center divider of Interstate 5 some miles south of the last Bakersfield exit the child whose fingers had to be pried

loose from the Cyclone Fence when she was rescued 12 hours later by the California Highway Patrol reported that she had run off the car carrying her mother and stepfather and

brother and sister for quote a long time certain of these images did not fit into any narrative I knew another flash cut

quote in June of this year patient experienced an attack of vertigo nausea and the feeling that she was going to pass out

a thorough medical evaluation elicited no positive findings and she was placed on Elavil 20 milligrams tid

the raw shark record is interpreted as describing a personality and process of deterioration with abundant signs of failing defenses and increasing

inability the ego to mediate the world of reality and to cope with normal stress emotionally patient has alienated

herself almost entirely from the world of other human beings Her Fantasy Life appears to have been virtually completely preempted by

primitive regressive libidden or preoccupations many of which are distorted and bizarre in a technical sense basic affective

controls appear to be intact but it is equally clear that they are insecurely continuously maintained for the present by a variety of defense

mechanisms including intellectualization obsessive-compulsive devices rejection reaction formation and somatization

all of which now seem inadequate to their task controlling or containing an underlying psychotic process and are therefore in process of failure

the content a patient's responses is highly unconventional and frequently bizarre filled with sexual and anatomical preoccupations and basic

reality contact is obviously and seriously impaired at times in quality and level of sophistication patients responses are characteristic of

those of individuals of high average or Superior intelligence she is now functioning intellectually in impaired fashion at barely average level

patients thematic Productions on the Thematic Apperception Test emphasize how fundamentally pessimistic fatalistic and

oppressive view of the world around her it is as though she feels deeply that all human effort is for doomed to failure a conviction which seems to push her

further into a dependent passive withdrawal in her view she lives in a world of people moved by strange conflicted

poorly comprehended and above all devious motivations which commit them inevitably to conflict and failure end quote

the patient to whom the psychiatric report refers is me the tests mentioned the raw shark the Thematic abception test the sentence

completion test and the Minnesota multi-phasic personality index were administered privately in the Outpatient Psychiatric clinic at St John's Hospital

in Santa Monica in the summer of 1968 shortly after I suffered the quote attack of vertigo and nausea mentioned in the first sentence and shortly before

I was named the Los Angeles Times woman of the year by way of comment I offer only an attack of vertigo and nausea does not now seem

to me an inappropriate response to the summer of 1968 two in the years I'm talking about I was living in a large house in a part

of Hollywood that had once been expensive I was now described by one of my acquaintances as I quote senseless killing neighborhood

this house on Franklin Avenue was rented and paint peeled inside and out and pipes broke and window sashes crumbled and the tennis court had not been rolled

since 1933.

But the rooms were many and high ceiling and during the five years that I lived there even the rather Sinestro inertia of the neighborhood tended to suggest that I should live in the house

indefinitely in fact I could not because the owners were waiting only for a zoning change to tear the house down and build a high-rise apartment building

and for that matter it was precisely this anticipation of imminent but not exactly immediate destruction that lent the neighborhood its particular character

the house across the street had been built for one of the Talmadge sisters had been the Japanese Consular in 1941.

and was now although boarded up occupied by a number of unrelated adults who seemed to constitute some kind of Therapy Group the house next door was owned by synanon

I recall looking at a house around the corner with a rental sign on it this house had once been the Canadian consulate a 28 large rooms and two

refrigerated fur closets and could be rented in the spirit of the neighborhood only on a month-to-month basis unfurnished since the inclination to rent an

unfurnished 28-room house for a month or two is a distinctly special one the neighborhood was peopled mainly by rock and roll bands therapy groups very old

women wheeled down the street by practical nurses in soiled uniforms and by my husband my daughter and me Q

and what else happened if anything a he said that he thought I could be a star like you know a young Bert Lancaster you know that kind of stuff

Q did he mention any particular name hey yes sir Q one name did he mention a

you mentioned a lot of names he said Bert Lancaster he said Clint Eastwood he said first Parker you mentioned the loss of names Q

did you talk after you ate while we were eating after we ate Mr Navarro told our fortunes for some cards and he read our palms Q

did he tell you you were going to have a lot of good luck or bad luck or what happened a he wasn't a good Palm Reader

these are excerpts from the testimony of poor Robert Ferguson and Thomas Scott Ferguson Brothers ages 22 and 17 respectively during their trial for the

merger of Ramon Navarro age 69 as house in Laurel Canyon not too far from my house in Hollywood on the night of October 30th 1968

I followed this trial quite closely clipping reports from the newspapers and later borrowing a transcript from one of the defense attorneys

the younger of the brothers Tommy Scott Ferguson whose girlfriend testified and she had stopped being in love with him quote about two weeks after grand jury

said that he had been unaware of Mr Navarro's career as a silent film actor until he was shown at some point during the night of the murder a photograph of

his host as Ben Hur the older brother Paul Ferguson who began working carnivores when he was 12 and described himself at 22 as having

had quote a fast life and a good one gave the jury upon request his definition of a hustler quote a hustler is someone who can talk not just to men

to women too who can cook can keep company wash a car lots of things make up a hustler there are lots of lonely people in this

town man and a quote during the course of the trial each of the brothers accused the other of the murder both were convicted I read the transcript several times

trying to bring the picture into some Focus which should not suggest that I lived as my psychiatric report had put it quotes in a world of people moved by

strange conflicted poorly comprehended and above all devious motivations end quote I never met the Ferguson Brothers I did meet one of the principals in

another Los Angeles County murder trial during those years Linda Kasabian star witness for the prosecution what was commonly known as the Manson trial

I once asked Linda what she thought about the Apparently Charmed sequence of events it had brought her first the span Movie Ranch and then the Sybil brand

Institute for women on charges later dropped of murdering Sharon Tate Polanski Abigail Folger Jay Seabring

Vortech Krakowski Stephen parent and Rosemarie and Leno La Bianca quote everything was to teach me something Linda said

Linda did not believe that chance was without pattern Linda operated on what I later recognized as dice Theory and so during the years I am talking

about did I it will perhaps suggest the mood of those years if I tell you that during them I could not visit my mother-in-law without averting my eyes from a framed

verse a house blessing which hung in a hallway of her house in West Hartford Connecticut quote God bless the corners of this house

and be the lintel breast and bless the half and bless the board and bless each place of rest and bless the Crystal Window pain that lets the

Starlight in and bless each door that opens wide The Stranger as to Kin end quote

this verse had on me the effect of a physical chill so insistently did it seem the kind of ironic detail the reporters would seize

upon the morning the bodies were found in my neighborhood in California we did not bless the door that opened wide to stranger as to Kin

Paul and Tommy Scott Ferguson were the strangers a Ramon Navarro's door up on Laurel Canyon Charles Manson was the stranger at

Rosemary and Leno La Bianca's door over in Los Feliz some strangers at the door knocked and invented a reason to come inside

a cool say to the AAA about a car not an Evidence others just opened the door and walked in and I would come across them in the entrance hall I recall asking one such stranger what

he wanted we looked at each other for what seemed a long time and then he saw my husband on the stair Landing Chicken Delight he said finally

we had ordered no Chicken Delight nor was he carrying any I took the license number of his panel truck it seems to me now that during those

years I was always writing down the license numbers of Panel trucks Panel trucks circling the block Panel trucks parked across the street Panel trucks idling at the intersection

I put these license numbers and addressing table drawer where they could be found by the police when the time came though the time would come I never doubted

Elise not in the inaccessible places of the Mind where I seemed more and more to be living so many encounters in those years were devoid of any logic save that of the

DreamWork in the big house on Franklin Avenue many people seemed to come and go without relation to what I did

I knew where the sheets and towels were kept but I did not always know who was sleeping in every bed I had the keys but not the key

I remember taking a 25 milligram Compazine one Easter Sunday and making a large and elaborate lunch for a number of people many of whom were still around

on Monday I remember walking barefoot all day on the worn hardwood floors of that house and I remember do you want to dance on

the record player do you want to dance and visions of Joanna and a song called Midnight Confessions I remember a babysitter telling me that

she saw death in my aura I remember chatting with her while reasons why this might be so paying her opening all the French Windows going to

sleep in the living room it was hard to surprise me in those years it was hard to even get my attention I was absorbed in my intellectualization

my obsessive compulsive devices my projection my reaction formation my somatization random the transcript of the Ferguson

Trial a musician I had met a few years before called from a Ramada Inn in Tuscaloosa to tell me how to save myself through Scientology

I had met him once in my life had talked to him for maybe half an hour about brown rice and the charts and now he was telling me from Alabama about e-meters and how I might become a

clear I received a telephone call from a stranger in Montreal who seemed to want to enlist me in a Narcotics operation is it cool to talk on this telephone he

asked several times Big Brother isn't listening I said that I doubted it although increasingly I did not because what we're talking about

basically is applying the Zen philosophy to money and business dig and if I say we're going to finance the underground and if I mention major money you know what I'm talking about because you know what's going down right

maybe he was not talking about narcotics maybe he was talking about turning a profit on M1 rifles I'd stop looking for the logic in such cause

someone with whom I'd gone to school in Sacramento and I'd last seen in 1952 turned off at my house in Hollywood in 1968 in the guise of a private detective

from West Covina one of very few licensed women private detectives in the state of California they call us [ __ ] Tracy's she said

idly but definitely founding out the day's mail on the hall table I have a lot of very close friends in law enforcement she said Ben you might

want to meet them we exchanged promises to keep in touch the never met again and not atypical Encounter of the period

the 60s were over before it occurred to me this visit might have been last and entirely social three it was six seven o'clock of an early

spring evening in 1968 and I was sitting on the cold vinyl floor of a Sound Studio in Sunset Boulevard watching a band called The Doors record a rhythm track

on the whole my attention was only minimally engaged by the preoccupations of rock and roll bands Open brackets I had already heard about asset as a transitional stage and also

about the Maharishi and even about Universal love and after a while it all sounded like marmalade Skies to me close brackets but the doors were different the doors

interested me the doors seemed unconvinced that love was Brotherhood and the karma sutra the doors music insisted that love was

sex and sex was death lay salvation the doors or the Norman mailers of the top 40

missionaries of apocalyptic sex raycon through their lyrics urged and Light My Fire and come on baby gonna take a little ride

going down by the ocean side gonna get real close get real tight maybe gonna drown tonight going down down on this evening in 1968 they were

gathered together in uneasy symbiosis to make their third album and the studio was too cold and the lights were too bright and there were masses of wires and banks

of the ominous blinking electronic circuitry with which musicians lived so easily there were three of the four doors

there was a bass player borrowed from a band called clear light there were the producer and the engineer and the road manager and a couple of

girls and a Siberian Husky named Nikki with one gray eye and one gold there were paper bags half filled with hard-boiled eggs and chicken livers and

cheeseburgers and empty bottles of apple juice in California Rose it was everything and everybody the doors needed to cut the rest of this bird album except one thing the fourth

door the lead singer Jim Morrison a 24 year old graduate of UCLA who wore black vinyl pants and no underwear intended to

suggest some range of the possible just beyond the suicide pact it was Morrison who would describe the doors as quote erotic politicians

it was Morrison who had defined the group's interests as quote anything about Revolt disorder chaos by activity that appears to have no meaning

it was Morrison who got arrested in Miami in December of 1967 the giving an indecent performance it was Morrison he wrote most of the door's lyrics

peculiar character of which was to reflect either an ambiguous paranoia or are quite unambiguous insistence upon

the love death as the ultimate High and there was Morrison who was missing it was Ray manzarek and Robbie Krieger and John Densmore who made the doors sound the way they

sounded and maybe it was manzarak and Krieger and Densmore he made 17 out of 20 interviewees on American Bandstand for

further doors over all other bands but it was Morrison who got up there in his black vinyl pants with no underwear and projected the idea

and there was Morrison they were waiting for now Hey listen the engineer said I was listening to an FM station on the way over here they played three door songs

first they played back doorman and then Love Me Two Times and Light My Fire I heard it Densmore muttered I heard it

so what's wrong with somebody playing three of your songs this cat dedicated to his family yeah to his family

to his family really crass was harnessed over a Gibson keyboard you think Morrison's going to come back he asked to no one in particular

no one answered so we could do some vocals manzarak said the producer was working with the tape of the Rhythm track they had just recorded

I hope so he said without looking up yeah manzarek said so do I my leg had gone to sleep I did not stand up

unspecific tensions seem to be rendering everyone in the room catatonic the producer played back the Rhythm track the engineer said that he wanted to do

his deep breathing exercises command zarak ate a hard-boiled egg Tennyson made a mantra out of his own name he said to the engineer

I don't know if he said Tennyson tennis and Tennyson or Alfred Alfred Alfred or Alfred Lord Tennyson but anyway you did it

maybe he just said lord lord lord lord groovy the clear light bass player said he was an amiable enthusiast not at all a door and spirit

I wonder what Blake said manzarak amused too bad Morrisons not here Morrison would know it was a long while later

Morrison arrived he had on his black vinyl pants when he sat down on a leather couch in front of the four big blank speakers and

he closed his eyes the Curious aspect of Morrison's arrival was this no one acknowledged it Robbie Krieger continued working out the

guitar Passage John Densmore tuned his drums manzarek sat at the control console and swired a corkscrew and that a girl

rubbed his shoulders the girl did not look at Morrison although he was in her direct line of sight an hour or so passed and still no one

had spoken to Morrison then Morrison spoke to manzarek he spoke almost in a whisper as if you were resting the words from

behind some disabling aphasia it's an hour to West Covina he said I was thinking maybe we should spend the night out there after we play manzarak put down the corkscrew

why he said instead of coming back Shrugged we were planning to come back well I was thinking we could rehearse out there

man's erect said nothing we could get in a rehearsal there's a Holiday Inn next door we could do that manzarek said we could

rehearse Sunday in town I guess so Morrison paused will the place be ready to rehearse Sunday

manzarak looked to him for a while no he said that I counted the control knobs on the electronic console there were 76.

I was unsure in whose favor the dialogue had been resolved or if I had been resolved at all Robbie Krieger picked at his guitar and said that he needed a fuzz box

the producer suggested that he borrowed one from the Buffalo Springfield you're recording in the next Studio Cricket Shrugged Morrison sat down again on the leather

couch and leaned back he lit a match he studied the flame a while and then very slowly very deliberately lowered it to the fly of

his black vinyl pants manzarak watched him the girl who was robbing manzarak's shoulders not luck at anyone there was a sense that no one was going

to leave the room ever it would be some weeks before the doors finished recording this album I did not see it through four

someone once brought Janice Joplin to a party at the house on Franklin Avenue she had just done a concert and she wanted Brandy and Benedictine in a water

tumbler music people never wanted ordinary drinks they wanted sake or champagne cocktails

or tequila neat spending time with music people was confusing and required a more fluid and ultimately

a more passive approach than I ever acquired in the first place time was never of the essence we would have dinner at nine

unless we had it at 11 30.

or we could order in late we would go down to USC to see the living theater if the limo came at the very moment when no one had just made a drink or a

cigarette an arrangement to meet ultraviolet at the Montecito in any case David hockney was coming by in any case ultraviolet was not at the

Montecito in any case we would go down to USC and see the living theater tonight or we would see the living theater another night

in New York or Prague first he wanted sushi for 20.

steamed clams vegetable vindaloo and many rum drinks of gardenias for our hair first we wanted a table for 12 14 at the

most although there might be six more or eight more or 11 more there would never be one or two more because music people did not travel in groups of one or two

John and Michelle Phillips on their way to the hospital for the birth of their daughter China had the limo detour into Hollywood in

order to pick up a friend Anne Marshall this incident which I often embroider in my mind to include an imaginary second detour to the luau for gardenias

exactly the scribes the music business to me five around five o'clock on the morning of October 28 1967

in the desolate District between San Francisco Bay and the Oakland Estuary of the Oakland Police call beat 101a the 25

year old black militant named Huey P Newton was stopped and questioned by a white police officer named John Frey Jr

an hour later Huey Newton was under arrest at Kaiser Hospital in Oakland where he had gone for emergency treatment of a gunshot wound in his stomach

and a few weeks later he was indicted by the Alameda County grand jury on charges of murdering John Frey wounding another

officer and kidnapping a bystander in the spring of 1968 when Huey Newton was awaiting trial I went to see him in the Alameda County Jail

I suppose I went because I was interested in the Alchemy of issues for an issue is what Huey Newton had by then become

to understand how that had happened you must first consider Huey Newton who he was he came from an Oakland family

and for a while he went to Merit College in October of 1966 he and a friend named Bobby seale organized what they called

the Black Panther Party they borrowed the name from the emblem used by the Freedom Party in Lowndes County Alabama and from the beginning it defined

themselves as a revolutionary political group the Oakland Police knew the Panthers and had a list of the 20 or so Panther cars

I'm telling you neither that Huey Newton killed John Frey nor that Huey Newton did not kill John Frey for in the context of revolutionary politics

Huey Newton's guilt or innocence was irrelevant I am telling you only how Huey Newton happened to be in the Alameda County Jail

and why rallies were held in his name demonstrations organized whenever he appeared in courts that's spring Huey the buttons Read 50 cents each

and here and there on the courthouse steps among the Panthers with their Berets and sunglasses the chance would go up

get your M31 because baby we're gonna have some fun boom boom boom boom fight on brother a woman would add in

the spirit of a good-natured amen Bang Bang [ __ ] [ __ ] can't stand the game white man's playing one way out one way

out boom boom boom boom in the corridor downstairs in the Alameda County Courthouse there was a crush of lawyers and CBC correspondents

and cameraman and people who wanted to visit Huey Eldridge doesn't mind if I go up one of the latter said to one of the lawyers feldridge doesn't mind it's all right

with me the lawyer said if you got press credentials I've got kind of dubious credentials I can't take you up then

Eldridge has got GPS credentials one's bad enough I've got a good working relationship up there I don't want to blow it the lawyer turned to a cameraman

you guys rolling yet on that particular day I was allowed to go up and the Los Angeles Times man and the radio newscaster

we all signed the police register and sat around a scarred Pine table and waited for Huey Newton the only thing that's going to free Huey

Newton rap Brown had said recently at a panther rally in Oakland Auditorium is gunpowder yeah Huey Newton laid down his life for us

Stokely Carmichael had said that same night but of course kiwi Newton had not yet laid down his life at all

was just here in the Alameda County Jail waiting to be tried and I wondered if the direction these rallies were taking ever made him uneasy

ever made him suspect that in many ways he was more useful to the revolution Behind Bars than on the street he seemed when he finally came in an extremely likable young man

engaging Direct and I did not get the sense that he had intended to become a political martyr he smiled at us all

and waited for his lawyer Charles Gary to set up a tape recorder and he chatted softly with Eldridge cleaver who was then the Black Panther's minister of information

Huey Newton was still the minister of defense Eldridge Cleaver wore a black sweater and one gold earring and spoke in an almost inaudible draw

and was allowed to see Huey Newton because he had those GBS credentials a press card from ramparts

actually his interest was in getting statements from Huey Newton messages to take outside in receiving a kind of Prophecy to be

interpreted as needed we need a statement Huey about the 10-point program Eldridge Cleaver said so I'll ask you a question C and you answer it

how's Bobby Huey Newton asked he's got a hearing on his misdemeanors see I thought he had a felony

oh well that's another thing the felony he's also got a couple of misdemeanors once Charles Gary had set up the tape recorder Huey Newton stopped chatting and started lecturing almost without

pause he talked running the words together because he had said them so many times before about the American capitalistic

materialistic system and so called free enterprise and the fight for the liberation of black people throughout the world every now and then Eldridge Cleaver

would signal Huey Newton and say something like there are a lot of people interested in the executive mandate number three you've issued the black plan for party

Huey care to comment and Huey Newton would comment yes Monday number three is this demand from the Black Panther Party speaking for the black community within the

Mandate we admonish the racist police force I kept wishing that he would talk about himself hoping to break through the wall of retro

but he seemed to be one of those autodidacts with whom all things specific and personal present themselves as minefields to be avoided even at the

cost of coherence for whom safety lies in generalization the newspaper man the radio man they tried

Q tell us something about yourself yui I mean your life before the Panthers a before the Black Panther Party my life

was very similar for that of most black people in this country Q well your family some incidents you remember the influences that shaped you

a Living in America shaped me Q well yes but more specifically a it reminds me of a quote from James

Baldwin to be black and conscious in America is to be in a constant state of Rage to be black and conscious in America is to be in a constant state of Rage

Eldridge Cleaver wrote in large letters on a pad of paper and then he added Huey P Newton quoting James Baldwin

I could see it emblazoned above the speaker's platform at a rally imprinted on the letterhead of an ad hoc committee still Unborn as a matter of fact almost everything

Huey Newton said at the reign of being a quotation a pronouncement to be employed when the need arose I had heard Huey P Newton on racism

the Black Panther Party is Against Racism Huey P Newton on cultural nationalism the Black Panther Party believes that the only culture worth holding on to is

revolutionary culture Huey P and you turn on White radicalism on police occupation of the ghetto on the European versus the African

Europeans started to be sick when he denied his sexual nature hearing Newton said and Charles Gary interrupted them bringing it back to First principles

isn't it true though Huey he said that racism got at start for economic reasons this weird interlocution seemed to take on a life of its own

the small room was hot and the fluorescent light hurt my eyes and I still did not know to what extent Huey Newton understood the nature of the

role in which he was cast as it happened I'd always appreciated the logic of the panther position based as it was on the proposition that political power began at the end of the

barrel of a gun Open brackets exactly what gun had even been specified in a naughty memorandum

from QEP Newton Army 45 carbine 12 gauge Magnum shotgun with 18 inch barrel preferably the brand of high standard

M16 357 Magnum pistols P38 close brackets and I could appreciate as well the

particular Beauty in Huey Newton as issue in the politics of Revolution everyone was expendable but I doubted that Huey Newton's

political sophistication extended to seeing himself that way the value of a Scottsboro case is easier to see if you are not yourself the Scottsboro boy

is there anything else you want to ask QE Charles Gary asked that did not seem to be the lawyer adjusted his tape recorder

I've had a request Huey he said I'm a high school student a reporter on a school paper and he wanted a stamen from you and he's going to call me tonight

okay to give me a message for him Huey Newton regarded the microphone there was a moment in which he seemed not to remember the name of the play

and then he brightened I would like to point out he said his voice gaining volume as the memory discs clicked high school student youth

message to you that America is becoming a very young Nation quote I heard a moaning and a groaning and I

went over there was this Negro fellow was there he had been shot in the stomach and at the time he didn't appear in any acute

distress and so I said I'd see I asked him if he was a Kaiser if he belonged to Kaiser and he said yes yes get a doctor can you see I'm bleeding I've been shot

I'll get someone out here and I asked him if he had his Kaiser card and he got upset at this and he said come on get a doctor out here I've been shot

I said I see this but you're not in any acute distress so I told him we'd have to check to make sure he was a member

and this kind of upset him more and he called me a few nasty names and said now get a doctor out here right now I've been shot and I'm bleeding and he took his coats off and his shirt

he threw it on the desk there and he said can you see all this blood and I said I see it and it wasn't that much and so I said well you'll have to sign our admission

sheet before you could be seen by a doctor and he said I'm not signing anything and I said you cannot be seen by a doctor unless you sign the admission sheet and

he said I don't have to sign anything and a few more Choice words end quote this is next up from the testimony

before the Alameda County grand jury of Corrine Leonard the nurse in charge of the Kaiser Foundation Hospital emergency room in

Oakland at 5 30 a.m on October 28 1967.

the Negro fellow was of course Huey Newton wounded that morning during the gunfire which killed John Frey for a long time I kept a copy of this

testimony pinned to my office wall on a theory that it illustrates the Collision of cultures a classic instance the historical outsider

confronting the established order at its most Petty and impenetrable level this theory was shattered when I learned that Huey Newton was in fact an enrolled

member of the Kaiser Foundation Health Plan 6.

one morning in 1968 I went to see Eldridge Cleaver in the San Francisco apartment he then shared with his wife Kathleen to be admitted to this apartment it was

necessary to ring first and then stand in the middle of Oak Street at a place which could be observed clearly from the Cleaver's apartment

after this scrutiny the visitor was or was not buzzed in I was and I climbed the stairs to find Kathleen Cleaver in the kitchen frying

sausage and Eldridge Cleaver in the living room listening to a John Coltrane record and the number of other people all over the apartment people everywhere people

standing in doorways and people moving around in one another's peripheral vision and people making and taking telephone calls when can you move on that I would hear

in the background and you can't bribe me with a dinner man those Guardian dinners are all old left like awake most of these other people were members of the Black Panther Party

but one of them in the living room was Eldridge Cleaver's parole officer it seems to me that I stayed about an hour it seems to me that the three of us

Eldridge Cleaver his parole officer and I mainly discussed the commercial prospects of soul and ice which happened was being published that day

we discussed the advance five thousand dollars we discussed the size of the first printing ten thousand copies we discussed the advertising budget and

we discussed the bookstores and which copies were or were not available with the difference that one of the writers had his parole officer there and the other had stood out on Oak

Street and been visually frisked before coming inside seven to pack and wear two skirts two jerseys or leotards

one pullover sweater two pair of shoes stockings bra nightgown robe slippers cigarettes

bourbon bag with shampoo toothbrush and paste basis soap razor deodorant aspirin prescriptions

Tampax face cream powder baby oil to carry mohair throw

typewriter two legal pads and pens files house key this is a list which was taped inside my closet door in Hollywood during those years when I was reporting more or less

steadily the list enabled me to pack without thinking for any piece I was likely to do notice the deliberate anonymity of

costume in a skirt a leotard and stockings I could pass on either side of the culture

notice the mohair throw for trunk climb flights I.E no blankets

flights I.E no blankets and for the motel room in which the air conditioning could not be turned off notice the bourbon for the same rotorum

now test the typewriter for the airport coming home the idea was to turn in the Hertz car check in find an empty bench and start typing the day's notes

it should be clear that this was a list made by someone who prized control and after momentum someone determined to play her role as

if she had the script heard her cues knew the narrative there is on this list one significant omission

one article I needed and never had a watch I needed a watch not during the day when I could turn on the car radio or ask someone

but at night in the motel quite often I would ask the desk for the time every half hour or so until finally embarrassed to ask again

I would call Los Angeles and ask my husband in other words I had skirts jerseys leotards pullover sweater shoes stockings bra nightgown

robe slippers cigarettes bourbon shampoo toothbrush and paste basis soap Razer deodorant aspirin prescriptions Tampax

face cream powder baby oil mohair throw typewriter legal pads pens files under house key but I didn't know what time it was

this may be a parable either of my life as a reporter during this period or of the period itself eight driving a Budget rent a car between

Sacramento and San Francisco one rainy morning in November of 1968 I kept the radio on very loud on this occasion I kept the radio on

very loud not to find out what time it was but in an effort to erase six words from my mind six words which had no significance for

me which seemed that year to Signal the onset of anxiety or fright the words a line from Ezra pounds in a station of

the Metro were these petals on a wet black bow the radio played with cheetah lineman and I heard it on the Grapevine

petals on a wet black bow somewhere between the YOLO Causeway and Vallejo it occurred to me that during the course of any given week

I met too many people who spoke favorably about bombing power stations somewhere between the YOLO Causeway and Vallejo it also occurred to me that the

Fright on this particular morning is going to present itself as an inability to drive this Budget rent a car across the carquinas bridge the Witchita lineman was still on the

job I closed my eyes and drove across the carquinas bridge because I had appointments because I was working

because I had promised to watch the Revolution being made at San Francisco State College and because there was no place in Vallejo

to turn in a Budget Rent a Car and because nothing on my mind was in the script as I remembered it 9.

a San Francisco State College on that particular morning the wind was blowing the cold rain and squalls Across The muddied Lawns and against the lighted Windows of

anti-classrooms in the days before there had been fires sets and classes invaded and finally a confrontation with the San

Francisco police Tactical Unit and in the weeks to come the campus would become what many people wanted were pleased to call a Battlefield the police and the mace and the noon

arrests have become the routine of life on the campus and every night the combatants would review their day on television the waves of students advancing the

commotion at the edge of the frame the riot sticks flashing the instant of jerky camera that served to suggest at what risk the film was

obtained then a cut to the weather map in the beginning there had been the necessary issue the suspension of a 22 year old

instructor who happened as well to be minister of education for the Black Panther Party but that issue like most had soon ceased

to be the point in the minds of even the most dense participants disorder was its own point I'd never before been on a campus in

disorder had missed even Berkeley and Colombia and I suppose I went to San Francisco State expecting something other than what I found there

in some not at all trivial sense the set was wrong the very architecture of California state colleges tends to deny radical

Notions to reflect instead a modest and hopeful vision of progressive welfare bureaucracy and as I walked across the campus that day and on later days the entire San

Francisco State dilemma the gradual politicization the issues here and there the obligatory 15 demands

the continual arousal of the police and the outrage citizenry seemed increasingly off-key an instance of the infant teribla and

the Board of Trustees unconsciously collaborating on a wish for Fantasy Revolution on campus and playing it out in time for the six o'clock news

adjet prop committee meeting in the Redwood Room rather scrolled notes on the cafeteria door one morning only someone who needed very badly to be

alone could respond with Force to a guerrilla band that not only announced its meetings on the enemy's bulletin board and seemed innocent of the spelling and so the meaning of the words

it used Hitler hayakawa some of the faculty have begun calling S.I hayakawa the semanticist would become the college's

third president in a year and had incurred considerable displeasure by trying to keep the campus open eifeman K Boyle had screamed at him at a

rally in just such broad Strokes was the picture being painted in the fall of 1968 on the pastel campus a San Francisco State

the place simply never seemed serious the headlines were dark that first day the college had been closed quote indefinitely

both Ronald Reagan and Jesse Unruh were threatening reprisals still the climate inside the administration building was that of a

musical comedy about college light no chance will be open tomorrow secretaries informed callers go skiing have a good time striking black militants dropped in to

chat with the Deans Strike King white radicals exchanged gossip in the corridors no interviews no press announced a

student strike leader who happened into a Dean's office where I was sitting in the next moment he was peaked because no one had told him that a Huntley

Brinkley camera crew was on campus we can still plug into that the dean said soothingly everyone seemed joined in a rather

festive camaraderie a shared jargon a shared sense of moment the future was no longer arduous and indefinite but immediate and programmatic

a glow with the prospect of problems to be quote addressed plans to be quote implemented it was agreed all around for the confrontations could be a very healthy

development but maybe it took a shutdown to get something done the mood like the architecture was 1948

functional a model of pragmatic optimism perhaps Evelyn War could have gotten it down exactly right

war was good at scenes of industrious self-delusion scenes of people absorbed in odd games here at San Francisco State only the black militants could be construed as

Syria there were any rate picking the games dictating the rules and taking what they could from what seemed for everyone else

just an amiable evasion of routine of institutional anxiety of the TDM of the academic calendar meanwhile the administrators could talk

about programs meanwhile the white radicals could see themselves on an investment of virtually nothing as Urban guerrillas

it was working out well for everyone this game at San Francisco State and its peculiar virtues had never been so clear to me as they became one

afternoon when I sat in on a meeting of 50 or 60 SDS members they had called a press conference for later that day and now they were discussing just what the format of the

press conference should be this has to be on our terms someone warned because they'll ask very leading questions they'll ask questions make them submit any questions in

writing someone else suggested the black student union does that very successfully and they just don't answer anything they don't want to answer

that's it don't fall into Fair trap something we should stress at this press conference is who owns the media you don't think it's common knowledge that the papers represent corporate

interests a realist among them interjected doubtfully I don't think it's understood two hours and several dozen hand boats

later the group had selected four members to tell the Press who owned the media had decided to appear on mass as an opposition press conference

and had debated various slogans for the next day's demonstration let's see first we have asked how's it like it ain't then stop press distortion

that's the one that was some political controversy about and before they broke up they had listened to a student who had driven up for the day from the College

of San Mateo at Junior College down on the peninsula from San Francisco quote I came up here today with some third world students to tell you that we're with you

and we hope that you'll be with us when we try to pull off a strike next week because we're really into it we carry our motorcycle helmets all the time can't think can't go to class end quote

yeah paused he was a nice looking boy and fired with his task I considered the tender Melancholy of life in San Mateo which is one of the

richest counties per capita on the United States of America and I considered whether or not the Wichita Lineman and the Petals on the wet black bow

represented the aimlessness of the bourgeoisie and I considered the illusion of aim to be gained by holding a press conference

the only problem with press conference is being that the Press ask questions I'm here to tell you that at College of San Mateo we're living like revolutionaries

the boy said then 10.

we put Lay Lady Lay on the record player and Suzanne we went down to Melrose Avenue to see the flying burritos there was a Jasmine Vine grown Over The

Veranda of the big house on Franklin Avenue and in the evenings the smell of Jasmine came in through all the open doors and windows I made boo Your Bass for people who did

not eat meat I imagine that my own life was simple and sweet and sometimes it was but there were odd things going around town

there were rumors there were stories everything was unmentionable but nothing was unimaginable this mystical flirtation with the idea of sin

this sense that it was possible to go too far and that many people were doing it was very much with us in Los Angeles in 1968 and 1969

A demented and seductive vertical tension was building in the community the Jitters were setting in I recall a time when the dog sparked

every night and the moon was always full on August 9 1969 I was sitting in the shallow end of my sister-in-law's swimming pool in Beverly

Hills and she received a telephone call from a friend we just heard about the murders a Sharon Tate polanski's house and Seattle Drive

the phone rang many times during the next hour these early reports were cardboard and contradictory one quarter would say hoods the next

would say chains there were twenty dead no 12 10 18.

black masses were imagined and bad trips blamed I remember all of the days this information very clearly and I also remember this

and wish I did not I remember that no one was surprised 11.

when I first met Linda Kasabian in the summer of 1970 she was wearing her hair parted neatly in the middle no makeup

Elizabeth Arden Blue Cross perfume and the unpressed blue uniform issued to inmates of the Sybil brand Institute for women in Los Angeles

she was at civil brand in protective custody waiting out the time until she could testify about the murders of Sharon Tate Polanski Abigail Folger

JC bring vojtek forkowski Stephen parents and rosemary and Lano labianca and with her lawyer Gary Fleischmann I spent a number of evenings talking to

Heather of these evenings I remember mainly my dread entering the prison at leaving for even an hour the infinite possibilities I suddenly perceived in the summer

Twilight I remember driving downtown on the Hollywood freeway and Gary fleischkin's Cadillac convertible with the top down

I remember watching a rabbit graze on the grass by the gate as Gary feischmann signed the prison register each of the half dozen doors are locked

behind us as we entered civil brand was a little death and I would emerge after the interview like Persephone from the underworld

euphoric elated once home I would have two drinks and make myself a hamburger and eat it ravenously dig it Gary Fleischmann was always

saying one night when we were driving back to Hollywood from Sybil brand in the Cadillac convertible with the top down he demanded that I tell him the population of India

I said that I did not know the population of India take a guess he prompted I made a guess absurdly low and he was

disgusted he had asked the same question of his niece a college girl of Linda and now of me

and none of us had known it seemed to confirm some idea he had of women their essential in educability

a similarity under the skin Gary Fleischmann was someone of a type I met only Riley a comic realist in a pork pie hat

a business traveler on the far frontiers of the period a man who knew his way around the courthouse and civil brand and remained cheerful even jaunty in the

face of the awesome and impenetrable mystery at the center of what he called the case in fact we never talked about the case

and referred to its Central events only as fielo drive and La Bianca we talked instead about Linda's

childhood pastimes and disappointments her High School romances and her concern for her children this particular juxtaposition of the

spoken and the Unspeakable was eerie and unsettling and made my notebook a Litany of little irony is so obvious as to be of interest

only to Dedicated absurdists an example Linda dreamed of opening a combination restaurant Boutique and Pet Shop 12.

certain organic disorders of the central nervous system are characterized by periodic remissions the apparent complete recovery of The

Afflicted nerves what happens appears to be this as the lining of a nerve becomes inflamed and hardens into Scar Tissue thereby

blocking the passage of neural impulses the nervous system gradually changes its circulatory finds other unaffected nerds to carry the same messages

during the years when I found it necessary to revise the circuitry of my mind I discovered that I was no longer interested in whether the woman on the

ledge outside the window on the 16th floor jumped or did not jump or in why I was interested only in the picture of her in my mind

her hair incandescent in the floodlights her bare toes curled inward on the stone ledge in this light all narrative was sentimental

in this light all connections were equally meaningful and equally senseless try these on the morning of John Kennedy's death

in 1963 I was buying at ransohoff's in San Francisco a short silk dress in which to be married

a few years later the stress of mine was ruined when at a dinner party in Bel Air Roman Polanski accidentally spilled a glass of red wine on it Sharon Tay was also a guest at this

party although she and Rowan Polanski were not yet married on July 27 1970 I went to the magnanim

high shop on the third floor of I magnin in Beverly Hills and picked out at Linda kasabian's request the dress in which she began her testimony about the

murders at Sharon Tate polanski's house in Seattle Drive size 9 petite our instructions read many but not extremely mini in velvet if

possible emerald green or gold or a Mexican peasant style dress smocked or embroidered she needed a dress that morning because

the district attorney Vincent bugliosi had expressed doubts about the drafts she had planned to wear a long white home spun shift

long is for evening you'll advise Linda long was for evening and white was for brides at her own wedding in 1965 Linda

Kasabian had won a white mccrade suit time passed times changed everything was to teach us something at 11 20 on that July Morning in 1970 I

delivered the dress in which she were testified to Gary Fleischmann who was waiting in front of his office on Rodeo Drive in Beverly Hills he was wearing his pork pie hat and he

was standing with Linda's second husband Bob Kasabian and their friend Charlie Melton both of whom were wearing long white robes

long was for Bob and Charlie the dress and the eye Magnum box was for Linda the three of them took the eye Magnum box and got into Gary Fishman's Cadillac

convertible with the top down and drove off in the sunlight toward the freeway downtown wading back at me I believe this to be an authentically

senseless chain of correspondences but in the jingle jangle morning of that summer it made as much sense as anything else did 13.

I record a conversation I had in 1970 with the manager of a motel in which I was staying near Pendleton Oregon I've been doing a piece for life about

the storage of VX and GB nerve gas a tsunami Arsenal numatilla County and now I was done and trying to check out of the motel

during the course of checking out I was asked this question by the manager who was a Mormon if you can't believe you're going to heaven in your own body and on a first name basis of all the members of your

family then what's the point of dying at that time I believe that my basic effect of controls were no longer intact

but now I present this to you as a more cogent question than I might at first appear the kind of Cohen of the period 14.

once I had a rib broken and during the few moments that it was painful to turn in bed or raise my arms in a swimming pool I had for the first time a sharp

apprehension of what it would be like to be old later I forgot at some point during the years I'm talking about here

after a series of periodic visual disturbances three electroencephalograms two complete sets of skull and neck x-rays

one five-hour glucose tolerance test two electromyelograms a battery of chemical tests and consultations with two ophthalmologists

one internist and three neurologists I was told that the disorder was not really in my eyes that in my central nervous system

I might or might not experience symptoms of neural damage all my life these symptoms which might or might not appear might or might not involve my eyes

they might or might not involve my arms or legs they might or might not be disabling their effects might be lessened by cortisone injections

or they might not it could not be predicted the condition had a name the kind of name usually associated with telephones

but the name meant nothing and the neurologist did not like to use it the name was multiple sclerosis but the name had no meaning

this was the neurologist said the exclusionary diagnosis and meant nothing I had at this time a sharp apprehension

not of what it was like to be old but of what it was like to open the door to the stranger and find that the stranger did indeed have the knife thank you

in a few lines of dialogue in a neurologist's office in Beverly Hills the improbable had become the probable the norm things which happened only to other

people could in fact happen to me I could be struck by lightning could dare to eat a peach and be poisoned by the cyanide in the Stone

the startling fact was this my body was offering a precise physiological equivalent to what had been going on in my mind

lead a simple life the neurologist advised not that it makes any difference we know about in other words there was another story without a narrative

15.

many people I know in Los Angeles believe that the 60s ended abruptly on August 9 1969.

ended at the exact moment when wired of the murders on Cielo Drive traveled like brush fire through the community and in a sense this is true

the tension broke that day the paranoia was fulfilled in another sense the 60s did not truly end for me until January of 1971

when I left the house on Franklin Avenue and moved to a house on the sea this particular house on the sea and itself been very much a part of the 60s

and for some months after we took possession I would come across Souvenirs of that period in its history appears to Scientology literature

beneath a jaw lining a copy of Stranger in a Strange Land stuck deep on a closet shelf but after a while we did some construction

and between the power source and the Sea wind the place got exorcized I have known since then very little about the movements of the

people who seem to me emblematic of those years I know of course the Eldridge Cleaver went to Algeria and came home an entrepreneur

I know that Jim Morrison died in Paris I know that Linda Kasabian fled in search of the Pastoral to New Hampshire where I once visited her

she also visited me in New York and we took our children on the Staten Island Ferry to see the Statue of Liberty I also know that in 1975 Paul Ferguson

was serving a life sentence for the murder of Ramon Navarro won first prize in a pen fiction contest and announced plans to quote continue my

writing writing had helped him he said to quote reflect on experience and see what it means quite often I reflect on the big house

in Hollywood on Midnight Confessions and on Ramon Navarro and on the fact that Roman Polanski and

I are God Parents to the same child by writing has not yet helped me to see what it means