He and a buddy have just gotten back from Louisville. He says he took the advice of a "bumper banner," "Choice - not chance; Go AWOL!" Nothing much to say about it - they had a bit of a bother ducking the MP's getting off the base, and he snuck a bottle of I.W. Harper's back with him. I haven't even heard of that for years - must still be out there - a very good bourbon, I believe.

Wish I could think of something profound to say about it, but nothing is coming. The bluebells and forget-me-nots are blooming in my garden. I'm planting the geraniums I bought a couple of days ago - have lots of pansies to put in, and herbs which I will try to plant in the swale the city created in front of my house a couple of years ago. There's too much shade in the backyard for anything but potted plants. The begonia tubers I tried to take over the winter in a box of coarse sand didn't make it - so spent too much money buying two new large blooming plants, but they will last all summer.

My house needs scarlet begonias. It already has a touch of the blues. It's painted old blue, and I'm blue from sciatica, which was actually not quite as crippling this morning. Walking around normally in almost no time.

I keep picking the same Tarot cards over and over - the six of wands (triumph) and the 8 of swords (obstructions made by oneself).

I have too much to do and no time to do it in, but that's normal. I wish I could go AWOL. I wish I drank. No, actually I don't wish any of those things. I like all the stuff I have to do. I just with I didn't feel as if time were running out.

This one from much earlier - September 1962. He's still at Fort Knox, in the Service Club, listening to Miles Davis' "Sketches from Spain." He says they had pictures taken, and he's thinking he will pass his out to the NCO's "who I am sure will be delighted." I liked his sense of humor. I didn't have the mental acuity to appreciate Miles until much later. Too much taken with Chubby Checker and Jerry Lee Lewis, I believe. Althought I remember thinking I *should* like jazz, mostly it just put me to sleep. I remember saying something like that to someone else later on in Chicago - that it was good music to go to sleep by, thinking that was a good thing to say, an appreciative thing. Whoever I said it to gave me a look of pure astonishment, and I knew I had just revealed myself as irredeemably uncool.