My room in the pension at 4 rue du Conseil, Brussels, 1967

  

My room at 4 rue du Conseil, Brussels, 1966-67

 On This Day

from my journal and mail

16 March 1967, Thursday

Dear Family, 

You risk a lot having me as a son:  I think like a poet, write like a pessimist, speak like a prophet, take advice like the pope, pay my debts like the poor, date like a priest, and eat candy like a pig.  Moreover, my brethren, be ye followers of me as I am of Menno Simons and I guarantee you a happy life. 

My letters probably give you a lop-sided view of me because my letter writing is for me a psychological recreation period.  That is, when something is irking me, I take to pestering other people.  So you miss all my composed, mature, pastoral moments.  They slip by unused across the pages of a book or are absorbed by the keyboard of a piano or just simply vaporize in the solemnity of my celibate room.

Nobody is around to reap my pleasantness, so I learn to stand content reflecting the beauty of the universe like a flower unnoticed on the bare steppes of Russia.  Or, I change moods and reflect the wrath of God, standing big-shouldered and low-browed oozing tons of energy, like a mad billy goat, into the nonresponding cool, vast airs of the Sierre Nevada.

With love,

Glenn

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