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Dec. 26th, '70 continued. The last time I went through such an intensive and concentrated time of work was in October of this year when I worked on those two poems for Alan's book. The persuasion to work --is it heightened by the potential of an audience?

Dec. 27-28-29:  Steady work, from noon to way past midnight. Revising, recasting color, a small change of angle of a single stroke, to sharpen a meaning. "This is what I mean." I wonder what forces conspired to doom me to such infinitesmal detail? Why should the smallest detail contain for me such huge importance. On the 29th: to Worth St. to renew my driver's licencce. Then a fruitless sojourn into shopping areas: to Highlights where there were only ugly hunks of rock, to Astro whereprices were astronomical but where the displayed specimens were utterly beautiful, especially a huge white rock with some unnamed blue crystals shining sharply in matrix, to Korvette for film, to Orbach, and then sensing the utter waste of time looking for clothing or whatnot, the ride home where all my work lay waiting.

Dec. 30 --My painting weaves in and out of thoughts, memories of  land, islands, seas, seasons, and poetry.  I begin to catch strands of poems committed to memory years ago, and now only vaguely, but importantly, remembered.  Dover Beach, something by MacLeish ( why do we stand here by the shore, ... what is it we cannot remember), Who Cares When, we who have done with [[strikethrough]] dreaming [[/strikethrough]] doing, shall hold fast ourselves at last, who cares when...

I try to reproduce in oil on board (20x22)the w.c. [[watercolor]] I did several years ago of an ocean sunset, perhaps the best of that whole series, but try as I may, the reproduction keeps veering off the original, and begins to assert its own world.

Dec 31. so today it has become a red sun over red sea ledges ("A Drift of Days"). At midnight I sat in the l.r. surrounded by all my new ptgs: Island and Stars, Atlantic Headld, Breaking into Fog, Breaking into Evening, Radiant Wave [[strikethrough]] Breaking into Morning [[/strikethrough]], Kelp Shallows, [strikethrough]] and [[/strikethrough]] the very new one with the red sun, and Erosion by Ice. 

(all this, through the horror and the sadness of the news from Toronto.)