Pick up your soft typewriter and walk

I saw Colin Pasmore, Don Carwardine (briefly), and then Ned Ammons, all about my scheme to intermit. Pasmore raised the sort of objections that have been thrown at me already—intermitting interrupts the continuity of my academic study, etc.—but Carwardine briefly filled me with hope by saying he’d “have a word” with Ned Ammons. When I saw Ammons himself, he was again skeptical, and wondered if in fact I wasn’t regretting my decision about the year abroad. He advised me to go see the Dean and to present my request in writing, which he will read out at a meeting of the Student Planning Committee on July 2nd.

I left his office with mixed feelings, both about my prospects and about the desire to intermit itself . . ..

Later I read and photocopied Burroughs’ “The Literary Techniques of Lady Sutton-Smith,” an exposition about the cut-up/fold in techniques he does with Gysin, his attitude about the would-be writer, his methods of material acquisition / recording of reality. This filled me with enthusiasm and I think made me realise how these Words and THIS FORMAT exercise a kind of tyranny over me.

I must dispense with them entirely, or at least dispense with them as the sole means of communicating my ideas or exploring literary techniques . . . EXPAND!