I mean it was like my first frightened realization of what to be japanese really meant—To be Japanese and not to believe in life any more and to be gloomy like Beethoven yet to be Japanese in gloom, the gloom of Bashô behind it all, the huge thunderous scowl of Issa or of Shiki, kneeling in the frost with the bowed head like the bowed-head-oblivion of all the old horses of Japan long dust.
He sits there on the lawn bench looking down and when Dave asks him “Well you gonna be alright soon George” he says simply “I dont know’—He really means “I dont care”—And always warm and courteous with me he now hardly pays any attention to me—He's a little nervous because the other patients, G.I. vets, will see that he’s received a visit from a bunch of ragged beatniks including Joey Rosenberg who is bouncing around the lawn looking at flowers with that bemused sincere smile—But little neat George, just 5 feet 5 and a few pounds over that and so clean, with his soft feathery hair like the hair of a child, his delicate hands, he just stares at the ground—His answers come like an old man’s (he’s only 30)—“I guess all the Dharma talk about everything is nothing is just sorta sinking in my bones,” he concedes, which makes me shudder—(On the way Dave's been telling us to be ready because George’s changed so)—But I try to keep things going, “Do you remember those dancing girls in St.Louis?”—“Yeh, whore candy” (he’s referring to a piece of perfumed cotton one of the girls threw at us in her dance, which we tacked up later to a highway accident cross we’d yanked out of the
