#james laughlin

This is a very unreal sort of summer. Do you ever have periods like that in which reality seems to have entirely withdrawn? It is not necessarily unpleasant—it creates irresponsibility, more vagueness than usual—a new sense of proportions or the lack of them. Usually it only occurs in summer and on the ocean.—It happened to me once in California—Laguna Beach just before the war. I called it Nave Nave Mahana, after the painting by Gauguin. It doesn't interfere with work—I have done a good deal on a long play but it makes your work seem more smokey more cloudy than it even is. And you are impatient with words. They seem the most unreal things a man can work with. Sometimes a storm blows up and enormous birds rush over—that's what you are waiting and enduring for. In between times everything is unbelievably pink shrimpish. What comes, what is coming?