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I realized at that time it is more provident to surrender to knowledge and curiosity than it is to movies or a novel. That escapism was the great drug of the age and I didn't want it and didn't want to produce it. "Give me a knowledge of society and my experience in it and then I will write through what I know and experience." That was the real source of epic poetry. It was not escape and blathering entertainment for 500 pages but a blasting voice through the world the poet knew. That is the thing. That is the only thing in the long run.

Berkeley taught this more than any other area I've lived in.

When young, at this time, I studied organizations; the organization of life. This was central and probably changed the direction of my writing from novel writing to poetry and philosophy. Novel writing was the study of human society for the most part. But society was only one sort of organization and had been studied to death. At any rate, science and philosophy led me to this study; a study without any final conclusion except that we, as people, are determined by the nature of organization we give our loyalty to or that subdue us one way or the other. This is why "freedom" is a reality and something to be taken utterly seriously. Without this reality in place all is predicable and predictability leads to a kind of kindly slavery. And as the world get more complex, more organized, more fierce in loyalties it becomes harder and harder for people to see their freedom, their possibilities, their own spirits.

What I learned, finally, from all this study, random as it was, profound as it was at times, is that the two greatest values to have are boundless curiosity and "learned ignorance." Christ is absolutely true: What benefit is there for a man to conquer the world and yet lose his soul? Which I take to mean, what matters if you know everything but don't have an inner core of "stuff" that allows for compassion, tolerance, pity, and the rest of it. Well, it's obvious what you have: Sick intelligent people running things.

To study something is not to kill it. And there is an art to it. As life, itself, is a kind of harsh art. This was a lesson I did not learn until the next phase of development, in the midst of family, in the LaMorinda area.

Berkeley taught me that the pursuit of power without discover of soul is a most dangerous proposition. A dangerous one.

I was never certain whether the openness in Berkeley was evidence of a dysfunctional breakdown or some new opening arising in the possibility of the new world.