Rebel Without a Cause (16 page)

All of the flowers are now coming up into bloom. They look so nice and pretty, and all of the birds and pigeons are all around the lawns in the morning. I get up as early as five, it’s real nice and cool then, and I look out of the window. There’s a bunch of birds around all the time and with them something is always going on, they’re fighting or making a racket, especially the pigeons. Everything is so nice and fresh. I can hear the bugle blowing when they bring up the flag; it sounds nice and far away.

The calendar tells me that this is the middle of August. The months go by fast and there are only twelve of them in a year so the years go by.

Sometimes I look out of the windows at night and see the moon shining and the clouds around it. It’s pretty hard to believe that the moonlight is nothing but reflected sunlight. The universe must be so vast: man’s mind cannot penetrate it; millions and millions of miles. It shows that man is still very small. And the earth just keeps on turning; and the stars. It’s very hard for some people to understand that the earth and the apple that falls out of the tree have the same amount of gravity on each other. They just see the apple fall out of the tree and they argue with you and think you are crazy. I used to argue a lot with fellows about how the universe is and things like that. Now I just back out of such arguments.

I like to read
Boat Magazine.
I just read it and look at the different boats. I like to go sailing. I’d hate to settle down in one place and just stay there all my life. I’d like to do this: buy a boat about sixty feet long, live on it somewhere along the water, somewhere in the north in the summer and the south in the winter, and have the work I want to do, all my books, my own library, and one other fellow on the boat with me to help take care of it. A boat doesn’t cost much. I’d like to have one when I wanted to go somewhere. If I wanted to go to New York I’d go to New York: if I wanted to go to Florida I’d go to Florida. I’m not interested in making money, big cars and all that. I guess what most of the time I’m doing is dreaming, that’s about all. I’d like to have a life of leisure. Of course I’d have to work, but I also want to do some of the things I like to do.
I don’t want to tie myself down to one place and know that I have to stay there the rest of my life. That’s one thing I dislike about this place. You have to do certain things at certain times. If you have stockade you have to stay out there, and you have to stay there in spite of the hot sun. Still I’m glad I’m here or I wouldn’t be learning as I am. Of course, I haven’t got very far, haven’t even taken the first step on the ladder. But I’m going up. It looks so high up, so very far.

Dobriski kids me a lot; calls me dumb and stupid, and I make believe I’m sore at him and he laughs. The other day he motioned me outside. “I don’t want to see you for nothing important,” he said. “I just want to look at you. I haven’t seen you for about a month.” Then he told me how thin I am. Everybody loses weight in the summer, I guess.

Sometimes I get angry with him when he comes around with another fellow that lives in his cell-block. I chase them away. I want to have nothing to do with this fellow, I don’t like him; I don’t even want to talk to him. He irritates me. Yesterday Dobriski was playing ball and he came over to get a drink of water when I was going in. He said I was acting kind of funny. He said, “You don’t want to talk to anybody; you walk around with a long face; you don’t notice if anybody walks past you. I haven’t seen you smile or have a good laugh in a long time.” I think he just imagines it.

One time we were sitting in the dugout, me and Perry and Dobriski, and another fellow came over. Dobriski sat down by me and put his arm around my neck. I was sore at this other fellow and I didn’t even want to see him, so I chased them away. Perry got sore because Dobriski put his arm around me or something. He said he didn’t like it.

I always like to go out Sunday mornings, though, because they have the radio playing music. Perry likes music a lot too, but he can recognize any song that’s being played and I can’t. He says music is like a hot poker that singes your heart and soul.

I hate a lot of the fellows in here. I like to be by myself. O, I know them. I’m getting so that I don’t want to speak to any of them and I don’t want them to speak to me. I’d rather be alone somewhere, all by myself for a few hours. Yesterday afternoon I was alone for about an hour. I started thinking about some philosopher
who wrote that a lot of people have a liking or dislike for some other people because, well, they say, “We would go and pay them a visit if they didn’t have that vicious dog in their yard.” Most fellows I guess are like that in here. One fellow says he’s a friend of mine but he told a couple other fellows what a fool I was. I told him I knew what I was doing, so he started cursing me and called me all kinds of names; so I started wondering how true this philosopher’s idea really is; certain people are just like a little vicious dog in the yard that bites you.

Yesterday Perry was telling me about genius. I don’t remember anything he tells me different times. Thoughts go through my head and I don’t pay any attention to what he says. When he got through I didn’t know what he said and I told him so. He said he knew it but kept on anyway.

There are so many different people in here. You can almost tell the states they come from by the different customs and habits they have …

Sometimes I talk and talk and talk and don’t realize what I am saying. It reminds me of the times when I am alone with somebody and I say something and they don’t know what I am talking about. I talk to myself a lot and I switch around to different subjects and think about them but when I try to remember the first subject I can’t.

I talk about different things with people, mostly trying to repeat things I study. When I study and find something interesting and then go on studying, I can’t remember what I studied five or ten minutes before. I’m getting some information about Mexico now, something about their political and economic and social conditions before and after the revolution.

I moved to another cell last night. There was an old fellow in there before me who had crabs and all of the other guys were kidding me about it today. I suppose it was just my imagination but last night I felt all the time something crawling over me. I didn’t sleep very much. All the fellows were kidding me and laughed: they saw that I hadn’t slept much and they said I’d been chasing crabs all night. I did sleep for a little while, though, and I woke at about four. I heard people talking outside my cell window.

Thinking about a boat now reminds me of a submarine, how it goes down in the water and comes up. It is made for only one thing; to destroy. It produces nothing. These boats cost millions of dollars. War is bad. These sea battles, the boats run right through the water, through everything and over everything. They’re the things man made to destroy himself. It usually ends up not by the man being destroyed, the man who made and built these objects. They’re used to destroy other men, not himself. I can see the picture. A lot of these men swimming in the ocean, their heads bobbing up and down, and the boats going over them and past them. I don’t think there will ever be any stop to it. They’ll always keep on like that; but nature is a funny thing. When a pack of animals is together and one violates the code it is killed or ostracized, but man kills regardless. So does the rat. I always think that man and the rat are the two worst animals in the world. I think even a snake is better than either one. A snake goes on across the path and gets into the bushes and keeps going. One big country starts a war with another country, over a river or a mountain or a canal, and they fight over it, and they keep on fighting for thousands of years to come, over a piece of ground and some water. They shoot hell out of each other and the best one is the one who wins. All the way back in history there have always been wars over something, more territory, more land, markets, or something. These countries always are in trouble, always have something going on. The people of Mexico are always in the middle of a revolution, fighting, fighting, for nothing. A couple of men come into power; they take the money that they want; then they leave. It’ll be like that through the ages. There’s nothing new about it; it’ll never grow old. As long as people are like puppets it will be that way.

I remember when I was in grammar school I had some puppets. I know how they work. You pull a string; they dance; they do anything. The only difference with people is that the strings are not visible; it’s hard to know where it comes from, what makes them act that way.

I like to be alone, by myself. I find that although I don’t know anything, I’m my own best company. I’m happiest when I am alone. I talk to myself and discuss things and I always have the same idea, one opinion of everything, so I don’t do much arguing with myself. When I am alone I just close my eyes and let things go by.

This fellow Gordon is a tough kid. He thinks he’s a big man because he gets in the boxing ring with someone. I think it’s alright; it’s a good sport; it develops their bodies; it makes them quick on their feet and teaches them how to use their hands.

I don’t like to pick fights. I’m going to have one I’m afraid, and if I do I’m going to hurt the other fellow pretty bad. I don’t want to fight: I might hurt somebody and I don’t want to hurt anybody. As far as I’m concerned nothing is important enough to fight about, either here or anywhere, unless it’s for sport.

I don’t know very much what I think about, but usually something I have read in the past will come to my mind and I think about it and turn it around and change it and twist it around to see if I can get something out of it. One time I was thinking about the iron ore that Germany is getting from Sweden, and I kept thinking how they can get the ore out if the railroad it is carried on is destroyed. I thought and thought and finally I decided that the only way they could get it out would be by airplane. I told another fellow about this and he said I was crazy, so now I don’t tell people what I am thinking about. I just think and let it go at that. Most people I know wouldn’t understand what thinking is anyway. I guess they haven’t done any of it. Most of them talk about baseball and then some more baseball.

It was always fun watching the fireworks on the Fourth of July.

Most of my fun was in bringing them into our town. I would go to another town near ours, buy them, and bring them back in a rowboat. I’d cross the river by boat because then I didn’t have to go by the bridge. One time I got caught on the bridge with a couple dollars worth of fireworks and they were confiscated.

I’d sit on the bank of the river on the Fourth and look over into P—— where they were shooting off rockets, and I’d see the rockets going up and looking like small meteors. I’d get a lot of pleasure out of lying on the lawn at night just looking at the sky, the stars, and the clouds moving past the moon. It would illustrate to me the good and the bad things, how they come and go, nothing permanent.

Sometimes they’d have concerts in the park near where I lived, and I’d go somewhere away from the music, all alone, not very far but distant enough to hear the music softly. Nearby it didn’t sound very
nice, but from where I was it sounded so soft and sweet. When you were away from everybody it was like the music was floating on the air, so nice. When I played the radio at home too I always kept it very soft. My father, he is nearly deaf, so he always turned the radio up loud, real loud. I didn’t like that and my sister felt the same way, so we’d go somewhere else and read.

People as a whole don’t bother me. Sometimes I like to talk to some sensible person. I go upstairs to type my lessons and if anybody is in the room I can’t work. Some of the fellows up there are alright and I like to talk to them, but I just can’t work when someone is around. It makes it hard for me to read my notes with people around looking at me. I tried to work several times in company. I don’t know whether they look at me or not and I keep looking around to see if they are watching.

I feel kind of sleepy. I didn’t sleep much last night. I guess they were kidding me so much it’s preying on my mind. I kept telling myself that it was just imagination but something in the back of my head kept saying it wasn’t. These fellows had me coming and going and I didn’t know which way to turn. There’s always something up in a place like this.

I looked out of the window and it was raining and the pigeons all got together and cuddled up against the building. They perched up there under the arches, snugly and warmly, letting it rain. They just get out of it. They know the rain will be over in a while. Man should learn more from them, only it looks like man learns more from the buzzard and the hawk.

It reminds me of a story I read one time of a bird that was trying to swoop down on a fish. It was swooping down and got hold of the fish and the fish was too heavy, so the fish pulled the bird down underneath the water, and the bird drowned. I don’t know the significance of that but I guess people could come to their own conclusion about it …

Doctor, would you mind giving me a little advice? You probably know this: Perry is in love with me. You know it.

L: ‘Now, Harold, instead of me offering advice to you, suppose you just continue as usual with whatever occurs to you.’

Well, it’s rather a funny and new experience, some fellow saying something like that to you.

Well, about a year ago Perry lived in my cell-block and ate at the same table with me in the mess hall. He always so arranged it that he was sitting across the table from me, so we had several conversations, and in the beginning I liked the fellow. He didn’t seem to be like the other fellows; he was different or something: he would usually just sit at the table and not say anything at all during the whole meal; and then sometimes he talked about many things. I never paid very much attention to him. He always seemed a swell kind of fellow, not the sort who would get himself into trouble. I liked him from the beginning and we’d talk occasionally.