The downfall of the American Empire and other trivial pursuits June 27, 1985

  

Dear Mary Kay:

I received your note the other day and had I known that you might show up I would have feared for my life – considering the kind of material we have been printing lately.

Seriously, I’m truly sorry to have missed you. It has been a long time.

It’s difficult to get ahold f me these days, too many hours working, too many places to run to.

When you came, I was rushing to Rutherford to buy a typewriter ribbon before heading up to Englewood to work.

Life is crazy. I’m going to have to slow down soon or go completely out of my mind. I work four nights baking in Willowbrook and six days at Fotomat.

I’m trying to put something together, just what I don’t know, maybe just a sense of security.

I broke up with Fran in March although it has been on and off since before Christmas and I’m just getting over it now.

I’ve been having trouble – emotional and financial – with my ex-wife again. She nearly caused us both to fall into legal oblivion, Some how things worked out. Maybe she’s been praying.

Michael is off on a strange tangent, singing with a band that plays up at William Paterson tonight. He’s been writing songs, too, but apparently has temporarily abandoned his poetry – a real crime.

Kathy Brucati is married and currently off in England after briefly working as a newspaper reporter in North Jersey. Who knows what will become of that? Franz is an odd character with a history I’m not happy about. But Kathy seems happy, deliriously so, and I suppose she’ll do well living inside a romantic novel

Lord knows, somebody needs to be happy.

How about you? From your letter, I got a sense of activity: work, work, work. But at the same time there’re seemed to be a deeper satisfaction with your efforts.

I see you’re still a stanch opponent of Apartheid. I recalled vividly our marching together at a protest in Newark a few years back.

Our next issue of Scrap Paper is about the war in Central America.

I recently learned there is a new kind of LSD called ADAM, which is supposed to be as big a revolution in consciousness raising as LSD itself was back in the 1960s.

It’ll be strange if nothing else.

Sorry for such a short letter, but I have to get to work. Stay in touch. Maybe we should pre-arrange a meeting so that both of us can attend, have coffee or something and discuss the eventual downtown of the American Empire.

Suggest a time, My schedule is so screwed up that I can only guess as to where I’ll be and what I’ll be doing at any given moment.

Definitely write.

 

 

Your friend

Al Sullivan

 

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