I must say this in defense of my mother. One of the best things she said to me was: "You know, all the knowledge of the world is in the library and I will show you how to use it." And she did. She took me to the library and we walked in and she showed me how the card catalog worked and she introduced me to the lady who worked there and I spent a very beautiful summer there and was very proud of it. Like I could really go up to the card catalog, look up books, get authors, pull the books off the shelves, and so on. It was too much, man.

I had to leave Lenore Kandel because she was corny and our life was not getting on together because of that. I have an exquisite kind of fineness to my life that she could not meet. She could not meet the other stuff that I needed desperately with perfection. She was a perfect helpmate. A goddamn good wife. But I didn't need it. I needed some other goddamn thing.

By this time I am thirty-eight, I am no punk anymore. It is really hurting. And how can you give up most beautiful girl in San Francisco, who you need? But I had to go. I had to split and I remember the split. It was really wild. She is weeping at the top of the stairs and I am weeping at the bottom of the stairs and like there are no words left. And we are both poets. And she knows I've got to leave, yet she really doesn't know why.