Ghosts

Dear Xoxitl:

I'm sitting here in Rachel's apartment, where I accidentally ran across a book a few hours ago called "Weldon Kees and the Midcentury Generation: Letters; 1935 -- 1955."

She has this book for a reason, and I was supposed to find it. By accident, of course.

Have you heard of this Weldon Kees? He was a poet, essayist, short story writer, painter, musician, and critic from Beatrice, Nebraska, born in 1914 and disappeared in San Francisco in 1955, where he is presumed to have jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge. He graduated from the university in Lincoln, was part of an apparently thriving bohemian scene there in the thirties, was published extensively in the "Prairie Schooner" and other Nebraska pubs, and later moved on to New York and San Francisco, where he was associated with Turk Murphy and the trad jazz revival, among other things.

For more on this highly unusual and enigmatic person, see this page.

For some reason, I have a feeling that it's very important for me to know about Kees, and important that he was from eastern Nebraska and also that he ended up in San Francisco. His life and death and work are pertinent somehow to my present situation, but I have no idea exactly why or how yet. This sounds kind of silly, as if I've become a believer in destiny or something, but that's how I feel.

I haven't posted on the blog in a couple days, so I think I'll post this.

Regards,
Xoxlatl