Page 19

By Jack Joseph Smith

Page 2 JOE Albright Harkins is young. Around eight years. It is about nineteen forty nine. The lake and the lodge are huge. I will have to trace down time with Rusty, the gypsy farmer father, when he returns, in order to find out their names. There is no waiting while I see the high waves chopping. They live. They have thin and long white straight teeth; with long gray throats that curve out to the air. They are in the thousands dancing as chains, as links changing yet in the same family under the shadows of the clouds and the distant while all the while surround- ing trees, across the utter expance, reaching up from under this wilder- ness. is my happyness, as strong as any search, I am one of those few young ones who have begun with the best of madness Big Bear Lodge. Trout and potato pancakes, before daylight The windows in the dining hall. High and wooden and thin all along the line. where the widest of drapes The mists black sleep stiring within the great lake from the non-colored shafts of light. Pre mortal; wonderfully different. You see the light struggling. It is saying very quietly that it has come from some place where you have never been. You can breath it, but you can't touch it. The child's heart resists trying to grab the light; it just makes him wonder. Not to be confused Standing on the dock the adventure is done. Though no one else knows how still the world is; the wind turns once again to sing the end of this song. After this, all will be easy. He does remember how he got to the beginning. There in the middle is what is vivid. The oar snapped in the Indian man's hands. His buffed white shirt alive in the movie with Rusty and enormous me.

Original Scan

Page 19

AI Interpretation

GPT

Albright Harkins remembers a lake visit around age eight in 1949 with Rusty. He describes waves, light at Big Bear Lodge, and an oar snapping in an Indian man's hands.

Harkins describes the child's wonder at light he cannot grasp and adds claims of happyness, search, and beginning with the best of madness. He ends with Rusty and enormous me. The handwritten cluster near the distant remains unresolved; the transcription keeps the other supported revisions.

Claude

Headed 'Page 2' with the handwritten name 'JOE', this typed and hand-revised draft places 'Albright Harkins' at about eight, in 'nineteen / forty nine', at a huge lake and lodge. The waves have 'thin and long white straight / teeth', breakfast at 'Big Bear Lodge' comes 'before daylight', and the dawn light is something 'You can breath it, but you can't touch it.' Margin writing adds 'is my happyness, as strong as any search, / I am one of those few young ones who have / begun / with / the / best / of / madness', and the page ends with a struck phrase replaced by 'enormous / me.'

The page moves between a child's-eye memory of water, light and 'the Indian man's hands' when the oar snapped, and the writer revising his own draft in the margins ('Not to be confused', 'After this, all will be easy.'). The handwritten additions push the memory toward self-assertion, turning the boy into 'enormous / me.' and naming 'madness' as a starting point. The effect is lyrical, unstable and openly unfinished.