Page 153

By Jack Joseph Smith

"But you make a mistake about the snobs" They don't have any problems about art, or drugs; They find both laughable; What do ya think? Snobs gonna worry about something they can't. paint their face;, dress up;, or drive in! Get to be crazy Prankster! Get abstract vengemence out of your head!" All this time there was a SECRET that the Prankster held on to. In all of his enviorments, mostly shaggy to the outside viewing eyes, he had a figure to give him strength, to give him com- fort, or to sometimes give him fear to handle. In this place below the pier he had one pole; It was the one to his right from where he most al- ways seated himself. Now it formed again in it's usual figure humaninhumain; It tented, yet re- lapsed. Didn't vanish like a frozen ball to warmed wind; just kept it's hat on or hanging and bend- ing. It's moves were answers and questions, that Prankster felt a direct relience upon. He was not afraid of it's mystery, for he understood how it could be stopped. From a blind outed stare say no. Say no, he knew; he had been saved from it's presence in the past. Now he gaged the time in which he could deal with it, and sought communication within a time limited form that was not a stranger, but a husband

Original Scan

Page 153

AI Interpretation

GPT

Prankster pushes back against ideas about snobs, then turns inward toward the pole figure that gives him strength, comfort, fear, and a strange kind of companionship.

The page pivots from social contempt to private dependence. The pole is treated as witness and counterpart: not a stranger, not fully benign, but something Prankster has learned to survive and address.

Claude

Animal's surface argument is about 'snobs' who 'find both' art and drugs 'laughable' - 'Get abstract vengemence out of your head!' - but the page's real subject is the SECRET Prankster guards: a 'pole' to his right that takes 'it's usual figure humaninhumain', tenting and relapsing, its 'moves were answers and questions'. He isn't 'afraid of it's mystery' because he knows it can be stopped - 'From a blind outed stare say no' - the way one resists not a stranger 'but a husband'. The page lets the hallucination stand as relationship, not symptom. This reading remains provisional because the page transcript is OCR-uncertain and handwriting still needs closer review.