When I’m feeling better I hope to write you a decent letter--the last two have been so haphazard, violent and vulgar. I hope these days of sea and sunshine and breezes are resting you and improving Tom.[48] In Havana I bought a _New Yorker_ and read your van Loon snapshot--marvelling again at your flexibility and dash. Otherwise I was sipping the glorious limonades most of the time! couldn’t get my mouth open wide enough to receive much other nourishment! Took long walks around the harbour and along the Malacon. A lovely city, albeit insipid; full of white and gold and azure buildings. Even plaster has something to say. 250: TO ---- _Isle of Pines, Cuba_ [_July?_] Dear ----: --/--/ I have not been able to write one line since I came here--the mind is completely befogged by the heat and besides there is a strange challenge and combat in the air--offered by “Nature” so monstrously alive in the tropics which drains the psychic energies.--And my poem was progressing so beautifully until -- -- -- -- took it into her head to be so destructive! How silly all this sounds! Howsoever--it’s a cruel jest of Fate--and I doubt if I shall continue to write for another year. For I’ve lost all faith in my material--“human nature” or what you will--and any true expression must rest on some faith in something. It has been so disgusting to note the sudden turns and antics of my “friends” since I had the one little bit help I ever had toward my work in the money from Kahn. Everytime I came into N.Y. from the country I’d hear new monstrosities of fables going about town as to how I was squandering money on pate de foi gras, etc. And worse whisperings. It’s all been very tiresome--and I’d rather lose such elite for the old society of vagabonds and sailors--who don’t enjoy chit-chat. Two of the latter, by the way, are keeping up a regular flow of letters and cards to me here. One, F----, came clear up to Patterson to see me during May--but found me gone, of course. I was very touched to hear that he had journeyed all the way from Norfolk--in memory of two evenings in Brooklyn last January. Immortally choice and funny and pathetic are some of my recollections in such connection. I treasure them--I always can--against many disillusionments made bitter by the fact that faith was given and expected--whereas, with the sailor no faith or such is properly _expected_ and how jolly and cordial and warm the tonsiling _is_ sometimes, after all. Let my lusts be my ruin, then, since all else is a fake and mockery. --/--/ 251: TO HIS MOTHER [_Isle of Pines_] _July 8th, 1926_ Dear Grace: Well,--after two months of absolute silence I’m glad to hear from you--and sorry to know that you are so disturbed and worried as you are, and sick in bed. --/--/