April 30, 2007
Tribeca Film Festival
The madness has begun over at House Next Door.
Reviews to check out so far:
Black Sheep - By Keith Uhlich
Vivere - By Steven Boone
Fireworks Wednesday - by me
Much more to come from all of us!
It's in poor taste ...
... but I cannot stop laughing at all of these suggestions for alternative titles for The Bell Jar - You know, the romantic comedy version of The Bell Jar. The "light" version of The Bell Jar. (go to the comments section, you'll see everyone weighing in).
Everyone is so clever!
Drop Dead, Ted is one of my favorites.
The Bourne Depression is also particularly funny to me.
Raiders of the Lost Mind.
"Honey, I (Almost) Gassed The Kids"
"Syl and Ted's Excellent Adventure"
"Things To Do In Your Oven When You're Dead"
I also loved:
10 Things I hate about (Ted) Hughes.
Like I said. Poor taste.
I adore it.
National Poetry Month: Mary Oliver
I figured I'd end my National Poetry Month extravaganza (although I might keep going with it, I've had a lot of fun, and a lot of cool new readers have found their way to me because of the poetry posts) with one of my favorite poems of all time.
In Blackwater Woods
by Mary Oliver
Look, the trees
are turning
their own bodies
into pillars
of light,
are giving off the rich
fragrance of cinnamon
and fulfillment,
the long tapers
of cattails
are bursting and floating away over
the blue shoulders
of the ponds,
and every pond,
no matter what its
name is, is
nameless now.
Every year
everything
I have ever learned
in my lifetime
leads back to this: the fires
and the black river of loss
whose other side
is salvation,
whose meaning
none of us will ever know.
To live in this world
you must be able
to do three things:
to love what is mortal;
to hold it
against your bones knowing
your own life depends on it;
and, when the time comes to let it go,
to let it go.
Other National Poetry month posts
Dear Alex:
I need to paraphrase the last paragraph of Charlotte's Web - it's one of the first things that came to mind when I read your unbelievable post this morning:
"She was in a class by herself. It is not often that someone comes along who is a true friend and a good writer. Alex was both."
I am proud to call you my friend.
April 29, 2007
Tribute to Ryszard Kapuscinski
My heart is so full. The place was standing room only. The line was (literally) around the block. It went from the door on 42nd Street all the way to 6th Avenue. I heard Polish being spoken in line, we all had dog-eared copies of Kapuscinski's books - I heard one young woman, she was probably 23 years old if she was a day, say to her friend, "I think The Emperor might be favorite of his. What's yours?" It is always a great comfort to me to find "my own kind". To show up for a matinee on a Sunday, a tribute to this great writer - and to find hundreds and hundreds of people who had the same idea. It was a bright sunny day, and we queued up - making quite a spectacle, the line snaking around Bryant Park. "What is this for?" people asked, drawn to us. Someone would answer, "Tribute to Ryszard Kapuscinski." "Who?" someone asked. But then someone else thought a bit, nodded seriously and said, "Oh!"
I think one of my favorite parts of the entire day was when the Polish writer and newspaper editor Adam Michnik got up to speak, a longtime friend of Mr. Kapuscinski. His English was halting, so he spoke with a translator - a tall laconic gentlemen over to the side, holding a microphone - who was the striking resemblance of George Plimpton (his name was Jan Gross). Anyway, the Mr. Michnik was red-faced, jovial - (oh, and the entire panel was drinking vodka the entire time ... in tribute to Kapuscinski and his love of life, good alcohol, companionship, and recklessness. It was great - there was Salman Rushdie, raising his glass of vodka to the memory of his dead friend ...) But anyway, the Michnik spoke, and it was obvious the vodka was having some effect - he was humorous, and anecdotal - he didn't stand on ceremony, he told very funny stories about Kapuscinski- and I loved him. But it was great because there were, of course, huge numbers of Polish speaking people in the audience (most of them sitting in the first 10 or so rows) - so he would come to the punchline of some joke, in Polish - and there would be a huge spontaneous thunderclap of laughter from the front, from the Poles ... then our Plimpton-esque translator would tell us the punchline in English 2 seconds later - and all of the English speakers in the audience would burst into a huge thunderclap of laughter. It came in waves. Like a time-released punchline, reverberating backwards in concentric circles. Laugh from front ... pause ... laugh from back ... and so it went, on and on, throughout the Michnik's entire speech. It was gorgeous. The interconnectedness of it, but also the separation - by language ... and yet humor is universal. We just might not "get it" at the same moment. It (to me) was the biggest tribute to Kapuscinski's overwhelming humanistic appeal: those time-lapsed waves of laughter. The jokes making it through the translation. The message received.
I took some grainy pictures below. Salman Rushdie was marvelous. The dry wit ... obviously very comfortable with public speaking - he appeared to speak off the cuff. Maybe he had some notes - but he didn't refer to them often. He just sipped his vodka and told funny stories. He related a tale about a time he and Kapuscinski had in London - a stage production of Kapuscinski's book The Emperor was going on - and protests were being staged outside the theatre.
Rushdie said to us (and his timing was impeccable - it was all in the pauses):
"Speaking as someone whose writing has ...... occasionally ... generated .... protests ......"
HUGE laugh.
It was the "occasionally" that made the joke.
And what an unbelievable pleasure it was to see my husband, Philip Gourevitch, in the flesh, for the first time. To hear him speak. My God. I admire him so much. I love his writing so much. Man, what a day.
Crowded. Photos of and by Kapuscinski were projected up onto huge screens around the room.
The ceiling in that room never ceases to amaze me.
The man of the day.
Another funny anecdote from Rushdie. Back in the early 80s - when Kapuscinski's books were starting to come out - he and Rushdie were part of the same publishing house in London. Rushdie, young, ambitious ... had never heard of Kapuscinski. He walks into the editor's office and the editor says to him in a portentous dramatic tone, "I have just read what I believe might be the best book ever written." (A lot of Rushdie's charm and humor was in how he told the story ... just the WAY he related the editor's words told us the whole thing - Rushdie felt jealous. He wanted the editor to be saying that about HIS book.) Rushdie, feeling jealous, said, "What's the book?" Editor said, "It's a book about Haile Selassie by a Polish writer." Long pause. Rushdie then said, "Well, that certainly sounds like the best book ever written."
So dry, so funny!!!
(Excerpt from "the best book ever written" here)
Another quote from Rushdie, on Kapuscinski's time in Africa: "He was sentenced to death every Tuesday."
Here's a grainy shot of the panel. Rushdie clearly seen over on the right ... and Gourevitch clearly seen over on the left.
The organizer of the event asked Kapuscinski once about the many times he had been thrown in prison in Africa during the 60s and 70s. I think it was over 40 times, and he had gotten a "death sentence" 4 times. Crazy decades in Africa, anarchy, etc. Kapuscinski, with his gentle self-effacing way, told a story about how he was in a dark cell, and the guards kept throwing in poisonous snakes with him. Kapuscinski's verdict on the whole thing, as he re-told the story? "It was ..... not so good." Never one for dramatizing the alreaady dramatic. Although he put himself in all of his books, it was never in a self-aggrandizing way. But it is true that after his time in the prison cell with the poisonous snakes - this particular imprisonment went on for 2 weeks, I think, and by the time they let him out - freed him from the pitch-black room with the poisonous snakes - his hair had gone completely white.
God, I love his face:
Rushdie asked him once about all of the times he had faced death while trying to get the story out to the wire service. Rushdie asked him, "How do you do it?" Kapuscinski had to answer that question a lot - he was asked often, "Are you attracted to danger?" He was always so incredulous at the stupidity of that question. He saw nothing attractive about danger - that's the whole point of his books. But in order to write them, he needed to be there, not behind some desk. - His whole essay about what happens to a man when he sits behind a desk is vintage Kapuscinski. So anyway, Rushdie was hearing the 100th story about Kapuscinski somehow conniving his way through some flaming checkpoint in Uganda, with rifles pointed at his head, and drunken soldiers rifling through his papers ... and Rushdie asked, "How do you do it? How do you escape death so many times?" Kapuscinski thought a bit and then said, "I make myself unimportant. I make myself seem unworthy of the assassins bullet."
Here's Rushdie at the podium - you can't see it, but he has a huge glass of vodka next to him.
Gourevitch spoke eloquently about Kapuscinski's thing as a writer. I loved one thing he said - he said that Kapuscinski is a 'great artist of the pixel'. And you know - thinking of his various books - it is the minutia that sticks with you: the cushion-bearer in Selassie's court, the long treatise on making cognac in the Imperium, the image of the pool hall built by the Soviets in what was once a mosque in Samarqand ... the old Muslims sitting outside under a tree, with the sound of pool balls clacking around the green baize table in what was once their holy place ... Oh, and so much more. The little puddle-jumping girl in Irkutsk. The wooden city in Angola floating away into the ocean (excerpt here). The gin-soaked nights in Ghana. The entire essay on the soccer war (excerpt here). His long essay on the Armenians. Their books. (excerpt here) Gourevitch told a very funny story too about how Kapuscinski was once asked to be on a panel discussing foreign policy issues - I can't remember which country, maybe it was the EU, I don't know. But it was to be a highly detailed conversation regarding this or that policy, this or that bill. He sat there, and was asked what he thought of such and such policy. He had never heard of any of them. He was not a wonk. He did not go in for the tiny details of government. He abhorred them - they were dehumanizing.
But his books! Look to his books.
Here's Gourevitch speaking.
April 27, 2007
Tribeca Film Festival
I'm going to be part of a team of critics covering the Tribeca Film Festival for House Next Door - one of the best culture blogs out there. Be sure to check in over there over the next week to see all the reviews as they come pouring in as quickly as we can write the damn things. I saw two movies today, and will see 7 movies in the next 3 days. Because I'm going to the press screenings, and not the regular public screenings - the movies are not shown at prime time. I'm seeing a movie tomorrow morning at 9 a.m., for example. And then racing downtown to see another one. Sunday will be truly insane. Movie in morning. Race to New York Public Library for the tribute to Ryzsard Kapuscinski. Hopefully meet Salman Rushdie and Philip Gourevitch. Race back downtown for second movie. And I will write my reviews ... when?
Here are some photos I took today as I tramped through the fog from movie to movie.
Ye Olde Media Kit and press pass.
I felt like Rosalind Russell in this moment.
Mural I fell in love with, as will soon become obvious.
Mural love.
Staff setting up the memorabilia and information table.
Poster on the wall in the lobby. I couldn't resist.
In between movies. A breather.
Madison Square Garden.
Back to work.
Mural love, yet again.
A black flat behind an information booth.
Hypnotized by the mural. Who wouldn't be?
Preparing ...
What can I say. The mural called .... and I answered.
Descending down to the lobby after the second movie - where audience members were gathering for the public screenings. You could feel the buzz in the air.
People holding tickets, yearning for tickets ... corralled up into queues outside.
The marquee.
"In an old house in Paris that was covered with vines ..."
Today is the birthday of Ludwig Bemelmans, author of the beloved Madeline books. Here is a really interesting biographical sketch of him. I didn't know any of it. Listen to this:
When he was a teenager, his parents apprenticed him to his Uncle Hans, who owned a string of resort hotels in the Tyrol. After the 16-year-old Bemelmans shot a head-waiter during a dispute, his family gave him the option of going to reform school or emigrating to America.Bemelmans chose the latter and arrived in New York in 1914, carrying two pistols with which to fend off hostile Indians. Once again, his career as a waiter was disastrous. After losing a job because he arrived wearing one yellow and one white shoe, Bemelmans enlisted in the Army.
"Once again, his career as a waiter was disastrous."
heh heh heh
He served in the Army in World War I, and he is buried at Arlington National Cemetery.
I always loved the Madeline books, and still do. Madeline: the red-haired feisty rebellious girl in the convent school, the one who always gets in trouble (even if it's just getting her appendix taken out) - but the one who is also most loved.
I loved how Miss Clavel woke up in the middle of the night, in her cavernous bedroom, sitting up in her cavernous bed with the draperies hanging above it ... and she said to herself: "Something is not right!"
She got a candle, and ran down the hallway (the illustrations are so dramatic, so wonderful) and burst into the dormitory, to see Madeline moaning in her bed, all the other little girls sitting up, awake, worried ... Madeline is rushed to the hospital to have her appendix taken out. Things might have gone very wrong that night if it weren't for Miss Clavel's powers of prophetic thinking. How many problems could be solved if we woke up in the middle of the night, alarmed, and said to ourselves: "Something is not right!"
I loved the watercolors. I loved the urban setting, the beautiful images of Paris, with the "12 little girls in 2 straight lines" going on their daily walk with Miss Clavel.
I'm sure it will not be a surprise to any of you to know that my favorite of the Madeline books is when she and Pepito, the little boy next door, join the circus. Of course they are forced to join the circus, since they are kidnapped by gypsies at a local carnival ... but still. They end up getting into their new circus life. As a little girl, I found that book to be so exciting, so ... magical. It opened up little doors into other worlds, worlds I could only get a glimpse of ... but oh, I wanted to see more! I remember in particular one illustration of the small company of circus performers sitting around a campfire in the middle of nowhere, their caravan parked nearby. The night around them is dark, a midnight-blue wash of watercolors ... but the bright jester costumes and the Pierrot get-ups of the gypsies gleam out from the dark, like magic little gems. I wanted to sit around that campfire.
Of course, since Madeline and Pepito had been KIDNAPPED by the gypsies - poor Miss Clavel was losing her MIND back in Paris, wondering where they had gome to, if they were all right. This time, Miss Clavel's precognitive powers failed her. At no point when she took the 12 little girls to the carnival did she think to herself: "Something is not right!"
Oh well. Even French nuns with powers of prophecy have their off days.
Happy birthday, Mr. Bemelmans ... glad you didn't end up being a waiter. Seems like we all are much better off because of your original failure in the service industry.
Characters
I got this from Super Fast Reader:
Name up to three characters . . .
1. You wish were real so you could meet them:
Nelson Denoon, from Mating
Harriet, from Harriet the Spy
Ilse, from the Emily series, by LM Montgomery - I'd love to meet Emily, too - but Ilse is really the one I'd love to check out in person
Claude Collier, from Lives of the Saints
Owen Meany, and also Hester the Molester, from Prayer for Owen Meany
Mr. Rochester, from Jane Eyre
Molly Bloom, from Ulysses
Sydney Carton, from Tale of Two Cities
Charles Wallace, from Wrinkle in Time
2. You would like to be:
Polly - from the "time" series of Madeleine L'Engle - I especially would like to be her in House Like a Lotus (excerpt here)
Petrova from Ballet Shoes
I'd like to be one of the kids who attends Hogwarts - I don't care which one
I'd like to be Jo March (but then again - who doesn't)
I'd also like to be Queequeg
3. Who scare you:
First and foremost: Cathy from East of Eden (wrote about that monster here)
And I'm gonna go along with what Annie said: Cordelia from Cat's Eye (shivers)
Miss Havisham scares the shit out of me. I never want to go into that room.
Mr. Charrington, from 1984 - I've had nightmares about that guy
The Book: "Wilderness Tips" - 'Hairball' (Margaret Atwood)
Next up in my Daily Book Excerpt ... Adult fiction:
Next book on the shelf is Wilderness Tips -a pretty much universally spectacular short story collection. One of my favorites of her stories is in this collection - it's called "Hairball" ... and that's what I'll excerpt today. This story is a major freakout. It might be her angriest story - and yet it's also one of her funniest. Atwood never goes the expected way ... This story is a RAGE (and it makes sense that our narrator is a managing editor of a magazine that she originally wanted to call "all the rage" - but that name was nixed - it's now called "The Razor's Edge") - "The Razor's Edge" is a hip edgy Toronto magazine (which is a joke in and of itself, at least in Atwood's caustic view) - and in its pages are columns about S&M clothing, photo layouts of sex toys, reviews of avant garde performance art pieces, edible condoms, you know - the point is to be as confrontational as possible. Kat loves that. She prides herself on her hard-ness, her cynicism - and the fact that people are "shocked". By what she writes and by who she is. She has no earnestness. She scorns sincerity. She is on the cutting edge. The story opens, though, with something completely "sincere" - meaning, there is no way to put a cynical spin on it. She has an ovarian cyst removed. The cyst is the size of a coconut. She asks the doctor if she can see it. It is huge. A huge hairball. With fully formed teeth stuck in it. She is mesmerized by it. She puts it in a jar of formaldehyde, takes it home, and puts it on her mantel. She likes the thought that it will shock people. She refuses to believe that she herself is shocked. That her body produced such a monstrosity. The "hairball" takes on a kind of personality - it sits on the mantel, and she talks to it, confides in it ... she stares at it, hypnotized. Meanwhile, she continues on as though nothing has changed. As though she has not been altered in some way by this surgery ... as though she is not now missing something. Her boyfriend is a dude named Ger - (she re-named him - Kat didn't like his real name) ... and Ger is freaked by the hairball, and ... well, the story comes to an inevitable conclusion. Or - it seems inevitable once you reach the end. I never saw it coming but as it unfolded, I started laughing ... Of course. Of course that is what she would do. Kat's "rage" up to the point of the story was a pose, a cynical "world-weary" pose - in a rage at propriety, bourgeois values, her own country and its pretensions. But once that hairball comes out - Kat starts to discover what real rage is.
Great freakin' story. Here's an excerpt.
Excerpt from Wilderness Tips - by Margaret Atwood, "Hairball"
During her childhood she was a romanticized Katherine, dressed by her misty-eyed fussy mother in dresses that looked like ruffled pillow-cases. By high school she'd shed the frills and emerged as a bouncy, round-faced Kathy, with gleaming freshly washed hair and enviable teeth, eager to please and no more interesting than a health-food ad. At university she was Kath, blunt and no-bullshit in her Take-Back-the-Night jeans and checked shirt and her bricklayer-style striped-denim peaked hat. When she ran away to England, she sliced herself down to Kat. It was economical, street-feline, and pointed as a nail. It was also unusual. In England you had to do something to get their attention, especially if you weren't English. Safe in this incarnation, she Ramboed through the eighties.
It was the name, she still thinks, that got her the interview and then the job. The job with an avant-garde magazine, the kind that was printed on matte stock in black and white, with overexposed close-ups of women with hair blowing over their eyes, one nostril prominent: the razor's edge, it was called. Haircuts as art, some real art, film reviews, a little stardust, wardrobes of ideas that were clothes and of clothes that were ideas - the metaphysical shoulder pad. She learned her trade well, hands-on. She learned what worked.
She made her way up the ladder, from layout to design, then to the supervision of whole spreads, and then whole issues. It wasn't easy, but it was worth it. She had become a creator; she created total looks. After a while she could walk down the street in Soho or stand in the lobby at openings and witness her handiwork incarnate, strolling around in outfits she'd put together, spouting her warmed-over pronouncements. It was like being God, only God had never got around to off-the-rack lines.
By that time her face had lost its roundness, though the teeth of course remained: there was something to be said for North American dentistry. She'd shaved off most of her hair, worked on the drop-dead stare, perfected a certain turn of the neck that conveyed an aloof inner authority. What you had to make them believe was that you knew something they didn't know yet. What you also had to make them believe was that they too could know this thing, this thing that would give them eminence and power and sexual allure, that would attract envy to them - but for a price. The price of the magazine. What they could never get through their heads was that it was done entirely with cameras. Frozen light, frozen time. Given the angle, she could make any woman look ugly. Any man as well. She could make anyone look beautiful, or at least interesting. It was all photography, it was all iconography. It was all in the choosing eye. This was the thing that could never be bought, no matter how much of your pitiful monthly wage you blew on snakeskin.
Despite the status, the razor's edge was fairly low-paying. Kat herself could not afford many of the things she contextualized so well. The grottiness and expense of London began to get to her; she got tired of gorging on the canapes at literary launches in order to scrimp on groceries, tired of the fuggy smell of cigarettes ground into the red-and-maroon carpeting of pubs, tired of the pipes bursting every time it froze in winter, and of the Clarissa and Melissas and Penelopes at the magazine rabbiting on about how they had been literally, absolutely, totally freezing all night, and how it literally, absolutely, totally, usually never got that cold. It always got that cold. The pipes always burst. Nobody thought of putting in real pipes, ones that would not burst next time. Burst pipes were an English tradition, like so many others.
Like, for instance, English men. Charm the knickers off you with their mellow vowels and frivolous verbiage, and then, once they'd got them off, panic and run. Or else stay and whinge. The English called it whinging instead of whining. It was better, really. Like a creaking hinge. It was a traditional compliment to be whinged at by an Englishman. It was his way of saying he trusted you, he was conferring upon you the privilege of getting to know the real him. The inner, whining him. That was how they thought of women, secretly: whinge receptacles. Kat could play it, but that didn't mean she liked it.
She had an advantage over the English women, though: she was of no class. She had no class. She was in a class of her own. She could roll around among the English men, all different kinds of them, secure in the knowledge that she was not being measured against the class yardsticks and accent-detectors they carried around in their back pockets, was not subject to the petty snobberies and resentments that lent such richness to their inner lives. The flip side of this freedom was that she was beyond the pale. She was a colonial - how fresh, hoiw vital, how anonymous, how finally of no consequence. Like a hole in the wall, she could be told all secrets and then be abandoned with no guilt.
She was too smart, of course. The English men were very competitive; they liked to win. Several times it hurt. Twice she had abortions, because the men in question were not up for the alternative. She learned to say that she didn't want children anyway, that if she longed for a rug-rat she would buy a gerbil. Her life began to seem long. Her adrenaline was running out. Soon she would be thirty, and all she could see ahead was more of the same.
National Poetry Month: Alfred, Lord Tennyson
Ulysses by Alfred, Lord Tennyson
It little profits that an idle king,
By this still hearth, among these barren crags,
Match'd with an aged wife, I mete and dole
Unequal laws unto a savage race,
That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me.
I cannot rest from travel: I will drink
Life to the lees: all times I have enjoyed
Greatly, have suffered greatly, both with those
That loved me, and alone; on shore, and when
Through scudding drifts the rainy Hyades
Vexed the dim sea: I am become a name;
For always roaming with a hungry heart
Much have I seen and known; cities of men
And manners, climates, councils, governments,
Myself not least, but honoured of them all;
And drunk delight of battle with my peers;
Far on the ringing plains of windy Troy.
I am part of all that I have met;
Yet all experience is an arch wherethrough
Gleams that untravelled world, whose margin fades
For ever and for ever when I move.
How dull it is to pause, to make an end,
To rust unburnished, not to shine in use!
As though to breath were life. Life piled on life
Were all too little, and of one to me
Little remains: but every hour is saved
From that eternal silence, something more,
A bringer of new things; and vile it were
For some three suns to store and hoard myself,
And this grey spirit yearning in desire
To follow knowledge like a sinking star,
Beyond the utmost bound of human thought.
This is my son, mine own Telemachus,
To whom I leave the sceptre and the isle —
Well-loved of me, discerning to fulfil
This labour, by slow prudence to make mild
A rugged people, and through soft degrees
Subdue them to the useful and the good.
Most blameless is he, centred in the sphere
Of common duties, decent not to fail
In offices of tenderness, and pay
Meet adoration to my household gods,
When I am gone. He works his work, I mine.
There lies the port; the vessel puffs her sail:
There gloom the dark broad seas. My mariners,
Souls that have toil'd, and wrought, and thought with me —
That ever with a frolic welcome took
The thunder and the sunshine, and opposed
Free hearts, free foreheads — you and I are old;
Old age hath yet his honour and his toil;
Death closes all: but something ere the end,
Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.
The lights begin to twinkle from the rocks:
The long day wanes: the slow moon climbs: the deep
Moans round with many voices. Come, my friends,
'Tis not too late to seek a newer world.
Push off, and sitting well in order smite
The sounding furrows; for my purpose holds
To sail beyond the sunset, and the baths
Of all the western stars, until I die.
It may be that the gulfs will wash us down:
It may be we shall touch the Happy Isles,
And see the great Achilles, whom we knew
Tho' much is taken, much abides; and though
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven; that which we are, we are;
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.
The bower we shrined to Tennyson
Gentlemen,
Is roof-wrecked; damps there drip upon
Sagged seats, the creeper-nails are rust,
The spider is sole denizen;
Even she who voiced those rhymes is dust,
Gentlemen!
-- Thomas Hardy, "An Ancient to Ancients"
""I cannot think he is a supremely great poet. There is something lacking in him. He is very beautiful -- very graceful. In short, the Perfect Artist. But he seldom lets us forget the artist -- we are never swept away -- Not he -- he flows on serenely. And that is good. But an occasional bit of wild nature would make it better still." -- LM Montgomery
"I detest Tennyson's 'Arthur'! If I'd been Guinevere, I'd have been unfaithful to him too. But not for Lancelot -- he is just as unbearable in another way. As for Geraint, if I'd been Enid, I'd have bitten him. These 'patient Griseldes' of women deserve all they get! I like Tennyson because he gives me nothing but pleasure. I cannot love him because he gives me nothing but pleasure ... I love best the poets who hurt me. But I think I shall have some love for Tennyson after this -- for today I read a verse in 'In Memoriam' which I do not think I can ever have read carefully before -- which scorched me with a sudden flame of self-revelation and brought to me one of those awful moments when we look into the abysses of our own natures and recoil in horror. The verse was:
Do we indeed desire the dead
Should still be near us at our side?
Is there no baseness we would hide,
No inner vileness that we dread?"
-- LM Montgomery
"On the bald street breaks the blank day." -- Tennyson
"Do you know, a horrible thing has happened to me. I have begun to doubt Tennyson." -- Gerard Manley Hopkins
"Even excluding the plays, it is a vast body of work: poems of feeling and of sentiment, poems of thought and of received opinion. When Browning acquired an audience, he turned garrulous. Tennyson turned sententious. But the Representative Voice does not merely entertain doubts, he actually feels them; his politics, like his religion, are rooted in memory of the past and fear of the future. A liberal, he distrusts progressivism even as he acknowledges the injustices and evils that make it necessary. Tennyson is an intellectual enigma, which is why many take him to be a philosopher speaking for their own indecision and doubt." -- Michael Schmidt
"I wrote as much as seventy lines at one time, and used to go shouting them about the fields after dark." -- Tennyson
"The real truth is that Tennyson, with all his temperament and artistic skill, is deficient in intellectual power; and no modern poet can make very much of his business unless he is pre-eminently strong in this." -- Matthew Arnold in a letter to his mother, 1860
"It is not religious because of the quality of its faith, but because of the quality of its doubt." -- TS Eliot on Tennyson's religion
"In 1850 Tennyson received public laurels and fulfilled a private desire. He was married after a courship whose length reflected not reluctance but lack of money. He published In Memoriam. And he became poet laureate, succeeding Wordsworth. The "Ode on Wellington" and "The Charge of the Light Brigade" are masterpieces of laureate art. Few laureates are so transparently sincere, prompt and prosodically competent in the execution of their duties. 'The Charge of the Light Brigade' entered the common memory." -- Michael Schmidt, "Lives of the Poets"
"Tennyson spoke to and for his age in In Memoriam. Its success as a long poem depends on its fragmentariness. The sections are elegiac idylls, assembled into a sequence. Like Maud, the sequence hangs together thanks to what Eliot called 'the greatest lyrical resourcefulness that a poet has ever shown.' Elegies and poems of aftermath were Tennyson's forte. He was a gray beard from the beginning." - Michael Schmidt
More on Tennyson here
Other National Poetry month posts
April 26, 2007
Chess
I love this photo.
Vladimir Nabokov and his wife, Véra, 1966. Switzerland
Photograph by Philippe Halsman
(More cool chess photos on Slate)
Life Before the Segway
My friend Nate has been filming various "talking head spots" for The Onion - and they're hilarious. The dead seriousness, the parody of it ... I love them!
Here's the latest. Nate's the first one who speaks when it's opened up for comments.
It's so stupid and so funny.
"he had some shit to take care of ..."
"I was on a horse!" (and the fact that that is the only comment that that guy makes.) HA!
National Poetry Month: Rumi
The Reed Flute's Song - by Rumi
Listen to the story told by the reed,
of being separated,
"Since I was cut from the reedbed,
I have made this crying sound.
Anyone apart from someone he loves
understands what I say.
Anyone pulled from a source
longs to go back.
At any gathering I am there,
mingling in the laughing and grieving,
a friend to each, but few
will hear the secrets hidden
within the notes. No ears for that.
Body flowing out of spirit,
spirit up from body: no concealing
that mixing. But it's not given us
to see the soul. The reed flute
is fire, not wind. Be that empty."
Hear the love fire tangled
in the reed notes, as bewilderment
melts into wine. The reed is a friend
to all who want the fabric torn
and drawn away. The reed is hurt
and salve combining. Intimacy
and longing for intimacy, one
song. A disastrous surrender
and a fine love, together. The one
who secretly hears this is senseless.
A tongue has one customer, the ear.
A sugarcane flute has such effect
because it was able to make sugar
in the reedbed. The sound it makes
is for everyone. Days full of wanting,
let them go by without worrying
that they do. Stay where you are
inside such a pure, hollow note.
Every thirst gets satisfied except
that of these fish, the mystics,
who swim a vast ocean of grace
still somehow longing for it!
No one lives in that without
being nourished every day.
But if someone doesn't want to hear
the song of the reed flute,
it's best to cut conversation
short, say good-bye, and leave.
(I found a quote below that references Rumi being heard in the downtown New York performance art scene - which makes me think of an Iranian poetry festival I went to - at the Bowery Poetry Club - where Rumi, Hafez, Ferdowsi and others were celebrated - it was mainly a Persian crowd, and it reminded me of the Bloosmday celebrations I've gone to, where it's been mainly an Irish crowd - meaning IRISH Irish - and people know large sections of Joyce's book by heart, and shout it out during the celebrations in unison. Sitting in that dark club, surrounded by rowdy wine-drinking Iranians - all of them with their dog-eared books of Hafez and Rumi, shouting out poems in unison - in Farsi no less!, a collective cultural memory ... it was one of my favorite New York experiences ever. Don't come between a Persian and his poetry!!)
"He turned into a poet, began to listen to music, and sang, whirling around, hour after hour." -- Annemarie Schimmel
"Praise to Early-Waking Grievers
In the name of God the Most Merciful, and the Most Compassionate.
This is the fourth journey toward home, toward where the great advantages are waiting for us. Reading it, mystics will feel very happy, as a meadow feels when it hears thunder, the good news of rain coming, as tired eyes look forward to sleeping. Joy for the spirit, health for the body. In here is what genuine devotion wants, refreshment, sweet fruit ripe enough for the pickiest picker, medicine, detailed directions on how to get to the Friend. All praise to God. Here is the way to renew connection with your soul, and rest from difficulties. The study of this book will be painful to those who feel separate from God. It will make the others grateful. In the hold of this ship is a cargo not found in the attractiveness of young women. Here is a reward for lovers of God. A full moon and an inheritance you thought you had lost are now returned to you. More hope for the hopeful, lucky finds for foragers, wonderful things thought of to do. Anticipation after depression, expanding after contraction. The sun comes out, and that light is what we give, in this book, to our spiritual descendants. Our gratitude to God holds them to us, and brings more besides. As the Andalusian poet, Adi al-Riga says,
I was sleeping, and being comforted
by a cool breeze, when suddenly a gray dove
from a thicket sang and sobbed with longing,
and reminded me of my own passion.
I had been away from my own soul so long,
so late-sleeping, but that dove's crying
woke me and made me cry. Praise
to all early-waking grievers!
Some go first, and others come long afterward. God blesses both and all in the line, and replaces what has been consumed, and provides for those who work the soil of helpfulness, and blesses Muhammad and Jesus and every other messenger and prophet. Amen, and may the Lord of all created beings bless you."
-- prose prayer at the beginning of Book IV of the "Mathnawi", by Rumi
"Around the first century AD, Balkh became an important staging post on the Silk Road, selling and trans-shipping raw silk from China to Persia and eventually Europe. The city spawned many imitators, among them Samarkand, Marakanda, Bukhara, Khiva, Merv, Tus, Ravy and Qom. After Muslim Arab armies arrived in 663 AD an Islamic renaissance flowered in its thriving bazaars, bathhouses and barrel-vauled palacees. By the eighth century the military prowess, artistic refinement and scientific achievements of the Islamic world had far surpassed the Christian West. Thinkers, poets and mathematicians thrived in Balkh, among them the Persian free-thinker Omar Khayyam, who spent his formative years there. In 1207, the city gave birth to another wild man, the poet Jalal-ud-Din Balkhi, also known as Rumi, who held that music and poetry could facilitate direct and ecstatic experience of God, and founded the Sufi Muslim order of whirling dervishes." -- Christopher Kremmer, "The Carpet Wars"
"Much of subsequent Sufism rests on the notion that when the lesser, egotistically oriented self of a person is displaced, the greater or Universal self is found, enabling the experience of contact with the Divine. The ordinary, sensible world is simply the reflection, at its more attenuated end, of the Divine emanantion, and Man its most exquisite mirror. As the dust of egotism is blown from the mirror ... The foundation of Sufi practice is neither ascetism nor retirement from the world, although there may be periods of both. The austerities of monasticism were disapproved of by the Prophet himself, and Islam never fully lost the company (or the genes) of its most spiritually inclined. It is perhaps the Sufi's willingness to undertake his spiritual training in the rough and tumble of life that accounts for the breadth of Sufism's appeal. In Sufism there is the renunciation of ties, but the most obvious among these - the visible ties of the material world - are the least essential. 'Is there anything more astonishing,' writes a nineteenth-century Sufi master, 'than that a man should put the blame on his professional activity for not being able to perfect himself?' " -- Jason Elliott, "An Unexpected Light"
"Along with a throng of pilgrims, I removed my shoes and entered Rumi's blue-domed mausoleum. A sign in English greets visitors with Rumi's words: 'Come, come whoever you are, whether you be fire-worshipers, idolaters, or pagans. Ours is not the dwelling place of despair. All who enter will receive a welcome here.' Turkish women wrapped in red head shawls and men with beards and woollen hats mingled easily with Western tourists amid the overlapping Oriental carpets and gold-leafed Koranic calligraphy framed by colorful tiles. Not just the tourists, but the pilgrims too, were happily snapping photos. Rarely had I been in a holy place with such a welcoming climate." -- Robert Kaplan, "The Ends of the Earth"
"The political upheaval [in Iran] particularly opened the way for a revolution in Persian literature. For over a millennium, poetry had had priority in a land that revered the lyrics of mystics such as Hafez, Ferdowsi, Rumi and Attar, who wrote at the height of Persian and Islamic glory in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries." -- Robin Wright, "The Last Great Revolution"
�Jalaluddin Rumi was, among many other things, a lover of irony, of the odd and absurd juxtapositions that life creates. So it may be that he would have savored the fact that Madonna set translations of his 13th century verses praising Allah to music on Deepak Chopra�s 1998 CD, A Gift of Love; that Donna Karan has used recitations of his poetry as a background to her fashion shows; that Oliver Stone wants to make a film of his life; and that even though he hailed from Balkh, a town near Mazar-i-Sharif situated in what is today Afghanistan, his verse has only become more popular with American readers since September [2001], when HarperCollins published The Soul of Rumi, 400 pages of poetry translated by Coleman Barks. September 2001 would seem like an unpropitious time for an American publisher to have brought out a large, pricey hardback of Muslim mystical verse, but the book took off immediately. It has a long road ahead, however, if it is to catch up with a previous Rumi best seller, The Essential Rumi, published by HarperCollins in 1995. With more than 250,000 copies in print, it is easily the most successful poetry book published in the West in the past decade� -- Ptolemy Tompkins, Time Asia Edition, September 30, 2002
"Persian literature and architecture had a great influence on the Seljuks. It may be telling that Rumi was a cult figure among hippies in the 1960s and 1970s. He was born in 1207 in Balkh, in the northern, Turkic, part of Afghanistan. As a boy, he traveled with his father for several years across Persia and eastern Anatolia to Konya (the hippie route to India, in reverse). Travel, evidently, leavened Rumi's spirit, and his tolerance. A flower child of his time, he believed that men, regardless of race or religion, were united, and linked to all of nature by love. This view, which may have had roots in the pre-Islamic past, was expressed in Rumi's characteristically sensuous poetry:
And I am a flame dancing in love's fire,
That flickering light in the depths of desire.
Wouldst thou know the pain that severance breeds,
Listen then to the strain of the reed.
Rumi believed that love of God transcends particular religions and nationalisties and that Moslems are by no means the only people to whom God has revealed himself. Rumi said that we should simply say 'farewell' to the 'immature fanatics' who scorn music and poetry. He cautioned that a beard or a mustache is no sign of wisdom - if anything, travel (the nomadic life) will bring wisdom.. Rumi was an ascetic, the opposite of a religious activist like Mohammed: He thought that men and women should shun politics and concentrate on discoveries of their inner selves. He favored the individual over the crowd and spoke often against tyranny, whether of the majority or the minority, When Rumi died in Konya on December 17, 1273, Christians, Jews, Arabs, and Turks poured forth from the surrounding countryside to mourn. They cried en masse and tore their clothes as a sign of grief. His tomb became a site of pilgrimage. In a part of the world associated with fanatics, he is one of history's truly ecumenical figures." -- Robert Kaplan, "The Ends of the Earth"
"Rumi�s spirituality is suffused by a sense of cosmic homelessness and separation from God, the divine source.� -- Karen Armstrong
"Rumi is able to verbalize the highly personal and often confusing world of personal/spiritual growth and mysticism in a very forward and direct fashion. He does not offend anyone, and he includes everyone. The world of Rumi is neither exclusively the world of a Sufi, nor the world of a Hindu, nor a Jew, nor a Christian; it is the highest state of a human being--a fully evolved human. A complete human is not bound by cultural limitations; he touches every one of us. Today Rumi's poems can be heard in churches, synagogues, Zen monasteries, as well as in the downtown New York art/performance/music scene." -- Shahram Shiva
More on Rumi here. Fascinating stuff there. Did you know that 2007 would be the year Rumi turned 800? Turkey has declared 2007 to be "International Rumi Year".
Other National Poetry month posts
The Books: "Cat's Eye" (Margaret Atwood)
Next up in my Daily Book Excerpt ... Adult fiction:
Here is my last excerpt from Cat's Eye - by Margaret Atwood. So much of this book has come back to me in the past week doing these excerpts - the detail, the sweep and scope of it - it is truly a "grand" book, in terms of its intention - and also - the perfection of some of the writing. For example, the following excerpt.
Elaine is now a young mother. She has married a fellow artist, Jon. They struggle. Cordelia is no longer at all in the picture. The two have lost touch completely. Atwood seems to suggest, though, that all roads still lead back to Cordelia (the last line of this excerpt shows that). But it also is interesting because .... whose voice is it? Is it Elaine's voice? I assume it is Cordelia's ... but the internalization of shame and self-loathing that came from her friendship with Cordelia is so all-encompassiong - that those emotions are no longer just a byproduct of a specific experience. They have become her identity. Isn't this so the way - with childhood experiences? We are not separated from what happens to us. We can rise above, get some therapy, try to forgive, forget ... but still: what happens to us IS who we are.
I was always quite struck by the writing here. There's a cliche here: despairing woman, artist, trying to commit suicide.
But it has the Atwood touch.
Excerpt from excerpt from Cat's Eye - by Margaret Atwood.
It is winter. The heat goes off, comes on again, goes off, at random. Sarah has a cold. She coughs at night and I get up for her, feeding her spponfuls of cough syrup, bringing her drinks of water. In the daytime we are both exhausted.
I am sick a lot myself this winter. I get her colds. I lie in bed on weekend mornings, looking up at the ceiling, my head clogged and cottony. I want glasses of ginger ale, squeezed orange juice, the sound of distant radios. But these things are gone forever, nothing arrives on a tray. If I want ginger ale I'll have to go to the store or the kitchen, buy it or pour it myself. In the main room Sarah watches cartoons.
I don't paint at all any more. I can't think about painting. Although I've received a junior grant from a government arts program, I can't organize myself enough to lift a brush. I push myself through time, to work, to the bank to get money, to the supermarket to buy food. Sometimes I watch daytime soaps on television, where there are more crises and better clothes than in real life. I tend to Sarah.
I don't do anything else. I no longer go to the meetings of women, because they make me feel worse. Jody phones and says we should get together, but I put her off. She would jolly me along, make bracing and positive suggestions I know I can't live up to. Then I would only feel more like a failure.
I don't want to see anyone. I lie in the bedroom with the curtains drawn and nothingness washing over me like a sluggish wave. Whatever is happening to me is my own fault. I have done something wrong, something so huge I can't even see it, something that's drowning me. I am inadequate and stupid, without worth. I might as well be dead.
One night Jon does not come back. This is not usual, it isn't our silent agreement: even when he stays out late he is always in by midnight. We haven't had a fight this day; we've hardly spoken. He hasn't phoned to say where he is. His intention is clear: he has left me behind, in the cold.
I crouch in the bedroom, in the dark, wrapped in Jon's old sleeping bag, listening to the wheezing sound of Sarah breathing and the whisper of sleet against the window. Love blurs your vision; but after it recedes, you can see more clearly than ever. It's like the tide going out, revealing whatever's been thrown away and sunk: broken bottles, old gloves, rusting pop cans, nibbled fishbodies, bones. This is the kind of thing you see if you sit in the darkness with open eyes, not knowing the future. The ruin you've made.
My body is inert, without will. I think I sholud keep moving, to circulate my blood, as you are supposed to do in a snowstorm so you won't feeze to death. I force myself to stand up. I will go to the kitchen and make tea.
Outside the house a car slides by, through the mushy snow, a muffled rushing. The main room is dark, except for the light coming in from the lampposts on the street, through the window. The things on Jon's work table glint in this half-light: the flat blade of a chisel, the head of a hammer. I can feel the pull of the earth on me, the dragging of its dark curve of gravity, the spaces between the atoms you could fall so easily through.
This is when I hear the voice, not inside my head at all but in the room, clearly: Do it. Come on. Do it. This voice doesn't offer a choice; it has the force of an order. It's the difference between jumping and being pushed.
The Exacto knife is what I use, to make a slash. It doesn't even hurt, because right after that there's a whispering sound and space closes in and I'm on the floor. This is how Jon finds me. Blood is black in the darkness, it does not reflect, so he doesn't see until he turns on the light.
I tell the people at Emergency that it was an accident. I am a painter, I say. I was cutting canvas and my hand slipped. It's my left wrist, so this is plausible. I'm frightened, I want to hide the truth: I have no intention of being stuffed into 999 Queen Street, now or ever.
"In the middle of the night?" the doctor says.
"I often work at night," I say.
Jon backs me up. He's just as scared as I am. He tied my wrist up in a tea towel and drove me to the hospital. I leaked through the towel, onto the front seat.
"Sarah," I said, remembering her.
"She's downstairs," Jon said. Downstairs is the landlady, a middle-aged Italian widow.
"What did you tell her?" I asked.
"I said it was your appendix," Jon said. I laughed, a little. "What the hell got into you?"
"I don't know," I said. "You'll have to get this car clearned." I felt white, drained of blood, cared for, purified. Peaceful.
"Are you sure you don't want to talk to someone?" the doctor in Emergency says.
"I'm fine now," I say. The last thing I want to do is talking. I know what he means by someone: a shrink. Someone who will tell me I'm nuts. I know what kind of people hear voices: people who drink too much, who fry their brains with drugs, who slip off the rails. I feel entirely steady, I'm not even anxious anymore. I've already decided what I will do, afterward, tomorrow. I'll wear my arm in a sling and say I broke my wrist. So I don't have to tell him, or Jon, or anyone else, about the voice.
I know it wasn't really there. Also I know I heard it.
It wasn't a frightening voice, in itself. Not menacing but excited, as if proposing an escapade, a prank, a treat. Something treasured, and secret. The voice of a nine-year-old child.
April 25, 2007
Things Bren said on the phone to me last night
"Zen samurais do not become dissolute."
"There is a Sleestak on the phone with us right now."
"It's the most fun you'll have being contemptuous." - on The Village
"You're half impatient and you're half totally ambivalent. Which is totally fun. And then there's Adrien Brody in the middle of it doing Retard 101." - more on The Village
"Look. I dont like nappy-headed hos in my British comedies."
This is how I used to write in my journal
It was August 21.
A Death in the Family had just closed. My going-away party was the next week. I had gotten so sick, and I was still sick on August 21. I had 102 degree fever. I remember actually having some tnesion with Jackie about this because yes, I was totally sick - but I could not/would not take a day of rest. I only had a week left. I won't DIE. I must plow through. Somehow I made it through the last weekend of the show; I remember sitting in my big scene with Kate, alternately chilled and hot with fever - and I cannot describe it any other way than to say that I was totally and unselfconsciously in the moment. I had no awareness that I was onstage, that there was anything in this world besides me and Kate.
I would walk home after the show - hot hot summer nights, crowded summer streets - I felt like I was floating through space and time. My feet weren't touching the sidewalk. My legs ached. Finally home, take medicine, and lie in bed, tossing, turning, hot, feverish ...
I called M. in a panic on the most feverish day. [Ahem.] He was gentle and sweet. I told him I only had a week left in Chicago and I needed to see him. I was afraid that it wouldn't happen. I needed him so much that summer. He reassured me. "Don't worry. We'll see each other. You just get better, okay?"
I lay on my green velvet coach moaning. It was 110 degrees out anyway.
George was going to Ireland with his family that week, so he wouldn't come to my going-away party. We both were pretty sad about it. We had become quite good friends that summer. Death in the Family was a magical experience. He wanted to take me out to dinner that Monday night, so the two of us could have some closure, have a proper good-bye night. I thought that was really nice.
Now.
As far as I was concerned, as far as I knew - August 21st was the second to last of his shows I'd go to that summer, if ever. August 28th was the last show, and I was leaving town the 29th. So the 28th was going to be a big extravaganza. Everyone would be there. Ann, Mitchell, Jim ... I wanted to buy a new dress, by the 28th I wouldn't be sick anymore. I had all kinds of ideas. I wanted to sing "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow" with him. I had a huge event in my head.
Now.
The way it actually ended up turning out ... despite the tearing in my heart (which I wouldn't have been able to avoid anyway) was "perfect". Meant to be.
I was trying to control our goodbye scene. With the dress and the star-studded night. I was playing puppeteer. I thought it was best that way. To make our private goodbye a public event.
This ended up being an incredible lesson for me.
Because I had to deal with a huge loss in the way it actually turned out. I ended up having to say goodbye to him, and that whole experience, alone. There was no event. All of this symbolic stuff - all of this "last time" stuff - really meant something to me - and it never happened, except in my head. I thought it would help: To sit beside Ann, to sit beside Mitchell, and know that it was over. To be aware of the ending as it was ending. To honor that.
As it turned out, the last time we all went to his show ... we didn't know it was the last time.
We always thought we had more time.
And so I had to grieve that. And so did Ann. So did Mitchell. So did Jim.
No one was there on August 21. I was there. With my fever. Ken happened to be there. And a full audience was there, too. But none of my posse. Me and Ken. And that was it.
On the other side of things, it was, for once in our lives together, not a crowd scene. I had him TOTALLY to myself. I only had to deal with me, and my emotions. I was so sick, too. I had no veneer. I was weak from sickness, I was open, I wasn't dressed to the nines, I had no armor on (sartorial or emotional). I resented that, at first. I wasn't ready. I wasn't ready to say goodbye. And yet when are we ever ready? I wouldn't have been ready on the 28th either. I just would have had a nicer outfit on.
So I was sad that Ann wasn't there - but (and Ann got this) the way it ended made sense. Eventually. In the Big Picture. Of me. And him. It was right. Because the first time we met was not a public event. Not when I went up onstage to sing. It was when he saw me through the window and came out and joined me on the sidewalk. To talk. Just me and him.
The universe takes care of you.
It provides sense.
You just have to pay attention.
And accept the sense in the answers that are given, not in the answers you want.
None of this took away from the blow I felt in the original moment. On August 21. I don't know if I could sensorally re-create it. It was so visceral, so enormous - a once-in-a-lifetime moment. Here's another "miracle". I had made a tape for him. I took my time with it. I kept a copy for myself, knowing I would want to revisit it some day.) I cried the entire time I made the tape. It took me hours. I was like a crazy woman, up at 3 a.m., drinking wine, all of the lights on in the living room, surrounded by tapes. Mitchell got afraid for me, but I kept assuring him I was okay. I needed to do this.
I called the tape: "Only Connect." Because of Howard's End. Life changes, life moves on, progress happens, landscapes change. All of this is inevitable. Yet if your mission during your brief stay on this planet is "only connect", you will not have missed your life. Making that tape was life or fucking death to me. It was life or fucking death that he hear it.
And so on the 21st, sick as a dog, having dinner with George, I happened to have my book bag with me - with the tape in it - already in a manila envelope, no less, even though I was planning on giving it to him on the 28th - our last night.
Here.
Here are the words that I need: the chilling words: to think that he could have left our final meeting to chance like that. He knew he didn't have a show on the 28th. How could he have been sure I would show on the 21st? What if I hadn't shown? What would have been his thought process then? Would he have called me to say goodbye? To let me know he didn't have a show on the 28th? I almost didn't go on the 21st. I was so fucking sick. I went on a whim. If I hadn't gone, I would have thought, "Well, whatever. I'll see him next week." And what a tragedy that would have been. A crushing blow, something I wouldn't ever not regret. To not see him that one last time. On our native soil. To have our paths miss each other so closely. Also: to know he didn't call me to let me know ... How could he be so cavalier? Clearly, it wasn't as important to him. Or he couldn't admit how important it was. Of course all of this is hypothetical. It didn't happen this way, but it very well may have. The whole thing was left up to luck, and that is what I find so haunting, so terrible.
Thinking about what really happened - by accident - on August 21 - and how it makes a terrible kind of sense to me, and comparing it to the hypothetical: me blithely heading out on the 28th, in my new dress, ready to leave town the next morning ... only to find that there is no show ... and that I will not be able to say goodbye ...
It gives me a cold flash. And he almost let that happen.
All of this did not occur to me until way later.
George walked me to the door of the club. As though it was my house. We had a big long tearful hug. I remember distinctly that I had that translucent shimmery feeling that goes along with really high fevers. I was transparent. My emotions were not just on the surface. They were the surface. But at the same time, I occasionally had that faraway roar in my ears. I felt very otherworldly, and removed. Like I was some invisible spirit hovering in the back. I have felt that way there before - especially after the whole thing between us ended - as though I were dead and re-visiting the earth.
I wasn't even positive that I could be seen.
I had on a big white man's shirt. I had on paint-stained faded jeans. I had on hightops. My hiar was long and loose. I had on no makeup and I still looked like death warmed over. I will never forget the glassy marbles my eyes had become at the height of my fever. The scary time, the time of the advancing icebergs. So I still looked sick on the 21st. Especially in my eyes.
Nobody knew I was there. I couldn't face going backstage to say hi. I set myself up way in the back. I don't think the show had started yet. The crowd was pretty sparse. I found a stool back by the sound board and perched there, sipping water, listening to the roar of the wintry sea in my ears, riding the waves of my fever. I had no connection to my flesh, not really, but then suddenly I'd be shivering, or burning up, or achey. I should have been home and in bed. No doubt about it. This was Jackie's worry.
But the universe knew I had to be there, and so the universe made sure I was there.
Somewhere, halfway through the first set it happened. He said something about the following week, then he stopped himself and said, "Oh, I won't be here next week ... so, the week after then ..." Totally casual, no big deal to him.
But sitting in the back, on my stool, I felt the bottom fall out. And then I was falling. I could not comprehend it. It was too immediate. Too big. I was holding on to something during this freefall - but everything else froze. I mean, the show went on. I could perceive that sounds were still being made, but I could not hear them. It was only the roaring beat of my heart that I could hear.
And I could not understand. Immediately.
It was beyond the pale.
I had to realize it. I fought it - but I had to realize it. It seemed essential that I realize what was happening. Tonight's it. Tonight's the last night. There will be no extravaganza on the 28th. Where I can be fabulous and a star and appreciated.
This is it.
Ready or not.
This is it.
That's another thing that turned out to be a blessing. I was not "ready" to say goodbye to him. I can overthink and overintellectualize something to death. But on August 21, I couldn't plan or orchestrate anything.
So I was thrown off guard, not to mention having a high fever. I had to deal with everything at once. I had to let go - there and then - of the thought of me and Ann at our last show on the 28th - I had to say goodbye to the fantasy - there and then.
And it changed everything. It was like an acting exercise where suddenly the stakes are raised 100% higher. And everything suddenly becomes more interesting. Immediate.
The whole atmosphere changed when I learned that this - right now - would be the last time. Whereas before, I was floating in my haze of sickness, watching him up on stage, aware of the dull ache I always felt when I would go to his shows, a low level drone of pain under the smiles ... and after the realization, it was like I was WHIZZING through space at full speed, heading directly for him, the air full of pure oxygen and knifes, high-pitched music, silver particles. Hang on ... this is IT. I'm not ready. We don't care! This is IT!
Hazard.
I cannot express the ineffable.
And somewhere admist all of this white-hot noise and internal chaos, I felt this hot bath of relief, immense, that I happened to have "Only Connect" in my bag. How fortuituous. Why was I carrying it that night? No reason. I didn't plan on giving it to him until the 28th. And so the gods smiled.
For once.
After the first assault of pain, a painful painful sweetness came. A love so sweet and big and yearning that I thought I might die. My love for this man physically hurt me. So I would wait it out, pressing in on my heart with my hand, riding the waves of it, like an earache, a stomach flu.
I sat in the back, in my dark feverish corner, no one knew I was there, with tears pouring down my ravaged face. The music blared, music made by him, and I sobbed into my hands, watching him through my fingers, aching, aching, aching.
I wasn't, of course, just crying about the letting go of August 28. I was crying about the letting go of him. That old hurt. And once the tears started to come, basically I cried off and on for the rest of the night. They woud not stop. It became a casual thing, my tears. I said, in the van ride home, "Do not be alarmed. I just can't stop crying. You can keep talking. Seriously, don't mind me. Ignore the tears."
My resistance was already shot, burned off by the fever. I could fight nothing, and it didn't even occur to me to fight. If our last night had been the 28th, I would have fought it the entire way.
Heart breaking, my heart singing out over and again.
Goodbye goodbye goodbye
Hidden in the back, shadowed, protected, disguised, laughing with love at his stupid jokes, clapping and clapping and clapping.
I was all alone. And it was right that it turned out the way it did. That I could sit in the dark, alone, watching the show, weeping, laughing, having a totally private experience. It was a gift, actually. It had its sad side, but it was a gift.
It had a symmetry to it. As the whole thing with him did. The first night - I went to go see him by himself. And it was in August. I wore my tight black button down shirt, my tight olive-green mermaid skirt. I sat, come to think of it, exactly where I sat on August 21st, on a stool by the sound board, in the back, in the dark. And I was alone that first night. Heady with freedom and independence.
But then - years later - sitting there, a week before leaving town - alone still, and independent, but "heady with freedom"? Not quite. Oh yes, I was free. But heady? Far from it.
It is a terrible thing to be free.
I did not let him know I was there. Not yet. Then he took a break. I tried to get myself together before I saw him, but it was impossible.
I moved up to the side of the stage during the break. I would watch the second set from there. I did not go backstage. I sat quietly behind the speakers, still invisible - quiet, pale, in tears - quiet constant tears.
Eventually Ken emerged from backstage - as did Jim - to find teary-eyed Sheila hiding behind the speakers. Jim, of course, gave me a big hug. He was always so sweet and so good to me. And Ken totally took care of me, in his own way, for the rest of the night. Ken had come to see Death in the Family, on his own initiative, had heard me talk about it, got tickets, and came to see it. I had no idea he was there.
Ken had never seen me in such a state as I was in on the 21st. But he handled it beautifully. He let me alone, and yet he stuck by me. We stood up against the wall together and watched the second set. I was totally split open, I couldn't hold anything back. Every song played, I felt it again. The associations, the memories, my love for him. I had no Kleenex. The cuffs of my big white shirt were drenched.
Before the show started, Ken and I were talking. I said, broken, "So this is my last show, Ken. This is it. I thought he would be playing next week."
Ken didn't say anything for a while. Then he told me that he was a huge Ramones fan - and he saw them 40 times or something. And he told me that when they broke up, they went on tour one last time, and Ken saw them play, knowing that this was it. This was it. The end of an era. Then he said, with his ducktail, and his thick-rimmed glasses, "Tonight is a close second to that."
It killed me.
I am loved. I am loved. And it has changed me forever.
During the second set - He had Ken sing - "Summertime Blues" - I was so glad he had Ken sing on my last night there. It meant a lot to me. I knew he did it for me. It was like my own private show. And at some point, during the second set - he started doing shots. He and I hadn't spoken yet and I had no idea what he was going through. I had no idea if he was conscious that we would not see each other again, that this was it - did he get it? Is he aware of the moment?
And once the shots started being tossed back - that's how I realized: he knows.
Now. Here is what happened next. Some girl, a regular in his audience, was moving to Thailand. For her, it was a very meaningful experience: her last show!! He had no fucking clue who she was. She was sitting in the back - and she must have sent a note up to the stage, requesting a song for her last night. He was in the middle of doing his third shot and he said, "That one went out to so and so ... this is her last night here because she's moving to Thailand ..."
Let me preface all of this by saying I was not expecting what happened next to happen. I was so discombobulated by the change in schedule, I knew it was my last show, but I was so sick - I was so plain - I didn't feel festive or dressed up or ready to sing with him for the last time. I was not ready. It became an intensely private night for me, even though I was surrounded by a crowd. It was just me, in the dark, focusing on him. As though he were the Planet Earth and I was standing on the moon looking back at him. Being able to see him whole. Surrounded by eons of empty cold space, unfamiliar lunar landscape - but there he was, thousands of miles away - a mindblowing sight, something to revel in. Look at him! My home! How I love my home. Why am I so far away.
After the farewell speech for Thailand Girl, he pulled the rug out from under me by saying, "It's somebody else's last night here --" It took me a second to realize what was about to happen, and when I did I just wasn't ready. I wasn't prepared. I couldn't be cool. And in retrospect, for that, I am thankful. Because what followed was one of the most intense love-bombing 5 minutes of my whole life - and I was not removed from the experience in any way, I had no time to sidestep the intensity of it (which would have happened if I had had time to gear up for it and to orchestrate the whole thing.) So when I realized what was next, I felt this plummeting, a stunned stasis, and my mind panicked - Oh God - not ready - no no no - not ready - no!!
I'm avoiding writing it down. By writing it down I finalize it. It becomes a thing. The writing becomes the experience, rather than the experience itself.
"It's somebody else's last night here ... this someone has been -- an important -- part of ... my shows ..." (I was Alice in Wonderland, drowning in my own tears) He joked, "Lord knows, she's bailed my ass out of trouble - times without number - " (Jim and Ken burst into laughter) "But it's time for her to move on. She's moving to New York City. This is right for her. It's where she needs to go." Everything was silent, and full, and horrible, and wonderful. It was like we were the only two people in the world, and everything of importance was being left unsaid. But we knew. We knew. He said, "But of course she'll come back and visit us, won't she?" And he looked over at me.
I must be honest. At that point, the thought of ever coming back to "visit" was so awful that it could not be contemplated. No.
This is the kind of love you never recover from.
I knew what he needed from me to make the moment complete, in terms of entertainment value. He needed me to call out cheerily, "Of course I'll come back!" But I could not do it. I was not being manipulative. I was being truthful. I could not speak. I just stared up at him, mute. ".....come back and visit us? ..." Visit? What a pale flimsy excuse for life.
It was only a brief pause, he was looking down at me, and I up at him - and I could see him die in that pause. Then he said, panicked - "Please say yes."
He needed my voice. My promise. This whole exchange was edged with humor on his side, he was in front of the crowd - but the core of it was deadly serious.
Please do not say to me that I will never see you again.
Please come back and visit.
Say you will.
Say you will.
I could not get any voice out, so I just nodded. Sort of cursory, I admit. Okay, okay, I say yes ... It was only to stop that look in his eyes.
I sometimes wonder if my pain is just a pale reflection of his pain.
The thought has crossed my mind. He has never told me so I don't know. But then, waking up at 3 a.m., that one time, feeling what I felt then, that Bob Dylan song: "You're gonna have to leave me now, I know. But I'll see you in the stars above, in the tall grass,in the ones I love, You're gonna make me lonesome when you go."
That was all there in his "Please say yes!"
And then he said, "So." and he raised his shot glass. I looked out at the entire club - and the whole club raised their glasses into the air, all of them looking at me.
"To Sheila!" he said.
Then the whole crowd screamed, "To Sheila!"
This really happened.
Then the cheering began. Endless. I wilted against the wall - bombarded with images - every single face burned into my memory - all of those raised glasses at me - the roar of the voices - the smiles - the love. They were all screaming as loud as they could, and it kept coming at me and coming at me. I held my hand over my bursting my heart. I managed to blow a very meaningful kiss at everyone - and I was in the perfect emotional place for such a gesture. I meant it.
I looked up at him once during this part and he was looking over and down at me - nodding - nodding, like, "You see that? You see what you have done? You see that?" We looked at each other, and I bombarded him with what was in my heart, and he took it. He saw it. He nodded. It was just us. Then he said into the mike, softly, over the cheers, but looking down at me, "You are loved, Sheila O'Malley. You are loved."
Caritas.
That moment has seemed to me either tragic or beautiful. It depends on where I'm standing.
The end was so near.
I forced myself to not cower behind the speaker. I knew, instinctively, that I had to let myself be blown to pieces like this. That it would not come again. I would be cheating myself. So I faced the crowd - all of those faces - with mouths wide open and cheering - beer glasses shoved in the air at me - and I held my hand over my heart, I had this huge smile on my face - and I bowed. The cheering intensified. I bowed again. It was - it IS - one of the most beautiful things that has ever happened to me.
I think for him too. I saw his face. The depths of that quiet Irish soul were stirred. Shaken.
Everyone wanted me to sing. I knew I couldn't. I was wrecked. I couldn't clamp down against it, I hadn't had time to get ready. I was sick, and I could not sing in that state. He came away from the mike and walked over to where I was - and the club had begun to chant my name, over and over, like some strange Chicago Sheila cult - and he leaned down towars me, my big gentle giant, I was still pressing my hand down over my heart, with tears streaming down my face - he was leaning down, I was leaning up, we were reaching towards each other - tension - magnetism - repelling forces - he said (and he was all about me, he would have done anything for me that night), "Do you want to sing?" I shook my head. He nodded. Of course. Moved back to the mike to explain to the chanting crowd that I was sick, I couldn't sing.
Once the cheering finally died down, I saw him have to take a moment. Just a little one, of re-grouping. My heart went out to him. He took this big shaky sigh, and then shook his head, as if to clear it out. And plunged back into his music. His world.
Then it was over. The show was done. The lights went up. He disappeared. I sat on the edge of the stage, tears kept bubbling over, but I was so happy too. Ken came up to me and said, "I'm not really hip on goodbyes, so I'm gonna bag out now - I just want you to know ---" and then he got all choked up, in his manly 1950s way. He couldn't finish.
I nodded. "I know."
We hugged for a really long time.
Then he was gone.
So many people came up to me to say goodbye and wish me luck. People I didn't know. People I had never seen before in my life. I was sitting there, blowing my nose, waterworks, they would say their peace, and I would thank them from the bottom of my heart, tell them how much it meant to me.
I was sort of putting off seeing him. He was back there, I knew that, and I was 10 feet away. Finally I was ready. He was on the other side of the backdrop, and he was ready too. We could not see each other, mind you. But we moved towards each other at the same moment and we met up by the black curtain. We stood looking at each other for a moment, it was this private silent "hello" moment - no longer than that - because then I went right at him, or he went right at me - I put my arms up - he stepped into my arms - and he held me - I held him back - the hug expanded, deepened, tightened - neither of us let go. At some point, the desultory tears became sobs. He's not good with that stuff, but he did okay here. The sounds that were coming out of me, howling into his chest, alarmed even me - once I heard the first sob wrench out of me, I was gone. I was choking, racked with it. And he was never a stoic stalwart granite guy. Tears made him anxious, restless, and sometimes cruel. He kept holding me, as strong as could be, but at that first sound that came out, he caught his breath. I heard it. I felt it all through him.
He couldn't reconcile the two things - his dream-girl, his love girl, and the tear-stained girl in his arms.
"I didn't only want Louise's flesh, I wanted her bones, her blood, her tissues, the sinews that bound her together. I would have held her to me though time had stripped away the tones and textures of her skin. I could have held her for a thousand years until the skeleton itself rubbed to dust. What are you that makes me feel thus? Who are you for whom time has no meaning? In the heat of her hands I thought, This is the campfire that mocks the sun. This place will warm me, feed me and care for me. I will hold on to this pulse against other rhythms. The world will come and go in the tide of a day but here is her hand with my future in its palm."
Finally, we both pulled back. He was holding my face, wiping away the tears, looking at me, lasering into me - the first thing I could say was, "I'm disappointed - I thought you would be here next week ..." He made this sound in his throat, like he was looking at a mortally wounded animal in the street. It was a compassionate sound, am empathetic sound, a sound of acute identification.
"I know," he said. (His rhythm was different. He wasn't racing all over me, hasty, clumsy, pawing me, trying to jostle me out of emotions he found confronting. He had an infinite gentleness and stillness and sadness about him.) He did not feign indifference - like he would do sometimes, just to hurt me, shrugging right in my face, like, "Oh well, whatever." He knew what it meant to me. He was kind. He allowed me to be sad. He allowed me to fucking love him.
I held out the manila envelope - "This is a gift for you. I can't believe I happened to have it on me tonight. I was gonna give it to you next week."
He took it. Made no move to open it.
I said, "Don't open it now."
He put it in his duffel bag.
Then he turned on me and yelled at me for being sick. He was dead serious. "Why are you sick?" He raised his voice. He found my sickness intolerable. I raised my voice back. "I'm just sick. There is no reason. Back off." This made him smile.
He calmed down and asked me seriously about my illness, how I really was. I told him about Maureen making a house call. The way he was listening to me - in that way he was - those eyes, boring into me. Searching for my essence. I told him about calling M., and begging to see him, how M. was taking care of me. He doesn't like the thought of M., I can see his eyes go dead when I mention him, but I figure the whole truth can be told now. You set me free, remember.
He asked me 100 questions about my life, where would I live, would I get a job, when was I leaving - exactly - like: what time in the morning (what are you gonna do about it? Show up at the 11th hour? Because I'm crazy enough to hope for that). I suddenly remembered that I happened to have a Death in the Family program in my bag - and I reference him, and singing with him, in my bio. I said, "Oh! I want to show you this!" I rummaged thru the bag, took it out and handed it to him, finger showing him the spot. He read it, hungrily. Of course. He is basically a hungry guy.
And something happened to him when he read it. I hesitate to say everything, describe everything, but I watched his energy change - right in front of me. He has told me he loves me. Of course. But words are nothing compared to what I saw on his face in that moment. It was like I saw his heart get bigger. It got so big that I felt it pressing in on me. He couldn't even say anything. He read the bio, and then just looked at me, with this kindness in his face, tenderness, and he said, "Can I keep this?"
I nodded.
Up until that point, I had been all about my own pain. It took up so much room. But then I could sense the pain he was in, the pain he would continue to be in, how much I mean to him.
Then we were getting ready to leave. He had to go get paid, so he had to leave me for a second - he was pretty freaked out, and all about me - "Stay here, okay? I'll be right back. Don't move." He knows me too well. He knew the odds of me suddenly disappearing into the night in a poof of smoke were pretty high. So he left, and I sat backstage, alone. The tears, like I said, wouldn't stop, but at the same time I felt ultra-calm. And then we left, through the crowded bar, with him escorting me protectively. Holding onto my arm, moving me through the throngs. As we left, so many people called out to me as we passed, "Goodbye Sheila!" "Good luck!" "We'll miss you!" Shadowed by him, pale and sick, feeling very small nextto him, walking out of that place for what would be the last time.
I didn't look back. I didn't take a last-glance-around moment. I just walked out.
Oh, the van. Oh, deserted Lincoln Ave. Oh, the traffic light. Oh, the New Seminary. Oh, the Emerald Queen. Floods of memories. As I climbed up into the front seat of the van, I sighed all that out. A big loud shaky sigh. As we drove away, I craned my neck to watch the club disappear. Nobody spoke.
He leaned over and touched my leg. "I meant what I said back there. About you bailing me out." Jim and I both started laughing, and he was laughing too. "Remember, Jim? My God, I'd be playing a show and people would be hating on me, or not into it and I'd have you sing and you'd turn it all around. So many times that happened. Right, Jim?" Jim was still laughing. "Totally."
"You were my savior," he said, and I just let that comment lie there.
He turned onto Halsted. Northward.
There were stretches of silence during the drive. And at some point, he started reminiscing. About our countless drives up Southport on those sweltering summer nights.
"What was the name of that store that you always used to scream out whenever we would pass by it?"
"WHIMSY!" I shouted.
"Yes! Whimsy! Oh my God - and remember that big weird Deutschland place that looked like it was made for Nazi meetings?"
"Oh yeah! You were obsessed with that place. You'd slow down as we passed it to stare at it."
It was during the drive that he told me he had done "a little reading" on the Actors Studio. He said, "From what I know about the Actors Studio - it's a place where famous actors can go, and work privately - is that right?"
"Yes. You're right."
He nodded, intent on me, intent on the road. I loved how he drove, leaning forward, involved. I remember he was trying to ask me about the makeup of the program, and he wasn't really expressing it but I knew what he was saying, so I said breezily, as we hit Belmont, "Oh, I'm sure it'll be a mecca of multiculturalism."
He laughed as only he could. He never missed a signal from me. He always got me - got my tone, the jokes, the snark, the points I made. Never had to explain myself twice to him. So he ROARED - roared at my word choice, but also roared at the fact that I had understood what he was getting at.
He looked over at me. I smiled. I felt very soft, very loving. He smiled, too - but there was so much else in it. A painful wince. What could he do to bridge the gap? How could he get more involved? It was never enough, with him. He always wanted more, more, more. But he cannot have it anymore. The gap will just keep getting wider. This is the nature of life. But it's hard for him to deal with that. There's a gap between his impulse and what he is allowed to do. It makes him wordless sometimes, caught. He can't reach out and kiss me. And in lieu of that ... what gesture would be appropriate? We never found the right gestures.
He finally said, "Well .... I think it's all wonderful."
Jim's voice, quiet, came from the back seat, "We're really excited for you."
They started asking me about neighborhoods in New York, where I would be living. I mentioned my classes down in the West Village, and he got so worked up he started riffing on his imagination:
"Oh, I can just see it. You'll be walking down the street in the Village, holding books in your arms, and it'll be chilly and crisp enough that it's time to wear sweaters again - and you'll be with a guy who looks vaguely like Bob Dylan ..."
He would do this to me all the time. Flesh out hypotheticals, imagining me in different circumstances - evidence of his visceral involvement with me. It always killed me when he would do that. I loved it, but it killed me. I need to be loved like that. Anything less will not satisfy, from here on out, and that is awful, and beautiful. Awful because I had to say goodbye to it, and never really could say hello to it - beautiful because I almost had it. I got a taste. Just a taste. It changed me for good.
When he went off on his fantasy of me in the Village, I turned away from him, hand clamped over my mouth, pressing my head against the glass. Here it comes again.
"Please stop ..." I managed to say. He looked over at me, stopped, turned back to the road. Jim reached up from the back of the van, and rubbed my shoulders, so nice. Then we reached Addison, and I had Breakdown # 89. I said, "What is wrong with me? I don't want to leave. This is my home. This is my home. What am I doing?? Am I insane?"
They bombarded me with positiveness. With love.
Sheila, it's gonna be so great.
This is a great thing.
It's right.
You're gonna do so well.
Everything is going to be okay.
Finally, he turned onto Wayne. There was my homelight gleaming. Silence fell over us. The end was here.
"Wind chimes," he said, as he pulled the van to a stop.
No one said anything. He got out of the van - ready to walk up the porch steps with me. Once he was out, I turned around in my seat to face Jim.
"Well, Jim."
"Well, baby."
I leaned back and we hugged for a really long time.
"Thanks for the fond care, Jim." A joke from way back when. A raunchy conversation had taken place - and Jim had apparently (behind my back) said something raunchy about me, and it had gotten back to me. I of course then had to go and bust on him about it, "Oh, so I heard that you said such and such about me ...", and he was mortified. His defensive response was, "I meant it with fond care." Now that is a joke that just keeps on giving.
As we pulled back, his eyes were all shiny. I said, "I really hope our paths cross again."
"I'm sure they will, sweetie."
I climbed out of the van, where he was waiting on the curb for me. He took my hand, the street was so quiet, in such a Wayne Street way. It wasn't a main street, so there were the big trees, and the crickets, and the silent darkened houses - but Addison was half a block away, so there was also the urban hum of a busy street, underneath the quiet. And the haunting occasional "ping" of my wind chimes, weaving through it all.
We walked up my steps. Neither of us leading or following. Then his arms were around me, and I went off into Waterworks again - the wind chimes like mistletoe - there was a wet patch on his T-shirt from my tears when I finally pulled back. But I was holding onto his big body so tight - and we said what we had to say. It's all kind of blurry now, that part.
You mean everything to me
I will miss you
Thank you for everything
No. No. Thank you.
Then he pulled back - gripping my arms - he made me look at him, forced me to - and said, with a fierceness and seriousness I had never seen, "And remember, Sheila. Always remember. If you ever have a day where you feel like you are not loved, where you feel like you are alone - just know that I am here. I am out here - even if we don't talk or communicate - I want you to stop, and just know that I'm here and I love you." He was shaking me. My arms were bruised from his fingers the next day.
"Okay, okay ... " I said. That was all I could say.
Then he left me. It was hard for him to do so.
The night started with him being far away from me, onstage, me on stool in the back, then closer - he got bigger - I was standing beside the stage - he was above me - then we were one on one, eye to eye, and then - he walked down my porch steps, getting smaller again, and then he was in the van ...
As he broke away from me and went back to the van, I heard an insistent "MEOW" coming at me. These were in the days when Sammy had discovered a way to escape by squeezing his body between the screen and the window. So I would leave for work, for the show, Sammy would be inside, it was heat wave days - so the windows were open - I'd come home and Sammy would come bounding over from a neighbor's yard. Like a dog. He tasted the fruits of freedom that summer. Unfettered.
So - as he got into the van, as Jim moved up into the front seat, window rolled down - there was Sammy, coming down the dark sidewalk towards me, meowing like crazy. Hello, hello, hello ... glad to see you? Am I in trouble? Is it okay that I escaped? Is it okay?
My face was wet from the tears, the collar of my shirt wet, my sleeves, the cuffs ... I came down the steps, "Hi, my baby boy! How'd you get out?" I scooped up my purring beautiful cat who has been such a comfort to me, curling up by my head as I cried myself to sleep.
Jim laughed from the van, a soft sound, and I laughed too. Everything felt soft and gentle and kind and summery, bittersweet. "He escaped!" I informed Jim.
The van started up - I could only see his hands on the wheel. Jim was on the passenger side. I stood there, watching - Jim called out softly to me, "We love you." I waved my fingers at them. "I love you too." The van started to move, I watched it go. Both men had their arms out the windows, waving goodbye, as they drove up Wayne and out of sight. I could see his arm coming up over the van, so he was steering with his right hand, and Jim's arm coming out of the passenger side - pale arms - waving - coming out to me through the darkness, getting smaller and smaller and smaller ....
The last time I saw them.
I must add something to all of this, having just read over what I wrote. I needed to write it. And I just have. I cried as I wrote it. But after all of this - I know that this is not the way it happened at all. It eludes language. Life, love, goodbyes. This is a reconstruction. A facade. It didn't happen that way at all. The real event is between all the words.
National Poetry Month: Anne Sexton
LIVE
Live or die, but don't poison everything...
Well, death's been here
for a long time --
it has a hell of a lot
to do with hell
and suspicion of the eye
and the religious objects
and how I mourned them
when they were made obscene
by my dwarf-heart's doodle.
The chief ingredient
is mutilation.
And mud, day after day,
mud like a ritual,
and the baby on the platter,
cooked but still human,
cooked also with little maggots,
sewn onto it maybe by somebody's mother,
the damn bitch!
Even so,
I kept right on going on,
a sort of human statement,
lugging myself as if
I were a sawed-off body
in the trunk, the steamer trunk.
This became perjury of the soul.
It became an outright lie
and even though I dressed the body
it was still naked, still killed.
It was caught
in the first place at birth,
like a fish.
But I play it, dressed it up,
dressed it up like somebody's doll.
Is life something you play?
And all the time wanting to get rid of it?
And further, everyone yelling at you
to shut up. And no wonder!
People don't like to be told
that you're sick
and then be forced
to watch
you
come
down with the hammer.
Today life opened inside me like an egg
and there inside
after considerable digging
I found the answer.
What a bargain!
There was the sun,
her yolk moving feverishly,
tumbling her prize --
and you realize she does this daily!
I'd known she was a purifier
but I hadn't thought
she was solid,
hadn't known she was an answer.
God! It's a dream,
lovers sprouting in the yard
like celery stalks
and better,
a husband straight as a redwood,
two daughters, two sea urchings,
picking roses off my hackles.
If I'm on fire they dance around it
and cook marshmallows.
And if I'm ice
they simply skate on me
in little ballet costumes.
Here,
all along,
thinking I was a killer,
anointing myself daily
with my little poisons.
But no.
I'm an empress.
I wear an apron.
My typewriter writes.
It didn't break the way it warned.
Even crazy, I'm as nice
as a chocolate bar.
Even with the witches' gymnastics
they trust my incalculable city,
my corruptible bed.
O dearest three,
I make a soft reply.
The witch comes on
and you paint her pink.
I come with kisses in my hood
and the sun, the smart one,
rolling in my arms.
So I say Live
and turn my shadow three times round
to feed our puppies as they come,
the eight Dalmatians we didn't drown,
despite the warnings: The abort! The destroy!
Despite the pails of water that waited,
to drown them, to pull them down like stones,
they came, each one headfirst, blowing bubbles the color of cataract-blue
and fumbling for the tiny tits.
Just last week, eight Dalmatians,
3/4 of a lb., lined up like cord wood
each
like a
birch tree.
I promise to love more if they come,
because in spite of cruelty
and the stuffed railroad cars for the ovens,
I am not what I expected. Not an Eichmann.
The poison just didn't take.
So I won't hang around in my hospital shift,
repeating The Black Mass and all of it.
I say Live, Live because of the sun,
the dream, the excitable gift.
"What Sexton suggested to Plath was the force of simple rhyme and simple rhythm, the magic of nursery rhyme darkened by time, of fairy tale where the happy ending somehow doesn't happen. Sexton showed Plath the way, and then Plath died first, stealing a march on her friend, which Sexton resented and envied. Four years Plath's senior, Anne Sexton survived her by twelve years, committing suicide in 1974. But Plath keeps hold of the laurels. There are wonderful things in the Complete Poems of Sexton, published in 1981, but many of them are things we associate, whatever their original source, with Plath, and Sexton's work seems but a footnote to hers." -_ Michael Schmidt, "Lives of the Poets"
"Have rejected the Electra poem from my book. Too forced and rhetorical. A leaf from Anne Sexton's book would do here. She has none of my clenches and an ease of phrase, and an honesty. I have my 40 unattackable poems." -- Sylvia Plath, journal, April 23, 1959
" I hold back nothing." -- Anne Sexton, 1969
"Once, when I wrote to her about my terror of publishing a second book of poems, she answered: 'Don't dwell on the book's reception. The point is to get on with it--you have a life's work ahead of you--no point in dallying around waiting for approval. We all want it, I know, but the point is to reach out honestly--that's the whole point. I keep feeling that there isn't one poem being written by any of us--or a book or anything like that. The whole life of us writers, the whole product I guess I mean, is the one long poem--a community effort if you will. It's all the same poem. It doesn't belong to any one writer--it's God's poem perhaps. Or God's people's poem. You have the gift-- and with it comes responsibility--you mustn't neglect or be mean to that gift--you must let it do its work. It has more rights than the ego that wants approval.'" -- Erica Jong
"My own struggle with Anne Sexton, for twenty years now, has not been about her subject matter (she is the one who taught me that you can write a poem about anything), but about the blatant deterioration of her talent. Sexton's Complete Poems appeared in 1981, edited by her daughter/literary executor Linda Gray Sexton. This volume includes the eight books Anne Sexton sent to press during her lifetime, as well as one hundred and thirty pages of posthumously published poems. Though fascinating as Sexton documents, the latter are shockingly sloppy and full of over-the-top, bad-trip imagery. This, coupled with the fact that the last three books she did publish (The Book of Folly, The Death Notebooks, and That Awful Rowing Toward God) saw an obvious decline in quality, has made it difficult to come to grips with her complete body of work. It also didn't help that, after her death, her former mentor Robert Lowell wrote that her writing had become "meager and exaggerated." I jokingly refer to Sexton's late period as "Bad Anne." How else to reconcile such slipshod lines as "I flee. I flee. / I block my ears and eat salami" with her amazing early metaphors ("leaves . . . born in their own green blood / like the hands of mermaids") and admissions ("Once I was beautiful. Now I am myself")? It's too painful to think of her simply as a brilliant poet who got bad. And too easy, somehow, to blame it on pills, alcohol, insanity, fame. Better, I recently decided, to think of her as a genius with demons, writing to beat the clock. " -- David Trinidad
"One feels tempted to drop [Sexton's poems] furtively in the nearest ashcan, rather than to be caught with them in the presence of so much naked suffering." -- James Dickey
Sylvia's Death - by Anne Sexton
for Sylvia Plath
O Sylvia, Sylvia,
with a dead box of stones and spoons,
with two children, two meteors
wandering loose in a tiny playroom,
with your mouth into the sheet,
into the roofbeam, into the dumb prayer,
(Sylvia, Sylvia
where did you go
after you wrote me
from Devonshire
about rasing potatoes
and keeping bees?)
what did you stand by,
just how did you lie down into?
Thief --
how did you crawl into,
crawl down alone
into the death I wanted so badly and for so long,
the death we said we both outgrew,
the one we wore on our skinny breasts,
the one we talked of so often each time
we downed three extra dry martinis in Boston,
the death that talked of analysts and cures,
the death that talked like brides with plots,
the death we drank to,
the motives and the quiet deed?
(In Boston
the dying
ride in cabs,
yes death again,
that ride home
with our boy.)
O Sylvia, I remember the sleepy drummer
who beat on our eyes with an old story,
how we wanted to let him come
like a sadist or a New York fairy
to do his job,
a necessity, a window in a wall or a crib,
and since that time he waited
under our heart, our cupboard,
and I see now that we store him up
year after year, old suicides
and I know at the news of your death
a terrible taste for it, like salt,
(And me,
me too.
And now, Sylvia,
you again
with death again,
that ride home
with our boy.)
And I say only
with my arms stretched out into that stone place,
what is your death
but an old belonging,
a mole that fell out
of one of your poems?
(O friend,
while the moon's bad,
and the king's gone,
and the queen's at her wit's end
the bar fly ought to sing!)
O tiny mother,
you too!
O funny duchess!
O blonde thing!
"I'm hunting for the truth. It might be a kind of poetic truth, and not just a factual one, because behind everything that happens to you, there is another truth, a secret life." -- Anne Sexton
More on Anne Sexton here
Other National Poetry month posts