Monday 22 June 1964
Celebrated Midsummer's Eve last night by listening to the Messiah and
browsing through my raggle-taggle poetry book which loses more pages all
the time, partly because pages are often torn out to take along somewhere.
You should have come along yesterday, sailing, on a gloriously sunny
day with a stiff sailing breeze and ruffled water. Mike called early in
the morning asking whether I thought this would be a good day for an excursion.
No question about that! So Mrs Lord benevolently let me pack a lunch in
her shiny kitchen (she is the cook) and we set out. The Enigma was partly
ready, but we had it put it into the water on an aluminum trolley that runs
on tracks into the harbour. Then we turn it into the wind, pull up the jib
sail, then hoist the main sail, attach the rudder, lower the 'board' (a
long board on the underside of the boat that acts as a stabilizer and prevents
the boat from drifting sideways), and slowly begin to move until we reach
the outside of the harbour, where the wind catches us and we are skimming
away. Not too many boats out yet, and no smelly outboards. We are going
to cross to Simcoe Island, about a mile and a half across the lake south
of the harbour. I get a lesson in telling yawls, ketches, schooners, dinghies,
sloops from each other. Our boat is a sloop because it has a large triangular
main and a smaller triangular jib, both on one mast. Four-sided sails are
gaffs and boats that have them are gaff-rigged.
We pass other islands. One of them has a tall-masted sailboat anchored
in a small bay. It looks like a scene from a pirate yarn. The breeze is
steady and we can sail without too much attention to the boat. When we were
out on Friday night it was different! There was a land breeze, strong and
gusty. When we went out one of Mike's misanthrope friends gave us five minutes
afloat until some gust capsized us. But Mike said "I'm a better sailor
than that" and we went out anyway. Fun! When the wind changes direction,
the sail veers sharply and if you don't duck the boom bashes in your head
as it swings over with the sail. When the wind is suddenly stronger its
force on the sail tilts the boat 'way over, and to right it we have to lean
over the side of the boat as a counterweight. But the wind soon died down
and we had time (this is Friday night) to enjoy the sunset on the water,
and the beautiful Kingston shoreline with its tall trees and cathedral spires,
and the masts at the Yacht Club.
Back to yesterday. When we reached Simcoe Island we found a flat-rock
beach and drew the boat up onto it while we picniced. It poised there like
a white shell with a very tall mast, a really beautiful thing. [sketch]
And coming home we were becalmed - crawled along at several feet per
minute, or just rocked on the swell - it makes one dro-o-owsy.
An instance of how a cloak is practical was Saturday afternoon. Tony
came barging up to the door to say "Your boyfriend is here." Huh?
It turned out to be Harsh, whom I've told you about, with two of his friends,
Ross (a rather pathetic boy who jokes constantly and badly, but is likeable
anyway) and Ad. Ad is 1) Indian as in from-India; 2) huge - about 6'5"
and 250 pounds; handsome with flashing black eyes and a black moustache
and very good features. And ultra-sophisticated and full of confidence and
charm. But anyway, not knowing who was downstairs and in an acute dilemma
because all my skirts, slacks etc were down in the laundry room, I just
put on my cloak and went down. There they were - and after touring Sunnyside
and fending off the kids they suggested a drive, and then pancakes at a
Dutch café. The first time I had pancakes mid-afternoon. And the
first time I've been out in panties.
Ended up going to a French-Canadian party with Ad that night. Hated it
and him by the time the evening was over because he was the most completely
ego centred person I've ever been out with, and all he could talk about
was the fraternity he belonged to at McGill. A great relief to be rid of
him finally.
June 27
[journal]
Sudden softnesses of myself today, during the warm afternoon, the child-full
morning, are fragments of last night's melting.
After babysitting until twelve fifteen last night, I flew to the International
House party on my bicycle, and the cape-streaming shadow was so ludicrously
Batman that I laughed aloud.
A few shapes still moving behind the curtains at the House, music and
light. Striding in (in a cape you can stride) to the doorway, pausing to
see Dennis' face alit in the chair below me, flourishing him the cape and
falling quickly into the pattern of his dancing. Light, precise, sway-right,
shift-sway left, step quickly step. Face and cheek. Peace, and an almost-oblivion
like a trance.
Then sitting in the chairs and talking to Dud while I could feel his
fingers on the back of my neck.
And by the door as he stopped to open it for me, his arms slowly drawing
me close to him; and his hard lean body nearby, cheekbone and shoulder,
arm and thigh. For myself, response to the mystery and the darkness in his
face, and to all that he is, unknown but believed in.
"Are you trembling?" "Perhaps. I don't know." "Are
you afraid of me?" "No." "You should be." "I
have a habit of being very trusting." "I don't like to tell you,
but you shouldn't." I remember Doug Odland long, long ago.
Walking home together, close, he wheeling my bicycle and holding my shoulders
with one arm. The shadow under the tree, beside the bicycle rack: close
and warm, his ears cold, the books clumsily between us, the soft curly hair
on his neck. His head once softly on my chest like a small boy's.
"Sweet little Ellie."
"If it wasn't for that," (oh, I thank you for this honesty!)
"you would be one of the most beautiful girls in Queen's." Dennis
you must know that I have a shepherd's face and that what I have of beauty
is only expression of my life.
But the mirror, two a.m., in my room smiles at the petunia in my hair,
smiles to remember his secret face and his gentle hands, at the hair tumbling
down. Says I am pretty. And so I smile to myself today in softness. I think
that perhaps he smiles as well.
[back to letters]
Saturday 27
Liebe Familie in DER Ferne: für die Bilder und den Brief, dank'schön
- I had never realized how dreadfully I spoke German until now, and how
painful it must have been to die Grosseltern.
I particularly like the photograph of the path in the snow leading out
through the corrall and down to the barn in the bush. I'm keeping the Rudy-and-Dirk
one because I have so few Rudy-pictures that look like Rudy. That one does.
(I remember taking the Dirk pictures one morning when we were all very gay,
Paul and Rudy and I and I think Judy, tumbling in the grass outside the
door on the hill-slope.)
Peter H is training both the little lab and the completely dear, shuffly,
ploppy little Saint Bernard. They are named Callas (after the opera singer
Peter has a crush on) and Augustine.
After babysitting went down to University Avenue and International House,
to check on the party that was supposed to be going on there. It was twelve
fifteen, only a few people left at the party, but Dennis Stamp and Dud were
there and we talked for a while. Dennis is rather a special person.
Tuesday 30
Saturday night Norm McLeod took me for a movie and was much better company.
The movie was about an army psychiatrist and his war-cases, was very sad
and very funny. We didn't talk about selling!
Yesterday morning when I was on duty, a visiting lady-psychologist and
I took Kevin, Bobbie and Tom on a hike. It was great fun because we took
the boys' route, not the conventional one: through a truck yard, down the
railroad track on the waterfront, over railroad cars, under a truck in a
garage that was getting a grease job, with a detour to sample the used oil
and talk to the garage man, over a fence, and pell-mell down to the bridge.
It is a favorite bridge of the boys because it is a lift-bridge and goes
up with much fascinating creaking and sighing whenever a boat wants to pass
under it. While we were there the many-sailed brigantine Saint Lawrence
II that I sent one of you a postcard picture of long ago passed under the
bridge and so we saw it creeping up and then down again. The workmen who
had been painting the bridge watched it with us. When I said to one of the
boys, "Why don't you wave at them?" a rumbly voice behind me said
"Why don't you? They are more likely to see you." I felt
complimented.
The lady psychologist was extremely game, and hopped through the debris
on the way to the bridge in her walking heeled shoes quite merrily. She
was Dutch and had been in Canada for only three years, but like all Dutch
educateds her English is smashing - she was good company too.
You have been asking about the radio announcing. On Sunday I had the
12-3 Classics by Request program. People can phone in and ask for their
favorite pieces, which we then look up in the files and play for them. My
operator, or the man handling the technical aspects of the broadcast, was
a rather tubby but very nice electrical chemistry professor (young and bachelor)
called Roger Granit. When we broadcast he sits in a horseshoe of technical
equipment and I sit in a small room facing his and separated from it by
a glass panel. My earphones are connected to his mike, and when he is nearly
ready to put me on he says "Stand by." Then, suddenly he points
a finger at me, I push a red button, a red light goes on, and I'm broadcasting.
When I'm finished I push an off button, and he begins the record on one
of his two turntables. Then into his mike he says, "Come on over, nothing
to do in there." So I go through two soundproof doors and we sit and
gab until the record is nearly over, when I run back and announce the next
one.
Announcing makes one very acutely aware of his enunciation and voice
and speed, and POISE. My first try had an appalling number of bloopers but
these will fall away with practice and composure. Last Sunday we played
an organ symphony, a choral-orchestral thing ("hairy" was Roger's
description) called Belshazzar's Feast, a Paganini concerto for violin,
Rachmaninoff's Concerto #2 which Judy would remember, and two Corelli concerti
grossi that the announcer begged for when there were no telephone requests.
I'm doing the show again next week. Listen to Radio Queen's, CFRC, 1490
AM and 91.9 FM.
A very nice surprise last week was a telephone call from Sexsmith's own
Linda Stojan, Chuck's little sister. She and her mother are visiting an
auntie here and she thought she would call up. So I invited her over and
she saw Sunnyside and we had a very good talk about Sexsmith. Seeing her
here was a shock because when you have two distinct worlds the intrusion
of one into the other is jarring.
Have I told you this? On Monday a week from yesterday I went to bed early
but was awakened at 1:30 a.m. by our night staff to find that I had a TELEPHONE
CALL. Stumbling downstairs, what and who should it be but Peter A. Dyck
calling from his hotel in Montreal. Not the least repentent about waking
me. Had been writing me a letter about impressions of Montreal and decided
what-the-heck he'd phone instead. After a great deal of the Dyckian-Eppian
nonsense that we call conversation he asked "Do you think this is ten
dollars worth yet?" and when I said "Hardly" he said "Well
in that case I won't hang up yet." His changed plans are to see Queen's
on the way back in August.
Enid Easterbrook had a garden party with iced coffee and strawberry shortcake
as a going-away celebration. She is off to camp now, but in October it is
Australia.
July 3, Friday
Summer vacation, and already the children have been behaving much better.
Summertime is the time we capitalize on for treatment because we can catch
our kids away from the stress of school and outside world. And what fun
for we child care workers whose working uniforms are bermuda shorts and
thongs and shirts drenched to the skin from hugging bathing-suited little
bodies. The girls are staging a ballet of their own. The boys fish and sail
boats on our back yard plastic pools (quite large and quite deep). We eat
outside often, lots of pink lemonade and iced tea and watermelon. Even now,
from the back yard, I can hear shrieks of "Treat time! Ice cream!"
Socially? Went to Amil's bachelor apartment last night to listen to Pakistani
music. He is a most peculiar person - we don't really speak the same language,
but he is rather sweet, and being a puzzle is an asset to any personality.
Attractive, with very large, eleven-year-old impish dark eyes and hair that
falls over his forehead, a semi-gaiety that is disconcerting because you
are never sure whether he is covering something or whether he is really
superficial. I think he is faking - but anyway, the most usual comment about
Amil is that he is a 'mover.' This means, mostly, that since coming here
six months ago in January, he has met more people and gone to more events
and made more friends than most overseas students and Canadians do in several
years. And he has a quality that seems almost innocence - he is intelligent,
certainly experienced, yet after a while gives the impression of naivete
- perhaps because he seems so completely without malice, perhaps because
he is so child-likely concerned about himself and so unaware of his faux
pas, and perhaps because he is so uncynically romantic. He says that the
girl he marries will be somebody he can worship - he wants her to
be superior to him, imagine that in any man! And his favorite poets are
Shelley and Keats and the rest of the Droolers (you see that I'm not terribly
fond of them). I seem to be thinking aloud.
Norm M is based in Kingston and selling in the area, so that we do things
like reading poetry and washing his clothes in our automatic (comment: "You're
the first girl I've ever gone out with who washed my clothes for me"),
and going to Prokops for a Vienese Chicken Breast with mushrooms dinner
the evening after the day when he sold $500 worth of stuff for a whopping
commission!
Saturday July 4
Well, Mother, I just shot my first game of pool. Mr Styles and Brian
took me along when they went to play, and they needn't have feared being
embarrassed by being beaten by a girl, because my first pool score was about
as bad as my first bowling score. The pool room was on the second, suspended
floor of a bowling alley, very new and shiny and clean. I was the only girl
there, and the man at the desk winked and said "Be sure you beat them
now." I like the game very much - it reminds me of croquinot but it
is more complicated - for instance I came out with minus scores! Red balls
like apples, one black one, one pink, green, blue, and the white cue ball
for hitting the others with.
Ich habe euren Brief heute erhalten, wahrend de - oops, I'm stuck for
the article - Deutch Studieren.
Peculiarly, last night after a study stint at the library, I went down
to the lakeshore (flying downhill on Beowolf) and lay flat under my favorite
big cottonwood tree looking at the vast high branches and the flakes of
sky between them. I was terrified for a minute when a man walked up, but
lo! it was Norman and he had used deductive reasoning method to find me
when I wasn't home at Sunnyside. So we had a good long talk comfortably
on the grass until midnight cold was too much. Norm is becoming an extremely
good friend and will probably be a buddy all through the rest of university.
Such good and intelligent and aware company. Not a ghost of romanticism
in the friendship tho', at least on my part. And he does have a Toronto
girlfriend who may keep his interests from straying seriously. We're going
to church tomorrow.
Our newest summer staff is an American named Betsy King. Our opinion,
Vicky's and mine, after her first day, was that she was quiet, plain, and
uninteresting. But our Betsy turned out to be a Dark Horse. Number 1 she
is here because her boyfriend is going to Queen's for the summer, and John
Ibsbister happens to be THE Queen's intellectual. Number 2 she met John
on a Crossroads Africa summer, when she and he were helping to erect a school
in I think Ghana as volunteers. She is from Connecticut, went to university
in Barnard and has worked for the past year in a children's centre like
Sunnyside in Pasadena California. What's more she has sparking black eyes,
a zesty sense of fun, and a look of potential mischief. I like her thoroughly.
And besides all this, she is an enthusiastic and excellent photographer.
Sunday July 5
Today is everything Sundays are supposed to be: gloriously sunny and
Sunday-feeling. Church was in a beautiful and imaginative United Church
with a mosaic of brickwork, slits of light in the ceiling, many polished
wooden beams, and a soft orange carpet. I enjoyed church very much and must
have missed it more than I knew. The special touch to the morning was when
the minister read First Corinthians Thirteen.
After church and coffee Norm took me straight to the radio station. Radio
Queen's is housed in the basement of Carruthers Hall, in a new and tidy
complex of record library shelves, two studios, the operations room, and
some listening areas. My Studio B is tiny with just room enough for the
desk and a wastebasket. The desk is equipped with the microphone, a set
of switches for on and off the air, and earphones for listening to my operator.
I have to announce selections, make station-breaks, give time-checks, make
a record in duplicate of the records we play for the files and run around
checking pronunciations on people like Moussorgsky. I started today's Classics
by Request program with the Schumann Piano Concerto in A Minor that is so
familiar to you, then went on to an organ symphony, Beethoven's 7th, a Brahms
violin concerto, Vivaldi's The Seasons, a Liszt and a Borodin. The
program ends this way: "For the past three hours on Classics by Request
your announcer has been Ellie Epp, and your operation, Roger Granit. You
are listening to CFRC, Radio Queens, broadcasting from Kingston at 1490
AM and 91.9 FM. It is three o'clock."
Two books I am ingesting are Handbook of Broadcasting and How
to Talk Well. Also Dostoevsky's enormous The Brothers Karamazov,
in the innocent style of that literary period in Russia; and Babbitt,
an American classic portrait of the smalltown bourgeois businessman; and
best of all, Margaret Bourke-White's autobiography Portrait of Myself.
The last is so exciting and stimulating an introduction to so vital a person
(you've heard of her wartime and industrial photography and her bout with
Parkinson's disease) that, much like A Peculiar Treasure, it makes
one hope desperately that the world will hold together and give us time
to see what we can do in this wonderful-paradoxical world ourselves.
[typed manifesto]
July 6, 1964
I, nineteen and eager, and hopeful of what I shall become; on this bright
day of a glowing year: do resolve that my obsessive eating has come to an
end. I will bury it this morning in the back garden of Sunnyside.
- Until I weigh 110 pounds, there will be
- no snacks between meals
- no deviation from diet taboos
- no second helpings or desserts of any kind
-
- Until I weigh 120 pounds, there will be
- no exceptions for special occasions
If at any time I regain weight past 110 pounds (if this is a practicable
figure) the regulations are again in effect.
Under the category of obsessive eating are snacks of more than one item
during an evening, afternoon, or morning; second helpings of anything, and
over-size first helpings.
I want to win this struggle very badly, both for the sake of my physical
self-concept and my psychological self-concept. I will not be a slave to
a slopping habit.
Any écart must be severely disciplined.
This I promise on my hopes for what I can and shall become, a strong
and vital person.
Elfreda Konrad Epp
- TABOO AND VERBOTEN
- candy, nuts, codiments, chocolate
- salad dressing, cheese
- spagheti, macaroni, potatoes, rice
- fat meats
- ice cream, cream, whole milk
- bread, cake, cookies, pastery of any kind
- no desserts
- July 6 - 140 pounds
- July 10 134 pounds
Tuesday July 7
Lake Ontario is warm this afternoon and was perfect for swimming.
Yesterday night Peter went out to the Old House and asked if I'd like
to go along, so you shall hear about the Old House too. It is a large two-winged
stone building erected somewhere about 1882 as a farmhouse for a man who
came from Bristol as a pioneer after dodging a debtor's jail sentence. Miss
Detweiler and Miss Allen own it now, and are renovating it slowly and beautifully.
They also have a large barn and 22 acres that a farmer cultivates for them.
It has a long rutted drive with trees on either side, and rabbit thickets.
The back verandah is covered with grape vines, and the back door opens directly
into their favorite room. The dining-living-kitchen has a huge stone fireplace
built into one end, with an array of brass and iron cooking pots and pans
on the hearth. They use it often. Other furniture in the room is sand-colored,
simply-built pioneer-style; the windows have rush curtains in red and gold;
there are candles everywhere, and two beeswax tapers frame Miss Detweiler's
big iron goddess sculpture in one deeply recessed window. There are large
books with wonderful pictures strewn everywhere, and many paintings (a number
of them by Peter) on the walls. Fruit, sea shells, bottles, curios, rugs,
books, everywhere. The house is very lived in. Next to the fireplace, built
into the wall, is a little black cast-iron door the bread oven. Baskets
hold firewood. There are three puppies leaping from person to person
Miss Detweiler is sitting in a big chair in her pedal pushers and an old
college sweater with paint on it, reading a book on early Canadian history,
chuckling often and reading us bits. The rest of us pick up books of our
own or cuddle the dogs - delightful place to visit. You know how often you've
been embarrassed, Mother, when your children are visitors and they straightaway
pick up a book and ignore everyone here it is natural and the hosts
do it too!
Upstairs are guest rooms with four-poster beds and deep windows, bright
rag-rug carpets, little wooden chests. Being a career spinster is very attractive
à la Detweiler and Allen.
The kids all have bicycles now - scrapes and bruises to patch up all
day, especially little Helen who has seven assorted band-aids as proud possessions.
Got a French letter from Pierre today, a phonecall from Olivia tonight to
say she is coming for the weekend on Friday (I'm glad, we'll have lots to
talk about, and we'll have to go house-hunting) and the nicest letter from
Grandma K who says "Grandpa und ich schliefen in eurem Mädchenzimmer.
Habe mir oft den Halbmond mit den Sternen angeschaut und gedacht was wohl
die Mädels fur Luftschlosser bauten, die möglich bis an den Sternen
und bis zum Mond reichten? Ja, o wie schön ist die Jugendzeit mit all
seinen Träumen und Wünschen!"
9 Thursday
I spoke too soon about Norm - it seems the Toronto girlfriend is not
keeping his interests from straying any too efficiently. On Sunday he wrote
a letter which suggested they officially break up - to which she replied
on Tuesday night by a slightly hysterical phonecall - to which he responded
by promising to take the weekend off to see her and talk things out, and
then by dashing over at eleven p.m. to tell me about it and talk out his
confusion for several hours. I ended up conning him into a better mood by
feeding him Sunnyside leftovers. Fortunately his breakup with Anne is not
directly because of me because he knows that I am and will remain romantically
uninvolved - the decision now is whether to leave a relationship which isn't
everything he wants in order to prove his strength and independence - ie
to give up something for nothing tangible - or to keep what he has and try
to be satisfied with it. This latter seems the weak way out, and he is afraid
that he'll take it and despise himself afterwards. Such a complex lot of
pros and cons make the whole mess frustrating from every angle, and I couldn't
help by giving any suggestions, only by providing a REFLECTING ear for his
outloud-thinking. (A reflecting ear is somebody, I suppose, who reflects
back what you've said to them in a - hopefully - clarified way.) OO, but
it is bothersome and maddening (tho there is an element of gratification
in it too) to have my good friendships mucked up this way. I seem to have
lost Mike for the same reason and I miss him too.
What do you make of that long and tangled and rather angry paragraph,
Mother?
Are Rudy and Paul at camp? Good ol' days, rain, flirting with the little
boys, films about enchanted places, loud good singing, afternoons of staring
at the sun on the water, sometimes an unbelonging feeling that seems to
bless and curse we Epps, and perhaps Mother as well, meals in the sawdusty
dim dining hall, whisperings with a new cabinmate girlfriend, crushes on
the cabin leader, the trip home on a pile of dirty bedding and towels. Stinging
nettles all around the privy. Narrow dirt paths from-cabin-uphill-downhill-to-cabin,
revival meeting guilts and hysterias and sometimes gladnesses.
10 July Friday
Olivia arrives tonight, so that the next letter will tell about that.
July 15
[journal]
Canoeing with Mike to Cedar Island - the exaltation of sitting at the
canoe prow slanting across waves with the free lift-fall of the water -
a feeling of being completely in the water and feeling the fluidity of it
in reality. Pulling up on a flat rock, climbing while Mike swam (long thin
body thrashing quickly in and out again). Running over the island exploring,
like a child, but thinking, as I picked berries, "gathering berries
for your supper, Mike" - undertone of cave woman and sexuality in that!
The small fire under a wall of rock, built on a ledge among cinders.
Twisted elm tree nearby. The lake lapping near us in a finger-lagoon below.
The silhoettes, lights on the water. Smell of smoke, rustling of trees,
large grinding of water. We had bacon-steak-tomato shish-kebab on green
sticks turned over the fire. Apple pie squashed flat together, two pieces
pried apart on the wax paper. ("Here is the piece de résistance.")
Then dark and the comfort of lying on your stomach with face in the firelight,
talking - about all the people in Hemingway that we remember, about progress
and science and ourselves in this. Later, about love. "It's something
in yourself. It has nothing to do with the other person besides being a
catalyst."
"You are very pretty in the half-light. How old are you?" "Nineteen."
"Did you ever make love?" "No, I guess not." "I
wish you liked to make love. It's such fun!"
Later, leaning against the rock with his arm about me and his fingers
moving, I saw a girl's face in the embers, very alive and young. "I
wish you could have something more than bricks in your arms, but -."
[back to letters]
Montreal July 17-20
"Qui pense Pepsi, pense jeune" - this is obviously the outskirts
of Montreal, because the billboards along the highway are in French. The
six-lane Highway 104 [ie 401] between Toronto and Montreal becomes very
new and smooth here, with overpass bridges curving over it and the aluminum
lamp posts bending in clumps like tall metallic grass. Four hours ago Peter
Hagedorn, his brother Henry, and I left Kingston. And here I am nearly in
the city of Mount Royal.
On a smoky little train riding underground through 'la montagne' to downtown
Montreal from the suburb apartments where Peter's sister lives. Half of
the advertising signs along the luggage racks are in French. The conductor
has a French-Canadian accent.
Gare Centrale - Central Station - under the Queen Elizabeth Hotel. Instructions
were to turn left on the street, four blocks down to the YWCA. Confused
impressions of skyscraper lights, a park full of staring old men, very lovely
girls who look French, small basement bars, old apartment houses, and mad
traffic.
It is only nine o'clock, time for some adventuring, leave my 633 key
at the desk, out onto the street. Wander back past the bistros and the apartment
steps where people sit outside trying to escape from the sticky heat, past
the staring park-sitters, and there is music coming from a wide square further
on. Crowds of people are gathered around a space where music swirls from
a loudspeaker truck and people are dancing madly. The square is very wide,
sunken a little, under the shadow of a huge four-winged commercial skyscraper
called Ville-Marie. The square is Place Ville-Marie (plahs veeh-mahree),
and is paved in white concrete with many steps to sit on and many flowerbeds.
The music is fast and European. The dancers are young, perhaps sixteen
and seventeen. The loudspeaker said something about a Czecoslovak folkdance,
in French. The dancers are very smooth and very quick, and all of them (about
a hundred) know the steps perfectly, although they are obviously not a professional
troup - some are always joining in and dropping out, and choosing partners
from the people watching on the steps around the square. There is a tall
slim girl in high red boots and a peasant skirt who dances with her head
thrown back, and with an incredibly sure gracefullness through all the intricate
skips, turns, leaps, and pauses. Her partner is tall too, and both are about
seventeen. They make me feel old! And there is a slim girl in a blue dress
and red shoes dancing with her long blond hair tied back with a ribbon but
blowing over her face when she whirls around. They are dancing in a wide
circle now, around the square. Now they've broken into couples. Leap, leap,
turn, hair flying, leap, turn. A tall man, thin, with a beard, standing
and watching. A girl with long hair and restless eyes watching with him
and leaning against his chest. Another dance, snaky lines of boys and others
of girls, doing a slow and intricate step in what seemed the after-beat
rhythm of the music.
And finally at eleven, the dancing ended and the walk back to the hotel.
An exhibition of painting and prints in the park. Something of dark colored
glowing forms and masses called "Cité" it seemed
to be Montreal, dark skyline and massed shapes of buildings. From the top
of the Ville-Marie, the four beamed searchlight swings wide like the wings
of a windmill.
Wide empty hotel corridors, sticky small rooms with smooth new featureless
furniture.
Morning, haze over the city. A tour bus, the Promenade. La Cathédrale
Notre Dame: high vaulted ceiling in robin-egg blue, red and gold Baroque
balconies, the curving wood-carved stairs to the pulpit. Candles flickering
in the half-dark. Woodcarved statues of Madeleine Bourgeoy (young girl with
eyes lowered) in two identical niches. Kneeling for a moment to see how
it felt.
Glimpses of blue-uniformed, white-wigged soldiers drilling in the court
of the museum-fort. The last puff of smoke of their long rifles. The magic
two-mile bridge of -----, then the stretches of park on an island (Paris
has the Bois, Montreal her Ile de Ste. Hélène), the sand-shoals
of the St Lawrence, the site of the '67 Fair, the driver-guide droning in
French, then English, with his French often easier to understand.
A winding road to the top of the Mountain - in reality, three mountains,
the famous Mont Royal from which Montreal was named. A long view of the
famous Saint Joseph's Oratoire (Uncle Bill curses it sometimes) with its
many steps for pilgrims to climb on their knees and its walls full of crutches.
The Westmount residential area with its rows of Scottish manor houses, elegant
and fashionably old. Talking to an Indian family on the tour, from Delhi
I think, but living in Hamilton now.
Fruit bought from a wee basement grocery where a fat blond customer spoke
to me in bad French to exclaim "Le petit chat! Très cute."
I felt very flattered to be spoken to in French by an English person. To
feel more French, look more French, I jaywalked merrily all day and wore
pounds of eyeliner.
A long walk in the evening, along the main shopping street, Sainte Catherine's,
to see a movie. A stop in a bookshop to get three souvenir French paperbacks
by my favorite French authors (Vol de Nuit and Terre des Hommes
by Saint-Exupéry and L'Etranger by Camus).
The movie, Beckett. An excellent movie about King Henry II, descended
from the Norman conquerors of Britain, and his best friend and archbishop,
the Saxon Beckett. When Beckett became leader of the Church of England,
his first loyalty as he saw it was no longer to his king but to God and
the church. Henry II could never forgive his friend for preferring God to
him, and in spite of the intensity with which he loved his friend, he hated
him equally and eventually had him killed. The war of emotions and the wonderfully
photographed changes in the faces of the two men (played by Peter O'Toole
and Richard Burton) were so wonderful and frightening that I cried at the
end. And I never cry in movies.
Back to my hotel room. Hot. Go for a walk. Hand my key to the kindly
man at the desk - "Didn't you get your phone call? The gentleman just
called. You must have been out for a minute." Scramble to the elevator
and back up to 633 just in time to hear the telephone buzzing again. I knew
who this would be because I had left a message in Douglas Hall at McGill
just before going to Beckett - "E.Epp (Hedgehog) is at the YWCA,
extension 633."
"Hello Peter - comment ça va?" And since it was only
midnight, it couldn't be too late to see a little bit of town together.
Exciting to see him again. He is still very lean and he looks older, but
all the essential Peter is there, intensified this time because this is
the first time we've seen each other without the tacitly understood, even
if unorthodox, teacher-student status. He's very real. [Peter Dyck, my grade
nine teacher, was in Montreal for a summer course.]
We walked downtown. The Quebec Hydro Building, a skyscraper, was lit
all night, every light in every room, as a sort of advertisement I suppose.
Across the street in an old house, a shabby old man in his underwear was
leaning out of his window looking at it. The light in the room behind him
was very dim.
Then up the steep hill to the McGill campus. A strange theology building
that looks like a Spanish mission, with its own small inner garden. We stole
a flower from it. Converted mansions with student apartments still bright
and jazz-noisy, parties. The long uphill street (everywhere in Montreal
seems either up or down hill - if you ask directions, they tell you, "Well
it's ten blocks, but it is down hill so you can walk it," or "Four
blocks, but up hill, so you can take the bus from the next corner").
Some sitting on a flight of long wooden stairs and talking. Much wandering.
Then, about four thirty, the walk downhill to downtown (well named!), and
coffee in the famous Ben's: a grubby and huge restaurant whose walls and
windows are covered with the pictures and signatures of thousands of minor
entertainment stars. The waiters are all burly and gangster-looking with
several days' beards. Other customers - and at four thirty the restaurant
was full - were mostly finky-looking people, long haired men and floozy
looking broads in tight black dresses. We had a French potato pancake called
crêpes with blueberries and whipped cream, and seconds of coffee.
Got back to the YWCA and rang the doorbell for the disgruntled deskman to
let me in at about five thirty. Ten minutes later it was nearly daylight.
Sun in the morning, heat again. Lunch with Peter and in the middle of
a steak, discovering that I had only fifteen minutes to get back to Peter
Hagedorn's place to go home with him. "Can't you stay and take the
night train home so we can finish the steak?" said Peter. So I made
arrangements and stayed.
Afternoon of lounging in a park watching the antics of uninhibited French
families and French lovers, and talking.
Dinner in the terrasse de café, the sidewalk café with
checked tablecloths and baskets of peonies, called the Coq du Vin. As entrée,
shrimp in cheese sauce. Then soup made of wine, beef bouillion, and exquisite
little chunks of green tomato. Then melting veal in a crusty cheesy sauce
that I can't possibly identify. With a red burgundy wine in tiny glasses,
poured with tenderness and respect by the waitress, who hovered beautifully
and filled our glasses the minute they were empty. Mint parfait. The most
delicious coffee I have ever tasted. Three hours nearly for the meal. Two
forks, two knives, three spoons. Eight dollars.
The walk back to the Gare Centrale. A stop at the downtown centre to
sit for a moment on the floodlit steps of a church and stare. The floodlit
dark, an old skyscraper with pillers and ornamentation, directly across.
On either side of it, the glorious sleekness of aluminum and glass - Place
Ville-Marie and the new bank building - stretching above the rest of the
skyline with clean black space all around them. Lights. Cars howling three-abreast
on the street below, the empty quiet of the skyscraper tops. Contrast and
gleam, energy. The four searchlights of Place Ville-Marie swinging. One
picture that seemed the soul and spirit of Montreal.
Lumped in a limp heap on a plush waiting room sofa waiting for the train
at twelve fifteen. The train and four hours later the taxi and then bed.
July 23, Thursday
You are a good reflecting ear Maman, because a reflecting ear does just
what you did: tell something I know, but restated so that it has more potency
coming from an external source. Exactly. I don't think the danger is exactly
in feeling gratification - I think it is in needing the gratification so
that you will deliberately work to get it regardless of hurting someone
else. Feeling it is hardly avoidable, and I think it could be an even good
contribution to personality self-concept - but encouraging circumstances
to provide instances of it is avoidable and criminal. I am partially guilty,
to the extent of doing my best to be attractive! But Norm has always known
that he can't in any way own me and he's not been allowed any touching (not
so much because I'm virtuous as because I'm disinclined), and a fellow who'll
fall even a little in this sort of circumstance cannot really say he has
been vampired into it by les arts de femme (doubtful French but you'll understand
it). Now I'm being defensive for the sake of self-reassurance and you stated
it well Mother. The Norman situation has eased off by itself - Norm has
been transferred to Ottawa and perhaps I'm not as 'charming' by letter as
by real. And anyway, Anne handled the weekend well indeed so that he didn't
commit himself either way to freedom or relationship-continuation. And she
is coming to Queen's next year, so that he'll be able to sort himself out
in her presence rather than absense; may be much saner. And I won't lose
a friend that way so I hope she continues to manage well. The thing about
this tho is that the decision was not only Anne and not-Anne, but ever so
many more complex things as well.
As for Mike, the situation is a question mark. I thought for a while
that because of a certain incident and generally because he would become
discouraged with such a hands-off sailing-buddy-type girl who refused to
be ready for a starboard tack into the romantic when he was - he would give
up. But it seems we're better friends than I knew and he isn't giving up
at all, and we still go sailing and canoeing and talk both excitedly and
comfortably - but I have to keep up defenses now, and it isn't quite so
easy-going as it was. Tension at not being quite what he needs. But the
hands-off policy is essential because it seems that involvement and physical
closeness are dear buddies too - tagalongs!
And now Dennis Stamp - something that could flare up (he's much like
Frank) but mustn't. Won't.
Peter Hagedorn teases me no end about all my 'lovers'. And he choked
with glee last night when I was making a snack in the kitchen, wrapped in
pyjamas and my bedspread, with all my clothes in the washer, and suddenly
I had an unexpected gentleman caller, but ha for Peter, the visitor was
Harsh Bhargava from India, who thought my turquoise chenille bedspread a
perfectly respectable sari! Harsh has just finished his MA English thesis
and wanted to talk about it.
Did I tell you Mom - I remember being very moved by Exodus as
well. Your love for historical and biographical novels shows a concern for
reality perhaps - is there more meaningfulness to the present in what was
real in the past? I'm not sure - I think that a perceptive novel even if
fictional entirely can say as much with as much reality as a "so Geschicht."
But I've given up altogether reading best sellers, and am sticking to the
books that are almost classics to the New Generation - books whose ideas
partly set the pace for our generation. I find I can't finish most other
books, even the most exciting or the sensationalist adventures, unless I've
been fiction starved for a month or several.
The clippings of the Frank J Doerksen silver wedding were interesting,
thank you for sending them. They made me sick. Platitudes and saliva. I
think the Frank I know hated it. It would make me sicker if I didn't think
he hated it. I hate to think of him existing in that East Aldergrove MB
muck, and trying so hard to reconcile himself to it. That is the worst.
If he ever stops fighting it the Frank I care(d) about will be lost.
The letter you readdressed to Kingston, from Brooklyn, was from Ed Wiebe;
I may have mentioned him. He is a Saskatchewan MB whom I met last winter
in the CUCND seminar, between twenty five and thirty probably - you know,
the other Mennonite at Queens besides Jerry Dirks. The letter was a complete
surprise - he seems to be doing summer internship work in Brooklyn Hospital
while he works on his MD - and I haven't a clue why he wrote - briefly and
casually. Flattering and puzzling.
26 Sunday
Do you know about our new little boy, Simon? He is three and a half,
and tiny, with huge blue eyes and almost white hair. His legs are still
a little curved, from rickets, but he runs, walks, jumps, and takes his
tumbles without a wimper. His mother, who finally married her stepfather
after an incestuous relationship, had twelve other children, one nearly
every year. She had the first when she was thirteen. And so Simon hasn't
had much of a life! But since he came to Sunnyside he has begun to radiate
happiness - at first he trusted no one but Peter Hagedorn because the only
decent relationship he had before was with his male case worker. Now he
likes most of the women here, and is beginning to trust them. At first he
would allow no one to help him with anything - he dressed, fed, toileted,
himself by himself with a fierce and desperate independence. Now he has
begun to let us help him, and this is wonderful. Simon has of course become
the Sunnyside pet: all the children dote on him because he is so small,
so sunny, and so game: and the staff quite naturally make utter fools of
themselves over him. But this little boy won't get spoiled. Even the kitchen
staff are always hugging him and sneaking him cookies! Frankie, who is our
temporary cook, stood in the kitchen and cried her eyes out when he came
because he was so tiny and bow-legged and tough -
I want to tell you about Frankie: she is about your age, I think, Mother. Very
attractive, slim, dark-complexioned with dark hair, tall. But sad looking.
We have become very good friends, sometimes sneaking time over midmorning
coffee to talk. She is always teasing me about being on a diet by waggling
her gorgeous strawberry shortcake in front of my nose. As a cook, she is
much more imaginative than Mrs Lord was, and she is much more interested
and involved with the kids. I wish she could stay, and she does too, very
much. She was the only child in an across-the-tracks family in Saskatoon,
and she knows all about the difficulty in getting to school in winter when
there weren't enough warm clothes. Her family broke up when she was nine,
and from that time her mother had no use for her because she was too much
like her father. Her mother's Seventh Day Adventist strictnesses soured
her on both religion and her mother, so that emotionally she is not all
that secure. But her heart is marshmallow-soft - "I'd give you the
shirt off my back and everybody else's too, if you needed it."
You asked whether the children keep contact with their parents or what
happens to them. In most cases, the child has become a legal ward of the
province through Children's Aid Societies, and so legally the parents have
no right to them at all. For the sake of their adjustment, Sunnyside usually
doesn't allow any more contact with the parents, who usually have no particular
feeling for the child anyway. Often however, the child gets a goodbye visit
in which both child and parent realize that this is officially breaking
the tie. If the child is confused about still belonging to his other parents,
he cannot begin to look forward to an adoptive home or to adjust to it when
he is there. There is no secrecy about the first parents, and questions
are encouraged and answered in detail, but dangling ends are very damaging
to the child.
Carol and I have a 'thing' - in Sunnyside jargon, that means that we
seem to have developed a special relationship that is just a bit more than
the child's relationships with other staff. These special 'things' are very
good they show that the child has progressed to the point of being
able to handle a more personal and intense relationship trustfully, and
when he is able to do this, he is nearly ready to move into a home, and
the kind of special relationship that will hopefully develop with the parents.
The symptoms of a 'thing' are mainly preference for that person, confiding
of troubles, telling of good news. And Carol sneaks into my room sometimes
at night to sleep with me for a while. And I'm delighted that Carol has
a 'thing' on me because I'm very fond of her she is such a quicksilver
child, moods, humour, depression and delight. And she is a beautiful child
as well, more from expression and movement than from actual features because
she has a thin body full of angles, freckles, a defiant chin. But elfin
eyes! And naughty. I chortled to myself yesterday morning when I heard Thompsie
chiding her for singing in bed. Thompsie said "That is very impolite.
Don't you know that little girls should be refined and cultured and QUIET."
Carol, with her tomboy ways and her raucous voice, cultured and refined!
Wednesday July 29
I'm enclosing a novelette by Saroyan, one of my favorite authors, that
I found in an old magazine and liked very much.
I am in my room, listening to Les Préludes by Liszt, I
think: slow exquisite music. And I'm rejoicing in my new clothes - a pair
of cut-off blue jeans like the ones that were Ban Righ III uniform, a beautifully
tailored blue shirt, sneakers. Now that summer-end sales are beginning,
it seems a good idea to buy a few things for my non-existant summer wardrobe.
And buying clothes is such fun - it is very materialistic to love clothes
isn't it? Bother. I go along merrily assuming that I'm quite content with
the 'finer things,' intangibles, and then remember how dearly I love things
- not necessities, I can do without them, but luxuries. There is so much
'rejoicing' in luxuries like flowers and books and Danish pottery! And blue
raincapes instead of a summer coat.
It rained one afternoon about two weeks ago, and rain is my undoing -
I got onto my bicycle and peddled madly, waving at people and grinning insanely
all the way. And I took all my money, eight dollars and seventy-six cents,
in a plastic bag, most of it jingling change. The record shop: a sale, twenty
percent off everything. !!!!
Schumann's Kinderscenen, scenes from childhood, solo piano, played
by Horowitz. The thirteen brief picture-songs were written for his wife
Clara, and they are childlike, peaceful. The beginning is From Foreign
Lands and Peoples, something with a bittersweet gypsy flavour. Then
the vigorous A Curious Story and further on, Traumerie. It
is very familiar, perhaps Judy has already learned to play it. The other
side of the record was an impromptu by Schubert, three sonatas by Scarlatti,
and two etudes by a modern Russian called Scriabin.
And an album of four concerti by Corelli, the Concerti one to four. His
music is very Baroque, like Vivaldi, very innocent and fragile. With good
reason, I suppose, because in the 1600's when he was writing music was beginning
its modern form, it must have been naïve and ingenue, and as charming
as sixteen. Or nineteen.
Do you know, there is a different sort of magic about nineteen. It is
still ingenue and girlish, but it has a suggestion of worldliness and wisdom
that sixteen suspects nothing of. It seems to be an age that appeals to
men very much. Twenty is such a placid-sounding age, and twenty-one has
a smug I've-arrived quality. But nineteen still has a questioning many-possibilities
piquancy that I'm very much enjoying!
I'm going to a Queen's summer stock play with Mike tomorrow, and Norm
is dropping in for the weekend. Peter Dyck is coming to see Kingston on
the seventh, when his summer school ends. We'll do some bicycle touring.
Radio on Sunday.
My holidays, for coming to see you, are from September 1 to 13. I'll
send you time details later, when I buy my ticket.
Kingston is very hot and very lovely now, with an intensity of color,
scent, contrast. I like to swim at night, where it is shallow and warm in
my favorite spot. Especially when there are small waves, it is very peaceful
to float on your back and look at the stars, the lights on the water. There
is a large stone house jutting into the water, lit at night with orangey
lights that look like candlelight. It is framed by large dark masses of
trees, and the whole is very romantic.
I met a man swimming last night who has been here from France about four
months - he is a swimming instructor with a beautiful body and a very strong
face that seems to flicker with light and intelligence. His name is Michael.
We had a long talk after we came from the water, and it was one of the ships-by-night
meetings that make me realize as I so seldom do, as anyone so seldom does,
that another person exists in the same very real, urgent, and CONSCIOUS
way that I do myself. Do you remember the other Michael that I told you
about last September, Mother, the one I met on the bus coming from BC? It
was a bit like that.
I have been dreaming over cameras, poring over photo magazines and hanging
about photo shops the camera I want is a Leica of course, for about
$432 with case. But I'd settle for a Super Contaflex B, about two hundred
dollars less. Dreams! And Europe too. But that isn't a dream, it is a reality
unless the world falls apart. I've told too many people that I'm going not
to actually go. So off it is. Perhaps Olivia will decide to stay for the
rest of the year as well. It will depend on money. Perhaps her family will
finance her. But that is hardly fun and she is growing up to the point where
she resents accepting money from her parents because it means she has to
accept their decisions as well. I admire the way she is sticking out her
perfectly miserable factory job and even enjoying it a little, for the independence
it is giving her. Her father is always criticizing it too, because he resents
his loss of authority and evidently authority is very important to his ego.
No wonder my friend Oliver is a bit confused at times.
part 4
- raw forming volume 2: september 1963 - april 1964
- work & days: a lifetime journal project
-
|