[letters to Greg from La Glace, June-July 1967]
Saturday
Father looks like a tough movie Mexican, burned copper-leather from wind
and sun, grizzled, white hair among his whiskers, haggard after a month's
spring work. He's already fond of Maria but stares at me strangely. Mother
and he were at Dan's Lunch in Hythe at 4:45 this morning to get us from
the bus. A grey dawn with black clouds like mountains in the north. I'd
forgotten how far you can see here, in spite of the hills and the trees.
(But the towns are so ugly, so muddy, so mean!)
There's a feeling about arriving in a small town early in the morning
- tension in the pit of the stomach, the bus dark and other passengers asleep.
There's the pickup parked beside the Chinaman's café. Mother looking
excited and embarrassed, Father looking embarrassed and neither excited
or happy. The ride home always the same: Mother furtively hugs me from the
side, makes conversation; Father answers questions but says little, looks
grim.
When we got home, I put Maria to bed and went to talk to Paul for a while.
I heard a small stifled sob and found Maria in a bundle under the covers
saying "I've made up my mind, I won't stay for a month, I'll only stay
for two weeks." I knew how she felt. My courage is low today. I feel
lost among these people.
When she came to meet the bus Mother looked worn out and older, I thought
she'd been crying. Paul says something happened last night before I telephoned
to ask them to get me. "Father was sleeping in the living room looking
righteous, and Mother was looking as though she'd been punched in the back
of the head."
There's no gaiety in this family. And no confidence - your family is
hardly gay but it is confident enough.
Cloud formations are different here. Today there are piles of cumulus
so still they seem not to be moving, much like a cliff face partially worn
but still massive.
Paul is something else - thinner, sardonic, pronouncing (in a new, slow,
deep voice) his carefully chosen mots justes with slight amusement
at himself. I like him. He wants to work in the East and I'd like to help
him get away.
I wish I could inject a little euphoria into all of this family - Rasheed
infected them a bit with his own style of euphoric madness, but I go flat.
Maria is doing a little with her enthusiasms for calves, barns, milk cows,
stinkweed flowers, freedom and Mother's buns.
-
Sunday night and I'm up after the rest of the family taking account of
things like the view from our front window. A field of short grass covered
with dandelion heads gone to seed, white and ghostly in the just-past-sunset
light. A farmhouse with a few lighted windows, behind it a ridge of trees
against a strip of intense pink shading through yellow into blue.
Yesterday Paul and I took the pickup for a drive along dirt roads after
a rain, and the light changed to the intense slanted light that appears
here only out of a sky partially filled with storm clouds, in the late evening,
and that isolates objects in shocking clarity.
The fields are like lawns now, covered three inches deep in sprouted
grain. Wild flowers everywhere, wild ducks in the sloughs. I'd like to buy
a quarter section of land here. No, it's not the farmer's daughter, I wouldn't
work the land but let it go back to grass and bush.
I hated Father yesterday because, when I went for a walk back to the
Webber homestead (we bought the land from the Webbers but built nearer the
road, leaving their log barn and house on a hill about a quarter mile further
into the land) I found that the two trees I'd loved most - the highest poplars
on the farm, dead at the tops so that their branches against the evening
sky were like Chinese ink - have been felled.
And then, when I got to the Indian Hill I found that he had plowed up
the sod above the Indian graves, toppled the grave markers and split Webber's
Folly. Rudy came in crying when he saw what Father had done and Paul was
ironic. "That old man will do anything to get an extra two shovel-fulls
of grain." I was in despair, if you'll allow me not to understate.
Nothing is changed, I still hate him.
Then after dinner Mother cornered me looking intense and told me that
if I had any consideration for them all I wouldn't wear my green dress,
because it is so short it stirs Father into a rage. She says I should let
them forget the Rasheed business and not be so blatant about keeping it
in front of their eyes. (The upshot is that I have nothing to wear.) We
both cried, I got angry and Mother said reproachfully "Why does everyone
have to be mad at me? Father gets mad at me, Judy gets mad at me, Paul gets
mad at me and now you get mad at me!" (To Paul she always says, "Why
do you all have to be so different from me? Why can't there be one of you
that I can understand?") Then she tries to argue religion. "There
must be a life beyond this one." I don't know what to do, Greg, I don't
want to stay. I'm supposed to 'communicate' with her but she doesn't want
to know about me, she really doesn't, and can't want me to tell her the
truth. She just wants me to be different. Father doesn't say anything important
to me, he doesn't talk to Paul at all, he criticizes Rudy.
I can't ever bring you here! And I want to show you this country so badly.
It's not so much lust now, as wanting to dive at you and stick my head under
your chin and howl. Is there any intelligent solution short of a clean break
with them? Mother says you can't bury your children while they're alive,
but I wonder about parents. I'm torn between hard-headed clean-break pessimism
and a desire to resolve the problem for the problem's sake.
Coming home from a Lutheran service tonight Father was loud and bitter
about a certain Isabel. "Other people can cover up, but not her."
"Cover up what, her head?" says Mother naively. "Cover up.
There she sat on the bench, with no sleeves on at all." My stomach
contracts when he goes on like that. It's a disease calling itself morality.
Then Mother tells me that he's talked to her about how he wishes he had
been educated, because the people he likes are educated people with whom
he has to feel ignorant and ill at ease. He daydreams like a child about
the trips he wants to take. He holds Maria in his lap and he smiles when
she's enthusiastic. And his face - I hate him and want to root him out of
me, I love him and pity him and can't bear him.
Paul and Rudy are wonderful, so is Maria (she is transformed, no scenes,
no selfishness, no frustration).
Gregory M: I can see you in my mind and I sometimes wish for you. You
are so right when this is so wrong. You're real too, where this is something
I can grasp at and only miss. Tell me what you're thinking and being. Don't
be insulted if I seem to be talking to myself, because I am talking to you,
and knowledge of your judicial ear keeps me from plunging into rank jungular
irrational passional distress.
PS The story of Webber's Folly, which I've told you but you've forgotten,
is this: Old Man Webber found a red boulder in the lower fields and had
it moved, at great cost, to a hill near his house - the hill that overlooks
the lake-bottom lands and Rat Lake with its duckweeds southwest of the farm.
Every morning he would jump out of bed, run up the hill, stand on the rock
and evaluate the morning.
-
One of the best things that's happened was the birth of five kittens
on Sunday to our tom-chasing little black point-faced cat. Sunday morning
she began to prowl the hall making guttural noises in her throat. She shrieked
once from the bathroom, and I found her in the dirty clothes basket. In
the process of moving her very quickly into a new box the first-born popped
out wet and gluey. She then delivered four more under the eyes of Maria,
Rudy, Paul and Mother who all patted and encouraged her. The first-born
is officially named Maria but is thought of only as First-Born. I think
the reproductive process has a dangerous fascination for me.
It's Tuesday evening. It doesn't really get dark here until late because
the sky is so open that thin layers of colored cloud continue to reflect
light long after sunset. I've just realized too, that there is a characteristic
sound of a car approaching through the nearly perfect country silence after
dark. The sound used to mean either that we were getting visitors or that
someone was coming home, because nearly no one going anywhere else ever
used that road. We could hear an engine a mile away, and sometimes recognize
it. Even now the sound raises half an expectation, which isn't functional
since we're now living beside a highway.
It's these after dark silences that seem to require you. I go to bed
early, usually puzzling at something. Maria hogs the bed and is scratchy
and gets up early.
-
Wednesday isn't a mail day in La Glace because Mrs Blask the mail mistress
locks up the white granary-sized post office and does her week's washing.
So I didn't get either of your letters until today, when Rudy brought them
in his lunch bucket after school.
I'm apprehensive about Olivia's reaction to Peter's death. Was she very
disorganized by it? I do think we should get a kitten, yes. I wish I could
bring one of ours, there's a tortoise-shell that's beautiful.
Spent this afternoon weeding and hoeing with Maria instead of studying.
I'm not keen.
In an apple box full of papers I found some of my old journals - one
of when I was fourteen written in an intolerably (now) enthusiastic and
slangy style. What is most striking in it is the glamour that surrounded
everything. I took a bus ride by myself from Valleyview to Edmonton, 250
miles, and while waiting for the bus shook with excitement. The journal
also contains first kiss, first nuzzling, first necking. I was a prude but
teased anyone I could, and loved it all. Ughch. Still the journal brings
back that particular frenzy very exactly. I wrote everything down. There's
the story of buying Facts of Life and Love for Teenagers and being
embarrassingly caught reading it by the boy who precipitated the anxiety.
What 'things' do you think our 'separation' may help you to put into
perspective? It worries me that you keep deciding you really do feel
strongly about me.
-
Saturday night. Maria and I are getting very close. I'll be sorry to
give her back to Anne. Without the sibling-dominance struggle she's without
tantrums and manipulativeness. She's just happy, spontaneous, independent,
and funny. I'm testing my theories on her, ie that if a kid can do something
by herself she should usually do it and be helped only as a gesture of warmth
and not as a matter of fact. Her being so good, happy and charming suits
my propaganda. I can cite her as an example of my methods / Anne's methods
when I argue with Father. He says, "When a child has a temper tantrum
just throw cold water on him." So I go on about needs and basics and
understanding and rational explanation, and he says, "Oh, but if you
throw water on him he won't do it again."
Conversations here always come back to him. The day after I arrived back
Paul said to me, "I'm so full of him I have to talk about him."
Things I detest in him, I'm beginning to see, are things I like in myself,
and the old leitmotif begins again - God help me not to be like...
We've driven the thirty miles to Grande Prairie together several times
and he usually begins to talk about himself, what he is, what he was, what
he knows. In a way he thinks he is an Ubermensch. He is proud of
his 'insight' into 'human nature,' its selfish motives and its sly maneuverings,
hidden outposts of the 'flesh.' He is the one who knows and tells
the truth and fights for the right. "Yes, and then they say, 'Epp is
looking for trouble again.' But I'm not looking for trouble. I'm just exposing
what they don't think I know. I've always been able to tell things about
people that they won't admit. I just put everything I know into a sort of
computer, and I can tell exactly what they'll do next. I can't enjoy people
any more, they're too predictable," he says and his voice works itself
into a sort of shrillness that I can't take. Lapse silent, no more argument,
change the subject.
What is bizarre about him is that he does have some insight (though not
more than other people do) and the gems of wisdom he is always scattering
are often acute. But there's no agreement among his aphorisms. He never
seems to realize that some of his positions contradict others. And he's
sure of himself.
When I argue with him I am just as sure of myself and sometimes the sort
of sarcasm that appears willy-nilly in my questions-designed-to-reduce-to-the-absurd
his positions (reductio ad absurdum doesn't bother him, at least overtly)
horrifies me by its similarity to his dogmatic assurance. Mother says I'm
smug, and I am, but what can I do with someone whose claim for acuity of
observation rests on prejudice, whose logic rests on several incompatible
first premises and many many incompatible minor premises? I don't know what
he wants from me now. He makes no personal remarks but he veils suggestions
in peripheral comments I can decipher easily enough and usually bare by
demanding to know what he means. He seems to have a conflict as well, because
he likes people to be independent and shoot sparks, but at the same time
he'd rather have this in a son, and have daughters who are gracious and
beautiful like his ideal woman.
About his first born daughter, then: she's ambitious and she likes to
travel and she doesn't cost much to keep, but on the other hand she doesn't
care who she sleeps with and she's self-willed ('independent' is good but
'self-willed' is bad: it's the same with a lot of synonym pairs) and she
wears her skirts so short it horrifies the neighbours.
That's another thing - his moral stand is against rolled-up cut-off bluejeans
and short skirts, but his indignation inevitably follows the visit of a
neighbour. "He wants to be proud of you and impress people with you.
You can give him that much," says Mother. "But who does
he want us to impress?" And she admits that he really wants to or needs
to impress everyone quite indiscriminately. Yet he says he doesn't care,
any longer, what people think of him, since human nature is so rotten.
And Mother: she told me how, on their trip to Mexico during the winter
two years ago, they came to a white sand beach, camped, and finally got
into the water. She had taken a book and been overjoyed with the sand and
the sun and being able to sit down to read a book. Father saw her reading
and was angry and hurt because her reading was a "rejection of his
dream" in her words. If she had really been enjoying the beach, and
really been grateful to him for bringing her, she wouldn't have been reading,
obviously. I thought of our beach on Hunting Island and the piles of books
we both brought.
Father says I shouldn't wait too long before I get married because if
I do nobody will be left who'll 'have' me, and I'll be driven to having
affairs with married men or, presumably, to the disgrace of a barren womb
and facial hair.
And in La Glace this afternoon an eighty year old of the community, Hilmer
Johnston, a man I hardly know, told me I'd become "a good-looking girl,
you know, with a good built, not too thin, you know, but not big."
I rode the bike to get the mail, two miles on a gravel road, sound of
the tires, drift of clover from the roadsides.
-
Sunday morning alone at home with Paul. Everyone else at church. Brilliant
sun, peace, absence of people. Many pages of Boring's History. [of
psychology] An uncle, Mother's brother Peter, visited this afternoon - adult's
idiot conversation. Ugh.
Greg: your rainy day letter today made me feel sour. I'm not sure why,
perhaps the contented tepid feeling of it crosses my own restlessness. Today
I haven't wanted to come back to Kingston at all, ever. It seems
a backwater. What I want is a life in which every movement is clear and
every detail, every artifact, perfect - like my dream house in which every
inch is articulate and right.
As I was reading one of the books Mother recommends to me, last night
- a religious book by Eugenia Price - it was clear to me why the 'conversion
experience' and the 'personal relation with God' concept appeal to this
woman. Think of the value, clarity, of a life which you sincerely believe
to be in two-way contact with the creator of life itself. Logically, the
woman was ... but she doesn't concern herself with logic, only with what
she experiences. She is unconvincing, but the need for clarity and loveliness
of life are real. Do you understand this?
-
But, Wednesday. Everything shifts. My archives, that box full of closely
written notepaper, tells me I've always, even in relationships I now feel
most strongly about, been non-committal, narrow-eyed and careful. Things
that point this out to me are the anti-realism outsider-romanticism of the
two paragraphs above, a conversation with Paul, and tonight's Festival
on television.
Paul has finished his senior matriculation exams and we've been talking
and talking. Both of us are angry about one thing - Father's behavior on
the way home from Grande Prairie. Mother wrote her last exam this morning,
grade 12 physics. When we picked her up at the school to continue into town
she was tired and discouraged because the exam had been very long and complex
and she felt she had probably failed. In town we all went to various appointments,
and she arranged to meet me at a certain café. When I came out of
the dentist's office they were waiting outside (Mother and Paul) because
Father had earlier told Mother that we were all to meet at a different
café. When we found him he was angry and childish, whining to her
in a low aside. When I had a chance I asked Mother what he was so mad about.
She said he was mad because she had been too 'confused' to get his directions
right. He had promised to take her to a restaurant to get some tea and lunch
because she hadn't eaten and in fact has eaten little for several days.
But because of this slight misunderstanding which didn't put him out of
his way at all, he ruined the small mean celebration he'd promised her.
All the way home, between her efforts to lighten the general mood, he kept
bringing the subject back, sarcastically. I finally said, "I think
that's enough on that topic" and he stopped. Although I think I made
him angry he didn't say anything. I was shocked at my nerve, shaken, but
glad.
The other thing: we were both sad about how Mother had finished a very
difficult several months of constant work, but there was nothing she was
longing to do. She made supper, though I wanted to, she talked about cleaning
the house, and then she went to bed early. I don't think it was only because
of fatigue, I think it's hopelessness. On this farm there's always work,
but there could be less if they had something to do that they really wanted
to do. The food is garbage. The amount of money Mother is given to feed
six people wouldn't normally keep two. Every shopping trip is an exercise
in culling whatever is substandard out of the good stuff. Rotten bananas
at ten cents a pound, three-day-old bread at two for a quarter, sardines
at a dime a box, all bought in quantity. We do our own butchering and the
meat should be good. But no, it's home-cured to save money and often tastes
a bit off. Even roasts are cut small. We'll fill up on potatoes and home-cured
bacon. Mother bakes well. Flour is cheap and it's economical to bake your
own bread. But she can't try out new recipes because she doesn't dare buy
the ingredients and Father doesn't like new things anyway. Greg, you don't
know how glorious I find your mother's way of buying coffee that's very
expensive but good!
And listen, it isn't poverty, it's meanness, it's joylessness. The farm
is worth a great deal of money and is worth more all the time, but their
life, their present moment, Father kills in every way he can. I hate
him. You're right, he's a bastard, for what he does to Mother to whom life
is, or would be, still valuable. He's mean, neurotic, egocentred, hypocritical,
unaware, sly, suspicious and ignorant. He's also unfortunate, sick, usually
in pain, a victim of circumstance and privation, uneducated, unconfident,
guilty - all of this I know, but perhaps it's good to drop the effort to
understand and forgive. He's a creep - and that has to be recognized first.
I don't know what comes next. He can't take criticism or conflict, and I
can't offer them to him in a spirit of love because there's no love there.
I'm as bigoted as he.
Paul and I talked about to what extent one can set up a minimum life
style which is good, self-respecting (fresh bread and Chiquita bananas),
clear, articulated, aware, joyful. How much of a working day, for instance,
can you sell to a company to maintain a life-style that's important to you?
How long can you live on egg-shells in order to save up for a trip to Europe?
When is the element of self-sacrifice necessary and when is it death? (I
think Father's sacrifices are death: when he attains his dream of travel
he won't know how to be happy and he'll continue to file both himself and
Mother with the cheapest thing on the menu. Perhaps that's why I'm careless
with money, except that I can't be any more, because if I'm broke you tend
to rescue me and therefore I've a responsibility to prevent myself from
spendthrifting.) (Please prod Mr Ellis, I have to pay the dentist.)
(I'll continue on the back of this because I can't get more paper without
waking someone.)
The third point in this flood of resentment is not a resentment at all,
but an excitement. The Festival program tonight showed a house for
drug addicts run by themselves on the bawdiest of group-therapy principles.
Method of cure was a tough punching-out from all other members of the group,
illusions knocked down (one of the girls said "We come out not as large
as our illusions make us or as small as our fears") and support shown
through shouted insult. Adults as Warrendale kids looking after their own
cures. I'd like to learn about it. The method at last: no religion and no
salvation, just action and interaction.
But I'm seriously doubting my ability to be anything good in child psychology
because 1. I don't seriously care, I don't invest, 2. I shrink from conflict.
But I don't want to be anything else except a writer, which I can't be
basically because of 1. and 2., or an architect, a fantastic tremendous
independent and wealthy architect, which is impossible.
Peter's death didn't move me. The tortoise-shell new kitten was killed:
that did.
Love to D and O.
-
Thurs. Post script to the letter I didn't mail when I went to get yours.
The news from Mr Ellis is very good. How can I get you to pick up the check
for me?
Your reaction to the violin concerto was like my feelings at the beginning
of this letter. Richness and transience, and therefore the need to increase
the former as the latter crowds in.
-
Later - confusion, laughter that twists in the stomach - Father killed
the stripey tortoise-shell kitten because we can't keep another cat on the
place, and tonight he brought home an apathetic dusty little puppy. He'd
just come from the auction mart where he'd gone to buy cattle. Did someone
con him into buying it? Or just into accepting it? Or did he mean something
by it? We don't know, but we think he was conned. He's a speculator in junk,
and the old sheds on the place are full of enamel sinks, tractor parts,
an organ that doesn't work. He's convinced he'll re-sell for a profit.
The other thing: in reckoning up accounts with him on money I owe, I
discovered that the 100 dollars he sent me at Christmas last year was not
a gift, as I had thought, but a loan, which I didn't really need and wouldn't
have kept if I'd known, although I was glad for it. I was terribly touched
at the time, overwhelmed.
He's dominating these letters to you and I don't like it. But I don't
know how to telescope myself out of obsession.
And how can I get the feeling of you back through this distortion
of perception? I can see you, you've taken off your glasses and you look
serious. You have a child's eyes when you take your glasses off, very clear,
direct and thoughtful. You have a nice mouth too. You kiss well, it feels
right. And you have a way of looking fuzzy when you're warm and excited.
I wish I were in bed with you and could lie against your back.
Paul and I and Rudy walked last night to a hill in our west neighbour's
pasture, where a Webber who was the brother of the man who owned our land
had his homestead. We could see flagstones, some cement with names and dates
(1920?) scratched, remnants of fireplaces, rings of stones for flowerbeds,
and the ashes of the house and barn themselves. A well filled in to keep
out cattle. Below the hill a creek lined with willow and poplar flows half
a mile into the reedy edge of the lake, and at the top of the hill are two
large morning-watching rocks. I love these men who so obviously loved their
places. Their wine too, for we've found many empty gallon jugs. When we
bought this place Paul sold enough beer bottles to buy a ball glove.
Paul is much better than he was two years ago: he's developed a (real?)
tough-indifferent attitude toward Father and he's learned to enjoy things
in a way he couldn't before. He loves this hill, he glories in it,
it's wonderful to see him. When my check comes I'm going to buy him some
cigarettes. He smoked his last Du Maurier (learned the habit from Rasheed)
beside the creek and gloried in it too, for the sake of the rebellion of
it. He wants to cut out on Monday but there seem to be no jobs and he's
not blasé about hunger so he isn't sure he'll leave to try the highways
yet. He's short one course for senior matric and so can't start university
next year - can't go to Europe because he doesn't have any money.
He is beautiful, you know. He's short, no more than 5'6" if that,
but slim-hipped and very well muscled in his shoulders and arms. He has
a long graceful neck, fine-textured dark skin, very silky dark hair, a large
mouth and a chin that's changed its shape to a very delicate three-pointed
line. I think he's extremely attractive and very charming, very intelligent,
very real. Funny too. He'll be something, I think. What interests him in
university - I've told you - philosophy. Perilous for him too.
Rudy is very thin, all limbs, but strong (in a sit-ups contest this afternoon,
Mother did four in a minute, Maria, fourteen, I, twenty four, Paul, thirty
six, and Rudy, forty!) He has none of the robust Konrad-look of Mother's
line, only the thin delicate Epp quality that you see in Judy. Paler skin,
small freckles, large brown eyes, shoulders so bony (at twelve) it makes
me want to put both arms around him and baby him. But he's happy-go-lucky,
active, uninhibited except when unable to do something Father expects of
him. He has a queer, rushed, squeaky, garbled, ungrammatical way of talking
that I can't capture for you, as I'd like to, because it is often very funny
and expressive. He still cries quite a lot and he loves the kitten, but
he only looked disgruntled with the puppy, Mother says because he's lost
too many dogs in his life - shot because they ate chickens, lost, driven
over. (The puppy is howling downstairs.) (Someone has gone to him.)
Gradually the house becomes quiet: the terse voices of Mother and Father
downstairs stop their back and forth accusation and protest. The house is
cold and it's too windy outside to walk, but as I go on and on to you I
become quieter as well, and the fact that you are there becomes real to
me again. I think of people I like and want to write letters to. Then I
go to bed, push Maria over and go to sleep before I'm done thinking.
The pencil is a stub, the candle has guttered out, tonight, now, I love
you, and goodnight.
-
There is joy in this house after all. This morning I woke at five a.m.
to find the living room full of orange sunrise light that became only slightly
whiter as the sun climbed. I sat in a large soft armchair beside the picture
window, with a wide-angle view of growing exuberant green, the neighbour's
neat white house and barn. Blanket wrapped around, coffee, National Geographics
and Five Approaches to Criticism. By seven the sky had clouded over,
I made some bran muffins with fat raisins, thought of you and ate a few
meditatively, had the house quiet to myself until 9:30.
Paul is happy, climbs trees, thinks about leaving, makes lists, plays
his two Simon and Garfunkle records and my Leveillée-Gagnon, listens
carefully to them and smiles.
Rudy is happy, bops around barefoot in bluejeans and a white hooded sweatshirt,
too small for him and short in the waist and wrists, always with the hood
up over his head. (I've known other boys of nearly his age who always wear
their sweatshirt hoods up.)
I lay on my stomach on the kitchen table talking to Mother as she waxed
the floor below me - she looked very pretty and talked about herself and
men and marriage and romanticism.
Maria has gone completely wild: never washes, never wears socks, never
brushes her hair, never pulls her pants up, yells around with the puppy
and the cat and the neighbour kid and Rudy and the flowerbeds. My caretaking
goes no further than telling her not to scratch her mosquito bites and reading
her three chapters of Black Beauty every night. She is on her own
for the rest; she's a great kid and I love her.
The kits have their eyes open and spar among themselves for fun; the
puppy is really quite (after all my bitching) likeable, a dusty-colored
fat cylinder-shape, eager but shy. Maria has also had the adventure of chasing
two small pigs half a mile through grass so tall you could see only a ripple
in the green to give their (fast-moving) positions.
But I won't give you any more of the rustic details. I'm documenting
these days partly for you, partly for me - and you see how reality shifts
radically every day!
-
Midnight. To celebrate Mother, Rudy, and Paul's end of exams we drove
the pickup back over summerfallow fields to Crocus Hill, a rock outcropping
covered with grass, wildflowers, and thin poplars, which separates two plateaus
of rich lake-bottom soil. Because it's an uncultivable rock island in the
fields, the stones gathered from surrounding fields are piled there, with
bones, bits of wood, and the giant roots pulled up by horses when the land
was cleared twenty or thirty years ago.
We built a fire in an old tub found among the stones and it flared up
just as it became really dark - although the sky was still orange-rimmed.
Rudy found a cow's skull and we put it up on a pole by the fire (remember
the boar's head in Lord of the Flies?), and filled the nose- and
eye-sockets with clover, dill, honeysuckle, unnamed blue and yellow flowers,
and Indian paint brush - in the firelight it looked explosive: the skull-flower
god.
And we danced and howled and beat shin-bones (not ours) against the rock,
Paul, Rudy (in his hood), Leo from next door, Maria and I (with Esquidieu).
When Mother and Father arrived we roasted wieners and marshmallows. Father
put a match to a pile of dry roots and started a huge pale-yellow fire that
fuzzed off into sparks high above our heads. A feeling of well-being in
spite of Father's unnecessary anxiety about wasting wieners or marshmallows
by letting them fall into the fire or be burnt, Maria, Rudy and Leo mad
with excitement of running with burning sticks and knocking off wild sparks,
Paul wanting to talk about Hemingway. Father a skinny black form in flapping
clothes outlined by the root-pile fire. The silly puppy crying behind a
stone and devouring wiener skins. Warm feet on stones around the fire, another
neighbour driving through the fields with his girl to Saturday-night park.
I thought you'd have liked it although I couldn't see you howling over
our Indian chant (I'll do it for you when I see you again) and dancing through
the fire. Guess you could have talked to the adults.
-
Sunday night: distracted; Rudy is going to La Glace to get the mail and
I'll mail this with him.
Monday night
This morning Paul got out of bed, tied his sleeping bag and hard-hat
to the knapsack he'd packed last night, said "I guess I'm going,"
opened the door, walked out and closed it without saying goodbye to anyone,
and walked down the road without looking back - bent a little forward under
the sack with his white hard hat on it like a beetle - looking very tanned
and determined, going out into the world to seek his fortune. He had thirty
dollars. Almost immediately he got a ride with a truck carrying horses.
He'll go to Edmonton, but after that neither he nor I know. He's looking
for work. I felt a pang because he's so beautiful and because he was leaving
so cleanly. He's never been on his own before: it's a complete beginning.
I was really moved and a little jealous.
This afternoon Mother was mourning her children again: she hasn't written
Judy for almost a month because she says there's no feeling of contact:
Judy is a door shut in her face. And Judy says she can't write Mother because
every letter has to be false, guarded. Mother cried. She says that what
is most painful about seeing us leave home is that "it never was home,"
and the fact that this was not her fault, she says, makes it even harder.
I asked her whether she thought she would ever leave him; she said it
was too complicated but that when she has her teaching certificate and earns
her own money she will be more independent. Money is one of Father's biggest
problems: when he gives or lends us money he feels that he has done everything
for us that a father can do. Consequently it is very difficult to ask him
for money. All during school it took half an hour's soul-steeling to ask
him for 25¢ to buy a scribbler: I always had to do it for everyone
because I was the oldest and most courageous! When I told him this morning
that Paul had left, he said "Why didn't he say something to me? I could
have lent him some money." I told him Paul had thirty dollars, and
he seemed put out to have lost this chance to show how generous he really
was. (Take this rather bitter interpretation with a little caution because
it may be unfair.)
A funnier incident was (yesterday afternoon) my attempt to dress for
a trip to a nearby park in a patched pair of blue jeans and my huge blue
and white earrings. I was expecting trouble about the earrings but went
ahead and sat in the pickup waiting and waiting. Paul went back inside to
see what was holding Father: he reported back that Father was refusing to
go along if he had to be seen with me in the bluejeans. I went in and asked
just what was wrong with the bluejeans. He said that if I wore those jeans
he didn't want to be seen with me because of what people would say. And
what would people say - that he was too cheap to buy me new ones? Exactly,
he said. So I tried to explain that patched bluejeans, especially when worn
with sandals and a very neat white sweater and a European hair bow meant
fun, for goodness sake, not poverty, and surely people were not so
stupid. He said, oh no, he was not a conformist (Mother made a face)
but the jeans were not respectable. So shouting ungraciously about pettiness
and silliness, I changed and we finally left. Maria bawled me out for having
caused such a ridiculous delay. The earrings (taboo under church tradition)
escaped and Paul and I rode in the back: a beautiful, glittering day, scent
of clover, fused green of grass in the ditch, blurring past us; feeling
of well being.
A school friend, a girl I'd liked better than most and who had liked
me in the last years of high school, was home for the weekend and at the
park with her husband and family. I happened to meet her there, and it was
very strange because, although I was eager to talk to her, she was obviously
curt, reluctant, and unfriendly. I'd never seen her like that before; she
is normally enthusiastic and warm. I was puzzled and hurt, and left feeling
very painfully that - you can't go home again.
But tonight the neighbours invited us after dinner to come and play volleyball:
it was fun because enthusiastic and spontaneous. Years ago the neighbours
and my parents and several other young couples with small children would
play volleyball often, and it is remembered as a happier time of their lives
before the great church fight that has left them hostile and suspicious
of each other.
I've learned something of that fight and what led to it: it seems that
because the church was the central and only social institution in their
lives, these people made it their political arena - the fighting comes down
to personal power politicking, but with the additional poison of God-and-right
mongering. When I suggested to Father that there might be something wrong
with the church as institution if it led to so little good and so much pain,
disillusionment, hatred, he said, no, the church has more trouble than secular
institutes because the devil tries harder to corrupt it. And I have an uncle
who thinks that most of the universities in the States are communist.
Tuesday night
I'm sitting in front of the large window looking north (yes, north) toward
the area of sky where the sun went down - it crawls across the north just
below the horizon and comes up again, still in the north, at 3:30 or 4:00
a.m. Sunsets are long-lasting, very panoramic-vista.
Work is coming lively at last: history and fundaments of the Gestalt
and behaviorist schools, rise of operationalism. When I lose speed I study
a little Spanish.
And I'm reading Thomas Wolfe - Paul gave me You Can't Go Home Again.
There's a furtive creaking and panting coming from the parents' bedroom
- there are no doors on the separate rooms yet, only curtains. It still
gives me a primal scene feeling, horror and fascination mixed, to hear my
parents making love. And it is even more horrifying because they have to
try so hard to be quiet.
Thursday July 6
Well, Greg. Your letter is a little traumatic. I've just come from the
post office on the bicycle - I read it through first there - and I'll give
you my response unmeditated.
It's been well over a week since I've heard from you, and your last letter
was written just before you went to Toronto. When there was nothing from
you this morning - I was worried. I also guessed that Victoria would be
back, and was even more worried. I still am, but more of that later.
My reactions are cantankerous - oh for goodness sake, if they all want
him let them have him!
A. I'm pleased that you told me about sleeping with Myrna: the concept
of unfaithfulness is not lost, only modified one step further so that sleeping-with
is no hurt, but not-telling-about is. I'm a little surprised, but if you
hadn't told me I supposed I'd have been dismayed.
B. Victoria - I've a kind of sinking feeling here but it fluctuates,
again, with a kind of annoyance. Annoyance because I don't want to compete
with another woman for any man and if put into a position where I'd have
to, my strongest reaction would be to throw him at her and cut out. The
other woman being intelligent, beautiful, wealthy (which in your terms is
freedom and skiing) and now seemingly committed, makes the cut-out signal
even clearer.
Friday night
Damn it, Gregory, I'm furious and frustrated because there seems to be
no way that I, too, can cheer my old friends, support and comfort them,
warm them from the fund of stability, wonder and amazement, etc, that fills
me so abundantly thanks to my relationship with you. Blast it, how am I
bloody well to know whether I like you at all if I have no chance to move
around? And whatever could I tell you to prove that I liked you if I couldn't
say that you make love better than A and somehow I don't want B as much
as I do you and I'll-soon-have-a-chance-to-like-you-better-than-C too? I
hope you're telling A, B and C that their ultimate value for you lies in
their being not-quite-as-much-as me? By all means Greg, support your friends
and relieve your tensions and admire natural beauty, but don't tell me that
it only 'intensifies' your (presumably positive) feelings toward me.
I think it's your attitude toward Leslie which angers me. If you really
want to help her, how much do you think it will do for her to sleep with
you off and on, knowing she's a stand-in? You don't have to tell her she's
a stand-in, but what do you intend to do when I get back? I don't think
you can fool around with a girl who has so many problems already. Suppose
that she too decides that she wants you and will leave Ralph Allen for you?
It would be flattering and all that but you've a few too many women to handle
already.
-
I had an argument this afternoon in which I told Father that I didn't
believe in souls. He wouldn't believe that I meant it. Then he hinted that
my university professors are evil, fleecing me of my belief and leaving
me open to God's judgment and ruin. Then he told me about a man in Saskatchewan
who had a road accident, and while in the hospital felt that he should "get
right with God." He had never been a religious man, and he did nothing
about this conviction. As he was driving home from the hospital he blacked
out and rolled the car. This time he went back to the hospital crippled
for life; but he understood at last that he must "get right" and
he did. God had spoken.
I asked Father whether he thought that the man would have rolled the
car if he'd made the right decision the first time: Father said he would
not have.
The moral of the story was then applied to me: unless I repent and turn,
God will send me serious trouble, to show me that he means to have me. He's
a merciful God, so if I won't bend the first time he'll try again, with
a worse catastrophe - but no more than three times, says Father. After that
God gives up and molests somebody else, leaving the stubborn unbelievers
mangled behind him.
The worst of it is that, if anything ever does happen to me, Father will
say he knew it all along. Good ol' God. But I'm not going to surrender;
there's a price on my head, so be careful about riding in the same car.
Incredible isn't it.
The line of huge cumulous riding diagonally across the sky was in flames
a minute ago - brilliant orange and pink from the sunset. It has died down
now; it only lasted part of a minute altogether.
There was a postcard from Paul today, mailed in Calgary, saying in 20-odd
words that he is eating and sleeping and hasn't found a job yet.
-
Maria is flying home tomorrow. Her father is back from Russia unexpectedly
early and he telephoned to ask us to send her the fastest way possible.
It was wonderful, his eagerness to see her and his excitement. He also had
the sentiment to come home exactly on their wedding anniversary.
It was Mother and Father's anniversary today too, but I felt I couldn't
brazenly celebrate the occasion although I did bake a cake. Mother is pretty.
They're going to BC next week and I'll have the house to myself to work
in.
Greg - it feels as though the day has been very long; I wish I knew what
was happening. Uncertainty is much worse than loss - and then I'm contemptuous
of myself for being troubled. Where's my mountaintop?
Do you know Pascal? Have you ever read the Pensées? Last
night reading late I became quite euphoric because of him. "Quand l'univers
l'écraserait, l'homme serait encore plus noble que ce qui le tue,
parce qu'il sait qu'il meurt, et l'avantage que l'univers a sur lui, l'univers
n'en sait rien." What precision in saying what my essay on tragedy
and the theatre of the absurd should have said. I had spent the day reading
controversies in philosophy of mind, history of mentalism vs mechanism in
psychology, and criticism of literary criticism, and then Pascal says quite
simply, "La nature confond les pyrrhoniens, et la raison confond les
dogmatiques. Que deviendrez-vous donc, ô hommes qui cherchez quelle
est votre véritable condition par votre raison naturelle?
Vous ne pouvez fuir une de ces sectes, ni subsister dans aucune." And
it is really Pascal, Jansénist, Port-Royalist, who is my Christian
conscience. His is the only good argument, pragmantic and undogmatic argument,
for being a Christian: the pari or wager, a "leap of faith"
made as a probability-based bet. "Le dernier acte est sanglant, quelque
belle que soit la comédie en tout le reste: on jette enfin
de la terre sur la tete, et en voilà pour jamais." I love him
and his language. Interestingly enough you can find bald existentialism
in him - I wonder how much of the whole literature is modern. I'm
becoming very excited about taking the course next year as well as the tragedy
course.
Even the summer's reading on history of psychology, phil of mind is exciting.
My mind is a bloody battlefield at the moment - lopped off conceptual limbs,
crippled schools, methodological horses shot down. Chaos! I don't understand
anything, I'm not sure I ever will - "La nature confond les pyrrhoniens
et la raison confond les dogmatiques." I can't seem to flee my 'sectes'
(what an excellent choice of words) not can I get along without one, nor
can I get a grip of one, nor do I want to give up any of them! (Emerson
says that self-consistency is the sign of a small mind.)
Times like last night with its exhileration and reality of ideas make
me wish for a tower and a candle and nothing but books. Did you know that
at the age of 38 Montaigne retired to a castle by himself and "established
himself in an old round tower and there read, meditated, and noted down
his observations," as the textbook says, "with the deliberate
intention of amusing himself in his own way." So nevermind - I'll replace
you with a tower. Much love and a large residue of things to tell you.
Saturday
I'm reading Hebb's Organization of Behavior and (still) The
Nature of Scientific Revolution, and I've a program of things which
must be done before I come back to Kingston - it should help, since I'm
becoming anxious to be back. A terrible thing happened this morning but
Mother is going to La Glace now and can mail this so that it will leave
on Monday. So I'll tell you tonight, when I've a few more hundreds of pages
read.
I'm trying to avoid the fallacy of valuing you more because your 'market
value' has gone up, but I do feel lonely for you.
Saturday night
Time is - moving, not in two-week units (more like five-year units),
but with such long dashes and sudden jerks that it is only intermittently
that we notice its movement. I just now found a photograph six years old
and was shocked at the unsubstantiality of those six years. It must be the
same for you. Childhood seems to have been denser - more substance between
years.
I'm confused by the real dualism between literature and science: "universes
of discourse" says Philosophy 251, but it isn't only discourse. As
I read I'm alternately scoffing the neural-disturbance sleuths and dedicating
myself to psychology-as-a-science; marveling at the reality of Thomas Wolfe's
world and agreeing that consciousness is unreliable data. Most people eventually
choose either world, but I seem forced to keep them both, straddling them
with the maverick ambition of philosophy! General Honours programs have
been eliminated at Queen's due to high incidence of schizophrenia among
these simpletons who wish to be both 'pyrrhoniens' and 'dogmatiques,' confounded
by both reason and nature, and so doubly unable to accept or do without
a 'secte.'
This morning before either Rudy or I were up, Father shot the puppy.
Rudy and I heard Mother asking him why he had done it, and we both leaped
out of bed, stunned. I looked out the window to see Mother protesting that
it had been Rudy's dog and Father whining about how he could "never
do anything right," voice raised, self righteous BASTARD. I lost control,
broke into hysterical, frantic weeping which was as bad as Olivia's worst,
shouted that I hated him (he didn't hear). Rudy just cried quietly.
When Mother came in later she said that he had gotten up this morning
very depressed after little sleep, and just lain on the kitchen floor in
front of the heater. She didn't know why exactly he was depressed but said
it was partly because he felt that everyone was against him and because
I'm rejecting everything I've been taught at home; also because the rain
badly needed refuses to come and it seems that this year's hard work will
result in another poor crop; also because he's in pain and not well most
of the time; also because there's nothing in his life that gives him any
joy or because he is incapable of living anything but daydreams now.
Then he went out and shot the dog, saying to Mother that this should
make her happy since she has never wanted it anyway and he was just 'making
trouble' between them.
Mother had objected to his bringing the puppy because she was afraid
the usual would happen: Rudy would become fond of it, then it would get
into trouble with the neighbours' chickens, then it would be done away with.
The night Father brought it I couldn't understand Rudy's reaction: indifference
or fear - he looked at it, shrugged, and went away - Mother explained why,
and what had happened to all his other dogs. But Rudy and I began to like
this puppy: Father knew it; he'd seen us playing with it; he was a very
charming and friendly small thing.
Greg I'm still filled with horror at Father's taking him out and shooting
him this morning. I don't know how he could have done it. It was partly
this horror that set off my hysterics, partly the knowledge of how little
Father cares about Rudy and how even happy-go-lucky Rudy will eventually
hate him, partly the hopelessness of Father who needs approval too much
to care about anyone else and who is mistrusted and hated just because he
cares for nobody else and who must be racked even by his children's attempts
to break the pattern, partly anger at Mother's having to stay with him and
defend him, partly panicky revulsion at so much sickness, ugliness.
Later he came in and told Rudy that he was sorry he had shot his dog.
He's never apologized to any of his other children, Mother says he's making
an effort with Rudy.
That's good, amazing, I suppose.
He takes pictures of his possessions - trucks, machinery, house. He never
takes any of people, at least not of his family.
I wonder what sort of picture you're getting of this man; I wonder if
you'll ever meet him. I was glad you weren't here this morning, although
I'm sorry you couldn't be here to give your cold impartial objective rational
external analysis. I'm sorry too that I can't show you this country; we
could live in the log cabin on Webber's Hill and look out every morning
at the lake and sit on the steps every evening to look at the northern sunset
and in between walk around looking for beaver, lie in bed together
at night listening to coyotes, read in the clover fields and the brilliant
rapeseed fields, smell the wild roses along the fence lines, make bonfires
at night on Crocus Hill. I have some erotic daydreams, but others are like
this one, tranquility-pastorality daydreams.
Sunday night
I'm happy, small jar of white wildflowers smelling wonderful, in bed,
feet warming under the quilt. You telephoned me back this morning in such
a warming way, I feel so fond of you; you sounded like yourself, and I want
to see you!
Something new is happening with Father. Tonight he came clean in an astonishing
way - he told us very emotionally that we children had always preferred
Mother to him because he is the one who upholds the discipline, and that
he is sick of it. He told us that he was tired of hearing from other
people what a wonderful person his wife is - "Does anybody ever tell
you what a wonderful person your husband is? No!" Mother says that
he has often made resentful but subtle jibes at people's universal preference
for her. I'm surprising myself more and more by being able to tell him exactly
what I feel: that he has never liked us, that he can't expect Paul to do
anything but resent him when his own dislike for Paul is so obvious, that
we partially came to dislike farming so much because we could never do anything
right and got verbal hidings, that we were afraid of him, that he can't
expect anyone to like him when he does nothing but attack them. He listens
to me and he calms down.
He seemed to have thought, when we were children, that we should learn
discipline and responsibility and that it was his duty to teach it to us
since Mother did nothing but 'shield' us. When he explains to us what he
wanted to do we can only tell him that his methods were wrong. He's a kind
of Don Quixote because he sees himself as championing the Right, but his
methods are out of contact with reality and so, inefficient, but he can
still claim that he has served his ideas well since his methods are inseparable
from his ideals in his scheme.
(He has a pervasive moralism about his personality which escapes moral-ethical-religious
boundaries and focuses equally on picayune details of social behavior ...
this was the curse of his 'don'ts' ... things must be done as efficiently
and economically as possible even when the energy and forethought required
take all the spontaneity out of an activity - he is the sort of person who
will nag a child about how he holds his stick while roasting wieners. Rigidity.
Rigidity in his thinking as well: he has several stories, examples, personal
successes, which he tells over and over, seeming to forget that we've heard
them before. Most of these stories are about someone else's dirty dealing
or his own quick thinking or skill in some situation. He defines himself
and other people in terms of this fairly limited set of anecdotes, with
the result that they seem almost compulsions or cores around which to organize
his experience. Kuhn talks about paradigms in scientific development: this
seems a case of personal paradigms organizing perception and behavior. Perhaps
part of the rigidity of his thinking is due to his having learned to think
in German and being fluent but not (perhaps) conceptually fluent in English
(complete hypothesizing). I think his could definitely be called a personality
disorder and not really a neurosis, but if he develops a psychosis, which
he could so easily, it would involve paranoia I think, delusions of grandeur
and persecution. End of analytic note.)
He said something else that shocked me - I've never known him to make
a bald statement of need before. He said, "We are soon going to be
at the age where we will need you much more than you need us; it isn't to
our advantage to lose you. I don't mean financially, it will be other things
that we need." I had never thought of that: I suppose it is true. My
first reaction was dismay - my second was shame at being dismayed. I don't
know what we will be able to give them when they are older. I don't really
want to give Father anything, but it's true that nothing of what he has
done has been done deliberately. Pity isn't a dynamic emotion: it's entirely
static and doesn't generate useful action.
I wonder if, were I to stay home all summer, Father and I could change
something. Maybe I should grow up. I really am a child about him.
You still seem to be close and friendly. The warmth from the heater is
raising the perfume from the wildflowers, the house is quiet. In Ontario
it's 3 a.m. and you're asleep in the corner under the window. I felt very
physically lonely for you this afternoon; now it's a loneliness for being
able to lie against your back with my arm around your chest and go to sleep
- that is a good way to sleep.
Monday
From my window I can see Rudy riding his bicycle on the road waving his
arms in the air in some intricate look-ma-no-hands ritual.
[journal]
July 10
Telegram from Greg: Fantastic letter. Are you enough? - Yes. Hurry home.
Much love.
[letter]
Tuesday
I got your telegram yesterday afternoon - the girl read it to me over
the telephone as tho' she didn't quite follow it - especially the "are
you enough?" line. I was surprised and delighted.
Rudy is going to La Glace so I'll mail this.
Tuesday night.
The letter which came today was not "tepid and comfortable"
but real and direct you.
I'm pleased - excited - that you think I could write. I want to. But
I'm worried by being a kind of anachronism; I think that the sort of things
I could say, as well as my way of saying them, are dated. This is exactly
why I have such a nasty bigoted reaction to some of your favorite novels
- they are how people write now, and I can't write that way. I haven't any
sort of contact with that quality of experience, and I can't see any significant
material or style that I could handle well. I haven't the guts to decide
that I will write, anachronism or not. But I'm encouraged by you thinking
I could. We'll talk more about this when I get back.
I'm sorry about the hysterical last letter. I was confused and my imagination
was 'way ahead of you. The scene: your apartment. I drag myself wearily
and dirtily up the stairs after walking 3000 miles back to you, I drop my
bag on the landing, I lean against the bedroom door - which opens upon you
looking fiercely protective of some young creature holding a bedsheet over
her breasts (it is early afternoon). I say "Oh excuse me" in a
small, brave, voice and turn, and go down the steps, and outside I plan
wearily and faintly to live in - either the park or a library closet, this
part is unclear - for the rest of the summer.
I believed all this one night when I had insomnia. No wonder I phoned
you in the morning.
There's Father panting in the next room again: I'm repulsed by the fact
that he doesn't care that both Rudy and I can hear them and because it is
always brief and it's always him - Mother never makes a sound. My teeth
are set on edge by it.
raw forming volume 7
- raw forming volume 6: september 1966 - july 1967
- work & days: a lifetime journal project
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