Kingston 8 December 1967
Went to a psychology party with John Glassco, came home to Greg's at
5:30 a.m. elated. Spent yesterday after five hours of sleep in a half dream.
Dreamed about John shortly after I fell asleep but it was only one fragment
- my hand passing over someone's thin hip and abdomen, smooth skin over
small bones, and the excitement I felt at this narrow section of body. It
was John but very feminine - I tried to connect the dream with yesterday's
impressions of the night and got a feeling of gentleness in him - unexpected
stubbiness of his profile seeming to make him a sudden person, with resistance,
during that one flash as we walked back from the Astor. Also: across the
table from me when I'd badgered him with a flood of 'personal impacts' that
he pulled out of by asking with his Glassco inflection of seriousness, "Do
you have a boyfriend?" He rescued me from my confusion as well - something
touching about that sentence.
19 December
I've just left Greg at his place and come home to my room. He stopped
me in the hall as I was leaving and wanted to know why. "I haven't
any reason to be here, we haven't anything to say to each other and we aren't
feeling anything."
He suddenly roared "I'm feeling something" and crouched
over me, pinning me to the wall, "and if you're not," he straightened
and his hands hung open at his sides, "I don't know, we've had it,"
I'm not sure what he said. "Whatever it is you're feeling doesn't do
any good." "When you look like that I just want to put my arms
around you." "But that isn't what I want."
I was bored with him, didn't want to touch him (even now I have no impulse
to go back and lie down with him), felt opposed by his dumb insistent affection
and anxiety, and so came away - but I'm afraid there's no one who wouldn't
bore me after a while, but that I'll never believe it. What do I want, that
he can't be? Don - flashing presence. Don's sort of person I couldn't take
either, I know it, I'm aware of it. What will I do with myself next year
and ever after.
[letter]
Here it is Saturday night before Christmas and I find I haven't mailed
this yet, although I was sure I had.
You'd like it here tonight, in Greg's living room - there's a tree propped
against the wall, a round long-needled pine so thickly branched it's difficult
to get tinsel to hang right. Paul in an armchair 'reading' a picture book,
cats sniffing around the presents (a lot of them), popcorn waiting to be
strung in heaps on the floor, very mop-haired Jay reading in another armchair,
Joanne making lasagna in the kitchen, my plum pudding going into its fourth
long hour of steaming, refrigerator full after a shopping trip with J and
P this morning. Yes - candles, music, coffee in mugs, wine and cheese -
no, not duck, small Cornish game hens, big enough for one serving each.
No potatoes, no vegetables, just salads and then the huge plum pudding
(which I steamed in a casserole and unmolded and will serve flaming - it's
bit like a third slice of a beachball.) Anne sent a fruitcake, Joanne and
Judy got nuts and candy to fill stockings. Firewood piled in the corner.
We're invited to Rasheed's later tonight. There's a kind of candle-thing
which rotates above 4 small white candles and makes a bell sound as it turns
- Jay brought it.
I wonder what sort of Christmas you'll have without more than one child.
Earlier this evening I said "This Christmas proves adults are really
superfluous for Christmas" but Joanne said "Yeah but adults need
kids for Christmas."
Cat - sleeping in the middle of the rug out in the crossfire of two stereo
speakers but full of contentment and equanimity. Greg is home for a few
days (until the 26th) and I wish he was here. He's got my present in the
upstairs closet and I've had to promise not to look until it's time. Wonder
where Olivia is.
It hasn't snowed yet.
The kids are out, Judy's Christmas bread (her first loaf of bread, with
currents and citron in it) just out of the oven looking very good - the
house remarkably clean and full of evergreen scent. The kids are out to
a movie and I'm savouring solitude after having talked to Greg on the phone.
Christmas Eve 1967
[journal]
Home alone, with the lauds, a bayberry candle, candlelight reflected
in the glass doors, the tree dripping tinsel, on the bookshelf Lorenzo de
Medici and a pot of yellow mums, the brass dragon with a yellow
candle burning on it, a card of Rouault's Virgin Mary given to Greg by Leslie.
Northern River in its black frame. I've been itching-angry all day,
feeling baffled by people again, hating the triviality of it all, impatient
with Joey's idiotic cheerfulness and her coy baby voice going on to Jay
interminably and Judy's uninspired tagging-along with all the idiocy and
triviality. Paul very quiet.
I sleep uneasily beside Judy. Last night I dreamed we were at Anne's
place; I told Anne passionately, "The trouble is that I can't stand
Judy. I don't like this, I try not to feel like this, but I really don't
like her." Judy was standing by impassively. Anne came over to me and
crouched beside me and kissed me and said "I've never had the courage
to say that but I've always felt it, you have the courage."
Another dream, Jean-Jacques Gaté in the rafters of a barn where
Professor Estall held his class, smiling down, unmistakable.
When I woke it was very dark, I don't know what time. I got up, sat in
Olivia's red chair in the kitchen doorway, with the blue robe on, with Cat
asleep on the chair back, purring when I leaned my head back against him.
I read the Thames and Hudson Van Gogh - his loneliness and earnestness,
his colors, his constant return to the necessity of working, the painting
of his bedroom, his ear cut off, his joy at the south of France, bridge,
blossom, postman, irises. Then when I looked down the hall I saw a strip
of wall turn mauve where the light strikes it from the side window; the
enamel shine of the black stairs; I wanted to keep it and took a picture,
but lost the look of that one slab of violet light past the unlit upper
hall.
Tonight a walk with Paul past the university and the houses on King,
dry light flakes of snow glittering, lying in delicate chips on the ground
- roofs outlined in black-white contrast like my photograph of Top Withens
- that kind of finely lumpy frozen ground also black and white.
January 3, Wednesday
[letter]
It's worth going over to my place through the snow today since there
was a letter as I'd hoped. I'm at Greg's, working on a Hegel essay with
the whole apartment to myself while Greg is in Ottawa skiing for a few days.
I've a scrap of paper somewhere with Christmas Eve details and I'll find
it before I send this. Christmas morning I was the first up, 9:30 a.m. (bed
at 3 a.m.), turned the Messiah on loud and full of static, next to where
Paul was sleeping on the living room floor and jumped up and down on Judy's
bed. The rest soon came tumbling down - and sadly (time is the measure of
events as Frank says, or vice versa really) we ate breakfast before opening
presents - Judy's Christmas bread, really good, and coffee and orange juice
in long stemmed wine glasses.
THEN we opened presents: [long description of gifts].
(Interruption for a story: the night before Michel went home to Ottawa
for the holidays he came in while I was wrapping presents and I said "You'll
have to get out so we can do yours." A horrified light dawned on his
face, and we heard him calling from the kitchen a few minutes later - "Do
you want anything from A&P?" Later when we gave him his earthenware
mug he gave us each a Nonesuch record. It's lucky the record shop is across
the street from the A&P.)
1968? Problematic - I don't know what I'm going to do. I'm not getting
a Commonwealth Scholarship maybe because I don't have the background in
filmmaking - anyway it's 'no.' And I'm turning down my nomination for a
Woodrow Wilson Fellowship because the Ford Foundation has cut the number
of awards from 1000 to 150 for all of North America and Canada (partly because
of Viet Nam I think) and I don't want to study in the US anyway (for the
same reason - and because there really are no universities that have what
I need.)
So - what to do next year. Either work and earn money, as a high school
teacher I guess, or go to University of Toronto to do an MA in English,
which would be a background for film, a kind of detour: there's no problem
about getting money in Ontario and it's too late to apply to graduate school
money for England, where I'd like to be - perhaps I could study modern writers:
that's what I'd like to do, if I must do something other than film. I'll
miss Greg -
I've been deciding that Greg is a very modern person. He's always had
a background of relative affluence ($140 ski boots for Christmas) so he's
completely generous. His house has always been full of intelligent conversation,
tolerance, many interests, tons of books, so he's at ease with his general
intelligence as I'll probably never be. (I worry, "Is it really there,
this intelligence?" "Will it disappear?" "Is it enough?"
"What will it do?" since it's nearly all I have) and he has a
very friendly ease with any group of people he meets (Anne liked him because
when he came into her house he just pushed aside a pile of laundry on the
table and put his elbows in its place without any formality or wrinkled
nose.) (I like him because he's tidy!) He's generous and tolerant and understanding
and patient partly because he thinks these are good things to be and partly
because being the opposite doesn't occur to him - he doesn't need
to be otherwise.
But sometimes I get restless and bored and wonder whether I should look
for someone who would challenge me more - and whether there is anyone
who would challenge me more and at the same time leave me as much freedom
to be and become myself. Next year may decide the question for me. There
are advantages to being lonely again, but after having someone it is more
difficult. G's birthday is on January 11 - he'll be twenty five.
At last we have a lot of snow, like you, and it's pretty.
Judy isn't comfortable with me, even now. I talked to her about it one
night when she was here - asked why she nearly always brings Joanne when
she comes. She said that she still feels like half a person when she's with
me, still something about not being an Epp like the rest of us, who are
nastier, hastier, and I don't know what else. It's queer - she acts like
half of herself when she's with me too - with Joey she's twice as noisy,
twice as talkative, twice as exuberant, and she feels like herself. We're
less interested in the same things and I feel sad that we seem to be losing
touch: it's partly my fault, since I've become less noisy, less exuberant,
than she likes to be but remain nastier and hastier. She also feels alienated
from you, feels you can't want to know about her (and when you don't write
for months it doesn't help - I think that was nasty. And she's the child
who is most like you, strange you and she shouldn't have gotten closer.)
But she seems to love the wildness in Epps too - the way I love the wildness
in Don Carmichael - and the way I suppose he loves the wildness in someone
even wilder, and so on - it's silly, but I understand it.
Norman is doing his MA in Toronto.
Sunnyside - one of my friends, Jackie, has just taken a job there, after
she dropped out of school, and so I'm getting news of it again. It seems
less well run than it was. Did I tell you that my best kid, Carol, the one
who knocked me over with a leap when you were there, has been adopted, a
year ago, by the parents of Greg's friend Rick? She's the only girl in the
family and is fitting in really well, becoming interested in clothes - Rick's
been coming over ever since Greg has had this place but I only now found
out about it. She remembers me too. I'm delighted that she has a good family.
Rick is a good older bossier brother too. I hope to see her.
Jackie tells me that Bobby and John are still there.
12 January 1968
[journal]
Head full of vague regrets, especially for that man in Athens who traveled
in his Volkswagon house, who had such a sense of listening and yet was stern.
I don't remember his name, he'd learned to speak Greek from his villagers,
he had a guitar and some books. We went to a taverna where we could sit
and listen in peace to the girl at the piano who had such a voice - and
the Italian blond princess with her beautiful, perfect face and her elderly
husband. When we got up and went back to the bus so that he could drive
me home he said "Give me a kiss, not a sexy kiss, just a friendly kiss"
- I did, though I was afraid, and he let it go at that, said goodnight briefly
on the step of my doorless house and vanished. I wished I had kissed him
differently, listened to him better, not been sad and anxious, not read
the magazine as he talked to the journalist, watched him and been sure of
myself so that when he asked me to kiss him I could have been different,
not afraid; so that I could have put my hands around the back of his head
and kissed him very gently and comfortingly. It was a failure.
Other failures - not talking to Tom at the SUPA conference; even this
year the sad defiant discomfort that's grown up with John Glassco and Arnold.
Last night when Krista and Joan left after celebrating Greg's birthday cake,
I felt it all again, that sadness of not being able to manage with people,
never being able to put myself on a spot, lacking courage and intelligence
and beauty, and accomplishment. Krista talked about leaving her man in Calgary,
very straightforwardly and confidently: "I always know I'll find someone
else in two weeks." I wish I knew it and could look forward to next
year in that way - as I do, partially. Possibilities: the year is completely
open. Toronto? The North? English? Money? Where, how; solitude and loneliness?
January 13
[letter]
Greg is back and we're swimming hard against an overwhelming current
of work again - I can now play a lot of chords and some songs but need to
learn transitions. Made a very large gooey cake for Greg's birthday.
Thanks to you for the Neujahr's Kuchen which arrived quite fresh
(and especially for the cookies) and to Rudy for the candle, which is such
a beautiful color and is a long-burning one.
[undated note mid-January]
There it is at last: a little landslide of letters through the slot in
the door, and Mr Swerfeger (landlord) finds one for me in the pile on the
floor - as I'm going down the steps with it he calls me back to say there's
something else - a postcard from Bill. I'm reading the letter as I walk
through the courthouse front yard on my way to class, but it's too slippery
so I have to wait until I get to the psychology building - well, I've done
it again - the class is at 10:30 not 10; I never can remember the times
of my classes. But good - I can read my mail. Bill says he's working on
two books and that's why he hasn't written. (Why hasn't Olivia?) And you
say, first thing, how much you like the Parker - Greg will be so pleased
that you do. He knew all along that that was exactly what he wanted
to give you - I was dubious about whether you wouldn't actually prefer ordinary
ballpoints, but I'm glad he was right.
[undated letter - end of January]
We celebrated your birthdays together, at Anne and Harvey's, yesterday,
dinner and Sunday night stories around the fireplace, Anne talking about
the Sunday afternoon when Father came courting you, how you took him into
your room to look at a photograph album, something a bit intimate and sophisticated,
as two of the boys sang love songs under the window while Anne peered under
the door and someone else looked over the partition from the boys' room!
Also about how Father gave you the cedar chest by putting it under the Christmas
tree at the church with the presents from Sunday School teachers.
Then we discovered that arranged marriages happened even in your day,
the story of Willie Matties' wedding as she understood it from her friend
Justina. We enjoy it when she tells her stories because she's so original
and funny. Harvey is delighted too, and if she says "You wouldn't know
where that was," he protests that by now he knows the whole country
and the exact location of every Enns and Konrad and Martins in the whole
Peace River Country.
This weekend trip really was a holiday but the excuse for it was an interview
at the University of Toronto English department. I don't think I'll be in
graduate school next year because they won't give me much credit.
The train trip here and back was the best part. I started out from Kingston
at 4 a.m., dozed very warmly on a seat and then woke at daybreak to see
the countryside sliding by like a dream landscape, all blue and white and
misty with only a few yellow lights.
In Toronto I woke Paul up. His new landlady, like his old one, opens
the door a crack and says "What do you want." This one, she's
Ukrainian, calls him "Hey Paul Wepp!" That was Saturday and we
walked thru U of T campus and uptown to a movie. Then I went back to Anne
and Harvey's. Paul looks very good, he's an extremely good looking boy.
What you say about Greg is very convincing in a way, it's something I
tell myself too. "You'd be bored and restless with anyone at least
part of the time; you really need a warm home to work out of," but
then I worry about the other person having to put up with my restlessness
and doubts. Poor Greg, when I wonder if he isn't boring, he begins to wonder
too, whether it isn't true. He's gotten more philosophical tho' and knows
that it will pass in a couple of days. But I think that if I am like Father
I don't want to treat anyone as he has treated you. Maybe I need somebody
who for their own good is not so tolerant and patient, maybe I'll be worse
if put up with.
[undated letter later in February]
Sunday night, smell of borscht in the kitchen, The Creation, a
good week past. Letters written to Olivia, Mitchell, Anne and Harvey, and
both grandparents.
When I showed Michel your Valentine letter he said "It's as though
a nineteen year old had written it." I had felt the same way - as though
you've grown younger than me. How nice for you! I quoted part of it in a
letter to Olivia too.
I have been 'sick' - a ferociously sore throat and high fever - for a
few days, and have enjoyed it very much, with Greg bringing me quarts of
orange juice and hot toddies, and somebody sending two roses anonymously.
One night the philosophy class came to me! We had our regular Tuesday night
class in Greg's living room with me in a bathrobe and Greg passing around
coffees. I was croaking like a crow, and had to spend the whole evening
listening.
We've spent quite a lot of time watching the Olympics on television.
Greg watches the skiing and I the figure skating - and Michel anxiously
watches the constitutional conference. I'm enclosing a Globe and Mail
clipping of Greg's father [Neil Morrison]. The features in the photograph
are quite a lot like Greg's individually although they don't really look
alike when everything is put together.
Your Valentine letter. I do know exactly how you felt. I felt that exhileration
about Peter, Olivia, Frank more than anyone ever. In Rome two winters ago
meeting Jerry was that exhileration right from the beginning. But I'm less
courageous than you, and when this happens it is usually because some one
else comes to me. And that is sad. You're lucky to be able to care enough.
Judy is like me too, and finds it hard to make the effort. And that's like
Father. But I am learning and I know Judy is trying to learn. One of the
problems about Greg is that he gives me so much there's little left for
me to do, and that makes me lazy again.
I'm reading Kierkegaard, and he makes me think of you because I think
his idea of Christianity is very like yours.
The exam timetable is up: eight exams in sixteen days, at the end of
April. I've applied for a job with the English department for the summer.
I don't think I'll be teaching next year. One of the problems is that it
is difficult to be a really good teacher without any experience, and for
only one year. Also it would be terribly painful not to be a good teacher.
I haven't really the personality for it - can you imagine it? What I may
do is go back to Europe on my summer's savings and study nonofficially at
the Royal College film archive in London and the Film Institute in Rome.
I won't be doing an MA in English because the University of Toronto insists
that I take two years instead of one to do it in.
Your letter came at the same time as one from Olivia - marriage seems
not to have killed her off - for she's still getting into desperate situations.
Did I tell you Pat Ranch was in Montreal for several weeks? He phoned
me twice and we had one long talk - I gave him Peter's address. He's married,
living in Calgary, working as a salesman for a pharmaceutical company.
Wednesday February 21, Ottawa
[letter]
Back at the big house on Monkland Avenue, having an aperitif before dinner,
while Neil talks expansively about the fall of the Liberals - he was there
the night it happened, as he's advising Sharp and spends his days in conference
with the hysterical politicians trying to see how to save the party - funny
stories, worries, prejudices, opinions. I feel left out in a family so political,
because I've not a shred of political feeling. But this crisis has resemblances
to a novel: here's Sharp, finance minister and maybe the next Prime Minister
- that walking cadaver! - surrounded by an entourage who've staked their
next two months' salary and maybe future, on Sharp remaining a candidate.
Threats of his resignation? But the money contributed! All these people
from Vancouver! From Halifax! And the field mustn't be left open to Trudeau!
That Trudeau! Suddenly Canadian politics are dramatic, and the line-up for
the visitors' gallery at the House is like a line-up for a football game.
Red headlines for newspapers for three days now. The house full of newspapers,
Diefenbaker on television with his wattles quivering with glee. We'll have
to be sure to catch that newscast. Not me.
My first reaction was both fear of a vague kind - just a tug at the bottom
of my stomach - and disgust - amusement too - at the thought that our government,
our stability, should fall to pieces by accident. It reinforces my antipathy
to politics - "See how absurd it all is?"
I hitchhiked here last Saturday morning from Kingston - a bright morning
with clean snow - but didn't remember to check for the temperature. It seemed
very cold, and although the sun was beautiful, there was a high wind drifting
snow across the hill overlooking Kingston - but I soon had one short ride,
then a quarter mile walk, then another short walk, a ride from two hippy-looking
friendly people whose baby couldn't, wouldn't, take her eyes off me the
whole time I was in the car.
Then a thin blond boy in a St Remy Motors towtruck, who told me of his
ambition to climb from garage mechanic to high school shop teacher: "Some
people can stay on that Dupont job, not me. I don't know if I can make it.
It's a long way to climb." Then a little man with a brown goatee and
wire rims, a red-cheeked kindly look - an Austrian, thirty years in Canada,
who'd come over as a young man when Canada was advertised as the land of
jobs for everyone - still had a heavy accent, broken speech with incongruously
colloquial expressions mixed with 'mit's and 'und's. His back seat was covered
with a blanket and full of knobs - he was a Raleigh traveler like the Raleigh
men who used to visit us. He talked about the families that still invite
salesmen to stay for dinner - said they're decreasing. I remember liking
it when Father invited the Fuller and Raleigh men for meals - they were
strangers and therefore glamorous. And like Jack Arnold they had stories.
He drove at forty miles an hour and I was glad because the countryside was
brilliant and my feet - poked between brown bottles toward the heater
were warming.
When he let me off where he turned into a lane, I had to walk down a
winding stretch. There weren't many cars. A snowplow looked as though it
would have stopped for me. There was a typically decrepit Eastern Ontario
farm beside the road, but the sunlight was so white and the air so clear
that every building, every tree, every nail out of place and every bit of
bark stood out - perfectly defined and beautiful, black and white in a stern
composition with blue sky, a rotting old yellow school bus. I wanted to
take a picture. (More of that later.)
Eventually another car stopped - a long faced English-looking French
Canadian with the back of his car full of ice-fishing gear. He became quite
friendly after a while, when he discovered that I was interested in fishing
and not a hussy after all, not visibly anyway. He went a little out of his
way to take me to the other side of Smith Falls. There was another wait,
shivering, in the usual medium-town wasteland of boarded-up drive-in shacks,
trucker restaurants, service stations with tattered banners snapping desolately,
dirty banks of snow.
The car that stopped was a family - an Evangelical-looking couple with
two children and a white haired neighbour with Mrs Hamm's graciousness.
They were going to Ottawa - so we went on through the beautiful afternoon
- trees, fences, clean banks of snow all look beautiful to me after being
Kingston-bound so long. The neighbour talked about her growing up in Estevan,
her problems with getting nurses' training in the 30s - I told her about
you - I'm really proud of you and I brag about you - also because she reminded
me of you, with her warmth and intelligence.
When we got to Ottawa I was full of the trip - I always become very fond
of Canada when I hitchhike, its diversity, the good-intentioned friendly
people, the sense of all these lives so different and all so important to
their owners. When I shut up at last Greg told me the wind chill temperature
out there was - 30o, but I didn't believe it - I know what 30 below is like.
This is a funny family, I've come to think that it would have been as
difficult to grow up in as ours was. Neil is at his best at work; he's a
witty and shrewd manager and thinker, but at home he tends to be grumpy
and self-centred - when we talk at dinner it's about him. He - surprisingly
- has a few of the same prejudices that I can't stand in Father. Jean says
he's a 'partisan' when he gets involved - it means the same thing. What
I dislike here is the way everyone toadies to him, is apprehensive when
he is in a bad mood, draws him out. I have a feeling, which may be my feeling
only, that he doesn't really like Greg and would be more interested
in a son as aggressive as himself. I resent that of course, a little, but
have to admit to his charm when he's in a good mood.
Jean is a paragon - sometimes it bothers me that in all her perfect control,
kindliness and friendliness, I am unable to find a person I can recognize.
I've never seen her touch anyone, even her children. She's civil and interested
but undemonstrative - I've never seen her in an emotion - she has them I'm
sure but I think she's a little like Judy.
On the other hand, we're very different people - she's theoretically
oriented and I find myself more and more artistically or emotionally oriented.
I can see why Greg has trouble feeling that he is something distinct, definite:
he has parents who are so tolerant but in a way so impersonal in their interest
and generosity that it must have been different from your quite passionate
way of making me feel like a distinct personality. It sometimes surprises
me too when I realize that some of the habits of perception and interest
that I like most in myself come directly from you! But, granted, there's
a lot of other stuff thrown in.
For next year - I'm also serious about learning photography, as I've
always wanted to, both because I love it as an art form and because it's
good - excellent - training for a director's eye. I've got so much to learn,
and I feel as though there is no satisfactory structured (ie school)
way of learning it, so I must see how well I can do at self education -
which is challenging, exciting, and demands ingenuity and determination
and shrewdness I'm not sure I have. But I'm relieved and excited. When,
if, I do graduate degrees it will be with a reason better than academic
distinction. What do you think?
10 March
[journal]
I never talk about Viet Nam, and it has permeated my apolitical amoral
world and makes me avoid newscasts, avoid America, refuse to talk or think
about the war, leaf quickly past the front pages and past photographs in
magazines. My room has its images of serenity and is itself my image of
style as serenity but there are no pictures of Viet Nam in it. Tonight The
Way It Is showed "Last Reflections on a War," Beryl Fox's
film made as a tribute to Bernard Fall. Fall's wife read a letter he had
written from Viet Nam. Beryl Fox made a brief statement, "Bernard Fall
was my friend. He taught me ..." Her long neck, her fragile small face,
her fine fragile features, her exact, slow enunciation. My emotion is ambiguous
- tears only at the addition of a folksong and images of riverboats, happiness.
The thought that 'one' must be accountable for the most serious error of
all modern life and something like fear at the risk so barely imagined -
not quite fear because so easily put out of mind. And of course surprise
and envy, or envious hope, because this young beautiful woman person made
the film, saw and listened and made this of it. The war must negate all
our adjustments to our selves and our lives, metaphysical or vocational
and even petty-personal, but there seems no way to see it either as a challenge
for which even the most demanding readjustments (going to Viet Nam) could
be answers. Nothing is right - not forgetting it or remembering it; certainly
not guilt. Forgetting or remembering, there's guilt. The emotion either
of helplessness or of a desire for helplessness - which?
14 March
Bande à Part - Jean-Luc Cinema Goddard - dumb Greg going
on amiably in the kitchen - Nur Ein Schlummer bass through my feet
in the hammock, can't find anything more melancholy - Jean-Luc Cinema Goddard,
Karina's face grey, helpless this time, "L'amour va vers l'amour comme
les écoliers qui sortent de l'école." Two hours traffic
on our stage. Séparé par une assez grande indifférence,
méfiant et tragique, chaude et parfumée, "le mariage
c'est donnez ses seins et donner ses jambes". Who Ich Jesum Finde.
Pater sitting at Christian's table hoping the working men will smile at
the beauty of their children. The tune from "Ne me quitter pas".
The enigmatic centre, like Sartre's man, a little draining hole in the midst
of water disappearing in a motionless vortex - me coming up the stairs feeling
my earrings and the loose hair along the side of my face, Peter Harcourt
between the glass doors, coming out alone. I take two steps at once to show
off and he says some things and I continue in and feel vulnerable - it is
because of my face that I'm like the draining hole - what do those looks
mean? Pretty? Alone? Strange? Harcourt, what did he mean? Take off the outside,
he gives you the inside, where's the soul? "I believe in you"
he says so easily, he can say easily. I believe too. Like Pater making a
life of moments; making the moments when they're not there, like Godard,
of course I can, but with Greg? I could do anything, I could leave him forever,
this minute. "Mad's mad isn't she?" "No she's not. Yes, but
I love her." "So do I I guess," I don't know about you. "How's
Greg?"
[undated letter]
I've saved up writing you until now because I had a weekend in Montreal
planned with Judy and Paul. Eventually Judy found she had too much work,
and Paul took the train to Montreal immediately after work on Friday afternoon.
I had hitchhiked to Montreal Friday early afternoon, with Tugwell, who's
just back from Europe - we rode through the rain in a truck, shouting reminiscences
and jokes over the roars of engine and wet tires.
The countryside is full of a very raw early spring. Cold rain has washed
away most of the snow, and water is running across the fields, much more
quietly than in the Peace. But the rain brings out color in everything,
like pebbles underwater in a jar. Sap and water turn branches red and yellow
and make the banks of rock beside the highway brilliant - orange and purple
where they are usually grey. The 401 to Montreal is lined with small woods
- crooked birches, black trunks, small trees covered with last year's leaves
dried to a gold-bronze color - everything distinct and glowing, even the
dead grass, under the rain. It makes me long to film it. When I got to the
outskirts of Montreal I had to find a new ride - and it turned out to be
a florist in his van, a French Canadian with a flat good face and a strong
rough French. It is exciting to come into Montreal and suddenly hear this
other language coming out of your own mouth - and that most delightful of
languages.
Richard [Behrmann]'s phone wasn't answered so I went to Peter's place
and arrived at his door - he and Christine have a tiny apartment on 15th
floor, a kitchen and bedroom built into one room, only the bathroom separate.
He looks quieter, Peter, but Richard, who sees a lot of him, says
he seems happier.
When it was time to get Paul from the train Peter got out his new car,
a Mustang! And drove down to the Gare Centrale with me. I looked and looked
- and couldn't see Paul until suddenly there was a menacing pair of sunglasses
nose to nose with me, and behind them Paul who had on a very smart new raincoat
- he's begun to look Eastern.
By this time we'd made contact with Richard and all went along to one
of his friend's parties where Peter began to seem his old self as he launched
into a very dogmatic argument about modern literature.
On Saturday Paul and I left Richard sleeping and went out into the rain
to see Montreal - he may tell you about what impressed him. I like being
with him - he's better company than most of my peers because he's soft-spoken
and doesn't talk much, but watches and listens and thinks - I'm really proud
and fond of him.
On Saturday night we talked to Richard's friends in the apartment above
him - a Trotskyite and a wild-animal-looking fussy-haired psychology student,
and some of their borderline hippy friends - Paul got a good inside look
at student radicalism.
On Sunday I had to hitchhike back - work - but Paul stayed and Richard
showed him around McGill. He was going to take the midnight train back to
Toronto and arrive just in time to go to work on Monday morning.
I got a ride nearly the whole way with a boy who had an Honours BA in
economics and yet was so shallow, so humorless, had values so fatally different
from mine (make a million dollars, go out with a girl who most importantly
must be slim, well dressed, and know how to act in expensive clubs) that
I felt immensely lucky to have found Greg and was sorry he wasn't there
when I got home (he's away skiing) so I could hug him! We've felt very close
for the past while and it makes me wonder how long things can go on going
so well. I'm glad you seem to like him.
I've yet to answer your last letter - my birthday was rather disappointing
because I had to give a badly prepared paper in the morning and then go
straight home and work out in twenty four hours another paper due the next
day. So I missed my usual birthday ritual of thinking about the year that
had passed. Also I miss Olivia who's a good birthday celebrater. Your birthday
money plus the $5 from Gpa Epps makes enough money to buy the 2 yards of
fabric I've been looking at in Montreal for about 6 months now - I'm going
to make Paul a rather wild tie out of what's left - it's a beautiful fabric,
rich colors with a rather velvety surface. I'm going to drape it over my
bed until I make it up and show it off when the philosophy class meets
at my place tomorrow.
Isn't this good note-letter paper, long like a scroll?
Other birthday presents - a Leveillée record from Paul, dinner
at a French restaurant from Michel and a bouquet of hyacinths from Greg
(who is still broke after getting me that guitar for Christmas). A big package
of art originals from Maria and Toozie and a Mexican Maya dress from Anne
- oh yes, and a towel from Grandma Konrad, with Hirschensaltz Kuchen and
Russian candies wrapped in it!
In your letter previous to this one you asked why younger students seem
so lethargic - and if it is necessary to be deprived as you were to love
learning as you do. My first answer is - sometimes now I run out of enthusiasm
and am not sure I wouldn't rather be ignorant - and it isn't from lethargy
really, but rather from limited capacity. Sometimes I feel stuffed - learning
has been my work, my profession, and I've done a lot of it, but myself,
me, the personality inside the learner can't keep up, can't understand everything
learned in relation to itself, and so gags.
The university system is hard, because it is necessary to learn in order
to make a living, and to learn as quickly as possible so that one can start
making the living - and that means that one eventually learns by lists,
just to get through the enormous course materials. I rebel at this, things
must come in slowly enough to be relevant or I become confused and depressed.
In one philosophy course this year we study rags and tags of 8 philosophers
- 8 personalities whose world view to be understood must be seen in relation
to still other personalities and events, not only understood but compared
with other world views to see what is new and valuable in them, or traditional,
or dangerous, and then finally to be evaluated in terms of one's own thinking
with either the one or the other needing to be modified. It's enormous work,
when sometimes even the most elementary step, understanding the words,
is almost impossible (Hegel).
Or in an English course it is the same, with not only the world view
to be understood but even more the emotional imagination - for me to feel
that I understand the works of an author I must sense that I've felt my
way into him - reading his letters helps and especially visualizing very
keenly his images in order to taste the way he sees. I often think I'd like
to go on in English - perhaps even teaching it would not be so bad. This
summer I'm to mark papers for [Kerry] McSweeney's summer course in Victorian
literature - it will be fun - and worth about a dollar per paper. There
- in spite of saturation I'm sounding enthusiastic again.
That book Judy sent you - I don't know anything about it except that
it's about experiments in sexual freedom. I wouldn't worry about it if I
were you - it's propaganda of the sort I used to send you I suppose. She
feels oppressed by having to keep secrets from you and wishes she didn't
have to - that's good. I think she is all right and she'd be relieved if
you could feel that too and stop being so intense about it all. She's pretty
sensible and, if anything, too careful rather than not careful enough. You
must write her oftener, and oftener than me because she needs it more.
25 March
[journal]
Dream last night. Peace River Country, a lake with an island near shore
and a small white church gleaming among trees, with a tall slender tower.
Crossing in a boat, waves piling up and sliding along the side of the church.
Inside, a loft where Father Patrick had lived, his things still there, letters
and books, a window in a long, dusty, dim room. Church become a rooming
house, a red chest studded with many brass tacks, and inside more of Father
Patrick's private books. I remember the dream all day, but no more of it
than I've recorded. It seems bright and important.
Remember Paul lying asleep on Richard's couch, naked to the waist, with
the skin on his chest and over his fine features the same color, smooth,
shining, all of his lines perfectly turned and his head thrown back to catch
the dim light.
26 March
Don wrote. Lying in bed, I thought about Greg and about my name, which
he seldom uses. "Ellie" is a silly prideless name that to me seems
two transparent pretty syllables, little more - to others it is a shape,
tone of voice, pitch of voice, real expressions, a walk, a solid characteristic
she - to me it's nothing - I don't know any other Ellie's - it's
not the centre, the amoeba that I am - it's something that designates the
one she I'm in principle unable to see. If 'Ellie' became that unreliable
face in the mirror both would be even stranger to me, face and name. The
face has a name, as I have no name. The name has no face to me - it presents
its face only to others. If the nameless face had the faceless name - there
would be a complete whole, snapped shut like two halves of a walnut shell
with me outside. but faceless name and nameless face - as they are they
have something to do with me, my to-and-from-the-world gates, my gate-hieroglyphs.
Pale sun, warmth like real spring this afternoon. I bought iris, red
anemones, yellow freesia for the yellow glass before my mirror - floor waxed
white, pictures up - De Neuve's fawn face, Mia Farrow, Dürer's arrogant
young man with a thistle, his red soldier, his flax haired very young man
above the typewriter, Botticelli's young girl with flower-mouth, his annunciation
angel, the Postman of the Midi, Nureyev's back and arm, Gaugin's hungry
man, Yeats with his knotted scarf - Mad sitting on the bed hunched over
her papers with her hair twisted back and her face in profile alternately
soft and dogged (the square lower lip) - Ted Lloyd silent and uncomfortable
in his chair, harried eyes behind the beard. Michael Fox looking up and
smiling over the contradictions of his hooked nose, pointed chin, and little
easy mouth. ("Relations with professor: 1. friendly 2. cooperative
3. unfriendly" - almost affectionate, uneasy) - a Marx seminar at my
place. David Polluck looking scrubbed, like a small boy who's just had his
hair smoothed down and his collar straightened, with fat little boy thighs
and a look of immense hopeful friendliness. April is the last month I'll
belong to this university. Michel in his red plaid bathrobe open to the
middle of his hairy plump chest, across the breakfast table talking about
determinism in that pale sunlight that had already begun early this morning.
Frodo is back in the Shire: it is 2:45 a.m.
March 29
While I was still in bed this morning, Greg brought me a thick blue airmail
letter, special delivery from Don. I was afraid to open it. I spent most
of the afternoon wrestling out an answer to it. The letter as he wrote it
- tiny black letters on lined notepaper, 19 sides closely written - "I
so much wish that this letter were well written; but it is very painful
inside and I have to force my hand across the page." - "me cast
in the role of the woodpecker indifferent to the flowers of the field, presenting
a challenge - by resisting - to Olivia's role as the lover and propagator
of life values and humanity. A continual game between the two of us jousting
for position and better terms. Seen in this way, I suppose my present practices
must seem a total capitulation or rather I should say a 'conversion.'"
The letter reads like the Quartet, elusive essences of three people circling
about one another like fish in a dark bowl, feeling movements of the water,
seeing nothing, not able to recognize each other with only the sluice of
water along the gills for token, suspension at an undetermined level on
a plane perhaps different from those swum in by the other two, weight of
water on all sides, dumbness. "Oh, also, when I saw you (in your room
that aft and on the boat) I wanted to ask you what I should do with myself
- I respect your judgment more than anyone's; as to me, it seeks the same
intangibles."
Suddenly, in even smaller writing, "Oh Ellie, this hurts so, I almost
called you. I feel utterly deserted, my world is in ruins, with absolutely
no one to turn to for help, or solace, or guidance." "And third,
above all, to thank you, for you have quite literally saved my life and
given me the will to go on. I can only say that I deeply hope you know this,
and that you know that should ever you need anything (I almost said and
I'm not sure I don't mean, including my life) from me it is yours."
The most urgent question for myself - do we really seek the same intangibles?
I doubt it.
April 2
- Seek the true self and in time become
- The true self sustained by generous pride.
- Pride of body is beauty of mind, beauty of body is pride of mind,
- The true self sustains a generous pride.
- Lifting hair is laughter of mind, eyes and talk are nearness of mind,
- You are it, daughter of Zion, generous pride.
Litany, incantation, inspired by Vogue magazine and George Eliot, and
motivated by unhappy jealousy at Andrea [Maitland]'s cynical self-conscious
wit, hard grey-eyed fine-tooled face. Desire to gnaw at bones.
7 April
Sidney Hook on Marx and Hegel: "The development of personality can
be understood as a process of overcoming the obstacles which have been created
by past achievements - achievements which are as genuine an expression of
personality as the effort necessary to prevent them from cramping and routinating
new experiences."
[undated letter]
Two letters from you at once, on one morning - in a long succession of
bright, hot mornings. When I wake in the morning the first thing I see is
branches against the blue sky, red tipped with buds like flowers. All day
we hear the kids shouting outside. The willows have turned green, little
by little - at first it was impossible to tell whether the green was there
or whether it was just the play of light caught in the branches. I've found
clumps of violets in the lawns, daffodils are opening at the university,
small nondescript blue flowers run wild in the grass. We don't run wild
much, Greg and I. The exams oppress us but the brilliance of the mornings
fill us with energy again. We got up early (9) to be able to walk while
everything is quiet. I'm buying a bicycle again.
Greg's place is full of big books from the library, on Europe - geography
and art, picture books. I get excited again, going through my papers and
notes from last time. Greg is looking forward to bicycling through England
in spring. I'm looking forward to becoming a really good photographer (and
getting a really good camera) because it's another way of getting down,
keeping, your experience, making your life really your own.
I'm glad you got to Yeats at least, a little, because I think he's the
greatest English poet EVER and possibly the greatest in any language. What
brought me to talk about him is that he too spent his life as a poet trying
to make his life his own and succeeded magnificently.
I'm serious about what I said in Rudy's telegram about his coming here
this summer. Our place has three bedrooms, it's next to the lake, he could
ride Greg's bicycle and he wouldn't be bored. We may be able to do some
sailing and canoeing too and Greg could teach him to swim. A large park
is half a block away, Kingston is beautiful in summer. I thought perhaps
he could come back with Anne and Harvey. Tell Father it won't cost him any
money.
Your poem is - well, you really need to get rid of some of your archaic
and romantic diction (Oh my Friend - no capital letter on friend and "oh!"
is dubious) - if you get a chance to read more Yeats you'll see how his
style got less and less 'poetic,' more and more condensed, more and more
natural. But you have a really excellent sense of rhythm: your last two
lines are especially good:
- Lest, in my haste to touch, to taste, to handle, and to see
- It blind me and elude my trembling grasp.
You are quite well on the way to having a style of your own, somebody
talked about "that purification from insincerity, vanity, malignancy,
arrogance, which is the discovery of style" - that's a good quotation.
Mother, listen, you really must go on in English, next year if you can.
Why does it seem unlikely? Why would Edmonton be impossible? Couldn't Father
sell a bit of machinery or land or something? You'd be an investment you
know, and you'd be such a good teacher. After a while you could get your
MA and then you could teach at the Junior College and do for other people
what Johnson has done for you. Don't quit! Think of a way! If your problem
is money then I'll just have to stay in Canada and work to put you through.
What do you think?
Sociology would be a good minor. So you're having 'end of the year' blues
- I had them in grade nine and grade twelve, won't have them this year because
there's so much to move on to.
Yes - I do feel that if I came home this summer I could accept you more,
but the same problem is still there - Father. I don't like him and I don't
like not liking him and I don't like what I am when I'm with him. And you're
on his side of course. It's a difficult problem, almost insoluble. It would
be good to bring Greg to see you and my growing-up country but with Father
there it's impossible. (It's impossible anyway, because he has to write
his thesis and he's booked on a flight September 7.)
3 exams gone, 6 to go.
This has been short, there's Heidegger to get on to.
part 4
- raw forming volume 7: august 1967 - september 1968
- work & days: a lifetime journal project
|