March 7th
[journal]
- of a wild windy morning of no sleep.
Last night lying in half-dream with seaweed thoughts thrashing in my
mind and the window thumping faintly from the wind. Until surrealist morning
framed in my window -
Olivia coming in in the dark to smooth my covers and hang up my red shift.
She doesn't hang up her own things. It was touching to see her hanging mine
-
Lying on the floor, stretched flat with my elbows tight over my face,
shaking with grief. Cathy and Olivia sitting behind me silent, and not hearing
the "goaway, goaway, goaway, goaway" shrilling in my mind.
Flat, with tears sliding down the sides of my face. A feeling of retreat
into a hard black triangle far away in grey nebulous ...
Olivia touching my chest and far away saying "Ellie what is the
mattah? You can tell me. Tell me! Ellie!"
[Earlier] walking home with hard crooked steps - holding hands with Dennis
unfeelingly. Calvin and Olivia behind us. Wes grinning at the door under
his cocky hat.
Moments dancing slow dances with Dennis when there was nothing but the
beat of the music and the sliding beat of our footsteps - his shoulder under
my hand, my shoulder under his. My face along his. The muscles moving under
his skin. His face along my neck. No person, Dennis: a shoulder of comfort
and reassurance of being precious, as I remember Frank -
"I have been faithful to you, Cynara! In my fashion." Standing
to look out the window on the cool dim street. With Dennis looking at me
as tho' I were lovely. Responding with ludicrous earnestness to his gallantries,
and laughing, then, later. Torturous dancing with Calvin so aggressive that
I pushed him away in my mind, violently. Ellen's thin body entire animation
and her pretty narrow feet flashing. The couple in the corner dancing in
gay improvisations, he beautiful and dark, she light and delicate. Tyrone
dancing with a girl in a blue dress, their arms around each other's necks
loosely, heads tilted to talk. Olivia following complex calypso rhythms
like a West Indian. Ghazali smiling and solicitous.
A feeling of isolation and loss; the feeling of being alone at a party.
No contacts established.
And in the dissolving dark of it all this morning, my poetry book (all
loose pages) and Auden -
- Lay your sleeping head my love
- Faithless on my human arm.
- Time and fevers burn away
- Individual beauty from
- Thoughtful children, and the grave
- Proves the child ephemeral.
- But in my arms till break of day
- Let the living creature lie -
- Mortal, guilty, but to me
- The entirely beautiful.
-
- Certainty, fidelity
- On the stroke of midnight pass
- Like vibrations of a bell,
- And fashionable madmen raise
- Their pedantic boring cry:
- Every farthing of the cost,
- All the dreaded cards foretell,
- Shall be paid, but from this night
- Not a whisper, not a thought,
- Not a kiss nor look be lost.
-
- Beauty, midnight, vision dies:
- Let the winds of dawn that blow
- Softly round your sleeping head
- Such a day of sweetness show
- Eye and knocking heart shall bless,
- Find the mortal world enough;
- Noons of dryness see you fed
- By the involuntary powers,
- Nights of insult let you pass
- Watched by every human love.
This morning a smile for the wind and another for the histrionics of
last night.
(And remember Prokop's with Ghazali, the taxi and the steak.) [19th birthday
celebration]
[back to letters]
Two things today:
- I am secretary for the CUCND for next term.
- I have a job.
Most important, I have a job. Here in Kingston. At Sunnyside. I am not
excited primarily about having a job, or about the money (I could make nearly
twice as much a month at the cannery - it is $125 per month plus board and
room), but about the job itself. Listen. Sunnyside is a rambling white Colonial
house about five blocks from here, surrounded by acres of grass and trees.
There are two stone gateposts and a sign that says "Sunnyside."
[Sunnyside Children's Centre] The house: a home for disturbed children taken
from foster homes. There are about fifteen kids between four and eleven
years old, not mentally retarded at all, in fact, most are above average
in intelligence, disturbed in that they have trouble relating to other children
or to adults or both. They stay at Sunnyside for a year or eighteen months
until they are ready for adoption. During their stay they are kept in this
enormous, wonderfully tidy but yet full of kid-stuff house with its dogs
and cats and records and pictures and smothered with all the happiness and
affection and individual treatment possible, and slowly they begin to act
like bright normal kids. I spent last Saturday afternoon and dinner there
as an interview to see how it would be and to have the place look me over.
Tonight they phoned to tell me that I was - bar catastrophe - in. During
the afternoon I met most of the kids, played baseball in the slush, broke
up a few fights, and talked to Miss Detweiler (second boss lady) [psychologist,
clinical director 1954-1967).
She explained that the staff includes a psychologist, a social worker,
so on. All of the staff meets often to discuss the children individually,
and each child is handled according to a special tactic almost military
in character. Some kids get the overwhelming affection bit, some who tend
to be over affectionate are reassured in other ways. All of them are given
the happiest atmosphere the staff can manage and the results are steady
and warming. Do you blame me for feeling very happy about getting on, pay
be hanged? My job will be a sort of glorified baby-sitting: recreation,
getting up and putting to bed, cuddling and cooing and scolding when necessary.
They are very dear kids and I'm looking forward to it all especially. The
whole summer of playing with kids. The job also provides for part-time next
year, so that will be extra money then. And all this is near the campus
and the library for the summer. There are also other college kids working
at Sunnyside full and part time. And Olivia will be in Toronto.
See you post exams.
March 14
I've gone temporarily underground. To study - and quite literally underground
because I've discovered that the musty mole-y corridors of the stacks at
the library are the ideal place to study. Not beside the English shelves
tho! (Temptation to browse, eg love letters of Carlyle). So I have a corner
beside a lot of dusty grey Spanish books.
Spring is here - residence is in a constant manic state. But what about
Sexsmith? It's a glorious place for March and April, when the water is roaring
away across the street by the post office and the sisters are out in front
of their house digging out their ditches with their sober black skirts flirting
in the wind.
Am studying Synge and the Irish stage in English (not Riders to the
Sea this time - The Playboy of the Western World, and it's beautiful.)
Got the collected works of Gerald Manley Hopkins (and snatches of his journals
and letters!) from Olivia for birthday.
March 23
It is almost impossible to realize that in exactly a month from today
the exams will be over, my first year at university will be over, our Ban
Righ III family will be wind-scattered forever. And then summer, Sunnyside,
summer school studies (I hope to audit some courses - perhaps Spanish or
German or both), books to read, explorations and wanderings on campus. The
summer holidays begin so early.
It's nearly dinnertime and I'm so hungry that I can't study - half an
hour to wait.
Report on activities: yesterday went to mass in Marg's wonderful hat
to hear the Palm Sunday music. All the statues of Christ were draped with
purple. On Easter morning the hangings are removed. The ceremony yesterday
was wonderfully colorful: three priests in splendorous red and gold robes
which they changed for purple ones later in the service. The small boys
in their white choir robes filed through the cathedral in a procession carrying
palm branches. The wonderful big organ thundered in the back balcony. Most
of the congregation had small palm branches as well, and a little girl across
the aisle was beating up a little uproar with hers.
Then last night listened to some of Bach's Easter music on CBC - perhaps
you heard it too?
It is a beautiful, bright Monday - the ice in the lake is clearing out.
People are down promenading along the sidewalk.
Olivia has finally begun to do some work - I got her up at 7:30 this
morning and no one on the floor could believe their eyes because usually
she tumbles into her clothes and slides into the dining room just as they
are closing the doors at 8:30 - unkempt and a little surly.
Everyone is out in summer clothes -
We did the Schuman A Minor Concerto in Music a day or two ago - made
me a bit homesick.
-
Five minutes before French class on Thursday morning - all is busy but
happy - first exam on the 8th - thanks for sending the pin - it is a conversation
piece on campus - it looks as tho' I'm 'pinned' you see and everybody wants
to know who - a meeting with International House last night at Dr Colbourne's
(math prof very interested in international students) with cocoa and apples
and cakes - met a boy there from Camrose who has worked in Fort St John
and sat jabbering with him excitedly about Beaverlodge sports days and Grande
Prairie softball tournements and so on. And he has seen the La Glace signpost
- it feels uncanny to meet someone who knows where La Glace is, as tho'
someone else had trespassed in a private dream I had or a world I only imagine
to exist. Something about working here this summer will be welcoming foreign
students who arrive early, at the end of August to the Sept 16 opening of
registration next fall.
We are having lovely weather, the sun wakes me at 7:30 every morning
by camping on my face, my red twigs are bursting into leaf from their warm
corner by the register.
We had a floor picture taken of all Ban Righ II and if you want a copy
(they are large 6"-8" approx) please send $1.50 rather soon.
Congradulations, Judy, on your rhetorical triumphs, and luck on the GP
eliminations [4-H speaking contests]. I've been thinking how close you are
to grade twelve and how close, after that, to college. Every year reels
by so quickly that I'll be in graduate school tomorrow and you'll be a freshette.
- Oh I talked to some engineers last night, Paul, trying to get info on
aeronotical engineering. But they were electrical and chemical engineers
and knew nothing! - How is the calf crop? Don't forget to tell me what happened
in the crucial girls' basketball game - and has the wonderfull wild-watery
gumbo Peace River Spring arrived yet? I miss the savagery of our back-pasture
torrents here where spring is so pastel and pretty, but tame. Muddy feet
aching from cold and wood boats stuck in the culvert and a patch of earth
under the window along the south wall with tiny green weeds beginning to
grow. Getting stuck in the field on the way to pick crocuses. Pussy willows.
Perhaps you've noticed that I still think of the 'Old Place' as home; the
'East Place' doesn't have that root feeling. Queer about nostalgia: you
miss even the things, times, places, people, that you didn't enjoy much
in the first place, just because you know there's no going back. Does everyone
feel just a little frightened once in a while, not often, when they realize
they are steaming ahead blindly and happily into a complete dark? Strange
that we are so gay about it; you'd think we'd be more frightened than we
are. But one of the reasons I admire man is precisely this irrational devil-may-care
determination not to be frightened, the habitually stiff upper lip. And
the marvellous ability of 'making the most.'
Reason for this philosophizing is a book I'm reading called The Tin
Drum by Günter Grass, a very strange book told in first person
narrative by a fictional hunch-backed dwarf drum-player in a mental asylum.
Wow!
How do you like Great Expectations Judy? It's rather better, I
think, than Copperfield. Olivia's best friend in Montreal has an
old grandfather who they used to call the "Aged Parent." Some
of the characters are delicious aren't they. Miss Havisham and Mrs Pocket
particularly!
Oh I found a good word today: 'wanderjahre." Wouldn't you like to
have one in Europe? Paul and Rudy don't realize - or do you? - how lucky
they are to be growing up as boys and able to hitchhike. And make more summer
job money!
Oliver hasn't a job yet but wants to work in TO (Toronto - as per idiom
on campus).
The pancake trees of last fall are now stringbean trees because of their
long (6" or more) springtime tassels.
Good ol' Sexsmith will soon be in its "mud-luscious and puddle-wonderful"
glory.
Did you know that G'ma Konrad sent me a box of fruitcake for my birthday?
The kids on the floor were overjoyed. Oh yes, and a doily.
I have up some new pictures stolen from a magazine: one is an underwater
photograph of red fish in beet-colored water swimming like gold-eyed dreams
with gaping mouths. Another is a self-portrait of Rembrandt in gold-brown
tones, the other is a blue-green Diana by Klee - but I know I've told you
about this - old stuff! Catherine de Neuve and Robert Frost and the guitar
player are still up - all of them have a serenity about them - is that why
I find them attractive?
- Oh, another thing I'm dreadfully pleased with was in my last modern
dance class. We were doing improvisations to music. There were only four
of us: the assignment was to work out an interpretation of a pagan bringing
an offering (fearfully yet joyfully) to his wooden god (in this case the
back of the piano), to music. (Interspersed necessary information: Maggie
is an advanced phys ed major who teaches us modern dance. She is a beautiful
dancer and has a lovely body - it is something to see her move.) The assignment
was a good one and fun to work out - and for the first time in all of these
classes I got a "That was beautiful" from Maggie, who meant it,
instead of the summary "Good" she gives most people most of the
time. Bit of a thrill. I've enjoyed those classes, tho I spent half of the
first three weeping in the washroom! I'm sorry we're finished.
What a patchy letter this is, but you know why. Back on schedule post-exams.
24 Tuesday
Olivia stuck her head into my door at 6:15 this morning and asked if
I would like to go for a walk - at 6:30 we were out of the big wooden doors
with the paper boys and a loner taxi or two. Walked along the lake; sun
just rising and glittering among the rocks and the ice. There was a huge
chunk of ice out by our 'desert island' on the horizon and it looked like
an iceberg. Quiet. Early-morning cool.
And devouring hunger by 7:30!
Am working quite hard and steadily but am determined not to go to 2 a.m.s
or skip meals etc or drive myself into a frenzy of anxiety. I'm not really
worried about them because I've not failed any exams yet! The Christmas
exams were and always are severely marked - and I studied only haphazardly
for them because I didn't want to mess up my schedule. The very amusing
thing is the way it is always rather enjoyable to study for exams: the intensive
self-saturation and the way things begin to fall into logical notches -
think of how much anyone could learn if they were continually under this
sort of motivation! Also, little romances seem to be putting up shoots:
Moira Beattie (the Saskatchewan girl I've told you about) and Roger Hamilton
(the Camrose boy I told you of last letter) have discovered each other and
he comes to dinner at Ban Righ on weekends. I'm pleased!
In music we are doing a bit of work on contemporary music written in
the twelve-note scale rather than the customary majors and minors: composers
like Hindemith, Bartok, Stravinski. Odd dissonances and harmonies with tunes
from a surrealist dream of some kind.
Good Friday morning
Last night after studying Olivia and I were doing personality inventories
from a psychology book. We had to finish a sentence when given a beginning
word like "man," "marriage," "my mother thinks
my father," "I wish." The joke of the evening was the sentence
keyed off by "a friend." Olivia's sentence was "A friend
is somebody you can depend on;" mine, "A friend is an independent
companion."
Clothes - you asked how the situation is. Rather comical! It is awkward
not having a sewing machine because so many things get ripped and unwearable.
Situation thus rather poor - my only summer clothes are my bathing suit
and a pair of shorts, no kidding! And I have nothing Sunday to wear because
the brown dress is sagging a bit and has been scooted down to the proletariat
ranks of my one skirt and two blouses and a dress for classes. It was good
of you to offer to make me a suit and I'd like one, but there are things
I need more that I would like you to make - but just now I've not got time
to look for patterns, and haven't got money to buy material - and by later
in the summer there'll be no time for you to do any sewing Mom. I dunno.
I have a pattern tho', for a housecoat which I badly need because my 'Joseph'
shift is fraying at the seams and I've had to cut the elbows off because
they looked like a big bald egg (ie elbow) in a multicolored nest of threads.
My only problem is material; I don't know what to decide about that, so
guess I'll leave it until April 22 - whee!
Meals at exam time tend to become Events because we take hours and talk
avidly just as relaxation from books.
Lovely, beautiful morning tho' it stormed last night and all the seagulls
whirled in hysterical high circles shrieking down on the earth - my red
twigs are not only in leaf - they are blossoming in tiny white flowers.
So they can't be willow twigs.
Railway fare return from Toronto to Edmonton is now about $65. Bus from
Edmonton to GP return is about $20. So if I have 90-odd spare dollars (har)
I'd like to come home for a week just before school starts next fall - but
I've my $275 debt to pay and clothes to buy and next year to live through
and a trip to Europe tentatively scheduled for next summer. All this runs
rahther into money. Don't really see how to manage but perhaps somehow -
I do seem to have 'flown' for good don't I?
March 29, 3 o'clock Easter morning
[journal]
I forget so easily what it is that I want to be - I forget and I ignore
it. I have not been nineteen yet for a month, but I've forgotten as tho'
I were thirty-four and fat - at the end of my first year in university,
disillusioned with myself.
What or who to blame I'm not sure. Olivia hasn't been entirely good for
me, but worse - because I am older - I have not been entirely good for her.
I remember the exile of my first few months. Perhaps they were good, perhaps
better than now.
Motivation is something I have lots of - I know this from last year.
But my motivation is easily dissipated to the child in my immediate desires.
Ridiculous to weigh 136 pounds this morning, twenty more than I did six
months ago! Ridiculous to have spent my Saturday night watching poor movies
on television. Ridiculous to have only silly co-ed conversations with people
I like - to be so thoroughly 'adjusted.'
Tomorrow will be a good day for meditation: we are having a peace vigil
at the Market Square downtown, standing and thinking of what peace is to
us personally. Peace, to me, is opportunity. I will think about that. I
will think of what I am not doing.
I am no longer hungry - strange that with satiation joy too is padded
with the fat of plenty and loses the glorious knifing driving edge. Love
loses its edge. Desire, exhileration are milky. Human relationships are
flaccid and I find nothing to say ... Mattering insulated in white rolls
of enough.
I had a vision of something I could be - others recognised it and warmed
their hands to it - (Mr Mann kissing my forehead last fall to say "We
will always be concerned about you: you know that don't you?" "I
guess so") - (Peter "There is something good about you")
- (Mr Block "your potential") - (Mother, "I think you are
closer to being the memorable woman than I can be") - (Frank "You
are one of my heroes"). And myself of last year, throwing a thin shadow
on the moonlit wall and promising myself a future.
I'm a betrayal of these. I must clarify in my own mind what it is that
I want to be and try to find my way to it.
[back to letters]
Saturday April 4
I'm down in the stacks surrounded by my books and tempted by the shiny
big red breakfast apple that will be my lunch - this reminds me, Judy, of
the good time we had last spring studying for our finals in the Sexsmith
School teachers' rooms - the tomatoes and apples and soup and lilacs and
the runs around the school with the caterpillars on the wall and ol' Peter
grinning to himself at our calf-like antics.
I've ever so much to catch up with in telling-you-about's. There was
Easter Sunday. Neither Olivia nor I went to church because we didn't want
to join the hordes of newly hatted twice a year churchgoers. Instead we
ran down to the lake where the ice had just moved out (shards of it were
floating and ground against the rocks) and ran along it leaping like mountain
goats. Olivia is an ideal companion on these abandoned runs because she
feels no embarrassment about being seen and because she is capable of being
so altogether happy. We ran far out across a boggy huge lawn under giant
newly sappy trees and then to the end of a long pier with the wind howling
about us and Sue's radio roaring an oratorio. And this is the funny part:
to this oratorio music we twisted madly, just the two of us on the end of
the pier with some male undergraduate popping his eyes out. Says Olivia,
"I don't know why, but every Easter morning I get terribly happy."
In the afternoon was something different: our CUCND sponsored a peace
vigil. I'll have to explain what and why this is: CUCND isn't primarily
ban-the-bomb, but more let's-do-everything-we-can to prevent it from being
necessary. So we had what was essentially a demonstration. About twenty
CUCNDers stood in line along the market square in downtown Kingston with
placards reading very simply "Peace Vigil, Easter 1964." We stood
there for four hours without speaking (except for short coffee breaks) while
the people passing in cars stared. The purpose of the vigil was double:
to bring the peace-meaning of Easter to the attention of the public, to
emphasize it for them (Easter is not a hat with a flower on it: Easter is
brotherhood of man and love and peace), and secondly, to force us to spend
some time thinking about the meaning of peace to ourselves.
To me, I think peace is predominantly two things: opportunity, and protection
for the people I love. Opportunity because only in peacetime can we study
and develop. Protection - I think of when you were not very much older than
I am Father, and had to do some very grim thinking about peace and war.
[My dad with the other Mennonite Brethern boys was a conscientious objector
through WWII.] And I think of the friends I have now who would have had
to go to war if they had lived then. And the utter, utter senselessness
of killing.
I cannot really say I enjoyed the vigil because it was so bitterly cold
and my legs were so frozen that I couldn't really think about anything but
how cold they were, but I am very glad I participated. Some of the other
people of the vigil were Tom Hathaway (who is studying harpsicord in Vienna
this summer and at the Royal Conservatory next year), Alison Gordon [daughter
of J. King Gordon, Canadian editor, diplomat and academic], and a lot of
people I met at the seminar. Several ministers joined us, a Quaker couple
with two small children, and a surprising number of people passing by. Publicity
was good - television and newspapers and radio. Pictures of us standing
meditating in the snow squall with hair and beards full of snow!
Across the street was a small bakery with a family of Orientals living
above it. They sat at the window most of the time watching us - a young
father with a wonderful face, four beautiful little boys and a lovely mother
stopping momentarily now and then on the way to the stove with a saucepan.
It made us think of how important peace is in relation to beautiful people.
Beautiful people are important to us, and when people are battered we lose
the beauty of them. All the beautiful people lost at Hiroshima. And I think
President Kennedy's death was such a loss universally because he and his
family were beautiful people - do you understand sort-of what I mean?
This paper is study paper so you'll be treated to some authentic scratchings.
The sketch on the first page is a doodle I did in philosophy one morning,
of an African girl sitting across the room. I translated her back into jungle
garb but her face is lovely even in western clothes. The red-ink paragraph
is just some thinking I did that same morning about how isolated we really
are from other people because we have no direct entry into their minds,
the "wonderful colors and scent and tilting and sliding" that
we can never do more than infer - yet this is what we love about them. It
is just thinking aloud and I hope you don't mind the patchwork nature of
this letter.
I'm pleased that you are pleased about Sunnyside because I am too. I
really can't afford the job because the pay is too low. But on the other
hand, I really can't afford to spend my time in a cannery or café
or office job with three times the pay. Doesn't that make sense? I'll just
have to trust Macawber's "something will turn up" - and actually
I have supreme confidence that the money will come from somewhere. Grant,
bursary, loan - no problem
Have I told you about Maureen, my friend who is going to Germany this
summer? She is a superlative example of this kind of faith. She came to
university last year on twenty dollars her father gave her and a promise
of a $400 scholarship. She hadn't counted on the initiation expenses, and
her twenty dollars was gone by the end of the first week. The scholarship
didn't come through until Christmas. She couldn't pay tuition, residence
fees, or buy books. She didn't even have toothpaste!
So she went to Miss Royce and said "I haven't any money." Miss
Royce threw up her unperturbable hands and said "Child! Do your parents
know you've come to university without any money?" Maureen, all composure,
"Oh they know about it, but they haven't that much to do about it."
So she got a job in the library and took out the biggest loan in the history
of the university, $650. And paid it back! And copped a $200 prize for the
highest mark in German 1 and another for the highest in English 2. And now
she has a scholarship to Germany. And she is the merriest creature I know!
Isn't that an exciting thing? I think it is nearly inspiring. Nobody
has any excuse not to go to university because of money. And my little theory
that if you want something badly enough and are willing to barge ahead on
faith and your own discipline you'll get it (and it'll be sweeter
for having struggled for it) seems to be doubly underlined by Maureen's
story. Both of us feel sorry for people who are 'sent' to school and receive
$30 cigarette money checks every month. And I'm a little sorry that it has
been so easy this far. I'm looking forward to the fight next year.
I feel closer to you as well when I talk about old times, so that the
feeling is mutual. I remember a great deal of enchantment in my childhood
and altho there were rough spots, they are valuable for giving added piquancy
to the delightful things. And there were really hordes of delightful things.
Thank you very much for the Easter CARE package. The paska arrived very
fresh (tho' not as wonderful as when you take it from the oven Mother -
that is a good memory too) and everyone with whom I shared a bit thought
it was extremely good. Olivia is terribly terribly critical of all food,
and she thought it was delicious.
PS My love to David Loberg!
PS A few days ago I went to see Dr Eichner who heads the Queen's German
Department and asked him if I could go straight into German 2 rather than
German A or 1 which are commonly prerequisites, on the condition that I
do a private brush-up this summer. He hauled out a sheaf of old exam papers
and asked me to translate - what a traumatic experience! But he was very
nice and said he'd risk me if I did promise to brush up. - So I intend to
take a German course next year. Also intend to do some child psychology
study this summer in conjunction with Sunnyside.
Monday morning, very early, 5:15 April 6
[journal]
Woke at three this morning to discover that round and round and round
my wooly mind were floating wisps of deontological intuitionism - this will
never do I thought, took two aspirin and snuggled down to think about Frank.
And somehow, between two and five a.m. I am always thinking I can write
poetry, and lines form in my mind but drift away before I can lash them
to an idea: "Suddenly / In the tumble-colored ...", "Stamp
my imprint on your faces."
And I thought of the art exhibit at the Etherington Center (Maureen and
I wandered through it yesterday afternoon): a driftwood painting, a ghostly
square house and barn on a flat white snowscape, an orange-to-violet cross
section of the world's history, a blue line on a purple plane, a series
of color strips in orange, red, and brown in contrasting intensities.
Then a crow barked outside and I ran to the window - the sky orange behind
the crooked line of roofs and treetops around the park, the buds on the
trees about my window silhoetted, lake grey and recessive. I sat on the
fire escape for a while with my blue blanket wrapped around, watching a
bird, the blue shadow of a tree seen between the grating of the fire escape,
the water on the roof glittering, the ivy all around me on the wall growing
thick and stubby for spring.
[back to letters]
April 6
Am taking a holiday tonight because I wrote Phil today and am study-exhausted.
I spent this morning (classes stopped on Thursday last) ironing ALL my
clothes and patching and fixing zippers - and lo, I have more than I thought!
Judy, incidentally, you know the blouse you have that is like mine, the
material we got in Vancouver, long sleeves big collar etc? Well - I've discovered
that mine looks much better if I hem up the bottom so that its new lower
edge is about where the top of the side-slits are. It is then an overblouse
rather than a shirt-tails or tuck-in, and it looks very chic.
By the way, you have never mentioned my great going-away family picture
taken last fall - is it developed?
I'll send you our floor picture when I get some money. My balance is
down to muddy level - not quite dry bottom but almost, and it'll have to
do until a first paycheck - also I'd like to wait until I have time to explain
in detail who everyone on the picture is and why they look so terrible or
so good and that they really look much better than that or much worse, etc.
Rainy spring weather - little yellow crocuses are blooming beside Fleming
Hall. They aren't like our fuzzy crocuses tho', they are smaller and more
delicate. Crocuses in spring - our hardy big purple ones - are something
I'll remember about my childhood. There are some up on the hill nestled
under Webber's Folly rock this spring, in a little while no doubt.
It is thundering now, beautifully.
Quiet hours on Ban Righ Three have become very quiet, and noisy hours
very noisy. Both Cathy and Marg are learning to play the uke and Karen Kn
is practicing - so those three and Sue on her guitar - and the rest of us
bellowing in three-part-and-a-discord harmony - have wonderful hoot'nanies.
The floor below us today must have been keening (a very useful college term
meaning 'to study grimly') because they sent a delegation up to see whether
we could or would stop soon and we told 'em we bloody well wouldn't before
the remaining 6 1/2 minutes of noisy hours were over.
The nearer the exams the wilder the pranks. On April 1 morning we staggered
sleepily into the bathroom to find "Out of Order" signs on both
toilet cubicle doors - poor groggy we, it was too early to realize what
day it was.
Marlene got her revenge for the raid on her room (which I have told you
about, I think) by crumbling chocolate cookies into Marg Allen's bed and
then locking herself into her room. When Marg stuck her legs under the covers
at 1:15 am (late movie on Friday night) urshkkcck! It looked dreadful -
like dog food or 'something'.
And Marg Allen who has a lovely slim shape but whom all tease affectionately
about being flat-chested, decided to make us all happy, so she stuffed,
with her pyjama bottoms and a toy octapus, and sallied out - chest very
much in advance - to show off. And Olivia didn't NOTICE!
Downstairs, people have been pasting apt little clippings on the doors
- "Please make me over," "Boys and other beasts," "Don't
disturb us, we'll disturb you," etc. Mrs Lush - our rather grizzly
pub-faced house manager - lives on second floor - and her door didn't escape
either. There was a small clipping "Well up on the social ladder"
with a picture of an African chief with feathers and a bone in his nose.
Went down to the lake in a gale yesterday and stood for a while on a
rock watching the waves smashing in and getting soaked. There was a boy
way down the beach throwing rocks at the waves as they came in. Nobody else
in sight.
Speaking of boys, my social life has degenerated to coffee dates only.
Norm McLeod is becoming a good buddy. He won the campus speaking contest,
and against some very experienced and glib competition! This summer he is
working as a salesman, and looking forward to having to work on his wits.
Ghaz is working hard and worrying a little because he hasn't a summer job.
It's pouring rain - the black squirrels are leaping about in the leafless
ivy looking for shelter, the blackbirds are avidly gobbling rain-loving
worms, the rooftops are lakes and our own slate roofs are torrents - beautiful
and much too exciting to study through. Cathy and I have been standing at
her window and staring and talking about the west - she works at Banff in
the summer and loves our Wild West thunderstorms too. She and Marg Allen
are so absolutely beautiful.
Bonnie, who has worked harder than everyone all year is now more frightened
(with less reason) than everyone. Poor old Bonnie. She hasn't had a very
enjoyable year.
You ask about lake dips this summer Mother - I don't know. Lake Ontario
is pretty cold even in August. And as for lying on the sand - uh-uh. No
sand, only flat pebbles and jagged rocks. Not like the beach we camped on
at the Salton Sea.
When I spoke of "steaming ahead blindly and happily into a complete
dark" I meant nothing more than tomorrow or next year - not necessarily
death, just the unknown of eventually finishing college, perhaps marrying,
working, having children and so on to the very very far ahead. And really,
being frightened is only a very transitory happening, only once in a very
long time because usually I'm very cocky about the future!
Thinking of this dark as death, tho', your analogy with night and morning
was beautiful Mother -
Oo, nearly suppertime, good. HUNGRY.
PS Next exam on the 15th - French. 20th - English. 21st - Psychology.
22nd - Music.
Then 'summer' holidays; imagine beginning them in April.
April 24
Ban Righ III for the last time.
Hello again family and beloved typewriter.
What would you like to hear about first - the leave-takings, after-exam
activities, how I am and how the exams were?
I am at last sending you the floor picture [*] and will talk about the
people on it to sum up the whole Ban Righ III year - oh, but first, thank
you EXCEEDINGLY for the ten dollars. My first thought was, "I can get
some nylons!" Also can get shoes repaired and coat cleaned and necessary
things like that. You won't be hurt if I return it when I get my paycheck?
I'll start off with the picture:
Back row, left side, Cathy Widdess. She is much more attractive than
this picture shows her, very dark hair and a perfect olive complexion, hardly
ever any makeup. She has an especially warm and outgoing personality (you'll
be able to tell from her note on the back), makes friends very easily, seems
to radiate personality. Cathy is definitely one of the outstanding people
on the floor. She is very feminine, but dresses very unselfconsciously -
as you can tell from the picture. Her family is amazingly close-knit, and
all of them speak to each other without embarrassment about everything -
as a result, Cathy has a completely natural and guiltless attitude to sex
and a very happy philosophy of life. Her father is a producer in Toronto,
and they're high high middle class. Cathy at first seemed a golden girl
with everything. One thing we have really learned from this year together
is that even the golden girls have problems. Hers is a physical one, something
wrong with her kidneys and urogenital system which very nearly killed her
when she was a child and still makes it impossible for her to ski, and which
will make child-bearing very risky. Discussing things with her brought out
an interesting suggestion - that it is worse to have a hidden handicap such
as hers than one everybody sees, accepts, and forgets, such as mine. She
left on last Sunday afternoon and the whole floor helped her bring her stuff
down and stood around and cried when she left. Cathy won't be back next
year because she is on a nursing science degree course and will spend her
three years of hospital training in Toronto.
Back row, next, Olivia: in a typically Olivian way, her picture is quite
bad of her, but you can tell her flopping mop of dark hair and her rather
slight bone structure, and her vulnerable young look. She is often quite
pretty. Olivia has grown up a great deal this year. Her note on the back
is the one signed "an independent companion" but I think you'd
have to know that even if I hadn't told you. Poor Olivia, saying goodbye
to places and people and especially Andy is such a wrench to her because
she wraps herself in them so wholeheartedly - especially Andy. Her mother
and sister came to get her and spent the afternoon looking at the campus.
Her mother reminds me so much of you Mother, that you could say perhaps
that you had visited by proxy.
Marg S: she has a toboggan slide nose and a wide grin and a wonderful
warm heart. Marg has so many problems, her parents' death and her feeling
of rejection with her step-parents, her own overwhelming loneliness and
love-hunger. Even on the floor she wasn't very well liked because she tries
too hard, and the kids (sometimes thoughtless, even on our floor!) would
back away from her. Toward the end of the year, tho, she developed a friend-relationship
with Karen Kn who was also a little left out. I hope things work out for
her because she is such a GOOD person.
Janet Mykitko: Jan is almost the stereotype highschooler, dates, Coke,
boys, chatter, popularity, students' council, medium good marks without
any real strain, cute, friendly, poised - the famous Mykitko teeth and legs
are an asset: they are really very attractive. Her few little idiosyncracies
were things like pounding stamps onto letters with her fists, stomping down
the halls, a giddy incredible laugh, and a howling radio constantly turned
way up during noisy hours. I disliked her earlier in the year because I
thought she was a featherhead, but even she grew up toward the end of the
year and my family-feeling of loyalty and affection to all of the girls
included her.
Marg Allen: her picture shows her sense of humour and hints at her exuberant
laugh, but can't really do justice to her exceptional prettiness and her
model's figure. Marg is a paradox because when she dresses up she is stunningly
stylish, yet it was the impeccibly dressed and groomed Marg who set the
Ban Righ III costume of bluejean cut-offs and a sweatshirt and old grey
men's socks and moccasins. Marg is also a very sweet person whom I have
admired all year. She was the first to leave last Sunday afternoon, and
all of us stood around with long faces, half of us (not me) crying while
struggling to keep some dignity for the benefit of the engineers passing
on the sidewalk! Marg and Cathy are bosom friends, and Marg will be nursing
in Toronto with Cathy next year.
Susan Cheshire: the floor rich girl, a pampered only child with armloads
of fur coats and millions of shoes and an entirely unsnobbish personality
in spite of it. She is a boundless-energy girl, phys ed major, with a talent
for music. Since Christmas she has taught herself to play the guitar with
nearly professional skill. Whenever she was frustrated, sad, happy, anything,
she would sit crosslegged on her bed and play her guitar and sing folksongs.
The most that can really be said for her voice is that it is loud and carries
a tune very accurately, but in a way it was Sue and her songs and her guitar
and our hootenanies that gave Ban Righ III its unity. (And we are much more
unified than any other group in residence.) Sue has grown up this year too,
and altho I thought we had little in common at the beginning of the year
we were quite close at the end.
Front row, left side, Bonnie W: Bonnie has a strange sort of intelligence:
strange because it can deal with studies and concrete ideas, but is devoid
of any sort of social sensitivity. You can talk to her, even communicate
with her, but there is never the exhilerating feeling of having made contact
with a vitally alive intellect. You know, the 'K.S.' feeling. Neither of
Bonnie's parents had more than grade eight education and she is self-conscious
about it. With you, it is different because you read and discuss and think
and are self-educated and communicate intelligently, but her parents (and
Bonnie as well, strangely enough, even if she is obviously anxious for intellectual
prestige) don't read or think and still say "he don't." So Bonnie
too has tried too hard to be liked and has succeeded in being one of the
least popular people on the floor for two reasons: the insensitivity I've
told you about and her dedication. The last one isn't quite fair - she shouldn't
be disliked because she works hard and because her motivation is so high
that she doesn't allow herself time for hootenanies and gabs. I understand
her motivation and her hard work very well because I know her background
and what she is trying to escape from and all that, because of last year.
But this year has been different, and it has been worth a great deal to
take off time for good and warm personal relationships. It seemed inevitable
that dedication means isolation, though, and it is difficult to decide which
is worth more: the goal you want or your development as a person among people.
Are most people really worth spending time on or are you better off picking
a few friends who can join you in your isolation and learning to live with
loneliness. I think this problem has probably been very relevant to your
life in La Glace - are most of the people with whom you have little in common
worth bothering about? When I was in La Glace I decided that they weren't
and I did in effect ignore them, and it was worth it - but it was painful
and it seems always a little painful, especially at first, not to fit in.
Basically, I suppose this is a problem of whether to conform and thereby
hold yourself down, or to become a social self-sufficiency and accomplish
things.
What a digression this has been! Next, Barb Wallace: a petite, pretty,
poised creature, usually quiet, but equipped with a sense of humour that
pops up and surprises both all of us and her with its acuity. Few of us
know Barb very well, because she is inconspicuous. Her affectionate nickname
on the floor is "little bitty bugger." (Boy, has my vocabulary
broadened this year!)
Then, Marlene Griffin: the one other country girl on the floor, short
and plump, cheerful, girlish, friendly. Thoroughly 'nice' but in no way
very outstanding. Pleasant and likeable.
Karen Kn: tall and bony and rather unattractive, though not nearly as
bad as she looks on the picture. Another warm-hearted girl with more than
her share of problems: an idolized dead mother, a less than adequate stepmother
and a bratty younger stepsister, nearly six feet of height to scare away
all dates, and a drab inhibited personality - also a brilliant mathematical
brain and a wonderful capacity for warmth that wasn't appreciated nearly
as it should have been by the kids on the floor.
Nancy Rankin: a honey! One of the girls I've respected and admired most,
an everyday practicing Christian (Alliance I think), a quiet always cheerful
unemotional girl who never during the year had one flareup of any kind,
either anger or depression. She was Olivia's roommate, and the two of them
kept the place in a delightful outrageous mess. Their record was the week
when their bed hadn't been made from Thursday to Monday!
At the end, Karen Kl: jolly practical joking, yet basically very wistful
and sad. I've felt very close to her quite often during the year, especially
when we've listened to classical music together. She is going into psychology
as well, and will be working at the Smith Falls hospital for retarded children
this summer. She'd be much happier if she lost about sixty pounds and could
go on dates like the rest of us and feel pretty and feminine, but she hasn't
had the determination to do it yet. Another thoroughly good and sweet person.
The notes on the back of the picture are priceless - I was touched by
some of them: most of them say a lot about both the person writing and the
sort of relationship we had during the year if you know how to read between
the lines.
You were right Mother: it has been quite a year. It has been everything
I wished for it to be, yes - not quite the way I had expected it to be,
but certainly just as good. I know I have been especially lucky in the friend-making
aspect: Olivia, the International House kids, and now Maureen who will probably
be a KS (we went to a movie together last night, sat and talked in a coffee
house until one fifteen, walked home singing hymns because we simply felt
like it (some rousing evangelico ones, not the insipid higher church type
- she has fundamentalist background), hung upsidedown on the fence railings
at the lakeshore talking for half an hour, then lay on the floor in the
common room talking until an indecent hour and listening creamily to a Johnny
Mathis record. Maureen is a brilliant mind and an emotionally-socially sensitive
very womanly girl, but she is - much as I am! - independent and a bit of
an isolate. I'm working on breaking through her social mask to reach the
real Maureen, and I'm making a bit of progress. Very challenging! This is
much the same way that Olivia attacked me at the beginning of the year though
she has a real gift for it and I'm learning very slowly. Strange tho, that
what I've learned from her I'm practicing on someone else. One of the valuable
things about friend Oliver.
I begin to work at Sunnyside on Monday night, and will move in tomorrow
so that next letter will be full of my kids.
By now the yard is dry and you are starting spring fieldwork? Dusty faces
and hands coming in for meal times.
I've been a little homesick, especially with everyone's parents arriving
to get them - I've been coveting the families. Oh well I'll see you in September
perhaps.
I'm almost busier now than before the exams - editing a speech for the
CUCND report on last winter's seminar. It is a transcript of a taped talk
by Julian Griggs of the Peace Research Institute who speaks very colloquially,
and I have to weed his diction, red pencil his ers and ahs and wells and
straighten it out generally. Lots of fun but a great deal of work. Tom (Hathaway)
is working on this stuff too and it is a mountainous job, but good writing
practice as well.
April 25, Saturday
Still from Ban Righ, for the last time. I'm moving to Sunnyside as soon
as I have this dashed off. All of the rooms are empty, my Spanish guitar
player is stored downstairs, my poodle, books, bags, junk is at the foot
of the stairs. I've said goodbye to the floor and removed my nametag from
the door of 49 and left the curtains still blowing in the defiantly screenless
window.
There is always a feeling of "That's all of that, nothing will ever
be the same, even if it is twice as good - an impossibility, surely - and
now what?" But the afternoon has been bright and the daffodils are
beginning to bloom and the leaves will be out soon and the lake was blue-green
this afternoon, not grey, and I'm reading four books and have so much to
study and it is sure to be a wonderful summer.
Spent most of the afternoon helping Maureen pack, then borrowed her bicycle
and careened down to the lake on it. It has been so long since that the
bicycle is a terrifying thing at first. And met a friend from Bombay walking
along the lakewalk, talked to him for a long time about traveling, watched
the shredded reflections of light moving over the rocks of the lake bottom,
and boats passing. Oh, thoroughly alive again after dusty decaying study
weeks! Even feel pretty again.
Mike will have his sailboat out soon because he is notoriously the first
yacht clubber to launch a boat in spring and the last to store it in fall.
And he has promised me some lessons so that I can become competent enough
to qualify as crew.
There were so many mothers and families here today that I wished you
could all have come to see Ban Righ during the exodus, on the last official
day that residence is open. The kitchen staff gave us a royal dinner: turkey
and Bavarian cream for dessert. And everyone is wishing everyone else a
happy summer and we meant it in the case of the kitchen people because they
have been dear friendly cheerful people all year.
The first to arrive and the last to go - and I finished the year exactly
as I began it: with a bath!
All the rooms, all down the hallway, with the furniture piled up. The
telephone booth still full of scribbles: "Cathy, boy, sounds like John,"
"Ellie, Tom Hathaway, phone back," "Olivia, Andy, will call
back," "Nancy, boy, no message, said 'oh, studying again,'"
"Cathy, long distance," "Ellie, boy, no message." Pile
of magazines on the table, but not the Saturday night issue in a thousand
sections that used to be strewn all over the floor when we came in from
a date late on Saturday and sat around on while we gabbed. Freshman year,
room 49 (beautiful room even now when it is bare), telephone booth, g'bye.
raw forming volume 2
- raw forming volume 1: september 1963 - april 1964
- work & days: a lifetime journal project
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