November 10, Tuesday the rainy
Now at last a new typewriter eraser so that I can write you again.
Enclosed are several scraps of letters that I began to you during the
Month of History this year. Wow! - and now the month is titled and official.
Mother will remember it with a certain amount of horror I'm afraid. I'm
sorry to have been so brutal in that one letter: I seem to have been carried
away. (But oh Mother, your one line of advice will be classic forever -
"DON'T fall in love, if it is going to UPSET you."!!) Now is the
time to tally a few of the results of that torrid month, however, and from
my point of view they have been three more extremely good friends, an increase
in confidence, an inside knowledge of what emotionality-irrationality is
like, a certain understanding of how creative genius (Danny - and to a certain
extent all of us in the Theatre of the Absurd) works and thinks, and from
this an ability to evaluate much more accurately the turmoilulous way of
life that is habitual to both Olivia and Danny, the flamboyant poet-prince,
and my own tendency to be awed by both of these. If I hadn't for one flaming
week been madly in love with Danny's genius and reckless a-sociality, I
would still be pining for the mythical genius-prince to gallop in and save
me from mediocrity. But I know now that I could never never live with the
Danny type and that Mediocrity is something everyone fights their private
and personal battles with - and that it is not an absolute Evil. One more
reason perhaps for writing the brutal letter that seems to have sent you
into such panic is that since the visit home I had not seemed to be able
to reach you and that the visit itself (I felt) was rather a failure, because,
while I had wanted especially to be responsive and merry, I managed only
to be depressed, depressing, and flat.
The new typewriter eraser is a byproduct of a spree of gleeful materialism.
Feeling wealthy after working the weekend, I went yesterday to the Domus
store (a wonderful shop-in-the-wall where Swedish china, Canadian crafts,
German stoneware, beads and jewellry, and all sorts of many-colored Village-type
miscellania are sold by a red-beard with bright eyes) and bought two black
candles, one tall beeswax, one small and delicate, a copper candlestick,
and a large stoneware mug. See below: [sketch]. Sort of grey-green stoneware
with a cream-green inside, heavy and sturdy, rather primitive-looking, love
at first sight.
Last night Olivia and I had a poetry exhibit (explanations later) and
we set out our possessions on a little round table, lit the candles, and
admired them. The poetry exhibit (not a poetry reading or a painting exhibit)
happened on Sunday night when both Olivia and I had a great deal to do but
ended by rummaging through all our favorite poetry books and copying scraps
onto slips of paper and taping them onto the wide bare wall in our
living room - some poetry of our own too because we seem to be competing
to be the most prolific creators: it is rather rough and angular, but not
really adolescent any more.
We turned our desklight toward this wall as a spotlight, turned off the
rest of the lights, ate red apples. (A closed opening of the exhibit of
course - In Group only. The real truth was that both O and I were feeling
amorous and wanted to see our men, and had to think of a relatively nonblatant
way to arrange it. So Charles came, and after a meeting, late as always,
Danny and Norman. They brought with them three peaceniks (CUCND types) on
their way to a pub after the meeting (about our Remembrance Day student
vigil - details enclosed in clipping) so we all trotted after them to the
Indian Room. I happened to be wearing my hostess gown and everybody insisted
that I keep it on, so I did, and trailed magnificently and warmly along.
Do you know about the hostess gown? A little, I think. It is green wool
(sample included) with Angel-Gabriel sleeves, a floppy hood, huge inside
side-pockets, and a length of warm trailing skirt. Voila: [sketch]. It is
really quite special and very flattering.
Two results of today's aquisitiveness were, besides the eraser, books:
Nine Stories by Salinger and The Second Sex, a long study
of women, what and why they are and their peculiarities and potentialities,
by Simone de Beauvoir, a very distinguished French novelist. Oh, and some
apples and a loaf of French bread for supper.
On Saturday night, went to a jazz and folk music concert with Ad - you've
heard about Ad I think. (The huge handsome Indian who keeps referring wistfully
to his fraternity at McGill and who is a professional engineer now? The
guy with the infinitely complex stainless steel mind and the perplexing
ways with other people - with whom it is impossible to be close friends
unless you constantly insult him and express affection only in insult.)
The jazz was excellent, sax, bass, and drumming. Rather erotic, as jazz
tends to be. The second half of the evening was the Travelers, well-known
Canadian folksinging group, singing mostly Canadian folksongs. At the very
end, the two enthusiasms merged in an unrehearsed jam session where everyone
went wild and the audience joined. I liked it, and the jazz especially.
Perhaps more than any other music, heavy classics excepted, it is image-evocative
and participation-demanding.
To answer some of your questions: Danny flung himself into our lives
this year, and through Norman. He and Norm were top politicians of the Toronto
High School set, for example Norman was president of the High School United
Nations General Assembly and of the Model Parliament. Danny was Secretary-General
of the UN and Prime Minister the next year. So they knew each other. Then,
when Norman discovered that Danny was coming to Queen's this year, he looked
him up, told us he wanted us to meet this "marvelous insane creature,"
and introduced us. Then we all began going for night adventures, then Charles,
whom we had discovered with glee at International House, joined us, then
Norm broke up with his girl, and that was how it happened. Danny is a frosh,
tho he is 20, because he was working for CBC for a year, and besides wasn't
admitted because of his disgraceful marks in mathematics (nevermind the
99% in English!).
Had to have yearbook pictures taken tonight - International House executive.
Am studying Walden, which makes me homesick for Frank because Thoreau's
outlook, personality, philosophy is Frank developed and matured.
Here is a poem I wrote about Dan. It is obscure because it has a lot
of 'in' references - if any of you understand it it will probably be Judy
because she is in the same generation.
- Princes are passé. (And love?)
-
- But perhaps there should be
- Left still a word. A prince rides on words.
- (Actions define?) Undefined wonderword prince,
- Bow then and be then, and pass,
- For I will be silently stitching a border
- Onto my flannel soul.
The parenthesis about Actions is a reference to the existential tenet
that the man is defined by his actions and not by his aspirations or his
wishes. Danny, you see, is intensely verbal, but entirely unfocused in action.
"Silently stitching a border" refers to my own, our own, occasional
sense of being unable to communicate, and the "flannel soul" is
the relatively drab but more substantial non-genius and non-Danny personality.
I wrote another one, very depressing, about moments when very intense
relationships suddenly seem flat and one feels unable to reach anyone else:
- This is not all, but enough?
-
- Two ways to avoid the question:
- I do not speak, and you smile
-
- You with your warm joy hidden
- And I with my bright joy lost
-
- The door behind you closing
- Tears in my eyes
This is ambiguous too, but some of the ambiguities have a point. the
stanzas are deliberately not punctuated so that they can mean several things.
In the third stanza for instance, you can read it as it is or like this:
"You with your warm joy, hidden / and I with my bright joy, lost."
And in the next stanza you could read "The door, closing behind you
as you leave" or "The door which is behind you closing as you
enter." - at that moment, you see, it doesn't matter whether the friend
is in or out: you are still separated from him. Also, the verb in the last
stanza can take "tears" as a direct object and be "The door,
which you move as you leave or enter, is directly responsible for the tears
in my eyes, it is closing tears in my eyes." This is a lesson,
by the way, on interpreting modern poetry - the reason it is so hopeless
often is that it is using compression and ambiguity in just this way. This
way the poet doesn't even understand his own poetry completely, because
it means other things to other people who read nuances of their own experience
into it. True for all poetry, but modern impressionistic etc especially.
Are you bored? This is really a very arty letter.
I am having some fun this year with clothes. My tendency is toward tweed
and leather and silk à la Chanal and Dior, I'm afraid, but not being
able to manage that I have decided that if I must be a little shabby I shall
be shabby with élan and with fun. Hence turtlenecked long-sleeved
tee-shirts (cheap), warm and patched patterned stockings, Alice-in-Wonderland
shoes, the cape, a corduroy A-line skirt, sometimes peasant kerchiefs and
little gold hoop-earrings, eye-liner, shrieking color combinations, and
the flight bag overflowing with books in lieu of a purse. And poor old Beowolf
cringing with embarrassment at his chipped and leaky condition. But the
vulgar, tongue-in-cheek Bohemian look is easy to keep up, and tho it is
ludicrous my friends know I'm not taking it seriously, other people find
it merely interesting, and role-playing is a constant secret joke. And knowing
you are deliberately looking a fright is a huge source of confidence. You
are horrified? No you aren't really: you would probably enjoy it too. The
little black dress, tho, will be one ray of elegance. Thank you Mother.
Judy, I read Zooey last Sunday morning before work (read Franny before)
and loved it so much I was happy all the rest of the day.
Olivia is still an extremely good friend. She says that if she were a
man she'd marry me: so it is compatibility plus. Rather will spoil future
mediocre friendships tho.
On Sunday Peter Kneisel and Carol (Sunnyside) and I found a tree on the
property whose roots were all gnarled into fairy shapes: we immediately
dug away the leaves and found a fairy village, a secret between the three
of us, and set to work putting fragments of glass into windows, carpets
into throne rooms, lanterns of red berries on bits of branch, pathways to
magic hills, and so on. It was so exciting to find that I could still do
this with genuine child-pleasure and that the wonderful little fairyhouses
(do you remember, Judy or Paul?) in the creek pasture near Lover's Lane
and the pond are not really lost. Do you remember, Mother, when I set to
work drawing up plans for a little house in that pasture where I would live
all by myself near the pond? There was more than enough enchantment in that
childhood, and it is the enchantment of it that I am remembering - do you
find that too Mother, Father? Did you know, during our childhood, about
the enchantment? I think you were quite understanding about it. Were you
glad, consciously, that we had it? What were your reactions to it really?
I very much want to know. You could write an article about it, Mother, or
at least write me a bit about it and about the enchantment in your childhood.
And I wish Father would tell us about his - is that an impossible wish?
Perhaps you could get him talking about it and take notes. Or is he determined
that we shall have nothing of him?
Paul, the two books about pyramids and Egypt are for you. The Novellen
are for the parents if they should have an itch to read in German (Peter
Hagedorn donated them), Island is for Judy in particular. The name
in the front is of the man on the train, a wandering Englishman-adventurer
returning from two years on the DEW line, who gave it to me. By now he will
be in South America. That adds something to the book. The History of
Music is for Judy also, part of last year's music course. (In connection
with Island, Judy, we have the cryptic little slogan "Here and
now, boys, here and now," a quotation from the book, on our apartment
door.)
The summer romance with mon beau doux Charles is still very affectionate,
very gentle, though not really platonic at ALL. (Should perhaps not have
been so emphatic about that: you will worry. You don't need to.) Enormously
peaceful compared to Olivia's continual tempest with poor Danny. (Poor Olivia
too, although she thrives and grows constantly more charming - darnit -
on it.)
Got a sweet one-line postcard from Grandparents Epp: "Dear Ellie,
Good wishes from your Grandparents."
The Jasper X mentioned in the letter to Dycks has turned out to be a
bloody pain. Went out with him for a drive one evening and discovered that,
not only is he all stickypaws, but he is also a lousy poet with a paranoid
tendency to exaggerate his greatness. And he keeps phoning, night after
night, night after night after night. How to get rid of him! Will have to
tell him the truth next time, I suppose.
Dear Mother, why Why don't you get hep to your abilities and accept the
Home and School regional directorship? It would be great for your confidence
- at first you would have to play the role and pretend to be confident but
eventually you would feel the part. And you being such a good actress: oh,
do get wise! Charles tells me "If you would just fall in love
with yourself, you know, everyone else would fall in love with you too."
That goes for you too Mother - and just remember that we are a family of
hams from 'way back and that we LOVE making speeches to PTAs - don't we!
Mother, Olivia thinks you don't like her because you never mention her
in your letters and she is my dearly beloved idiot-sister-roommate. Don't
you?
This will be an hellefant of a letter - many goodnights from Paradise-Almost-Lost-Under-the-Roof.
November 11, Wednesday, paradise-almost-lost, nine thirty
p.m.
A walk around the block tonight, licking an ice cream cone. The sky light
and pink behind Saint Mary's, shadow sifted into the many crannies of the
Gothic-style tower. The tower is this year's landmark, just as the Lower
Campus field was last year's.
We had the Armistice Day vigil today, for half an hour in front of the
Student's Union. Olivia was there (holding a sign of course, one of the
official signs, "Towards Peace"). Danny, Charles, most of our
peacenik friends, and others were there. It rained. We stood with the water
soaking our hair and dripping from the ends of our red noses, peering at
our hecklers through running mascara, feeling like fools not because we
were vigiling but because we looked so martyred. Charles the dearidjot was
not wearing a coat and was soaked to his beautiful shoulders through his
rust sweater. I wanted to put him to bed and feed him some hot broth but
I throttled motherly instincts and went to English class instead (hair steaming
and beginning to coil up into hostile shaving-curls). Mr Newell, prof for
this English class, is very reasonable, and to my joy, allowed me to choose
for my term paper topic a comparison of the doctrine of individuality between
Walt Whitman (whom I love and who is on our course) and William Saroyan
(whom I love and who is not on the course - Papa, I love You was
Saroyan): one is premodern and one is contemporary. A great deal of work,
because there is no reference reading on the topic, but something that interests
me fantastically and that, it happens, interests Mr Newell too - hey, this
is university studying at its best, choosing one's own term paper topics
and not even having to write the Christmas exams unless one wants to! And
in psychology, my little pecan professor Dr Blackburn (who is inconspicuously
Head of the Department - a great honour) will allow us to specialize in
the personality theorists who most interests us I think I shall do
Jung.
Had coffee in the afternoon and found that friends seemed to be continually
appearing and stopping to talk: a blessing-counting situation - there are
so many exceptionally interesting and warm people whom I by some miracle
know! - perhaps I shall not want to go to Europe for a year! Some new friends
are Tony Tugwell - a black-eyed wistful boy who is managing editor for the
Journal - and John Cooper - a beefy football-looking boy who was
telling us today about his last weekend's adventures in New York.
November 15, midmonth
From late Sunday afternoon and on a full stomach, hello. There is an
enormous letter packed away in the box I mean to send you soon as possible,
but as a result of not being able to gather any strong string the letter
will not reach you for a while, and in the meantime, you will feel that
you have been forgotten. It's not so.
Listen, the five o'clock bells from Chalmers Church playing Onward
Christian Soldiers, but langorously and with many trills!
Woke up this morning at eleven thirty, hungry, and who should call but
Ad, inviting me to come out just long enough for a chicken dinner with him
and one of his friends from Montreal. Chicken dinner! Olivia called from
her bed, "Going out for lunch? Oh, well if you go to a restaurant,
would you bring home some sugar? We're out, and I'd like some for our coffee."
So I brought some home, wrapped doubly in napkins and sneaked into a pocket
when our charming Welsh waitress wasn't looking.
November 20 page of journal, please file
Frame: the front window at 252 Barrie, one half of the casement window
closed, misted over, with our three green Chianti bottles in a row beside
it; one half of the window open, a tall bright rectangle, and again.
Frame: snow falling from a glowing yellow-grey sky, the telephone lines
radiating from a pole opposite in thick white ropes, tire tracks on the
street, fresh and black, or fading into a pottery-pattern of grey bands,
trees in spidery patterns of black and white, and above the four chimneys
of an old apartment house.
Framed: the cathedral tower far away behind millions of falling snowflakes,
insubstantial, transparent perhaps, in suggestions of pattern; suggestions
of form - lacy spires, pointed arches, four spiny smaller peaks around the
centre spire; medieval, or timeless as the motion of this falling snow.
(Instead of taking a bus downtown I called Mike: "Mike have you
looked out your window?" - He came for me and we went to the park,
threw snowballs around the war memorial, made a snow face with a thick lipped
heavy chin, perked ears, round eyes, a lawyer's curly wig, an ESP branch-antenna,
a squirrel - we laughed with three strangers, looked for a moment at the
black fierce lake, sang carols irreverently, went to his apartment for a
glass of port, talked and listened to Chopin, then he went to sleep and
I ground Bolero into the floor, into my feet, under my feet, in the dark,
then came home to some German and an apple.)
Nov 30
Dear Mother, and of course dear Madame Marie - Olivia roared into the
one English class we have together and said "Your dress is here! At
least it is a long flat package, and it is from your mother!" And so
plans to study in the library were scrapped as we ran to open it. Ever since
then, everyone has had the same reaction: "It is very lovely! And very
special!" It looks exactly as my ambitious pictures-in-mind did - and
perfect. Olivia's skeptical taste was quite overwhelmed and she'll wear
it eagerly as often as I let her - Susan, who wandered in while we were
trying it on, was very pleased. (It fits us both, but me better.) Norm was
spontaneously complimentary. Charles liked it when I wore it to a drama
guild production with him. Olivia felt like a princess when she went
to a concert in it. And when I wore it to a party early Sunday morning (12:30-4:00
a.m.) people kept telling me it was lovely. So! I do appreciate it very
much mother, how much work time, probably anxiety, and Tender Loving Care
went into my Original, and you can be sure that I will wear it very often
and very proudly.
I'm working quite regularly at Sunnyside now, and have very little free
time but manage to squander quite a bit.
December 2nd
Swaying windy classical music from the radio, snow falling in time outside,
the letter continues here ...
Ad was embarrassed - so then we went calling on some friends of his,
Doctor Mohan and Doctor Mrs Mohan. When we rang the doorbell, a stocky teenager
in tights, brief skirt and shirt, bounded down the door and leapt at Ad
- like him, the Mohans are Indians-from-India, but this girl, with her black
ponytail and bumptious enthusiasm, was all-Canadian prototype! Doctor Mrs
Mohan (this is her real appellation, to distinguish her from her husband
- when Nina, the daughter, reaches her goals and is a gynecologist-obstetrician,
there will be another Doctor Mohan, perhaps Dr Nina Mohan?) was in the kitchen,
leaning against the wall in a ratty-looking sweater and a sari that seemed
ill-at-ease on her large gladiator-like body, smoking a cigarette and expostulating
into the telephone. Eventually she noticed us, fell upon Ad, and invited
us into the living room for tea - we had niblets of some kind of peanut-shredded-wheat
(?) mixture spiced with fiery little seeds and some very moist balls of
rubbery-white milk curd (hollow in the centre) about the size and appearance
of tennis balls. Quite good. I determinedly had seconds of everything to
prove that I wasn't chicken. The house was covered with lovely rugs - mostly
red and intricately patterned - brought from India. Later in the afternoon,
reminded me of old Mennonite Sunday afternoons, three couples came visiting.
The difference between Mennonite visitors and these is rather sharp tho!
The young women were very lovely, all in silk Sunday saris and swinging
earrings - gay and lively chattering in Hindi - and all about nineteen years
old. Ad tells me that many of his relatives are married at thirteen (girls)
and sixteen (men) but even the girls go on with their education afterwards,
even going through medical school - they do belong to the Brahman class,
and to the upper, educated segment of it, however. Ad also explained to
me how unrooted Nina feels, because at school she is a typical Canadian
girl who has grown up with Canadian children, but when she goes home she
is an alien because she does not understand much Hindi (spoken in the house
whenever there are visitors) and because her parents will not allow her
the freedom Canadian girls of fifteen get.
Did I tell you, Judy, about the CUSO meeting I went to? A panel of five
recent returnees, three girls and two men, spoke about their experiences,
and afterwards we had a curry meal cooked by several of the Indian men (overseas
student-men seem all extraordinary cooks, even engineer Ad), which the two
Indian-returnees ate sitting cross-legged on the floor, with their fingers,
explaining that they did this as often as possible, to shock all these Canadians
whose morality includes cutlery.
And I have told you, haven't I, that I'm almost decided to become or
become educated towards a clinical psychologist, rather than a social worker?
As Olivia and I sat in our English class this afternoon, it began to
snow feathers, languidly, as the sky turned dusk-blue. Needless to say,
we became restless immediately, and the professor, whom both Olivia and
I are beginning to like enormously, noticed the stirring of the class and
let us go early. I suspect he may have wanted to go gambolling himself.
On the way we met Mark, and he stumped along behind us scratching his head
as we skipped and frisked across campus. Fifteen minutes later, Mad Murray
and Tim somebody found us lying flat on our backs in the snow, meditating
and making snow angels. They decided we were daft, and hauled us away to
the coffee shop: do you know about Mad? Mad(eleine) is blond, chic, lovely,
energetic, and a freshette. She also has a fantastic social sense, and is,
after three months at Queen's, passionate firm friends with every important
and "interesting though not very important" person on campus.
She is naïve in her approach to everyone, flattering them obviously
and rather childlikely, but interested in them quite sincerely. She is also
only child of a rich, important papa - we were suspicious of her social
climbing instincts at first, but suspicion has turned to admiration and
the condescending affection of second year students for a freshette.
What are Christmas plans? What is La Glace High doing for this year's
Christmas concert? I remember the school Christmases so vividly, perhaps
more vividly than any other part of my school days - always the excitement
and the anxiety of the night of the concert, the hall large and a bit cold,
with all the Norwegian people I didn't know, the new dresses, the church
quartets singing the same songs they had sung every year I could remember,
the Ladies Club in gigglish skits featuring Mrs Gilkyson's sense of humor
- the milling of crowds of girls from my class before the program, Myrtle,
Gail always in something new and striking, Donna and the rest. Later on
the boys milling with us. And now so much different, all of us adults and
so scattered, and in my case, such a remote way of life - remote that is,
from what it was.
I'm going to have a different Christmas this year - working at Sunnyside
about half-time, studying a good deal for the final exam in my art half-course,
with Olivia, Danny, Norm and even Charles in Toronto. I think Mike and I
will be doing a few things together, because he has no relatives here either.
Some of the International people may be here too, so we will try to see
if we can't include them in our plans. As for your Christmas presents, do
you mind very much if I don't mail them to you until after the holidays?
The money I'm making at Sunnyside is just taking care of my living expenses
a month at a time (but adequately: don't worry! I'm very proud of supporting
myself and wouldn't miss this for anything - and my luxuries are taken care
of by people like Norm and mon beau Charles and my own overly-nonchalant
attitude towards necessities - Judy will understand this).
Did I tell you about going to a concert of the Israeli Youth Orchestra
with Norman? Like the Canadian Youth Orchestra, these young people were
less than uninspired in Haydn, but brilliant in modern music like the Firebird
Suite of Stravinsky.
Saturday night is a party, Sunday is a carol service in Grant Hall, Thursday
is my first Christmas exam, in psychology, with three others to follow.
- The more it snows
- Tiddley-pum
- The more it snows
- Tiddley-pum
- The more it goes
- Tiddley-pum
- On snowing
-
- How cold my toes
- Tiddley-pum
- Are growing.
Thursday
This rather inaccurate version of Winnie-the-Pooh's snow song is remembered
scrappily from a loud chanting performance we - Mark, Olivia and I - did
marching through the snow yesterday. Later on, in further celebration, we
called Rasheed down from his room under the roof for a snow fight, we took
him down to City Park where it was already half a foot deep, and rolled
him in it. Norm was there too, and all very merry. Rash thinks that snow
is very beautiful and is amazed at the way the sky becomes so light when
it snows, from reflections on falling flakes. I think all of us were seeing
it through his eyes, trying to imagine what we would see if we had never
seen snow before.
In archeology we are near the end of the course, wrapping up Roman architecture
- we do all sorts of unlikely things, even study structural methods for
early Roman concrete and principles of arch-construction. Most of the class
writhes with boredom throughout the hour, but traitorously, the 'subterraneous'
architect in me is keen on even suchlikes.
Grant Hall was Medieval and romantic again tonight, under the snow, with
light shining through the yellow stained-glass arch-windows: sometimes,
seeing it in the almost-dark, walking toward it from across campus, especially
alone, is like walking out of reality and time. And you always forget what
it is like, during the summer.
Friday early afternoon
Winter burst into my numb consciousness this morning with the klingeling
of falling Farenheit degrees in hail-like heaps on our window sill. It was
ten o'clock when the sound woke me. "no, I will not go out to class,
no no no, I will stay here in my bed until April." But bed was much
too cold, and coffee - a mug of it steaming molecules of sugar and milk
rose through the heaps of hail-degrees to hover above my head like a vision
of the holy Grail. I then procrastinated finishing my essay on cold white
marble Greek statuary by reading glowing reproaches in the peacenik newspaper,
Sanity.
Olivia has just arose, and in mutual resentment we have been stamping
circles on our grimly flowered lino, chanting "cold hungry miserable
Cold Hungry Miserable COLD HUNGRY MISERABLE COLDCOLDCOLDCOLD C*O*L*D****,"
ending in an orgiastic shriek. Warming.
How long is it? Three weeks? More? Half a page sits forlornly in my typewriter
waiting to be finished. Meanwhile, no news doesn't mean that things have
been standing still: classes, Sunnyside, bicycling every day, books to read,
arguments with Mr Hepburn, good times with friend O are constants - other
special things are occasional bread-and-butter feasts, coffee conversations
at the Union, seeing Night of the Iguana, the first snow (described elsewhere),
a new pair of boots that look cossack-wise like this [diagram] (black leather)
(stacked heels). (O has a knee-high pair that she loves exceedingly), a
paycheck of $47.00 per month! Walt Whitman! French Classic plays! E-s-s-a-y-s.
Rasheed and Basil - two extremely attractive and intelligent West Indians
whose attitude toward life (accepting, free, and above all, sensible) we
find very intruiging and whose personalities are far above par for Canadians.
Both have the intuition of music that seems to characterize West Indians.
They live above the milk bar just three apartments down from us in the same
housing block. We were some of the first people they got to know when they
came, and they adore us both because we were friendly when they were so
homesick. And last week, Rasheed, who was brought up in a shanty in Trinidad,
born in a brilliant but very poor family whose father is a taxi driver,
and who now has a great deal of money from several large scholarships, asked
me to help him find a Christmas present for his mother - he ended by buying
her a $25.00 lacy red negligee. And the rest of his family get equally luxurious
gifts. He also sends a substantial amount of money home. He is so overwhelmed
by having money that he spends quite recklessly. Basil is intelligence and
good sense incarnate. Also very attractive - but faithfully engaged to a
girl at home.
A letter from Frank. The dear man has taken up smoking a pipe and having
a wee drop of whiskey and honey hot water with his books. He talks of a
hunting trip, and has prospects of a northland trapline for the winter.
Another friend, Mark Collins - did I mention him in the letter in the
box? Which you probably haven't received yet. Anyway. He turned seventeen
in September, is a freshman major in politics. He has a triangular, wonderfully-boned
face with large vivid eyes and a bush of blond hair that is so thick
and so long (you wouldn't believe it) that people keep taking him
for a hoyden girl - his face is potentially masculine and strong tho'. He
is tall, lean, well-formed, but hobbles because of an artificial leg (result
of a congenital deformity). His father is (both fortunately and unfortunately)
the Canadian Ambassador to South Africa, and so Mark is not only extremely
intelligent, but also far-travelled. In some respects he is unfortunate
because he has always felt that his mother did not love him - because he
has few roots, too much moving about - and because he feels that his pegleg
makes him inadequate as a man. Being so very young, he is also in
the stage where he doesn't know what he is, or if he even has any personality
of his own. He is very direct, very defiant, and very very sweet. He likes
me because to some extent I've resolved my pegleg problem (we have some
mostly-funny arguments in which we bang on the table and screech in defense
of our respective limbs: "Mine can knock a man out in a second
if I decide to swing at him" from Mark, and "Maybe it doesn't
detach, but it's just as good as yours!" from me. So I am becoming
a mother-sister-and-older-woman complex to him, and because he is very dear,
very moving and so wonderfully young I find it easy to love him and be a
bit of a mentor to him. One night - this is a tale I can't leave out - when
the six of us, Cathy Spennato, O, Charles, Danny, Mark and I - had just
come back from a pizza and were saying goodnight in front of the door, two
drunks drove up beside us and taunted Mark about his hair. Mark kept up
a derisive-defiant type of banter for a while, but soon both sides were
angry and the drunks threatened to come out and fight. And Danny and Charles
- men are dear foolish children often enough! - wouldn't have minded a scuffle
themselves. Mark finally shouted, "Oh you bums, just come out. This
is what you'll get -," and he swung his metal leg against an aluminum
signpost wildly - CLANG! CLANG! CLANG - magnificently.
Then Olivia stepped in, shooed away the drunks, and we went to bed. But
it was 2 a.m. and by now the neighbourhood was awake. Mr Hepburn was crouched
in the living room waiting for us, and we were nearly evicted as a result
of the row. The next day a large sign appeared on the door:
Absolutely No Male Callers Above first floor, except immediate family
or fiancee - Robert Hepburn
Since then he has relented to the extent of allowing us each ONE boyfriend,
and this means true-love Charles, but Olivia is breaking-broken up with
le Grand, and is being madly pursued by 1. Norman 2. Rasheed and 3. Don
Carmichael. Problems. Oh, life with Olivia is so eventful!
December 6, Sunday night
I remember writing you last year about this time to tell you of a carol
service I went to, as a 'kickoff' to the 'festive season.' Nevermind the
sarcasm, I went to another tonight, and it was very poor. The glee club,
even by La Glace Community Hall standards, was wretched, one Amazon soprano
wrestling to stay on the key just flat of everybody else's key. Olivia and
I did enjoy very much, tho', singing "GOOD KING WEN-SAS-LAS."
Christmas, the loneliest time of the year, when you miss every other Christmas
you have ever had, no matter how poor it was, and especially the good ones.
And I seem to make too many things "Remember Frank" occasions.
On the other hand, there is Sunnyside, where Christmas is a piquancy and
a time for forgetting everything past. I know I am going to value it during
the next month. Worked there this weekend we went tobogganing on the
extravagant Country Club hills this afternoon, in sun and warm, with the
lake glinting below and a grain-tanker anchored just off shore blowing plumes
of smoke.
7 Monday
Olivia and I went to a party on Saturday night, as our social event of
the week. It was a pyjama party, the campus term for a "wear anything
comfortable" party (the girls who wear nightgowns wear black sweaters
and tights under) so I could wear my green monk's gown, which everyone likes
enormously and which is a conversation piece besides. The party was at Jim's
house - Jim, a very young and very pleasant postgrad in politics, who is
part-Portuguese, part-Japanese, and part undetermined because he doesn't
know who his father was. He certainly is an attractive combination, however!
He worked his way through undergrad years, but now is on the type of fellowship
or scholarship that allows him to drive an Alpine sportscar and keep a magnificent
collection of all sorts of music. As a person, he is friendly, but very
tough and gutsy underneath - arriving the hard way has been good for him.
Perhaps. Jenrully is. All sorts of our protegés were there: Mark,
Norm (not really a protegé but he is being bloody ridiculous at this
point and we have to mother him or nothing), Bruce, George (Bruce's roommate
and honeymooning new friend), Ray who is a very intelligent and earnest
boy - not as nauseating as that sounds - who is going to be a psychiatrist
eventually. Other people like Peter Fraser from art class (excellent art
historian already - a ring of beard around his chin and an air of Henry
VIII) and some of the lower intelligencia of the university. There was good
and loud music, but everyone kept getting either stoned (Norman, the ass,
ruined his political image of staid, conservative uninterestingness by being
violently and creatively sick four times at, and on his way back to, residence)
or too sober, and thus depressed - some cheering up necessary - the female
function and all that. After everyone, including obnoxious Engineer-type
crashers, had gone home at two, the protegés and Peter and Jim and
I and Olivia listened to more music and talked eternal issues, except toward
the end, when Peter and I became a bit irreverent about our art course and
art esoterism generally.
Went home four thirty cold drained tired but happy with four wine bottles
for the collection on our windowsill. Forgot to mention a long talk with
Bruce [Stewart] about his wanderings over the earth with a father who makes
sewer systems (as an engineer) for local governments from Holland to Haiti,
Mexico to Barcelona - Bruce was drinking his 90¢ port from a wineskin
that the Spanish peasants use to squirt a jet of wine into their mouths
from great thirsty distances, as they walk along under the glaring noontide
sun of their happy land. There was a fire in the fireplace, candles on sills
('guttering'), tables of cheese and bread. Olivia just asked "Why spend
so much writing on one party?" "Because they like details."
Am I right?
8 December Tuesday
It must be eleven thirty by now, and I have a night-long term paper to
do in English, but before that ordeal begins, I want to tell you about the
concert I went to with Mike tonight - Haydn's The Creation oratorio,
presented by the Kingston Symphony and Choral Society with three excellent
soloists. I'm enclosing the program for you. Judy's heart will jump just
as mine did to see "The Heavens are Telling." It is magnificent
almost to the level of the Halleluja Chorus don't you think Judy?
And the passage where the trio sings "Never Never ..." can be
poignant to the point of hurting. Part III, the Thanksgiving of Adam
and Eve, is a complexity of trio, symphony, chorus, and soprano-baritone
duets (Adam and Eve) with the tenor Uriel moderating. I liked it most of
all. The staging was full of elegance as well, for the soprano soloist appeared
in a long mermaid like gown, elbow gloves, and rhinestones; and the two
men in sparkling full-evening dress. Even the pianist wore a full length
black dress and had a swanlike neck appropriate to such glamorous circumstances.
I knew one of the violinists - a sweet little puddle-eyed librarian at the
Douglas Library who seems my fine-intercepting guardian angel - and two
of the basses - one Professor McLay of the International House Committee
and our beautiful magnificent archeologist, Mr Hope Simpson. Will tell you
about him soon. Glorious man! O drool drool o.
Mike is good company at concerts, just as Norman is, for in spite of
all his concert experience, he is no more blasé about them than I
am, and the music moves over his face as much as it does over mine or Olivia's.
There is so much absolute, almost-invisible, joy running and glittering
through The Creation and music like it, that it would be desolate
not to be with someone who could see it as well. You know the feeling of
wanting to turn your head, during a particularly moving passage, and smile
at someone beside you.
I had another invitation out for Christmas: Bruce, the boy whose father
wanders and whose mother was a fashion model, invited me to his home in
Ottawa, and dearly I would love to go, but work and trainfare are problems.
Don Charmichael also asked me to his home in Ottawa (the misspelling of
his name is surely slippery Freudianism - it should be Carmichael). He is
a most charming and beautiful Irishman. Olivia is interested. She and Danny
have given up that particular ghost.)
[letter from the Office of the Registrar:
Dear Miss Epp,
I am writing to inform you that you have been given the Montreal Alumnae
Bursary of $150.00. I am enclosing a check.
I hope this will help to meet immediate expenses. I should like you to
come into the office some time so that we may examine your needs more fully
and try to help you work out a satisfactory budget.
I am sorry you were not able to come to dinner on Sunday.
I think it would be a gracious gesture on your part if you were to write
to the donors of this money expressing your pleasure in the award.
Yours very truly,
Jean Royce
9 Dec Wednesday
Writing essays all night is more exhausting than a day of physical labour.
Suddenly - you have been sitting alone in the circle of light from your
study lamp; your body seems to go flat because of all the caffeine and fatigue;
you have to concentrate on what you are writing without a break - and suddenly
there are movements downstairs. It is seven ayem! Then you finish the essay
in a kind of desperation, snap at Olivia when she asks some unimportant
question, have a luxurious breakfast at Shurtleff's, go to sleep on the
couch with your boots on, but only half-sleep because of the screams of
children downstairs and the sticky nets of words that writhe across your
mind trying to tear you back into thinking or writing, but all the clamouring
words are too loud and they have no meaning. (Do you know the feeling? It
often comes after studying too hard, cramming, and then trying to sleep.)
At noon the telephone wakes you. You speak in monosyllables that are hardly
civil. And you can't get back to sleep. You want to return to the world
of things and realities, so you walk slowly along Princess Street, stopping
at shops, staring and wandering with a stiff face and prickling eyes. You
buy four black candles and two small scented ones. After a long time you
come home, light all the candles at once, and wish for some Bach, but the
music on the radio is pop and raucous. Then you eat all the apples and think
wistfully of Bach again.
10 Dec Thursday
Eleven thirty, and it was a beautiful day, spent it's true mostly down
in the womb-warm stacks studying French for tomorrow. Now at home with candles
lit feeling at home and drinking tea before studying a bit more. No time
for a letter - just being faithful for a change. You haven't written for
a while, all the mail I ever get is fine-notices from the library.
12 Dec Saturday
Since there are no more exams until Tuesday, I spent yesterday shopping
in the warm rain, and then spent the evening listening to records and wrapping
gifts with the candles lit. Norm came over to deliver a Christmas gift,
a huge square box, which he let us open now - and it was an electric kettle,
something we needed to save us from brewing our coffee half a mug at a time
in our tiny saucepan! Dear Norman. We are officially his best friends, both
of us, and he seems to think of us as such. Quite overwhelming.
Sunday night
[journal]
A raining sleeping day, when I wasn't really awake until three. Bruce
called; we asked if he and George would like to come for the evening and
bring some records. Candles, a dark room. Olivia sprawled on the couch in
tights and my black dress, with her hair and the side of her face outlined
in candlelight. George on the trunk with a pillow, Bruce curled into the
chair, I on the floor in my green monk's gown. Vivaldi, the Missa Solemnis,
Piaf, The Three Ravens with Peter, Paul and Mary. Talking very generally
at first, but all waiting. Bruce saying to me "You don't have a 'face'
at all;" to Olivia, "You weren't real that one night after the
court, when you came into the coffee shop." I to him, "It's at
parties, sometimes; it's very gay colors." Bruce depressed, "for
very personal reasons." He wouldn't tell us why, so we told him. "I
think it's what happened to me last week," Olivia said. Me: "It
is as if your skin has thickened. Stimuli have a hard time getting through.
You feel as tho you can't reach anyone. You try and try to get through,
but it is all such a struggle that you hate it. You can't talk, you haven't
anything to say, and it makes you feel that nobody wants to have you around.
That is why you were bothered by Alison's wit." Olivia: "You go
into the coffee shop and you sit down. Then you get up and go away. And
then you come back. You can't stand being with people, but when you're alone
you have to go back to them." Me: "You stand and talk to someone
in a corridor for five minutes, but it is such a struggle. You fight and
fight, but you can't say anything, and you go away hating yourself."
"Sometimes it happens at parties, and everyone thinks you are being
a sulky child, and that makes it even worse." We looked at Bruce, and
he was smiling oddly, with a light on his face - "That is it exactly."
(Bruce with his slight, active body and his patterned Norwegian sweater,
his sharp-chinned articulate face, covered with freckles and seeming to
have a light behind it; his diamond-shaped eyes and his elfin ears.) And
immediately he began to lose his 'spook.' (By the end of the evening he
was very happy.)
There was a song on one of the records that we sang over and over, in
a sort of warmth that was very beautiful.
- Try to remember the kind of September
- When life was slow, and oh so mellow
- When grass was green, and grain was yellow
- When you were a young and callow fellow
- Try to remember, and if you remember,
- Follow.
-
- Try to remember when life was so tender
- When no one wept, except the willow
- And dreams were kept beside your pillow
- When love was an ember about to billow
- Try to remember, and if you remember,
- Follow.
-
- Deep in December it's nice to remember
- Although you know the snow will follow
- Without a hurt, the heart is hollow
- The fires of September that made us mellow
- Deep in December, it's nice to remember
- And follow!
[Words and music by Tom Jones and Harvey Schmidt from the musical The
Fantasticks]
-
F Scott Fitzgerald, Tender is the night:
in such contacts the personalities had seemed to press so close to
him that he became the personality itself - there seemed some necessity
of taking all or nothing; it was as if for the remainder of his life he
was condemned to carry with him the egos of certain people, early met and
early loved, and to be only as complete as they were complete themselves.
There was some element of loneliness involved - so easy to be loved
- so hard to love.
Some significance to the West Street type of people, especially those
I value.
(The West Street people are the intelligencia, the actors and artists
and philosophers, semi-bohemian, nearly all neurotic.)
December 14
[journal]
What fragments there are left of Charles can be put into a very small
heap. The picture of him standing under a tree in Craigleigh Gardens with
a streetlamp lighting his shoulders. The lights spread below, far at the
bottom of the hill slope full of trees, paths, shadows. Dancing for him
in despair at Howells' in Toronto, lying on the floor beside him, not touching,
and gradually reaching out fingertips for his. The solidness and leanness
of his shoulders under my hands. The whole long panel of his back, and his
small flat buttocks. The way he looked walking beside me, when I saw him
slantwise, his hair very blond, shocked over his forehead. Eyes small and
pointed, mouth with a strange curve. Standing in the rain the day of the
vigil, with his rust sweater soaked and clinging to him. The incredible
length of his legs, his absorption in something abstract as he walks away
after saying goodnight, without a backward glance. Slow voice on the telephone.
His stumbling, painful joy when he is drunk. Tenderness when I was sad (only
then) - the night Mark antagonized two drunks, and he held me closely, running
his hands up and down my arms. When we returned from Cathy's Chianti party,
stopping on the street corner to hold me. The night in the cow pasture with
the vodka, when he stumbled magnificently over fences, lifted me high to
see the lights just over the horizon (6'4" could see them more easily
than 5'4"), and we lay quietly on the ground listening to Danny, Norm
and Olivia shrieking. The way he tossed off glasses of vodka straight, with
such joy. His shuffling unrhythmic way of dancing. I always had to put my
arms around his waist because I couldn't reach his shoulders. And I could
never reach what he really was, I never saw a glimmer of him even when we
somehow found room on this patched old couch to curl up together in physical
peace, we never were friends. I could touch his face and rub his shoulders
hard in the palms of my hands, and he could move his hand from my neck to
my thigh, and touch my nipples, but we never were friends.
The touching was good. The one night he came in and we couldn't find
the lights, we stood by the window and kissed deep kisses. My blue shirt
was open and I had tossed my bra (I always took it off with a secret flourish)
behind a chair. Skin receptive, with hollows and curves, nipples excited,
very small and eager. All the nerve networks inside peaking around, down
in little jagged, colorful lines, like yarn.
Later that night when I sat up and took off my shirt ("I like to
take off my clothes for you, Charles") he reached up with his hands
over my breasts and pulled me down, and warmed me with his arms.
I miss him now, but I remember all the time we spent together, and how
little of it was meaningful. How sad I felt when he went home (without looking
back) because I still didn't know him and he knew nothing of me.
- This is not all, but enough?
There was a peace about it that seemed a constant. No struggles for intellectual
mastery. I knew how wise he is, but there was nothing active about him.
A kind of stupor over even his limbs, his dancing. No joy in movement, no
eagerness (but "Do you feel the earth underneath you? I like to")
in his long lean bones, no awareness of electricity in the world. A kind
of sleepiness even about his loving. (But once he seized me and forced me
back, and I loved it.) And always a silence or a strain.
- Two ways to avoid the question:
- I do not speak and you smile.
A goodness and kindness, and a concern. But love? Or even affection?
I seemed paralyzed by his kindness, and at last I hated it and had to stop
accepting it.
- You with your warm joy, hidden.
- And I with my bright joy, lost.
But I am desolate that I could not give or take or ask or speak enough
to find him. Once I wrote:
"Charles, I do love you. Commitment: this I love, you, for this
while. You I will care for and care about. I will mature an affection for
you and a peace with you and a warmth from you. I will give words, vulnerability;
find in you what is strong and what is tough, even your shadow in long,
firelit nights. Tell you truly that I wish to be your friend, for I see
you and I value you. My bright joy recovered, your roots glowing out again,
can we mesh them to our own joy and resiliency?" Doodling in English
class, I drew two strange trees with scattered leaves and wrote, "Let
us say that they begin to grow straight, are strong and shaken together,
rubbing and whirring, eventually there is a set of mind and a leaning toward
-."
For this while - knowing that nothing long and deep could come, but erecting
a tin shack and calling it "Troy - for this while." There was
the affection, and the peace with him, and even the warmth from him. But
I couldn't find him, not the toughness or the shadow. I could not see him
or value him. We could not mesh what we could not discover, and we never
were friends.
(But remember the night that we went to the lake, and it was cold sheet-light,
like ice, with mist and silence, and we stood looking at it with the rocks
under our feet. Then we found a flat stone and lay down on it; and it was
cold but we laughed and scuffed home through piles of leaves, and we were
very happy. That night I called it an October-summer romance. If I said
that now it is December, would it mean anything? Perhaps only that it was
not enough.
This is all there is that I can remember and keep of him.
- The door behind you closing,
- Tears in my eyes.
December 22
I feel very close to you all, very sad and very happy. Close, because
your packages and your exuberant envelope full of letters came today. Sad,
because I'm listening to the A minor Piano Concerto, which is more
Christmas to me than any carol or even the Messiah because of the
poignancy of the Christmas when we heard it first. Happy because Christmas
is very real this year, and as poignant in a different way. I think this
sums up all I want to tell you in this letter, the way a good introductory
paragraph should, but there are many details.
Can I tell you first of all exactly where I am and how it is? Olivia
went home to Toronto last night, so that the apartment is very quiet. On
the window sill are four green bottles, transparent, with yellow and rust
asters in them [probably chrysanthemums], the stems and fine leaves showing
through the glass magnified by the water. (I bought a small bunch for a
dollar from a business-like farmer at the market square this afternoon and
felt very gay carrying them through the streets wrapped in green paper.)
There are black candles everywhere, our three crystal wine glasses, kumquats
and evergreen branches on a coffee table (the kumquats like decorations
for a tree) with the bright blue gift from the siblings under it. There
is an orange the size of a grapefruit, something special, on my typewriter.
(Bought it and the kumquats and half a pound of delicious white cheddar
at Cooke's this afternoon - I'll tell you about that later.)
Intermission: Christmas presents: apple pieces and a dollar from Grandma
and Grandpa Epp, apple pieces and nuts from the Konrads, a small print of
three striped horses with their heads pointing in different directions called
The Free by Nakayama from Tony Tugwell, two autobiographies (Here
Comes There Goes You Know Who by Saroyan and Memoirs of a Dutiful
Daughter by Simone de Beauvoir who wrote The Second Sex, both
excellent) from Olivia, the kettle from Norman, the blouse from Judy and
Paul and Rudy, two ornamental tiny houses from my Sunnysiders, and from
you, in advance, a lovely and comfortable and extremely sexy black bra with
stretch straps and sides and black lace! Thank you, I like it very much
and shall wear it nearly constantly (oh, nevermind, I'm teasing you) [my
mom must have sent money]. And from Mike, a big pot of yellow flowers and
a dinner date. Rather a rich Christmas, don't you think? And wait till you
see what I got you - it's coming.
Oh, forgot - from Don Carmichael my Christmas present was the loan of
his hi-fi over the holidays.
Am working at Sunnyside nearly every day, still love it.
part 3
- raw forming volume 3: 1964-1965 september-april
- work & days: a lifetime journal project
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