[undated letter, February]
It's good to think of you going to school every morning on the bus and
I'm amused in a nice way to think that my birthday present helped to outfit
you.
And you want to know about Bill? It may reassure you to know that the
sweater was from Dorothy Volk as well; I suspect that she picked it out.
But why would he want to send me something so expensive? 1. He has lots
of money and no children. 2. He had to work his way through college in Brooklyn,
was very poor as a student, and couldn't get scholarships because there
weren't any. It took him seven years to get through the four-year course
because he had to go to night school. 3. He loves me. Partially, he identifies
with me because in a sense he's doing what someone should have done for
him; I'm ambitious as he was; I'm climbing out of the same sort of environment
that he had to struggle to get out of.
That's only part of it tho because the way he loves me isn't fatherly
- it was almost miraculous that someone as young as I and someone as old
as he could become such close friends, but we did - we had a relationship
with a great deal of trust and respect and more than a little excitement
of discovery in it. What you want to know is: did we sleep together - yes.
We didn't make love partly because of mutual loyalty to his wife (with whom
he has an excellent marriage) and partly because I don't think he could
have if he'd wanted to; but when we went on weekend excursions we slept
in the same bed.
He is a good person, and he is good in a sense that almost any moral
Christian I can think of is not good: he doesn't fool himself about his
motives or about the essential loneliness and selfishness of people, but
in his dealings with them he gives them his sincerity, his very serious
desire not to hurt them, and his tolerance of their right to have a personality
unlike his. Consequently he can have an encounter with them and he can love
them. You've seen his picture and you've seen his face. How many moral people
you know have a face as beautiful as his at his age? I respect him, and
I love him too - you and he are people who give me some confidence that
to mature is not necessarily to become more bitter and more unconscious
and more intolerant. And he has gone even further than you because he's
managed completely without religion. I want to keep him for a friend as
long as he lives, and if I ever have any children I want him to consider
them as grandchildren.
I was angry when you said "It isn't that I have a dirty mind, but
if you were my mother wouldn't you wonder?" You do have a dirty
mind - you have a dirty mind because you think that sex without marriage
is sinful and scandalous, and I suspect you're not sure it isn't sinful
and scandalous after marriage as well. And Father has an even dirtier mind
than you do: with all his obsession about sex in any form and with all his
righteous wrath and with his pride in his own chastity as a young man I
think he has one of the dirtiest minds I have ever encountered - of course
it isn't his fault, and of course I'm being unjustly hard on him, but his
righteous unable-to-face-reality, unable-to-face-himself, unable-to-tolerate-others
mind is dirty: the false virtue is supposed to cover his lack of
real virtues. Bill sleeps with women he isn't married to and he even goes
to nightclubs where the dancers are "halb-nakt" but he doesn't
have a dirty mind: Father turns the television set off the minute any hint
of body-beauty comes on and tears pages with bathing suit advertisements
out of magazines, but he does have a dirty mind.
You want to like me and be proud of me and respect me, but you think
you can't if you suspect that I have been 'sleeping around' so you pretend
to yourself that I slept with Rasheed because I was tempted beyond endurance
and that I have probably repented and won't do it again. Nonsense - I haven't
repented and will do it again. I slept with Rasheed because I liked him
and was attracted to him and trusted him not to think any less either of
himself or of me for it. He is a sensuous person, as you know, and he has
an extremely healthy West Indian attitude toward sex which does not allow
a sense of guilt to spoil his feeling that his loneliness is transcended.
Nor does Rasheed 'take advantage' of women; he is considerate and competent,
and I'm still pleased that he was my first. What I mean to say is that your
dirty-mindedness is not that you 'wonder,' but that you hope so desperately
that it isn't so.
While we are on the topic I'll answer a question that I dodged before
- you ask how important Greg is to me. I knew it would require a long answer
so I've waited until now.
He's very important: I like him well enough to think, sometimes, that
if circumstances don't change I might even marry him eventually. We understand
each other, we're comfortable and spontaneous with each other, he is mature
in areas where I'm immature and he's immature in areas where I am mature,
he is a potentially excellent husband because he is so considerate and so
warm; he is an excellent lover and our physical relationship is a very joyful
one. Do you know what I'm talking about? Do you know what it is like to
make love affectionately and freely with someone who is emotionally and
intellectually tuned to you, whose body you like and who likes your body,
who is concerned that you should be as pleased as he is? And afterwards
to lie with your arms around each other feeling so close and so happy that
you almost burst? I'm not sure you do know, and if not, forgive me if this
hurts you. But you must see that this is good for me (as it is good for
Greg) and does not fragment me - I have not lost anything, not my integrity
or my joy, and I have been gaining. I no longer have the fear that I'll
be emotionally paralyzed as Father has always seemed to be. And I think
that what I've said is true for Judy too. So when you wonder, please don't
hope that it is not so, just that both I and whoever else is involved are
mature enough to make our physical loving mutually generous.
If you want practical reassurance - I have a doctor's prescription for
birth control pills. If you want practical justification, remember the problems
of marrying too young and too early.
I wonder if you have found this cruel. I hope not. Don't you see what
will happen if we begin to write you comforting letters rather than honest
ones? Whenever we see you and whenever we come home we would have to think
"I wonder if they suspect, I wonder if they wonder" and our relationship
would be based on suspicion and dishonesty. Do you want us to have nothing
to say to you because some of the vital areas of our lives are things you
can't bear to hear about? If so tell us, and we'll write you comforting
lies but we won't respect you and we'll dislike ourselves. This is important!
Unless we can be honest with you and unless you want us to be honest with
you, you and we will lose what is most important to us. [2012]
I hope you're not hurt.
Much of this letter seems to have been said before - do you understand
and disagree? Do you not understand and disagree? Are you unsure which?
March 7
My room is prettier and prettier - Greg will take some pictures to show
you. There are new things since yesterday: a print from Greg, blue and orange
and other colors, by Paul Klee (called "Sinbad the Sailor"); a
book of pictures by Marc Chagall, with a radiant green-red-blue cover, from
Don and Olivia; and a large, stunning book of my beloved Dürer, letters
and paintings. From Judy I got some rather stunning leopard-looking underwear;
from Gma K $2.00; from Maria and Tooz' and Anne, cards and letters; and
from you, two very beautiful crystal glasses - I was excited at having
five dollars to spend as a present, and determined to get something beautiful
- not practical. So on Saturday, when it was Just-spring, mud luscious and
puddle-wonderful with rafts of thin clouds moving very quickly, I went downtown
to Domus and wandered through the really beautiful things full of the knowledge
of having money to spend on anything. And got the glasses, very delicate
and perfectly formed. I'll like them for a long time.
The beginning of March 6 found me full of coffee, nervous, typing erratically
- 7 a.m., 9 a.m., found me still typing, and my first present was the completion
of an extremely complex philosophy paper which had been due long ago.
Greg decided to make the birthday dinner, since I'd made his, and Olivia
had made Don's (24th) last week. So we had: a candle, gigantic, rare steaks,
mushrooms, fat black olives, brown bread and butter, salad, port, and peanuts.
Then I opened my presents and we took pictures and were gay in spite of
the fact that Don has just missed getting into Oxford and thinks he's a
failure!
He and She-Olivia intend to be married in summer and Olivia has asked
whether I'll be bridesmaid - I might. G may be best man - just to keep the
whole thing in the family. G is going to summer school and working on his
thesis: both he and Olivia graduate this year, and Don will have his MA
in September.
It is strange to be twenty two; I've always thought of it as the year
a woman's age begins to show. How old was I when you turned 22, Mother?
Nearly a year? You'll really have to start to think of me as grown up.
Later:
It is wet and sunny, nearing the Ides of March.
Olivia is to be married on June 10: she wants me to stay to be maid of
honor, so I'll probably work for John Neufeld at cherry-picking or something
between the end of exams at May 6 and the wedding, and then come home. Registrar
Jean Royce tells me that she may be able to get me a bursary for books.
Don will probably go to Essex near London for his PhD and Olivia wants to
go with him, leaving in September when Don finishes his thesis.
[journal]
March 10
"Il faut aimer, n'importe qui, n'importe quoi, n'importe comment,
pourvu qu'on aime." Mme Aubray, Les idées de. 1890
Ironical comment - I write it down, ironically with a view to the superiority
of knowing when, who, not to love (c/f D and O), but if fallacy - a fallacy
I've tried partially to live by. Whether ironically or whether seriously
moral - a statement of conflict.
March 11
Another one of my resolution dreams: I saw Jean-Jacques tying tarps onto
a truck, four girls getting onto the back of the truck, and the truck moving
away. I was in the cab beside him, he was angry about a letter he had received
from me; but we talked. He was defensive and hostile, I was conciliatory.
Finally we were lying down and he had begun to understand. I put my hand
on his chest and said "I still like you very much but I can't be a
little in love with you as I was, because you've treated me too badly. I
have to look after my pride." And some time later he pulled me over
and kissed me with his large soft mouth - I reminded him of the subway,
rode back to Place de l'Opéra when we had stood beside the pole and
he had kissed me so that I thought I would explode. The resolution wasn't
a joyful reunion, just a kind of tenderness restored - as it had been in
Athens, I suppose, when I was sick and he bought me the Dürer book
as soon as his money came. (I wonder if he has really forgotten?) He's confused
in my mind with Rasheed; perhaps that is why I was so irrationally and confusedly
attracted to him; this dream was like the dream in which I explained to
myself why Mitchell had withdrawn, in which we ran through a garden in the
moonlight looking for a place to make love in, but pursued.
That room I had in Rome - the dark and stench of the hall, my door beside
a table piled with junk, the cold stone floor, the bed that was always cold
until Jerry stole a blanket for me from the Naples hostel, the table with
its lace scarf, my Botticelli book open to the three graces, my Italian
text in the drawer, my yellow-covered journal, a glass with roses dropped
from a funeral procession, carnations stolen from the electric virgin, or
flowering white twigs from the Campidoglio, or daffodils from the public
gardens along the middle of the street paralleling the Foro Romano. The
tiny window set into the thick wall, barred, looking out on the hall. The
dim mirror above the washstand, the fought-over lampidina hanging from a
long cord from the ceiling, my rough paper packages full of prunes or olives
or carrots from the market - wonderful, large, sticky, black, sour prunes
from the cat-sour market in the park.
My room in Athens, large windows on the hallway,
one low cot in the corner, the small table with journal and Botticelli,
the folding wooden camp chair, nightgown on a nail behind the door. Jean-Jacques'
bedroll spread randomly on the floor under the window - the grimy white
shirt over the back of the chair, the neighbour's chanting prayers night
and morning, the dim early morning cry of the rag woman, the street outside
already brilliant with sun when we emerged from the dark stairway at 8 o'clock
to buy bread and butter, arm-over-shoulder, happy.
Beckett on Proust: "Habit is a compromise effected between the individual
and his environment. It is a generic term for the countless treaties concluded
between the countless subjects that constitute the individuals and their
correlative objects. The periods of transition that separate consequentive
adaptations represent the perilous zones in life of the individual, dangerous,
painful, mysterious and fertile, when for a moment the boredom of living
is replaced by the suffering of being."
March 18
Saturday morning, woke in the sleeping bag with sunlight on all the white
walls, the red and blue light concentrated in bars on the side of the bed,
Greg tramping in to wake me. We made bran muffins and I scrubbed the kitchen
while they baked. Then we took all twelve of them upstairs on a plate, ate
them with thick slices of butter, sitting in the sun. Then he kissed the
side of my neck (and we moved the three muffins left to my desk) and lay
watching clouds through the top half of the window (who could have dreamed
that my room could be so beautiful, last October when it was covered with
pink wallpaper?) He was extremely happy - I was too.
Tonight he burst in for a moment, poised on the rubber mat looking very
powerful, terribly happy; I think I want to keep him!
[letter]
18 March
It's good to have Greg writing to you so that I can stop explaining and
let him try: maybe he sounds less arrogant. My first reaction to your letter
was despair: I thought - well, that particular communication has been lost,
no hope for any understanding there. And my feelings were hurt. And I felt
wretched because you seemed to have given up on me - with more bitterness
than you ever show - as a fraud and a hypocrite. My consequent reaction
- which you'll recognize as one of Father's - was: if she doesn't approve
of me and won't agree with me it is obvious that the relationship has reached
the end of its value! And so on: "I won't go home; I'll be like Uncle
Walter and do what I like without telling anyone anything. It's obvious
that by telling anyone anything you just hurt them and estrange them. Uncle
W has the right idea: I thought she was different but it's obvious that
she doesn't want me to be anything but what she approves of: so let's feed
her as few lies as possible but as many as necessary and she'll be happy"
and so on in this vein.
Olivia immediately pointed out that this was silly: also that my very
bitter reaction had nothing to do with whether or not you understand,
as you said you do. I had expected that if I explained, you would not only
understand but approve. The fact that you violently did not approve
seemed to prove that any value I have for you is false, since what I approve
in myself is what you disapprove. 'Loving' me under those conditions is
meaningless: if I'm not valued for what I am, it's not me
that is valued, but something imagined. This was what your letter suggested:
and not only that I had let you down, but my whole generation.
Olivia also pointed out that to ask you to approve is to ask too much,
because in order to approve you would have to give up some of the beliefs
most important in making life or events meaningful to you. It's true - you
have a hard enough time as it is and I can't expect you to give up your
beliefs.
We're stale-mated. You won't change your beliefs and I won't change mine,
much as we may 'understand.' We'll have to see whether there's still a foundation
for a relationship in any case - I'll be home for part of the summer and
we'll see. I'm afraid! It surprised me how lost I felt even now at the thought
of such a breakdown of communications, even tho 'home' hasn't been home
for a very long time.
I've begun to understand from your letter that you were hurt as well
as furious as a result of my previous letter. If I sounded superior about
my sexual experience it was partly that I thought I did know something
you didn't - I'd never seen anything in your relationship with Father that
I could connect with my own experience. (And how was I to know it was good?)
I quite naively thought you'd be glad I'd discovered something better.
You misunderstood my use of the phrase "a good lover" - any
old stick certainly cannot be a good lover, I'm not talking about technicalities.
Any old stick cannot be generous, or warm, or funny, or understanding.
This letter of Greg's is quite good. He has expressed my feelings about
commitment very well too.
This is a funny philosophy class I'm having: Mr Estall in Theory of Knowledge
is slow-spoken, friendly, wise but in no hurry to show it, funny - he stands
or wanders about the front of the room fixating us with his blue eyes from
under his long white eyebrows telling stories to make his point. The fans
are humming and blowing, sun comes onto the floor in scattered patterns,
1:30 of Friday afternoon, no one is paying optimum attention, exams are
little more than a month away, and we are talking about whether or not minds
exist.
What time of the month was Rasheed's birthday? I saw him two nights ago;
he's happy. This sort of weather makes me think of him.
[journal]
March 19
Woke from a dream - Frank had sent me a box of papers, among them I found
the manuscript of a short story with pictures of him as he grew up and pictures
of myself looking vain, young, and pretty. The story had been published
in a magazine, with different pictures. I read it in the magazine version
- a rough, discontinuous stream-of-consciousness story which I don't remember.
I remember only that it evoked a particularly sharp sense of life moving
too fast to watch that Frank lives with more than anyone. I woke up, bathed,
made biscuits, all with the lemon-taste of the dream in my mouth. (Life
moving too fast to realize, but surely it is lovely and terrible as it passes.)
The personal symbol I remember is the summer of fifteen when, every time
I ran by the dirty window of the garage, I could see my face brown and altered
in a blur of green leaves; image located dimly behind a film of dust, but
glowing as tho' it were a dream and not a reflection. I think the window
a prism that caught my face and concentrated it into a statement of that
flying time: as an image it says everything.
March 24
I don't often face this leg: thick at the thigh, bony at the knee, tibia
and fibula and little more at the calf, heel jutting out like the end of
a bone, a long scar on the ankle, other scars all around the ankle like
a starry bangle, pale pink, bone jutting out at the instep, toes crushed
together, thick grey calloused skin on the heel cracked and dirty. Then
there is the other too: thick at the thigh, large as a leg of lamb at the
calf, gross and wide at the foot; but it is strong. (Once I was complaining
to Mother about my legs, and she said evasively, "Men are really more
interested in the ankles than in legs," and I thought "Oh, perhaps
I will have good ankles at least, when I grow up.")
The thin one (small boys' giggles behind me on the street, "One
fat one and one skinny one") lags behind me: there is an odd jerk when
I bring it forward in walking, because it doesn't flex at the instep to
transfer my weight.
I wear green stockings, yellow ones, silvery blue ones that glitter:
one fat leg and one thin one, grotesque but defiant. I will not camouflage
- this much at least I can afford to offer small boys on the street and
young men with raised eyebrows, they can peer as they like.
Even if I were beautiful I would be ugly. Even if I had the face and
body of the Black Russian [if I had] the legs of mine I would be set apart:
there would be a difference in the eyes of young men. Even Greg: it makes
me wild to wonder why he stays and wants me. (When he said at the movie
tonight, that he thought a dark-haired girl across the aisle was beautiful,
and an angel-blonde with my hatchet-faced boy, I withered up, not because
I'm afraid he will give me up, but in a way because I despise him for not
giving me up: for not giving me the slightest feeling that he would give
me up to try to get something beautiful - for liking me too easily and too
soon and too comfortably.)
Besides, I want Don. On to that again?
I've already forgotten the leg, or sat on it. Its circulation is bad
and it gets cold easily.
But this neurotic need to be beautiful - I claim it's metaphysical: a
need to incorporate in myself my only value. But I say to myself that I'm
glad for my leg - it sets me apart, it forces me to be distinctly myself-with-the-thin-leg-and-the-fat-leg.
A lie - if I could look like the Beauty in a moment, I would: hair, mouth,
neck, breasts, bottom, white thighs and fine firm calves and small feet
in their narrow slippers. I would change!
Fantasies from very young childhood, of being beautiful and perfect,
the long search in the mirror as I turned my face and turned it hoping to
find that when I turned it full face forward it would be new and flawless.
The long love-affair with Janeen's face: stricken desire at the other
faces I have passed, sad confrontations with myself, love affair with the
Russian's entire body this year: no academic interest. Lust. I want to be
- to have in my mirror this face and that body.
Agony at the age of twelve and thirteen, and mostly since, because my
body is short and thick, my shoulders wide as a man's, my face in photographs
always fleshy and peasant. The lifelong desire to lose weight, self-loathing
and nausea, the lifelong ghost of ugliness under the skin, much worse than
any sin - a guilt of being. (What right to live if you're ugly? And all
the rest of you too, the crowds of you coming through doors, you've
no right to exist.)
Called Greg and he was sympathetic. But he said "You must keep this
thing because it is useful to you." "It isn't a question of keeping
it, you can't take it off. You forget that it's there until somebody reminds
you." ("Who reminds you?" "Anybody can: somebody walking
behind you on the street, a kid ten years old. A difference in degree in
people's faces when they look at you." "Yeah I know.") "It
isn't that it functions, the point is that it doesn't function, or it functions
very badly, it has no circulation and it is always cold." I hung up
because I was crying in front of a stranger or something who's just come
in the door.
[letter]
March 24
Now they are only three weeks away. This morning I made bran muffins
in remembrance of yours, Mother. Sun all day, crowds of people in the streets,
smell of flowers from the market square, and an Easter egg. There was a
card from the Grandparents Epp which enclosed a dollar and said "Read
Psalm 1 and be happy" - I was. The snow is gone and a few yellowish
stubs of tulip buds have begun to show in the mud under last fall's grey
leaves.
We are anxious about getting essays and lab reports done so that we can
begin to study. First exam on April 18, last on May 6. Two more essays and
a report for an original experiment in psychology. Don and Olivia nervous
about getting married, Greg chaffing because he wants to be skiing and has
to write papers instead; feelings of affection toward professors who only
have four classes more to teach, feelings of hostility to that idiot Dr
Weisman who can't make himself clear; outline of what now is like. (Last
year this was Greece and Ischia!)
News is slow traveling across all those three thousand miles of muddy
brush and prairie between me and you. Echoes hardly reach anymore. Good
thing summer is almost here.
I was telling Greg about the trip to Mexico and Arizona. We were back
in La Glace by this time that year weren't we?
What I also remember is coming home from the sawmill one year just before
spring breakup, and stopping at Kinderwater's on the way, and having some
Grüben (I think) for breakfast.
Also, all those springs of watching for Kinderwaters' car at the highway,
glamorous excitement of going by a house with people in it who had just
come from California and might have brought us something. (How are
the Kinderwaters?) They'll be an extremely vivid childhood memory: the funny
smell in their porch and the funny Catholic calendars on the wall, and the
terribly enticing upstairs that we were never allowed to see. Magazines!
A Billy-Goat-Gruff wooden bridge cross the ravine, Mr Kinderwater's pipe
smell and his friendly gruffness. All in all they were very glamorous people,
so different from the people we usually visited (who were glamorous too,
in a way).
Happy spring - ie, read Psalm 1 and be happy.
[undated letter]
So - my frustration and bitterness. Of course there was some truth in
my tragic hero illusion as well - I may come to understand this again when
I'm less threatened by his and your rejection of my values: my life, is
what it comes to.
Your letter, Mother: it made me so sad the first reading. I do everything
wrong for you! Of course I shouldn't disparage your life and I don't mean
to disparage what you make of it. I'm so blind to things that I take for
granted you must want what I want and that you must have as much trouble
liking what you have as I would if I were in your place. This is nonsense
of course: I'll begin to realize that the sort of life you want or need
is not at all what I want and need and that therefore what you have is not
so bad for you as it would be for me. Olivia agrees with you that I tend
to expect other people to want what I want and that I try to reform them
if they don't.
All right - you aren't a heroine after all, since you really enjoy your
life as much as I do mine, especially now that it is changed. But you know,
part of the reason I have felt as I do about your life is that for a fairly
long time now I've felt as tho' you really did want to have part of my life
to fill in what yours lacked. And I'm jealous of my life: I want it all
for myself, because as long as you need it I can't be happy about
doing with it what I want. So I'm glad you're going to school: you're
on your own and I can have my life back. This is how I feel it, anyway.
And last year [month?] when I wrote the letter that hurt you about sex,
the same thing caused us trouble. You'd never told me it was good, and I
inferred from what I heard through the walls that it was terrible, and so
I assumed you'd be happy to know that I'd discovered it didn't have to be
terrible! Again, I thought I knew what you lacked or felt when I didn't
at all.
Anyway, I'll try not to do any more crusading and bungling and take what
you say at face value, and expect you to look after yourself, and not worry.
If you accept the terms and reciprocate - we have a deal.
About the other deal, money: Miss Royce called me this morning to tell
me that I've been awarded a General Motors Scholarship for the coming year
- as much money as I need up to $2000. I won't ask for that much, but I'll
be able to send you $200. Greg insists that he wants to send you some money
too: ie lend it to me to send to you; he's determined, so if you could use
$250 instead of $200 let us know. Also, when do you need it? He doesn't
get his fellowship and I don't get my scholarship until registration at
least (the 13th of Sept) (and his is later): can you delay paying your fees?
Do you have clothes, shoes? Do you have money for books?
Will you have time to knit my pullover? I've bought a knitting book with
instructions in it for a sweater I like a lot: I'll put it into a package
with some wool, the other white pullover, and that sweater suit of Victoria's
(it's too 'mature' for me), and send it this week if I can.
The General Motors Scholarship came as a huge surprise and at exactly
the right moment: because, even with the philosophy scholarship and the
$1000 loan, the year was really quite bleak-looking and pinched-in-the-cheeks.
But now I'm completely without worries and have $1000 less debt to worry
about. Also the scholarship is very prestigious and will look good on graduate
school application forms. Ordinarily the award is made only in first year
and continues through for the four years, but someone decided to graduate
after three years and I was recommended to get the year left over, on the
basis of last year's marks I suppose. I'm elated! Greg's elated! (He had
visions of having to subsidize me with crumbs from HIS table!) Freedom from
worry and some new clothes too -
You'll be interested to hear about Rasheed - he and Basil came to see
me today to invite me to a party they're having tonight.
[undated letter]
Your ability to write the kind of letter your last one was is one of
the most wonderful things about you. And I'm glad you decided not to shield
another of your difficult Epps - as you say, I'm lucky to have friends who
can head off the unfortunate Epp reaction to hurt feelings at least partially.
You are right in saying that I tend not to take other people's opinions
seriously when I'm convinced of something - but my feeling is often like
the feeling of helplessness during Rasheed and my arguments with Uncle Bill
Epp - there isn't a possibility of coming to an agreement because the two
opposing viewpoints start with two irreconcilable premises and two incompatible
sets of values: so the opposing viewpoint is automatically discounted because
it just does not and cannot fit into the whole structure of beliefs - you
have the same problem altho' in a way you have one-and-a-half feet in one
world and half-a-foot in another.
You know I've always thought of you as having a kind of vicarious life
'outside' thru' me - and my former long detailed letters were one way of
giving you some of my life to make up for your isolation: this makes it
doubly difficult for you to accept me doing something that you can't approve
of and thus share. And this leaves me in a position of being responsible
for cutting you off from one of your sources of gratification - but things
are different now, you're going to school, if you are determined to, you'll
go to university and then to different countries. You'll have a wider life
of your own and won't need ours so much: this is the best thing that could
happen to you. The need for security from your children that you speak about
can be turned into a very welcome freedom from them in order to do what
you want and find yourselves after these many years of responsibility
for other smaller creatures so intent on finding themselves that they pay
you no consideration.
I don't think it is true that we didn't get what we wanted from you:
you never stopped giving, and you know how central you were to our lives.
I supposed that you keep saying 'we' when you deprecate our family background
out of loyalty to Father - but surely you don't think you could have done
any more? If you didn't give us a 'home' in the normal sense of the
word it was partly from economic factors that you couldn't help, partly
because Father has a personality that isn't sure enough of itself and its
values, and partly because the children in the home are a queer lot.
A. The eldest is isolated by a deformity (which you couldn't help) and
compensates for it by 1. developing her intelligence 2. rejecting all other
people who might see her as an imperfect object rather than the live and
oversensitive somebody. So you did what you could to help her develop
confidence enough in at least some other people and made her feel valuable
for herself (it's true: you've no idea how important you've been in giving
me the amount of self confidence that I have - and that is why the thought
of you withdrawing your approval is so threatening).
B. The second is haunted by a domineering older sibling and grows up
to feel that she has no importance in herself, so must react in order to
become somebody separate and just as good (so you did what you could to
show her she was a somebody too: moreover you protected her from the sibling).
C. The eldest son has some especial problems accepting criticism (felt
to be unfair) from a father he does not respect (so you try to arbitrate
between them). He is full of resentment at all sorts of ills in the world
(so you show him that everybody in the world is not against him, you listen
to him, you tell him all the things he wants to hear but won't admit to
wanting).
D. A youngest who spent his first 6 years being browbeaten by the three
other browbeater siblings and therefore must be built up again completely
- which you do: with the result that he is (seems) 300% happier now than
he was then.
So don't you ever understand that you were the family and the home? Of
course we had warmth - and nearly constantly. I hope you have a chance to
stop spending all your energy on other people and can spend it on finding
out what you would really like to do for the next years. (Mrs Morrison
says that a woman's life is discontinuous: it changes completely during
its different stages.)
There is always this problem of hurting people: which people must you
choose to hurt? The whole question is complicated in the differences in
the people themselves. (For instance, I could do one thing which would hurt
part of my friends, ruin myself, but make the rest of the relatives happy.
On the other hand, I can do one thing which makes me happy, makes some of
my friends unhappy, makes some of them happy, and hurts or shocks a whole
lot of relatives, etc. Solution? Die - everybody can be equally unhappy,
then, but not for long!)
There has to be a choice you know, and I think I've made it. So the people
that will be hurt in this situation are
1. grandparents (who needn't know very much), who would not accept Greg,
married or unmarried - the sort of life they'd approve for me would make
me desperately unhappy; and I have longer to live than they have; they have
their own lives and have no right to mine: so I can love them, be interested
in them, write them, visit them (not too often and not too long at one time)
and that is all. What other relationship can there be in any case?
2. aunts and uncles (Anne and Harvey are the only ones I want to keep
any contact with) - I don't need them and they don't need me. Laissez-faire.
3. neighbours - fortunately I'm 3,000 miles away from them - and I think
I have learned the lesson about not embarrassing you with them. No more
boy visitors - neighbours' opinions are more important. (Although it makes
me furious to think that inconsequential people must be given such importance
because community and reputation is so important). (But okay, when I'm at
home I'll play by their rules - when I'm here I play by mine, not
theirs. There are limits!) Do you really feel that you must be evasive with
them because of me?
As for calling somebody your son for yourself and for him, that you can
do whenever you like. It concerns nobody but you and him. (Some people are
important and some are not! And the ones who are not important and
so aren't taken into consideration are usually more scandalized than hurt.)
Do you identify yourself with Grandpa and Grandma Epp? You aren't like
them - and you can't really say that your reaction to Greg is like theirs
to Rosemarie.
And if two people can live together without being married why can't their
parents adopt them in the same way? (Unlegalized inlawship.)
Your view that a marriage is built on commitment has some truth too!
It is true that if two people are married for good they are likely to try
harder to make their marriage work, but is the effort worth it? To spend
your life struggling nobly to make a marriage hold together, sometimes with
very minimal results, is a nice ideal abut it is a huge waste of time if
there is a possibility that both partners will be happier with somebody
else. The only time so much pain and sacrifice is worthwhile is either when
1. there is no better solution or 2. the results are really superior to
marriages of more compatible people. You can't tell me that some marriages
aren't better off dissolved! No matter how much self sacrifice or effort
goes into them. Perhaps if you believe in another life you can justify wasting
this one: but if you believe as I do that there isn't another chance at
life, this one isn't expendable - there's no excuse for throwing it away.
Trust and love can't be blind - they have to come gradually, not before
but after a long experience together. Investment is made in downpayments
a little at a time, and marriage is untenable until there's a good nest
egg. What if you're married and the down payments stop? Don't tell me they
don't, often enough.
If is often true that you can't become strong unless you are forced into
difficult situations and cannot run away, it is just as often true that
people are stunted and killed because they do not run away from difficult
situations. (What about Mrs Voth?) It's a common happening. How do you know
what will force growth and what will kill?
I've often thought about whether you'd be disappointed at our not having
traditional weddings - do you realize how much money you'd save? How much
worry about invitations etc? How much work for people with other things
to do? Can you imagine Father paying for it? Can you imagine us being
able to pay for it?
You are right, tho', it should be a joyous occasion. And my idea of joyous
is not a traditional wedding to which you have to invite all the people
that mean nothing to you, have to say a series of things that mean less,
have to go thru' an act which distresses you. There must be some special
way, really special way, to be married (if at all) that doesn't include
all this. I don't like the idea of a Justice of the Peace either; getting
married is a pretty sordid business any way you do it unless you can make
it up to a certain extent for yourself.
I can't promise you you'll be there because I hope to be in England for
the next three or five years and perhaps out of Canada for good.
And besides, it isn't likely ever to take place - I don't think marriage
is compatible with the way of life I need. But whatever, don't become a
Grandma Epp and worry and worry.
[undated letter]
Paul is more like me than like you and more like Father than like you,
and all of us are about as opposite from you as it is possible to be.
David's problem is more common than it would be if it were only a form
of mental disturbance. 'Alienated' youth are everywhere, and if they're
bright they're like Paul. The difficulty is that 'alienation' isn't a disturbance,
it is the healthiest, sanest, only response possible to a set of
circumstances.
Put yourself in Paul's place: if you were realizing that you were you
and could only be yourself once; if you sometimes believe you can become
somebody wonderful and extraordinary; if you feel and can't express what
you feel like to other people who also feel it (understanding isn't
enough); and if other people don't recognize you or your potential
or your worthwhileness or your feeling, you have a conflict between wanting
to be approved of and wanting to be recognized. The two can't be
the same when the only people who are around to approve of you are not able
to recognize you because you are fundamentally different from them. So in
this case self-realization and need for approval and love aren't compatible.
The idea is to get into an environment where the two are compatible. Also
to find some kind of work which you can do without feeling humiliated by
selling yourself short. I don't know how but I think Paul will be able to
do this. I was and am like him: I still sometimes hate to be touched, and
I think it is because being touched without being recognized is a little
of what you need, hated because it is not enough. Pride and disappointment
make you fight it off; it's like saying "I need something like
this, but not this. And I won't compromise." Anger.
The feeling of being a nothing is something I haven't had (I think
partly because of the leg, which gave me a strong tho' sometimes negative
identity) but Greg has it to some extent. I can't explain it. I think it's
partly a matter of not having the 'proper' emotional responses that are
expected of you because you don't have the values that are normal to those
around you. Also perhaps an inability to identify strongly with some adult
you'd like to be like because you don't know any who qualify.
Our problems are very different from what yours were, I think: everything
in the world has an impact, which reached your Mennonite youth much less
I think. We aren't Mennonites any more; we aren't Christians either; and
if you're about to say that it would be a good thing for us all if we were,
you're right. In fact it would solve the whole problem of 'alienation' and
values, but it doesn't seem possible to believe that way now, and it's no
good unless you believe it completely.
It's frightening to think that all the David's and Paul have a desperate
sense of their own responsibility for becoming something good. Not medium
good, but great and important. How are we ever going to help them be
that? Adjustment won't do; it's resignation. I'm sending the Hemingway book
because it struck me as an example of how to keep on wanting that without
being paralyzed by how life treats you. Hemingway committed suicide at the
age of 62 when he was sick and could no longer write. Sometimes I think
he was right to. You probably won't like the book, but it's for Paul, who
will.
This has been a tirade again, with no good advice and no comfort. Mainly
I mean to say that you shouldn't feel responsible and that you shouldn't
worry too much. I'm glad you told me about it; I'm looking forward to seeing
you and him and Rudy who doesn't seem too threatened by it all yet.
[journal]
April 3
Cowley's [philosophy prof] party: his house with the wood staircase and
fireplace, small sitting room full of chairs all except two occupied by
other members of the 334 class. Olivia and I on hard chairs at the end of
the room. Cowley himself, among his books and prints of Renoir, no ornament
other than those, grey sleeveless sweater, baggy grey pants covering an
amorphous body looking always terribly clothed. Olivia in her blue dress
showing a lot of thigh above the tops of her stockings, legs looking pretty,
gay and confident because Jim Beal is "in love with" her; exaggerating
her own flightiness, fuzziness, childlikeness, embarrassingly but with full
aplomb, arrogance, charm. Don in the wicker chair with one bluejeaned leg
crossed over the other, held horizontally level with the back of the chair,
at easy terms with the Other, confident in his own triangular face, his
bushing red hair, his exact proportions, and his Greek eyes. No en-soi /
pour-soi trouble like mine.
That again: when Olivia is delightful, I feel drab; when Don is delightful
Greg is sincerely, kindly, drab. He is sad that I am sad, because
his approval is not enough, or anything; he is distressed and holds his
head stubbornly against my chest, nestling like a very small boy: hopelessness
of an alliance of fellow creatures, the shadow-doubt of compromise. Perhaps
he, perhaps I; sick doubt. Sick love? Jealousy, competition. The watching
again of interaction, Don, next to him Olivia. Cowley in the rocking chair
going into fits of hoarse laughter at his own carefully well-told stories.
(Rather wonderful bizarre and abandoned laugh in a good grey philosopher.)
Greg bent forward, hunched in leather jacket and large white pants and very
large boots, sincere and bent on understanding Sartre (who says that you
can be what you want to be), full of good will. Do you omit to love someone
because you do not respect their good opinion of you?
He stood at the screen door about to go home, I was lying in bed; and
we looked at one another. I wanted to say, "I love you a little"
but I wasn't sure.
[journal]
April 10
We went to the Academy Awards in Nellie's kitchen, Greg on one side of
the couch, Olivia on the chair jumping up and down with her cigarette smoke
lifting in layers through the blue light from the television screen. Bob
Hope made bitter, bitter jokes; there were some memorable people (Julie
Christie in a miniskirt; the marvelous mouth shaped like Janeen's moving,
moving as though it were exactly point-for-point connected to a moving mind).
Hope's final speech was about "Men have a need for laughter, they have
a need for beauty," movies show man's life of emotion.
My own feeling about movies is like this: they concentrate whatever is
visually meaningful in life to create an atmosphere of metaphysical meaningfulness.
I used to believe that visual meaning, shape, color, inscape, was enough;
and it is only as I lose my sense of this that I need metaphysical meaning.
Human relationships still appall me, appall me, appall me. My reticence
- their silliness. My boredom: their unidimensionality. His, Greg's. Olivia's
sometimes. My guilt; their judgment. Their sincerity: my reticence. Their
sincerity: my distrust. Their sincerity: my fury, my boredom. Their goodness:
my disgust. Their disgust: my disgust. Their gaiety: my jealousy. My competence:
their jealousy. Their competence: my jealousy. Their dispute: my derision.
Their rapport: my envy.
In confrontation with them I must have my joy - is it true that in confrontation
with them I lose it? I'm restless; there are no miracles, I see no miracles,
I make no miracles. Greg bores me because my joy no longer takes us both
off. He tires me, he wearies me, he's solicitous and worried, I don't like
to kiss him and I don't want to touch him. I wonder whether I'd want to
introduce him to anybody as my boyfriend. I think with horror of what Mother
will say and feel when we break up. I dislike his frightened way of holding
his shoulders and his jerky gestures. I don't like his long-nosed profile
or the fat under his chin. (But his face, sometimes, and his bare legs.)
I've told him he's boring, I've compared the reaction of Don and Olivia
with our non-reaction and then gone to sleep with my back to him. The silly
Oscar presenters always came in holding hands with each other.
My stomach is constantly a little acid, there's a little soreness in
the back of my throat, the hard silly faces of aging actresses, flesh moving,
shifting eddying all the time toward even more ugliness before there has
been time to be wisely young or really beautiful. Frank's bitter horrifying
letter on an April Saturday night.
Don stood straight and livid in the hallway and complained that we had
not walked her the last block home: a man in a car stopped and followed
her, it seems. Greg was conciliatory, I was furiously angry because of his
protective attitude, frustrated at the whole system of female timidity it
condones; threatened by a sort of femininity I haven't got and really despise.
And yet the small bones, the long hair, the orgasms, the scent of shampoo.
Greg likes me.
[undated letter]
The wind this sunny morning blew in a notice of library fines and a long
envelope from Toronto which contained a very large painting from Maria with
a letter from Anne on the back which says: "Here is a rainbow picture
to cheer you up in the exam cram period. There is a house under the rainbow
for you, courtesy of Maria. Also a request to come see us whenever you can.
Do come for a time after your exams before you go home."
My latest idea is to bop down to Toronto for part of the time before
Olivia's wedding - if it ever comes off, that wedding, since there are constant
fights and reconciliations and scenes in which they throw their breakfast
at one another (the stairs this morning were covered with cheese omelette)
and shout insults. Whether or not the wedding actually takes place will,
I suppose, depend on the dominant mood June 10 morning.
I telephoned Judy on Sunday, just to talk, and she sounded calm enough
altho' she begins to write exams tomorrow. I'm really glad to have
a chance to see her this summer: she and Joanne want to take our Petercat
to live with them in Toronto if they get jobs. Then I can have him back
in fall.
In three weeks approximately, May 6, 5 p.m., all of this will be over.
In the meantime you probably won't be getting any more letters than the
average one measly per month from all winter.
Thank you for the paska - Olivia and I enjoyed it so there was none left
for the boys.
[undated letter]
The gooseberry bush at the psychiatry department came out in leaves this
morning - not leaves, suggestions of leaves - as Olivia and I went off to
write a philosophy exam in my best course this year: first exam. At last
the depression of being two months before the exams is gone (two weeks before,
two days before), from now on it is eat, study, sleep, study, write in a
solid succession that makes time disappear reliably day by day until finally
on May 6 at 5 p.m. I come out of the tunnel and it's nearly summer. The
worst part is the two weeks before, when you can't work but you feel guilty
continuously; depression, bad temper, black gloom, hatred particularly of
your best friends - then there was (as happens!) a money problem, solved
as usual by my Guardian Registrar who inveigled a bursary for me for this
summer: as it happens, not only can I buy books for summer courses, but
I can have two, perhaps even three, summer dresses. One of them I've
already made, another I've bought fabric for: brilliant colors - now is
the winter of our discontent made glorious summer is what they mean.
And I've acquired a new importance thru' the two little new bottles on
my spice shelf - one of vitamin C pills, the other of antibiotic, both because
a colony of staphilococci have settled just behind my tonsils.
Anyway, the first exam is over, the next the day after tomorrow, and
this afternoon I'm lying under a hairdryer reading Papa Hemingway feeling
alive and looking at the swatch of purple-orange-red-Joseph's-coat fabric
that is going to be made into a culotte dress. Olivia has three exams in
a row: Greg wrote one yesterday and one this aft' and has now gone off to
his professor's house to watch the hockey game: it seems they've become
buddies and want to run (training) early in the mornings. Mr and Mrs Morrison
are going to Europe in less than a month, since Mr M is a delegate to a
peace conference in Geneva and Jean is going to have a holiday (she's working
part time, but full time 8 hours a day, and clears in a week what
Olivia and I live on for months). Meanwhile Greg gets the other (small)
car to take me and Petercat to Toronto after exams. It won't hold any more.
Funny you should remember Henrietta Spaniel - I feel rather affectionate
for her now: she certainly served a useful function in the days when we
were more awkward than now, conscious of being countrified and not pretty
very often, too big or too peculiar or too asymmetrical and far from gorgeous
- she was the good, silly, scapegoat so much worse than us that we looked
good in comparison (at least we were not so dense).
So Frank must have been married yesterday.
April 25
Branches are red at the tips, bleached white toward the trunk, full of
birds, full of wind, full of rain and lightning at night because this spring
we've had an astonishing number of electric storms over the lake, but only
at night. Sun. Small blue flowers growing wildly (or wild) on neglected
front lawns.
Last Sunday the Howell family including Granny and a silent old Welsh
grandfather who is visiting (Richard who spent most of the time trying to
trap Petercat in a picnic basket) came from Toronto with a lot of food and
wine and a cake to celebrate Olivia's 21st birthday. She got a pile of presents
and was wild with excitement. (Come to think of it, have I been home or
seen you for a birthday since the 17th?)
I've written two exams and have three more. For the first one I wrote,
the Rationalism and Empiricism one, I already (unofficially) know my mark
(which includes term marks) - an 89%, which is HIC and which pleases me
very much indeed! (But I worked hard on it.) I'm doing better this year
in philosophy than in any other subject, strangely enough. It always helps
for graduate school. Greg is also doing very well after his many years of
not doing very well.
Haven't heard from you for a long time and look anxiously every morning
for mail that isn't there.
May 5
The last one is tomorrow, I'm not keen on studying, it's raining on new
leaves, tulips, and hyacinths, Greg wrote his last exam this morning, Olivia
wrote hers Wednesday, Don as a graduate student has been through for weeks
and I'm languishing. The exams have gone quite well after the first one
- the English exam yesterday worried me but turned out all right: I think
I've picked up a couple of A's.
So at 5 o'clock tomorrow, when I'm through, I'll be throwing Ajax into
corners of our apartment, getting ready to move out. We're putting furniture
temporarily at the boys' place since they're keeping their place for the
summer and Greg will be getting a new roommate there next year, a Frog from
Quebec. Sunday morning we'll probably hitch to Ottawa - three hours of fairly
attractive countryside - to see the Morrisons and pick up the Triumph in
order to take it back to Kingston to pick up Petercat, in order to take
him and us to Toronto in order to shop for Olivia's bridesmaid's dresses'
patterns and fabrics.
Hadn't I explained about the reading courses? When I changed one of my
majors from French to Philosophy after second year, I was two courses short
for graduation - I wanted to take six courses instead of five these two
last years, but found I couldn't keep up, so am doing two reading courses
- in which you read a lot, synthesize your information, but needn't go to
any lectures or even see a professor unless you run into problems: an ideal
sort of course, the kind I've always wanted - in order to be able to graduate
next June. I probably will put a summer between myself and graduate work
if I get an award and have enough to live on: I'm aiming for a Commonwealth
Scholarship, but they're hard to get.
I'm looking forward very much to seeing the farm. Save one or two seeds
for me to plant. I was pleased that Father says I can stay as long as I
like - it makes me feel less apprehensive and more welcome.
[journal]
May 29, Toronto, 54 Park Hill Road
Special delivery letter from Don. As I was sitting reading The Return
of the Native in a sunny corner of the upstairs sofa, Toozie climbed
the stairs to bring me a letter, half covered with stamps and with Don's
small pointed handwriting in the address. Five closely written sides apologizing
first for his strange hostile behavior to me lately. He's been alternately
polite and impersonal, and uncivil. He's seemed to find me a silly woman
with opinions not worth air-space. When I left on Friday morning, I paused
in the kitchen with my bags full of books, to leave a note for Olivia. He
did not look up until I spoke. He wished me a good trip; I didn't answer,
uncivil civility! I turned and muttered that he'd be left with peace and
quiet at last. As I was nearly down the stairs he called after me again,
"Have a good trip." "Yeah," I said. Sweating with the
bags in the sun, I though of all the things I should have said: "Do
you mean it?"
But it isn't the way I thought, it's better, but it's painful, and I
want to kick someone in the teeth - not Don, God, no! I've been pacing;
my mind has been pacing; the Brandenburg Concerto takes up the pacing in
my mind and carries it along even more quickly. What will I say to him?
What will it be like when I see him?
I've known for moments at a time: the night of the ballet when I wore
the low-cut orange-and-gold dress, came down the stairs from the balcony
toward them and he said only "Ellie!" and then covered his stare
with chatter. Olivia led him away and I felt an undercurrent which dismayed
me: jealous custody. One night late he couldn't sleep and was reading Time
in the kitchen: he looked up with his face open and soft, for once. I could
have touched him at some point but I suppose I shouldn't have - and didn't
because I was afraid, more than because of loyalties. What if I had? I remember
the night [in second year] we had a dinner party and I got drunk out of
loneliness for him, necked with Bruce on the floor; later he picked me up
from the couch and I remembered long-painfully the sharp smell of his perspiration
and the wiry muscle in his thin arm. One night before I left for Europe
Olivia unknowingly, as we walked home from Lino's, suggested that he put
an arm over my shoulder as well. He did, and I put my hand over his wrist,
and we walked home down West Street as he made his Donald Duck noises, three
together. Perhaps Olivia did realize, and was demonstrating her power. Perhaps
even now she knows; and if so I can understand why my philosophy marks distress
her more than they should, perhaps why she has felt threatened by me this
year. A frank-discussion period she arranged, if so, was either a test or
a demonstration, and dangerous in any case. But we could be trusted, although
I overquietly spilled what I felt and he went on about islands.
part 4
- raw forming volume 6: september 1966 - july 1967
- work & days: a lifetime journal project
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