[La Glace] September 1st 1962
Last night there was a thunderstorm. Judy and Paul and I went out to
get the cows. I drove the car (our round-backed old Mercury) and kept killing
it. We were afraid of Buck. He was nervous, pacing in tense circles, bolting
suddenly. Because they'd been nearly trampled a few evenings ago, Judy and
Paul were afraid. We hesitated beside the fence in the dark. There were
a few blurred thunder sounds among the wind sounds.
Paul ventured up to the fence. We were cowards but who can admit it?
We crawled under the fence. Again, a most awful stroke of lightening, nearly
on us. (Father said, in the morning, that twenty fence posts were splintered
in the same pasture - lightening ran along the barbed wire.) We flattened.
The cattle bolted. It began to rain in long hard diagonal strokes. The wind
rose. I turned the car and the lights pushed through rain and wind erratically,
blown about, as I slid on the newly wet earth.
I was excited when we got home, elated. There was no kerosene; the one
lamp burned very low. In the kitchen window, crowding the reflection of
my face, was the grey sky racing south and streaks of calm near the horizon.
I love rain and lightening and thunder-fear.
[Sexsmith] 3
The boy-girl ratio is swell (14:10), I'm surrounded by Pat Ranch, Wayne,
Terry. Dennis, Dave.
4
A new room -
I've hurriedly hidden the calendars and doilies that "tidied and
brightened" my room. It's more me now: the pink poodle on a high shelf;
books - Age of Analysis, Philips' New Testament, Webster's black dictionary,
Jung's Psychology, Introduction to Freudian Psychology, War and Peace, The
Story of Civilization, Nos Voisins Francais, Learning to Write, Effective
Expression, Roget's Pocket Thesaurus, Pulitizer Prize Reader; my typewriter
ready on the card-table desk, its case leaning against the wall; the BOAC
timetable and Enjoying France as a Canadian (from an airport rack); the
little earthern junk-pot from Mexico; my girdle crumpled next to a dainty
china lamp on the bedside table. I will replace those hideous smiling babies
and the blatant red and blue almanac with 1. Robert Frost (entirely wry
and carefree), 2. Catherine de Neuve (nearly a visuality of the identity
I want - mysterious), 3. The Knox Easy Diet Plan - "follow your arrow
to new beauty - no calorie counting drudgery!", and 4. lists of things
I must do. The window is wide open. (Said Mrs Wold, "Janeen syure yused
to keep that window shut. She syure could stand the heat.")
Parts of this respectible shiny house remain unchanged - the neat trash
basket, faded red curtains, three mirrors grouped above the scarred dressing
table, one pink and white doily on the lamp table, a pink tumbler on the
dresser. (Mrs Wold: "Hyere, you can yuse this one. It's the one Janeen
yused last year." "That seems like history repeating itself. Janeen
and I were very good friends.")
And here I am, about to begin, and tonight about to make some resolves.
I hereby solemnly do resolve and determine to:
1. have devotions faithfully every night
2. record every day in my diary
3. eat little so as to become little and lose the horrid pounds gained
since July
4. rise early (7 at least) and have a good breakfast, tidy my room, be
careful to leave dishes neat
5. dress carefully and expensively as much as possible
6. polish my shoes whenever they need it
7. cultivate Mrs Wold
8. spend time grimly and orderedly
9. ACCOMPLISH - essay, homework, letters, friendships
10. note every violation to this resolve and punish mercilessly
11. suck every day to the fibre and live enthusiastically
12. love the people I meet tomorrow and hereafter, all of them
Last night I fell asleep to the psycho-suggestive chant I vowed to fall
asleep to every night. "Tomorrow I will remember everything I learn,
tomorrow I will ..." Ron (of Saskatchewan) said it sailed him through
senior year.
As it happened, there was little to learn and therefore little to remember
today. I met a few people who had names - Terry (new here, as I am), June
from Lethbridge, Marlene (pretty but not quite - she reminds me of me).
And people I knew - thin Mr Mann ("Say, what are you doing
here?" with a pat on my arm), Dennis Maxwell asking questions ("Hey
Mr McCue, do you think I've grown since last year? What's that acid you
can't put into a glass, HCl?"), Ruthie young and alive and sweet, Wayne
behind me cavorting coltishly in spite of his long nose, Pat Ranch (I was
glad to see him!) well-dressed, lean, handsome and always talking, Dave
Leonard discussing universities with me at the back of the room with the
books.
I wore my pink dress and beige sweater. There were a few chances to mention
Stratford. A pretty twelve-year-old chatted with me in the sun. An old man
called out good morning as I walked to school. The grocer called me dear.
My dinner was 7-up (in a mug with ice) and a banana; my breakfast, scrambled
eggs. I brought home a Writer's Digest. It's a lovely lovely day. The 7-up
fizzed all over my new blouse, felt cold and sparkly, bubbled on the greeny
sheen of my blouse.
- All this very agreeable. And now to work. The first outline draft of
my essay went quite well. I thumbed through Writer's Digest, and now have
come home from the library with French stories (Balzac, de Maupassant, Saint-Exupery,
Satre), Bernard Shaw (Saint Joan and others), Don Quixote, National Gallery
of Art. The librarian has a warm prettiness spoiled by appology in her tone.
A man clutching his beer bottle patted my arm and assured me that Canada
is a free country - and told me with certainty that I was "pea soup"
(French) because of my long neck. "Long neck, yup. And he's Polack,
and I'm ..."
Mrs Wold likes to chatter. She calls her remarks up the stairs, I hollar
down. On the telephone she often switches to soft Norwegian.
Am I hungry - that is, is it hunger or appetite? I like my meals. Today:
breakfast - milk and (3) scrambled eggs; lunch - banana and Hi-spot; dinner
- 2 cups of soup, 5 raw carrots, milk; snack - 2 raw carrots.
September 4 [letter]
Do you ever scheme out identities, Frank? Question two: do you think
it is ethical to become someone whom you really are not, for fun, for convenience?
Regardles of your opinion on Question two, that is what I'm doing in Sexsmith
- It's very interesting.
Yes, I'm here in Sexsmith at Mrs Wold's house, repeating history by sleeping
in the room Jan slept in and even using the same pink tumbler for hair-setting
water.
Do you want to hear about it?
I have an upstairs room overlooking the mossy veranda roof and the street
you parked on that September 27. (It was Paul's birthday and you got him
some ice cream - 'member?)
The walls are all an intense blue except for one strip and the ceiling
which are an intense pink. When I got here last night the walls dripped
calendars and smiling babies' faces and almanacs, but its stripped now waiting
for the pictures I'll bring next weekend. (Gone, too, are the doilys that
smothered all the furniture - I loathe doilys: write that down in
your black book). Your poodle is on a shelf where I can see it from my bed,
and another shelf is already crowded with books that just wouldn't
be left at home (plus an exiting addition - the BOAC timetable for flights
anywhere in the world)
5
Reading Jean-Paul Satre's "The Wall" was an adventure today;
and learning logarithms and talking to Rick and Pat, and Wayne and another
smiler and Terry.
6
The Stratford essay is proving tres dificile. Mr Dyck was at school and
talked to me. Ruthie and June came over to talk. Frank wrote a happy letter.
The room is becoming more me - scraps of essay, a twig of red berry-bush
on the dresser. "National Gallery of Art" propped up behind poodle.
This room is my pride and joy; I feel that it is myself, I've made it more
than a room, as the south bedroom is. (On gleefully telling Mom that I'd
junked all the calendars, she said, "I thought that would be the first
thing you'd do.")
My closet is nearly tidy.
The fellows are nice - Rick, Wayne, Pat (Donna is coming - bother!) (In
a way, lovely!) Terry, the dark-haired boy with the dazzling smile, the
two little boys who walked home with me (Donnie and ---), Mr Mann - dear
Mr Mann who toted out "Third Reich" for me and asked solisitously
whether he'd bored me in Chem review.
7
It was sad to go home with Raynold.
8
[weekend in La Glace] I forgot to keep the fire of course and the buns
were hard. I'm reading Famous French Stories. Another letter from Frank.
9
Glory be, I'm back home with my pictures and books and poodle.
Sunday nite, September 9
There was a crazy joy to coming back to this room of mine and this street
of mine. I've put the photograph of Catherine de Neuve on the wall near
my mirror at face-height. (I can imagine that it is my face and that I am
lovely.)
The poster I have tacked onto the attic closet door. In askelter purple
letters it says "Expresso Place - The Historic Black Swan Club featuring
Cedric Smith singing folk songs, work songs, songs of protest, ballads and
madrigals." Tacked up as it is on the door, it seems that the Black
Swan Club is in the next room with candles and expresso and dim tables.
Robert Frost is smiling his beautiful (yes, really) smile from the wall
above my desk.
I went walking, just down the street and up. I love this street at night.
Branches hung down over the sidewalk. Like a child I couldn't help but jump
up to touch them. Two small boys leaned from an upstairs window to talk
to me. A man passed and his dim face turned to follow me. Children shouted
on the lawn. A white haired moppet in a red sweater stopped her shouting
to lean against the fence and say hi. The trees threw shadows. At the corner
near the lights the leaves of the trees are half light, half dark, a swaying
mass. In one window white-haired men playing checkers in suspenders. In
another was a bare-chested boy looking sulky. One house has red curtains
always closed at night and the light glows through it. I was conscious of
my body, of all my movements, of my white shoes, of my shadow on walls.
Cars slowed heavily at the corner. One of the boys I'd have been thrilled
about when I was thirteen leaned from a window to shout "Wanna ride?"
It didn't have the same kick. I hurried in with a berried branch for my
room. It is good to be back.
11
The old couple next door invited me over for coffee. They are very lonely.
I've found mags at school - "The Atlantic," Writer's Digests.
September 13
All day I've curved my back around a typewriter, bickering with words.
(I love words - why must I bicker with them?) Tomorrow morning I'll mail
my ms to the Toronto contest. It is a shambles. Right now I'm so near it
that any form it ever had is melted into grey streaks of yak. (Myopia -
writer's myopia.) However, it looks good. As I was saying, I've been home
all day with the thing. (Held at arms length by two fingers.) I got
sick on chocolate.
(Oh I must tell you - for dinner I took 25 cents and sneaked through
the back alley (because I was ugly and my nose shone) to buy three chocolate
bars and a bag of peanuts. The grass in the back yard was wet and tufty.
All of the houses had flat light and shadow sides in the sun. I love to
sleek through alleys. It makes me feel like "West Side Story."
For five minutes in the afternoon I stopped to watch the train thump
through in slow iambic. Back to the essay - slimy scholarly loathsome thing.
Why couldn't I talk about Gilles and banana splits and wearing the red-and-white
suit and belonging to a FUN group for the first time in my life and being
kissed goodbye by Al and Ricky and Tom! And Jim and Gilles. Glory!
While I was sweating it out - no, really I did! - I thought to myself
"I'll not spoil my beautiful friendship with words by being a writer.
I'll be a reader and my-own-journal-onlyist."
But I got into bed with Writer's Digest. Now I'm plotting another article.
Shucks
14
It wasn't until 11:40 that Ray came for me and I sneaked home to eat
several pears and fall asleep under coats because I had no coverlid.
16
Fuzzy lovely life! It's so good to be back in Sexsmith chatting with
Hilda over coffee about University, reading and eating scrambled eggs. The
leaves
are yellow. Dave and Dennis walked me to school ce matin.
17
I missed Saturday - Father told me that by such little things as eating
desert after everyone, Moussolini began and ended upside down from a tree.
September 18 Tuesday night
This house is so wonderful because it is everywhere, a universal house.
It could be set into any city or town, street and all, and still fit. I
can look out the window at the house next door and feel that I am in New
Jersey or Edmonton or California or England.
And windows, top storey windows, are international too, many things.
I ran out into the street tonight in my bare feet, ran down the street to
the end, dodging streaks of light, touching the grainy sidewalk only lightly,
lightly (it was warm). I came to the end, poised, looking up into the tree
with a street light shining out of it, turned and ran back. When I came,
panting, to the hedge of my house, I hopped through the gravel (bare feet)
to the grass on the other side of the street and looked up at my window.
It had a rose-blue glow, very warm. The light shone through the red curtains
(tho' they are faded and rather ugly I am glad they are there for they give
my house such a "Me" look from the road.) I ran back up to my
room. Papers and books spread. Oh yes, the one who lives there must be bookish.
A sage observation. She is a bibliomaniac and uses a long Latin word instead
of bookworm.
I went for a walk around the block with Hilda, coming home from the library,
books in my arms. I felt nearly foolish because I was always chattering
"Look at that window! Isn't it a warm-looking house? That's a mysterious
looking house. It's so big. There should be eleven children in that empty
window. Look at those lovely little trees Listen the leaves are rattling.
There's that little church. It's pretty."
This morning I woke with the breeze in my face (because I insist on sleeping
head-end down by the window). I said while half asleep "Help me to
love everyone today. Help me to remember to."
18
Lovely weather again, I ran down the dark street in my bare feet, wrote
two pages of journal, felt light and frivolous and went to the library and
ate too much - bought a bottle of marchino cherries. Never again!
19
They live in a very little house next door to me, two very very old people,
Mr and Mrs Eddie Ludington. Mr Ludington is tall and somehow thin looking,
although he has a round high stomach to lean his cane against while he leans
forward to talk. His hair is white, and soft as white hair always should
be. (He folds it back over his fuzzy bald spot, but it won't lie as flat
as he would like it to.) His eyebrows have the tufty look of Robert Frost's.
(Why is it that white eyebrows always peak and curl up?) His hands are wrinkled
over the knuckles, and freckled. They are usually clasped around his cane
head (the typical old man pose) or over the end of the chair arms. He used
to play professional baseball (a pitcher) and tells chuckly stories about
the old days. I saw his grade eight report card (mostly 90's) and that led
him to a favorite tale:
"I had this teacher, Mr Rice. I guess I sassed him or something,
because he told me to stay after school. When everybody was gone he said
"now take off your shirt and I'll take off your skin." I didn't
wait for any more. I let him have it, right between the ribs. He fell over
backwards and yelled "Minnie!" (She was his girlfriend, a big
fat thing.) So she comes running and I pick her up and set her right on
top of 'im. I got expelled."
And his robin's-egg blue eye in their round nest of wrinkles laugh at
the memory. He's eighty-one.
Mrs Ludington is a year younger, steadier on her feet, tiny and quick.
She was probably very pretty when she was a school teacher and married her
Eddie. She still is - a calm, closed face with bright eyes (large and blue)
behind her glasses. Her hair is as white as his, straight and sleek, swept
back with wings around her face. She sits leaned forward in a huge stiff
chair (black and heavy with a blue-purple-green striping on the back and
seat in a fabric strip.) She pours me coffee from the white pot untremblingly
but her feet in their large slippers (there seems to be a large space in
the heels where her feet have shoved down into the toes) are not quite sure.
Those two still like each other. As he hobbled past her chair he leaned
over it and kissed the top of her head, then teased her for blushing. She
insisted happily that it was he who blushed. "We've always been sweethearts"
she said. "What's your secret? The question is most unoriginal but
I'm awfully interested." "Well I think it is being aware of each
other as personalities, it's a give and take. You have to know the person
you marry and not just marry because everybody else is."
They both remembered a favorite joke. "The first time I got drunk
out here - remember?" Edward said. His wife told the story. "It
was a terribly hot day, and he and Robbie were out haying. They didn't have
any water and it was just fiendishly hot. Then this bootlegger came down
the road with a jar under his arm, one of these two-quart glass jars. It
looked crystal clear."
Mr Ludington couldn't wait for the climax. "So I grabbed the jar
and gave it to Robbie. He had a drink and then he passed it to me. I had
some, and then I passed it back to him. Neither of us felt anything. He'd
had it buried so it was cold, just like cold water."
Mrs L: "They didn't feel anything then but soon they knew what it
was. They came in with the load...
Mr L: "... and when I came to the barn I fell off, and Robbie right
on top of me."
Mrs L: "I ran out of the house - we'd been married a year - and
screamed 'Sunstroke!' but Robbie's girl ran out too and said 'That's not
sunstroke, that's drink!'"
We laughed together over the joke. I had another cookie.
We sat in the living room for a while. When he asked about his title
("48 years old, that one") and she began to get up he said, "That's
all right chum, don't bother." She got it anyway.
He'd had a black-out over his coffee and began to shake. She was beside
him in a step, stroking his neck firmly. "Keep your head down, chum,
you'll be alright." That one word "chum" ("Thanks, chum.
I'm alright now") is such a real endearment, something that "darling"
could never begin to be. It says so much. I want a husband I can call "chum."
It seems so wonderful to be married and friends.
A figure moved past the window. "Here's my boy, hell for leather,"
Mr Ludington cried, and a boy slid through the screen door. I'd seen him
at school. He's very lean and not quite tall - just as a boy should be.
His face is - beautiful. Long and thin-cheeked and very brown, a dip of
straight hair over his forehead, shiny hazel eyes. Blue socks slid halfway
into his shoes, a yellow jacket buttoned only at the bottom, sleeves rolled
up (with the frayed cuffs of his black shirt underneath), boyish brown hands.
"Colin Griffith" Mrs Ludington announced him. Mr Ludington added,
"I'm teaching him to play baseball, trying to. He's too dumb!"
Chuckled affectionately. He insisted that Colin show the pitching wind-up.
Colin stood up a bit bashfully but when he got the imaginary ball into his
hands his eyes became earnest, and he slid through the whole wind-up like
a jazz dancer in a pensive mood.
Mr Ludington patted my hand, "This is our girl, you be good to her"
he said to Colin, and tho' I laughed I was touched.
When I went home it was to sit on the steps with my carrots and homework.
I described Mr Ludington and had just begun on Mrs when Colin came out.
I'd been craning my head to look for him for ever so long and was glad not
to have missed him. When he saw me he drifted over between the yellow trees,
and sat down when I cleared away some of my books. He's nice. I like him.
He can talk of things besides himself, intelligently. He responds, he isn't
embarrassed at conversation lapses. We talked about what he wants to be
- "an industrial artist." He was interested enough, alert enough,
to ask what I wanted to do - "I would like to write." We talked
wistfully about these things, about traveling. "We both have some dreams
we don't know what to do with," he said. I like this person!
Later: a German children's choir is on the radio, threading dimly from
Hilda's transistor into my room. The way a German child sings - delicately,
with a harmony nearly minor - pulls me into an arpeggio ecstasy. I love!
English class, 20th
Awareness of my moist fingers over my face. There is a lingering scent
on their tips. (I touched some eau de cologne behind my ears this morning.)
Awareness of a dream I had last night (there seems to be a faint touch left
on my cheek although my fingers are writing now, and there is a faint touch
of the dream on my mind though my mind is listening to Mr Mann and thinking
of words) (as there is a faint touch of scent on my fingers).
Mr Mann is leaning against the blackboard with one foot on his desk,
his elbow on his knee and his chin on his hand, playing with a red pencil.
His voice shifts almost as his eyebrows, easing and tensing. He has his
own smooth awareness. (It is a general awareness, not my sharp pecking awareness.
It is perhaps more mature awareness, smoothed and chipped away by niche-knowledge
- the ego as center, all the branching cilia of experience.)
When I listen to Mr Mann it is not hard to love him. What is his charm?
A bit of whimsy.
But what he has really isn't charm. There's not the half-disapproving
skeptical feeling that sidles in with charm. It's a wholehearted starry-eyed
adoration.
He has a lean face with a sharp nose, small wrinkle cornered black eyes.
Straight greying black hair curved stiffly over his head, a perpetual beard-shadow
and a nearly perpetual smile. He is very lean, and shorter than he looks.
His suit is double-breasted and old fashioned with a careful mend on the
lapel. He hasn't had a new suit for a long time, and always wears the same
grey one flapping loosely around his waist where it is meant to be buttoned
over. His shoes are well cared for tho'.
I think that what Mr Mann has is what I want, a real love of people.
He talks to us, not taking himself or us too seriously, but smiling so warmly
that we feel he likes us and is interested in us. And that warmth is reflected
back to him. Oo, what a person!
Mr McCue is fat, arrogant, dimpled, cleft-chinned, self-important, vague
in his methods, but likeable. He is very very human (Mr Mann is above-human).
This makes him amusing, and therefore well-excused for living and for his
faults. I like him.
A teacher walked me to school this morning, thin legs in thick pinkish-grey
stockings and black-heeled oxfords, fuzzy grey hair. She turned her head
stiffly sideways as she talked, and told me, as to an intelligent person,
about "Judgment at Nuremburg."
Yes I am chewing at life vigorously.
-
The evening of the same day.
Oh if I can only keep this enormous love of life!
I dropped in at Ludington's twice, to say a few words while they said
many words. Tonight when I ran into their little warm house after an alone
dark walk around the block there was another visitor. He was explaining
that his wife was always running to Ludington's because Mr Ludington kissed
her. I couldn't resist a thrust, "Maybe if you kissed her more yourself
Mr Cook, she'd stay at home." It seemed a very successful remark because
they hooted and laughed over it.
When I ran out into the dark (through the screen door, from a precise
block of light into an edgeless mass of dark) I indulged in my favorite
sin - lingering for just a moment behind the door to listen to what is said
about "she" - what they said tonight was "so friendly"
and I glowed as I ran quietly back to my room. And now I want to be sure
to be friendly.
And I feel so pretty - and so happy - oo!
21
It is always sad to go home on weekends but today there was a letter
from Frank and some pocket book catalogs.
22
Saturday - I went to the sink to clean my fingernails but it was dirty
so I had to clean sink - cupboard - kitchen - outside and yelled at Mom.
23
Good sunny day - Father took off - we combined - on Sunday! Where Pop
went is a mystery. Eating and reading and studying - um!
24
First day of university. Next year. Streets are full of leaves
and sun. I love school and Sexsmith.
25
I miss man-company but love this life - 3 hours of homework after school,
went to library for books, station to watch the train pass by - it has a
pull that tears my mind and heart after it like a stretched elastic band.
Lovely weather and I'm reading Steinbeck's "East of Eden" - The
aliveness of living here!
-
Today was another glorious hot day that melted the gold leaves of the
grey trees into the blue sky - they hardened and are still there.
I won my 5 cent bet with Mr Cook (he and I made our bet solemnly at Ludingtons
and our money was put into a glass dish where it was today when I picked
it up.)
Tuesdays are good days - I go to the library at 7:30, ruffle through
books along the walls - today I brought some money from Father to the tall
house across the street where the light burns all night in an upstairs window
(even longer than mine). Friendly Mrs Peterson talked about "Pierre"
- my Mr Peter Dyck! It was a historical site, the house where he lived.
And I walked quickly to the shabby Chinese café on Sexsmith's
main street to buy a chocolate bar - Crispy Crunch is always good (a word
from our sponsor). Colin Griffith was there, long as ever and as beautiful,
smoking a cigarillo - friendly, pert, among a rabble in a crowded booth.
"Dennis's brother married a Lapp, not an Epp" he remarked, relating
unselfconsciously back to our on-the-steps conversation. "They're very
like" I said (dryly I hope), "both sound like a hiccup."
And I made something I've always wanted to make - an exit, laughing. They
were, not me. Ellie made a funny.
As I stepped across the road the passenger, a stub of a CN, came into
the station.
I ran, of course, to pace the platform with a near hysterics. The conductor
asked if I was going - "no, wishing." It nearly drove me crazy
to see the thing leave without me.
And when I got home to my upstairs, the radio was on. I sat on the top
step with my face on my hands and my elbows on my pink pyjama knees. They
played "Tonight" and again I was nearly wild.
Raw carrots and iced milk for bedtime lunch.
September 26
After a frugal supper of raw carrots, 2 plums which should have been
eaten at dinner, a glass of milk, a cup of soup, I spread out sheets and
sheets from a magazine - Christmas foods. Danish cookies, Swedish cake,
plum pudding, sugar plums (what is it that makes the word "plum"
so tempting?), candy, eggnog.
Ambition (what, another one?) to become a really good cook.
Later - 10 o'clock
Want to know something Frank? I'm going to live happily ever after. I've
decided to. I will!
The cup of coffee I had has kept me awake, even when I wanted to go to
bed at ten. In my red impressionist shift I ran outside, snapping my fingers,
bouncing on the balls of my feet.
Outside the sidewalks were warm. I'm going to live happily ever after
I said. This is a vow. And I reinforced the vow by running across the sidewalk
to the partly dead tree in front of my house. I scrambled into it and my
shift sliding up over my knees. Like an animal, like a jungle girl, bare
legs and feet clawing into a tree. I sat in the branches a bare moment feeling
slender and wild, then swung down and ran into the house. And as long as
I can climb trees at night I shall be happy, no matter what happens to me.
27
I'm S.U. secretary! How nice it will be for my scholarship record. I
feel pretty - reading a book "East of Eden" - the devil Cathy
feels like me. But not
September 27
Frank, do you remember September 27? Paul's birthday. Tonight on this
street it is wet. Last year on this street it was fiercely cold and very
windy. You were a partidge, a warm one.
This is a golden age surely. Everything good drops into my lap like sugarplums
from the sky - Frank, I'm Students' Union Secretary! It is an honour, especially
in a new school.
One of the duties of a friend seems to be listening to good newses -
are you a friend? Mm-hm. Yes. You sent some mint. Little crumbles of it
are in my purse. Poodle is going to hover around tonight when I go to sleep.
Thinking of you. Have a good night.
I'm reading a book by John Steinbeck, "East of Eden." One of
the characters is a crafty lovely girl who schemes her way out of anything
unpleasant, an inhuman person who burnt her parents' house with them sleeping
in it. Charred bones. She could deceive anyone. Frank, if I was a person
like her you might not know it. There's a thought for you Don't be too sure!
Your little idea about "a silent man is a wise man" has met
its match - another little saying. "A silent man has a silent mind."
28
In town after school and bought a lovely brown pleated skirt - 13.00.
Slipped in St Clair's Ladies Wear and jarred my knee. Brought home ice cream.
29 [La Glace]
Baked bran muffins with many raisins in them, drove tractor in the sun
for a while and enjoyed it.
30
Stayed home from church so Judy could wear my girdle and I could escape
the Thanksgiving Fête to do homework. Sunny bright day. Paul's party.
October 1
Became tangled in "Rise and Fall of German Reich" - hence in
vocabulary, German philosophy and history, hence in psychology. Stayed up
late!
2
Tuesdays are good - library night. I have to bring books home even if
I know I can't read them. This time, plays - The Importance of Being Earnest.
5
Friday. Impressed by Tennessee Williams' "Streetcar Named Desire"
from the libe. I get hungry on weekends. I can stay here all winter!
6
Saturday. World Series - Yanks and San Fran Giants. So far tied up. We're
still threshing on our 6 quarters' worth.
7
Sunday. Reading "Death of a Salesman" from a play book. Stayed
home from church again.
12
Fri - Snow this morning. Curled up downstairs with radio and a bit of
food and letters and songs and was wildly happy because I'm going
to Europe! I am!
13
Sat. In 2" of snow and much mud went home to find a shambles after
Father caned Paul - left Judy and Mom crying, Paul desolate, Rudy terrified.
I hate weekends!
14
Sun - Father has been gone (where? who knows?) since yesterday afternoon
- I made some ever-so-good cookies (peanut butter) and am looking forward
to tomorrow - yes!
15
A scrambled Monday morning. I feel half put together when I leave from
home and these weekends are so disturbing. Good to get back.
16
After school walk home staring into windows.
17
Weds. I'm experimenting with food to make it stretch over two weeks -
an egg, cereal, milk, and handful of carrots - c'est tout! Feel hungry.
19
Friday night party at the Bible school which rather bored me because
everyone laughed at things I thought were not funny. Will stay here all
weekend.
22
Monday - Mom phoned to say she wanted some stuff and told me about a
letter from Bonnyville. Dear Paul Sylvestre has been dead for two years, and he was
barely fifteen!! [d. August 15 1960]
October 22
I've cried my few tears for you Paul; and everything about you I will
remember. Remember so that I can keep you, so I won't lose all of you to
death.
And I think now, how much more I would have loved you if I'd known. (Did
you know?) But it is not natural to love someone more because they have
only a space left for loving. I asked a nurse "Is bone cancer fatal?"
She said she didn't know. And when I sat in that large chair next to you
I wondered. But I was fourteen and I loved you and I didn't think much about
it. We were friends I think; we spent an afternoon together in the sunroom
idly setting together a jigsaw puzzle. And just being together. You were
short and slight and when you walked there was a heavy list to the side
where your artificial leg was. You had small blue X's on your cheek from
the cobalt treatments, and your cheeks were too round and pink for a boy's.
Your eyes popped a bit too, and you cursed the cobalt mildly. When you asked
if I had noticed, I said no. You weren't at all handsome - you knew it -
but you had a warmth and a charm and a way about you. I didn't care. I was
even a bit foolish about you. Sweet. You were sweet. I think we understood
each other. (And you called me sweet - "Are they as sweet as you are?")
And I felt low because I was going with Reiner - I wish I'd been exclusively
going with you - and yet because I waited so impatiently to run back and
see whether you were still there. The night before I went home you kissed
me; lonely boy Paul, but happy still and always gay and with the rapport
only Peter Dyck has. (I wrote, "I know only two people who have it."
There is only one now.) You kissed me. Nobody else has ever kissed me so
that I'll remember it. I can say thank you for that, and for more than that.
But how you kissed me: the chinook sifting through the screened window,
the dim long room and the glowing television screen. You were leaning down
looking at the snow and the lights and the taxis. I was sitting on the long
sofa. You said, "There's a lot of those yellow cabs down there."
You said it casually, but you looked down at me and I looked up, moved a
little and said "Yes." So you touched my face to turn it and kissed
me. A long light trembling kiss, softer than I had thought it would be.
Reiner kissed fumblingly, but you didn't fumble and you gave me something
to remember. (Is remembering valuable when all the remembering in my mind
will decay and become plant cells? Earth.) And you smiled and said "Now
I'll go back to bed and smile to myself. Thank you." I never knew when
you were serious and when you were teasing me. It amused you. Did you really
speak your heart and hide it with a smile? When you are seventeen it is
easier to tell love than when you are only fourteen and round-eyed. You
said one evening, "I go back to my room but I get restless and I have
to come back to see if you're here." I wondered if you meant it or
if you were probing my own mind because that is what I thought. I would
flee you, back to my room, and dash into the bathroom to smile at the mirrors
and laugh. And I would run back, staying close to the hall walls so that
you could not see my limp. We could have been better friends: we were alike.
But you had more. Did you know Paul? While you teased me, gave me the warm
desired girl feeling, touched my lips with the chinook streamings, did you
know that you'd kiss very few more girls? Perhaps I was the last one. I
don't care. I wonder why you never wrote. I waited for your letter but I
didn't trust myself and I said, "No, he would not write me. Paul was
a playboy." I don't care, and I loved you. The thought of you as I
went home and for days after was sharp loneliness, smiling sore rememberings.
And will there be sharp loneliness now forever? Are you reading over my
shoulder? I would like you to know. But you were knowing, smiling over my
shoulder then. I think you knew I loved you. I hope you knew. To tell
your love while he hears.
23
Mrs Wold has a new television set to gobble up my time, and the whole
weekend is flying.
Weds, 24 Oct
Gorgeous morning, nippy and cold and wildly colorful, all sorts of pink
streaks in the sky and street lights still winking among the bare tree branches.
I'm not up yet. Will there be a letter?
26
Friday. Home for the weekend and it seems to be good because they seem
to like me. If only I didn't eat so much.
Friday, Oct 26
Cher Frank,
Remember, last letter was it? I threatened to tell you about the only
time I was ever kissed so it was worth remembering? Listen now. He was very
slight, not in the least good looking. He looked twelve and said he was
seventeen - acted nineteen, talked nineteen. He was an amputee, and had
a great deal of fun (and more than fun too) with his plastic leg. Above
that he had bone cancer and there were blue x's on his cheeks when I met
him, a January afternoon in the 4th floor television room. He was an immensely
appealing person, partly because of a very smooth line, partly because of
an impish sense of humor, partly because of a genuine warmth: it added up
to charm plus and round-eyed credulous fourteen-year-old Ellie was taken.
There was a peculiar thing, a vast restlessness when he wasn't around.
He never wrote. I missed him acutely for several weeks, and he still
pops into mind. Two weeks ago I wrote him an impulse letter. There was a
letter back this week. His sister, to tell me that he has been dead (dear
funny-looking Paul) for two years. I ran upstairs and cried my few tears
for him. But there were chuckles in the tears (bubbly red-nosed chuckles,
true) because when I knew him he was actually fourteen, half a year younger
than me. And he was the boy who kissed me so that I'll not forget it. Did
Paul go around giving girls memories or was it only me? I don't care. He's
a good memory.
27
Saturday's glimmer by - eating too much again. Judy and I stayed up until
about 4, talking, drinking coffee and eating fresh bread. Feeling inspired
that late.
29
Good to be back at school. It's dry, you know, after being muddy.
Tense world situation Cuba - Russia - US triangle.
30
Dennis and I will sit and talk and talk about the vital things to our
minds and Mr Mann will put in words. I love school.
31
Foggy wet muddy Halloween. Ran over to Ludingtons to beg an apple and
stole candy here.
November 1
Social Studies is becoming a real social study - I begin to see the whole
human race.
Nov 4
The fog has lifted now but when I came back to Sexsmith the air was full
of aerial wetness that became spitting powdery rain. The fog even looked
powdery in the headlights. Mom and Dad and I were alone and we are always
closer then - and the light from the headlights seemed an actual concrete
form moving before us, rigid in the rigid nucleus of our consciousness -
that is, what we could sense - the three dimensions I see and hear and think
was a nearly black shaped cube in the dark with the light as an actual shape
within it.
Now I'm back in my gravitational centre. My room. It's home, I'm lying
with the window open in my pink pyjamas with a sense line across my shoulder
where the neckline is sliding off, and a sense spot on the top of my head
where a roller is poking me, and the firm compact sound (yet with softening
edges like butter) of a car sogging by on the street, I'm not looking but
across the street I see a complete centre - the rectangle of a lighted window,
a flat surface object with a flat lamp in its exact centre and the flat
painted figure of a man slouching before his television set. It is like
a picture suspended, hanging from an edge wall in my vision consciousness.
There is an awareness of shape and unity tonight. Now suddenly the conical
splintery shape of a cough downstairs.
The candor of children is good. Towhead Carol was here visiting her great
aunt and came up to be with me. I was winding hair onto rollers. "Gee
that leg sure looks awful doesn't it" she said. "It sure does"
I said. "I mean you don't really notice it but sometimes you look at
it and it seems quite awful. It must be funny to have one skinny leg and
one normal sized one." "Oh it is. You get used to it. But sometimes
I look at it and it does look pretty queer."
5
An apple, 10 peanuts, a mug of iced tomato juice make a lovely meal for
the day. Restlessness and lonesomeness.
November 7
A short night walk, after studying history, nearly at midnight. TV was
good tonight, Parade had parts of "La Boheme" and "The Marriage
of Figaro." Ben Casey was grand and glorious through the floor of my
room (they have him on very loud). So I'm still not finished - and oh yes,
Hilda and I talked for a luxurious quarter hour. I like her!
Outside was wonderfully warm for November, an evening like a September
night. I walked down the stairs silently, silently in the dark, felt for
the screen door latch and walked outside, silently, silently, in my new
brown shoes (long-pointed and shiny). The end of the street has the tree
cobweb caging a lamp in its loony branches. I walked down toward it, saw
a light in an upstairs room where Dennis lives. Thought ah! Dennis is studying,
and smiled at the knowing of him without his knowing of me. It was the same
yesterday with the dream I had of him. I fell asleep thinking of Frank,
woke to a dream of Dennis playing Frank's part, driving a car, silent, distant,
and though I twisted in my seat to look pensive, he drove on not noticing
or seeming not to notice. Estranged. I dreamed that after thinking of how
long it has been since I've had a letter from Frank.
Anyway - walking at midnight. At the end of the block I stopped because
it was muddy further on (stopped to touch the wet earth), smiled at my house,
went back up to the window that looks so pink and rosy from down on the
street.
8
Today has been good - walking in my swinging purple coat, home from school
at noon to get my apple, swinging along with Wayne, talking. Biting into
an apple from Ruthie after school (the best apples I've ever had! white,
cold, big, juicy) [Okanagan Macs from the Bible Institute cellar], dancing
like a chorus girl to notes in my voice lesson - yah! hah, hah, hah!
Eating a chocolate chip cookie and "scroll" while watching
Teresa somebody in La Bohème and thinking of Stratford, Ricky, Al,
Tom, Indra. Oooo! Talking to Dennis, reading Atlantic mag in school, walking
to school at noon reading a yellow-jacketed Writer's Digest. Test tomorrow.
Ciao.
(Do you think Frank will write soon? I'm wondering.)
Analysis of Mary
What do I know? She sidled up today and said "Do you have a comb
I could borrow?" I had one in my desk, gave it to her, said, "You
may as well keep it." We are on a smiling basis - she smiles at me
as tho' she likes me and says hi.
Appearance - blowsy but conscious of herself. She wears flat-footed black
running shoes, already quite shabby, baggy Saan-store weave pants, an untidy
black sweater (cardigan with a vee-neck pilled and shabby), pink ruffled
blouse. She wears the sweater all the time. Her skirts when she wears them
are too long. Obviously she is not from a shiny new home and her mother
is not shiny or young or tidy at all. She curls her thick (corn-silk colored)
blond hair herself. It's wiry and won't curl for long but springs askew
to stand out straight from her head. Her face itself is fairly attractive,
good skin with freckles, no coarse features, blue eyes. She's a mess, granted,
but I think there is an awareness growing and it reminds me of myself, although
perhaps I was never quite like her. But -
She is always alone, has no friends. She spends hours in the washroom,
standing, combing her hair anxiously (pulling hard through the tangle).
She walks back and forth rather aimlessly. Hilda says she walks into various
rooms, asks aimless questions of the teachers ("Miss Schweitzer, what
will we have in art tomorrow?"), goes downstairs to stare and when
asked what she wants says "Nothing. I'm just looking." Obviously
she wants attention. Her grades aren't good. But she talks rather intelligently,
firmly for a junior high person. She says what she means. No flutter. Perhaps
she memorizes it. A queer child but like me. I'll probe.
9
Became very hungry, went out and bought fruit cocktail, bananas, Hi-Spot,
ice cream.
10
Our pictures [school photos] came and I look young and somewhat fierce and arrogant too, which I am
- arrogant and hesitant and afraid of people - even Ludingtons and Mrs Wold
and Mr Mann.
At the wedding in Valhalla, Nov 10
Girls - Patsy - lovely slim creature, downcast eyes, tiny long fingers,
one finger heavy with rings, the rest pink matt, small slender heels and
legs I'd trade anything for - even if they do have varicose potential. Her
grandmother, haggard, garrulous, says "Patsy is good girl too, good
in school." She looks slightly vexed but smiles when smiled at, red
coat. "Is fourteen, Patsy." I'd like to look like her. She's just
my speed - but by all means keep my wicked personality.
Woman chewing gum soberly with short red nose and stiff eyelashes - woman
in rich fur hat with scar shiny down her neck - woman with dished face,
fuzzy chin, sunken mouth - woman in maroon hat with bruise on her forehead
and saintly thin husband.
The baby who cried during the ceremony. People sitting, placid. Nymphs
just now beginning to brighten eyes at a wedding, walking awkwardly, pushing
or half-shy, beginnings of breasts under their coats.
The man who climbs stumblingly over a bench to sit with men who are talking,
muttering "Wall too cold" and moving into the conversation, if
only to listen. Lonely.
People are lonely; is that why these two beautiful young people are marrying?
Are they doomed too to the roles of the red nosed mother (young, dressed
in red and still pretty) who herds children, alone; and of the lonely listening
old man? (Now that one man has left, he moves over with his thick glasses,
his hearing aid, his attempts at jokes no one laughs at.)
The boy in the too-long brush cut who sits selfconsciously on the steps
or ambles about. The girl in the red coat - Patsy - wanders too. Will they
meet?
Lovely yellow chrysanthemums.
Scraps of conversation - "Al, take Jimmy out, will you? Please."
The young mother in the red suit still has her figure. Jimmy comes back
crying.
Shall I read my book? What bad manners. Writing is an alone avocation.
You go to something like this - it's good to go to a wedding where you know
no one. Not actually lonely. Not as lonely as a wedding where you know many
who aren't friends.
Flip through the book to see which page is least valuable. A preface
will do. I have nothing else to write on. They sing the table hymn and I
hear my own voice. Mother in red slaps her little girl. There is a girl
in brown with a big fur hat. Does the hat give her marriage status?
Another woman here remembers my mother's wedding but all she can think
to say about it is "Good lunch." I was thinking of Mother during
the ceremony, of what she felt, and of what the bride - lonely and white
and packaged in the significance of her momentous role tonight - was thinking.
The set of the veil? God? Her Gerry? [Gerry Loberg]
There is my father in the crowd. He is tall, good-looking; mother small,
unsophisticated, dowdy, but pretty anyway. Married people should sit together
at weddings and practice empathy for inspiration.
The bruised woman's brown spot on her forehead gives her a querying look.
Her husband is thin, worn; his grey hair is silky.
Saturday night between 11 and 12
Cher!
Pop and Mom and I had a 3-cornered date: we went to the wedding of a
son of a friend of Mom. The whole point of going was that Mom hoped to see
two of her ex-teachers there, who were relatives of the groom. We knew few
other people (which made it more fun because one could sit and stare and
scribble notes - two people asked me if I was the reporter - and even read
if there was time - I had "The World to 1914" with me and tore
pages out because it was the only paper I had) but Mother did meet one of
her teachers. They shook hands for longer than Pop thought necessary and
shoulders were patted and there was talk that sounded as if those two had
been very good friends. He taught her grade nine in a little one-room school
when she was fourteen and he was "older than he should have been as
a bachelor" (her quote).
He has a wry merry face, peaked white eyebrows, twinkling eyes, grey-white
hair. What did he look like when he taught school and after. We talked about
him all the way home. And when Father went outside Mother giggled and said
"I don't know if I should tell you, but he was the one who kissed me
for the first time!" She wrinkled her nose, "He had a moustache;
it tickled." All was not - ahem! - strictly professional between them!
Mother is a wonder.
You know, she feels like a girl inside; she doesn't feel like my mother,
or anyone's. And she talks to me as tho' she needs me very much as a friend.
It bewilders me a bit because this is a switch on the usual mother-daughter
role. Sometimes I feel like her mother and she feels like my daughter. Truly!
And tonight she told me a bit about this teacher and the years ago when
she was as young as she feels. She was starry-eyed tonight, looked young
too. She wants a great deal - to go to school, mainly (she told Mr Loberg,
"I used to dream so often that I was back in school, and I still do."
She does want school very much.)
And she wants to be a Quality person - well-dressed, poised, well-read,
informed, intelligent, gracous, all the rest. She wants to do something
important. But she's soft and sweet. She doesn't have the drive Father has
or I have or the rest of us neurotic Epps have. And so she'll never be the
person she has in mind and she'll probably never go to school. Instead she'll
forever do what she is doing now - bearing tantrums, forgiving them, forgetting
them; keeping her explosive brood near sanity; aching over all of us and
willing to do more for us and feeling that she's goofed somewhere. She wants
to have friends and all sorts of warm relationships but most of the women
she knows - like cows - don't understand her. So instead of the books and
music and friends, she has - father. This is the one point where I get a
bit bitter. Can you set me straight? But it's so pathetic, so very sad,
and it hurts! I don't help - I'm as selfish as all of us, more selfish -
and there she is in this grotesque situation, smiling. But not always.
And all of us in the world, all the swarms of us, do this to each other.
Your hate-love theory fits here and people can't love others well because
they can't love themselves because they are brutal because they have learned
brutality from everyone around them. It's a cycle. How can you get out of
it? Perhaps being aware of it at all is a beginning. It all makes me aware
of the bit of the Bible that says, "Lord be merciful to me a sinner"
- God be merciful to us all. We're certainly in a mess.
17
Sat - stayed up until I finished "For Whom the Bell Tolls"
and couldn't sleep after that.
November 17
For Whom the Bell Tolls - Earnest Hemingway has a name I read with awe.
Hemingway. Why is it. He writes about killing and about death and about
people. He even writes about love. I would like to ask him, why? Do you
believe in it? Do you want to believe in it? For whom the bell tolls ask
not It tolls for you - and that is why I want to write. (What is experience
if it is not kept? Why do I want it if it is transient? And why did you
kill yourself, Earnest Hemingway?)
Robert Jorden - Inglés - hero. Pilar - woman and force - knowing,
loving woman, huge ugly Pilar. And Maria, I saw you so vividly, long bodied,
round breasted, hair cropped and soft as a beaver pelt. Nineteen you were.
When I am nineteen I shall be much older.
You have moved me, Earnest Hemingway. (You are dead, Earnest Hemingway.
Roberto is dead, stubbly blond beard in the pine needles. His father is
dead, you are dead, Paul Sylvestre is dead. Sweet Paul Sylvestre.) Rabbit,
Maria. - Did you know how good this Hemingway is? He wrote a lyric to sexual
love that I shall read you - is this something you have dreamed, Earnest
Hemingway?
And she said, "Nay there is no pain."
"Rabbit."
"Nay, speak not."
"My rabbit."
"Speak not. Speak not."
Then they were together so that as the hand
on the watch moved, unseen now, they knew that nothing could ever happen
to the one that did not happen to the other, that no other thing could happen
more than this; that this was all and always; it was what had been and now
and whatever was to come. This, that they were not to have, they were having.
They were having now and before and always and now and now and now. Oh,
now, now, now, the only now, and above all now, and there is no other now
than now and now is thy profit. Now and forever now. Come now, now, for
there is no now but now. Yes, now. Now, please now, only now, not anything
else only this now, and where are you and where am I and where is the other
one, and not why, not ever why, only this now; and on and always please
then always now, always now, for now always now, one, going now, rising
now, sailing now, leaving now, wheeling now, soaring now, away now, all
the way now, all of all the way now; one and one is one, is one, is one,
is one, is still one, is still one, is one descending, is one softly, is
one longingly, is one kindly, is one happily, is one in goodness, is one
to cherish, is one now on earth with elbow against the cut and slept on
branches of the pine tree with the smell of the pine boughs and the night;
to earth conclusively now, and with the morning of the day to come. Then
he said, for the other was only in his head and he had said nothing, "Oh,
Maria, I love thee and I thank thee for this."
Technique! At first the watch, time, conclusive thoughts. Long sentences;
slowly, slowly words. Then a rushed uniting of all the world with their
reality, then staccato urgency. Now, now, now. Rhythm, perfect. A slowing
freedom, tempo, tempo. Then the soft brushing words; kindly, happiness,
goodness, the words "on the earth." Detail again. Sighs and a
waking.
18
Home all day for Sunday. Dreaming clothes and working on redo of "Winter
Boredom" article for F.H. [Family Herald - farm weekly] Sieburts
for late coffee.
22
Home on Thursday so I can stay the weekend. Now we have a combination
phono-radio
set - blond wood - nice.
23
Episode of the radio - poor father. Bathed. Goodness I'm fat - well,
diet again, I guess. And WORK.
The radio
Breakfast and peanut butter on the table.
The radio on a shelf, cord wound around it.
I didn't really care.
Mother asked would I take the radio?
Father said of course not.
Mother, "Why?"
"Your habit of setting things on edges goes against you now."
"Because I slobbered when I was a baby does that mean I shouldn't
eat in public now?"
"That kind of reasoning will get you nowhere."
"You use it all the time" from Mother. I am surprised.
"Well I don't expect it to get any results," in a querilous
tone.
I see Judy and Paul standing stiffly, Judy has her back to us as she
does when she is angry.
I walk into the living room and say in a whisper, although I don't care
about the radio, "Silly old man."
I come back and say "It's just that this is grade twelve and I have
to stay on my toes with the news."
"And this is the last year she'll be home - this is the last year
we'll be able to do anything for her."
And I stand with tears in my eyes and run to the living room where they
fall down and I wipe them away.
It is cold. I wait for Father in the truck, eating, propped against my
suitcase (pretty and blue).
Father comes back and he has the radio in a box against his knee as he
drives. We neither of us say anything. He puts it into Raynold's car and
I want to say thank you - I am so moved - but I say nothing.
24
Work all Saturday, downtown in the morning but I do get deathly bored
with homework!
25
Sunday - lovely afternoon studying in the kitchen with my feet in the
oven and books and song over radio -
27
Stayed until past 7:30 at school - being teased by the janitor - and
stopped by the library for "Alice in Wonderland" and a book about
gypsies.
"You make like fool of me. I hav' go home, eat doughnuts, maybe
two dozen. You be here, eat no supper, I eat, I hav' eat!"
Wife: "I make big pie. Is better to be happy than cry!" [janitors
Mr Gruscilo and Mrs Pinch]
[undated]
Saroyan - Armenian father whom he worshipped, a
revolutionist.
"I'm doing what I can to keep this moment
solid and alive" - yes! "I love consciousness."
His piece is called "Myself Upon Earth."
It ended this way, "The point is this - day after day I longed for
my typewriter."
"This morning I got it back. It is before
me now and I am tapping on it, and this is what I have written." (October
1934)
My eyes dropped from the last word and I felt a vast affection for the
man and his story. "I am a story teller, and
I have but a single story, myself." "Is any journey so vast and
interesting as the journey of the mind through life?"
Saroyan seems to have a vast (the word I use often and love - vast) love
of man, a respect for him. "How can one living
man possibly be greater than another?" he says, and "even frauds
are interesting" and "I am interested only in man." "Didn't
I say that in my flesh is gathered all the past of man? And surely there
have been dolts in the past." "I am sitting in my room, living
my life, tapping my typewriter." "If I am taken away from language,
if I am placed in the street as one more living entity, I become nothing,
not even a shadow." "I love and worship life, living senses, functioning
minds. I love consciousness. I love precision" - yes! "I wanted To say something and see if it was the right
thing."
I too have this passion for consciousness.
November 27
There are soft crying sounds from next door, partly because of an inadequacy
of mine. Ben Casey tonight featured a boy who reminded me of Frank
and Hilda of someone too. Mildly surprised Hilda is a soft vulnerable female
too, very dear, very good, very sweet. She leaned up against the door frame
when we went upstairs and said "If I wasn't so shy" - she's blowing
her nose now and there is a wet sound of tears in her throat, soft sound,
woman sound. And for a man who - I've gathered - she's never made friends
with because of shyness. "My big mouth won't open when I want it to,"
"I think I have an inferiority complex."
I walked over to the other door frame and in my own humbling way I failed
her. When I should have said, "You are very sweet and very nice. You
haven't got anything to worry about" I went into the explanation act
(inadequate, inadequate) and I said "Everyone has an inferiority complex"
and I said "I'd go hairy if I worried about my sister's pretty legs,"
and "Mr Ludington keeps saying something. He says 'You aren't competing
against anyone but yourself,' and so long as you make yourself the best
person you can be there's no point in worrying about other people."
So where I should have put love I put talk and where I should have forgotten
the stumbling self-conscious I, I failed. But I'll learn.
-
I feel like a scribe sitting beside a road in India. Of all this vast
earth I am the only consciousness and I must sit here beside my small table
in the sun, documenting the human experience that passes me on the road.
The miracle of so many consciousnesses - of all people who feel about
themselves as I do about myself.
28
I work late every night after school and love the janitors.
30
Weekend pressure off - had another pint of ice cream (whole, and licked
the wrapper too) and got a letter from F and went to G.P. basketball game.
December 1
"Bought" [ie put money down on] a Van Cliburn album for Christmas
and tried on a slim black $17.00 dress. Home this Saturday noon - our house
is "progressing."
2
Acutely sick because my stomach cannot stand such a landslide of food
- beware for next weekend.
4
Breakfast - butter dripping toast with boiled egg and an apple. Working
late after school.
7
Home for the weekend after a quick afternoon bath and a smothering headache.
December 7
Sitting here as a scribe beside my dusty roadside I seem to record more
of what I am than what I see. Does no one ever get away from the spinning
earth's center of himself? And about this all the multidimensional electron
rings of all humanity and all life and all theory and everything beyond
that. Who can realize that to everyone else in the world the self is another
and different nucleus? There is only one center, there can only be one and
I am that. And spinning about me all life - nothing I do not know exists.
Strange thing, this hungry tremulous protoplasmic (quivering an eternal
life-quiver) I. Do you know that I am an ameba? My consciousness spreads
pseudopodia over all surfaces of everything I know and when I come to the
corner of my street it pulls in the vacuoles and grains of all my perception.
And only the fact that I am a scribe makes me more than a lower animal.
I am a miracle and a wonder. There was never anyone like me entirely - but
even more wonderfully, I find people who are like me partially and I realize,
but only dimly, that there must be other galaxies . What am I? A world complete,
a consciousness alone and solitary. And as I was saying, a scribe. I like
the picture of myself a bronze man with a thin bare chest and mangy whiskers
(but the turban is white and clean) sitting endlessly under a noon-high
sun beside my small table and ink pots, forever crosslegged, watching the
dusty world pass on the road. But in all the world I see myself and I can
write nothing that is not myself; I am so important. What else am I? Seventeen,
lark-happy, crunching home from school late in my brown school girl shoes.
Swinging my big black bag. Singing. Coat buttoned to my ears. Staring into
windows of houses, writing poetry about it. ("Windows of churches dark,
and curtains falling / Even as I pass.") Watching my shadow. Do I list
too when I walk? No, not I. Only my shadow and my reflection in windows
when I pass. But that is not all of me either. There is the grimy grey creature
with bushy hair who cried into her washcloth from depression. Her face in
the mirror showed enlarged pores, anxious lines. She thinks her life is
over at seventeen. Child, child. But you see, she is a cynic, hard, hopeless!
Love is a fairy tale, religion a vast personal confusion, life? Die, die
in an Agean sea, deep, green, die before everything whithers and greys from
the green and glint that was sixteen. I'm too old for romance. I lie awake
briefly remembering how I used to hug my pillow, being excessively friendly
with some dark-lashed dream man. Gadzooks! Now dredge as I might, no eyelashes,
no passion, no arms, no dream! And formostly, no man. You know, I think
I am now and forever what I am now. I'm not of course. What I will be tomorrow
is not even what today I was. This vital thing - life - la vie - that makes
me sense - where is it and what is it? Soul? Psyche? Is it stable? Is it
an absolute? Is it actual?
Oh, and more that I am - an illustration. My small Rudy-brother set a
bit of a cat out of a bag, being friendly. I snapped "Shut up!"
And his face folded up like tin foil and he burst into tears. I felt positively
brutal and had to scoop him up and hug him. Inadequate, I am. He is. We're
human beings, possessors of this pseudopodian precept, but inadequate to
love each other unselfishly or to escape the spinning nuclear self.
And now in the reflection on the window pane I see another self, dark,
like a Portuguese fisher boy, a white scarf around my hair. Anticipating
Christmas. (Did you know that it is immoral to have children? The hugeness
of it. Building a Babel - reaching for God - making something capable of
damnation.)
8
Electricity [ie family got power for the first time] - lights, radio
with deep bass tone, record player. Played piano at intervals all day. Judy
was off to Grande Prairie to a basketball rally.
9
Bleak bleak Sunday. Cried bitterly tonight (Mother is a dear) and cried
bitterly the night before. I feel an almost hate and it's anguish.
[undated]
Tonight again there was father-agony. I've checked my "record"
- so many references to the terror of entering Mother's hell on earth of
marriage to a monster who is my father. I am so lucky. I mused to Judy -
"Am I that? No - I'm not. I'm a happy person. Furthermore, he never
was."
We ran into the living room and I played Mother's life on the piano:
monotonous but nevertheless young notes, only two - childhood. Three tripping
hurrying happy notes - love, escape. Three lower weary notes, ocaisional
crashes of discord - this, her marriage. Two notes repeating forever, one
and then the other. The shrieking discord is always in time with the lower
note but doesn't touch the other - her life now, two aspects: the earth
and the spiritual, the spiritual untouched by shrieking. And finally the
crash again, pouncing on both notes as they are played together. Silence.
I was frightened at what I had done. Judy beside me felt the horror of
such a real picture. It is true. It is true.
Mother walked back into the kitchen. She said something light and laughing.
That is among the horrors of being married. A continual need for small talk,
a mood to follow and be with at every f(?), forever more.
The piano again. We played a summer rain that is light on the window
panes. (Drops fall into puddles. They sound like stars.) It faded, but it
had faded into our very selves. The terror of the life sketch was gone.
There was instead a small joy like stars bursting in a puddle.
10
Lovely to be back - lovely warm room, light to read late on Edna Ferber's
"A Peculiar Treasure," toast for breakfast tomorrow.
11
Glory! A check for $25, which should just nicely get me a black dress,
get some chocs for people, get the gifts, a few. By Ellen Ghent, née
Ellieyepp. [Sold the Family Herald girls' page the winter boredom piece.]
14
Fri. Off to town in the morning - bought a red suit - 50% gift - and
chocs and for lunch Judy and I had bake shop stuff and went to a travel
bureau.
16
Didn't go to church but fell on the ice in the dark, crawled - literally
- to bed and dramatically cried, Why am I so ugly? Why am I so ugly?
17
The first day of this week gone - I feel like an idiot because I worked
at school late, thought the siren hadn't gone yet. Mr Mann came to take
me home because it was 10:45!
December 20th, Thursday
The end of today marked a release from something I'll wish I had back
very soon - my reclusive book and bed world here in Sexsmith. Tomorrow my
holidays start; I'll go to town, I think, tomorrow.
My one present that I was so pleased with is safely given. Rather awkwardly.
After school I had a very large and very heavy pile of books to carry home
(Mr Mann said, when he wandered in in his great black overcoat, thin man
with his half absent, half affectionate way, "Do I have to put a curfew
on you tonight?" "No - I'm going home - just organizing. Is it
okay if I take this book home over the holidays?" "Oh? Fine. Are
you going home home, or just home?" "Home home, I guess. Maybe
not 'til Saturday.") And wandered through the unfamiliar grade school
floor of the school looking for the janitor. She was talking to someone
and my books were heavy so I sort of pushed the package into her uncomprehending
hands and swung off up the steps. She said "T'ank you, oh. T'ank you"
in still a rather uncomprehending way and I walked home rather pleased.
It was a box of chocolates for her and for my dear teazing Mr Janitor friend
with his stiff black hair that parts in the middle. And I'm pleased with
the gift because, mainly, it wasn't expected, because I'm not soothing my
conscience with it, because I'm not trying to buy anything from them. I
just like them.
I stopped at the skating rink with my books and leaned against the fence.
Small boys, little blonde Carolyn between them, twin girlings in red skating
jerkily, like beginners. I wanted very much to come swinging down the street
with white skates over my shoulder - hung as they are with one skate in
front and one thumping my back as I walked, tied together by their laces
over my shoulder. I would have laced them up on my feet and stretched out
over the ice, sleek and long legged with floating gloveless hands and free
long hair (holly tucked into it). I remember a girl at the roller rink,
in orange shorts with slim tan legs crossing, recrossing as she swung about
the rink in a dreaming circle, time and time again, past the place where
I watched with my fingers dug into the wire fence and tears in my eyes.
I wish I could skate.
Playdate tonight featured a story about four men who accidentally
spend the night together in a flophouse - one a mild, soft hearted vagrant;
one a fearful, foolish, vastly foolish white whiskered old man with a quivering
bare heart too old for subterfuge; one a black moustached belligerent tough;
one a boy-faced ex-con, intermittently both terrible and tender. The story
had a stove, a fight, a new pair of shoes, an old man's dream of dancing
on street corners and whistling, the same old man's foolish fears which
made him betray his terrible-tender friend for the night. Again all the
dispairing inadequacy of people. I thought of Irish, I missed him, I wished
that, in Vancouver last summer, I had touched his arm and said "Take
care of yourself."
Today is December 20. It is raining outside. I can hear it on the roof.
I'm seventeen. Today I've been very briefly in several worlds - Salinger's
Caulfield, Thomas Wolff's Hills Beyond, piquant worlds of people
who write. And again I felt as tho' I should write. But is there in me not
only a wish but a way too, a way of setting words to show the shaded
patterns of what I know to people who read? Maybe it is too soon to tell.
But I feel aware, I feel like a writer.
Perhaps I will be. And is it foolish, vastly foolish, to want something,
and to dream something, that is too large for me? Scribesmanship. Or is
it foolish only to say what you wish? (Admitting even the thought and the
desire to write seems rash. Presumptious. Who am I to say that I have something
that will make me an author? Do I make myself a demigod? And shall I be
struck down? Is Babel in a dream only, presumptious? Ah, but I'm seventeen.
And a good life it is too, "Time passing as men
pass who never will come back again and leaving us with only this knowing
that this earth, this time, this life, are stranger than a dream."
Thomas Wolfe
It will be good to see Frank again. I am hungry for communication.
There is no communication now in my reclusism. At school I have nothing
to say, ne rien à déclarer, and when I talk I am aware of
a brittleness and meaninglessness and void of sympathy. I think of Mr Dyck
when I think of communication.
Last week on Monday I worked after school studying French. It was late,
and had been dark for a long time (the new house nearby has Christmas lights)
but dark begins early and time is ungraduated entirely after the sun sets.
"When the siren goes at 9:30 I'm going home. This is a bloody bore."
I heard steps in the hall and then a rattling at the door. Mr Mann, I thought,
come to tell me to go home. I nearly pushed the door accidentally into his
face. He said "Do you know that it's twenty to eleven?"
And when I closed my books I had the strange confused sensation that
I was going to cry. I couldn't talk to him coherently. In the hallway -
dim, half-lit - he said, "Where's your shoes?" "I'm wearing
them." And I scurried down the steps. "Hop into the car,"
he said. It was outside the door, and he got into it, and he drove me home
to the brown house. It was quarter to eleven. I hadn't eaten since eight
in the morning, and wasn't hungry. We didn't talk much on the way through
the streets. When he stopped at the corner under the streetlights I looked
across and saw him driving there, and I thought of a dream I had once of
him driving through a city with me in the rain at night, red neon reflected
in the rain drops on the windshield and onto his face. I love him.
part 2
- still at home volume 5: 1962-63 september-june
- work & days: a lifetime journal project
|