Found: Writing ideas? Dreams? Observations?

Today would have been my mother's 77th birthday. Each year on her birthday, I go through her collection of photos or her boxes of things, her writing. I have so many that I will likely never run out of material; she was a writer, after all, and a saver, collector of significant bits and pieces.

Today, I opened a box labeled in her hand "Personal NYer Notes." Among a collection of postcards of New York, art works, newspaper clippings, various things that spoke to her (the postcards are unused, blank), I found these two yellowing pages dated 1972 and numbered 25 and 26. I don't know if they are story ideas, dreams or observations. They are mysterious bits and pieces, "NYer Notes."

I wonder if I will find pages 1-24, or pages 27+ as I keep looking. 

Sending love into the ether for my mum. I am forever grateful she was mine. I do not claim she was perfect, and I was certainly not always a good, dutiful daughter (understatement...), but she was brilliant, quirky, loving, awkward, open-minded, kind, thoughtful. She was beloved by many, missed by them all, and none more than by me. We were quite the pair (single mother, only child), and I will always carry her memory and cherish the bits of her that are a part of me. Love you, mum.

The photos for today? Two from 1940, when she was three months old and her brother Graham (my dear uncle) was three years old.

And one from 2006, in the Sydney, Australia at the Royal Botanic Gardens, with her pixie hair cut, growing back from the chemo of the previous year, taken less than a year before she died. 

The Tempest of Clemenza, personal meaning

The first paragraph of the short prologue:

“Ludlow, Vermont. August. If I had known it was to be the last day of Clemenza's life, I would not have returned to The Haunted Mansion with the diaries. I would not have driven in that cursed rain searching for a beautiful notebook, as she had requested, so that she could begin writing the story of her life. I would have stayed by the fire, at her side, the two of us warming ourselves after our ordeal on the lake in the storm. But she had urged me to go. The diaries had to be returned to their author. And Clemenza was eager to embark on her own account of her life in the notebook that very night. She had just turned thirteen and felt that such an achievement warranted commemoration.”

An even shorter epilogue ends the book, and you can imagine the event that it relays. The pair frame the novel. 

The Tempest of Clemenza is the closest to my heart of all that my mother wrote and is the last of her completed novels. It is beautiful and surreal. My mother plays with the gothic novel form so deftly: stories framing stories, darkness, death, unexpected visitors, peril, and, O, the stormy Vermont holiday and the stormy painting at the Brooklyn Museum that Clemenza gazes at. 

"A Storm in the Rocky Mountains," Albert Bierstadt, at the Brooklyn Museum

The greatest personal bit: my mother and I are in it. The mother and daughter--Abel and Clemenza--stay in a Vermont house that my mother and I stayed at. They visit the Haunted Mansion antiquarian bookshop, as we did. Clemenza wears impractical gold vintage sandals on a hike, as I did.

Of course, they are not us, but my mother loaned them so much of us, even the geese chasing us when we were out on a rowboat boating once in Australia somewhere. My terrible, too-short haircut is there, which my mother thought looked “so French.” I look at old photos and still hate that haircut. I wore hats, as Clemenza does. Of course, Clemenza dies in end of an unnamed long-term illness, and I clearly did not, but even this event makes me shiver. Not only is it an affecting, emotional story, but her death also place marks all those mother-daughter memories for me: how close we could be and the stories that only the two of us experienced. Obviously, Tempest holds powerful personal meaning for me, .

The meaning of life doesn’t concern me much. (I don't think it has any.) I am likely too much in my own head; ruminating on smaller things is my style. I have been told many times I think or worry too much. I do. I can find strong meaning in events, people, even things--an object, song word or phrase, so much so that I have a physical reaction, a shiver, a heart flutter, a wave of slight dizziness. But a greater truth or meaning does not exist. This is personal. 

At this moment, I am typing at an antique spool-legged table with drop leaves that feels like home, because it was in my New York City apartment from my birth. My mother is signified, as is my childhood. I would sit cross-legged or with knees up during dinner, and my mother would bemoan the fact that she never taught me proper table manners. My mother and father bought it at some antique auction before I was born, so it even signifies that they once were a couple. I will hold on to this rickety table until it falls apart. Stories are in this table.

Similarly, holding a copy of The Tempest of Clemenza comforts me. The object and the stories told are significant, but just to me.   

dialogue with my mother's journal

So often, I want to call my mother and commiserate about having a different, outlying kid. This is not just about Iz, but also a selfish desire to know my own history through her eyes. I remember being so unhappy in elementary and middle school. Those eight years helped shape who I am now and reveal things about me that are both interesting and uncomfortable. But I do not know how my mother saw my unhappiness (and she saw it, for sure) or how it affected her.

My Iz, now 10, is more social than I was, though he can be deeply both anxious and sad. He is as quirky, awkward and as much in his own head as I was (am?), but he attends the Lab School of Washington, which is for “bright students with ADHD, dyslexia, and other learning differences.” He has friends of equal and ranging quirk. (I love it.)

But I cannot call my mother; I have not been able to for almost seven years. Again, I turn to her journals, those journals she wanted me to burn and never read. I find I need them. Her real, personal voice is still accessible, there to reassure.

Her journal pages from 1982 are typed on pages of lined, yellow legal paper. These pads were a staple in our house, in her office, by the phone, on the kitchen table. I turned 11 that May, near Iz’s age.

She does not write tons about me, which I respect because I cannot stand the thought of my own life revolving around my children, and I wouldn't want hers to have, though I know she loved me more than anything (no exaggeration). I do, however, pop up here and there. On May 2, she writes:

“Today is one of the most wonderful days of recent years. I feel alive again, as if I can indeed realize what it is my mind. It’s a funny, powerful feeling of utter satisfaction and possibility. So that this apartment, this life, which I see as never changing, sometimes confined and imprisoning, seem trembling with newness. First of all, it is well and truly spring. Lovely, lovely. Campus is beautiful, instead of being this dreary place along whose walk I carve a furrow with my footsteps. Classes will be over Wednesday, and I have practically four months to myself. There’s the MacDowell Colony, and I think I shall go to Ireland in August, if I finish The Woman Who Said Mouse. Caity has had a splendid school report, Lisa telling me Friday that she is particularly bright and has become one of the class, a person to whose birthday party children want to go. (Sometimes strikes me as a strange criterion for adjustment and success, but Caity is very happy.) Her summer arrangements seem good.”

My favorite phrase: “along whose walk I carve a furrow with my footsteps.” That woman could write, even when the words were to be private. I love that image of the furrow along the Columbia Campus walk; I close my eyes and can imagine a surreal image of the walk and a dark figure walking an actual furrow. I recall that real walk in an instant. I made my own furrows, walking to Bank Street every morning for five years, then to the 116^th Street subway station when I went to high school in Brooklyn, to St. Ann’s, then again as a 20-something, returned to my city after college, for various jobs and grad school on that very campus.

But, oh, my poor young Caity self. (I will still answer to that name.) How I hated elementary and middle school. I do remember the year with Lisa (teachers went by their first names at Bank Street), and it was one of the better ones. But it sounds as if it took me a while to “become one of the class,” implies that I was an awkward outsider for at least the beginning of the year. I am not at all surprised. How my mother worried. I would have, too.

(Aside: my summer plans “good”? Was that the summer of that disastrous, hated first year of camp? I certainly was not “part of the cabin” that year. I pretended to be sick all the time to be in the nurse’s cabin. I begged my mother to take me home, but she was obviously booked. Was I also doing something with my father? I cannot exactly recall.)

On my 11^th birthday, May 8, my mother’s mood was dampened by an uneasy last class (she taught fiction writing at Columbia) and the arrival of the author copies of Games of the Strong: “An ugly little book. Tiny print, out of proportion acknowledgements, and ugly red printing on that beautiful blue photograph. It looks crude, amateurish…So there is something of a letdown.” I did not know she disliked the cover and layout. Hm.

Maybe it wasn’t the class or the book, but rather her worries about me. She writes:

“And perhaps it is Caity’s birthday. Today. I am glad that Gordon is giving her her birthday picnic. I couldn’t have done it alone. But I am worried that the children won’t turn up, and that she won’t have friends there for the sleepover. At least Katarina and Christina are sleeping over. Sarah and Lola refused the invitation at the last minute. Lola said she had something else to do. Sarah said she had a friend coming over after all. Caity said that meant Lola was going to Sarah’s. She said Sarah hasn’t been all that nice to her recently. I asked her if her feelings were hurt, and she said they were. She really doesn’t talk about that kind of thing. And I can’t bear her to be hurt by other children. Am I uneasy because I have given her so many presents, and it isn’t the presents that make her happy? She loves the little unicorn and Pegasus best, and the $1.00 headband from Woolworths. The bike, well, the enthusiasm has waned, but that’s because I have frightened her about safety, about getting mugged.”

Where was I going to ride my bike nearby West 116^th Street in Manhattan without at least some threat in those New York days? Anyway...

I do not remember Sarah or Lola fondly, so I now don’t care that they rejected me. They were run-of-the-mill mean girls. For example, the next school year, in a moment of wildly misplaced trust, I told Sarah I was “in love” with Adam, and she promptly told him, and he avoided me from then on. That sucked and further cemented my outsider status.

I marvel at how aware of the social dynamics I was. I was sensitive but not savvy enough to fit in or navigate. I have frequently used the same phrasing to describe Iz: “sensitive but not savvy.” He is a darling, but he has had some social issues over the years, been hurt or confused. He does not navigate easily in large groups. At least he does not face the constant social challenges at school that I did. I do, however, recall that something went on earlier this school year when his declared “best friend” was being cruel to him for a few weeks. Iz was so confused by the turn of events, but they are buddies again.

My mother was sensitive. I am the apple to her tree in that and other ways, and I can imagine my hard times, my quirkiness, my sadness, affected her deeply. Iz’s do me. Now I know a little more; I am not alone. I wouldn't have it any other way, though. I want to be tuned into my children, but the connectedness is also very hard sometimes. Like my mother, I also want to be caught up in my own life, have my own things going on, and not just be focused on my offspring. I do my best. Like my mother, I need my own space, and I do not write only about my children. That would be dull.

(For another time: I wonder about how being the only child of a single mother has shaped me, and how her caution affected me. My mother was always very aware of the possibilities, dangers, of New York City living in the 1970s and 1980s. Hell, the car battery was stolen from her Dodge Dart twice when she risked parking on Morningside Drive. She pulled the curtains of the street-facing windows in our fifth floor apartment at night, so no one could see in. But she didn’t hover; she was not a helicopter parent. I don’t find myself overly fearful, perhaps that is my reaction. I often don’t pull the curtains or drop the blinds, and I live in a house. Something to think about.)

an entry for her 73rd birthday

Out running on this blustery winter day, I considered how to honor my mother on what would have been her 73^rd birthday. But where to start? Back at home, clean and in comfy clothes, I have dug out her journals and found a birthday entry from around when she turned the age I am now, 41: December 30, 1980, the very day of her 41^st birthday.

Overall in her journals, she does not write about me constantly, or even often, despite our closeness, but I seem to pop up as a topic on her birthday entries. Perhaps this is because it was always the holiday break, and we were spending day after day together (and I know how challenging that can be with my two kids).

In this birthday entry, she worries that her friends, with whom we were on holiday, were disapproving of my suddenly immature behavior (the usual: bathroom and sex humor) and new use of the word “homosexual.” (She does not describe how.) Though she thought I was being immature and inappropriate, she wanted to defend me.

“As I write this, it sounds as if I am the child. This sitting apart and writing is something I did, too, as a child.” She didn’t know how to confront the issue, so she got it out in blue ink on paper in her lovely (but hard to read) cursive. I understand this disappearing, finding a space to express and create alone. I am doing it right now, as my husband and kids play with Legos in the next room.

I want to remember her, celebrate her and connect with her today. That requires quiet moments and writing. I am the apple to her tree in so many ways. Despite our likenesses, I have been thinking about where we differ: She disliked much of the music I like (“All I can hear is the pounding.”), she would disapprove of my dark purple hair (“Oh, Caity, it looks so harsh.”), and she wondered at my dedication to running (“I am just so impressed!”). I can hear her in our dis-connections, too, and feel close to her.

My favorite line from this journal entry? “My new awareness and acceptance of the tadpole qualities of men.” I don’t (necessarily) agree, but I laughed out loud. A great line, if a tad, um, sexist. Then I think of my house, in which I am the only female (even the dog is male), and I wonder if she might have a point. Sometimes. Maybe. “Tadpole qualities.” *Giggle*

Underwood Portable

I have an Underwood typewriter from the 1940s and I am playing with it and thinking of my mother.

(Of course, I had to scan this to post it.)

five years ago today...

...my mother died. I should be doing work, but instead I seem to have dedicated today to remembering her.

I am finding old photos, scanning them, posting them on my facebook page, and updating the facebook page I created for her (https://www.facebook.com/GlendaAdams1939). I re-read an interview she had with Jan Hutchinson in the October 1988 issue of the journal Fine Line. They talk about whether her writing is autobiographical, morality in her writing, whether writing is political, women and writing, and my mother's two novels (at the time) Games of the Strong and Dancing on Coral.

copyright Nancy Crampton for Cane Hill Press

I am drawn to where they discuss how writing "mother stories" was unusual at the time (my mother had just written "The Day of the Mothers," which was included in Australian Short Stories No. 22). My mother says,

"I really like to try to write about life for women at is really is and life for single mothers. It's an extraordinary life that many of us lead with lots of pressures and responsibilities that are too easily pigeon-holed. Either you go to work or you bring up your family -- and it's not just either/or for economic and all other kids of reasons. But you wouldn't want to give up the responsibilities; they're wonderful responsibilities. It's a connection most mother's don't want to give up, the one of caring for their children. Plus, they have to work for economic reasons. And most women aren't doing work they like. I feel I'm a very lucky person that way because most women have terrible jobs and are poor. It's a very complicated area for us to write about."

Though many of her stories are dark, sometimes surreal, she says she can find a "fluffier," "lighter side" to stories with children: "Whenever you've got children, there's hope, this open-endedness, the next day, and it's delightful despite the troubles."

I'll take the words "wonderful responsibilities" and "delightful despite the troubles," and remember how much my mother loved me. And I will also think of them when my two young boys require so, so much, as children do. Despite or because of all of it, they are delightful and wonderful, the next day.

my mother's ski sweater

In honor of what would have been my mother's 72nd birthday, today, I wanted to write something thoughtful to honor her. I wrote some notes about what she called the "clothing museum." It included clothes of hers and mine that were special in some way. I have not finished this piece for many reasons. I will get to it, soon. For today, I will post one photo of one item from that museum: my mother's ski sweater from the 1950s. It was handmade, tiny and wool.

I would never have worn it--even if it would fit me--because wool makes me itch. And I never saw my mother wear this sweater. But I picture her in it when I read her short story, "The Circle," in The Hottest Night of the Century, which revolves around a skiing trip.

James, James (or Slippery Crockery)

I am reading the pages of my mother’s unfinished novella, first named Slippery Crockery, then James, James, after A.A. Milne’s poem:

     James James

     Morrison Morrison
     Weatherby George Dupree
     Took great

     Care of his Mother,
     Though he was only three.
     James James Said to his Mother,
     "Mother," he said, said he;
     "You must never go down
     to the end of the town,
     if you don't go down with me.

She writes of a family—mother, father, son, daughter—that in structure alone reminds me of her own. The story plays with who is like whom: the mother defining the two “plodding,” capable ones—herself and the older son—and the “geniuses”—the father and younger daughter. Yet the daughter and mother can repel each other like magnets: “like forces repel.” So she suggests the daughter must also be like her mother.

I think of my grandmother, who died at the age of 91 in the year 2000, whom my mother said went silent when angry and would not talk, sometimes for extended periods. I never saw this sweet, tiny woman angry, but I was not her daughter and did not know her before she was in her 60s. I read how the mother in James, James wordlessly leaves the house:

     Our mother had taken to leaving us, slamming the front door and 

     walking, almost trotting, to the bus stop at the corner.

     "J.S.O.," our father termed it. "Just stormed out." The first time 

     she stormed out, he said it with astonishment, but gradually it 

     became a simple statement of fact, like "how do you do." J.S.O.

I wonder if my grandmother ever stormed out. Now, as a mother myself, I know I threaten it sometimes. I keep promising myself that I will stop this practice, but I often want to close the door and walk down the street when my two boys go at it. Sometimes I do walk out the front door and sit on the front stoop and take a deep breath, but the boys follow me, crying, within moments. I wonder if I share a certain anger style with my grandmother. But I can certainly yell—more than I think my mother ever did and unlike the closed silence my grandmother dealt out.

This novella is not autobiographical, and it mixes parts of real people together into one. I see my stepfather in the father, as well as seeing bits of what I know of my grandfather, who died long before I was born. But is makes me think of who is like whom in families, how we label each other, take on roles.

And I am also beginning to think I could finish up this novella for my mother—if I could find all the pieces of it. I have two drafts in hand, and some computer files. I have heard there are 50-75 pages total. I have much fewer in hand. 

Sunday, December 30, 1979

On the day my mother turned 40, she wrote in her journal, and a fair bit of it had to do with me (which is actually unusual in her journals). I have left out what was personal for her alone. I wish she had not felt so frustrated with my 8 1/2-year-old self, but I find it interesting, even reassuring, to read what she was feeling. And, as a mother, I totally understand:

"My fortieth birthday, and I’ve just had a quarrel with Caity, the same old thing, a contest of wills, with each of us knowing we were in the right. Our first fight since Friday lunch on the train, when I made her throw out the apricot yogurt she had ordered for lunch and then not wanted. We have both made new year resolutions. Caity first, and she wrote 'no to much fiting with my mom,' and then I wrote 'not too much fighting with my daughter.'

Caity troubles me. She isn’t how I would want her to be. She seems to bully and cheat and cry and sound like a brat. On the other hand she is sweet, too, and innocent, not crafty, and she is responsible and trustworthy. I have messed up rearing her. She thinks I am terrible—mean, angry. And yet I hear these other kids on the train and they sound obnoxious, some of them. The children at the Hilton with older brothers, or any siblings, seemed to be able to cope in the world more gently and amiably that Caity. Everything terrible I have caused her."

I may still not be gentle and amiable deep down inside, but I hope I am not a bully or a brat anymore on this day, my own 40th birthday. 

philosophical? (July 1970 and July 2007)

I may be including some of the too-personal stuff I hoped to avoid (for example, in the first quote, G is my father), but this passage from July 13, 1970 captures something I share with my mother:

“The only things that concern me are philosophical questions and observations of life and passions. And everyday my experience becomes more intense. I wish I could share this. But when I rattle on about the thoughts crossing my mind—I admit they may seem puny and uninteresting to G—then he gets a bored look, interrupts me mid sentence, or replies on a completely different subject. I don’t know if I embarrass him or bore him. But I do need an exchange—for it is the most exciting thing that has ever happened to me, and I want to share it, to take the plunge into the mind with someone. If he were to confide in me the same way I am ready to confide in him, I know I would be interested and listen and empathize and respond. But I feel a blank wall from him; and I really feel he is not really interested in my inner workings, in me as a person.”

My mother is one of the few I know who thinks (thought) like this, thinks as I do. I miss it. The piece I wrote for her funeral in July 2007, long before I had her journals in hand, included a bit about “philosophical questions and observations of life and passions”:

“I already miss talking to her on the phone – being able to call her and talk about nothing important. With the time difference between us, we often talked at odd hours for her, even 11 or 12 at night. Even the “nothing important” stuff was interesting to her. She could discuss anything as if it were a story or a philosophical question to be examined – whether the topic were something trivial like a bad haircut or something meaningful like becoming a mother.”

cupboards and tables

Jan Hutchinson interviewed my mother for Fine Line, Number 4 (1988). The bit that jumped out at me today:

"When I start a class I urge students to write memories, remembered images. I'm not advocating that you have to write about real people and what really happened. I don't care about that, but I do care about the world that's created on the page. Tabling a lot of these details and experiences starts to show you the writer's process and your true subject matter. It's your source, your cupboard of supplies." (p. 46)

I can picture a cupboard and table, and words and images being pulled out of the cupboard and put on the table, sorted, measured, gathered, piled up. I love it: the cooking, tools and housekeeping aspects of writing seem so solid, reliable and powerful.

Side note: My mother had an actual cupboard not unlike the one in this photo I found. Very Australian. Hers is light wood and a little broader than this one. It has the glass double doors, the little drawers and assorted-size cabinet doors. It is in storage waiting for me; I wish I could ship it here.

my mother has a wikipedia entry

My mother can be found in wikipedia. I had no hand in this, but maybe I should add to, correct or update the information there. It is not especially long, but she is the only family member I have who has an entry.

Sunday, 12th July, Brussels

About her writing process: 

"What today?—more or less ‘normal’. I suppose, but still very impatient with other people’s words. This morning my volcano episode began to click into place. It is always a mystical experience when this happens with a story. I know I have to think lot about the feeling and the atmosphere of anything I want to write; and I know I have to do a lot of testing in my mind of situations. And I know that after thinking about it, it usually at one point clicks into place. But the amount of time needed for this to happen is out of my control. I have been thinking since we arrived 12 days ago—but it has not been high quality or concentrated thinking. In other words, I haven’t had my heart in it. And it is only yesterday and today, last night and this morning in bed that I began to see what I had to do with my three girls and the volcano. I expect to finish this process today, provided I can keep a bit to myself and not be distracted by others’ words and presences, and tomorrow, it should be flowing from the fingertips. I commit myself like this because I am interested to see if I am correct in my assessment of how I function, when it comes to writing. I can only contrast the present with how it was, say, from December to April, when I wrote what I feel are the best things I have done to date, when every spare moment, in the subway, doing the dishes, walking here or there, or just sitting, was enveloped in my story; my mind grew big enough and all-consuming and predominated, so that the story aggressed into other domains; whereas since May, what with M. leaving S. and organizing a household of four, and preparing to leave, it is everything else that has intruded into my mind and pushed out the story. I am impatient to go out into the beautiful sun of today and sit in the forest, to let G. and C. talk while I follow through with my story. I am tired of hearing the same old Columbia stories, told with the same adjectives and phrasing, as if it were a script. Just as I have become tired of telling the M.-S. story. I want to sweep all this old stuff out of my head for it is time to start with new and exciting things, thoughts."

Some notes:

1) Is this the volcano episode in Games of the Strong, which was not published until 12 years later?

2) My father told me the story of M. leaving S. with, I'm sure, the same phrasing and vivid bits--four heads leaning out of a window to see S. arrive home a few apartment entrances down and to see him emerge again, running out after finding an empty apartment--that they all repeated 40 years ago.

more from July 11, 1970

Here's where my mother was almost wrong:

"One of the sadnesses of life is that no one, but no one, is as interested in oneself as one is oneself. Nobody would be interested in the quirks of my mind and the dilly little thoughts I’m putting down here; a husband or wife certainly wouldn’t be; a psychiatrist, well he couldn’t be, and he has his own set of quirks, etc. into which mine would be interspersed; the only person who would willingly listen and try to understand is one’s mother, and that’s the very person one can’t say all these things to. It is only from a parent, especially a mother, that one can demand and get attention."


If I were not interested, would I be reading these yellowed pages and typing them up? 


She is right about the mother thing, though, at least as the main person with whom to share one's "dilly little thoughts." And she certainly listened to mine. She was an amazing mother, and she wrote this a year before I was born, before she herself had the maternal perspective. I miss her and her thoughts, dilly and deep and brilliant.
 

July 11, 1970

Not yet pregnant with me (It is hard to avoid measuring my mother's journals with my personal timeline), my mother was at a party in Brussels and had an odd experience, as if she were watching a movie:

"It reminded me how little the experience of watching movies jibes with the realty one lives in—watching Women in Love I could empathize with almost all of the four characters in turn, and I particularly remember a beautiful scene in which Birkin (Bates) and Ursula (Jenny Linden) run towards each other, naked, through forest and ferns, but with the camera turned sideways, so that she was running upwards and he downwards, giving the whole scene a powerful symbolism. Now I was there with them, also running through the ferns; but were I in fact running towards a man like that, it would in no way resemble the sensation of watching two others run together and imagining that it were I. Very subtle difference. And I often have wondered why thus and such a situation (a picnic, a ride on a bicycle, standing on a bridge and watching the water) does not have the power of an identical situation on celluloid. The answer is not that celluloid glamorizes, distorts, romanticizes, for I find real water as enchanting as water on a film; it is that, with a movie, one it watching and taking part vicariously in a perfect situation, with one’s whole concentration; with real life, one is actually part of the action and cannot step back and see the whole as a third, disinterested person. But last night I did feel I was watching a movie. Watching these people move about, and I don’t mean playing parts or acting. The parallel comes from my own lack of real involvement. R. made her entry, and it was as if I were watching her on cinemascope."

A few thoughts:
1) Is "Women in Love" (which I have never seen) the origin or just an example of the running-toward-each-other-through-the-grass cliche?
2) This reminds me of my own how movies/stories relate to real life: How I expect each situation to have a solution (good or bad), and I look at life as a story, with "perfect" constructions, "fated" (may be the wrong word) choices. It is hard not to, right? But there is not always a solution, and I don't necessarily believe in fate and tend to support the idea of free will, which does not fit the idea of a set, "perfect," movie-like story.

no time to write more

On July 11, 1970, my mother sat down to write a journal entry:

"It seems I only sit down at the typewriter when I know I have to stop soon; so that I can say, darn, just as I was getting going, I have to stop, and thus am saved the embarrassment of not being able to spew forth the mighty ideas I fancy I have in my head."
 

And I sit down today at my laptop when I know I have no time to write. I repeat her lament 40 years later. 

I realize that the date of this entry, July 11, is the same on which my mother died, 37 years later.

Thursday, May 14, 1970

This date is almost exactly a year before my birth. This bit from my mother's journal (I'm offering about a half of the entire entry for the day), has a local Columbia University event, the bombing of the Alma Mater, and a reaction to the news of the day, including Nixon, Cambodia and Hugh Hefner. I think her reaction to the Columbia symbol is quite sane. 


A bit of 1970 in New York City:


Thursday, May 14, 1970

Journal time. Start the day well with journal time. In the middle of the night we were all – M., S. [a close friend and her son, who were staying with my parents], G. [my dad] and I – awakened by a monstrous explosion. Wondered when our building would cave in. We craned out the front window, but could see nothing. I could see smoke rising from the campus, but G. and M. insisted it was only a nightish mist. Learned this morning from S. H., who called at 10 a.m., that the Alma Mater in front of Low Library had been blown up. (Like the IRA blowing up Nelson’s column.) Probably Weathermen. I haven’t seen it yet and don’t know what reaction there will be. I am beginning to think nothing upsets or enrages me. So the Alma Mater, just a statue, is blown up. Ho hum. And in fact, yesterday afternoon, as G. and I watched the construction people opposite raise a mobile crane that was higher that the umpteen-storeyed building in the throes of construction, right outside our window, we decided that if the crane toppled over and top of our apartment building and smashed us to smithereens, tant pis. We are ready to die, I guess. At least, it will be no great thing if we do.

But it’s not true about not getting enraged. Just reading Newsweek yesterday, for the first time in a year or so (M.’s subscription is bringing it to us faithfully every week), I got furious just to read the succession of idiocies committed by Nixon et al. during the past week: Kent State killings by the National Guard; the stupidity of the Nixon admin’s handling of the war and the extension into Cambodia; Hugh Hefner’s internal memo calling for a monumental all-out Playboy article against women’s lib; Peter Arnett of AP’s story about GI looting in Cambodia that was killed by the AP New York bureau – Wes Gallagher said that in view of the touchy political situation last week he judged it better not to inflame the situation with “inflammatory stories”. Ugh, ugh, ugh.

1968, Brussels (Part II)

I've decided to post most of the rest of this journal entry because it is cute--ah, to be 20-something and living in Brussels. This was the first entry, a typed entry, in what was to be her journal. But I have no more entries in my hands until May 1970. My mother praises the weekend (ah, life pre-children) and goes from deciding to be a poet to dreaming of running a radio talk show:  

"Anyway, I started off this morning very happy because it was Saturday. A marvellous day, the most marvellous day, of the week. Strangely enough, the sun always seems to be out, even in Brussels, at least in the morning and the middle of the day. To spend the first few hours mildly tidying up and sweeping the apartment is almost bearable, since it gives me time to work out all the things I shall do, today and in the future. Everything seems possible. Today I decided I would be a poet, writing lively and funny epic verse that would soon be in demand the world over. The BBC chattering in the background helps me along. Some silly word game at one o’clock called something like “Just One Minute” is extremely pleasant. The four participants, all articulate, vaguely humorous, have to speak for a minute on some topic like “smoking”, “cockroaches“, or “the first day at school”, etc., etc. They can’t hesitate or repeat their nouns. A silly game, but the voices are soothing and just listening to the words pattering out pleases me. All those BBC word games please me immensely, like My Word, My Music, and Verbal Tennis. As I potter around I decide that I really would be absolutely happy if I spent the rest of my life, or at least six months, devising such games. Then came the Midlands “Trolley Service”, or something like that, a sentimental hospital request session. The English are as addicted to the same old sentimental tunes as we Australians, and I feel as if I am hearing an exact replay of the ABC’s listeners’ choice. The Nuns’ Chorus, Bless this House, There’s No Place like Home all pour out with predictable regularity, and I like it. Bless this house today made me get a lump in my throat because it used to thrill my grandmother back in Sydney. The chap running the show today said that it was from Aunty Flo or someone for Ethel and that he hoped Ethel would be up and about again soon. Then came the Saturday play, about hippies, which I didn’t listen to. But the words and the voice were pleasant, and all I remember is that one chap, presumably the hippie hero, had a soliloquy that must have lasted ten minutes. It has to be a good play to have just one person talking that long. [I think she means to suggest this was not a good play.] Then the collection of Women’s Hour interviews and talks run by Josephine someone always interests me, trivial as it is. I see myself as becoming so well known as to be in demand for little talks on such sessions—or else I see myself running and organizing such a programme and having a tremendous time.

Sunday is the day for papers and sheer laziness. I feel terribly put out when the English fog prevents the delivery of the Observer and the Sunday Times, which happens once or twice a month. The papers are yet another source of inspiration. In fact, now that I look at it, I see Saturdays and Sundays are my recharge days, and often the inspiration has enough impetus to see my through the week. At least today I have found enough energy to sit down at this machine and start a long intended journal—as Paul Gallico says in his “Secrets of a Storyteller’s Mind”[Confessions of a Storyteller?], there’s nothing like applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the typing chair to get a writer on his way. Not that I’m a fan of Gallico.

The short stories I have more or less in my head are:

1. John the Hippie. In Kochel, telling the callows about pot, etc., and eventually getting a new market for his dope.

2. Rosie the barmaid, trying to pay off her debts, breaking her knees, etc., and eventually winning through. If that doesn’t fit the short story formula that Scott Meredith is so keen on, I don’t know what will.

3. Then there’s the new jigsaw idea, that could easily be turned into a Scott Meredith special, too.

4. There there’s the second Madeline and Bettina story. But I can’t stand those two for a while, not after Scott Meredith’s attack on the first one. Still, I do think they are saleable, SM or no SM.

Not to mention magnificent novels:

1. The Story of My Life.

2. The one about three married women, conflict and murder in France.

3. And my sweet little children’s adventure story about the kidnapping. [I think she used this story as a story within a story in The Tempest of Clemenza, written almost 30 years after this journal entry.]

Not to mention all those fantastic articles for the big glossies:

1. Language courses abroad.

Can’t think of any others at the moment.

Of all these wild dreams, the only thing I shall probably actually do are my trivial little talks for Radio Australia."

1968, Brussels (Part I)

I have been reading my mother's journals. She had asked me to burn them, but I love hearing her voice again, and I will not burn them. And I will even share bits of them, though not most of them. She may be cursing me (if there is any kind of afterlife), or she understands.


The earliest entry I have found is from when she was 28 years old. It begins:


"Saturday, March 9, is almost over, and I am disappointed because I didn’t do all the marvelous things that always seem possible on Saturdays. And now my excuse is that my back aches a bit from having bent for hours over that habit-forming jigsaw puzzle, which has been part of the scenery in the apartment for the past five days. Altogether we must have spent twenty hours fathoming out the thing—1500 pieces which together make a “Scene in Enkhuizen” by a Dutch painter called Cornelis Springer, 1817-1891, whom until now I had never heard of. Now I shall never forget him. The blurb on the back of the box says that he was “a Dutch painter, etcher and aquarellist. He painted extensively in Holland, Belgium and Germany, and his work has been used in historical books. This picture hangs in Riksmusium, Amsterdam.” I think now that I know every corner f the picture off by memory. I even dreamt about doing jigsaws the other night. Anyway, we are hooked, and the only thing I can say about getting hooked on jigsaws is that , besides being a monumental waste of time that leaves one with eyestrain, backstrain and frustration, they are an excellent lesson in perspective. The little lady in background literally is walking on the head of the big lady in the foreground. The other thing I can say about jigsaws is that they get you acquainted with whatever you are building. The Berlin puzzle we bought in Munich (simple, only 500 pieces and two hours’ work) got me all familiar with Kurfurstendamm, and when we went to Berlin a few weeks later I felt as if I was walking through a three-dimensional puzzle. (That would be a fun short story—getting to know the world through jigsaws.)"

Games of the Strong, Part IV: Valley

Neila escapes the Complex in Part IV. She becomes more fully herself, which means no more pretending to be loyal to the Complex, but does not mean becoming an active resistor. She goes into herself, becomes overtly alone.

Neila is revealed as a resistor to the Complex, but not because she freed the Island exiles. After the Island trip, guards greet Neila at her office and escort her to the top-floor office of the Complex Leader. She wonders if she faces promotion or censure. She even fantasizes about what she could do to “turn everything around” if she inadvertently became the Leader of the Complex because of their failure to comprehend her real sympathies. Her thoughts as she goes to meet the unknown are “I am not indomitable. I am not a hero. I am not an activist and I do not care for groups and ostentatious political stands. I am also a coward and fearful, although I do appreciate the efforts of the brave.”

She faces the actual Leader, to whom she is polite and proper, though she thinks of how he as “ruined thousands, killed thousands.” He reveals Serena, obnoxious Serena, who survived the lark of a boat ride that ended in disaster. Serena has returned, “thin and sunburned,” determined to destroy Neila.

The juxtaposition of opposites – expecting either promotion and censure, awe for and resistance to the Leader, relief and fear at seeing Serena – is what the whole novel plays with – each thing and its opposite, characters continually changing sides, nothing being as it seems.

Serena pins the disastrous results of the leisurely boat trip on Neila. Serena’s position is one of the few clear ones now; she is a loyal Complexer. Neila’s confessed cowardice and fear are revealed in the telling of the boat ride. As the boat sank, she decided to swim for help; she was the only swimmer on board. But she admits to us that she swam because she was scared. While she did gather help once ashore, the boat was not found.

Serena accuses her of purposefully trying to execute the companions on the boat. (All but Serena are confirmed dead.) Serena fingers Neila as the Chief Resistor. She assigns to Neila what she wishes she could be: Brave. “I was actually thrilled. Chief Resistor. But of course she was wrong. I would like to be Chief Resistor material, but I am not. I will never be.” And Neila sees in Serena the same cowardice she feels – a mirror of herself. She thinks, “You rotten, lying bitch, piously mouthing loyalties. Serena, as is always apparent, saves herself first.”

Neila is imprisoned in what sounds like a lovely room: double doors, a terrace, a garden. Neila is determined to just walk out of her prison. “I intend to flee, and I suppose it won’t be too hard.” And it isn’t. Neila buries her journals and her copy of The Scared Journey under a flagstone in her prison garden, “a little square gave.” The written words are abandoned. She walks, and those who see her assume she is just going for a stroll in the garden. She just keeps walking – on her own sacred journey.

She pretends to be crazy so that workers in the Fields dismiss her, ignore her. She is performing at first, but the performance slips toward reality. She goes a little mad – both removed and unaware while also very paranoid.

After a stop in a Fields town, she escapes the notice of a group of Complex soldiers posting wanted notices, which may or may not picture her. She decides to indeed head back to the Mountain to become a hermit there, and her crazy beggar routine becomes increasingly real.

As she walks, she thinks about Lak and questions everything, “I was doubting everything that every happened to me. I was thinking I had manufactured my love for him. My whole past life seemed vague, uncertain. Even The Sacred Journey and its lessons seemed like nothing as I walked, though I could remember my obsession with it. What did I care?”

When Neila takes a serious fall while walking on ice up the Mountain, she loses herself in crying.”What am I doing here?” Complex soldiers riding in a jeep capture her. As a prisoner, tied with rope, she rides down Mountain roads, and the jeep crashes. She is seriously injured and ready to die.

But, seemingly deus ex machina, Lak appears to save her. “’My Neila,” are his first words. Lak reveals some unanswered questions and keeps referring to “the plan.” But we have no idea what “plan” he means. We think maybe he is talking of some Resistor plan. But instead he quickly reveals that he let his own family be arrested and assumed that Neila left that very day because she knew they were to be arrested. He assumes she is the loyal Complexer that he himself is. He has been trying to crush the Resistors by infiltrating groups in the Mountain, and he thinks Neila is there to help him.

Neila recounts no emotions here. She loved him. But he was always this bad guy. Neila simply acts. She sets up a trap so that he will fall to his death. She is not sure if it works, but she doesn’t see him again. The last words of the novel: “I shall do what I have to do, and then start the struggle all over again.”

Memories of my mother’s ways in Part IV:

My mother took great pleasure in her clothes and was always searching for and picturing her ideal clothes (and the ideal shoes and the ideal bags). In a town near the Fields, a ticket vendor gives Neila the shirt off his back, and convinces a restaurant owner to offer her a place to clean up and sleep. And a blue cloth is left for her to use. Neila voices what my mother would have felt: “The ticket vendor’s shirt felt soft and light. It came far down my thighs, almost to my knees…I wrapped the blue cloth around me so that it formed a long skirt and I tucked the long ends of the vendor’s shirt into it. I felt wonderful, renewed.” I can imagine my mother enjoying the clothes in just this way.

My mother could assign feelings to food she ate, such as black and white cookies – she had to take equal, alternating bites of each side, so as not to offend either side. Neila is fed in the Fields restaurant: “I ate it all, trying to use the etiquette of the Fielders, not mixing different kinds of food and taking equally from each dish in turn, so that no dish or type of food would be affronted at being first or last, favored or disfavored.”

My mother used to be so annoyed at the unreality of action movies, when the hero (a la Indiana Jones) would fall, be beaten, get seriously hurt in some way, and yet keep going. In the Mountain, after her fall, Neila expresses just such a thought: “In books and films when people are hurt, they rarely cry. They seem to grit their teeth, and give a small groan, a grimace, and then they carry on. Yet when I fall I find that my body is out of my control and needs to cry to heal itself, to recover from the shock, and to get fit to continue.” My mother wanted to assert what would be the reality of the situation.

I love seeing these bits of her, hearing her voice, used to fill out a fiction.