film: Mullan: The Magdalene Sisters (2002)…a second try.

It was in an unctious fit that I wrote last night’s comments on this film. In bed, some hours later, I could not close my eyes without the horrors seeping in through every crevice, as if fools themselves, to think that the moment one’s eyes are closed one is wholly insensitive. Which, I suppose, when one considers what I suffer, is precisely the misunderstanding I fancy to be true. In any case, whether I am or am not the fool, I watched this film, and I did not enjoy it, which shouldn’t be considered a demerit when it comes to judging fine art. So, is there not something? anything? that I can discuss that doesn’t relay my passions? Yes. Though very briefly.

The film plays with this convention of ‘sisterhood’ and another of isolation. The girls are not technically sisters, which is the first irony, given that their families are the ones responsible for giving these girls up to the Church and Ireland; but they are all thrown together to live like a family, or like prisoners, together, suffering the same cruel fate together, day by day. Second, we’re quite used to films following the lives of different characters who somehow come in contact with each other, affect each other’s lives, as in The Hours, Pulp Fiction, and Magnolia; that’s to say, it’s getting old. But in this case, we follow, more or less, five girls, whose names I won’t bother trying to remember. They do interact with each other, but because there are policies of forcing them into isolation even when they’re together, whether by outright corporeal punishment, or by humiliation and forcing them to withdraw inside themselves, interaction is something that nearly takes our breath away when it occurs. Explanations aren’t given, one girl steals from another, one girl saves another from suicide, and so forth, but the extent of their caring for each other stops just beyond the threshold of kindness. It seems so easy for them to rise up and rebel, but they never do. The majority of emotions in this film are displayed by the audience. So, that’s what we have, a film following the lives of four girls, that in any other situation, would twist and turn around each other’s stories in endless complication. Instead, they weave past each other, barely touching, and the fact that these girls were ever together at all, it doesn’t really matter. In the end two of the girls escape and unleash half the emotions you were hoping for, and run through what looks like a scene from La Grande Illusion, which, I think is not a poor comparison to make. In Renoir’s film there are no bad people or real conflicts, despite being a film about prisoners of war. The prisoners were out to kill someone else’s enemy, and the guards are keeping watch over someone else’s prisoners. They know they just have to play the game and they should get out okay. In Sisters, we’re dealing with an illusion even more grand, which is the Church itself. Motives become twisted when the concept of God appears–Miss Marple, Miss Marple, Miss Marple, if I just keep repeating it she’ll turn kindly again…

Byron – Occasional Pieces (1810)

It seems particularly apt to come across this short poem today. Shakespeare’s ‘Taming of the Shrew’ was never something that made much sense to me, nor did Anais Nin’s final rebuffing of Henry Miller, and so on, so that all those terrible things we learned would be finally obliterated by feminism, well, I begin to wonder if there’s more to it than that. Do I believe in love? Yes. There is the love of a parent for his or her child, and there is the love of a man for another man or woman. And I think that covers it. Do I believe in love? Not really. I think it’s mostly a struggle of power, and it just happens to find an easy vehicle for cruelty when everyone is so desperately exposed. One year ago I had spend significant amounts of time in a cockroach filled shoebox of a bathroom watching a girl piss, a girl who refused to let such trivialities get in the way of conversations about Fitzgerald or Henry James, and since she also refused to let such trivialities like eating get in the way of her drinking, well, I saw her drink for six days straight without eating so much as one bite, and we would spend the nights sneaking cigarettes in my room after her boyfriend fell asleep and we’d sneak away from him. We grew close by drinking in the middle of a country road while the moon was large, surrounded by dark farms, and when trucks would come barreling down the road we would hold on to each other, determined not to move, determined, until the absolute last second when, holding on to each other, we’d save each other’s lives by flinging ourselves away from the middle, roll into the dirt. When we came back, everyone was angry at us, they’d all waited up, we couldn’t feel our bodies, and they never had any idea of what we really did when we went out there that night, their imaginations ended at the word sex. We were really out there discussing how unfair it had never been necessary that any of them had to work for anything in their whole lives. She knows how to love, I think. I’ve seen her love. She proposes to me at least once a month.
“For the record,” I tell her, “I haven’t been answering or returning your calls for the past two weeks for a reason. It hasn’t just been ignorance.”
“Really?!” she asks excitedly.
“Yes. We can discuss it another time.”
“Tell me!”
“It’s because last time we spoke you went on a drunken tirade and said things that were entirely unacceptable.”
“Oh, it’s because I told you to dump that bitch, I mean, she’s not a bitch, I’m sorry, she’s not, but it’s because I was telling you to dump her. I’m sorry.”
“That wasn’t all you said.”
“Oh shit! Really? Well, I was drunk, how can you expect me to be liable for–”
“You’re always drunk! Always! So you have to be liable for your words, because that’s your normal state of being.”
“Okay, okay, what did I say?”
“We’re not discussing it right now. But you broke some of my rules, and if you do it again you can be damn sure you’ll never see my face again.”
“Okay. I’m so sorry. I don’t know what I said though. Do you still love me?”
“Of course I still love you.”
“And you’ll still marry me?”
“You and everyone else. Why is it that the only people who want to marry me are in danger of liver failure before hitting age 28?”
“And kidneys for me too!”
“You’re all going to fucking die, and just leave me, helpless and alone and unloved because I’m the unlucky one. Many years ago I had a dream that I was being shot, and my feet were attached to the floor and I couldn’t fall, and I desperately wanted to die, I hated being shot so much, but until I fell over I couldn’t die, and I couldn’t fall. I’m afraid it’s true.”
“We still have time left. Think about it, k? I’m serious. We would never be really in love, but, but we’d still be amazing.”

I came to believe that love was emotionally about punishment, practically about money, and now, I’m quite sure, it’s about power. It’s a thought that doesn’t escape me when I see how my dogs love me, how devoted they are to me, and I try not to remember that it’s because they fear me, because I hold power over them, and it’s not love: it’s subservience. But they don’t understand how I feel about them.

“Does being around your mother make you happy?”
“Not…really.”
“Then fuck her.”
“What do you mean? Should I call her and say fuck you?”
“Just fuck her!”
“I don’t understand…”
“Just forget about her. If she doesn’t make you happy, why keep her around? Why keep anyone around if they can’t provide you with something.”
“That’s a fucking heinous thing to say.”
“Think about it.”
“…you know, you’re right.”

Do I believe in love? No. Do I believe in friendship? Yes. Do I believe in firewater? Even more than I believe in friendship.

And now, the poem that spurred this whole mess:

The spell is broke, the charm is flown!
Thus is with life’s fitful fever:
We madly smile when we should groan;
Delirium is our best deceiver.

Each lucid interval of thought
Recalls the woes of Nature’s charter;
And he that acts as wise men ought,
But lives, as saints have died, a martyr.

1810 is fascinating year as far as his “occasional pieces” are concerned, because there are so few of them as compared with years prior and years following. At first I figured he was perhaps writing Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage while on his travels, but there’s no evidence of such speculation, so I have otherwise no answers. What’s particularly noteworthy during this period is that he’s a perfect poetic upstart, perhaps in the wake of English Bards and Scotch Reviewers, perhaps merely because he felt himself living in the golden age of mythology, making use of his classical education, “Ζωή μου, σᾶς ἀγαπῶ,” and making full use of all his 2,000 parts.

Well, so it goes, Byron died alone, Shelley died essentially estranged from his wife, Keats died without ever making love to his lover, the political revolutions all failed except in Greece, the sexual revolutions gave way to stifling victorianism, what was radical became obscure, what was sublime became quaint, what was humanist became theist. What hope have I now?

Proust, on the novel.

Après cette croyance centrale qui, pendant ma lecture, exécutait d’incessants mouvements du dedans au dehors, vers la découverte de la vérité, venaient les émotions que me donnait l’action à laquelle je prenais part, car ces après-midi-là étaient plus remplis d’événements dramatiques que ne l’est souvent toute une vie. C’était les événements qui survenaient dans le livre que je lisais; il est vrai que les personnages qu’ils affectaient n’étaient pas «Réels», comme disait Françoise. Mais tous les sentiments que nous font éprouver la joie ou l’infortune d’un personnage réel ne se produisent en nous que par l’intermédiaire d’une image de cette joie ou de cette infortune; l’ingéniosité du premier romancier consista à comprendre que dans l’appareil de nos émotions, l’image étant le seul élément essentiel, la simplification qui consisterait à supprimer purement et simplement les personnages réels serait un perfectionnement décisif. Un être réel, si profondément que nous sympathisions avec lui, pour une grande part est perçu par nos sens, c’est-à-dire nous reste opaque, offre un poids mort que notre sensibilité ne peut soulever. Qu’un malheur le frappe, ce n’est qu’en une petite partie de la notion totale que nous avons de lui, que nous pourrons en être émus; bien plus, ce n’est qu’en une partie de la notion totale qu’il a de soi qu’il pourra l’être lui-même. La trouvaille du romancier a été d’avoir l’idée de remplacer ces parties impénétrables à l’âme par une quantité égale de parties immatérielles, c’est-à-dire que notre âme peut s’assimiler. Qu’importe dès lors que les actions, les émotions de ces êtres d’un nouveau genre nous apparaissent comme vraies, puisque nous les avons faites nôtres, puisque c’est en nous qu’elles se produisent, qu’elles tiennent sous leur dépendance, tandis que nous tournons fiévreusement les pages du livre, la rapidité de notre respiration et l’intensité de notre regard. Et une fois que le romancier nous a mis dans cet état, où comme dans tous les états purement intérieurs, toute émotion est décuplée, où son livre va nous troubler à la façon d’un rêve mais d’un rêve plus clair que ceux que nous avons en dormant et dont le souvenir durera davantage, alors, voici qu’il déchaîne en nous pendant une heure tous les bonheurs et tous les malheurs possibles dont nous mettrions dans la vie des années à connaître quelques-uns, et dont les plus intenses ne nous seraient jamais révélés parce que la lenteur avec laquelle ils se produisent nous en ôte la perception; (ainsi notre cœur change, dans la vie, et c’est la pire douleur; mais nous ne la connaissons que dans la lecture, en imagination: dans la réalité il change, comme certains phénomènes de la nature se produisent, assez lentement pour que, si nous pouvons constater successivement chacun de ses états différents, en revanche la sensation même du changement nous soit épargnée).

Next to this central belief, which, while I was reading, would be constantly a motion from my inner self to the outer world, towards the discovery of Truth, came the emotions aroused in me by the action in which I would be taking part, for these afternoons were crammed with more dramatic and sensational events than occur, often, in a whole lifetime. These were the events which took place in the book I was reading. It is true that the people concerned in them were not what Françoise would have called ‘real people.’ But none of the feelings which the joys or misfortunes of a ‘real’ person awaken in us can be awakened except through a mental picture of those joys or misfortunes; and the ingenuity of the first novelist lay in his understanding that, as the picture was the one essential element in the complicated structure of our emotions, so that simplification of it which consisted in the suppression, pure and simple, of ‘real’ people would be a decided improvement. A’real’ person, profoundly as we may sympathise with him, is in a great measure perceptible only through our senses, that is to say, he remains opaque, offers a dead weight which our sensibilities have not the strength to lift. If some misfortune comes to him, it is only in one small section of the complete idea we have of him that we are capable of feeling any emotion; indeed it is only in one small section of the complete idea he has of himself that he is capable of feeling any emotion either. The novelist’s happy discovery was to think of substituting for those opaque sections, impenetrable by the human spirit, their equivalent in immaterial sections, things, that is, which the spirit can assimilate to itself. After which it matters not that the actions, the feelings of this new order of creatures appear to us in the guise of truth, since we have made them our own, since it is in ourselves that they are happening, that they are holding in thrall, while we turn over, feverishly, the pages of the book, our quickened breath and staring eyes. And once the novelist has brought us to that state, in which, as in all purely mental states, every emotion is multiplied ten-fold, into which his book comes to disturb us as might a dream, but a dream more lucid, and of a more lasting impression than those which come to us in sleep; why, then, for the space of an hour he sets free within us all the joys and sorrows in the world, a few of which, only, we should have to spend years of our actual life in getting to know, and the keenest, the most intense of which would never have been revealed to us because the slow course of their development stops our perception of them. It is the same in life; the heart changes, and that is our worst misfortune; but we learn of it only from reading or by imagination; for in reality its alteration, like that of certain natural phenomena, is so gradual that, even if we are able to distinguish, successively, each of its different states, we are still spared the actual sensation of change.

love and silence, my first reaction to Lady Chatterley.

Perhaps it’s no secret that I think very, very slowly, and have immense trouble understanding when other people speak. Not always–not when I am on autopilot, when I have another mission, when that mission is to tear somebody apart, or to be the life of the party, it’s at those times when it’s far more critical for me to push myself aside and let that other part master me, when I know that beyond all else it’s important to be witty, or to be cruel, or to be perfect. When I emerge from these moments they’re all dreams, and when I look back on them I see them as if they took place underwater, everything is blurry, I remember very few specifics, I become drunk on myself and my thoughts and my power, and others remind me quite frequently of things I’ve said or done that I haven’t any recollection of–thank god they’re generally wonderful, and I wish I could be so wonderful when I’m being myself–though I once had three conversations with a guy when I was in such states, and when he introduced himself to me when I was thoughtful, I had no idea who he was. It’s all a bit horrifying, really. I have suspicions that this is all due to keeping closed-captioning on the television for nearly a decade for no reason except that I enjoyed reading my television shows.

Some of the most important moments of my life, though, I’ve had to give up, because I could not understand what was being said to me, because I have such difficulty understanding English behind any sort of accent except the American no-accent characteristic of Philadelphia. If I was in bed with Humphrey Bogart, I’d have no idea what terms of endearment he’d be calling me, because I can’t understand what he says. And it becomes embarrassing very quickly, to continue saying “I’m sorry…what?” because, well, I have two ears, and if one is pressed against your tummy, you probably suspect that my other one is still working. I could perhaps claim that they’re like my eyes, that one ear can recognizes something is there, but two ears perceive the depth of it. But then I’d always have to keep one ear against your tummy so that I could keep up the lie, the lie being that I can’t understand what you say to me when it’s most precious to me that I understand. I hope someday I understand, that someday your voice becomes one with mine, though right now all that’s been burned into my memory is the exact words on your voicemail, on the edge of exasperation, a picture of polite curtness, “you know what to do” it says, when the truth is, I don’t know what to do, not anymore. Everyone was scolding me for not leaving messages when I called, so I began leaving messages, “hi it’s me. bye.” and everyone was twice as annoyed. “You know what to do.” No, I don’t. And I won’t, there’s no chance that I ever will again, unless you tell me to leave my name, my number, a brief message, and the time that I called, or unless you answer. And the truth is, I’m very self-conscious on answering machines, when I hear people leaving messages I sometimes write down precisely the formula they use, I try to understand it, I find these pieces of paper in pockets, boxes, shoes, and still.

“So,” I am asked, “did you find anything interesting at work today?”
“Yes.”
“What did you find?”
“An old lady, born in the 20’s, who signed her name with a heart as the dot over her letter i.”
“Yes? And what else?”
“A man who misspelled the abbreviation for October.”
“How did he spell it?”
“O-T-C.”
“Is that all?”
“Yes, that’s all.”

I’ve been dried up, dried and shriveled like a dried salami. “Do you know what a dried salami is?” I am asked.
“I can guess, Grandpa.”
“Let me tell you. You’d go to the butcher, and they sell salamis, and some of them they take them and–”
“Dry them. Yes.”
“They hang them up, and a few months later, they’re dried, all shriveled up. If you eat one, it has a different consistency than a regular salami.”
“Yes, I think we passed one around at a party once, Scott’s grandmother gave something to him, I think a dried salami.”
“They’re more expensive than a regular salami.”
“I can imagine.”
“Because it takes more work to make them.”
“Yep.”
“So if you go looking for a dried salami, expect to pay more for one.”
“Right.”
“And when you speak to the butcher, make sure you specify precisely, a dried salami, not a regular salami, or he’ll give you a regular salami, and you’ll be able to tell instantly, because it’ll be too big to be a dried salami, and it won’t be wrinkled, and a dried salami is darker than a regular salami.”
“Like when you hit puberty your penis is supposed to get darker?”
“What?”
“I’ll make sure to specify. To the butcher.”

“And only now she became aware of the small, bud-like reticence and tenderness of the penis, and a little cry of wonder and poignancy escaped her again, her woman’s heart crying out over the tender frailty of that which had been the power.”
Ch. XII

And it’s this that finally melts her after confessing that she could never love him, finding him clownish in his dirty brown corduroys, a buffoon to turn his back to her as he zipped up his pants, so self-assured in his ignorance, so ugly in his broad common-speak. And she suddenly melts in his arms and comes to love him, first his body, perhaps only his body.

But it’s the language, the language, the language, the language, he knows how to speak a good English, once a bright young man who progressed beyond his place in society, moved upwards through the military, learned to speak in the language of the ruling class, and then, he lapses into his horrid common-speak, that I cannot even fully decode, and he does so at the worst moments, when his clothes are off, when she is wrapped in him.

‘”Goodnight,” she said.
“Goodnight, your Ladyship,” his voice.
She stopped and looked back into the wet dark. She could just see the bulk of him. “Why did you say that?” she said.
“Nay,” he replied. “Goodnight, then, run!”
She plunged on in the dark-grey tangible night.
-Ch. X’

I reread this part of the conversation a few times and decided that she gave pause over his use of the term “your Ladyship”–after making love, shouldn’t she be addressed differently? Perhaps it’s at that moment she feels somehow as if he is the hired man only performing his role of pleasing those who hire him. Later she gives him reason to suspect that she’s using him in an effort to become pregnant, and he gives perhaps his longest speech thus far:

“Well,” he said at last. “It’s as your Ladyship likes. If you get the baby, [your husband’s] welcome to it. I shan’t have lost anything. On the contrary, I’ve had a very nice experience, very nice indeed! . . . If you’ve made use of me, it’s not the first time I’ve been made use of; and I don’t suppose it’s ever been as pleasant as this time; though of course, one can’t feel tremendously dignified about it.” . . .
“But I didn’t make use of you,” she said pleading.
“At your Ladyship’s service,” he replied.

But I think there’s something more to her pause: I don’t think she’s regarding the term “your Ladyship” and what their apparent relationship is based on that so much as the difference between his language of love and his proper speech. He collapses into his broad accent when he is naked, and that’s how and when he is most honest, speaking in punctuation, and when she loves him, she gives no notice, though there’s no indication of whether she understands or not, as she never answers his broad accent directly, only conversing verbally with his proper English, and otherwise answering physically or emotionally.

So, she tells him she cannot love him. And then they make love. And she wants him again. And so, for a third time, they make love, and here begins the conversation that began all these thoughts of mine:

And afterwards she was utterly still, utterly unknowing, she was not aware for how long. And he was still with her, in an unfathomable silence along with her. And of this, they would never speak.

When awareness of the outside began to come back, she clung to his breast, murmuring ‘My love! My love!’ And he held her silently. And she curled on his breast, perfect.

But his silence was fathomless. His hands held her like flowers, so still aid strange. ‘Where are you?’ she whispered to him. ‘Where are you? Speak to me! Say something to me!’

He kissed her softly, murmuring: ‘Ay, my lass!’

But she did not know what he meant, she did not know where he was. In his silence he seemed lost to her.

‘You love me, don’t you?’ she murmured.

‘Ay, tha knows!’ he said.

‘But tell me!’ she pleaded.

‘Ay! Ay! ’asn’t ter felt it?’ he said dimly, but softly and surely. And she clung close to him, closer. He was so much more peaceful in love than she was, and she wanted him to reassure her.

‘You do love me!’ she whispered, assertive. And his hands stroked her softly, as if she were a flower, without the quiver of desire, but with delicate nearness. And still there haunted her a restless necessity to get a grip on love.

‘Say you’ll always love me!’ she pleaded.

‘Ay!’ he said, abstractedly. And she felt her questions driving him away from her.

‘Mustn’t we get up?’ he said at last.

‘No!’ she said.

But she could feel his consciousness straying, listening to the noises outside.

‘It’ll be nearly dark,’ he said. And she heard the pressure of circumstances in his voice. She kissed him, with a woman’s grief at yielding up her hour.

He rose, and turned up the lantern, then began to pull on his clothes, quickly disappearing inside them. Then he stood there, above her, fastening his breeches and looking down at her with dark, wide-eyes, his face a little flushed and his hair ruffled, curiously warm and still and beautiful in the dim light of the lantern, so beautiful, she would never tell him how beautiful. It made her want to cling fast to him, to hold him, for there was a warm, half-sleepy remoteness in his beauty that made her want to cry out and clutch him, to have him. She would never have him. So she lay on the blanket with curved, soft naked haunches, and he had no idea what she was thinking, but to him too she was beautiful, the soft, marvellous thing he could go into, beyond everything.

‘I love thee that I can go into thee,’ he said.

‘Do you like me?’ she said, her heart beating.

‘It heals it all up, that I can go into thee. I love thee that tha opened to me. I love thee that I came into thee like that.’

He bent down and kissed her soft flank, rubbed his cheek against it, then covered it up.

‘And will you never leave me?’ she said.

‘Dunna ask them things,’ he said.

‘But you do believe I love you?’ she said.

‘Tha loved me just now, wider than iver tha thout tha would. But who knows what’ll ’appen, once tha starts thinkin’ about it!’

‘No, don’t say those things! —’

And he’s absolutely correct. How intelligent Connie is, how sharp and thoughtful, how passionate and able to love, and yet able to play games, to “give him the slip” as he puts it, to say what she feels at one moment, that he takes as truth, and change her mind the next, and then shudder at the way he reacts by closing himself up emotionally, that no matter how she feels he treats her the same, with the same touch, the same temper, whether he is being loved or used, and in love he gives her this language, his truthful language, but also in pain, so long as she is touching him, as it were, to the quick.

I heard an interview with Chinese author Yiyun Li, who said that she had only ever written creatively in English, and so when she created Chinese characters, they spoke to her in English only, and that she would have to give them old Chinese proverbs to speak in, to give us some sense of them as real people. We seem to delegate this or that language to demarcate segments of our lives, and there’s this language of love, that perhaps is the same as the language of pain and of joy, though I’ve heard Céline exclaim “oh shit!” and I myself have said “merde!” at such comparable moments.

And I end the call without leaving a message, and wonder if I’ll ever find my head surfacing from the water again.

So, I am there, longing to my very depths for answers, and I cannot understand a word, and I wonder if I too speak complete nonsense, when I grow intoxicated and begin pronouncing every single letter with infinite gravity, and I am too ashamed to request that you speak to me in Philadelphian English, embarrassed too by my own accent, and when I want to plead, all I can do is cling, physically, emotionally, uncertain above all, hopeful, and trying desperately to be secure in silence.

Byron – Occasional Pieces (1809)

What’s wonderful about Byron’s “Stanzas Composed During a Thunder-storm” is that is that he seems finally to have some of the experience necessary to discuss his subjects of choice. Of course, he had love in his past, and indeed the sort of love that would have been novel to publish in English, you know, the cripple being molested by his nanny, that sort. So his early work is generally boring–it’s just too commonplace. And it’s in his later work, as he becomes both cosmopolitan and self-assured that he then deserves to write on the subjects he chooses, and they’re finally believable. This is where it first shows up, though in his “Lines to Mr. Hodgson” he discusses parts of his tour across the Mediterranean, it’s still done with the same lackluster humor that his earlier poems written about going to school or boozing possess. In this one, perhaps he’s guilty of lovely arrogant name-dropping, classical terms, modern cities, but he mixes it with some of the peril we come to expect from this generation of poets, always on the verge of death, kiss me! as well as the repining for lost love that is the hallmark of early Byron. This prepares us for “Childe Harold” as well as “Don Juan”–or at least shows us more of the transition of early Byron into what we know him to become. Also, it’s worth mentioning that he uses the word “panting” — “panting Nature” in his “To Florence” — which is always worth mentioning, as I recall it being a word Shelley uses quite liberally, and, honestly, it’s a wonderful word, a wonderful thing to do, to pant, everyone should pant more often.

Byron – Occasional Pieces (1807-8)

Byron’s Hours of Idleness covers 1802-7, so far as I can tell, and is one of the most difficult books to read because it’s just so poor, not that it’s his fault, he was only learning the ropes, but it’s precisely what you’d expect someone in his position to write. Occasional Pieces of 1807 are no better than that, and perhaps worse, including a poem to a tree, a poem to a son (he never had a son), and a poem written “upon finding a fan” and that’s all I have to say about that.

Occasional Pieces of 1808 show what I think is the period when his work becomes beautiful, and begins to be fearless. This was always Gigi’s favorite poem when we studied him together:

When we two parted
In silence and tears,
Half broken-hearted
To sever for years,
Pale grew thy cheek and cold, 5
Colder thy kiss;
Truly that hour foretold
Sorrow to this.
The dew of the morning
Sunk chill on my brow— 10
It felt like the warning
Of what I feel now.
Thy vows are all broken,
And light is thy fame:
I hear thy name spoken, 15
And share in its shame.
They name thee before me,
A knell to mine ear;
A shudder comes o’er me—
Why wert thou so dear? 20
They know not I knew thee,
Who knew thee too well:
Long, long shall I rue thee,
Too deeply to tell.
In secret we met— 25
In silence I grieve,
That thy heart could forget,
Thy spirit deceive.
If I should meet thee
After long years, 30
How should I greet thee?
With silence and tears.

It’s not as concise as some of his other poems of the time, but it feels more so because of its pulse, indeed, it’s the pulse that makes easy to absorb whereas his older verse didn’t have quite the same aesthetic mastery over meter:

“Oh, Anne, your offences to me have been grievous:
I thought from my wrath no atonement could save you:
But woman is made to command and deceive us–
I look’d in your face, and I almost forgave you.”
(To Anne. 1807)

Precise, but stilted. One of the first mistakes of writing in form is to believe that the rules are there to contain one’s verse, when I believe the form is there to set one free. this makes me old-fashioned. But, I think the difference between these two poems is clear–there’s a confidence in “When We Two Parted” that I do not find in Anne, if only in the loose interpretation of the pulse: Byron has his way with the pulse, he knows as long as it keeps beating he is free, while even at times it has the same meter as “Anne“, where each line begins and ends feminine, between feet, one giving birth to the next, in “Parted” he abandons precision for the movement of breath. We can feel the punctuation in our breath rather than in some stylized fabrication. How is it to be read?

“When we two parted, in sil-ence and tears…” forces the whole thing to read well, but read like one needs a pint of beer in one hand and the other balled into a fist. But that isn’t the mood the words set at all. I’ve always taken the emphasis as: “When we two parted…” and taken the language and punctuation naturally, as if there were no line breaks at all. And I believe that is how it is meant to be read, because it can be read that way. “To Anne” cannot be read like that, the punctuation breaks every line off forcefully, despite the feminine endings, exhausting because it’s so unnatural. When we two parted in silence and tears, half broken-hearted to sever for years, pale grew thy cheek…and cold; colder thy kiss…truly that hour foretold sorrow to this. No matter how you break it apart, it works, it’s has an undeniable utility as shown by the form, but also a beauty that raises it to what we can finally call art.

Proust: Swann’s Way: ‘Overture’ (1913)

Clearly, I’ve decided to go with a translation (Moncrieff/Kilmartin), what seems to be considered the driest and most accurate translation available, as the new ones seem to carry the prose into something more contemporary. I never found an argument concerning that with which I particularly agree, even when modernizing Shakespeare, I think it should be done only with an emphasis on finding his likeliest original words and removing whatever adulteration printers added and propagated throughout the centuries. Well, so, here I am reading a translation. Fuck me, but I can’t wait any longer, and truth be known, I’m only making my halting way through Le Petit Prince in French and if I don’t get Proust started now, why, by the time I finish it I’ll be old enough to appreciate it.

It was probably Céline’s putting him back in my head as we snuck around the pathways between tombstones and stared at his own, somewhat austere. Nathalie suggested we touch it, we all wiped our noses, and Whitney finally choked out, “well, who is he?” It was Céline who answered, and I think she gave a better answer than Nathalie or I could have given, because she said something that made a lot of sense, and she didn’t stumble, and she made Proust almost sound interesting. “There is a phrase in French, the madeleine of Proust, which you use when something reminds you of a story from long ago, because he wrote a very long novel, very long and famous, and it all begins because he tastes a madeleine, which is a type of cookie.” Well, so there you have it.

I almost fear the taste of madeleines, and of clementines, I cannot recall their flavors now, but I know one taste will send me back to the dark streets of Paris, to the early morning snows, to sitting on the stones before the cathedral in Rouen and seeing all the clementine peels on the ground wherever I went, cigarettes, bottles, thinking about what a good American I was being by cleaning up my own messes.

Initial reaction? Not quite the same immediate joy I feel when reading Lawrence or Nin or Miller, but yet beautiful, and yes, he does go quickly, the first fifty pages are criticized because nothing happens–yet, it’s the sort of nothingness that we come to appreciate, it’s thoughtful nothingness, and it’s a compelling prelude to the work we’re about to embark upon.  It’s not only the obsessive attention to detail I love, but the insistence on resisting vulgarity, quite the opposite of Lawrence, actually, whose vulgarity is yet somehow an aesthetically cogent illustration of how beauty integrates itself within the animal, or perhaps vice versa, how it is that our instincts can be delicious. So far, Proust takes a higher road, one built of suggestions rather than directness, telling us things we already know, not how it could be, but how it is, not in the secret world between two people, not in the secret world of one’s heart, but in the secret world of the mind, of language, of the expressible, of art, of memory, all the things that Connie Chatterley is so far grown opposed to as she comes to need her lover.

Chicago

Visiting cities used to exhaust me utterly, until last spring when, as recorded here, I think, I gave New York a try with a goal of being drunk the entire time, and it worked out, and since then I’ve had no problem with cities at all. Little towns, like the one Manny lived in in Connecticut, they’re easy to digest, there’s a single coffee shop, and an ATM, and really not much else that I can remember. That town is mine, I might never go there again, but I’ll be there always, nothing will change in it without my knowledge, because nothing will change.

Chicago means these things to me: one of my favorite bands is Chicago. The Smashing Pumpkins came from there and I don’t really like the Smashing Pumpkins except for that one album. Upton Sinclair. Hemmingway and his story about the option to cross the lake to Canada as a means to avoid the draft. Isabel Archer. Characters in Gatsby. Capone. Michael Jordan.

Going to a new city is like watching minor surgical procedures under local anesthesia, it happens, it happens to you, and you don’t feel a thing. I overcame this in France by walking. I suppose spending the past month or so that I’ve been back mostly sleeping has atrophied my legs and feet and I just didn’t notice until I set out on Friday morning to see what this city was really about. I will say that United Express is a wonderful airline, I was thrilled with them. And then the El to reach Chicago from O’Hare was a depressing experience, very bumpy and slow, I was quite sure I’d have to get off and have a rest, but I made it okay.

I walked around trying to find someplace to eat, and happened upon the Juicy Wine Co. whose website makes it seem as if they actually serve food, but as far as I could tell all they had was wines and dried meats. Of course, I went because I thought it must be some exciting new creation, “Juicy Wine”–so I went in, and I think I was the only person who didn’t work there, and they all looked at me and I said, “so…what is it?”
[they give an answer]
“So…it’s not anything…novel?”
“Well, we’ve been here for two years, I’m surprised you haven’t heard of us.”
“I just got here today.”
“Oh. Well, you should go upstairs, people like the upstairs.”
And with everyone looking at me, waiting for me to order, I just, what a douche, ordered some tea, a black tea I’d never heard of before, with hints of chocolate, and the truth is I wanted so much they offered but I couldn’t afford any of it.

I’ve got to remember to get a DNA sample from my dog, I feel like she’s suddenly gained some perspective on time and mortality, the expression on her face is always horrifying now, as you can tell she can’t decide if she’s done enough with her life, if she was happy, if those two times she made love to another dog could have been better, probably, because she never loved him, wondering where the rest of her children have gone, has she run enough? does she regret the time she jumped through the car window? is she embarrassed about her son? as the cancer spreads through her body is she truly content with the course of her life? her near brush with fame as she took on the Westminster Kennel Club show, flown all over the country for special training as a champion, my sweet little dog, she doesn’t even smell so bad. Yes, my darling, I will clone you, I will clone you as soon as I have the money, and I’ll make a new clone of you every year so that each time one of you kicks the bucket I won’t even really notice, it’ll be wonderful, you’ll all have the same name and when I shout it all twenty of you will come running to say hello to me, you were my first best friend, and all eighty of you will be my last, don’t eat each other when i die.

So the following day I walked only ten miles–it felt like more–but that’s probably because I was wearing Italian leather dress boots. Some seven miles into the journey a man said “shoe shine” as I walked by, and I thought to myself, “asshole,” before walking another ten steps and the sudden recognition that maybe he wasn’t criticizing me, but was rather offering me something. I spun around and asked how much. He smiled and opened the door as he said $5, more expensive than at the airport, but…hell, he was in better shape than the old men who work at the airport.
“Are you married?” he asked.
“Have you been to Mexico?” he asked.
“Are you here for business?” he asked.
“Where did you get these shoes?” he asked. Ah, now, finally, a subject I enjoy.
“Paris.”
“Ah, yes, you’d find shoes like these in France, in Spain, in Italy. And they cost you a lot?”
“No, not so much.”
“$200?”
“60-some euros.”
“What?”
“Yes.”
“They’d cost over 200 if you bought them here. I know this because I’m also a shoemaker.”
“Do you see this style of shoe often?”
“Oh no, that’s why I asked where you got them. You don’t see these here.”
And he shined them up shinier than when I bought them, so shiny that they look like Marine dress boots, so shiny that I can see my reflection in them. And then I continued on to the Art Institute to see their two paintings by Watteau, but they were closing, so I continued on to where I was heading…

i chose Clark Street because it looked most interesting, as if I might see the most on it, and it took me past Wrigley Field, whose name in my youth I was proud to know, and if I could have seen a game there, I would have, I’ve never been near a major-league stadium before. And, most importantly, the site of the Valentine’s Day massacre. The old buildings are torn down now, and it is only a parking lot, but…as I stood there and looked through the gates, it still doesn’t look like the surrounding area, there’s something darker about it, more run-down and horrific, my favorite place in the whole of the city I saw, buildings close together in ways physically impossible, a shroud of ignorance to the warmth and sunshine of the day, it was somehow delightful, somehow precisely what I wanted to see. As I continued walking I thought of how I swear I saw the garden of eden in a forest I was camping in as a boy, nobody else was around, but the image is so clear in my memory, I wonder if I was lying to myself then, and also now.

I’ve never seen so many cemeteries–like driving out of Brooklyn and just driving and driving for ages through that cemetery the highway traverses, everything about New York suddenly makes sense when you see that cemetery, everything about the world makes sense. In Chicago people die also. I would be on that schoolbus taking me to camp and the girl sitting next to me would say “if you breathe while we pass the cemetery ghosts will enter your body.” I don’t know why that’s such a scary thing to a child, to have a ghost enter your body, because I don’t know that I’d much mind it now, but, in any case, I would hold my breath, and even as I passed the cemeteries, hungry, and all these wonderful restaurants, I figured it might be a bad idea to eat in front of a cemetery. There are signs saying that out of respect for the dead you cannot allow your dog in the cemetery, there’s a sign saying out of respect for the dead you cannot allow your dog in the Vietnam War memorial. I went to a coffee shop and called Joe to see if he was in town, but he wasn’t, but we were talking when I guy sat down next to me and began talking rapidly about Chris Brown being sent to jail for committing only three felonies, what the fuck, if every time someone committed three felonies he was sent to jail, hell, everyone would be in jail, well, I don’t fucking care, what’s this word mean? Gouge? What’s that mean? Does that mean to hit? And I sit there with Joe yapping to me in one ear about what he’s going to do with the arts community of Cleveland, as their guru, and in the other eat this guy yapping about beating the shit out of his grandma and how, well, who fucking cares about Chris Brown because he’s my rival and if he’s in jail I can finally just take his place, good riddance, I’m a singer, hey, look, look man, this guy here, he’s an actor, he’s got a show, I’m an actor too, I’m a singer and a rapper and an actor and I had an audition for a TV show yesterday and the secretary in the lobby said I probably did well so I’m expecting them to give me a call anytime now, I’m feeling pretty good about all that. Joe’s conversation finished, and this guy keeps talking, telling me his life story, crack-addict mother, father in prison, what it’s like to be young, gifted, and black in America, hell, he’s been everywhere, he almost got strangled to death by Luther Vandross’s men because when they introduced him to the Temptations he was all like “so what? what are you gonna do for me?” And then he mentioned he was gay. And it all became clear. This guy wasn’t looking at me like a person, actually, he wasn’t looking at me like an ear, he was touching my arm because he was looking at me like a piece of meat. I don’t mind being hit on, okay, I’ve always minded being hit on in the past, and this time too, I hate being hit on, but that’s because the right person has never hit on me. There you have it. So now, I have this grand-matricidal guy who wants to stick his penis in me, and he’s cried twice, and he’s been talking to me for over an hour, I mean, Jesus, how many fucking lame stories can he possibly have if he’s only been alive for 22 years? And suddenly, thank the good lord, I get a business call about some freelance work I’ve been doing, actually, more like an advertisement calling to make sure I understand how to use their product and let me know about specials. I take the call and the guy runs out to smoke a cigarette with his friend, a big Native American who’s been trying to come in and keeps getting shooed out by my new friend. There’s no way to escape–he’s got me cornered in here, no back door, and he’s standing in front of the only exit. I get my scarf on and pack my bag. His scary friend comes in and demands “____wants your information.”
“My information. Right. Do you have a pen?” And I write down a fake name and number. When I leave my new friend takes my hand and won’t let it go, he hands me a piece of paper with endless ways to contact him, tells me to call anytime. “Well, I’ll be in town for two weeks, so you call me too” I tell him. He says, I should probably let you go, but he still doesn’t drop my hand, and he asks if he can come see me perform tonight. “I wish you could, but we’re sold out tonight.”
“Can’t I just…you know, drop by?”
“There’s fire regulations, and the doorman won’t let you in, there’s already too many people, you know, fire regulations, we’ll get in trouble.”
“When can I see you?”
“Sunday, 3pm.”
“Okay.”
I’d be a thousand miles away by then. He dropped my hand and I scampered off and turned the first corner and then hurried down alley after alley, searching closely for any signs of black people…terrified of blacks because…one wants to make love to me. I tell my brother this and he begins listing rules for when you’re allowed to shoot somebody legally, and how it’s against the law to fire warning shots. You say “leave me alone I have a gun.” you pull it out. and if he still doesn’t turn his back, you kill him. “i’ve been trained to put two shots to the chest and one to the head before he even hits the ground…that’s also illegal outside the military. when you fire, you do so for one reason: to thwart an attack. once the danger has passed, any injury you inflict is entirely illegal.” a few blocks down i got back onto Clark and continued my wonderful journey through the heart of Chicago!

As I crossed over to the ‘miraculous mile’ or whatever they call it, I grew cold, my feet hurt, and I realized I could separate myself from the pain, I could stand up straight, walk normally, and despite the pain, actually my socks were bloody in multiple places when I changed them later on, I could be apart from it because it didn’t frighten me, but this feeling of dread came over me, a vast feeling of aloneness, that hasn’t quite subsided yet, I feel as if I’m standing over the abyss that is time and waiting for it to close, or shake, or smoke, or something, anything, and rather, I’m just getting older as I wait. I walked the rest of the way. I spent most of the weekend panicky because a stomach flu was going around and I’ve been trying to figure out if it’s a message from god, and if so, what’s the message? And everyone probably thinks I’ve lost my marbles, which I have, but…well, I was on edge, Chicago, on edge.

Here, I’ll end on a positive note. Everyone was really friendly. That’s how the midwest is, friendly, which I find creepy, I’m so used to coldness. Actually, the only person who was unfriendly was still only unfriendly in a friendly-sarcastic way. It went like this, at 1am as I checked out from CVS and, since they didn’t give me a bag, I was in the process of taking one for myself, and the checkout guy said.
“Oh, you wanted a bag.”
“Yes, please.”
“I thought maybe you wanted to save the environment.”
“At first I did, but then I remembered I have quite a long way home.”
“You have a long way home. Right. That makes sense. A long way home. So you want a bag. Yeah, okay.”

Ass.

Otherwise, everyone was friendly. In fact, the guy sitting across the aisle from me on the plane home wouldn’t shut the hell up. He’d wait for me to blink my eyes open or reach for a gummy bear or something and begin asking me inane questions to which I’d provide vapid answers and try to shut my eyes again. And then while we were out for dinner last night the guy sitting next to us begged us to let him tell his story, because he’d just now been released from jail and was getting some dinner and his girlfriend wouldn’t even come home from the arcade to see him, and he had to tell his whole boring story. And even after his story was finished and we’d all agreed it was a wonderful story he should call the newspapers with, and then turned back around, he insisted on telling us more. What I mean is that everyone is friendly, in the whole world, the whole goddamn world is friendly, and there’s a great big cloud over my head, and I check my face for wrinkles, I love showering.

Chicago is a nice city, and I wouldn’t mind living there. But there’s something about the coast that makes me feel more comfortable, as if when the apocalypse comes I’ll be able to escape the wrath of god quicker if only because the ocean’s an hour away and i could always swim to france if satan gave me magic powers!

theatre: sideshow theatre company: everything freezes

i don’t think i really had any idea what theatre is until i saw this show, which makes me more deeply thrilled to have been one of the people to help make it happen.

i hate to reference it again, but the show Pippin had one of the most profound effects on my life, firstly because of the chord changes on the last song, secondly because of the violins on the last song, thirdly because of the way it showed me that, yes, i’m going to die unhappy, and likely a coward also. anyway, i was fascinated by it and began speaking with cast members of the show i’d seen, asking them questions, and learned that they, all being teenagers, had been told it had a happy ending, when i think it has one of the most tragic endings of anything i’ve witnessed. they had been told that the main character just hadn’t recognized that his life was complete and that he was happy, and that when he recognizes it he gives up plans of suicide. what really happens is that he gets too scared to kill himself and goes back to a life of discontent because it’s the best his rationality can come up with. rationality is a terrifying thing, isn’t it? fortunately, i’m accused regularly of under-utilizing my own, so i must be on the right track. the point i’m getting at is that all those actors in Pippin were wrong, for whatever reason, they were wrong, wrong, wrong. now, i know that the author is supposed to know more about the characters than he lets on….but the actors?

the use of repetition, like lawrence or the hebrew poetry

other things i noticed on the second time

Peisistratus of Athens (rules 546-27 BCE)

(from list of weekly goals)

3. Film. I’ve spent all my time for watching films instead reading Greek history. My parents are fed up with the book, because I leave it in the kitchen, and my father began reading it and said it was intensely boring, he said he read one page three times and still didn’t know what it was about, and asked if I did, and dared me to tell him, and it was about the construction of Odysseus’s house, everything from the dung pile to the unusually large central room with a space circling the ceiling for the smoke to leave. They’ve been removing it from the kitchen. But I’m making decent progress, and I’ve found a character that I find fascinating, and he also happens to be one of our Occidental villains, because he’s the tyrant who overthrew Solon’s democratic reforms. Now, I’ve read Plutarch’s chapter on Lycurgus, which may be the source of utopic fantasies of Sparta–but the truth is, even reading Durant’s negative depiction of Sparta, I’m still impressed, because as cruel and isolated as the place was, it sounds like a society filled with contented people, but then, I’ve never thought individuality was very wonderful to begin with, it’d be nice to just be normal and happy, and I can’t recall what Huxley’s people in ‘Island’ were like. But a society based on strength and beauty, that sounds to me ideal. Whatever. I can’t escape the creature I was born as. Anyway, the point is, democratic Athens birthed all that culture, but it’s celebrated over Sparta in the same way that we celebrate the English over the Spanish, in the same way that we celebrate the Greeks over the Trojans, all three examples that make me quite uncomfortable. So, Solon is celebrated over Peisistratus, the bringer of democracy over the tyrant. Tyrant? Or, rather, the executor of Solon’s reforms? The democracy could not persist beyond Solon because he embodied it in the same way that George Washington himself represented the United States, and beyond his death the country may have disbanded except for the creation of Washington DC as an idol of sorts, complete with its radiating spokes, its avenues, reminiscent of Louis XIV or the legend of Samson. And, the fact is that the tyranny of Peisistratus in some ways concluded as a republic because the people loved him, and I think there’s further evidence of this by virtue of their ousting his son from power after not agreeing with his method of rule, that is, they were uncomfortable with a monarchy once it became apparent that’s what it was. And as Peisistratus left the state essentially in order with Solon’s laws, including the divisions of power. Through him, arts flourished, such as the setting down of ‘Homer’s’ works as we now know them, and the basis for theatre as an art form. The state flourished, the lower classes grew wealthier and the upper classes retained their wealth–it was ideal, and it’s no wonder that Plato preaches against democracy. While Peisistratus gained his power by fairly indecent means, faking an attempt on his life in order to secure himself a bodyguard of 50, that he builds to 400, and then overthrows the government, his wisdom and what seems to be a dedication to securing the happiness of his people, proves that perhaps the route to democracy is impossible in only an instant, that it takes a generation acclimated to the ideas, and then a generation forcefully held to them by a system of both rewards and punishments, through dictatorship, before it can take root in a culture. And perhaps that goes for anything, as we see in Russia, where communism was fact for probably thousands of years before the revolution took place, and so a few years of democracy are difficult to swallow. But I know nothing of Russia. Well, okay, I know nothing of anything, actually.