Train from NYC 1:40 PM 27 Dec 79 –
Alarms & Diversions – T & I have just had 2 very intense fights. Guess I didn’t realize the anger than was building up in me. His mother is just so RUDE – I cried in front of her last night for a solid hour feeling sheer helplessness! She is so awful! After she left we managed to come together much chastened. Yesterday we went to NYC to see costumes at the Met – got in a traffic jam outside Tiffany’s and could see we weren’t going to make it – got out of the cab and T bought me a ring! Eternity band of diamonds – very sweet. They say if a diamond ever falls out they replace it! Celebrated at Sherry Netherland with manhattans and duck pate in lingonberry sauce. Wrote four poems but too exhausted to know if they’re good. 12:30 AM – Wed 9 Jan 80 Battling with Byatt’s Virgin in the Garden. I may be unable to persist. Makes me long for Agatha Christie. She has a Proustian compass but overwrites dreadfully. T due in ½ hr – at library studying as usual. We had a lovely dinner before he left – spinach soufflé, salad and wine. Took dogs for very pleasant walk. T says he loves me so much more every day he can scarcely comprehend it. He was so upset when I said I might not take his name – it was only because he’d been flippant about a previous girlfriend. We are both so sore. Trying to stay open and honest as the emotions blast through. 1 am Thurs 10 Jan 80 Got a crazy card from Devon saying “I love you madly”! Guess we all want what we can’t have. Also good letter from Maureen. Blackberry accepts My grandmother’s ghost! T. teases that the $9 I made is “putting him through law school” (it cost $10 so far.) My Grandmother’s Ghost My grandmother never cried Emmie you’re a stoic Everyone admired her. That’s why She haunts us; pressing her face accusingly Against the glass beneath the stairs. On windy nights she Threatens God, maligns His angels; for the little boy who died Of scarlet fever; without once Calling her name; and the collie dog run over And the storm that forever uprooted Her wedding tulips. Mother shakes her head, says, “Poor Gran Will never be done; she’s got Too much grief to catch up on.” I wish our families would JUST GO AWAY and leave us ALONE. Phone call from Avril – our house for sale - her life very undecided. Toss lecturing very unsympathetically about what she “should” do – I bit his head off. I don’t dismiss his mother’s problems with smug pronouncements! He apologized, asked if he should fly A out here – generous but we really can’t afford it. We’ll get through this. Making applesauce from dying apples. T’s friend had a paper that needed typing - managed to get it done in time. Itchy vagina/anus from reckless wild sex acting up. Made a delicious dinner – porkchops with home made applesauce, green salad & sweet potatoes. Lie flat with yogurt in my V reading Queen Victoria & Her daughters. Not bad. Granma called about family party in March – now T has been on phone with his Mom the past 2 hours. Heard T yelling and cursing at his mother – then he comes up to tell me we have to “head off” Granma’s engagement party because his Mom doesn’t want to go to any party Granma throws. And she expects T to show “solidarity” with her by being unpleasant, stupid and cruel like she is. I try to explain to him that if she doesn’t want to go she doesn’t have to! She can throw her own party! There’s something wrong with Rebecca West – something distasteful. I just can’t put my finger on it. 5:30 PM Fri 11 Jan 80 Difficult, inconclusive day. Thank God for my mysticism – so necessary for an artist. I can just disappear into myself. Writing away to NJ Catholic colleges looking for a study of the mystics I can take this summer. My parents declare themselves appalled. “Mysticism doesn’t exist”. 8 pages on novel. It is scaring me to death. Why can’t I relax? Be playful? Is it because of my mother’s anger over the father’s death? She really cant forgive me for it! I’m so panic stricken over the ending I’ve decided NOT to make a plan. Toss got weird postcard from ex girlfriend. Couldn’t even tell whether she’d received his card or what it meant. Standing outside my own jealousy, I could see. The game is to pretend not caring. Trying to accept his love as a precursor to our love. He was filled with compassion for me over Devon’s weirdness. We discussed our children and their allowances as we walked the dogs! Very sweet letter from Beales saying he remembered me more fondly than he remembered himself! Cheered up by a book called Womanpriest. Sat 12 Jan 80 – 3:30 PM Worked on poetry,(horrible metric problems) read the 12 pages I got on Summer Before Spring– no good. Deep depression. I need to expunge all “flowery” writing-class writing. Beginning to feel this bombed out cavity of a house is cursed and no project can be completed here. And he badmouths my lovely, finished 5 bedroom 3 bath gas piped house in Safe Suburbia! Bad scene with T when I told him I’d already spent the money he gave me. He doesn’t think $35 necessary for groceries! But OK if long distance phone bills with his family are astronomical. He would do everything differently – why can’t I learn? I am afraid the real problem is males have their temper tantrums encouraged while little girls’ are relentlessly quashed. Accused T of caring more whether I’ve cleaned & cooked than written. I was surprised when I said I don’t respect his intellect! I said I’m just upset about my writing. He said why not find mentor. Hmm. Here? Webb critical of Harriet Martineau’s gossip – seems to see it as exclusively female (shades of V Woolf.) Pope, Rogers and Jonson said the most awful things about EVERYBODY. Plowing into Tudor Women. Poor Dixie having trouble walking – needs x-rays! 11:50 PM – Wed 16 Jan 80 Just finished B Russell’s autobiog – bizarre document! His description of dinner with the Stanleys (each member of the family adhering to a different religion) sizes up Victorianism perfectly. Got a letter from Brooklyn College saying they would consider me for teaching fellowship in creative writing program is they could see a sample of my writing. Better that than my academic record!
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Alysse Aallyn
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