Avril’s birthday – Bastille Day – Sunday - Oland
10 AM – sitting in the remains of camp. Tents folding up, People wandering through. Sitting in the sand wearing corduroy levis over my terrycloth jumpsuit. “In the chilly hours and minutes Of uncertainty – I want to be In the warmth of your loving mind… Aaah but I may as well try and catch the wind.” So true. (Donovan) One week and two days!!! What is going to happen to us? I wonder about that, with Toss in Oregon and me God knows where how will we stand it? I would stay home and write if I could write there. I guess I haven’t yet found the place where I can write. I know Balzac – or Thackeray – would say it isn’t a matter of places. Write, woman! I’ll have to think of a way to rake in money so I can go to see him. “When the rain has hung the leaves with tears I want you hear to kill my fears…” So much to say. But if I sit down for a moment I immediately fall asleep. This is a real problem is you are trying to have a meal or keep a diary. How to begin? Rex and I walked and walked around Kalmar but the town was dead as a doornail. Nothing happening on a rainy Sunday. We ended up at a swanky restaurant where Kersi (the Indian from Geneva) was having a coke. He began playing their piano. He was magnificent! Seeing those pudgy fingers flying over the keys was a revelation! Chopin…Debussy’s Mosque – all from memory. In triumph he bought a bottle of wine, drank the whole thing himself and threw up in the lorry on the way home. Eeeeew. And let that be a lesson to you, children. Not to aspire? Learn music? Drink wine? Have digestive systems? Life is so complicated. Once back I washed my hair to get the puke smell out and dried it in front of the fire. I was staring into the fire and Rex said, “There’s no one quite like him, is there?” I said, “No.” Rex asked if he could kiss me good night. I could feel the down along his upper lip. Fri 19 July 1968 My whole system is in open revolt. Such a bad cold I can’t breathe, my stomach can’t handle any more of this awful food and my intestines are making their outrage known. Hideously ugly today – truly hag-like. My hair is black at the roots, white at the tips and full of oil paint. Every article of clothing I own is so smeared in paint and red jam that it ought to be burned. I watch as all my mother’s worst qualities bubble to the surface within me. Why can’t I be like my sister and choose boys based on their tastes, families and circles of friends? Yet I absolutely cannot give in to status concerns or you live too much in other people’s (highly unreliable) heads. On the other hand Toss belongs to a high-status family, very self-consciously so, so who’s fooling whom? Rex is the nobody from nowhere. Vicious circles of Extreme Sensitivity. These wars play out on the battlefield of my skin; my face looks like the Last Siege of Ypres. I am so afraid I will run up to Toss at the airport and he will blanche and stagger backwards. Who wouldn’t? I’m also a sexually starved mess. I am eyeing everyone as a Possibility. I desire to close amoeba-like over some poor wretch. I told Rex not to kiss me so now he doesn’t try. I realize I am punishing at least three people with my desires and then I hate poor Toss with all the fever of my own self-hatred. Whereas Rex is such a darling, freaky child – he’s so much like ME. To suppress hatred or to recognize it? Conundrum. Maybe hatred is the true murderer of freedom. Everyone will be glad to leave this camp. International relations have become Strained to say the least. After the French girls left morale dropped severely. No wonder the world is in such a mess! And now I can’t sleep. I lie here swallowing gross stuff and listening to my ears crackle. Staring to think Toss is the only person who can ever love me.
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Alysse Aallyn
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