Tues. 19 Dec 67 – Pewter Hill
Advanced state of 20th cent rot clearly observable on Johnny Carson show. I give up and come upstairs. Told Dad I’m thinking I want to be an actress but worry I’m not pretty enough. He says, “Judith Anderson is an actress!” Have you SEEN Judith Anderson? I have – (MacBeth.) Suicide is preferable. Thanks a lot, Dad! THINGS ACCOMPLISHED IN THE LAST 3 DAYS: 1) Read Helen Bevington’s When Found Make a Verse of 2) Taught Avril 3 French Christmas carols 3) Took Phinney on 20 walks, brushed him, cleaned up 900 messes 4) Washed every dish I could not talk my way out of 5) Slept & ate continuously Something’s got to give! Fri 29 Dec 67 just after midnight – Pinkham Notch NH Past, present & future all mingle. Driving home from a party with Devon Duvall – he keeps kissing my hands. Can’t kiss mouths because we are laughing too hard. “Goddam it” I say and he says, “What kind of pillow talk is that?” The kind you have with someone who already has a girlfriend. (or 6.) Luckily skiing is good for sexual frustration. Mon. 1 Jan 68 My sex life has nowhere to go but up. My dreams have been INCREDIBLE!! Writhe & pant all night. Reading Achilles His Armor in between doses of The Decline & Fall of Practically Everybody. Wonder if my life will ever be a joke someday to somebody. Left the New Year’s Eve party (Brice kept asking if I was a virgin); faced the fact there would be neither sex or champagne to be had; donned my golden caftan and cleaned my room. Ever been climbing stairs and you suddenly noticed what your body was doing and you couldn’t do it anymore? That’s what happened to me at the mountaintop, feeling cold and tired and hungry and I thought, what if I suddenly forget how to ski? Devon says beginners have to be taught not to sit on their heels – now the new racing theory is to sit on your heels, so NOBODY knows how to ski. And I don’t like things that work only when you DON’T think about them. Wed 3 Jan 68 1:10 AM Nietzsche was surely right when he said of all the treasures life unearths, self-knowledge is the last. I am nowhere near it. Find other people a whole lot easier to understand. Mother speaks of auditions and my liver freezes but I was the one who suggested it! Do I want to be endlessly “inspected”? Seems so repulsive. Plus I hate hassle and Plumly is working my last nerve. Do I want to bothered while laboriously constructing my house of cards? Imposserous. Maybe I should join the Peace Corps or lock myself in a room and Write a Novel. Somerset Maugham says only a writer is truly free and this book shows me how it can be done. As soon as I touch it I’m flushed back into the maelstrom and lost again. Philosophically I am closest to Hindu. (Dr. Gilmour says I’m a mystic.) That right there separates me hopelessly from Devon who was raised a Hysterical Christian so now has a bad case of Borderline Religious Disorder. He says I’m a Pantheist which is NOT technically true since I believe in the supernatural. Metaphysics are the ONLY physics I have time for. According to everybody I project confidence, which shows how blind everybody is. Avril told me she sees me rich & famous and herself a housewife married to a 9-5er. (She’s only 13.) She insists she has no talent, which I told her is UTTER BUNK. It’s the other way around: anything seen that young is a flashing pan for sure. Thurber obviously can’t draw and Basil Rathbone obviously can’t act but look at them! The challenge always is to deepen the imagination. Plumly Home for Incurables Mon 8 Jan 68 School station wagon met me at Paoli and I was back in jail in time for Vespers. We all bow our heads and I pray to Sredni Vashtar The Magnificent . She answers my prayer; I get an excellent letter from Devon saying how much he misses me! This boy shows promise! And another from penpal Dave saying he can’t find anyone as beautiful as me. Heheheh. He sounds so lovelorn you’d never guess he hasn’t seen me for four years! What a nut! I’m just friendly, I’m not actually encouraging him. Let’s hope he’s not some kind of a serial killer. Help! In my jail cell complete with high chipped blue walls, iron bedstead and junk bureau I write a story called A Very Private Invasion. Spent a lot of time on it but now I can’t show it to anyone or use it for anything. It’s a fantasy about Devon and me after he gets killed by an avalanche (Heheheh.) It’s always a mistake to cross us writers. Reading Unicorn can’t figure out why they rave about Iris Murdoch so. Hackneyed plot. Horribly afraid “they” would tell me “That’s the point! Isn’t it a gas!” It’s a gothic so I suppose I should be pleased. Still, literary criticism feels like a moving target. Sat next to Master Gwill in meeting but didn’t have anything to say to him after. He’s so weird. What is he? Man? Woman? Floating hair? God only knows. Miss Cluny telling the whole junior class how REVOLTED she is by the IDEA of sex! And she’s like twenty-five! Should we be under the instruction of these mentally disabled people? Casey playing Francoise Hardy. The minute she went to the Tower to take a shower I put on good old honest Stones.
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Wed 6 Dec 67
Back at Plumly. Bad birthday – me, Mom & Avril all endlessly menstruating. Auntie Beulah creaking like a shutter in a gusty wind, probably jealous that she can’t menstruate too. I admired Mom’s bracelet and she took it off and handed it to me in an annoyed way! I don’t want it like that! Now I’m so high strung and bitchy these days it’s a wonder anyone can stand me. I bite my nails, claw my face, pick my hair and my hands shake. I trip over furniture. How will I make it till June? Prognosis: grim. I was SO looking forward to that Pewter Hill dinner, then missed two buses trying to get back to school. Mom kind but irritated underneath; I shot myself to pieces with mental recriminations. Received two bad shocks; first; Brice Harbreath will be along on our Christmas ski vacation. Ugh. His lewdness & diseased morality seep a constant vicious poison and since he talks a good line about “freedom vs license” M & D don’t realize it. It’s one of those things where you can’t expose him without making yourself look bad. I know he will cling to me like a limpet. Ugh! That laugh! I shiver at the thought. And he dumps ME for being “sexually inadequate” because I wouldn’t take it for granted that all dates should end with a hand job! Ugh, ugh, ugh. “Frigid,” my foot! Second shock; Mom offered me skis for my birthday and I said I didn’t need them. But when I reconsidered and said I thought new skis would be nice she snapped at me that I don’t need them! I thought it was my choice but guess not! “We’ll rent,” says Mm, “Or you can borrow from Devon.” Devon the ski coach! That would be great. Put me on the wrong track with him from the start; I was counting on him to protect me from Brice. Hell. The real joke is I’m the only member of this family who can actually ski! (Owing solely to Devon.) Thurs. 7 Dec 67 Six girls received the same KOB last night – only difference is name printed in block letters on the outside. Inside in crayon: DOESN’T IT SEEM RATHER FOOLISH TO LET YOUR PRIDE BRING YOU DOWN?” One glance and I knew it was Shawn Kobler. Proved it to Casey from his writing sample in my notebook. Everyone else thinks it refers to the Christmas dance; the demand that the guys dress up, buy flowers and act decent. I think the others are camouflage and I am the real target. He has a point, but I’m not admitting it, because sometimes pride is all there is. Was dozing through meeting when Shawn spoke up at the end about how emotion embarrasses everyone. People worry about “self-revelation.” That was brave! But I’m not going to the dance without a date and just “meeting” him there. I would rather go with a guy I DON’T LIKE. So there. Reading The Man Who Was Thursday, which should definitely be called The Man Who Was Sunday. Wed. 13 Dec 1967 Ate like a wolf at dinner – like a COVEN of wolves. What is to be done? Flirt with Blair Manteo till I saw Shawn staring at me. Decided to send him an “anonymous KOB” saying “Doesn’t it seem rather foolish to send anonymous KOBs?” Serves him right. But he already confessed to Aynsley so it would be beating a dead boyfriend. D & M in Vietnam and I’ve heard nothing for 2 weeks. I SUPPOSE they’re all right. Just read the most appalling Newsweek – all they get out of Dr Zhivago, Bonnie & Clyde and Darling is the cut of the clothes. Casey studying by the window. We were caught for Late Lights so have to study downstairs in the Monkey Cage. Discomfort (no tea) but plenty of company. This is a very Disrespectful Senior Class. Either that or it is unrealistic to expect ANYBODY to finish ANYTHING by 10 PM. Off to Girls’ Locker (to pee) I trip over Bob Burke & Susie Thomas all over the floor (and all over each other.) There may be snow on the ground but it’s spring in our hearts! On my way back I trip over Renda Swayne & Bill Johnson Doing the Likewise. It’s enough to drive one into the Girls’ Parlor to watch TV with the Uglies and the Morally Fucked Up Council Robots. I know what I want for Christmas. Print of Breughel’s Hunters in the Snow. As soon as the bell rings Casey and I are making soup. Thursday, 30 Nov. 1967
I am doing a bunch of special projects – Harold Pinter, American Foreign Policy and Konrad Lorenz. Probably ought to be a way to blend these so I can write the same paper for each. How about a play about the Vietnam War performed by ducks? Toiling on my poetry. Sneaking into the Tower at night to write poetry in black magic marker on the inside of the bathroom stalls. Something “cultural” to look at. (Mostly Millay and Frost but some John Lennon. Plus my Plumly poem sans attribution.) Krissy says everyone knows it’s me because my handwriting is so distinctive. Verb-Corseted The French teacher sweeps The cherry blossoms from the tennis court (As she would like to sweep the cherries) French them soundly beneath Spiked shoes; printing red marks Like kisses On their half-grown thighs While headmistress Cello-breasted Measures with her thumb The Bath Wife’s heft; Polishes graffiti carved upon her Coffin in Chaucerian High English And the girls, Nun - white Nun - blue Soar above the soccer fields Foul-mouthed angels High on fetal wings; Anticipated ecstasy locked in narrow hope chests Ripened on amphetamines Free love Bad dreams. 1 Dec 67 Warm letter from Dave Reinhart, boy who saw me at the Stratford play and asked for an introduction because I was so beautiful! He made a good start! Reading Territorial Imperative and On Aggression. Interesting. So glad to find a valid argument against the conditioned reflex. Worry that I’m prostituting my mind in this place; Plumly Academy for Losers. My teachers may be well-meaning but they are trying to drag me down the wrong road. Their “good intentions” are dangerous for me. Reading Knut Hamsun’s Growth of the Soil for my “non American novel”. Good to be a senior: these days I do nothing but read which is all I ever did anyway. Nothing human is alien to me, says Terence. Doesn’t need to be human from my point of view. Fri. study hall, I’m in the library studying for test on the Constitution. Can’t wait for THAT to be over. Casey and I off to dinner at Pewter Hill. Thursday, 30 Nov. 1967
I am doing a bunch of special projects – Harold Pinter, American Foreign Policy and Konrad Lorenz. Probably ought to be a way to blend these so I can write the same paper for each. How about a play about the Vietnam War performed by ducks? Toiling on my poetry. Sneaking into the Tower at night to write poetry in black magic marker on the inside of the bathroom stalls. Something “cultural” to look at. (Mostly Millay and Frost but some John Lennon. Plus my Plumly poem sans attribution.) Krissy says everyone knows it’s me because my handwriting is so distinctive. Verb-Corseted The French teacher sweeps The cherry blossoms from the tennis court (As she would like to sweep the cherries) French them soundly beneath Spiked shoes; printing red marks Like kisses On their half-grown thighs While headmistress Cello-breasted Measures with her thumb The Bath Wife’s heft; Polishes graffiti carved upon her Coffin in Chaucerian High English And the girls, Nun - white Nun - blue Soar above the soccer fields Foul-mouthed angels High on fetal wings; Anticipated ecstasy locked in narrow hope chests Ripened on amphetamines Free love Bad dreams. 1 Dec 67 Warm letter from Dave Reinhart, boy who saw me at the Stratford play and asked for an introduction because I was so beautiful! He made a good start! Reading Territorial Imperative and On Aggression. Interesting. So glad to find a valid argument against the conditioned reflex. Worry that I’m prostituting my mind in this place; Plumly Academy for Losers. My teachers may be well-meaning but they are trying to drag me down the wrong road. Their “good intentions” are dangerous for me. Reading Knut Hamsun’s Growth of the Soil for my “non American novel”. Good to be a senior: these days I do nothing but read which is all I ever did anyway. Nothing human is alien to me, says Terence. Doesn’t need to be human from my point of view. Fri. study hall, I’m in the library studying for test on the Constitution. Can’t wait for THAT to be over. Casey and I off to dinner at Pewter Hill. Sun 12 Nov 67
Getting upset over people. Hate to see Aynsley turning into a bigoted old lady but she is. At dorm meeting we all plead for unlimited late lights and faculty shoots it down eery time. Aynsley sides with them! She snapped at me “You yourself have acted terrible after getting what you want” right in front of everyone! Uh oh! This is my roommate! She told Casey she felt sorry for C if she roomed with me because I hadn’t “grown up.” Well I don’t plan to turn into Miss Wormrest if that’s what growing up amounts to! I was just seething! Aynsley herself hasn’t an iota of personal discipline and always needs help to do her homework! (Which I don’t give her so she is constantly in Lindles’ or McKenzie’s rooms.) Certain Sarah Lawrence won’t let her in Casey also is a slave to convention (she has nightmares about college entrance exams) – kowtowing frantically to the sadistic old women who run this place. Makes me burn to even TRY to please these old bags. But they won’t let me room by myself! Damn. Tues 13 Nov 67 Senior Play went remarkably well (although my mother commented loudly that I had never held a broom in my life which is NOT TRUE.) Fun driving around Philly after though Far from the Madding Crowd no good. Terence Stamp couldn’t save it. Today on the other hand was One of Those Days. Master Gwill insisted I rewrite my paper on The Lark misunderstanding every point I tried to make. (I thought it was funny to write my paper in the style of the play. He did not.) I don’t think I CAN write criticism. All his compliments were just sops to my disappointment. Had that awful, “I’m going to cry” feeling but I couldn’t get away from Master Gwill who kept stumbling after me still talking and making things worse. Tried to excuse myself saying I’d had a rough day – more compliments emptier and emptier – God it was awful. He obviously thinks I’m a helpless birdbrain. I was 20 mins late to History but he gave me a note. Everyone could tell I’d been crying! Awful. I am always morbidly ashamed on at war with myself after these outbursts. I guess I am insanely moody – one day all smiles and Tra la la the next deepest, darkest gloom. Guess I am too emotional to be a true intellectual. Maybe no creative person can look at reality in a dispassionate light. Why should we want to? A journal such as this presents the ridiculous side of life much as I try to embroider & give it meaning. Success? Failure? Only I can solve this conundrum. Thursday, 16 November 1967 Oh wherefore in my heart that was so hard hast thou these tender places made to come? (For Kip. From me, courtesy of Shakespeare.) Senior Checkout in the New Gym. We stood around and bounced tennis balls while I thought, there must be more to life than this. Then we ran around the floor several times. If I had a scrap of honesty left in my being I would have walked out. But I’ve been too well indoctrinated. I gritted my teeth and thought, if I waited four years I can wait a half hour, but baby, mentally I’m already gone. In a Russian mood reading Clara Milich and Oblomov. Oblomov is delightful – the scenes between Zahar and his master make me laugh out loud. Kip and I have been on a collision course for the past few months. We keep colliding, veering off, going to other people. I stopped answering Avery’s letters so he wrote to the school to find out where I am! Then he wrote me a really angry letter. Then he sent me a picture of him and his girlfriend dressed up for a dance. She’s the exact opposite of me in every known human way, so you go figure it out. I’m ”off “ relationships right now. Monday, 27 November 1967 English next period – quel nightmare. That is an all Herman Melville class - love him or leave him, with a teacher who does not allow a “careful disorderliness” about the enterprise. Thanksgiving was wonderful. I gave thanks for my unorthodox family, my excellent education (I make up the deficits) my inquiring mind, interesting face and good figure. Avril and I went for a walk and locked ourselves out. I had to climb the rose trellis and get in the third floor bathroom. I decided to kill sentimentality and destroyed all my loveletters – even from Dan who wrote the best ones so far. Not Reed’s KOBs though – they’re not really about me but they’re too good on their own to destroy. I’m sure he didn’t even keep copies, just tossed them off in free verse. I read the whole of To Die at Noone and Kip and Preston both “dropped by” to see me – unfortunately the same night. So it was duel a trois with neither of them wanting to be the first to leave and Kip talking about how he was going to Harvard early placement (wrestling scholarship) and trying to make Preston, who attends a high school so hopelessly progressive that they have no grades - feel bad. Finally Kip had to go first because he had his father’s car (Preston takes train.) So I made out with Preston till about two in the morning as a kind of frustration-revenge-rage thing. He said he loved me and I liked hearing it, but I couldn’t honestly say it back. Reading Easty’s Method Acting. If I did things his way I’d go insane. Mon. 6 Nov 67
I tried to sleep. Finished Princess, checked a few references with N&A, then lay listening to the girls calling each other down the halls like lovebirds. The inner life of a private school. Closest to miserable depression today in quite awhile. My headache filed me with such agony my whole body shook. Recalling when M & D wouldn’t allow aspirin because “you don’t need to be all drugged up!” (They disapprove of throat drops also.) Out on the courts my hands were beet red and would not hold a racket. Hit the ball your racket spins. Felt like an animal on a treadmill! Nasty tennis. Run around the courts – a bit better – back in my room for orange tea. Reading about the Trials of the Russian Aristocracy. They were a bunch of idiots who don’t know where money comes from, sad to say. Tues. 7 Nov 67 50th anniversary of the Russian Revolution! I was timer at hockey giving me the opportunity to write two letters while sitting hunched in a blanket. Not a bad job. Any job that allows writing is a good job. Also details of Eisenhower’s visit (he landed his helicopter on the lawn!) including movies seen & books read. Etc etc. Acquitted self of All Social Obligation. (Toss Sheffield asked Eisenhower what’s a soldier to do when asked to fight in an unjust war? Ex-Pres waffled.) How I wished that I’d brought YOU. You wouldn’t think an old paper notebook could affect one’s life so profoundly, would you? Yet you have. For example, I can’t write letters unless I haven’t written here! Not only do I hate repeating myself – I don’t know what I think until I see it written HERE. Maybe what I need is a piece of carbon paper…Note to Self… I remember being jealous of people who did NOT keep diaries I felt like such a slave. Breathed a sigh of relief as the SS France sailed past the statue of Liberty – certain I’d made my last entry ever. The Morocco diaries require an Iron Stomach to reread. But I spoke too soon – I was addicted! I have reached the supreme peak of egoism: nothing happened unless I write it down. Wed. 8 Nov 67 Things never work out the way they are planned! This eve I was going to get so much done. Wash hair & set, do homework and reading. Instead I waste time talking to people. Suddenly got the idea for short story called To Bed In the Afternoon about a frigid woman. I tried to write it all down – typewriter ribbon all screwed up. I give her grandfather Granny’s bedroom, which I can clearly see. Matt Romer playing Husband #2 calls up to ask me to help him with his part. Put him off – grabbed Eva La Gallienne’s autobio put myself under the hairdryer and start to read. Awful. Dull in the Extreme. Mom & Dad off to NYC to see Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead the lucky devils. Nothing to show for 3 hrs but clean hair ad a foul temper. I could have worked on Christmas cards! When I break promises to myself I fear I am becoming flighty. Miss Cluny gave me & Casey a pineapple that made our mouths bleed. Now I am struggling with the correspondence of Mrs Patrick Campbell & GB Shaw but I am having trouble keeping the 900 characters straight. They would rather scald their souls then open them to one another. Much fashionably empty Evelyn Waugh double-talk. |
Alysse Aallyn
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