Fri 17 Oct 80 – On the train
Just finished May Sinclair’s 3 Sisters. Fascinating & beautiful feminist plot. Can’t think why she’s so forgotten - probably because she didn’t make a fuss of herself. Managed to forget a teacher’s meeting this AM – another sign I’m trying to fit the round peg of my life into a square hole. 20 Oct 80 Staying home with an awful cold finishing Prelude so I can write my Wordsworth paper. Type tomorrow AM. Difficult weekend with friends. Don’t know how to handle T’s anger in front of other people. Fri night was his night to cook – he made a wonderful boeuf bourguignon. But on my night (Sat) he was so interfering I just let him do it. He’s moved everything around in the kitchen so I can’t find anything – embarrassing. He seems to be reproducing his mother’s ploys and tensions. Wish he had a little more of his laid-back father in him! Read Jean Rhys’ Quartetand Smile, Please. What a writer! Such purity! I am really envious. Don’t agree she’s beyond self-pity however – the books pulsate with it. What a pity respect & love aren’t joined in the male as they are in the female. Now reading Janeway’s Powers of the Weak. There’s a chapter missing! Interpersonal power politics between husband and wife! Avril called tonight to say she got the Maine job – (domestic abuse shelter) $11,000 the first year! Bravo! 22 Oct 80 – Train Creature from the Black Lagoon in Eng class. Too stupid to contribute. Brent criticized my story Travel Fever– bad ending – (fair enough) but he also said he was surprised at the cruelty in the family! (Katrina the scapegoat.) This from a man who admires Flannery O’Connor. Better off working on novel and NOT short stories. Don’t think I have the art. 26 Oct 80 Horrible fight with T began with my criticism of his old newspaper and rusty tobacco tin collections – do we really have to save all this moldering junk? He blames me for the “bad move” from KY in which he lost so much stuff. But I moved, too (TWICE.) He also had the nerve to say we “live like slobs” when he was supposed to clean the living room 2 days ago. (He’s doing it now.) 6:30 PM– He came upstairs and apologized – very sweetly. Lovingly, courageously and open-heartedly. So we did go for walk – gathering branches & berries to decorate house. Saw a beautiful did bird with a black ruff around its neck – feathers green and black. Blissfully happy reading Rose MacCaulay’s Letters. News that Commonweal will publish my poem Life of the Virgin! 30 Oct 80 Very interesting discussion with T – he cooked a fabulous leg of lamb (but still refuses to vacuum.) He said Henriette Wyeth not worth the ink she’s getting for her show – I said art is really lacking in feminine emotion (Rothko Pollock & de Kooning masculinity reduction ad absurdum) and woman painter raised in a family of male painters is a “test” case. Whats the missing element? Supernaturalism! Since we borrow our bodies from earth our souls are our only true individuality. 1 Nov 80. T. so angry when I criticized his procrastination ( he keeps saying he’s going to look for a job and not doing it) he pushed me into the bathtub! He denies that housework is humiliating but he doesn’t do it because he doesn’t want anyone to see him doing it. When I was having coffee in bed he pulled all the sheets off as if he was going to wash them but when I got home they were still on the floor. Guests to dinner – in the middle of the meal he would suddenly turn and glower at me hostilely. Horrible day at school – EVERYONE IN THE CLASS got an F on their Prelude paper! We all had the “wrong” reaction because we had the nerve to react personally. I immediately bought my first set of Cliff’s Notes. If there’s a “right” response I’m going to give it – don’t want another F. (We all get one more chance.) K. Mansfield’s Letters unbearably sad. She would envy T’s & my life together so much.
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Alysse Aallyn
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