After the Stroke (24 page)

What is this vulnerability? It had nothing to do with who I am—but simply that as a human being one is hurt if treated as though one did not
exist.
And if this happens at the hairdresser where, of all places, except a psychiatrist's office, one should feel safe and sheltered, it becomes acutely painful.

I consider Donna a friend. I am very fond of her, a maternal young woman, tender with her many elderly customers. We did not talk about the incident but resumed our usual conversation after Chuck had left and we were alone. But I have thought quite a lot about it.

Sunday, January 25

On this glittering January day, glare ice on the road in, Susan Sherman is driving up from New York City to take me to lunch at the Whistling Oyster. I feel excited after these last days pent-up by the two storms, longing to “get out”—so it is a fine prospect.

I have had three letters lately that have helped me grow a slightly tougher skin. One from a Sister in Boston who enclosed an interview in the
Globe
which was inept and made me feel naked before the world, as no doubt I am. She says, quoting from the interview:

Regarding your comments about being “a good writer who happens to be a lesbian,” I think that the goodness which is in our hearts and souls is what counts and not whether we are gay, straight, bisexual or God knows what. Furthermore, I could never imagine in my wildest imagination that God would label us!

The second is from a woman in upstate New York. She had discussed
As We Are Now
at a group. She says, “We have read about forty to forty-five books and I can't remember any besides yours that was totally enjoyed and appreciated.” That was good to read but what interested me even more was what she told me of her own reaction to my books:

I wish to share two aspects of your life that speak to me and give me hope. The first is the acceptability (at least in some circles) of a female Muse for a woman.… I have been inspired by several women over the years … but never able to fully explore what those feelings meant due to their “unacceptability.” Now thanks to your openness on the subject I can begin to look and to not be afraid of whatever feelings and Muses may arise in the future.

The second point I have found hopeful came to me as I was reading
At Seventy
this week. You said you are more yourself than ever. For that I rejoice, both for you and for me and all of us who need to be reminded that growth is possible through all of one's life. You have been able to grow because you remained open to others, and to yourself. When I am tempted to close myself up (which is often) I have you to inspire and remind me that there is little growth without pain.

The third letter—I've lost the address:

I could not, for some time, figure out why you and your work are considered “obscure.” Finally it dawned on me that your interior freedom terrifies people. It is very hard to read your novels just for entertainment—put them down and say “nice story, now I'll get back to real life.” You touch our real lives, understand the interior life too well for comfort, and force us to think.… You are courageous and therefore frightening.

Tuesday, January 27

Sea smoke today, so it looks as though the turbulent silver ocean were boiling—because it is warmer than the zero air. Another charm of this brilliant dry cold weather is that when I sit up in the night to stroke Pierrot, down at the foot of the bed, his fur sparkles, rivulets of fire under my hand.

Yesterday there was a ton of mail so I never got to describe the delicious time Susan and I had at the Whistling Oyster. A bright cold day at Perkins Cove at its most glamorous with the bridge up. Susan remarked how like it is to a famous Van Gogh painting of a wooden bridge up like this one. Absorbed in talking and eating oysters, it took me some time to take in that ours was the only table with a bunch of tulips on it—and of course Susan had had them sent over from Foster's to greet us! She ordered a bottle of St. Émilion and as we talked and talked—really the first time we could talk in peace—we drank it all. But the splendid lunch was not all—at the very end I was presented with a small round chocolate cake, surrounded by strawberries to take home with me. Amazing kindness and thoughtfulness.

In the mail yesterday a letter from Juliette, such a delight to hear from her after quite a lapse. Her letters always bring me life, but what a hard winter it is in London! Her pipes had frozen one day.

I can't get the horror of Jesse Helms being ranking Republican on the Foreign Affairs Committee in the Senate out of my head. He surely does not represent the majority of Republicans, nor anyone except the extreme right. It is the ignorance that terrifies me.

There is a fascinating piece in this week's
Manchester Guardian Weekly
(January 25, 1987) by Marion Kumar called “Why Americans Are Different.” She begins:

Once again, Europe watches in stunned amazement as yet another American political web of intrigue unfolds. We can empathise with neither the actions nor motivations of the principals involved nor with the responses of the American people. We are learning, once more, that Americans are different; we really don't understand them at all.

Ask a US citizen what makes an American what he is, and he will very probably talk about liberty, democracy, and “the American way.” Probe a little more and it is likely to emerge that he firmly believes that
only
Americans have real democracy and are truly free. Moreover, he is suspicious of anything a little foreign and unfamiliar. To be “un-American” is not only second-rate; it is potentially evil.

That, of course, is how Jesse Helms behaves.

Thursday, January 29

A delightful photo of the Carmelite Sisters and me when I was there in October came yesterday from Jean Alice, the prioress, and the day before a long letter from Sister Leslie, a generous letter as I had been rather critical of some essays she had sent me ages ago. It made me homesick for those radiant October days when I was the guest of the monastery, wrapped in a cocoon of tender loving care, like “a child of the house” as my mother always called my friends when they came to stay. I was homesick for the ordered silence, the pattern of the Carmelite “charism,” as Leslie calls it.

And I was moved today to read her quote from Emily Dickinson, “We both believe and disbelieve a hundred times an hour which keeps Believing nimble.”

I am now reading the biography of Krishnamurti which I ordered on an impulse because a review in the
Times
said that he did not
want
followers or any religious Ashram around him. Religious certitude too often creates a closed mind, foments a sense of superiority,
excludes
rather than includes, opens the path not to love but to hatred as is quite clear in the attitudes and behavior of the fundamentalists here in the U.S.A.

What moved me so deeply among the Carmelites was their open-mindedness, their total devotion to seeking the Truth even when it might be revolutionary in regard to Catholic dogma. They were never hortatory. They do not “have the Word” against all others, they “live the Word” towards communion with all others.

There are numerous pine siskins at the feeders now, such a delight. Also the downy woodpecker and, alas, coveys of huge ravenous gray squirrels. But in the bitter cold, below zero at night, I haven't the heart to chase them off.

Sunday, February 1

I am immersed these evenings in a book as fresh and thirst-quenching as a glass of spring water, A
Maine Hamlet
by Lura Beam. It has been reprinted by a Maine publisher, Lance Tapley of Augusta, who is rescuing this remarkable writer from oblivion. Such lucid prose and such credible truth on every page. It is good that people understand that even today a Maine hamlet is not all Beans! In fact much of what it describes reminded me of North Parsonsfield and of Anne and Barbara.

On Friday, when another storm was expected with perhaps ten inches of snow, I dashed into Portsmouth to do errands and be well-stocked. The instinct to batten down and prepare for the worst is strong!

I bought the ingredients for a chicken stew, made for a change with white turnips, cabbage, onions and carrots. I got the car, which was covered in salt, washed and then stopped by the greenhouse. What bliss to walk into that green smell of things growing and to see rows and rows of primroses, a rainbow of colors, and cyclamen, a few azaleas, African violets galore and, surprise! two or three cinerarias. Of course I had to have the blue and white one, one small brilliant red cyclamen, and two primroses, one blue, one a tiny bouquet, a nest of brilliant red flowers with yellow centers. Oh yes, and in my wild extravagance a tiny pot of purple crocus still in bud. They have come out overnight.

The excitement of spring plants when the snow is deep outside and wind chill minus thirty! But we only got about three inches this time and valiant Diane came yesterday, managed to pry open the cellar door and take two weeks' rubbish away.

The porch roof is leaking again, plop-plop, into a pail. Nothing to be done till spring.

Monday, February 2

Rowan Tree Press kindly sent me Robert Francis's
Travelling in Amherst: A Poet's Journal
, for Christmas. I only discovered it when I was tidying up the other day and read it all through the night. Pure pleasure. I'm going to lend it to Judy Burrowes who comes bringing sandwiches for lunch tomorrow—if it does not snow! She is a good poet but like all good poets gets a lot of rejections. So did Robert Francis. Most people have no idea how hard it is to get poems published.

In 1931 Francis writes: “When a poem and I embrace, I have a peculiar impulse to pray, ‘Don't let me die, dear God, till this is over.' The writing of poetry suddenly makes my life of high value to me!”

The last entry, June 28, 1954: “Nothing can cure a poet's malaise except to write new poems. He can't live emotionally in his past.”

The worst thing for me during the months of illness was the absence of poetry—not to be able to write about Bramble after her death hurt.

Today again I am buried under the outside world piling in on me. A letter from a woman asks me to read her manuscript, a novel, and help get it published. One from a boy asking if I would sign one of my books for his mother if he sends it to me—at least he has the grace to
ask
! Two books of poems the authors hope I'll comment on for publicity purposes. Three gift books which must be thanked for. A long letter from a patronizing woman who assures me that the journals will live, not the novels or poems. A letter from the poet Roger Finch in Japan—which I must and want to answer. A mailgram from an old friend who has just heard of my stroke and begs me to call him.

A wonderful letter from Dorothy Bryant telling me, in answer to my letter about her great new novel
Madame Psyche
, that every character in it is pure invention,
plus
all the hard work she did about the history taking place in San Francisco from the fire, through labor wars among the fruit pickers, to what an insane asylum was like.

Not that letter which I treasure, but all the rest from unknowns silts me up till I feel crazy with frustration. What about
my
poems? What about
my
life?

Wednesday, February 4

What a difference the afternoon light makes in February, a tender light I have not been aware of since September, a light that lingers on now till past five. A pastel pale blue sky with small lavender clouds floating along, over white snow turning blue as the light fades and the gradually darkening slate blue of the ocean. This afternoon I stopped hurling myself at all I should be doing and sat here at my desk for an hour reading Robert Francis's poems.

So I'll copy one here. It is hard to choose, as I remember when I was teaching at Harvard, a lowly instructor of English in 1950, how often I used Francis as an exemplar.

                              
Invitation

You who have meant to come, come now

With strangeness on the morning snow

Before the early morning plow

Makes half the snowy strangeness go.

You who have meant to come, come now

When only
your
footprints will show,

Before one overburdened bough

Spills snow above on snow below.

You who were meant to come, come now.

If you were meant to come, you'll know.

Friday, February 6

The irony is that Robert Francis lived the life Robert Frost pretended to live and mythologized in his poems—for Francis was a solitary, lived on next to no money, grew his own food (he was a vegetarian) and had very little success. “What is more ludicrous than a successful poet,” Louise Bogan used to say.

The difference is perhaps that where Francis lived close to the marrow, never married, and seems to have transcended conflict, Frost was always conflicted, treated his wife and children badly, must have known in his heart of hearts that he was terrible, a terrible person in many ways. The marvelous poems came out of constant struggle. Or the difference may be simply that Frost was a genius.

But I want to place here another poem of Francis's that does him justice. It is Part I of a poem called “Swimmer”:

Observe how he negotiates his way

With trust and the least violence, making

The stranger friend, the enemy ally.

The depth that could destroy gently supports him.

With water he defends himself from water.

Danger he leans on, rests in. The drowning sea

Is all he has between himself and drowning.

I decided to have a rhythm test yesterday as I was afraid my heart was out of sync. It only takes a few minutes and was well worth doing as the old heart is behaving in perfect sinus rhythm after all.

For some reason the cold got to me yesterday—that icy wind that pierces one's bones even though the sun was out. Today I have on long johns and two sweaters. That should do the trick.