Just after midnight Fri 3 Nov 67
Writing by candlelight on my desk’s dark blue blotter. Need to get to bed by one – 45 mins. Loafed hideously through study hall – did manage to finish Nick & Alex. Tried Gertrude Lawrence’s autobio but she is just too stupid – plucked every hair of her eyebrows and said “Darling” all the time ugh. Turned to Princess but got only as far as the annulment chapter before I realized she is just not leveling with us. All this “Dr. M” stuff. Dr. Mabuse? Sometimes there are things we won’t even admit to ourselves (Nietzsche says our own treasure is the last we dig up.)
Poor Alexandra – what did she get for her icons and prayers? Rasputin! “Sunny” was married to “Bloody Nicholas”! We should neither envy nor condemn. Human beings are poor wet butterflies crawling along the grass, flapping useless wings in terror. Marie at least seemed to know she was a broodmare. Poor Marie, bruised by her cloth of silver corsets. Poor Grand Duchesses unprotected by their diamond armor… at least I have my privacy. Seems so precious now!
20 short days we move into Pewter Hill! Can’t wait to sit at my desk at the top of the house watching dusk creep across the park! If the air is pregnant with snow I will have all that I need for Perfect Happiness.
Sun 5 Nov 67
Quite a weekend. Saw Pennebaker’s Don’t Look Back and Bonnie and Clyde the latter leading to a very unpleasant date with Vincent Plevins where he lay with his head in my lap for an hour and a half and sobbed about his childhood. I’m ashamed & horrified & planning to never mention it again – hoping he feels the same.
B & C is a work of art – Casey wept at the end – I controlled myself with Iron Will (I’m especially ugly when I cry.) Certainly puts the sting back into death. Warren Beatty forgot a couple times he wasn’t playing Splendor in the Grass but that woman who played Blanche was very good. Gnomish CW with his squirming mouth & elusive eyes. The film defies discussion. Violence turning people into animals. Master Gwill went on and on about guns being phallic symbols while I tried very hard not to listen.
Didn’t like the opening – just another naked dissatisfied blonde – but at least the love scenes were beautifully controlled. “Hollywood” was resisted. PM says no one will fall for “triumph over impotence” at the end. I’m not sure. Surely it represents their safety with each other rather than actual sex act. To me the most beautiful scene in the film is when Bonnie has “the blues” and Clyde puts his whole hand over her face. They need each other – love emanates from each desperate being.
None of us agreed on The Final Look. PM = “panic”. Jack B = “We’ve got to keep driving”. I think they said different things – Clyde = “it’s over” and Bonnie = “I’m here with you. We’ll die together.”
Master Gwill took us out for ice cream after the film but Jack couldn’t stop yammering. The Truth is SILENCE.
Fri play rehearsal was cancelled so I hitched a ride to Media Station with Lindles. After a brisk walk from the Queen Lane Station I arrived at the house at 5:45. Dad immediately shoved a glass of wine into my hand.
Matt Romer called me up – offered to drive me back and see Don’t Look Back. I really wanted to see it but Dan has taught me how miserable I can be with someone I don’t like. Still, Matt said a lot of kids were coming so I agreed. Hope Matt didn’t think I was avoiding him but I was. He asked why I was so silent: “Thinking about the movie.”
We were late getting back – had to call Casey to check me in. I’ve got to stop being honest and start to LIE she warns me. She is probably right since all I get for my honor is a pile of detens.
James Cleland of Duke U in chapel for Vespers. He was adorable – he’s all for “individualizing” religion says they’re all the same anyway! He ruefully observed that the older you get the more you need it.
I think people over-estimate their own resiliency. B & C couldn’t see what they were getting into. We are never as free as we think we are. I used to not understand why people kill themselves when the world is so wonderful and you can always start over. But now I see it’s a question of the Rot – how far it has gotten. Once you have polluted your soul there may be no turning back.
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 happens 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.
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 every 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 Womrath 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 and 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 Bloy’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 love-letters – 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 in” to see what condition my condition was in – both unfortunately on 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.
Alysse Aallyn 
Leave a comment