Mon 19 Nov 79
Mike & Lorraine Inzar killed in small plane accident Mom & Dad call to say. This makes Dad majority stockholder (Mike’s stock divided among 5 kids.) Painful thoughts. Lorraine so young! One of her daughters with them too! (Mike was the pilot.) Mom says salutary reminder how easily we can all be “snuffed out.” If I died now how awful!!! Dad wants to go look at Bennington airfield trying to find ANYTHING but pilot error – what could have happened?
Try to make each day an entity in itself. Yesterday a good day reading V Woolf letters. Can read these again & again. Neither she nor Vita could truly appreciate themselves. But I appreciate them.
Boiled diary into 5 pages for Yuna. I think we can call this a completely unsuccessful breast-beating exercise. Took dogs walking in park with T, bratwurst for dinner, fantastic lovemaking, sleep. Typical day.
2 Dec 79
Maddening depression. My precarious identity under permanent assault, only the cycle of achievement to carry me through. Bride rejected no note of any kind. Devastating. Thought I’d get some direction at least.
Wrote 2 poems on Rossetti family – sent 40 poems out, wrote 15 family letters.Maybe I should hide my feelings from T. His suggestion I write magazine articles throws me into blacker depression because I would have to:
1) Learn how to write magazine article
2) experiment with same
3) forge relationships!!!
CRAZY time consuming plus new ways to fail!! Novels are BOILING inside me – can’t get over that THIS IS MY DREAM LIFE – writing full time at home while husband busy with important job. But part-time newspapering pays horribly and he looks forward to law job after graduation. So our timing is off. Let’s hope not FATALLY.
Thurs. 6 Dec 79
T compliments me on being “so female” (“in the Jungian sense”). He’s
beautiful & supportive – he liked my Rossetti poems a lot. Feeling better carefully following my program; hoping I can be the person I want, follow the life I want.
11:15 PM Thurs 6 Dec 79
Everything looking up except this diary. Lavallee LIKES Bride and thinks we can sell it. Studying the lives of Saints makes me feel better, so I’m enjoying assembling a calendar of poems called The Spire. Does nothing for my career but provides relief. What if I learned how to pray? Assembling a Christmas wardrobe.
T. annoyed when I trimmed my public hair! Since he goes down like Jacques Cousteau I should listen. Buying Sutton’s wife Val a sweater for Christmas from Brooks Brothers gives me & T a chance to rationally discuss our differing styles. He accedes to the more imaginative choice.
11 Dec 79
Finished Life of Raymond Chandler. Reading about Ottoline Morrell and Katherine Mansfield. Disgusted with poetry and taking a vacation. Bought T. the prettiest Pierre Cardin diamond cufflinks.
5:30 PM 13 Dec 79 –Thurs
A good day in spite of a weird pain between my breasts. Tension? Seems better when I move round so not incipient heart attack. Diet?
Reading Lady Sackville & drinking tea. Phone call from beloved after his Commercial Paper exam. Getting a haircut then home in ½ hr. Mom called to apologize very nicely for sounding “disrespectful” about my work by dismissing it as “ghoulish” and “morbid.”
We had a nice talk.
Finished Xmas cards today – 172 cards! T & I had beautiful long talk last night of course followed by spectacular lovemaking. Confiding fears for our relationship. T doesn’t see how this relationship can last when everyone else’s falls off the cliff. I said I worry about hardening myself against him because it’s so difficult to be so open.
Out shopping today got a flat tire changed by the grocery store employees! Free! Would that happen in the Northeast? Certainly not in DC. Very little sleep last night because of T’s studying – but I didn’t want him to leave the bed. It’s getting dark now – beautiful light over St John’s church. Submitting altered version of The Spire (leaving out sex poems.)
11:45 AM – Sun 16 Dec 79
In 15 mins my angel will have been at work for six hours. That’s more than a half day! When he gets here he still has his packing to do. He asked me what about spending summer in Princeton then back here for a year? He knows he can get a job here – his friends have been working on him. I said I’d hate it. Want to get established somewhere before I get pregnant. I have a far better chance of getting a job there than here. He walked in – greeting noises from dogs!
StormFall Farm – Wed Dec 19 – 79
Unalloyed pleasure! Sitting at my desk in winter living room (table pushed up to window.) It’s been snowing since we woke up at 10. I saw my new house – where his mother grew up in Grovers’ Mill NJ – very low ceilinged antique farmhouse full of original furniture. Too outdated to rent but fine with me – a whole house of our own! We could have two kids there without being overcrowded! It has some unpleasant dark curtains we could just get rid of. T’s grandmother just went into nursing home for the second time. Looks like this is the last time.
The only problem is it has no laundry room – perhaps adapt upstairs closet? (Very tiny closets too.)
Trish & Noah (cousins) & Toss have gone to town – I will walk dogs and then be ALONE.
Gloriously ALONE. Very close to becoming complete recluse. Just finished N Mitford’s Voltaire in Love. T enormously enjoying Perry Mason whom I read aloud on our long drives.
Train from NYC 1:40 PM 27 Dec 79 –
Alarms & Diversions – T & I have just had 2 very intense fights. Guess I didn’t realize the anger than was building up in me. His mother is just so RUDE – I cried in front of her last night for a solid hour feeling sheer helplessness! She is so awful! After she left we managed to come together much chastened. Yesterday we went into New York City to see costumes at the Met – got in an epic traffic jam outside Tiffany’s and could see we weren’t going to make it – got out of the cab and T bought me a ring! Eternity band of diamonds – very sweet. They say if a diamond ever falls out they replace it!
Celebrated at Sherry Netherland with manhattans and duck pate in lingonberry sauce. Wrote four poems but too exhausted to know if they’re good.
12:30 AM – Wed 9 Jan 80
Battling with Byatt’s Virgin In the Garden. This woman asserts a Proustian compass but overwrites dreadfully. T due in ½ hr – at library studying as usual. We had a lovely dinner before he left – spinach soufflé, salad and wine. Took dogs for very pleasant walk.
T says he loves me so much more every day he can scarcely comprehend it. He was so upset when I said I might not take his name – it was only because he’d been flippant about a previous girlfriend. We are both so sore. Trying to stay open and honest as the emotions blast through.
Alysse Aallyn 