Category: #Mysticism

                         11PM Starlight Wed 7 Mar 79

                                   Very down night. Only $70 so far. Need $600 to

 keep my bills current. Bryony wailing because the state took her children away.

  Sometimes seems like the pain of the helpless is smothering the world. Tony’s 

the bouncer tonight and he’s all for letting the men stick their bills down the girls’ G-strings!  No thank you.  Wait till Gentleman Randy hears about this. 

                                            Reading a bad German mystery – the mystery being why he wrote it, how it got published and why I’m reading it.  Fantasizing celebrating spring by getting all my hair cut off. Hmmm. Jean Seberg? Could be sexy. 

                                            Wish I’d brought Kafka’s Letters. Making 

huge floor pillows for my housewarming party. Longing to sink into classical music & bubble bath, followed by Oleg Cassini sheets & cup of diet cocoa. Having my own house really is a dream come true.

                                            Mon 20 Feb 79 – 12:20 AM

                                   Such a depressing party I got drunk just to be “out” of it.  Avril & Ben making out in a corner all evening. Usher brought me books and a bird of paradise flower, Stockley gave me a beautifully framed tiny drawing of crustaceans –

but then cancelled that by attempting to corner me all evening. He covers up the soul he doesn’t believe in with a repellant fleshy brutality – life is kill and conquer – 

– eat or be eaten.  Honestly, now I’m scared of him. Afraid to even argue with him for fear of launching something irreversible. Luckily, he next fastened his lasers on Yvonne. Poor Yvonne. Save yourself, I should say but was relieved to be off target. 

Plan to ask Paz to schedule me for just two nights. On a self-dare, 

I sent my poem about Rossetti’s model to Usher.  

LIZZIE SIDDALL: The Woeful Victory

Be still or I can’t paint you.

It is evening and

I almost knew you.  Who are you

Fair one?  Your mouth is stuffed 

With poppy hair 

Fate coils between your breasts

A snake –

Your tongue’s torn out.

You must be the echo of my thoughts.

(“I am the motionless cradle.”)

Your flesh takes fire from my setting sun.

Can you free me, O Lady of the Sundial?

My eyes grow dim.

(“Perfect love’s not found this side of heaven.”)

I shall paint you vermilion

Butcher nightingales and use their tongues for brushes

Melting foil & verdigris

To the tune of Canterbury bells.

Stay awhile, Fair one.

I almost thought you spoke.

(“I am the face rising from the pool

to drag the drinker deep.”)

I will bury you in manuscripts, I will

Visit when there’s time. Someday

We might marry, but

I am not whole, dear lady.

I am not myself.

Who are You?

 (“I am thyself. What hast thou done to me?”)

                                            Tues 28 Mar 78

                                            Extraordinary spiritual experience.  A haunting.  Someone standing behind me in the empty house. I turned and no one was there but power only increased.  At first I was afraid – then felt a melting richness of love –

– coming at me, into me from outside of me.  I realized it was Jesus.  Relief.  Followed by –

Confidence.

                                            Of course, afterwards I question it all over the place.  

How could I be so certain?  Maybe just an ordinary haunting by a peculiarly loving ghost?  Maybe a thing in my head?  But I do have that memory of certainty and bliss to cling to.  Very powerful.  It’s out there – somewhere.

                                            Starlight Thu 14 Mar 79 – 10:00 PM

                                            Started out as a very bad night – trying to dance myself exhausted – then some guy tipped me a $50 and I ate an orange and now –

I feel better. (Feeling so unbearably fat I bought diet pills.  Then “dinner” of cashews and wine.) Finished Prayerbook for a Skeptic – I liked it. Fortunately, I brought along a ton of reading. Had to dump Joyce Carol Oates’ Do With Me What you Will when I became disgusted with zombie heroine. NOT as good as The Hungry Ghosts (but reminiscent of McCarthy’s Groves of Academe.)   I’m in the mood for something different.  Not, however, C.S. Lewis’ The Four Loves which is deeply annoying. Women are “unqualified” to be “true friends”. Isn’t that the “know your place” argument?

                                            Maybe what I need is Thos Merton’s, Seeds of 

Contemplation.               How to switch the physical into the spiritual – that’s what I can’t figure out.  Sexual longings intense – my body on fire. 

                                       No wonder monks beat themselves. Peace and

 concentration in the dressing room – we are all doing doubles. Yvonne is fine.  She is more than a match for Stockley – saw through him without a problem. She just acts interested in all men regardless. On principle. 

She says if you want to choose, you’ll have to compare offers. So sensible. 

Tomorrow a day of cleaning & working in my study.

                                            Sun. 18 Mar 1:50 PM.

                                            Terrible nightmare about Usher Glayne. His face 

melted showing the skull underneath – two hideous holes of darkness.  The world is fierce, cruel, we are all hobbled. Wake to astonishingly gorgeous day. 

                                         Worked on expanding short story Erin – cleaning away deadwood –

–  it’s only going to be 30,000 words but the hell with it. Can’t “produce” to “compete”.  Want to find the intrinsic shape buried within. The secret meaning.  Letting it speak for itself makes me happy.

                                            Adoring Pilgrim at Tinker Creek. (Wish I had written it.) 

 Then it’s off to the library á la bicyclette for more theology books to understand my haunting. 

Apparently lots of people have had it. 

                                       Obviously, I should worry more about Success and the fact that I’m dirt poor but I am interested in a different kind of immortality. 

I have arranged my life so carefully to do exactly what I want.  

Seems a shame to ruin it now. 

                                            12:30 PM Mon 19 Mar 78

                                            It’s a problem that I don’t like Usher’s poetry. At least he talks about sperm and chastity so presumably is not yet dead from the waist down. He’s successful and I am not, so criticism from me sounds like sour grapes. I call to thank him for the books he send me; a woman who is probably his wife answers. Should I be embarrassed?  We are NOT having A Thing. So, why?

Out in the yard with dogs trying to read Teilhard de Chardin.  Hot sun.

                                            Café Rabelais, Wed 21 Mar 79 3:25 PM

                                            Pleasant 3 hr lunch with Usher discussing literature

 – he had to run away leaving me with my coffee. Tried to get me to pretendto be willing to date his friend who is wheelchair bound.  I have a feeling this was the whole point of the lunch. I want to talk about literature, he wants to give me away to his friends. I said No. But couldn’t I just make nice? I said no. 

I’m not that kind of nice. 

                                       I took revenge by asking if he lives with his wife. 

He said “sort of”.  Their child is “a problem”.  No one can write within a mile of this child.  (Poor wife. Luckily her life doesn’t matter!)  Usher seemed taken aback by my questions so maybe I won’t hear from him again. 

Good lunch, though. Very cuisine minceur – lots of different dishes and you don’t feel full afterwards. (Rabelais would have been very disappointed.) I top off my coffee with a glass of blond chartreuse. 

                                 At the Phillips, I saw a Goya that made me want to burst into tears. 

Note to self: reorganize Courtney entirely around paintings. But which artist would be perfect to express my anti-heroine?

                                    4:20 PM Thurs 22 Mar 79

                                    Today a model for what all days should be.  

I’ve passed unscathed through the financial hysteria of closing on a house, even have money in the bank.  Sparkling weather; spring is definitely here.

A day of sunbathing – the first are always the worst – skin a white blubbery mass. 

                                 Reading Kroll’s book on Plath symbols – gives one furiously to think.  She wants to find everything in the poems themselves – and of course – that’s exactly where it all is. Plath controlled by potency symbols.

                                    I am sick of Devon’s letters – he must “shield his eyes against my radiance”.  Come on. I can’t believe he doesn’t want exactly the life he’s got. Always hard for me to believe that one can reject the sprinkles, the cherries, the walnuts on the sundae.  My family always lectured me for being attention-seeking and voracious – so it makes me shy to advance myself into anyone’s purview. Plath seemed prepared to be loved for her accomplishments rather than her being – a scary compromise.

                                    Although I do recognize that I am trying to 

experience my own “wholeness” through the eyes of another with all 

the danger that implies. Currently trying to kick my sugar cravings.

                                    11:30 AM Fri 23 Mar 79

                                    More sunbathing – my own skin smells 

intoxicating to me. Like pool water, like beach sand, childhood. 

Dixie – “God’s lioness” stretches out beside me, wind ruffling her fur. 

I write a poem about dogs.

Sticks

Peter’s dog

Went on fetching sticks

Long after it was dead.

We’d find them on the stoop

Arranged In patterns

Pete would sigh and say

That’s poor old Monk all right

Still missing the people games

Heaven won’t allow

                                    Add it to my ghost story book.

                                    Unexpected tear sheets in the mail from Usher 

– his reviews of Plath. He says he didn’t think it “professional” to disclose

 that he knew her – that seems unprofessional to me.  Makes his comments seem underhanded: pale. He says diplomatically about my poetry that I’m a “rare being.” Hmmm.