Alysse Aallyn

Tag: #DancersLife

  • Inspired Pleasure – the dance diaries of Alysse Aallyn

                 10:30 PM – Plush Palace – Mon  night 10 April 78

                                         Two more sets. I’ll live. Finished study of Mary McCarthy by Doris Grumbach. Much prefer that to actually having to read  McCarthy who reminds me of Aldous Huxley – Is it possible to be too contemporary?  Trends of modern writing a little too sketchy for me.  No book  should feel like flipping through a magazine.  Sensory overload sans enlightenment.  

    As for Angus Wilson – we are parting forever. I read all but two stories in Such Darling Dodos  – back on the shelf he goes.

                                        Wonderful day – up before 7, read New York Times, sent out poems – magnificent walk with dogs – explored abandoned house. Haunted by novel – so went back and got six pages – one good new idea. 

    Called publisher – ordered ten more books.   Little self-promotion. While writing got call from the Plush Palace – would I come in two sets early for Glory, who is sick?  Love to.  Just feeling bankrupted by the drycleaners. I was justified too because first set got a big tip. ($300)!  

    Peter called – said he would have loved to go to the Raitt concert with me but had to go to Vermont. He certainly talks differently when his girlfriend/housekeeper/telephone answerer person is not around. 

                                        He hinted that his love life is impossibly complex and he doesn’t want his parents to know. I’m guessing that she is married. He promised to get in touch when he gets back. I’m in the ladies room because the air-conditioning in dressing room not working – it is suffocating in there. Yesterday evening thoroughly enjoyable – steaks wine and hot fudge sundaes at A’s then watched Richard Brooks Happy Ending which really 

    was a bomb. Trying to read Anthony Powell’s Venusberg but feeling nothing yet. Tried Sarton’s Miss Pickthorn – a hash of all her other stuff – very slight. Avril not home for past four hours – out on date with Jordan. 

    Can’t wait to hear the play by play.

                                        11:45 PM – Thurs 13 Apr 78

                                        Safe & warm in my gilt-canopied bed, happy in spite 

    of my cold.  A & I got “El Diablo” inspected today – $70 – But at least she can take it to the MVA tomorrow and have it put in her name.  That great feeling of “starting out fresh”.  In spite of dribbles & wheezes, blissful dog walk followed by deep-dish pizza & wine at Armand’s. No painful memories. 

    Cherry blossoms are out.  

            Saw Coming Home with Jon Voigt & Jane Fonda.  Good, if somewhat earnest.  Bruce Dern acted like he was in a different movie.  Rough role deserves a hero’s commendation. I stare at the casually interdependent  couples – it’s been a year since I could lay a hand on another’s thigh with that proprietary air.  Poor Avril dissolved in tears towards the end – too reminiscent of the “endless pain” of vets like Bruce and Mason.

                                         I’d be more sympathetic if they didn’t take it out on others. What they learned apparently is how to “stage a war”.  The people we love inflict the worst damage.  Avril’s at the stage where she’s still haunted by Mason but feels it’s “boring” to talk about him so she bottles it up.  I tell her get a diary.  Hope to finish Powell’s 

    Agents & Patients tonight – but it is a little dull. 

                                        Plush Palace –Fri 14 Apr 78 – 3:50 PM

                                        Only 3 more sets, with 4 dancers.  Still, made 

    enough tips for groceries.  Buy wild birdseed for the birds cavorting 

    outside my desk’s bay window. Daringly went on without stockings – such a savings if we didn’t have to buy them but Eddie told me No Cigar.  

    Too bad – they’re hot in summer.  Alvera says Yvonne’s back at Mother Joe’s.  I thought she wouldn’t be able to eat enough shit to stay in her music clerk job.  We goddesses so spoiled by our pedestal.  Called A in the afternoon to see how she was doing – Shoulders was there flexing his muscles at her and she is over the moon.  Trying to be glad for her but in spite of his obvious beauty I’m afraid he is a bit of a shit. (See testimony of past burnees plus eviction notices.)

                                        I feel I must disappear deeper into solitude and see what’s down there.  Gift  (new version of Courtney) coming along interestingly but slowly.  I’m afraid it has no plot other than my own life, when what it needs is a couple of murders. (Same thing my life has always required.) Poems so much easier instead.

    Tried to read Phyllis Bottome but she’s a fatal cross between a 

    didact and a pleaser; sort of like a barky little dog.  Most unpleasant. 

     And that casual anti-Semitism pretty shocking.

                                        Plush Palace – Sat 5:50 PM 15 Apr 78

                                        Halfway through novel –  can’t figure out if I’m 

    satisfied or not.  All my discoveries so agonizingly slow. Can’t afford 

    fuckups – then I’ll have to go through it all AGAIN. Slept late, breakfast at Avril’s.  We did laundry together, then played gin.  

                                        I was the first one here thank God (means I’m the

     first to leave).  Got my schedule – 4 nights in a row, 2 days off.  Good. 

    Congratulate myself on my intellectual freedom as I wrap black lace around my throat, recalling all the put-downs I suffered back in the day when I was an “architect’s helpmeet”. 

                                      Reread Alvarez’ description of Plath’s suicide – I don’t agree her death was some “by-product.” Her mother raised her to be murdered by other people; 

    Nazis or husbands.   There had to be a “bloodletting” – Mrs. Plath’s ulcer – Sylvia’s “suicides”. If you don’t “accept” martyrdom someone will have to die in your place. Kid yourself it’s” freedom” just because you choose time & place. 

                                         It bothers me terribly that Mom & Daughter shared a bedroom during Sylvia’s formative years.  Death would seem inevitable just to get some privacy & distance.   Poor Sylvia offered those magnificent poems to Alvarez and he 

    backed away terrified because Art is terrifying. $30 for lost contact that came out when a necklace scraped my eyeball while I was hanging upside down. 

    Teach me to wear contacts onstage. Who needs to see the audience anyway?

                                        7:15 PM Sun 16 Apr 78

                                        Spent the day in bed eating oranges, raisin bread, peanut butter.  Avril’s spending the night at Shoulders’ new place – then tomorrow we’re going to the new Cassavetes film and I’m excited.  Jervaze in for last set to invite me to his going away party.  I slept nine hours. 

                                        Horrifying Who Made the Lamb – author really lost control of this one but I bet she would say she was just “reporting”. Books Do Furnish a Room much better than Powell’s previous – has a sense of direction. “Trapnel himself always insisted that a novel is what its writer is”. I would agree.  Style follows taste, I think. Realize Dad and I don’t mean the same thing by the word “intellectual”.  He means a person who knows specific things, (education) I mean a person who thinks a certain way (style). 

    Twain never meets. I am not respectful of artificially acquired patinas –

    “points of view”. Wrote the infirmary scene – just what I wanted to say.

                                        Maybe I need to give up sex and even male companionship –

     – just can’t afford them.

                                        Plush Palace – 6:45 PM Fri 21 Apr 78

                                        Wonderful walk along Powder Mill Road thinking 

    about the mystique of money.  I eternally fight a rearguard action. Mom & Dad call at noon – Genevieve had little girl – Belinda.  Avril delivers my new lens– bounce notice in mail – I tear my hair in a frenzy.  I get to dance 2 sets for GiGi – $200 – she tells me about her night of sin with Louie. And she wants another one.  Life’s a soap opera.  Management says there’s going to be a drug raid with dressing room search warrant. Panic among the girls – but not me. Check out the customers with a more intense interest.  Are narcs here?  Everyone planning to leave town except me.  I offer to work tomorrow night.   

                                        Reading an interesting study of Iris Murdoch novels – the Disciplined Heart. Too much coffee – I’m switching to tomato juice. 

  • Secrets of the Self – how I became a warrior by Alysse Aallyn

    Duality

    Have you ever both wanted something and not wanted it? Of course you have. It’s the human condition. We often choose something temporary, hoping to dodge the consequences. Or we tolerate something to get a certain outcome, and when we’re denied that, we feel cheated.

    My duality is the desire to reveal myself and also be private. I want both things at once – to be completely known and to be utterly unknown.

    I already have two superpowers (Art & Love) but if I could get a third (seems unlikely) I would choose Invisibility. I love eavesdropping on conversations.

    These aspects of myself have certainly frustrated incredulous friends, boyfriends, managers and agents.

    I was very uncomfortable in the theatre, speaking and acting other people’s words, but I think (though I never got the chance) that acting my own words would have felt even worse.

    I could never express to family and friends the enormous relief it was to dance – utterly silent – in the spotlight –to my own moods – which you couldn’t dignify as “choreography”. Being almost nude didn’t bother me at all but felt absolutely right, since clothes & costumes were an impediment to which the performer must be mindful.

    I became a Warrior trying to explain these anomalies to people. Welcome to duality – the other edge we walk.

    Centering

    Dance is holy expression

    A centering, before

    The explosion

    Tuning to ancient volcanos

    Pre-dating the planet

    Performing with magma

    Shooting like footlights

    Re-shaping everything

    Selfhood and sainthood

    Willingly abandoned.

  • Secrets of the Self – how I became a warrior by Alysse Aallyn

    Education

    As soon as my education was my own to manage, I bollixed it up. My high school’s near total repudiation of Art left me seeking some kind of art school, but which? I was accepted at a School of the Arts in San Diego but depressed by the distance – a visit to my ex-boyfriend in Oregon and a visit to my handsy uncle in Hollywood had not endeared me to the West Coast. I auditioned at glitzy acting schools but had zero game and even less confidence so obviously THAT wasn’t going to work, so I started off modestly by interning at Southwark Theatre School (they gave me office work) and taking classes at the Philadelphia Academy of Dance. I was physically clumsy and slow and this was going to hold me back from any theatre career. I was very well developed in the left brain areas but my right brain appeared to be asleep. Although I was the worst in the class I did get better and I was amazed to be accepted by a prestigious theatre school in New York City. I got an apartment in New York city, signed up for classes at Martha Graham to prop up my confidence, and gave that a try.

    Act, Don’t Think

    Anxious about future

    I had no idea of living in the moment.

    Until was dancing

    The “present” wasn’t real.

    Releasing my

    Self

    Freed me from self-ness

    Becoming “eternal”

    In one second

    Was exactly

    The training I

    Required.

  • Secrets of the Self – how I became a warrior by Alysse Aallyn

    The Goddess –

    One of my earliest jobs was an office work temp – ending up as receptionist at an architecture firm. In my hegira through multiple workplaces I did not find one where I liked the lowly way I was treated. But Warriors, by definition, don’t put up with the Status Quo. Seeking to ratchet up my power level I used my training and auditioned to be a dancer. Things improved mightily! Although I still encountered some mistrust and scorn, on the whole, I achieved my goal of feeling plugged into the Universal Power Source.

    Artistic Expression

    What if you could


    Be Yourself at work –


    Release


    Every day feelings


    Invoking ancient


    Raptures?


    Though mother disapproved and


    Dad worried, I


    Launched my


    Physical self


    Into the Universe and


    The Universe


    Loved me back.

  • Embattled Love – the diaries of Alysse Aallyn

    1 Nov 80.
    Toss 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-ever 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.

    Sun 9 Nov 80
    Thrashed it out and fell into each other’s arms. One must insist on justice but not too much. Love requires acceptance and we both are suffering. He envies me having someplace to go and I wish SOMEONE ELSE was going there! I have to give up this 50/50 concept – our definitions are just too different. If you want it done your way you really have to do it yourself. He applied for a job in Princeton – relief. Hope he gets it.


    Still reeling from nightmarish election results. T. telling me I threw my vote (for Anderson) away.

    Vet Day 11 Nov 80
    Toss out sleeping in his study. Poor man. He promised he wouldn’t but the next 2 weeks will be a nightmare for him so I hate waking him. The house is at last tidy which is something that’s frustrated me for a long time. I think I talked T into my plan to paint the wicker furniture dark blue. We can use my study as the baby’s room for the first year.


    Just finished Sackville-West’s Challenge – the whole course of the Violet -Vita affair laid out there.

    15 Nov 80 – 4:30
    Toss and Lois’ boyfriend Ricardo roofing the barn – but it’s getting dark and they’ll have to come in soon. My nerves are snapping with exciting revelations about my writing. Cut my teeth on other people’s writing – sharpened my tools – now it’s time to do my own thing. A bit frustrating that my Fiction is class so stuck in Stage 1.

    17 Nov 80
    Bad times for us get worse and worser. Intense nostalgia for my dancing days washes over me – because I feel alienated from my own body! Part of the “psychology” of “giving it up” to get pregnant I know. Need to find a dance class for fatties.


    T. and I had a terrible argument about child pornography – he says acts can be censored, ideas never. I totally disagree! One bad idea leads to another one – you have to cut SOME of them – bad social ones – off at the pass. They’re taking up brain space you could use to think other thoughts – it becomes a race to the bottom. He said I was trying to “control” him which surprised me. Doesn’t he try to change MY thinking? Aren’t we trying to influence each other?

    Fri. 21 Nov 80
    Toss read my diary – said, “I want to save you from this ogre but it’s me.” I said I have to write what I think is happening and how I feel about it! He asks – why aren’t I controlling my own thoughts the way I recommend others do?


    I say I’m trying. But we need to figure out what reality is first and if you’re a writer you REALLY need to. I found and read him some good parts where he’s the hero!


    Really enjoying Fat is a Feminist Issue. I’ve definitely been eating my
    anger!

    1 Dec 80
    Easier holiday than usual for everyone except Avril. She’s gained weight during the scary move, then the frightening job search then the threatening days of a new job surrounded by traumatized women. “I don’t even want to THINK of anyone touching me now,” she says. I get it! I am contemplating swelling up to blimp size on purpose! Will my husband still love me? Will the honeymoon be over forever or will I be able to get back to normal? Stay tuned. I lend her Fat is a Feminist Issue which I think is a big help but she never likes those books as much as I do.


    Thought of a good ending for Pinch of Death. Hate myself for compromising all the way along trying to get Fiction class to like me. Means this novella is not good enough to represent me.

    6 Dec 80 –
    Lying in bed with a glass of vermouth while Toss in long underwear plays on the floor with Weasel. Soon he’ll take a shower – then delicious sex.


    A wasted day – cooking, housework, letters – making social engagements for Xmas. T read my story Kisses in the Dark through and liked it. Made love last night after movie It’s My Turn (not very good) partially clothed on the living room floor! I prefer the bed!

    9:30 PM 8 Dec 80
    Lying in bed with a beer – there is no wine – feeling very bad tempered. Fordham very dissatisfied with Chevenix transcript – they say they need some sort of “evaluation.” Why do I attend these hippie schools? Oh, the horror.


    Rough time today Christmas shopping. Toss thinks it’s an insult to buy inexpensive presents – he wants to follow the rich people’s “codes” but on the other hand we’re broke! Conundrum. The bar exam’s the end of Feb. Can we make it till then?

    9 Dec 80
    Glamorous new gilded diary – I was hoping for a new life to go with it but here are the same old problems. Last night I was so upset at the prospect of having to find someone to evaluate my work at Chevenix I cried. Feels like having to describe a rape in order to get “compensation” – how could that be worth it? What a horrible school that was. Toss very, very good with me, so tender & supportive.


    We were supposed to get up early and go running – I woke at 7 still with the headache I’d had the night before – realized that in my crowded life I’m crowded to the wall – something has to give. Won’t even try to grade those papers today – maybe not go in tomorrow. Finish up the Seiden paper as good as I can do it.


    9 Am phone call from Lois – Aunt Henrietta died in her sleep, John Lennon shot by a crazy. If he’d stayed in London where it’s harder to get a “warm gun” – oh well.


    Toss & I went running – lost Weasel dog – called & called – came home to find her cowering. Me furious. Run ruined. Gotta dress & go.

    9:05 PM Another bad, frighteningly depressing day. Being necessarily humbled, I suppose. I am as sick with fear over this Shelley paper as if I were a 15 yr old about to be tested in math by Master Don Byerly.


    Read Prometheus Unbound when I got home, glanced through criticism, had a bath, “treated” myself to Monica Dickens’ Winds of Heaven. The shrieking blasts of anguish through that book doing nothing for me, however. The point of Dickens’ books – God hardening us. Prophetic case on 60 mins.


    Should reason myself out of this depression. Happy memories of Washington, sitting in my garden reading Bloomsbury Portraits, lolling in restaurants over wine, no bills due. Bad conjunction with Ezra giving me bad news about Kisses and this awful Shelley paper. (Charlene wrote a good one but it mentioned God and Seiden gave her an F.) I take my F with all the equanimity I can muster. Long break upcoming – maybe finish Pinch for Ezra’s inspection.


    What I hate most about depression is being depressed. The physical condition. Worry it’s hurting Toss (who has more reason to be depressed than me.) Give it up to God. Throw it at Her like a curveball.

    15 Dec 80 2:30 PM
    Living with Toss kills my diary dead. I use it as a steam valve. The only things I can’t discuss with Toss are my fears about him! The result; it seriously distorts our life together. Decided to forget “stream of consciousness” and try Page A Day (I really need 2 pages) so bought a beautiful white leather one I can’t wait to attack. Full of horoscopes, religious holidays, full moons.
    But now in the 16 days remaining I glut myself of Complaints & Fears.


    I really don’t know what’s the matter with Toss. (I’m sure he’d say, “Marriage”.”) He talks endlessly of wanting a job but takes no steps whatever. (Says he only has Jan to look, Feb he needs to study.) Look back on my times of similar paralysis – mainly 1973 – every step an effort. I blamed PLUMLY. All the “assumptions” of my life completely unacceptable. Bound hand and foot by speechlessness – needing new definitions of world & self.


    In Toss’s case can’t be that – he was “successful” before me – and it’s gone on too long for mere indecision. I think it’s an overwhelming fear of rejection – something I can sympathize with (although his chances of success are 1000 times mine.) This AM he was in a bad mood because of sleeping till 11:15. It’s against my nature to push, shove & nag, I just won’t do it.


    Saturday we made an agreement – I would clean the kitchen, he would vacuum. He didn’t get to it till Sunday! I had to remind him about rest of the house. He seemed surprised but cracked down & did excellent job. I think it’s critical we share housework but his non-violent non-cooperation tough to get around. He thinks a big effort once every 2 weeks should cover it.


    My slightest comments become part of his “mythology” so I guess I’m handling this badly. Maybe I should assign tasks. I am cooling off on the idea of him having his own law firm. He really needs to work for someone else. I like the idea of having our own press or buying a small newspaper. He’d be wonderful at that.

    11:45 PM – Finished Waugh’s Letters. Very instructive – a necessary corrective to the impression one gets elsewhere. His loneliness, fear of poverty and modernism are sad enough – but not so tragic (TO HIM) as people thinking him a “bore”. That was the revelation from which he never recovered. (He WAS a bore because of the drinking. His solution? Drink more!)


    Always a mistake to surrender one’s responsibility. (Only possible result: alienation.) Inevitable that Waugh’s identification with Catholic injunction against birth control would lead exactly where it did – unbridgeable distance from wife. (They lived in separate houses so he wasn’t bothered by kids’noise.)


    Half read, half skipped Wills’ Chesterton. Very PhD thesis – no concession to reader. No frills.
    Radio program about Christian employment agency got me thinking. I’ll write to Witness and see if they want my writing. Put my name in at the agency – just fishing. I’m sure there are more born-agains and Catholics looking for edit jobs who would fit in better but you never know. Toss’s friend Dave Swift might turn up something also.


    Met Toss at the station at 8:40 we agreed we’re too ornery & snappish, must be more gentle in future.
    A perfect night. Me in nightshirt, T in bathrobe – silver tray between us containing emptied manhattan & rob roy glasses. We share a stogie. Feels like Christmas!


    Reconciled to not getting pregnant immediately. We talk of taking Sept trip to Ireland – how I’d love it! Discuss a year in Eng – me absorbing the place while T studies law. Time is closing in on us making it impossible to break free. I think about Chesterton’s statement that Christianity represents a crossroads in one’s life. Feeling free.

  • Embattled Love – the diaries of Alysse Aallyn

    StormFall – 4 Aug 80


    Familiar feeling of depression. More wedding invitations – Granma’s list and Sutton’s list. Poor Sutton – I feel so sorry for him even though he jokes about missing Val: “I got rid of the last gardener I had.”


    The only bad night was engagement party – Mom and Dad chose a reel of slides and I sat there stunned at the genesis of all my stories. Ocean, lake, dolls’ cottages – happy healthy smiling people – whence comes all this pain? Dad looks at pictures of the Gryphon tooling through Europe and says, “I’d do it all again.” Would he? I wouldn’t! That pain comes from somewhere deep, deep inside me. Makes me feel like they’ve been right all along – there’s something wrong with ME. Luckily Toss backs me up – he says he “feels 13 years old” around them. Fortunately, I had one “flying high” day on Shadowe Island – with Gretchen Fuchs, the poet. Oh, her library! We soared together in a conversational ecstasy. I saw us deep in the future, two old ladies in an English garden. Talking forever. Lovely woman.


    Champagne & steamers with Sutton – then home.

    Grover’s Mill – 10 Aug 80
    Unpleasant shock in the mail today – Guilders demanding transcripts. Naïve me – I thought only the writing sample mattered for the writing program! Wait till they cock a snook at my record! Will I be exposed as an unqualified adventuress? Would it be so bad if they withdrew their offer? Then I could go someplace else – Marymount maybe. How I loooooong to be pregnant!

    StormFall – Tues 19 Aug 80
    My last entry? I absent myself from family discussions saying I’ll go to bed to read – really want to write here. Just taken my last Birth Control pill maybe EVER – only 13 pills into the packet. Feeling amorphous. Borderless. The aspirations of adolescence fading.
    What were the aspirations of adolescence? I can barely remember. To be admired, chiefly. By “others”. And now I’ve ditched the “others” and I’m alone on a vast plain – trying to steady a tipping world. Listening.


    Are inner imperatives enough for a whole self? What about love? But love is a term like “weather” – describes infinite mutability.


    Need to finish the goddam wedding maps & directions & walk them to the Post Office.

    2:15 PM – Thurs 21 Aug 80
    Period started! Shouldn’t be surprised – been having a brief period in the middle of my cycle since I started these damned pills – probably they’ve been making me sick.
    Thinking about the relationships between parents & children – how avoid the miseries? Poor Mom! She felt like a “loser”. Dangerous not believing in an “eternal force” because then all there is is YOU. To BLAME.


    Poor Mom! Preferred to housekeep alone – but wanted us to “help” when she wasn’t there – but do it “her way.” Fated to eternal disappointment!


    Wedding programs – copy the service in a book for T’s friend Bracket – the gay Baptist preacher – to use.


    Weirdly dark cold day. Shakespeare play at Edith Wharton’s tonight is open air – I just hope it doesn’t rain!


    Toss’s out driving around with Cousin Wolf in the ancient Chevy they resurrected.
    Studying the Marymount catalogue and reading Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet – hadn’t realized he was so young when he wrote them! Should be called Letters FROM a Young Poet! May have to switch to Agatha Christie – she’s the sugar taken for “shock”.

    Grover’s Mill – 7 Sept 80

    A week since our wedding so this must be our honeymoon. I feel perfectly balance on a tightrope – drinking vodka & lime while studying Woolf’sBooks & Portraits, Sayers’ Mind of the Maker. Toss struggling with his additions to our thank you notes. Tomorrow off to Guilders College for a “teachers organizational meeting” so they must be sufficiently desperate if they don’t mind my lack of a degree. Should be interesting.


    Chaotic summer swallowed up by the wedding – ended up costing $7000 total. Facing winter with confidence – pregnant in 2 months! If Guilders doesn’t work out enroll in Marymount get my degree one class at a time.


    Last night we had bridesmaid Trish Lambert to dinner – husband Noah coming to lunch today – their marriage breaking up so we try to counsel. Looks hopeless – Noah chooses his pride over Trish every time – she says she’s not going back to a situation where she was made so physically ill. What was she allergic to all the doctors wanted to know? Turned out to be him.
    Try to write here more regularly. These pages are a bank account. Save, save save.

    Mon Sept 8 – 80 – Train from NYC – 4 pm
    What I thought would be a “teachers meeting” turns into a disgusting “registration” process – running from one building to another, paying fees, filling out forms – I am seriously allergic to bureaucracy and the tears are starting to leak. Feel like a person wearing an ill-fitting disguise. However, I believe I carried it off. Just act like you’re entitled and no one questions you. I just don’t want to live in this world. I doubt poor Toss caught in the maw of Beginning Law can provide much sympathy. He is dotting I’s and crossing t’s with a vengeance.


    Financial pressures create time pressures. Try to look for the meaning in all this.

    2:30 AM Sept 9 – Worry and 2 double whiskies wake me at one and I can’t get back to sleep. Tried bath & reading, nada. Toss has been magnificent. I was able to present my worries without sounding like an idiot and he was able to identify with them without being dismissive. He says his uncle Avery gives Masters to people without BAs in Environmental Studies all the time. I say I really don’t need the degree it’s the experience I want and anyway I blame Plumly. And Chevenix. They ruined me for “degrees”. He always says Plumly was “not so bad” – and of course he loved Reed but they wouldn’t even let him SEE his grades! (They show everyone else!) and he needed an extra year – but he seems to accept my Kafkaesque emotions.

    Sat 20 Sept 80 – Fortunately our weekend guest (Toss’s Reed roommate) not here yet. Cleaned & garnished house for 4 solid hours. Went shopping bought 14 meals for $60 – Toss went to Trenton then discovered he didn’t need to go. (Getting out of housework? Hmmm.)


    He put a bookcase together and filled it with books (which helped) now he’s making peach butter.
    What’s preventing me from pointing out to him that him doing all the work he LIKES and me doing all the work BOTH OF US DISLIKE is not a fair division of labor? Cowardice.


    Then there’s the problem that this is his grandparents place filled with his grandparents furniture and he doesn’t want anything “changed.” My only satisfaction if making my study a feminine as possible (painting my file cabinets yellow.)


    Reading Krumm’s Why I am an Episcopalian (he’s pro women’s ministry) and Hans Kung’s Signposts for the Future and struggling with what God I believe in. Not a subject for dinner party conversation. He will watch Presidential debate and I can opt out of that.


    22 Sept 80
    Lie in bed satisfied our entertaining’s over. It’s a “test” of our relationship to be around third parties. T always more critical of me in his anxiety that things go well – I am dreamy & slapdash by nature. Ended up watching the debate after all – much more fiery and vituperative than I expected – John Andersen an old-time preacher and Reagan sweetly vague and never finishing his sentences.

    24 Sept 80 –Waiting to counsel Rose Love (!) but looks like she isn’t going to show. Lots of them don’t. I’m not the only one having trouble with this system. Horrors! I was “observed” in class – a teacher sneaking in while I was trying to teach probationary “backward” students (I.e. unprepared) how to write an essay and feel I made an idiot of myself. I sweat & tremble – am I only “a pack of cards” or are THEY only “a pack of cards!” Basic feeling of inadequacy – these kids deserve better than me! How did I ever think I could DO this!


    Well if Rose isn’t showing up I can read Sackville-West’s magnificent Eagle & Dove.


    Very depressing meeting with advisor Ezra Brent about my novel – asked how long I’d been working on it – I said 7 years and he was HORRIFIED. WAY too long for a project so short! But I am evolving as it’s evolving I splutter. Better write about your childhood instead, he counsels.
    Of course, I can’t do that! Blah! Resolve to write a novel specially for his class – chapter a week. What interests me? Murder & nuns at present. Do I know anything about those? I admit I don’t but need to follow this trail. His obvious expression of disbelief is all the goad I need. Call it “Pinch of Death” from Shakespeare – a quote long in search of a tale to headline.

    Train to NY 1 Oct 80
    Class observer gave me a rave review! Made 4,000 copies because frankly, no one would believe it. I don’t believe it myself. Good meetings with students. Asked Brent what to do about lack of a BA – he said Do nothing yet. You are a “promising” student. I still feel uncomfortable – don’t even feel like a STUDENT. Feel bolstered up. Unfortunately, no one in fiction class likes my novel – they all think I’m “anti-modern”. I don’t like theirs either. I fire back by advising they read Krafft-Ebing – no “modernity” without him. I should have taken Carberry’s modern poetry – enjoying romantic poetry VERY much.


    Fellow student Charlene Clark is teacher at a Catholic college (working on her SECOND masters) and can give me lots of advice about nuns.


    I got a letter saying I am a member of the faculty so I get a 10% discount at the bookstore!!! They also have a very respectable library. Reading CS Lewis’s Letters to an American Lady. I CHERISHED his Letters to Malcolm. But 4 Loves very rough going. His anti-feminism somewhat mitigated by his late marriage. He was dragged into that the same way he was dragged into Christianity – kicking and screaming – “the sorriest convert you ever saw.” Interested in his “shameful” relationship with Mrs. Moore. Krafft-Ebing anyone?


    Experimenting with prayer but it feels very unnatural. I like the mystic’s stillness – make yourself empty and “fill up.” Any kind of “intellectual direction” feels wrong.

  • Embattled Love: the diaries of Alysse Aallyn

    Thurs 12 Jun 80


    Rode my bike to Evening Prayer in Princeton. Perfect length (1/2 hr) 2 hills of equal size so neither direction is “harder”. Ordered more wedding invites, then discovered it was 5:23 so had to rush to intimidatingly big church.


    7 people arranged around a side altar – my plan to go unnoticed conks out. What is my obsession with invisibility? Because parents were so agonized whenever I launched forward?
    Minister female, short, stocky. Daphne?


    Turned out to be a healing ceremony! Quite beautiful! Lots of rising and standing. At some point I just burst into tears. Awful. Everyone asking if they could help but I don’t know what’s wrong so just slobbered away. I think now I was feeling “expulsion”, exclusion – “The gifts of God for the people of God” but I don’t really know. I may just be emotional as parents said; “we won’t let your peculiarities interfere with your health” direct quote.


    I was so embarrassed leaving – apologized but the minister grabbed my hand and looked piercingly into my eyes.


    GOD IT WAS POWERFUL! Said, “I’m Daphne Hawkes!” Wow!


    She insisted she “knew me” and “recognized my name” (Reader of Devlyn? Impossible.)


    She said she had time to talk, I said I DIDN’T and blundered away. She said, “You’re in my prayers, Alysse!”


    I stagger off, exalted & terrified.


    Bike conked out, I walked home.

    On the Palmetto from Washington – Princeton Jct 10 PM Tues 17 Jun 80
    I love trains. I like Arthur Conan Doyle because he loved them too. All his fuss over timing, carriages & tickets delicious to me.


    Feeling bad about Avril – she says her life is suddenly empty. Her heart membrane as thin as a racehorse’s ankle.


    We got her a cat and helped her pack – best way to free her I can think of. Bought my wedding lingerie, tried on the veil Maureen is making for me – STUNNING!


    Avril & I saw 2 classics – The Empire Strikes Back and The Shining.


    Missing my angelic male half.


    House sale should net $5,000 – M & D giving me $3000 stock Nov 1. Relief to have SOME money coming in.

    Thurs June 19 – 80
    Letter from agent – Devlyn sold to Germans for $1000! (One edition – rights revert to me.) Der Todestrank or some such thing. “The Death Drink.” Maybe I don’t have to take a job this summer (fellowship starts Sept.)


    Late again to Daphne’s service – this is awful but I had to drive T to pick up his car. Forgot to bring Kleenex – so sure I wouldn’t need it! Wrong!!!


    Trying Zen breathing to control the sobs – zilch. Total humiliation.


    Daphne hugged me said she was glad I’d come – I took the oil & communion although I’m “unbaptized.” Daphne said a different prayer for each of us. Lovely woman. The wine was real! (Unlike at Devon’s church.) Nice touch!


    I think I’m crying about “losing control.”

    Thurs 26 June 80
    Writing wedding invites not as much fun as I thought it would be – can’t use my fountain pen (paper too absorbent) can’t get as good an effect with a felt tip. Oh well!


    I’m up to 90. Can only do 20 per sitting because I become paralyzed with boredom.


    Last weekend on Cape first time I felt I was “myself” around T’s family. Having a book out nobody read is not much to establish an identity.


    T’s aunt Mimsey staying with us now – up late arguing with her about adopted cousin Katey. She argues – weirdly I think – against adopted children finding their biological parents! If they could just accept a Beneficial Social Fiction as reality wouldn’t we all be Fine? Where have I heard that before! I was so relieved Toss saw all the issues immediately – he’s so smart – the biggest one being TIMES CHANGE. (Often in ways we can’t imagine but since we know they do, why pretend? ”We’re gonna fix this for you kids right before we die and you’ll never have to address that problem again” is sheerest idiocy.) He really is a superior intellect. (He does have a flaw; sees abortion and adoption as similar! Typical male!)

    Mon 30 Jun 80
    Lethargy – extreme, prolonged, profound – the key to my personality these days. Fallow. Torpid.
    A little Teresa of Avila goes a long way – Elinor Wylie is fascinating & sad. Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s latest volume. of diaries is an irritant. I WANT to identify with but she’s too oppressively DIFFERENT.


    Jonathan Valin’s Lime Pit ho hum, Eliz Cadell’s latest totally empty. A Marriage of True Minds had some interesting data.


    Not finding what I want I reread Nancy Drew with an eye to a Modern Version. What would that look like? I sketch out a Mystery at Mirror Lake – trying to help a friend – it becomes Last Year at Marienbad pretty quickly.


    Want to rewrite Prisoner of St Secaire & getting some good ideas. I don’t want the heroine to be “unsure”, that’s Nancy’s appeal in a nutshell. She’s so confident! She’s always being accused of being a spy and a snoop and it doesn’t faze her. Yes, she is! So there! She has no problem pocketing evidence and keeping it to herself.


    Probably why Bobbie Mason (?) condemned her as “cold” and “calculating” in The Girl Sleuth. She NEVER solicits male help! (Asks Dad for a favor once in blue moon.) “Unfeminine”? But why then is she so popular WITH GIRLS? She represents an absent vitamin? Obviously. We’ll suck tree bark to get it if we have to (and you DO have to suck tree bark to read Nancy Drew.)


    A possible direction for Fawn in Demon Roused?

    11:AM – 3 July 80- StormFall Farm
    Toss’s father Sutton’s third wife Val died suddenly yesterday morning at 2:30 AM. T. was on the phone with his father about 11 PM when Sutton suddenly said – “there’s something wrong with Val.” And dropped the phone.


    When he came back on he said they were calling Rescue.


    Toss and I jumped into the car and drove straight up to Masschusetts arriving at the hospital where they said, “She expired.” Like a library card! Couldn’t understand it at first. She was only 46!


    Back at Sutton’s house he was cold and grey still in a state of shock; “They couldn’t start her heart.”
    No one knew she had anything wrong with her heart! I don’t know who suggested birth control pills as the culprit – or smoking? She had decided to break her diet for a dish of ice cream and that was it.


    Toss is with his father, I should be washing my hair; instead I write a poem for Val I can’t share but like better than anything since Alyssum.


    At this rate I’ll have a volume in 20 yrs!

    Sutton’s Place
    Everybody crying, Sutton on the phone with his sister Mimsey, Granma’s plane just landing, youngest brother Dom will be here within the hour. Minister came over to lead prayer service – did quite well – we discussed immortality & warmed to each other – I was stupid enough to say I’d written a poem – he said I could read it at the service Uh oh. Better come up with something for public disclosure.

  • Embattled Love: The Diaries of Alysse Aallyn

    2:10 AM – Grover’s Mill – New Jersey – Sat 24 May 1980


    Here we are! Just finished painting the newly plastered wall, putting up a bookcase and most of my books in it. Bad moment when T. thought I was going to paint the wall yellow (I wasn’t.) The kitchen is done but this bedroom still looks like hell.


    Wrote a 9 p letter to Devon when I was at my bluest. Probably shouldn’t send it! Sometimes life is too mysterious and T is too much of a stranger. Imagine making this move with Devon! (Or Bruce!) Or Ryder. UNIMAGINABLE!!!! Things are worse because we’re fasting till Mon AM. I use food to pep myself up but this summer I’m determined to get my greed under control. Hard accomplishing anything with T standing over me questioning every move I make.


    Looking for a place to hang the Earl & Countess of Horton bas reliefs Mom gave me T said, “I won’t lie to you – I don’t like them.” I said, “I’ll put them in my study” but then I boiled. I don’t like ANY of his stuff – his horrible vintage Camel ads – it’s all hideous – but what if I said so? I took it for granted that if HE likes & wants it, end of story. Evidently, I need to recast my thinking! But that’s impossible – if I rejected everything I didn’t like we’d only have my stuff!

    Memorial Day
    Our compromise is – he works in the barn, I work in the house. The barn is full of treasures that need to be appraised and catalogued and probably sold but he is wildly incensed when I say so! Everything must be saved till it chokes us to death. He is a very angry man and his anger makes me angry. Most unpleasant. He said Alysse, even when you’re angry you’re the person I love most in the world. I feel like I have T’s peace of mind in my care but he doesn’t have mine because he doesn’t know HOW to. Wasted time trying to get him to see praise & encouragement aren’t the same thing. He says, “At least when I praise you you’ll know I mean it.”


    He thinks I love him because my “standards are low.”

    4:30 AM Sat 31 May 80


    Can’t sleep. Reading Helen Van Slyke’s hymn to the middle class but all her books are hymns to the middle class. People who think life is an Ionesco play crossed with Munch’s The Scream won’t like Helen Van Slyke.


    Lavallee likes my rewrite “a lot” and is submitting it to Crown. I was sure she’d be able to tell I’m getting numb but apparently not. Sent my gothic The Bride & the Wolves to Tower. Now I have to take a serious look at St Secaire.


    Had a little cry (private fortunately) over T praising my clothes, body & housework but not projects or ideas. Need to start a serious program of prayer & meditation.


    Ackerman liked T but his CLERKS didn’t want him and Ackerman leaves it up to them! Too bad. Now he’s behind on his bar study schedule because of the move. Maybe self-study NOT the best pattern for a procrastinator?


    I think men just aren’t bred to give encouragement.

    7:15 PM Wed 4 June 80


    “O Rose Thou Art Sick…”


    The problem is T’s anger. When we are walking the dogs he says, “Keep to the road, dammit!” There is no point cursing at a dog! He says it makes HIM feel better. I say anger is corrupting – it just makes EVERYBODY angrier! How break an addiction that poisons our relationship? How is it women are called “strident” when men pullulate with such rage?


    Forms arrived so I innocently shared my poems and he got jealous of RYDER!!! It never even occurred to me! (poem in question: Love the magician) Obviously, I should have kept these publications “secret” but how icky is that! Especially when the guy is lecturing me on “honesty” night and day. I’m going to have to start pleading the Fifth.


    Set up a prayer desk in my study – books, candles, etc. I’m going to practice. I feel stupid asking for things – just try to get in touch with the Divine. But I also feel like God could “save” T! Flood him with light, etc.

    Yesterday required interview with Eng Dept at Guilders College for teaching. They astonished me by saying “You’re hired”!

    Thurs 5 June 80
    Yesterday so bad I threatened to give up and drive to Washington! I was almost in despair. He said I am preventing him from studying with my “demands” which means breathing, sleeping & eating apparently.


    He apologized finally and said he’s just so upset about the bar exam! So, I try to relax him physically. Give up on dieting – alcohol & food accomplish what rationalizing & arguing won’t.

    Sat 7 Jun 80
    We’ve been here a little over 2 weeks and the place is beginning to look like ours. I’m sitting in the garden under holly, maple, lilacs and cypress – an English garden gone to seed. I see Toss’s light in the Little House (an outbuilding) where he is studying.


    Tomorrow drive to Phila to celebrate T’s birthday then on Mon I plan to plunge into my study & redo Secaire. Mom & Dad called – I told them about Gilders College Writing Fellowship. They told me ForOptics merged with Corning Glass – up to 24 from 8. This would be good news for me if I could ever get hold of my stock but my “trustee” – Dad – won’t let me have it. He is considering a disbursement. He’d better since Gilders’ stipend is $60/week!


    T & I had the usual fight last night but I am learning from them. He goes “negative” & combative very fast. I have to grit my teeth not to mushily give in – I don’t want to fight but APPARENTLY HE DOES – the trick is to get him to see it. He thinks I’m just “resistant” and “demanding.” Resolved to bring his unconscious processes into consciousness.


    Dinner = trout grilled in spinach. Melon & cold veg salad.


    Reading PD James’ Innocent Blood – just awful. What bone does she have to pick, that’s the curiosity. Feels like she hates females. Probably thinks she must go “male” to write – or how can female “fluidity” direct a story?

  • Embattled Love: The Diaries of Alysse Aallyn

    Tues. 11 Sept 79 –
    Every day catalogue.
    Jan & Mary Ellen to dinner – she has black eye but otherwise seems no different. Does not disparage new house where they still plan to live.


    Mom sends separate letters to me & T. I feel she is on “his side” not mine. She thinks “living together” is at the heart of all our problems (secretly, she probably thinks it’s my “exhibitionism”. Me, the shy introvert!)


    Reading Self-Starvation about how children make enemies of their own bodies in reaction to growing up. Tremble with recognition. Mom said things in her letter she could only know from what I wrote to my older sister Genevieve. That outlet stopped. Feeling a rush of mature personal power – I’m moving beyond them.


    New novel Speechless is a bloody struggle. Writing about things too close to me. Wrote my first seriously bad scene – the adults all together.


    3:50 PM – too upset after letter from Genevieve to write. She has been robbed of her honest feelings – she is just pumping up and down on the merry go round. They obviously think T will get sick of me soon but can’t decide if that is good or bad. My insistence on having a “real relationship” means I’ll never have one! Silly me. Need to do housework – or something – till I feel better. Shouldn’t try to write when feeling so despondent.

    Midnight – Bath & Facial. Toss beautifully aroused – we made love TWICE. He says I am only girl he ever wanted to marry. Feel even our most terrible problems are being slowly overcome. Routine & diet coming under control. Dream of the Rood unsuccessful book.

    12 Sept 79 – Magnificent day only half over. Charting novel – seems “completeable.” Starting research for short story Demon. No bad mail – no guilt about housecleaning – send off Walt Whitman entry. Sylvia Plath provides poetic incentive – I can’t put her down.

    14 Sept 79 – Woke 4 am to tremendous whoosh – hackberry tree coming in window spreading shimmering shivering glass across floor. Went downstairs – more broken windows – tree leaning against house. Seemed to come out of nowhere. Put on coffee and called Toss at the newspaper where he works part-time.


    He came home looking so handsome in wheat jeans & fishermen’s sweater bringing a photographer from the newspaper to take pics. Started calling people at 8 am. Insurance doesn’t want to pay so he called his insurance law professor.


    Trying to read Robt Penn Warren – finished me for novels. The whole thing, after many premature burials, killed stone dead p. 300. Even there it didn’t stop. Can’t blame him for publishing it. It’s the publishers fault. If this was a woman’s novel they would flatten it. Never see the light of day. Retreat to Woolf’s diary where I plan to be for rest of week. Reading my diaries emotionally draining but inspiring. I’m up to 3 pages on The Repudiated Journals of Yuna Roe-Smith which is a lot of fun. The whole Ryder saga, though, is beyond depressing.


    I had forgotten Mom wanted me to marry Armon and cried over his mother’s mean phone calls! Horrible Armon! What ashram would I be suffering in now? O, for a trustworthy literary executor instead of more family myth victims.


    T. and I discuss travel – Portugal, Ireland and the literary tour of Eng. He prepares frightening presentation for Justice Goldberg. We will celebrate with Graves couple to dinner – turkey? My piece de resistance of hot, garlicky potato salad.

    Sat 15 Sept 79 –
    Insurance will pay. Celebrate one of our many anniversaries with muffins for breakfast. Nice cool fall day – I can wear a sweater! T says after Goldberg he will set up his new study and his old study becomes our dressing room. Good, I need closet space. Type 10 p without a break – T at library – do my exercises – hand laundry. Novel going uncommonly well except for constant awareness of what I cannot do. Tonight spaghetti & green salad. Didn’t realize I was clenching my jaw as I wrote. Sore.

    Sun 16 Sept 79 – T hands me his mother’s legal file – tells me I can read it! Found exactly what I need to portray Alva. She told her kids she was allergic to their father’s sperm!! Ask if I can incorporate T’s letter to his father about StormFall into Speechless.


    Can’t read African diaries. Forgot I threatened to kill myself. Needed child psychologist in a major way. Parents were always staggering around blindfolded. No map ever suits the new terrain.

    17 Sept 79
    Finished Part I, on to Part II. Looked everywhere for Generation of Millionaires – can’t find it. Rats. I was sure I could use almost all of it.


    Letter from oldest sister Merrill tells me I have to separate from M & D for my own emotional mental health. Can I do it AFTER wedding? Reading Women in Love. Think its wasted on me.

    18 Sept 79
    Up to p 145 but feel I am just beginning. I need to write another gothic – it would be easier. Dumped D.H. Lawrence’s Women In Love in favor of Hahn’s Lorenzo which I can actually enjoy.
    Useless trying to clean our room – T has nowhere to hang his clothes! We must construct a closet out of pass-through bedroom. This is a crazy place – longing for my own house. Yesterday such a magnificent dinner – chicken stew, wine, liqueur, pears, nuts & brie – we decided to skip dinner tonight. I love him so much but still feel like a wayfarer unrevealed. Sometime I wonder if 29 is too old to fall in love. M & D called – good conversation. To bed with History of Modern Poetry.

  • The Diaries of Alysse Aallyn

    Queens Chapel Rd, Washington D. C. 3:30 Thurs 30 Aug 79


    Belongings packed. I’m in shock. Crawled into the bath with a vodka tonic and now I’m feeling better. Trying to figure out how to approach parents for money. Maybe they could give me my own stock as engagement present?


    My sense of helplessness is NOT a good sign for T’s and my relationship. He can’t “make” me independent! I have to do it myself. I’m doing this guy no favors handing him a woman on the edge of breakdown.

    4:25PM – My darling just called! Relief! He borrowed a truck from somebody so although we’ll have to drive separately we won’t have movers to cope with. He’s driving it out here so I can sleep as late as I like which I really need. Reading Robert Ludlum’s perfectly ludicrous Matarese Circle. In 100 yrs people will wonder how we stomached this stuff. Avril and I going to Olney theatre to see The Bat tonight.

    Newport Kentucky – Tues 4 Sept. 79
    Reading old high school loveletters for something I can use in Blood Memory now renamed Speechless.


    T. ebbs in and out of stranger-hood. He told his friends I used to be an exotic dancer – because he says he can’t “lie” but I think it was a bad idea. One obscene phone call so far. Don’t like the way they stare at me.

    Last night we made love twice. I especially like to watch him sleeping – the perfection of his profile is heart-rending. But his angers are so weirdly arbitrary. Not against me so far. I am divided on what to do – if I ignore it will it be somehow programmed that I’ll stay reasonable while he’s outrageous? But if I don’t “let it slide” it’s non-stop arguments. Went to a famous restaurant to drink mint juleps last night and ended up in a silly argument about whether he has any misogynistic ideas or not. I proved he did (he thinks women “act stupid”) but that didn’t make him happy!


    He’s given me the entire third floor of his house with glorious views over the city – I spend most of my time up here. Total furniture so far: a desk and a lounge chair. It somewhat makes up for the fact that he presented me with a new vacuum cleaner – obviously thinking I’m going to clean for him. Uh oh! Misogynistic idea #763. Mostly I am incredibly happy. At about 8 I’ll start the casserole & set the table.

    Newport, KY: 10:15 AM Wed 5 Sept 79
    The electricians have been here for 2 hrs driving me insane. T ordered impossibly ugly furniture from Horchow catalog – luckily agreed to send it back. Enjoying A Certain Slant of Light. Point of view not a problem for this writer. Next Drabble’s The Ice Age. Project: The Contemporary Novel.
    The irrevocableness of marriage. My children mutely regard my choice. The hopelessness of explaining myself to any of T’s friends. Rain. Any excuse not to take a walk (T lives in bad neighborhood.) At least there’s a fenced yard for the dogs. Feel like a girl in a gothic novel except for the constant sex which makes it a different kind of novel. Break with the past.

    6 Sept 79 – 2 PM
    Impossibly intense happiness. Peace & joy. Feel we have been standing in a dinghy trying to balance. Equilibrium is everything.


    Toss suffering recurring nightmares that I leave him to go back to DC Can’t reassure him while I’m struggling to balance. Moves upset me to a terrifying degree. Let’s hope the next is last till kids are born. I recall when I got to Maine took me a full month to get my neuroses under control. 4 good pages on my latest novel. Molly Lefebrve’s book on Coleridge fascinating. T & I up at 8 AM to go shopping. Laid in a glorious supply food & drink – I gave him check for my ½. He is slightly alarmed I won’t open checking acct here. But he did say he can no longer afford the allowance he promised me and I’m too proud to complain. Must make money writing. Should take a walk right now – wake myself up. But light a little scorching – longing for fall.

    12:50 PM Fri Sept 8 – 79
    Long letter from Devon full of love and caring – his girlfriend sounds so wrong for him – she’s a prudish fundamentalist: what was he thinking? Must we marry our nightmares?


    Perilously close to a bad argument last night – somehow Toss & I got over it. Trying to treat his ideas with respect. Our family has a ban on displays of anger – his doesn’t! In Sheffield World the angriest person wins because they “care” the most. Or are just willing to behave worse, I suggest.
    I get angry when he postpones our wedding AGAIN. He thinks we can’t “raise the money”. I say just make it a family party on the lawn. He says “a piece of paper doesn’t marry us”. BUT IT DOES. Why does “piece of paper” make him a lawyer, I ask? “That’s different.”


    “Maybe next summer” does not sound good. Thanksgiving would be the easy thing – he says no – so I suggest spring vacation – he says Sept a year from now! Wants to have graduated into a law job. I think it is better to get wedding stuff out of the way. Now he’s trying to talk me into living near his mother in the city but I hate cities. Impasse. Seems I don’t need to cut very deeply to see pus.
    Can’t speed up the intimacy process much as I want to. Trying to detangle Mom & Dad’s puritanical creepers out of my own mind gives me a headache. At least T is making dinner tonight. If it weren’t for alcohol I don’t know if we’d pull through. Loving Christina Stead’s Miss Herbert.

    6:40 PM Long letters to Devon and Merrill, then when T came home I wept for an hour. Apologized. This is heavy work. T shocked me by suggesting we “spend the summer here”. My traumatized response showed how much I think I am “camping out.”

    Mon. 10 Sept 79 – Finished mad disturbing Miss Herbert then walk in dark with dogs. People’s complex rationalizations for the arcs, crests & troughs of their lives bear no actual relationship to what’s really going on says Stead, and I think I agree. Order & purpose come in a dream – then flash away again. I think I like Herbert even better than Dark Places of the Heart. Weird publishers’ blurb says they themselves don’t understand this novel! Poor Stead!


    War with my current novel struggles a snails’ pace 3 pages. Keep longing to write here like I’m on the verge of some great discovery. Want to read my old diaries – make notes – but that would be a massive undertaking. With NO effect on novel.


    In the meantime poor T and I continue our struggling course. On Friday his friend poor Mary Ellen was raped in her new house! I told T this was a bad neighborhood! I think I’d be scared if I didn’t have dogs. Jan and Mary Ellen left for their vacation early. Told T they should come here when they get back – she should not have to live in that house again. Great thing about this house is 3 floors and 4 bedrooms (2 bathrooms.)


    Last night we lay naked face to face kissing and talking about the amazingness of our love. It is astounding. We’re riding a tiger and trying to tame it.


    Saw Marquise of O – came home to delicious steak dinner – went a tour of restored houses after. Poor T trying to “sell” me on the area. I pine for our new Pennsylvania house just for us alone. So what is the answer? How does one give true weight to ideas & things?


    To conservatory to see plants – home for fabulous lovemaking. Good weekend.