Henry Miller book review By Rosalind Sharpe, Carmel Pine Cone, 12/13/1946

While I was searching for obscure information on the Pat Wall Modern Art Gallery in Carmel, and Monterey, during the 1940s to 1960, I stumbled across a few of my friend’s mother’s art reviews and articles from the Carmel Pine Cone in the Internet Archives. Because it’s an OCR scanned newspaper archive, it was a mess: columns combined, chunks of text missing, orphaned text, and illegible clusters of consonants. But I cleaned it up and restored it to print, and am posting them here along with the Pat Wall stories, for context. there were several arts articles in this issue, probably the last issue of the year, published on Friday the 13th! I knew Roz for most of my younger life, and kept in touch with her when she lived in Marin and Sonoma Counties, so I was pretty excited to find something she had written during the Bohemian years. It is probably the first time that this article has seen the light since 1946 (other than the Internet Archives, where it is virtually unreadable). Read on.

 

Carmel Pine Cone 1946-12-13 

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 13, 1946
Henry Miller book review
By Rosalind Sharpe

By no means the best or the most recent of Miller, The Wisdom of the Heart, a collection of essays ranging in subject from sex and French prostitutes to D. H. Lawrence, Gutkind and the Collective Whole, gives one unfamiliar with his work a good bird's eye view of the range, style, and, in some instances, the very essence of Millerism. Heterogeneous in sequence, it is in short a kind of teaser, a, capsulized version of Miller, which nevertheless seems as organically whole as anything else he has written, in that everything he writes of proceeds from himself, his own personality, his own reactions, impressions, searching, awareness. "Writing,” as he said in Reflections on Writing, "like life itself, is a voyage of discovery.” The essays are a good spring-board from which to proceed to Air-Conditioned Nightmare, Colossus of tyaroussi, or the Tropic of Cancer (if you can get it), which are arranged in a more definite sequence, centered on the topics of America, Greece and French prostitutes respectively.

Some of the essays in Wisdom of the Heart, particularly Creative Death, Uterine Hunger and Reflections on Writing, make one aware of the brilliance, clarity, ceaseless fertility, richness and creative variation of his reaction to reality; his paradox and never-ending exploration of values and meanings and symbols and sensations—the sort of thing that has made Henry Miller a cult among his admirers.

He has expressed his basic attitude towards writing, life and reality very lucidly in the essay Reflections on Writing where he says, "I began in absolute chaos and darkness, in a bog or swamp of ideas and emotions and experiences. Even now I do not consider myself a writer in the ordinary sense of the word. I am a man telling the story of his life.... It is a turning inside out, a voyaging through X dimensions, with the result that... one discovers that what one has to tell is not nearly so important as the telling it in dry-lipped whispers, ...characters and come forth with such books as the Wisdom of the Heart (a collection of essays), The Colossus of Maroussi (about Greece), and Air-Conditioned Nightmare (his impressions of America), all conspicuously devoid of four letter words.

Down the coast, he is writing a sequel to the latter volume, entitled Air-Conditioned Nightmare II.

He goes on to say, ”1 talk now about Reality, but I know there is no getting at it, leastwise by writing. I learn less and realize more. I learn in some different, subterranean way. I acquire more and more the gift of immediacy. ... I haven’t the slightest idea what my future books will be like, even the one immediately to follow. My charts and plans are the slenderest sort of guides; 1 scrap them at will. I invent, distort, deform, lie, inflate, exaggerate, confound and confuse as the mood seizes me. I obey only my own instincts and intuitions. I know nothing in advance.”

It is altogether obvious that comment on Henry Miller and about Henry Miller by other writers is a foolish and superfluous business. Henry Miller has said it all. He is honest and searching. He discovers everything in himself and exposes it to view. His search through reality and sensation is continually given body in his writing, and if one wants to know Miller, all one has to do is to read him. He withholds very little. If he changes, then so be it, life changes, reality changes, the "voyage of discovery” goes on.

Sam Colburn, Carmel Water Colorist, In Farm-Group Period By Rosalind Sharpe, Carmel Pine Cone 1946

While I was trolling the internet for leads on the Pat Wall Modern Art Gallery in Carmel & Monterey, during the 1940s, I discovered a friend’s mother’s art reviews and articles from the Carmel Pine Cone in the Internet Archives. Because it’s an OCR scanned newspaper archive, the text was a mess: columns combined, whole chunks of missing, or orphaned text, and illegible clusters of consonants. But I cleaned it up and restored it to cyber-print, and I am posting most of them here along with my Pat Wall stories, for context. 

I knew Roz for most of my younger life, she was like a second artist mother, and we kept in touch, so I was excited to find something she had written during Carmel’s extraordinary Bohemian era. It is a safe bet that this is the first time that this readable article has seen the light since 1946 (other than the Internet Archives, where it is virtually unreadable). I’m sure there’s much more to be gleaned from the Carmel Pine Cone archives, if they even exist. Funny, my mother’s cousin, Marie Gilman was the Carmel Librarian. If only I could go back in time. The Monterey Peninsula Herald is another source, but its impossible to scan their microfiche archives. No text. Read on.  —Maureen Hurley, Spring Solstice, 2021

Carmel Pine Cone 1946-12-13 

FRIDAY, DECEMBER 13, 1946
At Pat Wall Gallery

Sam Colburn, Carmel Water Colorist,
Currently In Farm-Group Period
By Rosalind Sharpe

While oil painters are a dime a dozen in this neck of the woods, watercolorists (particularly good ones) are scarce as hen’s teeth, and Sam Colburn, along with Royden Martin of the Carmel Valley, is not only one of the rare representatives of this art on the peninsula but enjoys the not inconsiderable distinction of being good enough to stack up with some of the best in the field anywhere. He is a young man who has come a long way since he first arrived here and started painting in 1937, and particularly has gained command of his medium during the last three or four years. People hope great things of “Sammy” whose work already is distinguished for its simplicity of form, and its finely concentrated mood quality and his achievement is particularly remarkable when one realizes that he is a virtually self-taught artist in a medium which is generally considered the most difficult of them all.

When Sam was traveling through France, Spain, Mallorca, England and Germany in the early ’30s, he did a little sketching, but although he had always been interested in painting it was “nothing that felt like a career,” and later, when he settled down in southern California selling cub airplanes, he attended some life classes in the adult education program and was fortunate enough to get a teacher who was mainly interested in sculptural form. “To hell with cast shadows and all that,” as Sammy put it. But it was only when he came to Carmel where he had a lot and decided to build a house that he actually got launched on an artistic career. This was in 1937.

“That decided me,” he said, “No further waverings. Painting? I drifted into it gradually, until I became' thoroughly involved, enmeshed."

As to why he chose water color instead of oil paint as a medium, his surprising answer, "I was intrigued with water color because it was very difficult. Besides. I am very much interested in luminosity. You can achieve effect with water color not possible in oil."

"The oil painter," he added with a grin, “has to carry hundreds of brushes, paint rags, tubes, easels, all sorts of paraphernalia. It clutters up the place.”

Sam, who is a thin, lanky individual with a deceptively casual air , who usually impresses people fOL being one of those characters who^drift through life without strain or undue exertion, is actually an extremely hard worker who rises nearly every morning around 6:30 or 7:30. ‘I get out very early when the sun is not high,” he said.

"The landscape is more dramatic in early morning or late evening." And when Colburn is really in his stride, he turns out two or three water colors a day. Some, however, take a lot of time. Others are more sketchy. But watercolor on the

[in tyith people and everyday living, ]. Sam had some pungent comments to offer.

“Art and artists are receiving a wider acceptance lately,” he said. "There is more interest, no matter in what kind of art. At one time artists were considered ‘precious.’ They were looked down upon as producers of nothing worthwhile. But people realize now that they have plenty to offer.”

“Museums,” he continued thoughtfully, “are very bad and even art galleries from one standpoint. People think they have to walk in and stand in awe. It scares them away from art and they think it’s something that has nothing to do with themselves. Paintings should be in homes and restaurants and bars and stores. Mainly in homes, where people live with them.

Jeanne D’Orge, painter, exhibit at the Pat Wall Modern Art Gallery “Paintings Not for Sale“

While trolling through Google looking for articles on my friend Micaela’s father’s art gallery, the Pat Wall Modern Art Gallery in Carmel, and Monterey, during the 1940s to 1960, I stumbled across one of Micaela’s mother’s article from the Carmel Pine Cone in the Internet Archives. Because it’s an OCR scanned newspaper archive, it was a mess. But I cleaned it up and restored it and then I realized it was something of interest. It fleshed out the stories I was working on about Pat Wall. And then it becomes a gift to my friend Micaela, a Memento Mori, words written by her mother so long ago. It’s safe to say this Jeanne D’Orge interview of Rosalind Sharpe Wall hasn’t seen the light of day since 1946. Obviously this blogpost was written much later than 1998, but since these are themed pieces, I am posting it here. 

During the 1970s, my boyfriend Bob Hamilton, and I spend most weekends in Monterey County. We camped in the VW Bus and explored the Big Sur area. We were interested in the bohemian artists of the 1940s. I have a vague memory of visiting the Jeanne D’Orge gallery and spending an evening looking through her work. In retrospect, I realized the kindly gallery sitter was probably Jane Wilgress (see below). Because I was not yet a writer, I don’t have specific images to share, perhaps visiting all of this is a way to regain memories from that time when I did not write. —Maureen Hurley, Spring Equinox, 2021.

Cherry Center for the Arts

Jeanne D’Orge, neé Lena Yates, was born in Cheshire, England in 1877. When her father, a seed merchant, deserted the family, she and her mother moved to the outskirts of Edinburgh. Lena published her first poems at 20, and wrote a series of children's books on animal fables under the pen name of Lena Dalkeith—playing on a combination of her birthname, Lena, and the quaint Midlothian village of Dalkeith, near Edinburgh, where she was raised. Thus was the beginning of a woman of many identities.

While on a walking holiday in France in 1906, Lena was swept off her feet by geographer and engineer, widower Alfred Burton (dean of M.I.T.).  Lena and her mother joined Burton and his two sons in Newton Grange, Massachusetts where she and Alfred were married. A pioneering modernist poet, Lena became involved with the Others, a poetry group that included Marianne Moore, William Carlos Williams, and Wallace Stevens, and she began publishing her work in literary magazines, Others: A magazine of the new verse, and Poetry. Some of her prose poems were published under the name Lena Dalkeith Burton.

Suffering from poor health, and a profound dislike of east coast weather and New England mores, Lena moved to Carmel in 1920 with her 3 children in tow—where she built a Craftsman style house. Her husband retired from M.I.T, and joined her a year later. They became involved in community theater, with Dr. Burton building sets and acting in Forest Theater productions; Lena wrote and produced a series of Commedia dell’ Arte styled plays, including Crazy Ann, under the penname of Lena Burton.

In 1928 Lena created a scandal when she left husband and children to live with the Forest Theater lighting technician, and M.I.T. graduate, Carl Cherry, some 20 years her junior. They converted his mother’s old Queen Anne cottage, a wedding gift (they were married in 1930), into an art studio for Lena, and a workshop for Cherry. During the lean years, they lived off canned tuna and coffee. She began painting in earnest in 1937, and Carl Cherry struck paydirt when one of his inventions, the one-sided blind rivet, revolutionized airplane and shipbuilding construction during the war years. Lena took up her painting name Jeanne D'Orge, after a river in France, having shed all vestiges of her past lives. For D'Orge painting embodied the intangible moods of form, color, and feelings that cannot be expressed in poetry or music.

The Cherrys carried on as before, living a simple lifestyle, but used their newfound fortune to establish the philanthropic Cherry Foundation to "further the culture of America by sponsoring experimental fine arts, sciences and education." The foundation underwrote arts events, concerts, plays, lectures and seminars featuring world class lecturers and performers. She became friends with Robinson Jeffers and Edward Weston, and wrote plays under the pseudonym of Juniper Green, after a neighboring village near Edinburgh. After her husband Carl Cherry died of cancer in 1947, D'Orge continued to run the Carl Cherry Center for the Arts, and "often appeared on the streets of Carmel wearing a big pink hat, ankle length Chinese robes and paint-stained tennis shoes." She died in 1964. Her former home, now an art center, houses over 1200 pieces of her art, plus letters, books, manuscripts, photos and memorabilia, as well as an extensive library.

Pat Wall, modern art dealer: Dali, Miller, & Varda 3.5, envoy; folklore & fragments from The Pat Wall Gallery

(Much of this page was gleaned from orphan newspaper clippings—both fragments and articles often without dates or provenance—this is a pastiche of reportage and paraphrase, my own journal fragments—as well as some of my memories of Pat telling the stories of the artist colony that made Big Sur famous. Journal entry notes were collected from various sources, Pat Wall, his daughter Micaela, and other friends of Pat’s over the years.)

In the late 1970s, early 1980s, I also edited several of Rosalind Sharpe Wall’s manuscripts, one eventually became a book. When the Coast was Wild and Lonely: Early Settlers of the Sur  1987. The manuscript was a right mess as I recall, so her son, Chris, must’ve worked on it too, as it was reprinted. As we went over the manuscript, Rosalind would fly off into tangents on Egyptian scarabs, living Mexico, Henry Miller, the Tarot and John Cooke—scraps of stories with lots of middles, with no beginning, and no ending in sight. Only later, long after Roz died, was I able to make any sense of her stories.

 

Many of these orphan fragments came from old newspaper articles. I grew fatigued, and abandoned the project, as I had never properly recorded, or lost the sources. Someday I’ll get back to it. Micaela and I were hellbent on recording Pat’s oral history before it was too late. Then it was too late. So these are mostly from Micaela’s scrapbook collection. I was going to shape these notes into a fourth piece on Pat, but too much time had passed, so I can’t reconstruct it from these rough fragments—that strangely create their own story. So it’s a pastiche, a collage of sorts.

In the early 1970s, I also revisited many of the places Pat and Rosalind mentioned, including Doc Rickett’s lab on Cannery Row, when you could still go inside and see the empty aquariums, and the ranch that Henry Miller was living on. These were stories we grew up on. We used to stay at Deetjin’s cabins in Castro Canyon when we were flush, but more often than not, we slept in pullouts along Highway One. We met up with a bunch of hippies, who saw that we were reading Tropic. A party ensued. My boyfriend Bob Hamilton and I wound up sleeping in the VW van on a hill so steep, it was a miracle the van didn’t roll down the mountain into the sea. Oh, but the morning was stellar as we were above the fog line, afloat in our own cloud kingdom. Magic was afoot on the Big Sur coast. 

Pat Wall, Modern Art Dealer: 3 Henry Miller and the Avant Guardians (journal)

Amazing to spend the morning reading about the Pat Wall Art Gallery and its wild guests, then to look around Micaela's room and see the very art mentioned in the reviews. The Avant Guardians are watching over me as I sleep.

I'm looking at Henry Miller's self-portrait with its red and green five sided frame, the brushstrokes are deft. Henry, supposedly in his 50s, stared back at me across the years, a young man with sallow skin and Prussian blue ears and nose. 

You painted what you liked, Henry. I hope you died happy. Henry looks a bit like Oleg Atbashian, which puts me off a bit. Self-absorbed men. Was it the talent that made them so self-absorbed, or was it the rank self-absorbtion that allowed them to become so talented?

I recognize so many of the paintings: McClatchy's Door. Several Graham paintings: Lament, and The Beginning of War. Other unnamed pieces. When Graham and Miller became rather famous, things changed. 

In the early 1970s, I remember traveling to someone's house under the Bixby Bridge to see Henry Miller's watercolors. I was not duly impressed. But I dutifully read everything that Miller ever wrote, so I felt compelled to witness the paintings too. I think I was reading Nexus at the time.

I think the owner was rather hoping that we'd buy a painting, but we were as penniless as Miller was when he moved to Big Sur. Micaela has more articles on Henry Miller's watercolors. Wish I had time to read them all.

Henry moved to Big Sur in 1943 and lived in a tent alongside the highway, he was already living the life of Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch, it was a cult of sex and anarchy on the coast. He said, "I'm not perverse, but the idea of looking through a keyhole fascinates me."

A keyhole in a tent? I asked myself. And thought of camera obscurae.

April 14, 1947: Henry Miller talked about how his paintings morphed from landscape into fish. I wonder if that's a reference to his Red Fish? 

Said Miller, "When I paint I have a lot of fun but I feel I'm on a tight rope. I'm jittery sometimes when I start out to do a landscape I end up with a fish I worried about this until the other painter said they do the same thing."

I had to laugh, Mike Goldberg's painting, Sardines, came to mind. See, Frank O'Hara's poem Why I Am Not a Painter sums it up nicely.

....I am a real poet. My poem
is finished and I haven’t mentioned
orange yet. It’s twelve poems, I call
it ORANGES. And one day in a gallery
I see Mike’s painting, called SARDINES.

Pat Wall's art gallery became the focal point in a Harpers article on the new west coast cult of "sex and anarchy." A Times reporter descended, to buy a Miller painting, then left for the East Coast, calling it Paris of the West. Miller was a Paris expat, so he had several threads going. The race was on.

About the same time, the restless New Mexico contingencies (Wilfred Lang and Co.), were experiencing hot flashes, the Age of Light was born. (My grandmother's niece was working on the Manhattan project).

And somehow the role of art went from the cultured confines of the City of Light to the Age of Light. Miller detonated a moral code in Big Sur. The world fell apart, the center did not hold.

Henry must've loved exhibiting his thermonuclear watercolors next to the surrealist nudes of Dutch oil painter, Cock van Gent (a she!), and Edward Weston's extreme close-up photos of bell pepper buttocks.

The Grahams, Toni & Ed Ricketts, James Broughton, Virginia Varda, Dr. Rodin, Henry Miller's physician, and someone named Brewsie were among those attending. Everyone signed the register as Mr. and Mrs. So-and-so, as if that slender slice of decorum could contain the avant guardians.

Pat Wall, Modern Art Dealer: 2 Betty Wall (journal)

Pat & Betty Wall, me, Arthur Boericke, Fort Bragg 1971

One of Pat Wall's gallery artists, Joseph Albers, a Bauhaus student and teacher, painter and poet, taught at Black Mountain College in North Carolina with Jean Varda. Varda I remember from the Sausalito houseboat days when I used to stay at Pat and Betty Wall's house. Micaela, Chris and I often played on the Charles van Damme ferryboat.

I knew Walter Gropius's name would eventually crop up in this crowd. Too bad the Hexagon House in Guerneville burned down. We used to go to tea dances there in the early 1980s. I remember sitting on a tall stool admiring that open beam work. I was always told that he designed it, but someone else did. No matter, it’s gone now.

Another clipping on top of the scanner: thieves broke into Picasso's home, took his clothes, took his money a radio, but left the art. Thieves also broke into a Berkeley woman's house to steal a painting by Dan Harris. Who is Dan Harris? (a painter, his wife Gertrude gallery sat Pat’s art gallery).

Names from my childhood kept cropping up. Sue Wall dressed as a girl sucking on a lollypop, a painting by by Dan Harris. Pat's other wives: Rosalind Sharp, Mrs. Margaret Lane. Did those women have any idea what was in store for them? Still in their separate identities. 

Pat would later divorce Sue and marry Rosalind and have two children, Micaela and Chris. Meanwhile Mrs. Lang and Wilfred Lang separated… Which one? My God is that a reference to Betty Wall, Micaela's stepmother and Pat's third wife? 

So, who was married to Wilfred at the time? I can't imagine Betty as the "other' woman. But they all were "other" women, one way or another. Betty was more of a mother to me than anyone else in my life, certainly my own mother—besides my grandmother that is… The other women who raised us. Art was our mother. Art was also the other woman.

Aug 9, 1998

added 6/17 slight revisions

Pat Wall, Modern Art Dealer: 1 Ellwood Graham
Pat Wall, Modern Art Dealer: 3 Henry Miller and the Avant Guardians
Wilfred A. Lang, painter (1915-1994)
Banana

Pat Wall, Modern Art Dealer: Ellwood Graham (journal)

Patrick Wall, founder of The Pat Wall Gallery, Carmel/Monterey, ca. 1973

When I was a child, my eyes feasted on the paintings collected by my best friend's father, Patrick Wall, when he was an art dealer in Monterey during the 1940s. Pat's gallery was on Olivier Street, we never did collect his oral history, so this is a placeholder for what we collectively remember. We also didn't realize that Pat singlehandedly changed the face of West Coast art with his controversial unorthodox exhibits. 

Pat, who was from Jersey, the Channel Islands, UK, came to California ca. 1940, with his inheritance and a dream of art. He took a chance on the local "moderns" and created The Pat Wall Modern Art Gallery, and through this connection is how I got to know the work of Ellwood Graham who "painted out loud" with lots of hot colors. His abstract portrait of John Steinbeck was controversial at the time—circa the 1940s.

What I loved were how Graham's personal hieroglyphics, or pictogram paintings which were almost quilt-like in nature, I loved the way the heavy dark colors were a combination of thick impasto, a drawing, and transparent glaze. A doodle, a half a whale (the tail end) captivated my attention. He compared his work to a composer working on a "musical canvas." Graham painted an egg tempera mural in the Ventura Post Office. Is it still there?

So much history attached to those old paintings of Pat's. There was John Steinbeck and Ed Ricketts, known as Doc Ricketts— they too were juxtaposed in Graham's work. It was John Steinbeck who told the artist to paint out loud imagine that—paint out loud. Graham moved to Monterey because of John Steinbeck.

Steinbeck also created in Graham's [Monterey] studio. He wrote Sea of Cortez while Graham rendered his portrait. Of course he sold the painting to Steinbeck, but "I kept some studies and sketches." 'Where is that portrait now? "People have been calling me for years... I don't know." he says, "I haven't seen it in over 50 years."

Then he adds, "That portrait was very good... I hear it was bought by Burgess Meredith but I also heard it belonged to John Huston. —from Alta Vista Magazine, 1992 "Ellwood Graham: Never Say Die," —Susan Lea Hubbard (see bottom of this post for more stories).

Saltspring Island (placenames) (Journal entry)

I awoke thinking of Salt Spring Island. Phrases we once said: We're going to Ganges for some Labatt's Blue. We're going up Mount Vesuvius and Mount Maxwell. Salt Point, Long Harbor, Indian Wells. So many orphan names attached to memory. Now mere fragments.

This place is the haven of wildlife artist Robert Bateman, and of movie stars: Al Pacino Patrick Stewart, Robin Williams. We never saw any.

But I do remember all the nesting eagles at Beaver Point. Like Christmas tree ornaments. The pictogram that I carved into living rock. A Kwakiutl sun face design for the solstice.

I remember naming the deer. We camped at Henry Ruckle's farmstead at Beaver Point, Now Ruckle Provincial Park.

And the odd bits: the first to arrive were nine slaves in 1857. They landed in Vesuvius Bay, the northwest corner of the island. Refugees from California. Last time I was on  Salt Spring Island, it was a refuge for draft dodgers, from the Vietnam war. Bob was thinking of defecting. We were looking for a place to call home.

A cultural crossroads on the Gulf islands. The Hawaiians, the Kanakas (Polynesian for human beings) whose descendants still live here. We visited the Hawaiian graves at Fulford Harbour, at St. Paul's Church, some dating back to 1885. No markers for the First Peoples, the Salishan and Saanich.

7/28/1998
rev. 6/17

Dream: Robin Williams

7/24: Last night I dreamt I was hanging out with Robin Williams, and it seems so real. I was amazed that he remembered me after all these years. After all, I haven't seen him since 1983. And despite all those years since College of Marin, (1970-1973), I was surprised to discover that a part of me still loves him. 

I awoke with a sensation that one doesn't ever really fall out of love, it just moves over for another person, like a lazy dog at the hearth. And so, I chose Bob Hamilton, or should I say, he chose me, because I was too shy to pursue Robin, and he was too shy to pursue me. I was left standing in the field.

 Imagine how different my life would've been if. If we had managed to handle the mating dance? But now, more years than I care to imagine, have passed. What is the half-life of a first love? If requited, or not? 

I dreamed we'd absolved all that self-confessed shyness. I regret all the lost years. I said, too bad we weren't in touch when you did Moscow on the Hudson. We could've practice our Russian. Yours was pretty good, I said. But mine's better.

There wasn't a romantic twist to the dream. We were just glad to see each other after all these years. But our lives, once intertwined, were interrupted, and I lost sight of him, both literally and figuratively. And the world claimed him, as he lost sight of himself.

7/24/1998

Remembering Lloyd Bridges

On March 10, 1998, Lloyd Bridges died. I remembered him from when I was a child, How he held me on his knee, dangled me, and threw me into the air until I screamed with delight, and he gave me a crystal star necklace. He said he had a daughter just like me. Lindy. He was like a father to me that summer in Sacramento .where my mother designed costumes for a live TV program, a weekly series, Music Circus.

I remember Lloyd on stage as Sky Masterson, sitting at the table pounding his fists, in Guys and Dolls. And there was also a ballet dream sequence. The set was draped in purple tulle netting. The magic of theater had me hooked. I later dressed up in those scraps of purple tulle pretending I was a ballerina. Twirling in the basement. 

The crystal star, it slipped behind the backseat of our neighbor Agnes's Pontiac. I remember frantically searching for it, heartbroken. But she was too drunk to care, or to help me find it. Can't stand the odor of Bourbon to this day.

Now I hang crystals in my windows to catch and spin light, just like that crystal star Lloyd gave me. I watched that man on TV religiously every week at my friend Stephanie Stone’s house. We didn’t have a TV, nor reception, either. Sea Hunt would eventually lead me into and under the sea. I became an avid snorkeled. I can't get enough of that underwater realm. Magic.

It was like swimming inside a crystal, mirrored endless light. I gazed at it that summer in Sacramento, dangled it in the motel pool, playing my own game of Sea Hunt. But Jeff and Beau wouldn't play with me. They knew their father wasn't Captain Mike.

I have a vague recollection of them, two blonde boys in the deep end of the pool. But I was too shy, and only six. But I adored Lloyd. I was too young to care about things like autographs or photos. 

As I watch the biography of Lloyd on TV, a floodgate of memory opens up. And yes, I was really there. I remember fragments of my childhood and maybe someday I'll write about it.

7/23/1998

• Guys and Dolls

Intruders of Imagination

I've been cleaning, marveling that I can even do such simple work. I'm patching the tiles of the kitchen floor with acrylic paint and Fixall. I realize I've already dreamed of doing this before, a déjà vu moment, and I say to myself, Neil will call today, and so he does. I'm depressed, it's 4 AM for him in Scotland. I told him I had night terrors when he left. I was screaming at shadows, intruders of the imagination waiting at the door.

7/21
added, rev slightly 6/17

Journal entry, 7/10, Big Sur

7/10/1998  Big Sur was fabulous, it restored some sense of play, freedom and adventure. Since the accident we’ve had our noses pressed hard against the dredge wheel, reality pressing in from all sides. Other than a jaunt to Nicasio to see my family, or the rare evening among friends, we haven’t really done much of anything. No mini vacations etc.

We were planning to go to the Guinness Fleadh at Spartan Stadium in San Jose and it was so expensive the tickets were $42.50 each plus $10 for parking with no in and out privileges, no food no drink etc. We got pissed off and drove down the coast. We hung out at Asilomar, the scene of the crime, and I snagged a room on the at the Bide a Wee motel for $59. He didn’t want to stay at first and I ignored him. We played table tennis in the Asilomar Lodge  and visited the scene of the crime where he collapsed from the ulcer. Yes it was isolated, and yes it was at night, and yes, he really could have died there.

Catering to the Catered (journal entry)

I'm waiting for the Boyd people to show up. It's 7:50 AM. I could've had another cup of tea. I rode in on BART, everything still new, but it's not as overwhelming as before. I'm sitting in the hall of the SF Mart, an orphan in service black and whites.  I could have used that last cup of tea, I'll be upset if they don't arrive by 8 AM as I struggled to get here on time. I'm early again because I don't know the ropes. How close to shave it in terms of time?

What was I dreaming? Evaporated, the alarm jostled me back to this world, and for some reason, I have such strong memories of Leningrad and Amsterdam whenever I ride BART or the metro. That link with Europe via the underground railway. It's the odor, and I think how an entire culture exists underground, even if it's only transitory. Not just the vendors, or the homeless, but those enroute, as well as those who are always caught between worlds, never arriving.

7/28/1998
added 6/17

Catering the US Open Golf Tournament

21 June, 1998, the longest day of the year, and the last day of the US Open golf tournament at the Olympic Club where we're working. The caterers Ridgewell's, the sixth largest catering company in the United States, also caters White House events. They give us many rules. We are an invisible tuxedoed army.

This is how we celebrated the first anniversary of our car accident, and Neil's 44th birthday. As penguins in cumberbuns and bowties.

It's been interesting working the event. We're stationed in the Bayer Aspirin cabana. I now have catering experience under my belt. A new skill. Light bartender, server, sous chef, even busboy experience, all in one job. I was having to fluff out my résumé. I didn't expect to do it at the Olympic Club.

We had ringside seats at the Bayer cabana. The Bayer representatives take pity on me and offer me some aspirin. When Tiger Woods stepped up to put, you could hear the reverence roll like a wave over the links. It was a holiness of sorts. Everyone was dressed in woolen kneepants and Argyle socks, as if they stepped out of the 19th century. I looked for Model T cars on the horizon. Mostly Caddies in the parking lot. Even a Rolls Royce or two. It's that kind of crowd.

I learn words like birdie and mulligan and wondered about the backstory, what Irishman did what to get that one named after him.

We were hired through a connection of Neil's, a Marin caterer, Fred Martin. It's sporadic money at best, I needed to earn something anyway. We've been so exhausted each evening, so it's a training ground, or a battlefield where we attempt to prove our mettle.

added, revised 6/17

Asleep in the bath

I'm mad at Neil for hogging the tub. I asked him not to stay in the bath until 2 AM, so he lumbered out at 1:30 AM. Meanwhile, I fell asleep on the couch, exhausted. And then it was too late to take a shower or so I thought. But then, because I needed a bath, I couldn't sleep. So, I crawled off to sleep in the bath, Norwegian Wood style. Every muscle aching. But the water was too cold. More grueling punishment tomorrow at the US Open to watch Tiger Woods rack it in.

Journal entry, 5/13 back in Santa Rosa

5/13/1998 I’m back again in Santa Rosa after a sojourn at Neil’s place since Easter. My God how the time has flown. It all began with me sobbing over the phone at Easter, we were talking about taxes and I came undone. I was supposed to go to Wendy’s Easter party, and to possibly meet up with Neil beforehand. We were still on pretty shaky ground ourselves, which didn’t help matters any. And I was feeling so very fragile.

Neil said to bring my taxes down with me and so I did. Tom Harrell was living with Neil and finishing up his fourth your internship at Highland Hospital, so we didn’t have a lot of privacy. Tom’s hours are varied between three shifts. Poor guy. And so I worked on my 97 taxes, and actually accomplished my goal by April 15. Then I begin working on my back taxes and finishing up on my Higham family school book, when Neil had to go to Monterey for a gig. 

Meanwhile I went to Sinead’s and then home again feeling like this trip up north was all wrong, and I didn’t know why. He was looking so forward to it. Tuesday he called me early from Monterey. I called him that afternoon at home but he had been hospitalized for a duodenal ulcer that hemorrhaged. So I turned right around again and drove right back down to Neil’s I didn’t even spend one night at home.

Full Moon Over Lake Merritt

Saturday's full moon over Lake Merritt. I found in the mud, a horse jawbone, encrusted with barnacles and tube worm casings. Blackened as if it had been burned. I took it home and bleached and cleaned it. I always wanted a horse jaw, or skull. So, I didn't get the whole thing. Still, I am pleased for the horse is the totemic animal of my dreams, of creativity. The horse, the archer, first full moon in May, magic is afoot.

We walked around the lake, a long line of goslings came tumbling down the hill to the safety of water. The super flock had grown up, teenagers now. We counted 36 goslings. A few domineering mothers had kidnapped, goose-napped all the others babies. As someone said, you can't get much cuter than that. As they waddled up the embankment to splash about and drink from a mud puddle, and to nibble on the grass, they were a superfamily: brothers, sisters, cousins, aunts, uncles and relatives by proximity. What could top that?


May 1998

Lake Merritt, Oakland

Home alone on a Saturday night

Yesterday I was miffed at Neil for not showing up for dinner at six, he had gone to see Vito. Well, an evening transpired, he had his guitar with him, and the women of the sangam were there. He eventually called near 8 PM. I went out for a walk around the lake and he still hadn't returned, so I did some errands, arriving home after 10 PM.

I was talking with my cousin when he finally came in, and I was bugged because I was in the hurry up and wait mode all that time, and I had already fix dinner by the time he had called. Sinead calm me down as I tend to take off when my mind gets going. But I was the one home alone on a Saturday night while he was out playing.

Mauve is a color

We're in the emergency room at Highland Hospital. Neil's bleeding again. Frank blood. Stretchers coming in right and left with the crazies seeking shelter for the night.

A woman, whose contractions are coming in three minute intervals, tells me the pain is bad it is unbearable. She doesn't know the English for midwife, and I don't know the Spanish. We chitchat. Some women have been here for over five hours. I'm beginning to feel faint. Some are screaming, others are moaning hopelessly.

Neil wrote his will while waiting. We ran his lines for Malvolio. I am an executrix of his will along with Allison. He bequeaths his Ovation guitar to me. I don't want it.

Some of the paramedics are as crazy as the crazies. One explains to the other that mauve is a color, like lavender, only different, as a crazy accuses another of being gay.

Neil says, be warned that someone could pull a gun. He is called into a waiting room. The crazy says all the homosexuals run the mental institutions. You know like Cuckoo's Nest. They wheel in a big jovial Indian man dressed in mauve, with swollen crippled feet, his toes have all curled underneath with ingrown nails. He will never walk again.

Neil comes back to say it'll be a while, six people in front of him it's been crazy back there as well. He looks particularly handsome tonight though he's been bleeding on the inside. He reads to me from the yoga journal about love, the heart, and relationships Aha! he exclaims, always looking for exterior signs, that's about us. Lately he's been questioning why we're still together, I think. Mauve is a color, only different, I tell him.

DIVIDING MORNINGS BY AFTERNOONS

DIVIDING MORNINGS BY AFTERNOONS

All this new math asks the impossible:
I divide morning by afternoon
to arrive at a total bird count.
Let me go, like the water iris 

fisting its way towards death,
for I have seen the day lose its breath
 as the sky blanched and contracted.
 Another crisis averted, a dress rehearsal

converted into an equation for living
one's life the appropriate length of time.

 Or is it a case of X plus integers?
If only the problem were that simple,

like laying out a sonnet rhyme scheme
and then filling it with wild birds.

4/26/1998
added 9/2016
minor revision

The Higher Functions of Lower Math (Archie Williams)

I have spent the morning weeping over the higher functions of lower math while the medical student Tom, a doctor in waiting, sleeps in the other room. He is neither doctor nor student, yet he would have no trouble passing the math test. He could pass it in his sleep. Maybe I should ask him while he sleeps.

Neil attempted to show me the simple algebraic equations that poor Archie Williams tried to teach me some 25 years ago. He may have been the first black man to win a gold medal for running, but he couldn't teach me the higher functions of simple math.

I admired that golden disk within its five interlocking rings. And the heft of Archie's Olympic medal. Nouns Berlin and Hitler were stored in memory to be extracted at a later date when the larger picture would reveal itself some some 20 years later— when I fell asleep in front of the TV.

Hearing Archie's name mentioned on the TV, I pieced together a string of names that were attached to the story of Berlin, 1936, Jesse Owens and Archie Williams—the underprivileged, the those censored by race and by creed. Under a Nazi Germany, was it Nuremberg? The story took years to piece together. Before internet.

I struggled to become a teacher like Archie, but I failed a practice CBEST test. A test a sixth grader could ace. I couldn't piece together the parts of the whole in order to pass the practice test. I'm failing the higher functions of lower math.



see more on Archie Williams
"Olympic Pride, American Prejudice" documentary includes Archie WIlliams
RIP Harry Roche
Segregation Games (Archie Williams)

Journal entry, ulcer, 4/21 - 4/26

4/21/1998 I’ve been uneasy about Neil being in Asilomar, it turns out for a good reason. On Sunday he passed out at the ocean and when he came to, he thought he had food poisoning so he took himself to the hospital. It was a duodenal ulcer and he nearly bled to death, they said I was feeling more and more depressed as I headed north and I didn’t really know why. I guess I sensed something was amiss. He’s on the phone with a classmate, Jill, gory details. Tom Harrell, the doctor/boarder, walked in the door it looks like he had a rough day in the emergency room. Neil talks about his classes and I’ve heard the story before. It is the first warm day, spring has arrived and it’s a bit sticky. Scent of lemon blossoms hangs in the air.

4/22/1998 Neil sleeps. Wendy called to ask how he was doing. He was so shaky and gray yesterday evening when I arrived. Shaky on his feet. We held each other for sometime. I gave him a light massage but his skin hung to him, clammy. He probably lost a quart of blood, and is anemic. I remember seeing how sweaty he was the other day, and I thought it odd. And that sweetish, almost fetid odor that emanated from him. When he fell asleep on the couch, he was sleeping oddly, and I thought something was wrong. Did he have a stroke?

4/26 A second night on the couch for him, and of course I can’t sleep. 7 AM. Nightmares of vultures landing on the infield. Too many consultants between me and the pitcher anyway. I had to throw a fit in order to see who the pitcher was, let alone, see the ball. When the vulture landed between us, ending the game, it began to feed on itself for it was dead, or dying, plucking it’s skin like a doppelgänger devouring itself, beak first.

Journal entry, 4/17 continued

4/17 continued... I made a drawing of calla lilies today, I worked outside with my single flower turning it again and again for different angles to make it look like I have a full bouquet. I realized that the little black kids on the balcony were watching me trying to figure out what I was doing. One little guy said to the other, why does she keep looking up at us? And the older one explained, she’s drawing that flower. Look. But he wasn’t convinced and they argued about it for a while. I smiled and then held up the drawing. The ice was broken. The little guy said, tight! And I said thanks. There has always been a potential for hostility between them and us. They often throw trash into our little yard. Maybe now it will stop. Neil wouldn’t have leave anything outside. Stuff has been ripped off before. And now we leave the chairs and the tables and even the clothes we put the line up, overnight—with confidence having made that space a secret oasis. It is our dining room.

Speaking of our, I’m still in the dark as to what we’re doing, having cut myself off from him. I do have more strength I’m not dependent upon him. My domestic urge is still strong but I’m less attached, there’s a good distance on both sides still. But we regained some small parcel of ground. I climbed aboard him wrestling as we used to do and he wasn’t too responsive, he was that tired but a few feeble attempts restored something that was lost.

The boarder, medical student Tom was at the door. I leapt off Neil and sat up, all circumspect beside him, embarrassed by the compromising position only to have him crawl on top of me to throw it’s me. What I saw was a rekindling of affection in his eyes, we both have been dead and cut off since I left. We walked down to see the ducks at dusk and he again was ranting about the pain in the suffering, specifically how he regretted the blow up he had with his old man in Ireland.

He said, he was a real cunt about wanting to leave and instead of giving into him,I got angry and we weren’t speaking to each other and I thought at the time that I’d live to regret that moment—it will come back to haunt me. And it did.

He was pretty shattered by the time we got to the ducks. I tried to hold him from behind because he need to be held even if he didn’t want it. It reminded me of a pony I had who threw me, and at first I thought she was maliciousness until I discovered she was insecure and needed to be gentled. I guess she had gotten plenty of abuse from her previous owners. She knew pain and humans who inflicted were her adversaries. She had had hid her fear behind a socialized façade, she was seemingly well adjusted.

He broke away after a few moments, still intent on containing his own grief. His back was really hurting. He said, let’s sit down on the step. I massaged and held him, telling him to breathe, to let go of the grief, not to dwell on the anger and the resentment, but love—for love is what your father needs right now, not the other. Give him your blessing.

I gentled him the way I would a horse. I was a horse whisperer and I could feel him letting go. I was  inside him deeper than I have ever have before. Still I was cautious for it could be seen as invasive and he was so vulnerable. I was using my healing skills to restore the pathways for I do have that gift to enter the psyche though there were still so many lines of defense between us, we were able to find a common ground.

You are perfect the way you are I whispered, remember the self. Let go of the burden of grief and pain. You don’t need it to carry it around with you any longer. You are the phoenix rising from the ashes of the past. There is only this moment, twilight on the lake, the ducks and geese flying towards the setting sun. How do they know where to go with such determination he asks. We could hear their gobbling replies on the wind.

I could feel him letting go, feel the pain slip from his shoulder blades, feel a bit of hope for that ice that is his wilderness, was beginning to thaw.

Journal entry, 4/17 domestic goddess routine

4/17/98 After the midterm yesterday Neil was pretty keyed up and stressed out so we didn’t go to the Romeo and Juliet play after all. Just as well as I was way too tired. The pain management pill is definitely making me dizzy, giving me vertigo. I started taking them Easter night three times and by Wednesday tax day I had vertigo. It takes longer to undo the damage I think. This is three days out, and I’m still dizzy.

Neil was going on about the theory of spiritual life, about advancement and how time is speeding up unnaturally while I watched the world spin past my forehead. I was useless for much of anything. 

I went on a domestic cleaning jag, sweeping, mopping etc. I rerouted the TV cable because I tripped on it one time too many. I wrapped it around the door but it was black and so I painted it white. Also I touched up the nicks on the walls and doors, the base paint I had brought to restore the stool was close enough. I also re-organized around the fridge painting around the electrical cord and I put nails up to hang the brooms, etc. I put in a cup rack and rescued potatoes that were gurgling, and made a great dinner with Greek potatoes, spinach feta salad, apple cobbler with gluten-free flour, which was a little challenging but it worked. It felt good to be on a roll, centering me.

Journal entry, post tax season 4/16

4/16/98 We made a quick quick dash down to the lake to visit the ducks which was a concession to me, for Neil has a midterm today, and needs to study. He lectured me on the pitfalls of poverty consciousness, when I said I was yet another grand in the hole from paying my taxes. He said,  You just got a $2000 job. Think of it in terms of more, not what you haven’t got. He’s right, but I am the the pessimistic optimist. I’ll believe it when I actually have the contract signed. He said remember when I sent you $2000 and I said your stress level rise to meet the occasion? It wouldn’t matter if it was $25,000. It’s still outside, a mental image of fuck you on the inside. It rises to the demand. True, that.

We celebrate with a salmon dinner. I dropped him off to study while I shopped for dinner and I felt like I’ve been given a reprieve on several accounts for I love being here and nearly having convince myself that we could become platonic friends, until we went down to the docks where he grabbed my jeans at the waist, sticking his hand between my cheeks left me over the edge, a rather familiar gesture for a man who professes interest no interest in my body. I didn’t let on, poker face as I was. Another time he remove the hot mitt from the stove mumbling about pilot lights and possible fires. A year ago I would’ve been pissed off at him, but this time I smiled knowingly, my back to turn towards him. Allow him his neuroses and quirks, for it to is a part of the the process. Be not attached. No gain.

It’s taking some time to restore the balance, but we are once again normalizing our relationship through established rituals, whether it be domestic like what do you want for dinner, or offering nurturing massages. Seeking the balance between the giving and receiving will always be our biggest chore in task, he had to give a whole lot more to me to get me through my taxes, as I had told him it would be so, then he had expected, but he did come through to the nitty-gritty end.

After dinner, our first outside since the range weekend, though we also had breakfast outside yesterday as well, he went to Berkeley to study, asking if I’d call some of the old Ulster gang, to see Romeo and Juliet at TheatreWorks, a play he had auditioned for. A lovely long chat with Lorcan whom I like very much, but he is a bit shy, and Jane Bark, Vito Orlando, and Allison Tassie, a real telephone night. Jane said you didn’t come to my puja, my housewarming. Neil said you were busy I said I had left him, having been fed up with our non-relationship on Ash Wednesday. I left him for the season of Lent. She said Ash Wednesday was a good day to leave. It was appropriate she said. He seemed a bit down, she noted. I said denial was buried in his name, and he wants to just be friends, and I couldn’t take it anymore, so I left.

Everyone seems to take it in stride that Neil and I are having a relationship, that he thinks it’s nothing more than friendship, but we all know better. Where do we go from here? I’m obviously a big part of his emotional makeup, as he is of mine. He’s afraid of definitions, and commitments, yet he desires the wife and kids thing, as an abstract. But, this is my home, this is my bed, we’re still sharing. Don’t rock the boat. See how long it will go on like this for he made the concession that we sleep together only this once for I am so fragile and I’m so vulnerable, when will he kick me out? Loose strands of my hair become a metaphor, turning up in the domestic arrangements, blankets, pillows, sinks, rugs, to claim residency.

The pearl is my oyster, I misread an ad for watches. If they carapace of the watch is the oyster, and the mechanism, the heart of the pearl, where does that leave time? For time allows nacreous intentions to grow between the shell and the quivering flesh. A conversation form Easter Neil wanted to know whether or not aphrodisiacs work and was there anything to it? Mostly in the mind of the beholder says Tom, but if you believe, it will work. Oysters seem to be a real-time honored aphrodisiac he concludes. His libido is raging and he can’t seem to find the right woman though he’s desperately searching.

Journal entry, Working on my taxes 4/14 to 4/16

4/14/98 Working on my taxes from 1992 to 1997. I spent the morning in the IRS building weeping, while collecting information forms, only to be told that because of my accident, I should go to an actual tax accountant who specializes in the arts. I should also depreciate my losses, my wages and earnings from 1993 up to 15 years into the future. But I don’t have enough information due to the accident, to file. To file an extension, even though I’m supposed to have back years paid, is impossible. The woman at the free tax helpdesk patted me on the shoulder as I wept, saying she understood. She understood. Perhaps that was more important than anything else. Not that it matters in the larger scheme of things. I’m doing all of this for such minute amounts of money. Draconian.

I’ve been at Neil since Easter Sunday working on my taxes. A fit of weeping yesterday afternoon depleted me. I had worked so hard and got nowhere. All the foibles of a dyslexic threatening to sink me. The complex labyrinth that is the IRS schedule and forms, the sheer volume of information is debilitating. 

The rules change from year to year, according to Congress. So no rules need apply. It’s all bets are off. I had to get different forms for each year. 1992 is being mailed to me. To do, California tax forms. My plate is so full I’m at the point of not dealing with it at all. I’m not used to this copious weeping. Agony, frustration, fear, rage myriad of emotions bursting forth. The taxman, and he taketh away.

4/15/98 I’ve been working all morning on my medical stuff stuff which will help with the insurance. I had breakthroughs right and left. A desperate call to do it Tobey Kaplan via Neil‘s urging, for some tax information on deductible categories where I was stuck. She also gave me the name of her CPA which I will have to use, even the IRS suggested it. All in all, my experiences yesterday with the IRS were very positive, considering. No one chastised or criticized me for not paying my taxes. Neil said it’s like going to confession, except there, you get to hide out in the dark confessional. I was on display for the world to see.

The other perk was a job lead at Markham school, Tobey said there is matching money. So I also called to Tureeda to see if I could approach schools, as Micaela wants to observe me. So things are opening up a bit. I’ll have to call some other CPITS people to see if there’s a nibble or two. I should ask Tobey‘s advice on upgrading jobs etc. She’s in much better position than I, with a junior college job, and other jobs as well. Still 1/3 of her income comes from CPITS.

After days of struggle, I finally finished my taxes. Neil walked me through the figures and, as I suspected, I owed them nothing. It was a minus win situation. Primarily due to my medical bills. But I have to pay my Social Security regardless. Done.

4/16/98  Now I’m facing the blank page with both anticipation and with nothing to say, having made a perilous journey through the tax maze, and having suffered I was elated to be done with it. We were mad hatters dropping off our precious cargo. There was a comraderie on the street, a common experience we shared as we lined up in front of the post office. One black man, seeing our goofiness as we raced to the mail bins to beat the 6 PM deadline, only to discover it was 7 PM, said it’s tax time! To which I replied yeah, hours of work to prove that I don’t owe anything. Neil gives me a bear hug to congratulate me on completing my taxes, saying see you survived it.

A woman walking her envelope to the bin burst into a smile thinking he was addressing her. I insisted on dropping a letter into each bin, there were four of them. He said hey that one was an express mail drop. I said I didn’t really care. I wouldn’t even put my return address on the envelope I was so mad. He had to do it for me. I said, trust me it’ll get to the IRS, no matter how funkily it’s addressed, it’s that big. I said, even if it were to get lost in the mail. I’d still get it back. Giving my zip was enough to ensure a return, but his sense of pride propriety with scandalized so my envelope was compromised by conformity, my address on the outside, a mental image of fuck you on the inside. 

COLLECTING STONES

COLLECTING STONES

Turquoise protects against catastrophe.
Amethyst promotes mild misunderstanding.
Citrine is an agent between the lower
and the higher self.

I am advised to follow my vision.
Keep my intentions honest 

and make sure my motives are pure.
I'm told to develop objectivity 

and stand back to observe the self.
Try to be more forgiving 

and less possessive, the oracle says.
What a bunch of crock.
I am no Brandenburg Concerto

or a mad minuet of the butterfly in flight.
I am the brash opening of Beethoven's Fifth.
What did I expect seeking advice 

from clattering stones?

April 13, 1998

10/15/2015

Journal entry, 4/13/98 Easter

4/13/1998 And so I called Neil who sounded a bit guarded but he’s been that way since my departure. It surprised me to learn that he’s been spending some time focusing on my dilemma—taxes and depression, admitting that he had reneged on those promises to help. A breakthrough. So his nos can become yesses. It was a wretched morning for me as I’ve been so depressed the past few weeks that I’ve been nearly dysfunctional. He told me to bring my taxes with me to meet him at the ashram, which I did.

I’m in such a fragile state, that the ashram was a calming refuge, but I couldn’t stop the weeping. He said to bring something of value to leave at the chair of the guru, so I left a silk painting, I had given the others to Wendy and Alison–as it was their birthdays. I wrote my wishes on a prayer stick, Finely sliced wood, one wish was to have a loving relationship and family. Also a prayer for strength and the resolve to grow through this trying time, to put my taxes behind me, to put to bed my grief over my parents and their death. To send to put it into the suffering of these past five years. I also prayed for a career, at least for guidance and for help.

My rock-bottom status—I’ve given up all hope and have lost the will to be a warrior. He took me to the altar of the statue of Laxmi bedecked with flowers in the breezeway. Should I have left my painting of flowers with him or with the guru? I left my prayer stick with him. What happens to the prayer sticks? Do they burn them? And my art? Do they burn it too? give it away? It’s like leaving a child behind. That just further increases my feeling of abandonment.

At the bookstore, the clerks exclaimed over my pieces. I had asked for a bag large enough for them. A lot of unexpected feedback positive. I flamed red, my face was hot—an unexpected source of praise.

Funny, when I was in the main meditation hall, I could feel energy rising from the top of my head but was it split into two directions. Later I realized one thread veered towards Laxmi, and the other towards the guru. As we first enter the meditation hall, he took my hand, holding it firmly, full of strength. And I again had that feeling of connection. The aha! moment. I belong here. Many hugs and weeping.

But by the time we got to the picnic, it was very late in the afternoon, The picnic was loads of fun. Vito, Jane Ayles, and Bob were there as well as Wendy’s family. Larry Spears and Naomi Gibson with their kids. Naomi left for Scotland as her grandmother had died—three deaths since the New Year’s. Tomas the intern was a little red-eyed as he’s on the night shift rotatuon at Highland Hospital but we had a rousing game of rounders which is a free-form softball with the kids.

As we headed back I began to sink into a depression again. How much of this is due to a profound lack of sleep? Tom and I chitchatted on the couch. I tried to to nap. Neil was talking to Jane Bark. We went to Pasand for dinner and had lamb for Easter.

We came home and Tom napped before going to work at midnight. Neil and I poured our souls out to each other and meditating for 20 minutes. The energy centered and rose in my crown and my feet began to buzz. They haven’t done that since I’ve left, I’ve missed that connection, literally. Neil said that sometimes that happens to people their feet open up, but it’s not common. Why, I wonder, I’ve always like to be barefoot, I suspect, to feel the energy flow through me.

As to what it is, scientifically speaking, I’d say it’s like the magnetic fields an acupuncturist stimulates. Nerve pathways which transmit electronic impulses. Whether or not I believe in all of this is moot as it’s happening to me. I’ve experienced it before but it was never quite so intense. I can see why people get all hooked on it, and of course I’m suspicious of that stuff too. But the life I’ve been living is no longer meaningful so, I’ve nothing to lose by it.

Neil says so many things I wonder if I can recall much of it except by paraphrase. Namely that I was on the verge of opening up, letting the shaktipat in, and he said I’d see how and why it changed my life. The spiritual community exists for a reason. I’m not a believer.  Vito said that I should do kitchen seva, etc. that’s his thing, to do dishes, but I reject this. I do enough dishes at home. Thank you very much.. Why is it that men are willing to do dishes at the ashram but not at home? Talk about double standard.

We talked a lot about the sources of my depression. Neil wants me to go to counseling—we share the same symptoms. I feel I’ve been depressed for a while, but I find it curious that he’s not willing to go to a counselor to see if his is a clinical depression. I know what the source of mine is, my parents deaths and the unresolved problems around them.

I played mirror for him and I said it doesn’t matter how you do it, just as long as you do it. He’s chosen the path of meditation and it’s helped him enormously via spiritual growth, but bottom line, he is still depressed. Why I don’t hear from him, besides the fact that he’s overwhelmed and or busy, is because he continues to be depressed. We talk about or despair, how the thought of suicide becomes evocative and unacceptable at the same time, the point being that the despair leads us to that place.

Earlier on, I had talk to him about how it was his responsibility to mine joy in his life, not someone else’s job. Strange to hear my own words back on his lips. Was I following him or maybe he was following me—we were on the same path.

We made ready for bed he said tonight is special mean we get to sleep together, but just this once and I become icy with anger, lying there, too tired to leave, having taken an allergy pill and a muscle relaxant at the same time. I spit out, you say that like I’m going to attack you? This is your decision. You call the shots. You defined the relationship. When he asked why I couldn’t just let it go and be friends. I said why are you so attached to nullifying thismrelationship thing because this is how it began, how we started. I don’t know when nor how it shifted into friendship with you but somewhere it did after the accident. I’ve been trying to hack away at it to no avail. because you keep giving me mixed signals.

I said part of the reason for my depression is the separation and I’m in grief over you as well. Boy did he deny that one, saying no no no no it’s about your parents, old issues, it’s not about me. I have nothing to do with it. Oh, then, denial is it. He was hurt that he was being attacked for being honest, saying we had three or four big episodes dealing with this, I thought we were clear. I reminded him again he was dictating the shape of things. He said something about my choosing the path of suffering and anger and hurt by being blocked. When I didn’t have to, as if I’d had a choice.

I can resolve to cut off all relationships with him, I’ve done it before, but I am not sure it’s the right path because I only feel right when I’m beside him. I had no answer, the anger dissipated as quickly as it came but I was glacial. His touch disarmed me and I rolled into his arms saying thank you for this evening. I get trapped in my own anger. Remember when I told you I had the hardest lesson was patience?

He said, you become stranger when you’re angry, you’re unrecognizable. I don’t think he said a beast or an animal. But funny how anger wounds you. You mean it for others, but it hurts you more, he said, falling asleep. He stroked my face. I contemplated that maybe he really doesn’t love me. He’s not in denial, or dishonest. Maybe something really did slough off. maybe he’s just a gadfly.

On the other hand, his depression and lack of desire have a lot to do with it. What is the best path to take? We were in contact all night long, mammalian warmth, creature comfort. I dreamed of finding a rubber on his desk and freaked only to discover it wasn’t opened. Still, it upset me because it was all out there on the table—literally. For me, or another woman I don’t have a clue.

Another tidbit—maybe we’re just dreaming up this moment during our long talks. I told him accident unhinged me and made a hole in my psyche and he was inside my head. He said I am you, there is no division. We are all one. I said I am afraid I am a fraud, and  he said, we all feel that way inside.

Journal entry, 4/7/98, continued, my mother’s marriage certificate, tax woes

4/7/1998  I fell asleep sometime after 8 PM and awoke at 10:30 with the TV blaring, some lame squawk show, so I turned off the lights and went back to sleep—only to awaken again at 6:30 in the morning. I dozed until 7:30 AM, my first full night’s sleep since I left Niel’s place in February. For lent I gave up sleep? I don’t think so. I awoke with erotic thoughts of Neil and wondering if I jumped his bones if that would’ve made any difference, or would he have rejected me anyway?

Yesterday my mother‘s marriage certificate arrived in the mail and I had to laugh, she told me they were married sometime in February or March 1952, this after telling me I was born at eight months, or I was a love child. But the date was June 29th! Practically July—and I was born in November. Talk about being on the way. I was not an eight-month baby but a five-month baby. Right? She said I was the only child she carried full-term most likely because I was conceived in March. Whose wedding Was it, I wonder?

Neil called, wanting to know about Walt Whitman! and I gave some pointers on what to look for: free verse, his was the first truly American poetic form, etc. Then he asked me if I I plan to file my taxes and we got into an imbroglio—I become sullen and quiet. 

He prods me, asking if I choose to pack around this pain and suffering. I accuse him of abandoning me, not making the time to help me. I felt betrayed, and that he didn’t listen to me. What I needed was someone to physically walk me through the process, to hold my hand. He said he would as soon as school was out, but this year he wouldn’t be able to help me at all. I’m angry because he didn’t help me when he said he would, and now there was no time for me. I am not a high priority. How He worked his way out of that promise saying he’d help me, when all he did was to drive me to Office Depot to pick up some files and ledgers. That’s not supporting me,  or is it going over the process so I understand what I’m supposed to be doing.

Journal entry, 4/7/98 reprise and regret

4/7/98  By now I must assume that he has gotten all my little notes, about Wendy’s the Easter party, my aunt Jane’s travel stuff. He’s leaving at the end of June for Scotland and going on a retreat in the Catskills for 10 days for the ashram. Whatever. It’s hard for me to accept that the ashram stuff is actually good for him, I think it makes him compartmentalize things even more. He maintains that its kept him whole. That’s debatable.

And of course there’s my missive. I’ve never let someone into my journal like that before, so it’s a big risk. He will hopefully see another side of me that isn’t readily available and perhaps be more understanding. Or not. Trouble is, he’s not much of a reader. Will he even bother to read it? I think so, but retention is a whole other matter. It’s a lively enough read, and it’s all about him—you know, the actor ego—so maybe.

Journal entry, 4/6/98 continued, home again

4/6 continued… Home again, not because I want to be here, but because I can’t stand what has happened to us, and so waiting around for Neil is pure torture. I get into a lather too easily, and I was sleepy coming home, partially because the alcohol, too much Guinness and champagne during the course of the evening, and partially because of depression coming on, having found his wishlist what he wants—a wife and kids—thinking what’s wrong with me? I feel marginalized, I am still not convinced he doesn’t love me though he is icy, but we’re both a little cool towards each other.

I left a copy of my journal notes to August 8 I left a quick note saying I thought he’d be interested in reading my notes to jog his memory that we were never merely pals, before the accident. I said I understood if someone falls in love and then out of love again, that’s another story. But to say that there was never anything there? He has done me a most grevious wrong and I don’t know anything that can right it.

Journal entry, 4/6/98, continued, Actors can’t commit

4/6 continued.... Bedtime roulette—since Gary Mullan was staying over on the couch after the Bay Area Theater Circle Critic’s Award, Neil and I slept together, chaste, but still we snuggled. He didn’t move away, but there’s a gulf between us. I slept in for the first time in ages. It seems like I can only sleep in at Neil‘s. Will this never stop?

Neil got up at five to take Gary to the airport, and then onto the ashram. So I’m here, but not quite alone. Tom Harrell, the intern, is here too for the month and as we go through our rather public trials and tribulations, I really wish Tom wasn’t here. He’s moved in, and I’m not really welcome. That’s not really true as Neil said this house loves you and you were always welcome here. Odd because he’s moved things around and I feel displaced as if the things themselves represented the familiar placeholders for something more than time and memory.

But, now he’s away at school and I haven’t a clue as to the long range plan. If I’m to leave, I should do it soon as traffic is horrendous in the afternoon.

I’m invited to Easter at Wendy Worsley’s. Maybe I should be satisfied with just that, be friends from afar, friends from a distance across the room.

As we drove across the Bay Bridge last night, Neil said it was really good to see the gang—his family—again, that he missed them and didn’t realize it. I was pretty reserved yesterday, feeling ambivalent after Sunday, though my cousin Sinead said you guys were in each others’s hip pockets. Maybe so, but I suspect we are both a bit frozen and I don’t see any thaw, we are both on our guard.

At Kate O’Brien’s I told Wendy about leaving Neil, but she said she already knew. I said that I was sorry for having kidnapped him on Sunday evening, but it was the first time we’ve had a normal interaction since I had left. She said, we must hope and pray for it. I also told Neil’s actor friend, Matt Klein, and he said, actors? They never can commit. Matt’s castmates, John Anderson and Alex were saying, awww what a nice guy Neil is, and here I am, thinking, what a jerk.

Journal entry, 4/6/98 Bay Area Theater Critic’s Circle Award

4/6/98 I was ambivalent about going to the Bay Area Theater Critic’s Circle Awards at the Palace of Fine Arts in San Francisco. I doubt that Neil would’ve understood if I didn’t show up. Was I so important? It’s just that I don’t like being part of the dog-and-pony show. Frank McGuinness’s play, Observe the Sons of Ulster Marching Towards the Somme racked in the awards. Naomi Gibson won Best Director for the season’s run, and Sons won Best Ensemble, that’s everybody, the entire cast. Wow. Gary Mullan flew up from LA, he was Neil‘s understudy, and took over the part after Neil’s accident.

Nearly everybody in the cast was at the event, except for Seamus who was in New York. It was great to see the old gang again. Someone said it was like doing the show all over again, that same feeling of camaraderie. At the awards, Larry Spears, Naomi’s husband, said, though we are a new theater group, we are here to stay.  

We all went out to Kate O’Brien‘s Pub afterwards. After all, this is where the play was originally staged. They put Naomi on the bar and she gave a speech, I can’t remember what all was said for the Guinness and the champagne were flowing. She gave another incoherent speech on a stool, and an Aran Islander, too drunk to stand, interrupted her every word.

We had a fabulous rooting squad, lots of us showed up, people whose names I didn’t even know, but I remember their faces. Some woman named Patricia remembered my name, so though we were injured, I must’ve made an impression. She asked if I was part of the Exit Theater group and I said no. Maybe it was a Verona connection? No. It didn’t matter. We drank to the stars.

Larry? Or someone at hired a stretch limousine and we all piled in taking turns cruising around the block. Going nowhere, other than in circles. Perne in a gyre. Such ridiculous fun. We told Gary that he was going to be next at the Oscars, and so he picks up the bar tab. 

I got a chance to talk with Gary’s girlfriend, whom he is thinking of leaving. I liked her. And I said to Gary, you must choose. Either you want your freedom, or you’re committed. I expected him to leave her, but he’s sticking it out. I’ve got to admire him for that. When I told him about my imbroglio with Neil, having left him on Ash Wednesday—thinking I never see him again, and yet here we are. He said these things have a way of working themselves out. I’m not so sure.

Journal entry, 4/5/98 Palm Sunday

4/5/98 Palm Sunday. Neil came to mass in Nicasio.We went over to the Druid’s Hall for the annual church brunch. We took a hike up the hill above the church. He was reciting Malvolio’s lines for the play. We walked down to the old school house, stopping into the Rancho to say hi to Danny the bartender who bought us two beers, and then we had dinner at Sinead’s, it was family day to the max. He was about to leave around 5 PM with a little arm twisting he stayed for dinner.

On top of the hill we goofed around. He got me into an interesting hold, bending me back into his arms and up into the air not once, but three times so it look like we were doing the tango. Maybe we were, only there was no music. Suggestive much? I don’t know, I’m feeling a bit cold towards him.

I don’t know where we are going, but at the top of the hill we had a good time. We lay in one another’s arms, facing skyward until the dampness of the grass caught our attention. The long slow body contact, holding hands as he recited his lines, I didn’t know what to think. What are we, Victorians? Entire novels have been written about this kind of foreplay. Some eye contact, but beyond the superficial glance, I don’t read anything into it at this point because I’ve been there before.

As we came down the hill he said that he was there for me—whatever that means. Is it merely my coldness or is the spark really gone? He asked me to transform my love, have I done so or is it merely a form of denial?

Later I drew the runes and asked if it was over, and instead, I got strength. So I asked again and I got separation, but reversed, followed by the great awakening. All three cycles represent self -change, and terminations equal new beginnings. What am I to make of this? At first I thought it was completely negative reading as in yes it’s over, but upon closer inspection more meets the eye, though I harbor little hope.

In the bar I got pretty blitzed on one beer and I refused to give him his cues unless he gave me a wee kitty. He offered his cheek instead, and I said, no you got to kiss me on the lips, and so he kissed his finger and then touched my lips after meowing like a kitty. So I didn’t exactly win my point.

He may honestly have not remembered our dalliances last year before the accident. I didn’t give him my notes yet but I did give him the poems, which he read. I’m also on my period so I’m a bit more bitchy in general. We are more scrappy, but it’s definitely a new phase. He made a few references to last Palm Sunday about dragging me across the field like Maureen O’Hara in The Quiet Man. I said you’re too late, you had your chance. He was also admiring my ankles after mass, I had low heels on. The only form of touching allow these days is wrestling but the very fact that we are wrestling is an improvement over the past few months.

It was good to revisit the past in public, so we could not fulminate or get lost in endless arguments. It was safe ground. The real question—do we still like each other? That’s obvious. We still like body contact too. I told him I’d never be anything but who I already am, and he told me to shush and calm down. I said and you wouldn’t want it any other way. He agreed.

And there’s still more distance between us, separate paths but I need to get going on the lawsuit stuff and I need to not be estranged from him. But we have to resolve this business so we can move onto the next level, whatever that is. I do feel that we are growing apart but our lives are so intertwined.

I told him how difficult it was that he never listened to me or remembered what I said. I hate having to say I told you so, but I’ve been doing it a lot lately. Last semester was a pretty trying time for me. We hugged and he said he felt something of his old self returning. It’s been a long dark passage for both of us. I’m still a little mad at him so I am less willing to trade small favors. I am still smarting from Alison’s remark about my wearing my heart on my sleeve. Oh, so it’s that old game, is it? Does she still hold a torch for him somewhere beneath all that calm exterior? I picked Neil a thistle from the top of the hill. A thorn in each other’s side.

Journal notes: Dear Neil letter

Dear Neill,

The trouble with writers is that we tend to take detailed notes on everything—nothing is sacred, especially relationships. Remember I was a reporter. Neil, since we have wildly differing opinions as to what our relationship is/was, please find enclosed a copy of my journal entries to jog your memory. Perhaps you’ll see why I maintain we were never “just pals.”

You may have been frozen, in denial, ambivalent, or even apathetic (a loose cannon?), but I don’t think you’re as innocent, or platonic (scot-free?) as you insist you were (see late May/June entries). 

If, after you read this, you still maintain we were never more than “pals,” well, then, there’s little else to say, is there? You’re not an honest man. I can only assume you were either trifling with my heart (an unforgivable transgression in my book) plundering me, you said? Manipulative? Or you have an abysmal memory (which we already know you have!). 

If you really were in love with me and fell out of love, that would be a different matter—these things are out of our control— but you maintain we never crossed that line from pals to couple. Well, we did. You inferred you wanted to be with me on several occasions, never quite asking me outright. Saying you’ll take care of me the rest of my life, that I’ll never want for anything if I stay with you, etc. What was I to believe, I imagined it all?

You can hide the truth from yourself only for so long, but I promise you, it will come back to haunt you. Maybe this is the reason why all your relationships turn to ashes, maybe this is a samskara we’re to work on. Maybe this is our last chance. 

You once said you were afraid to begin an intimate relationship, because all of your relationships turned to ashes, and you didn’t know why. You’d rather keep my friendship than eventually lose me as a lover. Well, you’re losing me as a friend for not being brave enough to risk being my lover! How’s that for turned tables? So choose. Either you’re in or you’re out. What will it be? Believe me, I’m not wearing my heart on my sleeve, I never was, I’ve just brutally honest, and chose not to play games—which is more than I can say of you. (Games bore me.) 

I’ve put my life on hold because of you, because of the accident. Now, I want it back. I’m not interested in games of denial. Life’s too short, and too precious for that. For all that I’ve done for you, given you this past year, nothing can repay that gift of myself to you. 

But I ask of you to be brutally honest with yourself, and to ask yourself if there’s anything more between us than friendship—as if your life depended on it (as it did last June). It’s a sad state of affairs, you haven’t even allowed yourself the chance to find out! Hey, I have some big doubts about you too, but at least I’m willing to gamble. Would you cut off your nose to spite you face, are you really willing to lose me forever because of fear or pigheaded pride, I wonder?

If you’re still in complete denial, maybe you’ll find this document interesting for other reasons. Understand why I’m so frozen. You always wanted me to write about you. Maybe you’re stuck on your rut, and me in mine: though they may run parallel, never the twain shall meet. Right? By the way, it angers me that you ask me to deny (“transform”) my feelings, erase them as if they never existed. Your denial is my suffering. There was reason enough for my expectations to develop. 

Yes, we’re in agreement that we have a rare, deep connection. You said something to the effect: if there really is a deep connection, people just don’t go around taking their possessions (and money) back… You seem to forget you’re the one who’s rejected me. Your words, not so neutral. Beware a woman scorned. When a fox is caught in a beartrap, it will gnaw off its paw to escape. I’m learning to walk on three-legs; don’t rub salt in the open flesh of a phantom limb—for maybe I only dreamed it all up after all.

Please note I begin this treatise with dream entries and finish with events, noting the dejá vús whenever possible. Many times I felt the dejá vú happening but didn’t note them down because there just wasn’t enough to go on—mixed synaesthesia. I did very little revision except for the post accident notes as there were times I was too out of it to write, and took annotated notes, knowing I’d have to write them up later for the insurance company. This journal rewriting wasn’t exactly easy—as I had to go back into time, enter and relive a year of intense suffering, but I felt it was the only way to reach you since you don’t always hear me.

April Fools' Day, 1998, Forestville