Come Back (17 page)

Feel like suicide the next few days. She doesn’t care one bit   letter huh! / drove blue pickup out to Aspen Creek / alone, empty cabin, bare trees at night groaning in the wind. Good music for me. Ripped open the 2 metre beaver dam below their lodge, twice, but they just patched it together every night / why am I anywhere

Our family at Grant and Joan’s for supper. Ailsa with Denn and Colin in family room downstairs but of course I have to stay, talk with adults. Then A comes upstairs face painted and dressed like a clown! Hallowe’en child

Like the buffoon, the clown is the mythic
inversion of the king, of the person with
enormous power seemingly reversed

I have not—no, I said a couple of sentences to her in church—she said Hi in a crowd but otherwise she ignores me—runs away in fact. I see no future. Just end it. I can’t Three day job, Edm. National Film Theatre, attendance survey.

I can’t forget that distorted clown. Things are worse than before I left. Such a waste— what am I doing? Is there a pattern I could figure out—

God (reason behind/beyond existence)
NKinski (innocence) / ideal / EKirkby (maturity)
Ailsa / closer to reality / Joan

So maybe if I talked to Joan more I … but obviously A and her mom are still not reality to me, I don’t really … what are they really like, what they think, what   in
Paris, Texas
the NK character says she hasn’t tried to see into another person’s mind, from their point of view—I do not even want to see into my own mind, but then I do not excite myself—only some others excite—o bla bla bla   I miss Miriam, researching her anthro MA in the old quarter of Quito, Ecuador—and her letters, not since September in London—“travelling alone … I’d get too lonely and feel more scared of things i.e. I’m quite brave in a group but not alone.” Ahh Mir, the heavy, heavy difference of “lonely” and “alone” / I’ve never even talked to sweet Mir about A   never to a single soul   but she’s
always been so considerate and gentle, every minute since I was born, my beautiful sister full of fun and forever friend, I can’t remember one quarrel or long yell leave alone fight, it sounds brother-and-sister impossible but its true because of her / maybe talk to her I should I should “I love you and think about you a lot”   yes, I do both too my sweet and only sister, and do you have an inkling of what I feel? I should visit you in S.A., bury myself in Spanish, learn to be a different person—   But now Leo says he’s quit his job at Edmonton Transit as of November 30 and will fly to Miriam in Quito for Christmas. And what will happen between them—o Mir, the dangers of studying Spanish—maybe if I’d been born like him, in Argentina and tortured half to death by politics and been forced to flee (not try to escape) my own country, maybe then I’d know what I wanted when I wanted it and do something. Not just sit at cafes below the Acropolis—in the bedroom where I grew older.

Okay folks, why’d you give me such a great Canadian childhood?

Hopeless

The problem is you can’t have anyone else, you only—maybe can’t even—have yourself. So why do I worry. I can’t help it if my emotions take control of me     can I

I hardly dare say a word to Joan who’s as lovely as her daughter, just to be in their presence is … I play my silly thought games—A will save me—fool, no one saves you, only yourself. I do have a few things to say, I just can’t do
anything. Not even shovel snow off the walks unless Mom asks me. If only my being would cease

Life mucks on, always, somehow. I still exist at church, to be ignored with a “Hi.” If only Germany and Duino—ugggh—this mind bullshit     why A why did you go after me in Mainz only to ignore—yuk—all I do is ping-pong back and forth about that stupid letter, never yet mentioned but there in every glance we

Edm. National Film Theatre, “a non-profit organization devoted to the study and appreciation of cinema.” May hire another assistant if gov’t. funding comes through/January. Fat chance.

Lucked out: hired by NFT, assistant administrator, $150/ week, start Monday 26, yes! And I can get out.

Stay at church for open lunch. A has cut her hair short, comes in and talks to BR, must be dating him. I can’t stand it, go down to washroom.

The problem is, if I could distance myself from this entity called “Gabe” I would laugh loud and sing: but since I am I it seems I can only weep.

I seem to hear chuckling, somewhere. Laughter in the dark. I hope I’m providing these beings with a good time,
because I certainly hate it. Why create feelings only to laugh at them. I say, who wants to exist only to be tortured

Hey! What am I doing? I’m free.     But I have nothing to say.     Or I do have a few things but I just can’t / in this basement room I can’t / things leak out of my head, that’s what eyes are for, to leak tears—or get mad at—poor Mom

Naturally I’m too feeble to go through with anything because the right time, right place would be the Oldman River the last week of April c. 21–30/85—but that is a long way away. Too bad I don’t get run over in the street / like Dad says of poor stories his students write all the time: things get too complicated to handle so here comes the Big Truck, Smash! All problems solved, end of story. Just step out

“…  tired of livin’ an’ scared of dyin’,

but Old Man River he just keeps rollin’ …”

Solitude
: Sanctuary of the Sensitive Soul (Duino Castle in mist)

Ardor
: A Demiurgic Quest (A walking away, forest)

Neither pic really much of anything?   hnnnn

Finished Nabokov’s
Glory
. In the end Martin finally ACTS. Sadness soaks me. “…  to create such a protagonist but not include talent with his keen sensitivity … how cruel to prevent him from finding in art—not an ‘escape’ (which is only a cleaner cell on a quieter floor), but relief from
the itch of being
!”

So much feeling with no talent, uggggh

Demiurge
:

an autonomous creative force, uncontrollable     yes indeed

Church concert p.m. A there with J, Grant sang tenor. After A came straight to me, said she was so glad she was old enough not to sing in the children’s Christmas program. She looked me in the eye unblinking, surely she was hinting at my only letter? She definitely does not hate me but—how can you talk in a packed church lobby chattering Christmas

Finished Nab’s
Laughter in the Dark
hmm a cruel novel, to be in such clutches. Denn went to Youth Group swimming party. Much too young for me, but I imagine Ailsa in a swimsuit—God you do create beauty, it exists in this world. Thank you for letting me see her, only please, now let me get to understand and see the mind behind those stunning green eyes.

Didn’t go to church—not up to seeing but impossible to be close situation. Suddenly remembered a song we learned in college, singing in my head:

I sing of a maiden that is makeless …

he came all so stylle where his mother was,

as dew in Aprylle

that falleth on the grass

Happy memories of Xmas singing … why didn’t I sing in that choir after the first term? So many questions

A and J, Grant, Colin come over in evening after Mom’s Christmas turkey dinner. We all play games on family room floor. Fireplace fire. Always nothing but family, very good for what it is, laugh and snack and joke and chatter and everything warm / the back of her head, her slender hand reaching / she plays every game so intently, completely / friends, family happiness / lying in me like a burning log

With parents, Denn to Aspen Creek, cabin in deep snow. Plowed a track in. Tree trunks a grey wall splintering, crashing with cold. Chain-sawed firewood, shovelled. Then Fred arrived from his home in Winnipeg, great, played ping-pong, pool, lots of crazy laughs remembering Italy and Greece. Karen O now at Ohio State / Fred phones her a lot. He wants to study law at UofA starting January. Great I have a job / find apartment together?

Fred and everyone left p.m., no church for me. I scrape a few inside logs, sand smooth knots again. I love the long bulges of warm walls. The moon over the creek. Moving around in this empty house silence.

Alone. With my futile dreams.

Why am I?

The universe even if beautiful should not

exist. A bad dream in God’s sleep …

Laughter—somewhere there is laughing—

Do I make you happy?

Usual four families back at cabin for New Year’s—including J, Grant and Colin but no A. Usual celebration, enormous bonfire in deep snow, Dad pounds it with logs, showers of flames shoot above trees / take photos, eat, sing, talk, listen to music till 3:30 a.m. with J the last to go. She’s so exquisitely gentle. She nor I say a word about A. She stayed in the city—with friends overnight it seems.