Yellow Notebook, page 18
I suppose being sad and laughing are not mutually exclusive.
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The psychotherapist talks about ‘men in suits’ who come to him. ‘They think they can hand me their problem and get me to fix it for them. They’re so blocked. It’s sad.’
‘They must be terribly lonely?’
‘And frightened. At some stage they always cry.’
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Up at Primrose Gully with Y. We’re both scared of snakes. And we’re ignorant of electricity, and how to use the car battery for power in the house. The neighbour from down the road: plain, with a mouth that’s drawn in, watery eyes, filthy farmer’s clothes, a loud, rather harsh voice—but a lively mind, witty turn of phrase, a tough and cheerful friendliness. He called each of us by name once or twice, as if to fix us in his mind. He offered to help with buying a chainsaw. I liked him very much, and felt lucky to have met him. He mentioned in passing that one of their children had died.
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Dreamt I was to sleep in a borrowed room. I asked the woman, ‘What’s in that drawer?’ ‘Maps,’ she said. I looked at her with happy respect, knowing that she was a traveller, someone who’d been to strange, distant and perhaps dangerous places and who had returned. She seemed a calm person, the kind who makes plans and fulfils them with steady application.
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A hawk on a tree. We saw its shoulders.
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I dread having to become a Christian.
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A beautiful letter came from J. He said he loved my work, and that though I may not define goodness as he does, I was ‘searching for a language of grace’. I went stumbling out on to the footpath still reading, and when I glanced down, the pebbles sprang into such bright relief that I had to look again. I had the dog with me and we walked slowly round the big block. It was a windy, sparkling afternoon.
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‘People who can’t accept a gift,’ said the Jungian, ‘often feel a need to wound the giver.’
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The biographer does that maddening thing of asking, ‘Am I boring you?’ at the exact moment when I am most deeply attentive to what she is saying: thus she breaks my concentration. It’s as if she’s jealous of her own discourse: when I’m paying total attention to it, she needs to force on me the distinction between what she is saying and her.
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A Giuseppe Bertolucci movie, Segreti Segreti. I was struck dumb by its sophisticated structure and the deep sense of the society it emerges from. The final scene, where the terrorist sits opposite the woman judge and begins to reel off the names of her comrades, made me want to get down on my knees and grovel. Why can’t Australian films achieve that density? It must be because our society is so porous.
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At Primrose Gully the grass is stiff with frost. Feet aching with cold. The clear patch on the window where I wiped it to see out has refrozen in prettier patterns.
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I saw a big fat koala fall out of a tree. It sloped off towards the road with a sulky look over its shoulder. I laughed out loud and clapped my hands but it paid me no attention. Its victorious rival, clinging to a tall slender trunk, had what looked like a bloody wound on its chest. Life is carnage up here.
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Census night. The law student and I were filling out the form. He had to say what he was in relation to the head of the household. I expected him to write ‘tenant’ but he put ‘friend’. I think of this on and off all day and it comforts me.
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Hannah and Her Sisters. Too close to the bone. Oh, it hurts so much to look back. I rode over him roughshod. Impatient, vain, self-important, and then abject. No wonder he can’t stand me. I can hardly stand myself.
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House full of music. The law student and his huge friend roaring away upstairs on amplified bass and guitar. The girls downstairs singing Schubert at the piano.
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The I Ching says that flight means saving oneself under any circumstances, whereas retreat is a sign of strength. Voluntary retreat. Friendly retreat. Cheerful retreat. That’s what I’m after.
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As the afternoon was ending my friends took me for a walk along the Glebe waterfront. The sky was quite black in parts, then streaked, swirled and plumed like a Turner painting. A strong, warm wind blew. The evening star shone steadily between rents in the cloth. ‘Australians are hopeless with land use,’ said the Cretan. ‘In Europe there’d be a couple of little restaurants along here.’ He showed me some photos he’d taken of me last year and I was shocked by my ugliness: spotted skin, lined face, ugly haircut, dark expressions. I mean I was shocked. I quailed at the possibility that I will be alone now for the rest of my life. That I will never turn back into a womanly being but will find myself stuck here in between, plain and dry in my manly or boyish little clothes. I was afraid of my ugliness. I thought, I will go on getting older. This is not a temporary phase. I am moving slowly and surely on towards decrepitude. But walking with them I became happy. I picked wattle, bottlebrush, Geraldton wax. The Cretan poured out so much botanical information that we teased him and called him Professor. They asked me if I would ever consider moving to Sydney. ‘I feel,’ said the Cretan, ‘that you’re on the verge of plunging into a pool of clear water.’
Up here, among kind friends, I forget my troubles.
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How the nun says goodbye: ‘Go in peace.’ ‘You too,’ I say, without having to think. Afterwards I felt her little blessing and was grateful.
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F says I ought to get a regular job, so as to be less ‘frantic’.
‘What could I be?’
‘A teacher. A publisher’s reader.’
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The historian who came to my reading at Monash. She told a little anecdote, with gestures, about using the expression ‘phallische Symbolen’ to some visiting German friends of her age: to her astonishment they had never heard the term. She was speaking about a row of carrots standing on a shelf in a juice shop.
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I like it when my sister talks about nursing. She told me about nasogastric tubes and how to insert them. And about colonic irrigations.
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Les Murray’s wonderful poem ‘When Bounty Is Down to Persimmons and Lemons’. The infuriating accuracy and simplicity of his images—birds that ‘trickle down through’ foliage. Of course, I think, that is what they do—why didn’t I know how to say it? ‘Women’s Weekly summer fashions in the compost turn blue.’
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Evil Angels—its marvellous combination of tenderness for the characters with an awesome ability to handle masses of factual material. And the delicacy of its emotional texture. The whole thing is buzzing with life.
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At the school concert a girl’s proud father says, ‘I love you!’ and squeezes her in his arms. She shrieks, ‘Ewww, YUCK!’ and fights to break free. He grips tighter with a demonic grin.
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To the dentist for a crown preparation. He stuck the needle twice into my lip, babbling rapidly, ‘Oooh, yes you’re a good girl a brave girl a very very good girl a brave girl.’ Almost two hours of grinding, drilling, injections, string, blood, impression taken twice, post screwed in. As the time went on I became weakened by attrition. His waggish, chatty spiel, his way of addressing me as if I were a child and stroking my face while the impression set, caused a regression which reached its peak when I told him, after he’d cemented the temporary crown on, that it felt big in my mouth. He snapped at me: ‘I asked you before! And you said it wasn’t touching!’ To my horror I burst into tears. ‘I’m sorry! I’m so tired! I didn’t understand exactly what you were asking—oh, boo hoo!’ He was astonished, and embarrassed: ‘WHY are you so tired?’ ‘I’ve had my mouth wide open for TWO HOURS!’ He put me back in the chair and drilled off a bit more. I tried hard to control myself, for fear that if I jerked he would puncture my already bloody gum, but I couldn’t stop my quivering sobs, like a child’s, and tears ran off my face. He and the nurse acted soberly. The nurse didn’t look at me again. It was awful. His falsely cheery goodbye. I stumbled off down the hallway. Before I reached the street I had recognised it: Dad territory. His baby talk had lulled me, and then the shock of his anger—a sudden withdrawal of approval. At the traffic lights I met Mum’s brother. He didn’t even notice I was crying, so I quickly stopped.
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I lie in bed thinking voluptuously of the stories I’m going to write.
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‘I think,’ says R, ‘that people who “long to have children” are just being romantic.’
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The bloke next door shows me the room with bunks that he says his children will sleep in, if he ever finds anyone to have them with. I forbear to point out that any child who sat up in the top bunk would be beheaded by the ceiling fan.
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The plane lurched in the air and was lit by lightning, but in Melbourne the land was sunlit and the air was crisp.
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I entered the living room and found Mum sitting alone on the couch, looking elegant. During our short conversation I had one of those moments of disconnection from myself: looking at her face I felt strongly that I both knew and did not know this person.
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The high-school drama night. M’s house did Molière, Le Médecin malgré lui, which she had directed. It ripped along, seductive, hilarious. Her fleeting bit-part as the passing stranger who tries to stop Sganarelle from beating his wife—she was a flash of lightning, her face white with righteous anger and then with alarm and apology—people shouted with laughter. This skinny little trouper of mine. Not mine much longer.
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Raymond Carver called collect when I wasn’t home, and the law student, confused, caused him to hang up.
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Out near the rubbish bins I ask my neighbour if she knows anything about Melanie Klein. ‘I absolutely detest psychoanalysis,’ she snaps. I bet you do. Look at your life.
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A woman reviews my postcards book in Meanjin. Covers it with praise. ‘Artful.’ ‘This brilliant story.’ ‘Consistently good.’ ‘Outstanding.’ I’m glowing, defences down. Then on her way out she flicks me with her tail: ‘She is at her best, so far, when dealing with…middle-class, contemporary living and relationships. This is her great talent. It remains to be seen whether this is also her limitation.’ What do they WANT from me?
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Visconti’s wonderful movie Bellissima. We writhed with laughter in our seats: the comedy of the child’s suffering. How there’s often a secondary activity in the background of the main action: a line of tiny distant dancers rehearsing on an outdoor stage: ‘Uno! Due! Tre! Quattro!’ A man on a high scaffold banging in a nail with tremendous arm movements. Layer after layer of life.
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Afterwards at the Rialto A ordered another beer when everyone else was ready to go home. Three quarters of the way down it he went off to the lavatory. T seized his glass and swigged a large mouthful, to speed up his painful slowness. ‘Here he comes,’ she hissed. ‘Is there foam on my lips?’
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I want to write a story called ‘The Punishment for Not Being Beautiful’.
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I shot off a whole roll of colour film in our house while everyone was out. First I took one of each bed as it had been left; then I crammed myself into corners, set things up, crouched, stood on chairs, screwing up my face, framing things—to take photos you must have to relearn to look. Filled with respect for people who do this difficult thing beautifully. I loved trying. Thought of writing a story with no characters in it, called ‘Four Beds’, and even began it, but put it aside, out of fear I suppose.
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At their house we ate barbecued chicken out of a paper bag and listened to Nat King Cole.
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Dreamt I was a teacher and there was one uncontrollable boy in my class. I sent him to the principal. I said, ‘I’m not stupid, you know, no matter how much you dislike me. What do you think of me?’ He replied frankly, ‘I think you’re awful.’ At that moment I saw a close-up, near my face, of a bush covered in pretty little flowers, in the front garden of our old house at Ocean Grove.
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Outside the post office the dog shat out a tapeworm. It trailed behind her and I had to put my foot on it to snap it off.
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In Readings I picked up a novel about a sadomasochistic affair. I read it in furtive bursts, in case someone looked over my shoulder. It was frightening. I realised I am very much a moralist: afraid of the tremendous power of sex when it’s let loose from love and social restraints.
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‘There are people,’ a reader writes to me reproachfully, ‘who have their babies at home, get married with flair, and get buried in triumph.’
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After the funding meeting comes a surprising letter from the old poet who worked with us, a small, gentle, mildly spoken, slightly trembling woman with long white hair in a French roll: ‘You will never be in need of friends. I mean of all sorts and degrees—and whatever your own personal uncertainties may be.’ The extraordinary kindness of this. She mothered me. I’m not used to it.
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Spring comes. People fall in love—or they will, when the sunny breezes blow and exams are soon and cafe tables are put out on the pavements. Will I? I can’t imagine who with.
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On a sparkling morning, windows wide open, Crowded House on the stereo, the law student and I wrestle with a lamb shank. He twists and wrenches with the rubber gloves on, I hack with a big blunt knife, so he can make stock and cook us some soup. Carnage over the trough. Blood splatters his front. ‘Take your shirt off and soak it.’ ‘I wouldn’t have known about doing that.’ ‘Women know a lot about blood.’ He’s the closest I’ll ever get to having a son.
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Primrose Gully with T. There’s a star beside the moon that neither of us has ever noticed before. Star and moon are both reflected in the dam so vividly that it’s unnerving—as if we were suddenly seeing everything upside down.
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A big dry wind roars all night. Stars brilliant. Several are yellow. ‘Look at them,’ says T. ‘Aren’t they queer. They make the others look really blue. They look like electric bulbs.’ She messed around with some grass and rags and came up what she called a ‘pagan bride’, a little straw doll in a dirty cloth dress and hood. She called me to look at it and I got a funny feeling, seeing it leaning against a small bush. It looked primitive, mysterious and powerful. Maybe I could write about A’s panic when I said I was going to get my palm read. His refusal to tell me his astrological sign. Can I use the Cathedral Tearooms? The women’s ordination? Ayers Rock? It could be a novel. Oh, calm down.
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I sat at the table working away with the Faber Castells while the law student played his Jazz Originals book on the piano. Drawing beats colouring-in hands down.
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In a magazine a sketch of three women sitting at a table, and on it, in the foreground, a crudely drawn pistol and a very high-heeled shoe. The artist does people with hardly any lines: women with funny little bobbed haircuts and sober faces.
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‘I saw how beautiful she was,’ said the bridegroom in his speech, ‘and I saw that a man’d be a fool not to want to share his life with her.’
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The things men say to me sometimes at public gatherings. In a strange, jesting, almost pugnacious tone they say that they like my work, and then they tell me what bugs them about it. This one couldn’t stand the way I ‘talk about Bach and popular music in the same breath. That’s an abomination to me.’
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They must have seven kids by now, the youngest only a few months old. Felt a longing to visit them, to see them all thronging, hear their family language and songs, jokes at the table, the noise of it.
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The academic was wearing a little pale satin shift to mid-calf, like a pretty nightie. Watched her in the line for food, saw how large her head looked, pale and tired, well-set on her slimmed-down body.
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Should the law student write his new almost-girlfriend a letter? If so, what sort? My tactician’s idea: a postcard. What’ll he write on it, though? Something short. What about ‘Dear X, Come back quick. Love—’ and sign? Perfect! But should he put some kisses? Just put one. OK—he doesn’t want to be heavy.
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Dream of a court case. A report typed on a typewriter that made small plants grow out of the page. I had to push the little stalks and leaves gently aside so I could read the print at their roots.
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A visitor from Circus Oz. Her grey hair, flamboyant comfortable clothes. In the kitchen we talked with urgency and uttered screams of laughter.
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My mind is full of stories but I lack the nerve to catch one and try to pin it down.
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After the concert of mediaeval music the academic said she had seen the counter-tenor walking down the street with his little drum over his shoulder on a leather strap. We thought that he probably slept under a hedge.
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We quarrelled. M spoke sharply to me. I suppose I was being silly and middle-aged. I was embarrassed that her rebuke had hurt me. She gave me a perfunctory hug which I accepted. I drove off to review a play, alone in my car and my clip-on earrings. Walking in the dark down Queensberry Street I felt quite desperate. I thought, ‘This far down is when you ought to pray.’ I didn’t know how, but the thought presented itself like a reminder of a practical technique.
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A thunderbolt struck me—a character. Ideas and plans flooded in and out of my mind all day. Such a richness of material that I hardly dare to look straight at it: I have to keep looking in the other direction. Surges of excitement and confidence, which suddenly ebb away and leave me panicking: can I do this? Can I find out what I need to know? By this I mean that a creature is beginning to exist which will lead me into a story. All I had to do was wait for my guide. I stepped out the back gate, my head bursting with this, and remembered that state where one lives night and day in the world of the novel and one is NOT AVAILABLE. No wonder men don’t stick around.
