156
PARTISAN REVIEW
at reality . I don't care who the governor is. I don't know the price of
anything.
If
the world flies off in ten thousand directions, that's to be
expected: I just don't want to have to
worry.
Or to be ashamed . He
was such a nice man with a fine sense of humor and I just kind of
greased in on a smug yes . Extremely embarrassing. I hate telephones .
I can't talk on them . It's like talking to myself because I do that all
the time anyway. Then I wake up with the thunder on and reach for
the phone. Always phoning. Writing seventy-six letters a day. My
apologetic and in-error self. I am the dumbest , illiterate, babbling
incontinent who ever walked or breathed . My great weakness is be–
lieving against my own inclinations. I get blown around, like a leaf,
very mindless, because it doesn't make that much difference to me
who wins . How I have to please them in the effort to have them help!
I have to wait and lurk inside myself before I dare say anything. To
pipe up and speak is a danger for me because then I will be attacked .
To keep pleading- and have it overlooked! Impulsive and thought–
less and wrong. Always face to face with some urgent thing, our
noses touching, inescapable the face glued to mine. I liked him. He
scared me at first but I liked the room and the books and the light–
ing. The books . I liked the way it smelled and I was grateful. I can
live , but you'd be amazed how shitty it is . I had envisioned it joyous
and light.
If
you wait long enough and have enough breath to hold,
sometimes you get a break, a big, nice, lovely , rather amazing sur–
prise. I've been holding my breath for a man like him for ten years.
It's not the end of the world, but it's a blow. The wrench it gave me,
walking out that door. I will completely pull out of being berserk and
go over and close the window. It's only the first floor anyway . To roll
all the way down hill and at the bottom get smashed on enormous
rocks, no, not for this. He despises,
despises,
what charmed him most.
It was like bringing a tubercular lung to a great TB specialist who
hates tuberculosis . Don't worry about it, the astrologer says: by 1995
it'll all be better. That it will: I'll be old and ugly and weakened, and ,
with all my talents wasted, I'll really need it then. By comparison
this will be hedonism then . All he said was that it wasn't enough . I
asked him if I was hopeless and he didn't even answer. Which is the
answer. I personally don't think I'm all that bad, even though , in en–
tirely new ways, I regret enormously what I am . My wishes tease me
tease me tease me. All I want is oxygen.
The old story of who my father was and who my mother was
and who I was. That old story and its ramifications . My mother. My
