WAYS OF WRITING ABOUT ONESELF
69
more implication than explication. For example, I wrote an entry on
December
12, 1993,
in Hawaii, that reads:
Birclcalls wake me, a sound like names, like
the trees repeating themselves in the dawn mist, each
holding its place, awaiting recognition, like names.
The context for this entry is omitted. A reader could figure it out
from things said in other entries, though many autobiographical details
that might seem relevant
to
a biographer or a gossip aren't given.
[n
this
entry I don't say that I had awakened lying beside my girlfriend and that
we had been together for almost three years. ot long after this moment
she would leave me. I don't say that I knew she would leave me, and [
don't mention the fact that she was twenty -seven years younger than
me. I don't sa y tha t I knew the age difference was of concern to her, or
that it somehow hadn't yet troubled me as much. I don't say our back–
grounds and interests were nothing alike. I don't say that she didn't
enjoy lectures given by visiting scholars at Berkeley where we lived dur–
ing our three years together, or that she hated Berkeley dinner parties
with academic or literary celebrities. I don't say that I was crazy about
her. I don't say that I would have happily not gone to lectures and din–
ner parties and stayed home with her and watched Monday Night Foot–
ball, or, if she insisted, I'd even have gone bowling. I don't say that what
she found interesting-running small businesses, investment banking,
managing the finances and personnel of an office-didn't much interest
me. I don't say that I tried to be interested, and I would ask her ques–
tions about her work, but I would end up feeling more intrusive than
properly engaged. The innerness of business life, and the whole realm of
action and money were never accessible to my brain. I don't say that
once, after a lecture in Berkeley given by the chairman of the Harvard
English department, she said, "We're basically different. You listened to
the lecture and I wondered how much it cost the university for the light–
ing and janitorial service that made the lecture possible. Now you want
to talk about the lecture, but I'm still wondering about the maintenance
of the building. All that glass had
to
be washed, the floors polished.
Someone had
to
take care of the garden outside, the landscaping." I
don't say that I woke up beside my girlfriend who was twenty-seven
years younger than I was and would soon leave me, which I knew,
though I didn't know she would leave me for a businessman.
My girlfriend and I had gone to Hawaii, the Puna coast of the Big
Island. We were staying in one room of a primitive but elegant shack in
