I've been sitting with my computer this morning trying to write about the rabbit hole. The trouble is I am trying to write profoundly and well. It is not possible. It comes out stilted, artificial. I am giving up for the day. I will try to write it in my shotgun style later. It is the only way I can write. Well, except for academic writing which is only interesting to those who are interested. But that sort of writing will never grow a crowd.
There. That feels better already. I've been wearing an iron cap all morning. Let me not try to be Proust. Proust is too slow. Everything moves at internet speed now. That is the rabbit hole. There is no savoring bits of information. The internet promotes greed. Nothing is ever enough. You can do what used to take weeks or months or even years in a few minutes, but the hours pass quickly while you take turn after crooked turn. Faster faster, quicker quicker.
What I've learned is that her life was tragic in the common sense. It never reached great heights. Why? That is what concerns me. I want it to have. Why do I care? I mean, it seems weird. Looking up facts about her life, I feel like a creeper, a stalker. Each internet search slimes me anew.
It is remarkable what you can learn about a person very quickly on the internet without really learning anything about the person at all. You find data. You construct meaning. And as Dr. Fauci says, a model is only as good as the assumptions you provide it.
I'll be better telling bits and pieces at a time. Data. With each new piece, the picture changes. It is like spilling coffee on a masterpiece, or putting lipstick on a pig.
The morning was overcast, but now the sky is blue and bright. I think I'll take a long walk. I've stared at computer screens too much the past couple of days. Fresh air and sunshine will be the bromide I need. As bad as times are. . . .
There is a v.p. debate tonight. I have learned my lesson. I will tape it.
Tape? What am I going to use, a VCR?
The obsession of a first love and how it makes art occurs more often with poetry I think, but I find it in a lot of the German literature I have read. In the autobiographical novella “Tonio Kroger” Thomas Mann rights about the blonde haired, blue-eyed Inge of his youth, his first love who like Hans his first friend also blue eyed and blonde haired he pursues for the rest of his life. You can read the whole thing here
ReplyDeletehttps://literaturesave2.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/thomas-mann-tonio-kroger.pdf
But I have pasted some passages below:
"Faithfulness," thought Tonio Krager. "Yes, I will be faithful, I will love thee, Ingeborg, as long as I live!" He said this in the honesty of his intentions. And yet a still small voice whispered misgivings in his ear: after all, he had forgotten Hans Hansen utterly, even though he saw him every day! And the hateful, the pitiable fact was that this still, small, rather spiteful voice was right: time passed and the day came when Tonio Kröger was no longer so unconditionally ready as once he had been to die for the lively Inge, because he felt in himself desires and powers to accomplish in his own way a host of wonderful things in this world. And he circled with watchful eye the sacrificial altar, where flickered the pure, chaste flame of his love; knelt before it and tended and cherished it in every way, because he so wanted to be faithful. And in a little while, unobservably, without sensation or stir, it went out after all. But Tonio Kröger still stood before the cold altar, full of regret and dismay at the fact that faithfulness was impossible upon this earth. Then he shrugged his shoulders and went his way.”
“Tonio Kröger looked at them both, these two for whom he had in time past suffered love-at Hans and lngeborg. They were Hans and Ingeborg not so much by virtue of individual traits and similarity of costume as by similarity of race and type. This was the blond, fair-haired breed of the steel-blue eyes, which stood to him for the pure, the blithe, the untroubled in life; for a virginal aloofness that was at once both simple and full of pride.... He looked at them. Hans Hansen was standing there in his sailor suit, lively and well built as ever, broad in the shoulders and narrow in the hips; lngeborg was laughing and tossing her head in a certain high-spirited way she had; she carried her hand, a schoolgirl hand, not at all slender, not at all particularly aristocratic, to the back of her head in a certain manner so that the thin sleeve fell away from her elbow-and suddenly such a pang of home-sickness shook his breast that involuntarily he drew farther back into the darkness lest someone might see his features twitch. "Had I forgotten you?" he asked. "No, never. Not thee, Hans, not thee, Inge the fair! It was always you I worked for; when I heard applause I always stole a look to see if you were there..”
ReplyDelete“The music struck up, the couples bowed and crossed over. The leader called off; he called off-Heaven save us-in French! And pronounced the nasals with great distinction. Ingeborg Hoim danced close by, in the set nearest the glass door. She moved to and fro before him, forwards and back, pacing and turning; he caught a waft from her hair or the thin stuff of her frock, and it made him close his eyes with the old, familiar feeling, the fragrance and bitter-sweet enchantment he had faintly felt in all these days, that now filled him utterly with irresistible sweetness. And what was the feeling? Longing, tenderness? Envy? Self-contempt?... Moulinet des dames! "Did you laugh, Ingeborg the blonde, did you laugh at me when I disgraced myself by dancing the moulinet? And would you still laugh today even after I have become something like a famous man? Yes, that you would, and you would be right to laugh.”
"The work I have so far done is nothing or not much-as good as nothing. I will do better, Lisabeta-this is a promise. As I write, the sea whispers to me and I close my eyes. I am looking into a world unborn and formless, that needs to be ordered and shaped; I see into a whirl of shadows of human figures who beckon to me to weave spells to redeem them: tragic and laughable figures and some that are both together-and to these I am drawn. But my deepest and secretest love belongs to the blond and blue-eyed, the fair and living, the happy, lovely, and commonplace. "Do not chide this love, Lisabeta; it is good and fruitful. There is longing in it, and a gentle envy; a touch of contempt and no little innocent bliss."
ReplyDeleteoooooooo i like it r e a l l y s l o w w w w w w
andalsosometimesreallyreallyreallyfast.
Oh. Sorry. *blush*.
This is the longest I have gone without sex with a man in my lifetime.
Occasionally, I cannot contain myself. Everything takes me there.
I'll be all right (honestly for how long - I certainly never ever signed up for the Nunnery).
Shit.
I was going to make this all about you.
I'm not reading c.c.'s comments until after I post mine. He's a Genius and I will undoubtedly be influenced. I mean it may happen - you never know. ;)
Ok.
Where do I begin? To tell the story of how great a love can be. The sweet love story that is older than the sea. The simple truth about the love she brings to me. Where do I start?
That's a song I think - from a book about a girl who dies.
Shit. I feel like I need to make a statement first:
I believe, for you, there is a suffering of deep and true sadness that your First Own True Love has died. Maybe I told you that already - I'm not sure.
There is always a shock when someone dies. And Your First Own True Love dying - could - in some exceptionally sensitive people - set off feelings of all kinds. And tho you have not probably thought about her in a long time - the rush of emotions would/ could be Big, Weird, All Sorts of Things.
I want you to know - I get that and along with getting it, 100% honor anything you might be experiencing with regard to the death of Emily.
We good?
I held off commenting so that you could settle some (maybe - you internet stalking freak).
My first reaction, after reading of your reaction to finding out Emily had died was mostly about me - "I really don't want to do Love and Death right now, I'm two years into that story and Recovery feels really good."
Then after ruminating a bit, I immediately thought of Ophelia. I thought about Poe and his obsession of beautiful women dying. Laura Palmer. Etc.
Today, I was thinking of Mr. Campbell. And so I don't need to think too much more cause he has done it all for me.
"Artists are magical helpers. Evoking symbols and motifs that connect us to our deeper selves, they can help us along the heroic journey of our own lives. [...]
The artist is meant to put the objects of this world together in such a way that through them you will experience that light, that radiance which is the light of our consciousness and which all things both hide and, when properly looked upon, reveal. The hero's journey is one of the universal patterns through which that radiance shows brightly. What I think is that a good life is one hero journey after another. Over and over again, you are called to the realm of adventure, you are called to new horizons. Each time, there is the same problem: do I dare? And then if you do dare, the dangers are there, and the help also, and the fulfillment or the fiasco. There's always the possibility of a fiasco.
But there's also the possibility of bliss.
— Joseph Campbell, [6]
ReplyDeleteBring on the bliss, I say.
But you have some work to do.
It appears.
Whatever it is you need to do with this broken mosaic, Batman, I wish you the best. And I'm sure it will be good - not sure I ever mentioned it - but I think you are a pretty darn good user of words.
T. had a beautiful, crackhead girlfriend once. He wrote poems about her - she never cared about the poems. I think I told this story.
Anyway, he was thinking about her - I guess and wrote this - he too was still thinking he could have rescued her.
That Other Girl
Lisa says
that's your awful girl,
she don't like me to write about her no more
sometimes I think of her in a ditch
with a dirty face
and I think about defeat
and that's a dry thought too,
stained lute is a bit scratched up
with old tunes,
Lisa sniffs
if you are quick you may catch a tear in her eye
even though she don't much like that other girl.
I think that middle part - about "defeat" - that's what that poem is about.
RIP Emily.
ReplyDelete* and for the record - I never expressed one sentiment about "not writing about her." You couldn't tell that man about writing --- sure I always asked him to write and I admit to making him tell me everything about her - and obsessing over one poem he wrote that was so sweet it hurt my heart.
It was a "pleading" sort of thing -and doing what she did to him - really awful things - I loved him so I didn't think she deserved his -- poems which was him.
Oh. He liked having a pretty girl hang around even tho she was truly horrible. We talked about it all over the years. We laughed about it too. Again, him sort of finding enjoyment in my discontent.
I'm not a jealous person by nature. Any chance he could - to try to get me going - he would - for his ego, of course. I didn't mind. He knew was I was crazy about him. Nutso.
ReplyDeleteGreat stuff, c.c. Thanks for sharing. Those darn Germans. :)
My son loves Mann.
All I can say is "stay with me." Nothing is ever what it seems.
ReplyDelete