Opposite Contraries (12 page)

[…]

The song is to the singer, and comes back but to him
The murder is to the murderer, and comes back but to him
Not one can acquire for another, not one
Not one can grow for another, not one.

—Walt Whitman [
Leaves of Grass
]

I hope 1935 will bring me more zest for work, more inspiration. Maybe I’ll have to be stripped of everything, even my house, before I come down to brass tacks. God, humanity, my work — if I only could burst forth with live, spontaneous, bursting love like the throbbing love I had for the birds when I was a child and stood tiptoe to peep into a nest. The secret and mystery, the ecstasy of wonder and love that thrilled me to the very core! If one could only feel that all again, and the love you had for Mother when you’d been bad and she’d been patient, a sort of shy and adoring love, so thoroughly comfortable
a kind of love. And the love of the lover sweeping you clean off your feet, making you forget the horrible sex things told so disgustingly when you were a little child, things that frightened you horribly. And yet in the passionate love of the lover, forgetting every bit of the horror, willing to give every bit of your body and life and love in floodtide ocean fairly drowning the beloved, and to find it was not wanted and never, never, to quite know why, only to know it must be so, and to eat one’s heart out
alone
always, never daring to tell a soul, shamed and broken and hurt at your own indecency, of loving so furiously, so overwhelmingly — unasked and unwanted — to find the caresses and kisses were only sport, selfish amusement, your heart used as a shuttlecock, batted furiously hither and thither only lasting one game, thrown aside, feathers broken, balance broken, a hideous, battered, smashed-up toy that could never be mended or straightened again. Only good for
one
game, then finding its way to the garbage can, grimed and fouled. Oh love, poor love. Not mended or soothed and strengthened but murdered and thrown out and towed far far out to sea and dumped. Oh! Is it possible that it will be washed and purged and buffeted and perchance cleaned by great washings in the sea, will be cast ashore again?

Lecture not so bad last night. Good deal of analysis. One can analyse too far and become a machine building mechanically. On the other hand, one can (like me) hustle a thing into being without organization. Then the first kick tumbles it over. Balance and horse sense is what counts. The sickly insincere slop of flattery before and after lectures nauseates me. [. . .]

It was brought to my mind in the wee hours by Susie. She was my valentine two years ago and while it was yet dark up she came to my bed. Who would believe the love and sweetness that can be wrapped up in a little white rat? In the night like that she is so peppy and so lively, rubbing against my cheek, licking my hands, going through and through the hollow between one’s shoulder and one’s head on the pillow. Thrusting her head up with little quick jerks and pushing here and there among one’s cheeks, among the fingers of your hand and under your chin and begging to have her ears rubbed and her chin. Then she flats down and oozes contentment and satisfaction and gives soft little happy squeakings. In the daytime she seldom leaves the big studio table, though she sticks her nose out of the basket of rags, when I call her, in a drowsy fashion. At night she’s quivering with life. If I’ve been writing, she goes among my papers; if sewing, she flits among my work. Anywhere where the smell of her beloved is fresh. That rat loves me.

Man’s effect on woman is queer. Apparently a woman may love another woman genuinely. Let a man come into their life. Phiz! Out goes the other woman; just incidental [to] your friend you were, and their man is the all supreme with them. It hurts. I
don’t think it would ever be that way with me, if the other woman was close to me. Seems to me women friends are not “stickers.” Maybe married ones who have both families and husbands in common are, but spinsters and married women are not. The married woman always feels so superior to the spinster, and you know what you say to her passes to her man. It’s best to say goodbye forever when a woman gets a man. One cannot
trust
men. Even if one married I don’t believe they could quite, in all the world. I do not know of one I’d trust, and married women the same because of their men.

Life’s hideous just now, everyone anxious and pinched and unnatural and sore about something, and some wicked fairy has turned all the blood and flesh hearts into affairs of tin and lead and stone with all the warm soft gone out. Just a hard dry ache and a “hungry want.” Where have you gone to, joy? You are ached out of existence.

There is a woman with many children and a husband that drinks. Her lot is very sore. I think I could not bear it, I should be bitter and nasty. I think her love for him is frayed at the edges but she worries for fear of what may happen to him if he comes to calamity driving home drunk. The wonder is what would happen to them all if his salary (a good portion of which goes to the bottle) were totally withdrawn. Does she, can she, still love him for himself? Looking at marrieds, I often wonder how much is love and how much the ordinary needs of life, like when one is in danger of losing their job, being afraid of being without it.

Friendship — what does it mean? None of us knows any of us. It sickens me sometimes. Those close hugs, those kisses and confidences, they don’t mean a thing except for a heartbeat or two.
The connection was never fast grown. It broke so easily. This heart went bitter. That heart went; your shoulders shrugged and that was the end. No gum, no bridging, can mend it; the old wound would always show. Maybe lazy fat would collect and hide the injury, but [when] the weather changes, the old injury would grumble and remind you.

[…] Max [Maynard] has just been in. We always disagree a little. I do not think we understand each other. We have different slants on work. Some folks buck you, some leave you like a wilted cabbage, some like a frosted one, so that your unpleasantness reaches out to those near you and you wait to pour ashes on your work and to dance on your hat. He likes my work sometimes, but in an unpleasant way. A way that depresses you.

Last night I dreamt of Lawren and Bess, a happy dream. They were married. I was with them and said to myself, “I am so happy I’ve found them again and the new arrangement hasn’t made a difference, only made things better between us.” Bess was chattering away, but Lawren said nothing as is always the way. He never speaks in dreams, but he laid his two hands on me and smiled. Poor Lawren. I loved his work and should, but his body — I don’t know how to put it. It shivered — repelled me.

Everyone is waiting and waiting and waiting these days and nobody knows for what. There is a lonely blue brooding over everything. Everything is so difficult. People’s bodies and hearts are aching. It is not all because people’s purses are empty. It’s some other dreary, lonesome thing. We’re off the boil, no cheerful sing, no quivering lid,
just a sullen lukewarmness, sooted on the bottom and furred within. Oh for a jolly old fire to set life’s kettle singing and bubbling and steaming!

It’s “Doxies” that sharpen the edges of Bess and I against each other. She is “author” and I “unauthor,” the Doxies that becomes one hideousifies the other. Life, dress, food, recreation, work, companions. Tasks, furniture, houses, gardens, looks, books, friends, churches, religion. She looks one way, I another. I suppose if we both looked straight out ahead we’d be ok and maybe that’s what Heaven will really be — everyone seeing things straight, looking neither right or left but straight out in front, and the straight front look will be so broad and clean and right that the crooked side way will be forgotten. There won’t be any “Doxies” at all. Neither “author” nor “unauthor” but just one grand broad rightness — beautiful! No one will want to say, “I told you so,” because it won’t be to the right or the left like either of us thought but plumb ahead, and we’ll both want to step in line with a delighted chortle of joy and no venom.
[…]

[…]
There is something comforting about writing, sort of explaining things to yourself. When I was frustrated, I thought of other people; I connected what they would think with what I wrote. It’s different now. It’s sort of easier for wondering. One
talks to so few people, and so few out of these few understand each other; some make you feel a dreadful fool. Other times they’re the fool and you’re the important one.

Today and tomorrow it will be my sketches on exhibition and I shall hate it because it expresses me more. The old Indian pictures expressed the Indians. There was only an insignificant splatter of me. They made the cake and I only had to cut it and hand it around. Any fool could do that. With these, they’ll want the receipt and what the cookbook calls “method of procedure,” and I don’t use a cookbook. I throw in to taste, overseasoning, underseasoning, burning, omitting “raisins,” having “doughy” results. When people ask you to explain a painting, how can one? Do you have to explain why the cat yowls if you step on her tail?

Not so many came as to the Indian pictures but quite a few all the same. And many who had been to the Indian exhibition came again, which showed they were interested enough in the painting side to see what was happening next. It was interesting to see their reaction to the two types. About the Indian things they talked more and their remarks [were] more superficial. They discussed Indian ways and the disappearing race, but mostly the money value of things when they had ceased to exist. To the sketches, their attitude was quite different. They looked much, thought much and said little. Money value was not discussed, but they were interested (some of them) deeply. You felt something stirring around the rooms. They took the Indians “sitting.” Nobody sat to the sketches. They moved, went back and forth, were more awake and alive. Something seemed to be waking up inside them, something that slept gently through
the Indian exhibit. Gee, I’d like to wake myself sufficiently to run and set the sitters and the standers into a gallop.

How tired one can get and not die! When the exhibition closed yesterday I longed to get to painting. First, however, the flat the exhibition was in had to be got ready for a tenant. The kitchen was peeling. I bolted out of bed this morning right on to the stepladder with a knife and those walls had to be scraped inch by inch. I did not give myself time to think. I said, “Put your whole zest into that, old girl. It’s necessary, so make it worth while. When it is all clean maybe you can paint.” Life is such a continual struggle inside.
The desire to hurl yourself entirely into paint, line up in another world where apartment houses, family relations, gardens, tenants, friends, clothes, food do not exist. And combatting all that innate desire to “do all things decently and in order” to have a clean decent home, to love my sisters and do my duty to them, to help in their lives, for if I did not go to them, they would so rarely come to me we should almost be strangers.

Everything in life seems to contradict something else. If I was a real artist I’d let everything else go, but I can’t and don’t and so I’m not. [. . .]

[…]
Oh the awful constant wrestle between this and that. It is not so hard to measure up to justice. One’s instincts lead to that, but to heap mercy on top of justice without being unfair to oneself, that is difficult. In dealing with tenants now, if you will let them, they take every advantage of you they can. If they cannot get it by fair means, they’ll take it out by unfair. My whole soul cries out against the letting business. People are poor these days,
but oh they are selfish, forgetting that owners are poor too with the grinding taxes, constant repairs, vacancies. They hound and jew one. You are always only the darned landlady, a little juice to get the best of. That’s where mercy and softness get tangled. I’ve tried my level [best] to be decent to those tenants; under our contract they were to give work in return for all the “gratis” I [have] thrown in (all the furniture) and $5 off rent. The woman declared any of them would do anything for me. For the past year it has been only wood, and that done as a favour. Four healthy adults have sat in that flat and heard and seen me labour like a char, with folded hands they’ve sat without an offer of help.

There is another battle constantly waging inside me. Artist and domestic. Trying to be honest to both wears one sharp. The last six months have been almost all plain domestic. My soul is thirsty.

[…]
Goodbye little white rat Susie. I found her halfway across the studio floor headed for my bedroom but dead, this morning. She had outlived her span of life and it had become to her a burden, and I tucked her away in the good brown earth under the lilac tree, glad her wearinesses were over. It is astonishing the empty feel of the big table where she lived. I always spoke to her as I passed, and there was always that companionable little nip of her life came out and met you with ready response. She had a free happy life and I loved her well.

[…]
Went to eight o’clock celebrations at the cathedral. Church full. I met them coming from the seven o’clock. I wonder why
people look so very self-conscious and smug when they are going and coming from Communion, especially in the early morning? They clutch their prayer books and give you a sort of “you” look, much as to say, “Did not know you were that sort.” I often wonder what they are praying about so long there upon their knees yet vividly alert to what is going on around them. And those who go seldom and are not at home and have to peep to see what the ones in front are doing. I am afraid I do not follow the sermon much from my book. I cannot hear so I shut my eyes and just try to feel Christ, and to feel all the thoughts that have tried to struggle up to him there.