On Falsifying Life Narratives
Jun. 3rd, 2022 08:23 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mallorys_cameraI did blissful nothing yesterday!
Blissful!
Well—not quite nothing. I toddled over to the Most Fabulous Garden Store in Dutchess County where I saw these fabulous canna lilies:
I spent three hours in the garden weeding and planting flowers in my pollinator swath. Behold my fabulous new salvia:
I think this salvia is a perennial. Think. Salvias are actually a bit AC/DC on the annual/perennial spectrum.
I also bought (and planted) some sky-blue pansies and some incipient snapdragons, and this of course was a waste of money because they will not survive the winter.
But like most things that will not survive the winter, they are very pretty…
Came home, read 100 pages of Intimate Lies, which is Sheilah Graham’s son’s deconstruction of the many ways his mother falsified the narrative of her relationship with F. Scott Fitzgerald. Well-written book! Entertaining!
I did not Remunerate!
I think I needed not to Remunerate.
I’d been pushing myself very hard the previous two days.
I will Remunerate today.
###
Reading Sheilah Graham’s son’s book did make me realize one of the reasons I was in such a funky mood earlier this week.
I told Ichabod when I was talking to him on the phone that I was going to send him a copy of my travel insurance documents so that he will be able to access his (and RTT’s) billion-dollar payoff instantly when my plane crashes on the way to Italy.
“Do you have a will?” he asked.
“No,” I said. “I don’t have any assets. Making a will seems like a waste of time.”
And he began chastising me.
And I supposed I deserved to be chastised.
“I guess you’re right,” I said. “The only thing I have that might be of some value are my diaries. I’ve been keeping them for almost 60 years. And I write extensively about everything. Surely, they’re valuable as a historical document.”
“Yeah, you should do something with them,” said Ichabod. “I mean, I won’t have time to read them—”
THUNK.
###
My own mother was insane but a really, really good writer.
On those rare occasions when I found myself alone in her apartment, of course I would go through all her private papers and read anything that looked interesting.
She kept carbon copies of every letter she ever wrote to anyone!
Writing well was the family curse. Her two sisters, my evil Aunt Jane and my careless, cruel, self-involved Aunt Annie, were excellent writers, too.
But I’m the only one in the F2 generation that seems to have inherited the gene.
Anyway, after my mother died, I searched through all her papers, eagerly, desperately, trying to find something, anything, that might explain her to me.
But by then, she’d cleared out all her carbon copies.
I wondered why.
Of course, she was incredibly secretive because she confabulated so much. (She would have been incredibly pissed off to find me shuffling through her papers, but I mean, c’mon—how could I not?)
One document remained, and it was an essay she had written for some kind of class she took at San Francisco State University.
The essay was about the Greyhound bus ride she took from New York City to San Francisco in 1964 following a massive psychological collapse where she took to her bed for two weeks, hallucinated on the ceiling, and I had to feed her and change her (‘cause she insisted on peeing on herself.)
The usual cliches about Greyhound bus rides. The amusingly odd passengers, the panoramic unfolding of the scenery, blah blah blah.
But the funniest part of the essay was that I was apparently on this trip with her! Much of the essay was devoted to the contrast between the expansive, free-spirited, enlightened woman and her crabby, narrow-minded 12-year-old daughter.
I’m happy to report that I did see the light! Quite literally: It was a sunrise over Las Vegas. Mother and Daughter bonded. I think Daughter may even have murmured, Thank you.
Mother knows best!
###
Of course, I was never on any Greyhound bus ride with my mother in 1964.
So reading this essay made me very snarly indeed.
Fuckin’ liar, I thought.
Pathological lying was a characteristic my mother shared in common with Ben.
But since then, I’ve grown more charitable.
Maybe this was an attempt at fiction.
And even if it wasn’t—what does it matter if people falsify their own narratives?
Especially if their own narratives are all they really own?
###
Anyway, my feelings were dreadfully hurt when Ichabod said he wouldn’t have time to read my diaries.
I continue to think they have some objective worth.
But maybe, they don’t.
Maybe they’re sand paintings.
Whatever, the conversation did make me think that I should find a literary executor.
Two people come to mind.
Blissful!
Well—not quite nothing. I toddled over to the Most Fabulous Garden Store in Dutchess County where I saw these fabulous canna lilies:
I spent three hours in the garden weeding and planting flowers in my pollinator swath. Behold my fabulous new salvia:
I think this salvia is a perennial. Think. Salvias are actually a bit AC/DC on the annual/perennial spectrum.
I also bought (and planted) some sky-blue pansies and some incipient snapdragons, and this of course was a waste of money because they will not survive the winter.
But like most things that will not survive the winter, they are very pretty…
Came home, read 100 pages of Intimate Lies, which is Sheilah Graham’s son’s deconstruction of the many ways his mother falsified the narrative of her relationship with F. Scott Fitzgerald. Well-written book! Entertaining!
I did not Remunerate!
I think I needed not to Remunerate.
I’d been pushing myself very hard the previous two days.
I will Remunerate today.
###
Reading Sheilah Graham’s son’s book did make me realize one of the reasons I was in such a funky mood earlier this week.
I told Ichabod when I was talking to him on the phone that I was going to send him a copy of my travel insurance documents so that he will be able to access his (and RTT’s) billion-dollar payoff instantly when my plane crashes on the way to Italy.
“Do you have a will?” he asked.
“No,” I said. “I don’t have any assets. Making a will seems like a waste of time.”
And he began chastising me.
And I supposed I deserved to be chastised.
“I guess you’re right,” I said. “The only thing I have that might be of some value are my diaries. I’ve been keeping them for almost 60 years. And I write extensively about everything. Surely, they’re valuable as a historical document.”
“Yeah, you should do something with them,” said Ichabod. “I mean, I won’t have time to read them—”
THUNK.
###
My own mother was insane but a really, really good writer.
On those rare occasions when I found myself alone in her apartment, of course I would go through all her private papers and read anything that looked interesting.
She kept carbon copies of every letter she ever wrote to anyone!
Writing well was the family curse. Her two sisters, my evil Aunt Jane and my careless, cruel, self-involved Aunt Annie, were excellent writers, too.
But I’m the only one in the F2 generation that seems to have inherited the gene.
Anyway, after my mother died, I searched through all her papers, eagerly, desperately, trying to find something, anything, that might explain her to me.
But by then, she’d cleared out all her carbon copies.
I wondered why.
Of course, she was incredibly secretive because she confabulated so much. (She would have been incredibly pissed off to find me shuffling through her papers, but I mean, c’mon—how could I not?)
One document remained, and it was an essay she had written for some kind of class she took at San Francisco State University.
The essay was about the Greyhound bus ride she took from New York City to San Francisco in 1964 following a massive psychological collapse where she took to her bed for two weeks, hallucinated on the ceiling, and I had to feed her and change her (‘cause she insisted on peeing on herself.)
The usual cliches about Greyhound bus rides. The amusingly odd passengers, the panoramic unfolding of the scenery, blah blah blah.
But the funniest part of the essay was that I was apparently on this trip with her! Much of the essay was devoted to the contrast between the expansive, free-spirited, enlightened woman and her crabby, narrow-minded 12-year-old daughter.
I’m happy to report that I did see the light! Quite literally: It was a sunrise over Las Vegas. Mother and Daughter bonded. I think Daughter may even have murmured, Thank you.
Mother knows best!
###
Of course, I was never on any Greyhound bus ride with my mother in 1964.
So reading this essay made me very snarly indeed.
Fuckin’ liar, I thought.
Pathological lying was a characteristic my mother shared in common with Ben.
But since then, I’ve grown more charitable.
Maybe this was an attempt at fiction.
And even if it wasn’t—what does it matter if people falsify their own narratives?
Especially if their own narratives are all they really own?
###
Anyway, my feelings were dreadfully hurt when Ichabod said he wouldn’t have time to read my diaries.
I continue to think they have some objective worth.
But maybe, they don’t.
Maybe they’re sand paintings.
Whatever, the conversation did make me think that I should find a literary executor.
Two people come to mind.
no subject
Date: 2022-06-04 08:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-06-05 10:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2022-06-04 11:52 pm (UTC)I once wanted to write a story about a woman who kept a diary in two colors of ink, one for the life she actually led and one for the life she wanted to be leading, but I couldn't think of a way not to make it cliched (thinking of what you said about grayhound bus cliches.
I don't have a will either.
no subject
Date: 2022-06-05 10:23 am (UTC)Big, big, big sisterly-writerly favor: Can I use it?
no subject
Date: 2022-06-05 11:45 am (UTC)