It Is Margaret You Mourn For
Aug. 7th, 2012 09:13 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mallorys_cameraFrom time to time I dream about this labyrinth house. At least, I think I dream about this labyrinth house – I suppose it’s completely possible that I only dreamed about it last night and that embedded in that dream was the sense that I’d been there (i.e. dreamed about it) many times before. I’d left a bunch of possessions there – random strings of beads and other glittery magpie things – and I was trying to reclaim them except the people living there now were an entirely new set of people and I didn’t recognize any of them.
And when I looked at the house – a wooden house with myriad rooms on all different levels – it was a completely different house, all metal and modern and gleaming architectural embellishments.
“What happened to the house that used to be here?” I cried to one of the new inhabitants.
“Oh, that was torn down years ago,” the man told me briskly. “And I see you’ve come back for the orientation –“
“What orientation?”
“The orientation. We gave you yesterday off.”
“Excuse me,” I said, “but I’ve never seen any of this” – airy wave at the metal building – “ever before.”
“Yes, you have. You spent four days here last week.”
“I don’t remember spending four days here last week.”
The man shrugged impatiently. “Nevertheless, you did. Don’t be late for the orientation.”
###
Been here a little over a week. Liking it. Doing basic maintenance in the garden for an hour or so every evening, weeding, watering, excavating the slate maze from under a mesh of crab grass. Haven’t quite decided what to do about the roses. They desperately need to be pruned but if I prune them now the meristems won’t grow and I think that might damage the plants further.
Some time this week I must tackle the mass of rotting apples and leaves in the entertainment area. There’s a huge old apple tree there that looks as though it might even predate this area’s subdivision into suburban living back in the fifties. It’s showing its disapproval for the materialistic Nassau County lifestyle by raining down unripe apples by the bushel. There are still hundreds more on the tree. I think this might be due to underwatering. Also, there is a type of fruit tree moth infestation that typically manifests in fruit falling before its time.
Ah, nature. Endlessly fascinating.
Emotionally, I still feel incredibly fragile. Have been in several social situations this past week and held my own, but I could feel the strain.
Cassandra tells me I draw people out as a way to avoid talking about myself. Partly true, I suppose. What’s mostly true is that the endless prattle about sports teams and mileage and reality TV stars and Tom Cruise’s divorce and the Olympics doesn’t interest me in the slightest, so I naturally change the subject to the narrative of the other conversationalist’s life. That does interest me. I like narrative.
At Cassandra’s a capella get together a week ago, I did somehow end up talking about myself, at least enough to say I’d ended a long marriage two years ago, that I had enjoyed being married, that I was sad it seemed likely I would never marry again –
“You’re still in mourning,” said one of the women there. “That’s natural.”
“But it’s been two years –“
“Eh. That’s nothing. That’s not long at all.”
Thing is, of course, the marriage was a mess, the faithless husband a real pain in the ass. Intellectually, I think any continuing mourning on my part is neurosis bordering on pathology. And it’s not exactly as though I’m mourning the marriage or him. No. I’m mourning the loss of that other voice in my inner dialogue – which probably didn’t exist in the first place. Consummate hustler that Ben has always been, he probably fed me exactly what he intuited I wanted to hear on that end.
Still. The Pathos of the Only Child. Longing for that imaginary playmate.
Of course, karma is the ultimate bitch goddess. Ben texts me several times a day with his medical updates. I care, but not a whole lot. He isn’t the person I loved anymore. Hasn’t been for quite a while. Some kind of imaginative edge there was lost years ago. Must say, I understood Ben a whole lot better when I finally got to experience him against the backdrop of the Finger Lakes. The Finger Lakes are beautiful but man, that area is provincial. I suppose his compulsive lying over the years was a way to appear less provincial.
Anyway, I’m very close now to the city I was born in. Like literally. Five miles away from the Queens border. I think I’ll give Carl a holler and see if he’s available to play later this week.
Oh – also I saw a movie I liked very much. Kenneth Lonergan’s Margaret. I shsould write about it at length if I get some time. The film got uniformly bad reviews but I thought it was a masterpiece. Messy, human lives making narrative. I also liked the fact that there is not a single character named “Margaret” in the entire film. The title is drawn from the Gerard Manley Hopkins poem that ends: It is the blight that man was born for, it is Margaret you mourn for.
And when I looked at the house – a wooden house with myriad rooms on all different levels – it was a completely different house, all metal and modern and gleaming architectural embellishments.
“What happened to the house that used to be here?” I cried to one of the new inhabitants.
“Oh, that was torn down years ago,” the man told me briskly. “And I see you’ve come back for the orientation –“
“What orientation?”
“The orientation. We gave you yesterday off.”
“Excuse me,” I said, “but I’ve never seen any of this” – airy wave at the metal building – “ever before.”
“Yes, you have. You spent four days here last week.”
“I don’t remember spending four days here last week.”
The man shrugged impatiently. “Nevertheless, you did. Don’t be late for the orientation.”
Been here a little over a week. Liking it. Doing basic maintenance in the garden for an hour or so every evening, weeding, watering, excavating the slate maze from under a mesh of crab grass. Haven’t quite decided what to do about the roses. They desperately need to be pruned but if I prune them now the meristems won’t grow and I think that might damage the plants further.
Some time this week I must tackle the mass of rotting apples and leaves in the entertainment area. There’s a huge old apple tree there that looks as though it might even predate this area’s subdivision into suburban living back in the fifties. It’s showing its disapproval for the materialistic Nassau County lifestyle by raining down unripe apples by the bushel. There are still hundreds more on the tree. I think this might be due to underwatering. Also, there is a type of fruit tree moth infestation that typically manifests in fruit falling before its time.
Ah, nature. Endlessly fascinating.
Emotionally, I still feel incredibly fragile. Have been in several social situations this past week and held my own, but I could feel the strain.
Cassandra tells me I draw people out as a way to avoid talking about myself. Partly true, I suppose. What’s mostly true is that the endless prattle about sports teams and mileage and reality TV stars and Tom Cruise’s divorce and the Olympics doesn’t interest me in the slightest, so I naturally change the subject to the narrative of the other conversationalist’s life. That does interest me. I like narrative.
At Cassandra’s a capella get together a week ago, I did somehow end up talking about myself, at least enough to say I’d ended a long marriage two years ago, that I had enjoyed being married, that I was sad it seemed likely I would never marry again –
“You’re still in mourning,” said one of the women there. “That’s natural.”
“But it’s been two years –“
“Eh. That’s nothing. That’s not long at all.”
Thing is, of course, the marriage was a mess, the faithless husband a real pain in the ass. Intellectually, I think any continuing mourning on my part is neurosis bordering on pathology. And it’s not exactly as though I’m mourning the marriage or him. No. I’m mourning the loss of that other voice in my inner dialogue – which probably didn’t exist in the first place. Consummate hustler that Ben has always been, he probably fed me exactly what he intuited I wanted to hear on that end.
Still. The Pathos of the Only Child. Longing for that imaginary playmate.
Of course, karma is the ultimate bitch goddess. Ben texts me several times a day with his medical updates. I care, but not a whole lot. He isn’t the person I loved anymore. Hasn’t been for quite a while. Some kind of imaginative edge there was lost years ago. Must say, I understood Ben a whole lot better when I finally got to experience him against the backdrop of the Finger Lakes. The Finger Lakes are beautiful but man, that area is provincial. I suppose his compulsive lying over the years was a way to appear less provincial.
Anyway, I’m very close now to the city I was born in. Like literally. Five miles away from the Queens border. I think I’ll give Carl a holler and see if he’s available to play later this week.
Oh – also I saw a movie I liked very much. Kenneth Lonergan’s Margaret. I shsould write about it at length if I get some time. The film got uniformly bad reviews but I thought it was a masterpiece. Messy, human lives making narrative. I also liked the fact that there is not a single character named “Margaret” in the entire film. The title is drawn from the Gerard Manley Hopkins poem that ends: It is the blight that man was born for, it is Margaret you mourn for.
