I must make a note as to where to move the daffodils, the iris. The earth in my hands. A wand of forsythia like a light in my hands. I think of Barbara an hour away, the glowing glyphs coming off the screen in her study. The whole world — luminous, luminous. We were lucky to be here. Even in pain and uncertainty and rage and fear — some fear. In exhaustion.
Too much energy has gone into this Brown/Columbia decision. Where shall I end up? I have only partially succeeded in keeping it all in its proper place. I’ve had to work too hard to keep my mind at the proper distance. It takes its toll. I’ve needed the space to think, to dream other things. It hardly matters today though; another étude brews.
The RCF essay now in the back of my head. What to say? What can be said? How to use it to learn something, explore something I need to explore. When thinking of literature, the past and the present all too often infuriate me: everyone, everything that’s been kept out. The future won’t, can’t be the same and yet…one worries about it. What I wonder most is if there is a way, whether there might be a way in this whole wide world, to forgive them. Something for the sake of my own work, my own life I need to do — have needed to do a long time. Perhaps in my essay I will make an attempt, the first movement toward some sort of reconciliation, at any rate. If it’s possible. To set up the drama that might make it possible.
This breakable heart.
April. How poised everything seems. How wonderfully ready. And I, too, trembling — and on the verge…
Acknowledgments
THE AUTHOR WISHES to thank those that published these essays, sometimes in different form: Conjunctions, American Poetry Review, Review of Contemporary Fiction, Seneca Review, A Place Called Home: Twenty Writing Women Remember (St. Martin’s Press, 1996), Reclaiming the Heartland (University of Minnesota Press, 1996), and Tales from the Couch: Writers on the Talking Cure (Avon, 2000).
And a special thanks to Bradford Morrow.