when she didnt die at 19 she became confused, so she got married,
when she got married she wanted to live to be 80. that was her goal,
so she dressed well then, and made a schedule, and fed her husband,
and talked politely to his friends, and was faithful, and kept the
house clean.
soon she was in great pain, soon she was so lonely, soon she woke
up, made the beds, cleaned the house, did the laundry, made the
dinner, did the dishes, watched television, and went to sleep, soon he
stopped coming home, and soon they stopped making love, and soon
she knew she would live to be 80, and she didnt want that anymore.
so she left her husband, and she was poor again, and this time she
thought 33.
she liked movies and books and music, it was harder to like
people.
she liked animals and she liked to talk to old people, she asked
them where they had been and how they had lived, she asked them
who they were and what had happened to them over the years.
she was poor, and she went to the city, she remembered the mountains and the ocean and she remembered that she had never seen the desert.
in the city there was great pain and suffering, in the city there were
poor people and hungry people and angry people and brutal people,
in the city she sat alone, in the city she was alone.
everything changed, all day long she was alone, everything was different. all day long she was alone, everything changed, she was big and she was sad.
now there were young boys, now they were young and soft and unsure. now they were children that she turned to, one by one, then two by two, and as the days passed, three by three and four by four.
there was a special one. he was short, and he smiled, he had 2
dogs, she didnt have any power anymore, she had given it all away,
she didnt have any power and she wanted young boys.
the special one lived near her. he hung out on the street, he liked
the violence of the street, he was very young, he would feel it in the
air and smile his smile and wait for it to happen, she liked him and
she was afraid.
he wanted her to come to him. he asked her many times, each time
she smiled sadly, she had something to do. she was tired, in the heat
of that summer she was dirty, her feet had blisters, her skin had
boils, her sadness was in her like a lump blocking her throat hurting
her breast choking inside her chest.
each day she passed him on the street, each day he smiled and
called to her. each day he asked her to come see him. each day she
wanted him more and more, each day she sat alone and walked her
dog and read from a book and listened to music, each day she was
busy, each day they smiled at each other and he asked her to come to
him and she said I will and she did not.
then one day she did. she remembered the mountains and the
ocean and the desert she had not seen and the power she had had.
she went to him and he smiled at her and he was her lover and because she was sad she became more sad. and because he was young and soft and unsure she became more sad.
they walked down the street sometimes, sometimes they were in his
room, sometimes they took his 2 dogs and her 1 dog to the park.
then the winter came and he was not very young anymore, she was
still sad and still he was her lover, sometimes they laughed together,
she did not go to him anymore,
when the spring came she left the city,
she went to the mountains,
she was alone there.
when the summer came she let a young boy who lived in the mountains make love to her. her sadness returned again and worse, when the fall came she began to wait for the snows,
when the snows came she took long walks.
she had her dog, and a wood stove, and she loved the trees and the
snow, she loved her solitude, and her sadness disappeared as the
snow melted.
when the spring came she wrote small fragile poems,
when the summer came she went into the city,
she was 27 now and the city was her mirror, she wore heavy boots
and she smoked cigarettes as she walked down the streets and she
gave quarters to the beggars, she drank tequila and four by four they
were her lovers again,
she was a famous writer by now.
in the winter many people wanted to talk to her. in the winter
many people took her to dinner, and touched her knee, and wanted
her to know them.
in the winter she was more and more on the streets, in the winter
she fled from the people who wanted to take her to dinner, and touch
her knee, and have her know them.
in the spring she left the city, she went to the ocean, she walked on
the sand, she walked up and down the oceans edge, over and over
again, she did not remember what it felt like to be sad. she remembered very little,
in the summer she wrote down everything she remembered,
in the summer people crowded onto the sand and at the oceans
edge so she went to the mountains,
in the fall a famous actor made love to her.
in the winter she forced him to leave, in the winter she called him
terrible names and felt great rage and forced him to leave,
then spring came and she went to the city.
in the summer she was tired, in the summer she became weary into
the marrow of her bones, in the summer she became so tired that her
physical vision diminished and a darkness began to close in on her.
in the summer she was so tired that the streets were blurred and she
could not see well enough to read.
in the fall she tried to remember her husband, and her first love,
and the first 4, and the four by fours and the three by threes, in the
fall she tried with all her might to remember.
in the winter the snows came, in the winter she stayed in the city
and she couldnt remember, in the winter she died, she was 29.
some awful facts, recounted by bertha schneider
(for J. S. )
bertha schneider, nearly 31, was too disturbed to have any friends,
she was like all the other schlubs running around out there, loss was
driving her crazy, loss was eating up her heart, loss was defeating her
cell by cell, corpuscle by corpuscle, loss was the desert in which she
was lost, life had finally forced her to shake hands with the great
democratizer—loss, bertha schneider, lost, was at last just like
everyone else—lost.
her cycles of loss traditionally divided into 3 year periods, a double
cycle was 6 years, there were no half cycles, she had had several double cycles sequentially, these she had put behind her. who could remember so much loss, even her loss was lost, except when she slept
and spectres of loss, all flaming and brazen, assailed her. but most
often even sleep was lost, beyond her immediate grasp, remembered
dimly, imagined badly.
it was this current cycle, only in its 2nd year, that had made her old
all over again, too soon, before her time, at 18 she had been 84.
Schneiders Cocktail—drugs, sex, radical politics mixed with a lot of