14. London Art; Poetry

Friday 17 January.  Last night's poems:

My Father

We sit and drink in London or Las Vegas

In Denver or LA, Coeur d'Ailene and Palo Alto.

"It's crazy, isn't it?" you ask,

as you stir the vodka with your fingers.

"Yeah," I say, in awe, not knowing whether

You really believe it is, or

Whether it is all just another plan of yours

To answer things we don't

really understand with

perpetual awe and a decent amount of liquor.

Same day, Friday.  Audley End Train Station.  Waiting for the 5:35 Cambridge train.  Spent the day typing and revising, but only about 50 pages.  I would like to 100 pages a day, because I know I have to go back and do it once more before I send it out.  I am a little surprised at my work product, like some passages.  Some are necessary evils (to tell the story), but what I really want to do is tell my relationship to writing.

How truly I have spoken before.  Once something is written, it is easy to file away.  I have looked at this manuscript so long it's hard to believe I'm actually going to do something about it.

(On board the train.)  I kept trying for the new material but where was it?  Essays, poems, but a book is harder.  Time to reach back and finish that which I have started, clear my conscience of that worry.

What I have discovered this week is a week of hard work, something I have not really done in the last six months.  I have been busy in the last six months, no doubt about that, but I haven't pushed as I am doing now.

Tuesday 21 January.  5:15 p.m.  A client just called!  But only for the name of an appraiser.  (It's cool.)  Can't help but make a note that, as I have reworked chapters (at the moment), Peter's chapter (Best Friends) begins at page 114, his old address.

Wednesday 22 January.  9:30 a.m.  Book is all together now.  I will read it to see if it reads together, then patch it together once more before I send it out.

Friday 31 January.   Routine: Monday and Wednesday mass, work early to late on book.  Figuring things out sometimes while I sit in church.  Weather mostly cloudy.

Sunday 2 February.  Ten o'clock train to London on Saturday, celebrating Robert's birthday on the 24th.  Cab to Hazlitt's Hotel, not far from Soho Square.  Robert and I went to the British Museum for about an hour.  Saw Beatles' manuscripts, mummies, Rosetta Stone and Making of the 20th Century Exhibit.  By the time we got to the Elgin Marbles, Robert was dragging.  Dropped Robert off and took Mara with me to Murder One book store on Charing Cross, then to National Gallery, where we concentrated on the Turners and Rembrandts.  In the evening we went to see "The Wind in the Willows" at the National Theatre.  On the way out of the hotel we saw a distraught man run down the street saying someone had been murdered.  A fellow said, "Don't let the children see this."  Then a group of men started grappling with the man causing the commotion.  Soon they were rolling on the ground.  The children were fearful (Mara) or fascinated (Robert, Jeffrey).  The play was wonderful.  The hotel comfortable.  We stayed next to the "Prussian President" in "Sir Marmaduke's" room.  The children were all in a room on the next floor.  Noon mass on Sunday at Farm Street, then cab to Sloane Square and lunch at Ariel Brasserie.  While we ate, a waiter, good looking guy with chiseled features, did a fall with a tray full of food, flat on his face, with a silencing crash and a loud "F---!" in the then quiet restaurant.  Afterwards to the Tate and home on the 6:30 train.

Taking the Train

Nothing Else to Say!

Ariel

Monday 3 February.  8:05 a.m.  Book one half together.

Notes:  On the radio: dysentery caused by soft toilet paper.  Don't these people wash their hands!

Excellent little tour of 6 or 7 works at the Tate yesterday.  Got me thinking: originally art was representative, then cubism, Braques broke picture down to component parts and a subjective view of the object.  Seems that what happened so long ago in art is now happening in literature.  Or perhaps that was Joyce, i.e., subjective view of reality is distorted.  Deconstruction takes texts to task, takes them apart, critics doing what painters used to do?

Thursday 6 February.  Nine fifteen to London for the Mantegna exhibition at the Royal Academy.  Lunch at Le Meridien.  In the evening we watched, along with everyone else in the country, "Elizabeth R."  Sunrise 7:31 a.m., sunset 4:58 p.m.

Sunday 9 February.  Eleven o'clock mass, then off to Robin and Camilla's for a nice visit.  Sunny.  They live in an old thatch roof cottage that used to be a funeral parlor.  There have been some signs that it might be haunted, but they asked the ghosts, "Let's just get along, okay?"

Wednesday 12  February.  11:50 p.m.  Thomas has lots of, "Daddy, I love you."  ("You play castles with me, right?")  Great lines, many commands.

 Still working on my book.  I have revised generally since we've been here (September/October).  Retyped. (Finished in January.)  Revised thoroughly again and retyped.  (Completed this week or last.)  Now I am trying to read through quickly, get the feel, the flow and redo it only once more (this time) and send it out.

 My fall reading was to get a sense and correct glaring errors.  My next one (January) was to put the flow in.  Now that I think I have the flow, I have to read it for sense.  I realized today for the first time how the places in my life have corresponded to my own times of life, e.g., Malibu (simple, yet mysterious) = childhood.  Palisades (society, lovely, everything there) = adolescence (good times, questions, but you think it's all before you).  Las Vegas (stark reality is ugly) = adulthood.  My next step should be middle age.  Where does that leave me??  Reconciliation with death?  A big city?  Some place close to nature?  Old would be what?

 If I tried it out what would I come up with?  Say, for example, I said Seattle, how would that fit in with middle age?  Or Santa Fe?  Or New England, New York, Midwest?  Try them out and see what I can make of them.  i.e., it's up to me now, I've never done this before, only followed.

Thursday 13 February. Nine fifteen train to London. Eleven o'clockwalking tour with June of the London fire monument, old banks, Lloyd's. Stopped at Guildhall afterward for look see at Gog and Magog giants. Now and Zen for lunch. Stopped in at St. Martin's for the first time: lovely white interior, impressive prayer bulletin board. Toured the National Gallery: Impressionists, Rembrandt and new Raphael. Return on 6:02 train.