Language Lesson

 Language lesson.  

One thing I didn’t write about our stay in Kristovia,* I guess because it didn’t go anywhere, was the language lessons that our hotel clerk Tural arranged for us. We only went to the first.

     The woman that met us at the front door of her square little house was dressed like a fortune-teller, long, flowing flowered skirt, bright yellow blouse buttoned to her neck, three or four costume-jewelry necklaces of different lengths sprawling against it, and her hair tied up in a lime-green kerchief. But she didn’t look at all mysterious. She looked familiar. As if I’d met her briefly thirty years before. We’d spent an evening drinking Saki, smoking cigarettes and talking about Sartre. Not that either of us had read anything but Nausea and No Exit. Still, we had ideas about what existentialism ought to mean - some of them we agreed on, some of them we didn’t.

     But we couldn’t have met. She was Canadian from near Ottawa. She had never lived anywhere else, and I had never been there.

      Not long after that non-existent meeting, though, she met her husband (also “Tural”). He was from Pompeijo; he had a job prospect there. They moved, they married, and they had been in that city ever since.

     “Flora,” she said, when she met us at the door, extending her hand. “Roz,” Roz said. “Ted,” I said, both of us taking her hand. She invited us through the house into the kitchen. She offered us coffee [khavay]*. We would just get to know each other this “lesson,” to see how we got along. Still, she would also teach us a few words and phrases: “cream” [krem], “sugar” [shekhar]; “hello” [zahlahm], “thank you” [chock-teckshur], and “good-bye” [zhoshbeshtlick]. Also: “What is this?”- pointing [Boo-nuddeer?], so we could learn other words as we went along.

     “Boo-nuddeer?” Roz asked, pointing at the clock. “Zaaht,” Flora said.

She asked us what brought us here. “A tramp steamer,” Roz said. “Guhmee,” Flora said, “ship.” And the two laughed.

     The back door opened, and in came the girl I had been thinking I remembered from thirty years ago. It was Zayna from the restaurant, maybe thirty hours ago, who’d let Nemet do all the talking to us.

     “Hi,” she said. “We meet again.” Her English was perfect. She sounded like she’d lived all her life in Ottawa.

The Thursday Special from Pompeijo, Kristovia arrives in our town.
(Intermediate stop at Union Station, Washington, D.C.)

Yet, it was Nemet that called now. He and Zayna were in D.C. [day-ssay]. They could come to see us? - it wasn’t far? “The ffōn ssay sso.” “And wass a train. It comig Tursday?”

     The call came Sunday afternoon. So now, I was trying to get Dr. Feight to explain to me how I could get a phone call from someone that didn’t exist outside of a story I had made up, or that my addled brain had concocted for me. “This is not like the letters I get from Moira,” I was saying. “This isn’t even a real place,” I said.

     Dr. Feight didn’t say anything, until the pause lasted what must have been at least two minutes. Then, “Go on,” he said.

03.26.19

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  * See beginning here.
 ** The pronunciations are according to what I heard. I have no idea how any of the words should be spelled.

In the beginning was the word,

 In the beginning was the word, 

Down Dr. Feight's stairs

When I went to see Dr. Feight yesterday, I took one of Moira’s letters. (About those see here and here.*)

     After Roz and I talked about Nightwood Tuesday night, I tried to write her, Moira, about the book, particularly about the character of Robin Vote. The blurb on the back of the paperback Roz is reading calls the novel “the story of Robin Vote and those she destroys.” Those are Felix and Nora and Jenny Petherbridge, also Guido, her son with Felix. Just as I was going to sleep, I began to remember pieces of the story. “Each of the characters becomes involved with Robin,” I wrote Moira, “and each is destroyed. But why do they become involved with her in the first place? What attracts them to her?” I couldn't see that. “It’s one thing with Guido: children become involved with their parents willy-nilly. But grown men and women - have they no choice when it comes to their lovers?”

     Then I wrote, “I’ll stop here. I’m running out of coffee. Or maybe I’m just running out (period), petering out.” But I go on: “Where does that idiom come from, to ‘peter out’? A woman describing her lover, perhaps? ‘He began well enough, but before we were half-done, he just petered out?’ Forgive me. Maybe that’s not something a man writes to his younger sister. Besides, there’s no need asking you, is there? You don’t have either a library or the internet, and your access to the All-Knowing seems - to me, oddly and surprisingly - limited.”

She wrote back Wednesday afternoon. She looked forward to what I found out about “peter out.” “It’s not, incidentally,” she went on, “that we don’t have access to the All-Knowing, but unless you happen on one of His (very few) interests, He doesn’t really pay attention. I might well ask, for example, where the phrase ‘peter out’ comes from, and even put a gasp of sexual innuendo into my voice. And He will likely respond by asking what I think of the phrase ‘cleverly devised myths’ in II Peter, meaning the New Testament book, and then, when I come up blank, he might suggest that could be something worth thinking about. He’d be glad to exchange views if I formed any.

Dr. Feight's couch

     “And I get the feeling that is true. He would be. He is never - He can never be - too busy for me - or anyone or anything else - because He is not only All-Knowing, He is All-Doing. Still, never being too busy and appearing accessible are two quite different things.

     “So, yes, please, you see what you can find out about the phrase.” She signs the letter, “Love, Moira.”

I read the letter to Dr. Feight. I wasn’t sure what I was going to do if he asked to see it, but he didn’t. Instead, he said, “It doesn’t have to do with sex, does it?” - meaning the origin of the phrase.

     “No,” I said. “It doesn’t.”

03.22.19

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 * Links to my lengthy history with Dr. Feight may be found here.

Nightwood

 Nightwood 

“Ted,” I hear. I look from where I’m lying down on the couch across the coffee table. Roz is sitting in her chair, feet tucked under her hips; she has raised her head from her book. Roz’s chair is blue. It has an aura that wavers a little. She is wearing gray, a lighter gray sweater-top and a darker gray skirt that she’s pulled down over her knees.
     I took medicine once that made everything shimmer under incandescent light. Except for Roz. She always sat, and she always sits still, except when she raises her head, and says, “Ted.” Then I look up. Behind her, shimmering in a different way: a Pat Matheny Album she likes, songs from the sixties and seventies, “The Sound of Silence,”“Cherish,”“Rainy Days and Mondays,” “And I Love Her,” among others. The name of the album is What's It All About.

Roz's chair

     “Did you hear what I said?” she asks.

     “I might have,” I say. “What?”

     “Are you okay? I don’t think you want to go to sleep right now.”

     “What time is it?” I ask.

     “It’s a little after eight.”

     “It’s Monday, right?” I ask.

     “No, hon. it’s Tuesday.”

     “Did I see Dr. Feight today? I was thinking it was tomorrow.”

     “No. You see him on Monday. And on Thursday. You saw him yesterday and you see him again the day after tomorrow.”

     “What are you reading?” I ask.

     “Nightwood.”

     “Oh, I remember that. I think I must have read it once.” Djuna Barnes, I know that;but I’m not sure I ever read the book any more than I’m sure what day it is or how it could be eight o’clock and not ten or eleven. The new drugs aren’t used to each other yet. Some days they seem to get along, and some days every one is angry at every other. Or, some want to cooperate and others are intent on forming alliances.

     I try to think how many there are, probably not this many but it seems as if I have one to calm me down and another to keep me awake, one to keep my stomach from buzzing and another to keep it from shutting off. There’s one to keep my brain from imploding and another to keep it from exploding. There’s one to open my lungs to the world and another from keeping my spirit from escaping through my nose. And there’s Vitamin D.

     “Why don’t you try reading something?” Roz asks.

     “What?”

     “Well, I don’t think Nightwood,” she says.
     “No,” I say, “From what I remember, not that.”

03.20.19

Anti-story

 Anti-story 

One of you wrote me about the last post in which Michael Gerson was telling his story, but I wasn’t telling mine because I had none (Click here.): “Didn’t you run into someone you knew, for instance? Something must have happened. If so, there must be a story.”

I ran into two people I knew. I ran into the big, fat, angry preacher that was out to preach last time I was there, about a year ago. (See here. The story of that stay begins here.) He still comes, apparently. And he’s been coming all along.

     The day I ran into him this time must have been a Sunday, but I wasn’t keeping good track of the time, so I didn’t realize it was Sunday. I hadn’t gone to “worship.” But he came over at lunch; he remembered me somehow. And I saw that lunch was “Sunday”: fried chicken - a leg and a thigh - covered with corn-flake batter thicker than the meat; a runny lump of mashed potatoes and a stew of mashed green beans, which I stirred together into one camouflage-colored glop. Also: sweet tea; and Jell-O with fruit in it for dessert, a smudge of whipped cream on top.

     The chair across from me was empty. He sat down in it - or surrounded it - and he asked me how it felt to be back. There wasn’t a touch of irony in his voice that I could tell. It was as if he genuinely wanted to know, as if we’d been vacationing for years on the same week on the same half-mile of road leading off Highway 12 to Canadian Hole Beach, and I’d missed last year for some reason.

     I didn’t know how to answer, so I said, “Fine.” Then, after a minute watching him watch me while I ate, I asked him what he thought God was up to the when he struck Saul mad. He looked at me. He shook his head. Then he said he was in the loving-God, not the second-guessing-God business. I said, “Oh.” He started getting up, pretending that it wasn’t an effort to get all that weight from sitting to standing and that he wasn’t angry about gravity, about my question, about everything else in the world God had made good but Man insisted on mucking up. “Good to see you again,” he said. “Good to see you,” I said. I didn’t mean it, but I don’t think he meant it either. Still, it was good of him to see and try to say something to me.

Staff

I heard from one of the staff that has been around longer than the preacher has been coming out - much longer - that Molly had been back but was gone again. He wasn’t supposed to tell me that kind of thing, he said, “But I got such a kick out of it when you guys broke out of here that time.” 

     That was at the end of December two years ago. And we didn’t exactly break out; more, we drove away. (Molly enters that story right after Roz takes me out for Christmas dinner, which is here. Just page on from there.)

     Staff said he wasn’t supposed to tell me this either, but Molly was about the same. “He reminds me of a dead leaf blowing along the sidewalk,” he said. “He looks like he’s dancing in the sun, but you know . . . .” He stopped. “Well, you know that it’s not dancing, it’s something else.”

     I hadn’t thought about Molly for a while, I told staff. “Do you know where we went?” I asked, “not that you could tell me.” No, staff said, he couldn’t tell me if he knew; but he didn’t know. “He just blows in and he blows away again,” staff said as he went back to scrubbing the floor. When someone throws up, he mops up, staff said; then he scrubs the whole hallway; then he mops again.

03.08.19

Some time later

 Some time later . . . 

I saw Michael Gerson on television in the common room the other day: He was talking cheerily about being hospitalized for depression. He’s written about it, too; I read one of the articles. He’s telling his story. That’s good.

     I’m not telling my story because there isn’t one. That’s my experience: There is no story.

Some years ago I bought used an anthology called . . . Anti-Story, I believe.* I thought I might find something helpful for writing this in it, so I went looking for it this morning after Roz came to get me and brought me home. Uncle Albert was with her. She had to go back to work for a while, and he was going to stay with me until she got home.

     I thought I knew right where the book was, or at least what other books it would be with; but it wasn’t there. And I didn’t know where else to look.

03.04.19

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 * I was right. I looked it up on the internet: Philip Stevick, ed., Anti-Story: An Anthology of Experimental Fiction. New York: The Free Press, 1971.