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Letters 1995-1997Though CS had occasionally been “brought down” by her job at QBank, these were the years when she was discontented most of the time. Once R, her energetic and generous boss, left his position, chaos reigned. Between 1995 and 1999, CS would be assigned to three different bosses. None made good use of her abilities. They had problems of their own too; either they never meshed with the culture or never earned the respect of their direct reports. There was disenchantment all around. Her mother's health continued to fail, adding more stress to a difficult time. CS was submitting her work very little and writing sporadically, though when she did write it was with new wisdom and depth.January 18, 1995 Dear Jack, I’ve read your letter of the 31st a few times. Sounds like you indeed had an amiable Yule. I made you a tape of Christmas music, but since it was New Year’s Eve by the time I finished tinkering with it, I figure I’ll wait till next year to send it. No jingle bells, no Santa, no neon-nosed reindeer. Just beautiful holiday melodies in a variety of moods. John and I executed our no-presents plan for Christmas. It wasn’t so bad. We spent our money in a madcap, ad hoc way. John got himself a Gameboy and now we are addicted to a game called Tetris in which you endlessly fit random block shapes together into a perpetual brick wall, a Sisyphean enterprise if ever there was one. (Camus was right; trust me; Sisyphus is happy.) I plundered the sale racks at Talbot’s, the “proper Bostonian” store which I have come, in my forties, to adore. One is always discovering something new about oneself—for example, that plaid is one’s color. You men and your preferences in actresses! Allow me to vent! Based on this and other letters, it seems you’ll always choose Meg Ryan and Julia Roberts over Natasha Richardson or Emma Thompson. I would rather watch Natasha and Emma blow their noses than endure Meg’s dimply girlishness or Julia’s blowzy uncombedness. They are sweet, but they seem airheaded and uneducated to me. This is what you pant for? This, when there is NR and EG and Helen Mirren and Susan Sarandon and Holly Hunter and other such actresses of good looks and depth? I remember, in high school, our drama teacher, a big fat guy named Brother Cronin, praising his favorite actress: Barbara Eden, known then as a midriff-baring television genie! I was so impressionable, I went out and dyed by hair blonde and jumped onto the diet merry-go-round. As a result, I was the world’s first miniskirted, mod Antigone. And, for a time, I valued beauty and fame over talent and brains. What would have happened if Cronin had praised Anne Bancroft instead? Your story about the sharp-tongued Mrs. Barnes is a sad one. Too often teachers forget that tender growing souls are in their hands. Brother Cronin certainly forgot! When John was a kid, he was given the drums to play in a marching band. “You’ll never be a drummer,” the bandleader told him. How it stung! A child doesn’t just hear “You’ll never be a drummer,” he hears “You’ll never be anything, don’t even try.” News stories are breaking my heart lately. Did you read about the Korean woman who was killed by a subway train? She’d been pushed onto the tracks by a homeless psychotic on her way to a stint of volunteer work. Everything about this story slices me up—the hard-working, generous Korean woman, senselessly killed; her grown children, in mourning; the crazy man who had just “walked out” of the hospital without anybody noticing or caring; the valiant bystander who ran after the man and captured him. My tears rained. Now Japan is a shambles after a jumbo earthquake. In twenty seconds, everything can change. I have been working on this letter for two hours, in between sundry interruptions and endless phone calls. In addition to our private lines, I answer a general information line for Bankcard Marketing. All day long, the callers call: I have a product I want to sell in your card statement, who do I talk to? .... where do you get off at, running that tasteless ad in the paper? .... my neighbor got a solicitation for the AAdvantage Card featuring a free companion ticket on American Airlines, why can’t I have one? .... take me off your mailing list, you swine .... will you advertise on our radio station? .... will you give me data for my term paper? .... somebody from your company is on my campus pushing your product without permission, get him out of here .... where can I get one of those Santa suits featured in your 1992 TV commercial? .... your customer service rep was rude .... your telemarketer has been hassling me .... I want a job .... I want to issue a private label credit card .... I have a direct mail list to sell .... I want to buy your list .... I fart in your general direction ... It’s a zoo parade all day long. February 1, 1995 Dear Jack, I am in a low mood due to a monstrous episode at the office. I picked up the phone on Monday and encountered an extremely abusive, irate male whose unrelenting harangue all but undid me. It was surreal. At first, I gave him the benefit of the doubt and tried to hear him out—you have to listen to these people, their complaints may be legitimate—but it was impossible. He would not even specify the nature of his call, only that he wanted to discuss the “loss of his business” with the president of QBank. He kept carrying on and putting me down, using coarse, sexist language. Not in all my nine years here has anyone gotten to me the way this guy did. There was something malevolent about the man. I should have hung up on him. Instead, I let myself get caught up in the drama, and at last I wept, got hysterical, even did violence to the telephone. I made a spectacle of myself, alas, and had to go home, I was so unnerved. An “all-or-nothing” doom got me in its grip that day, of the sort I had thought I had outgrown. At home, I thought, this is it, I am finished at QBank, and good riddance, I am never holding down a full-time job again, so what if I’ll be poor again, no job is worth the aggravation, etc., etc. I got through the night with the help of John’s sympathy, two vodka gimlets, and a dish of Haagen-Dazs Cappuccino Commotion. Booze and ice cream, my drugs of choice. What a waste of time and what an absurd agon! Why couldn’t I have been cooler? I don’t know. Just when I think I have snuffed out my demons and reached a state one might call “maturity,” something like this drags me down and makes me feel like a foolish 20 year old, green around the gills and oversensitive. The day after the “incident” I wrote two poems and that is one reason to cheer. Strong emotion oils the gears, I find. “The Way of the Soul” describes just how I felt—as if I’d been brought down in some essential way. . . . . Then, miraculously enough, I wrote a “funny” poem about customer complaints, “I Hear America Complaining.” Maybe the episode was a blessing in disguise. It certainly woke me up somehow. It even helps me to be honest about the limitations of my job at QBank. I have to keep remembering that this job is primarily a survival tool, money for bills, money for larks, money in the bank. I shouldn’t let it get to me so much, though it does. I wish I could be writing you one of my breezy, wow letters and this is definitely not that. The late winter doldrums are not conducive to such. February 15, 1995 Dear Jack, Thanks a bunch for your empathetic note, and for the sweet Valentine’s Day card. I needed a little validation and a little romance! The office goo remains deep and viscous. My (new) boss announced that he is leaving the organization as of March 1st, and that a new marketing director has been hired and will be starting next Thursday. ‘Sblood! I’ve got to break in another one. This has become a harsh, cutthroat place and I am sick of it. What a headache life can be. You must listen to all this bureaucratic nonsense and thank heaven you are out of it. Church administration may have slammed you with different types of frustrations than those of Corporation World, but there were frustrations all the same, eh? I’m glad Lent is coming, for I need time to examine my conscience and repent, though “repent” is a scary word. What do you have to say on the topic? You tend not to be philosophical in your letters, and yet I am sure you are so. “Tell me what you are doing and where you are going,” Elizabeth Bishop pleads in a poem to one of her correspondents, but I am just as apt to implore “Please tell me what you are thinking and how you are coping.” Personally, my own “thinking” is all aflummox right now and I wouldn’t say I was coping! I love to hear about Santa Fe too. It sounds so beautiful and so lively. You’ve even gotten into the poetry scene there, which is more than I’ve done here. Did you read that piece about readings in the Times Book Review on Sunday? I feel very close to that writer. Poets can be ill-behaved and unprepared, readings are too long, they are tedious, they are unendurable sometimes—and yet they endure. Don’t even get me started about “slams.” I imagine that readings can also be magical, when it all comes together. Of course, I still quake at the thought of doing a public reading. I ambled over to a reading at Barnes and Noble a few months ago, in order to check out the scene. Under harsh lighting, a woman read in front of about 50 people. She read a poem about menstruating at age 47. “I AM OBESE WITH BLOOD,” she blurted. I scampered away just as fast as I could. And yet I still love poetry. I feel jangley and alive when I am writing it. I feel pleased and blessed when I have brought a good one to closure. I lament my obscurity in the field, and yet, to be truthful, I am comfortable in the obscurity. Torn up, I am torn up. A storm is coming, a forecast of high winds and slushy snow, followed by a steady rain which I hope will rinse away the icy remains of the last storm, for I am tired of slip-sliding away. I am actually looking forward to it. I will sit in my apartment tonight and listen to the pelting rain and feel snug. Well, I have to get back to work even though my boss, in his lame-duckhood, has played hooky today. Then it’s off to a scrumptious cafeteria lunch! (I be ironic.) At this point, CS was looking for a new job within QBank, though ultimately she decided to stay in her position as administrative assistant to the credit card marketing director. March 21, 1995 Dear Jack, Haven’t heard from you for a while; hope you’re okay. When your friend didn’t share his tax woes with you, you felt he ignored your friendship, your supportive shoulder. Well, I am in bad need of shouldering. I feel lousy, Jack, I am suddenly a psychological mess again. Crying jags, inertia, desolation, morbid thoughts. I’m not coping well. There was a test for depression, a series of questions, in Mary Gordon’s article in Sunday’s Times—did you see it? That’s when I realized I might have a problem. It has occurred to me that all this may be hormonal—I’ll be 45 soon, after all. So I will see a doctor this week and ask him to test hormone levels and also check out my thyroid. I most heartily hope that it’s all just a physical thing, and treatable, though I’d rather not become, as one T -shirt boasts, a “Prozac Chick.” Here’s a question for you. Is depression a break with reality or is it being absolutely tuned in to reality? After all, we age, we ache, we fail, we don’t measure up to our own standards, and over life’s course we lose looks, libido, gusto, all sense of surprise ... nothing surprises you, after a while. I wish I could say my “art” saves me, but it doesn’t, you know. When I become benumbed, I can’t create. I hope I am not hauling you into my slough of despond here. I’m grateful you can listen, though. I have been trying to end my letters on a cheerful note, but it’s been a ruse. John is worried about me; he’s the one who made the doctor’s appointment. I am not much company these days, I fear. Not much attention span either. Haven’t read any meaty books lately. I’ve been browsing through a book of sayings of the saints and finding some comfort therein. Here’s the one I liked best, from THE CLOUD OF UNKNOWING: “Believe me when I say the devil has his contemplatives as surely as the Lord as his.” Not much solace there! March 22 Perhaps the “cloud of unknowing” is lifting some. It helps sometimes just to admit you are having a problem, rather than marching forward, chin up, in soul-murdering pretense. If there is a psychological element to my depression, it may be that the imminent loss of my long-time job has hit me hard, even if my decision to leave it is voluntary. In one of my pow-wows with the H.R. lady about my job situation, she asked me what I disliked most about my new boss. I didn’t want to be a complainer and anyway he seems like a good guy, basically. To myself I answer the question: I don’t like the way he uses his assistant as his memory and repository. He is one of those bosses who cannot keep paper on his desk; if he needs a document two days from now, he returns it to me to give to him then. I came in on a Thursday morning once to find in his out box something for me to give him Thursday morning! This seems idiotic to me. Then there’s the “reread” routine. He gives stuff back to me so I can give it right back to him to reread. Also, every afternoon I have to type up an index card with the following day’s schedule laid out on it. He has a normal desk calendar but he lives in the present, I guess. Since no one has typewriters anymore, this means I word process it, print it, cut it, paste it. As they say in Ireland, it’s shtupid. You don’t respond much to my Mondo Mammon stories, or question me about the wisdom of working here. I know you, though. You are a nonjudgmental sort. And besides, if you were to say, “Hey, Catherine, are you crazy, why don’t you go back into publishing?” I probably would not appreciate it. Why don’t I go back into publishing? The thing is, they would never hire me as an acquisitions editor now—I have lost all contacts, I don’t know the agents and I don’t have a stable of authors. And I am now overage for an associate editor position, of the kind I had before, not to mention unwilling to take the low salary. It’s too late, that’s all. The idea scares me to death, anyway. Publishing is such a volatile, non-bullish industry, no job security at all, prima donnas around every bend and people strutting. Days like these, I wish I had taken up interior decorating or fashion reporting or something fun. Shoulda, woulda, coulda. Once again I incant the word “Prozac.” I’ve read that it makes you feel like yourself only “without lead boots.” Devoutly to be wished. What a drag I am. I have been sneezing all morning—maybe it’s dust in the air—not to mention burping and other flatulent horrors. I wonder if I could write a poem, “Flatulent Ode.” It would have to be very verbose and vowelly, very gassy! April 5, 1995 Dear Jack, I should have known that as soon as I mailed off my last, yours would be waiting in the mail for me that very evening. I very much enjoyed that letter. . . . The depression still tugs on me, though not so incessantly. The doctor told me I’m physically healthy, and recommended I go on Paxil, a second-generation Prozac drug. I’m not doing it. I have grave doubts about the chemical solution, at least in my case. I know why I get depressed. It’s the choices I’ve made, the habits of being I’m stuck in, the isolation I feel. Of course, stress is part of it, as you note. Just remember that this secretary-bird existence is the choice I made to relieve myself of the stress of all-consuming book publishing, so I could carve out space in my soul for the poetry. I’ve done everything I can to alleviate stress, short of locking myself in my room like an anchorite! I first started thinking about anchorites when I ready a moody, evocative novel years ago called WOMEN IN THE WALL by Julia O’Faolain. One of the main characters was literally walled in—sealed in stone in a medieval convent. I’ve pondered that image ever since. The anchorite or anchoress was considered a very holy soul and said to bring grace to the convent or monastery. Isolation was a vocation in those days. Scanty foodstuffs would be passed to the person through a low slot in the wall. Julia used a first-person voice to recreate life in such a circumstance. It seemed strange and horrible, living on scraps, living in darkness, surrounded by excrement, plagued by loneliness and wild thoughts. There is a scene at the end when the anchoress is forced out of hiding by marauders. I see the scene cinematically—a skinny, Auschwitz-like figure hardly recognizable as human, dragged against her will into the outside world, and then killed, her skull cracked by a boot as easily as if it were made of eggshell. These were the Dark Ages, brutal times, full of ignorance and extremity. Quite a bit like the NYC subways, I suppose. Last week I wrote two wonderful poems, “Knees” and “In the Devil’s Monastery,” the latter drawing on that quote from THE CLOUD OF UNKNOWING. It’s a sort of “tour” which starts with the image of an inverted crucifix and goes from there—a dark, quirky poem full of extreme imagery and black humor. When I do good work, when I can draw on my inner life like water from a well, then my outer life seems worth living. I was in the middle of composing this letter yesterday when I got a call from the Bay View Manor, my mother’s boarding home. They are very worried about her. She’s been losing weight, eating sporadically, and having a hard time getting around. Monday she took a fall. They sent her to the hospital for tests. Amazingly, nothing untoward was discovered—no broken bone from the fall, no heart arrhythmia—and so they sent her back to the Manor. Still, I remain worried, and so do her caretakers, for they recognize a failing old person when they see one. I have just made flight reservations for Friday; John and I will go to Searsport, Maine for the weekend and see what’s what. Could my depression have been a “sympathetic” one, I wonder? You never know. My mother and I always were pretty meshed. O, God, a cold spring weekend in mid-coast Maine among the old and the ailing! April 18, 1995 Dear Jack, Post-Easter, post-haste, post toasties—I survived my weekend in Searsport and was actually very happy to be with my mother again. Though she has lost weight, in my opinion she is not as underweight as when she arrived at the Manor in 1988. At that point, she was thinner than Kate Moss. Her appetite is hopeless, though; she only gets sweet things down. Meat she picks at, veggies she doesn’t touch. I have advised them to serve her things like egg pudding and sweet cream of wheat, but I’m not sure they can handle special orders there. What a misery it is, seeing your mother so helpless and frail. She has a senile hobby—saving used cigarette butts in her pocket book, along with leftover cookies and things. Crumbs and ashes have to be shaken out of her bag regularly. She doesn’t really need a bag, but insists on portaging one around at all times. There’s nothing inside it except a pack of cigarettes, a clog of tissues, and all the dreck. Just picture it! A tiny, very aged lady with long gray hair, stringy and straight, and shuttered, unseeing eyes. They dress her in hopeless outfits—short white sweaters, loud blouses, sorry polyester slacks, nothing matching and everything cheap. The nice stuff I bought her last time got lost at the cleaners, or some such. . . . . Since my Maine trip, I am practically beside myself with fury here at the office. Why? Because I am paid to “look after” a perfectly able-bodied, able-minded man, to fetch for him, and see to his comfort, and get him where he’s going. Meanwhile, up at the Bay View Manor, thirty souls, mostly aged, some retarded, have no one person to see to their very real, very simple needs. My heart bursts open when I visit them. I want to touch these people in tender ways, I want to succor them and see to their happiness. Such little things make them happy. One woman, Lillian, celebrated a birthday on Palm Sunday. At 74, she is one of the youngest and looks positively dewy next to some of the others. I found her quite beautiful, actually. They brought out a big cake with candles in her honor—they never miss a birthday at the Manor—and I gave her a little lacy heart box I had found at a local shop. I didn’t realize, when I bought it, that that one little thing would be her only present. But she was delighted. Such a little giftie, yet she lit up. Nothing I could give or do would make my boss light up, I assure you! But will I leave him? My job search has been disappointing; I have not found any greener patches of grass within the organization. A job in the training area seemed perfect, but they are not budgeted to handle my current salary! Can you imagine!? Anyway, tomorrow, when my boss gets back from a trip, I will tell him I would prefer to stay with him. . . . . I recently sent my buffed-up manuscript off to a contest to be judged by Alicia Ostriker. I am pleased with this latest version, which includes some of the new, more spiritual stuff I am writing. Love, work, the flesh, the family, the soul—it’s all there. April 28, 1995 Dear Jack, Got your letter last night. Clearly you know what’s it’s like, trying to sustain the elderly. The first time I visited my mother at the Manor, back in 1988, I felt sickened by the sight of so many passive old people. I could barely breathe in the common room, what with all the cigarette smoke (they now have new rules about smoking) and all the despondency. With each visit, my perspective lightened. I learned not to care about signs of “progress” or initiative. Suddenly it seemed enough just to sit with these people, watching TV and conversing with those who felt like it. One woman there, Virginia, crippled by a broken hip, loves to say “I’m glad I was young when I was young!” Another woman loves to talk to me, asking the same questions again and again. One of the men likes to talk to John about lobstering and trucking, his former occupations. One man just sits there under his cap and smiles. He’s a little “slow,” I think, but sweet and benign. They shuffle around, they nap, they live for their pale meals. Who am I to say it’s not a life? It’s the endtime of life, that’s all. The things I’ve witnessed in my few visits! Two imposing residents are a brother and sister, both blind, both very large, and both retarded, he more than she. Her name is Ruthie. For a blind lady, Ruthie sure gets around! She’s the fastest shuffler of them all. On Lillian’s birthday, Ruthie made a whole to-do of bringing Lillian her teddy bear to pet as a special birthday treat. At one time I would have seen only pathos. This time I saw simple human kindness. . . . . It seems a miracle to me that I can even enjoy a visit with my mother in her present state. But I do enjoy it. She is full of memories of the distant past now. Her childhood is accessible to her whereas her life as a wife and mother is fading out. I actually learned something new about her. It seems, as a young girl, she worked in an ice cream parlor. She was so green, when her first customer left change on the table, she brought it to the manager, not realizing it was a tip! An old buried memory, now bubbling up. . . . . My mood has improved greatly since my trip to Maine. It grounded me, and reminded me I really am a competent grownup now, with choices. Deciding to stay put at work has settled my stomach some too. I am getting in the swing of my new boss’s style. I have not forgotten I was once your secretary. That a friendship could have blossomed out of that inherently unequal situation seems phenomenal. But you were not the typical boss, and the United Presbyterian Church was not the typical workplace. Halcyon days for me, in retrospect. But I was young and restless and wanted more of a challenge. Now I’m old and tired and only want money. And a little peace of mind. Peace of mind coming, I hope, for I am celebrating my new attitude with a vacation. On May 6th we are headin’ down the turnpike for Virginia. We’ll spend a weekend in Chincoteague/Assateague, a new place for us, and several days in Williamsburg, which we haven’t seen in 20 years. As you know, I’ve been researching the colonial period so I am eager to take a walk down the history road. I can fearlessly spend money on vacations but I get paralytic when it comes to spending money on my apartment, so I will try to take some inspiration from you and think about a renovation at last. We need some new furniture; our apartment is the epitome of “shabby chic” right now. That leather sectional couch we bought ten years ago—at the time it was purchase of the century—is now a scruffy mess. The leather has cracked and crackled and split; what was once a smooth taupe surface now resembles elephant scrotum. We will miss it when it goes, though. That couch is the most comfortable niche on earth. Ages ago I mentioned that Columbus Avenue is being dug up. Trucks and chaos have assaulted us on and off for a couple of years now. Since November, it’s been particularly awful—three-quarters of the street has been cordoned off, and the noise starts at dawn. Those backhoes are a misery, as are the car alarms set off by all the vibrations. No wonder my nerves have been shot. Last night, voilà, I came home to find the streets paved and quiet. It is a temporary respite. They’ll be back in October. Lord knows when they’ll finish the project, but when they do we’ll have a spanking new infrastructure, new trees, and charming old-timey streetlamps. . . . . I’m speed-reading Scott Pecks’ latest IN SEARCH OF STONES, which is rather pompous and more-or-less a rehash of his pet themes, and then I am turning to a nonfiction work by the Irish poet Eavan Boland and the new edition of Anne Frank’s DIARY OF A YOUNG GIRL .... .... The mention of which reminds me of Auschwitz, Oklahoma City, etc. I have been trying to make sense of Oklahoma City too. Every detail explodes the soul. There are cracks in the world where the evil gets in. At this point in my life, I don’t expect it not to. Write you again after my trip. May 18, 1995 Dear Jack, I was away from the rat race for a while. Now I’m back, and swamped, an old gray water rat skittering along slippery slopes.
. . . . Before I leave the subject of my vacation, I must mention a funny thing that happened on our trip down. On Route 13 in the Delmarva suddenly John said, “Hey, there’s a mime driving the car behind us.” I swung around and sure enough, there was the mime, grinning and waving at us for all it was worth. We still giggle when we think of it. With great interest did I read your introspective recent letters and that stimulating article you sent on “temperament.” The temperament theory rings very true. You and I are both shy, fearful types, I guess. I cried uncle and surrendered the battle when I went back into secretarial work. Now I support those whose temperament is the aggressive type, who thrive on strife and conflict. Let them have their suburban manors, their Mercedes-Benzes, and their fat paychecks. I’ll take the calm life. . . . . The temperament article had me revisiting my childhood again. No doubt I was born hyper-sensitive and the parenting I got gave me no way out. For instead of being patient with my fearfulness, ol’ Ma and Pa would always mock it and reinforce it. “O that’s Cathy, scared of her own shadow!” was a favorite saying around my house. And the ever popular, “Don’t be silly, there’s nothing to be afraid of.” But I lived in fear—fear of loud arguments, fear of shaming, fear of criticism, fear of sin and God’s wrath. Fear of school made my life miserable from age 5 to 17. I would not have been able to explain it or define it at the time. Now I realize I just hated the whole competitive classroom dynamic, which filled me with performance anxiety . . . . I feared the nuns, and was brought down and made broken. I still think of childhood as a reign of terror. My stomach still sinks on Sunday nights, because of all those Sunday nights spent in terror of Monday morning, and school. You know, when you and I first met, I was in the liberated stage of my life, a time when I felt I had conquered the old demons. I felt cocky and hopeful, and hadn’t lived long enough to be aware that I was stuck in patterns. Now I know, O how I know. I’m beginning to sound depressed again! I was totally undepressed on vacation. Lighthearted. Happy to be me. Now I’m back, and swamped, an old gray water rat skittering along slippery slopes. June 6, 1995 Dear Jack, Lately your letters have a placid, introspective air, a mood of mellow attentiveness and self-acceptance. I like this in you. You lament your lack of patience and yet you are growing in patience, I surmise. “Do I write my way in or do I write my way out?” you ask. I write my way through, I write my way toward. I take a little journey, and when all is going well I savor every stop and sight along the way. Perhaps I’d write more if I did go jumping in or bounding out. Or even strolling in or backing out. Instead, I wind up waiting—for the inspiration, the urgent insight, the ah-ha! moment. Then I wait for a certain mood, ample, edgy, when the first words, the first lines become flesh. Not for nothing do writers speak of the creative process in terms of fertilization, gestation, birth. O, but it requires patience! And the waiting makes one cross. . . . . We finally saw Rob Roy. Tim Roth’s performance as what can only be called a macho fop is outstanding. We admired all the acting, in fact, and the highland setting, and the scenes of marital, middle-aged love. Now Streep and Eastwood are fogging up everybody’s goggles with yet more middle-aged love, in Bridges of Madison County. We baby boomers will never let anyone call us “over the hill.” I feel jaded sometimes, but not over the hill. In fact, since my blood tests revealed that I am nowhere near menopause, I have been feeling young and perky. I have revved up my workout regime after that depressive’s winter in which I could barely get off the couch. Got to do something to compete with all those skinny size-2 types baring their midriffs as they rollerblade around town in clingy Lycra. (A pox on skinny women! May they choke on their Diet Coke.) I was sorry to hear about your friend’s failing health. “Parkinson’s dybbuk,” someone once named the evil spirit which makes a person shuffle and jerk. Even the news seems saturated with maimings and tragedies, people losing legs in the subway, for example, and now Christopher Reeve, of all people, being paralyzed. I find myself dwelling on his horrible plight and hoping for a miracle. We could use a good, newsworthy miracle in this country. Our weather in the Apple is heavy and humid today, thanks to the tail end of a tropical storm off our coast. The sky is bright in a porous, gray way; one feels it weighing on one’s shoulders and saturating one’s spirit . . . . June 29, 1995 Dear Jack, Forgive me if I don’t write frequently. My frantic job keeps me from the things I love. At the office, the only thing lifting my spirits lately is the sight of glinting jet planes landing at LaGuardia. From the windows of my boss’s office, I can see them descending onto the runway. One of those “satisfying sights.” I will never be blasé about air travel. In fact, transportation of any kind fascinates me. I often think about transportation as an “idea” when I am on road trips. One drives on exciting, milling interstates past airports and train tracks. On our last trip, a menacing military aircraft passed over us, very low—a massive thing, painted all over in green-and-black camouflage. A “Yankee bird of Prey,” I called it. Thrilling! Advanced, efficient transport is one thing that makes a civilization great. . . . . We saw The Madness of King George, being suddenly into costume pictures, and also The Bridges of Madison County, in which poor Streep is costumed most miserably in dowdy shirtwaists. Bridges was a disappointment, I thought. Meryl’s burgeoning sensuality is very nice, when she’s alone on screen, but I did not feel any sparks between her and Eastwood when they were together on screen. It’s a talky film, whiny even, and the sex is G-rated. Save your seven bucks. Feh, blah, blah. I am fast becoming a bitter old lady, shaking her fists at the world in general. Insipid movies! Bad dentists! Boring, enervating jobs! Wot, wot (as King George would say). Wot, wot. Has it warmed up in Santa Fe? We’ve had some dog days, and now some blissfully breezy days. I am taking my sanity walk through the park almost every morning now, and it helps. How I revere the summer this year, the deep green of leaves and lawns. I am deep green inside; this is the full summer of my life, my forties. Often the sprinklers are going in Sheep Meadow when I pass by—geysers, dozens of them, shimmering with rainbows. I don’t even mind the humidity, per se. Humid air hugs you and youthens your skin. It’s watermelon weather, iced tea weather, hammock-and-pool weather—but it is not pantyhose and heels weather, not hot suit and tie weather! At least we have casual Fridays now, a great thing. August 7, 1995 Dear Jack, . . . . Right now my life is just an office blur. I sometimes go home feeling like a wrung-out dishrag. I consider weekends R+R from the battle zone. I catch up on sleep, work out, do some shopping, eat and drink enjoyable things with John. Sometimes we stay cool in the air conditioned living room, other times we walk around the nabe or watch the sunset at the boat basin in Riverside Park. It’s a soulful experience, strolling out of the park as darkness settles and the lightning bugs start twinkling. It is also a sweltering experience. My world is weird this year, jarring, numbing. Part of me remains buzzingly alive and tuned in to everything, while another part has recoiled like a snail touched by salt. The stimuli is overmuch!—the constant onslaughts at the office, the heavy heat, and all that noise from the infrastructure overhaul on Columbus Avenue. When I mentioned the construction the last time, I had thought it was over for a while. But while part of the work has moved down a few blocks, they keep coming back to my block to dig more holes! I call these holes “Little Pockets of Misery.” Sunday night, they loosely paved over one of these LPM’s with soft asphalt and a bus got stuck in it! There it was, sinking as if into quicksand, listing menacingly. Meanwhile, down the Avenue, a backhoe operator plowed into a power source and almost electrocuted himself. It was on the news, captured on home video—sparks everywhere. Sorry, but I am staying inside my shell for a while. And in my shell I am hugging some nice books. Finally I am reading A THOUSAND ACRES by Jane Smiley, and loving it a lot. I also just read THE GOOD HUSBAND by Gail Godwin. Gail writes novels about intelligent people who think deep thoughts and have interesting conversations. They are the kind of people you know or hope to know—editors, writers, even men of the cloth. I wouldn’t call her stuff “great literature” but it is good literature, and it acts on me like a tonic. I didn’t "get" THE SHIPPING NEWS, though. It’s the writing style that put me off—all those choppy sentence fragments and peculiar descriptions of people, none of whom seemed human, all of whom seemed Martian. I just don’t “get” some things that everybody else seems to get, the movie Forrest Gump among them. This saddens me. I like to be au courant, I consider myself a populist, but I guess I am also, at times, a snob. September 8, 1995 Dear Jack, Long time no hear. Hope it’s because you’re having too much fun to write. Or maybe you are tired of writing to such a gloomy-gus as I. If so, you’ll be happy to know that I am feeling—really happy! I just had the best vacation in years, full of fine moments I keep calling up in my mind whenever I need a lift. We never really planned a day outright, and yet everything fell into place perfectly. Every morning we did a different hiking trail in Acadia National Park. Most of the trails in Maine are alternately rocky and root-strewn, and they tend to go up, up, up (and then down, down, down). We got addicted to the experience on day one when we spontaneously went off on the evocatively named Great Head Trail, a swirly path at the edge of cove-like Sand Beach. We took the “high road” option on that trail and wound up clambering over rock faces so steep that all four limbs were needed. Other trails rewarded us with rugged Atlantic vistas or hugged us between tall stands of pine. Hiking is nothing like ordinary walking, I find. Walking on level ground or in the city is a mindless, automatic process. Trail walking requires that you concentrate on every step. There’s a Zen to it. I become that radiant animal I describe in “Expedition in Mid-Life.”
One night we joined about 50 other souls for a ranger program called “Stars Over Sand Beach.” Without a flashlight, we managed to feel our way out of the unlit parking lot and down perilous stairs to the beach. The last time I saw stars like that was when I stayed with my sister in the boonies in 1983, and John had never seen a night sky like that before in his life. A sad situation for a 43 year old man, but that’s urban living for you.
. . . . Anyway, I am in a post-trip glow and even the office isn’t tarnishing it. My boss has hired a couple of new vice presidents. Many changes afoot, and I am glad. We need fresh blood around here. We also need a good soaking rain around here. The drought may have given me great weather on vacation, but our reservoirs are sinking fast. High humidity has not kept some trees in Central Park from going from green to desiccated brown overnight, and lawns are haggard hay. I have really gone through the sunscreen this year! I don’t leave home without it. I am pure, white and unfreckled, dewy, doe-eyed and young. October 6, 1995 Dear Jack, . . . . A sense of peace has come over me since the O.J. Simpson verdict. Accurate or not, we finally have closure. I am working very hard this year, as you know. When I stay on top of things, it can be exhilarating. Of course, I am ever and always nagged by the inappropriateness of this job, but never nagged enough to make a change, it seems. Looking back on the last twelve years, I have to conclude that psychoanalysis murdered my ambition. I had hoped it might resurrect my ambition, but it did not. These things are a mystery to me. I can’t nail down the source of the problem because I feel so nailed down myself. I feel shame as I write this. I think shame itself is what I am nailed to. The manifestations are different, but I wonder if we don’t have this in common somehow. We were going to go to Tavern on the Green to celebrate my 45th birthday, but I woke up that day, a Sunday, with a yen to get in a car and go somewhere. So we took another day trip to Bucks County and had a great time. John’s birthday is this Sunday, and yours is the following Sunday. We three were each born on the same day of the week and we are Librans every one. Oy, that construction is still making a kinetic mess of Columbus Avenue. A tremendous piece of red machinery called a LINK-BELT has been inching back and forth, giving off Stygian noises and menacing the neighborhood like something out of Terminator 2. The noise is less bothersome when you actually watch what’s going on, though. This LINK-BELT lifts the shiny new water pipes—huge things—and lowers them into the ground, a neat trick. One just has to admire a great public work like this one. October 12, 1995 Dear Jack, You recently set out to help an audience remember fourth grade experiences. Ah, fourth grade! In our nun-darkened school, that year I had a lay teacher, a nut case with hair dyed red as a cherry lollipop. Her classroom was a vortex of terrorism. She flew off the handle regularly, the worst time around Christmas. We kids had papered the room with our crayoned Christmas drawings. I recall drawing a puppy poking up out of a Christmas stocking, an image I had borrowed from a favorite Christmas card. Something infuriated her; to punish us, she tore up every drawing right in front of our sad wide eyes. We were such docile children, it didn’t even occur to us to question her outburst. Easy as that, she punched the life out of us. Such events mark you, they gouge a hole in your soul—and this story from my childhood is not atypical. Is it any wonder I dread the putting forth of my creative work? . . . . Things worked out for O. J. Simpson, all right. The O. J. acquittal continues to stir people up. The whole thing is a sort of Rorschach test for the American psyche, isn’t it? I am more philosophical than most—at least I do not personalize these things, the way so many people do. . . . . As for domestic violence—well, I’ve seen some violent relationships. My parents were very cruel to one another, mostly verbally, sometimes physically . . . . My aunt Helen was beaten up by her adult son a few times. I know first hand how complicated abusive situations are, and I know to the bottom of my bones that victims usually do play a role in their victimization. It is not “blaming the victim” to admit this. A woman will be stuck forever in abusive hell if she doesn’t figure out what attracts her to violence in the first place. Nicole seemed to be climbing her way out of the abusive abyss when she was murdered. That’s a fearsome time for the abused woman. She runs the risk of enraging the batterer and putting herself in danger. That might have happened here, but we don’t know. Therefore, let it be. Therefore, let’s get on with it. . . . . I hope you have a great birthday and enough breath to blow out 70 candles. I remember how you freaked when you turned 50, but you seem pretty accepting of 70. Have a good time with the Poetry Kit. I have one too; my fridge is covered with weird verbiage. November 10, 1995 Dear Jack, I’m here, you’re there, and my boss is where you are—spending a 3-day weekend in Santa Fe, ostensibly on business. Our folks are visiting your Los Alamos Labs, which gives programs for business people. He’ll be back by Monday but those who stay will hear a talk by Murray Gell-Mann, who is quantum physics. I am bottle green with envy. Thanks for the snapshot. You look great. I look so-so and feel worse, a consequence of cabin fever, I think, for I have been stuck inside for the past four weekends due to either bad wet weather (the drought is certainly over) or colds, first John’s, then mine. I am determined to get out and about this weekend, lest I turn into a couch turnip, insinuating shoots into my sad old pachydermous couch. On that couch, we slack-jawedly watched Pulp Fiction the other night, a film about the dreary dailiness of evil. The characters speak a coarse language, which can sometimes seem pretty funny. At one point, a brutish fellow threatens to “get medieval on your ass.” I keep thinking, what a useful phrase! How very evocative! Imagine, for example, telling your child, “Clean your room, Ben, or I’m gonna get medieval on your ass.” I thought you’d enjoy tinkering with The Poetry Kit. Speaking of poetry, that Canadian schoolbook thing fell through—the old “lack of space” excuse—but an editor at a magazine called Across the Board, aimed at corporate types, called and asked if she could publish “View from the Front Desk,” a sonnet of mine that appeared in THE LITERATURE OF WORK. So that’s a nice thing. November 14: A nor-easter is in progress, only two days after another bad storm hit the area, causing uprootings and power outages in the burbs. Right outside my apartment building, one of our Callery Pear trees lost a branch. Time to batten down, curl up in a quilt, and hit the hot cider. Our building is getting an interior face lift, ten years after the last one. New paint in the hallways, new tiles, new carpeting. I don’t know what possessed the operating committee to choose aqua blue for all the doors and trim. To my eye, the color is tacky. Reminds me of Howard Johnsons circa 1959. They’ll probably install salmon-colored carpet to complete the picture. Speaking of interiors, they have upgraded my cubicle at the office to gargantuan proportions. I sit now in a double-sized cube with plenty of desk and storage space. It’s so large, it’s almost obscene. A power cube, big enough to bowl in. My boss got new mahogany office furniture. Have you heard that NYC’s transit fare has just gone up again, to $1.50? Because they changed the token size too, lines were as long as the Amazon and acrimony was high. I escape such urban blights by reading nature books, for example the three I just read by woman authors: Diane Ackerman’s new book THE RAREST OF THE RARE, about her study of declining species and habitats; another book, by a different Ackerman (Jennifer), about life on the Maryland shore, and Alix Kates Shulman’s DRINKING THE RAIN, about her experiences living solo on an island in Maine over ten long summers. I love this type of book; they are balm for my city woman’s abraded soul. . . . . Any thoughts about the new TV season of have you kicked the video habit? I’ve “starred” in a video myself lately. QBank asked me to appear in a video they are preparing for new hires, in which various employees speak about Q's benefit plans. So they rouged me up, powdered me down, and put me in front of the lights to speak about accident insurance, our prescription drug program, and Managed Choice, one of our medical options. I was very nervous and it probably hampered my presentation. Still, it was a nice challenge. January 9-10, 1996 Dear Jack, I love winter! We’re under two feet of talcum-like snow and had Monday off because of it. Everybody went out to play. In Central Park, people are tobogganing, skiing, snowboarding, making snow sculptures and carving out igloos. Parked cars are completely buried in white stuff. And it’s quiet in town for a change. I was relishing winter anyway, the clean air, the invigorating temperatures—the blues have not felled me this year—and the blizzard makes things perfect. Drifts, updrafts, icicles! It is a cornucopia of winters! Of course, I am back at Hellbank today, after a snow day, and a week after a vacation spent reading and lunching and walking around in what was then mild winter weather. I think my favorite vacation day was the day we strolled around Central Park and then went to the zoo to visit the polar bears and the penguins and my favorite beasties, the little red pandas, which climb onto the bushes to munch. Then we stopped at a sweet hotel on Lex owned by Irish people and had Irish coffee. Your essay has me pondering the gift-giving business, which to my mind is more complicated than you let on. It needn’t be complicated. To my mind, only two things are required for good gift-giving: knowing the person, and selecting something that will delight the person and honor that person’s essence. Instead, people tend to choose gifts based on agendas having more to do with the giver than the receiver. I don’t have much of an opportunity to actually give gifts anymore. You may recall that gift giving got so weird in our house than I gave John the best gift of all—permission to not exchange gifts at Christmas! I have given you a few little things when the moment seemed right—to celebrate your new home and then your new computer. But who knows, you may have opened the stuff and said to yourself, well, why doesn’t she send me something she’s made, why doesn’t she send me a book, why doesn’t she do what I do like normal people? Giving and getting, getting and giving, it’s a terrible maze. It seemed a little odd, a little coals-to-Newcastle, receiving the book of George Herbert’s poems from you. Nevertheless, I have been making use of it, rediscovering my old favorites. I got hold of Seamus Heaney’s new book of essays, THE REDRESS OF POETRY, which devotes an entire chapter to Herbert’s work. Seamus especially likes “The Pulley.” 17th Century language can seem stilted nowadays—and some of Herbert’s poems are alienating for that reason. Yet the best of them read easily still. He is one of my Big Three Christian poets—Donne, Herbert and Hopkins. I have a secret ambition to one day write only religious poetry—a poetry with its heart tuned to eternal things. I thought this might be an apt time to show you my poem about Christian meditation, the one inspired by Thomas Merton’s THE ASCENT TO TRUTH. Like one of your more exacting pots, this particular poem is one I hold in high regard. I still don’t believe that something so holy came out of me. I am now reading Volume 2 of Merton’s diaries, started when he had spent about six years at Gethsamini in Kentucky. It comforts me to read how he suffered pangs of remorse over his own all-too-human tendencies—being judgmental, getting annoyed over trivia, getting bogged down in busywork, resenting the routines of the life he had accepted as his vocation. (He says nothing about sexual troubles; they are conspicuous by their absence.) I am also bogged down in busywork, I am also resentful of the routines of this life I accept not as my vocation but as “my habit, my subordination.” I mean the bank. I mean the boss. I am getting snowed under in more ways than one. I could leave this place in a heartbeat, but I keep counting to ten and ten again so I don’t screw myself by doing something rash, like quitting in a huff. I think I have outgrown such impulsiveness. I am beginning to reason, well, if I must keep working at a paying job for survival reasons, perhaps I can scale back and work in a less frantic, lower-paying atmosphere. A foundation, a nonprofit organization, someplace where the people are kinder, the pace calmer, the vacation policy more liberal. I keep pondering this. It is my secret escape hatch. I hope you had a great Christmas . . . . I myself am managing to not get medieval on anybody’s ass, but I have gotten medieval on my cube, which I have decorated with a yards’-long reproduction of the Bayeux Tapestry and with a huge, gorgeous calendar featuring illuminated manuscripts. Happy ‘96. January 29, 1996 Dear Jack, . . . . It eases my mind to hear you are finding something worthy in my contemplative poem. I have shown the poem to no one else yet, though I read it to John once; not being at all religious or conversant with the topic, he found it opaque. Nevertheless, I consider this my best poem, even though (because?) it frightens me a bit. No ego was brought to this enterprise, I simply let myself be a medium for Another’s message. It was thrilling, and chilling. Have you seen Sense and Sensibility? If not, you must—you will be charmed. I can’t recall a movie in the last few years I’ve enjoyed more, or an actress I admire more than Emma Thompson. In fact, I liked most of those movies Jim Wall discusses in the current Christian Century. I saw Georgia too; it is a searing film, one to choose when you’re in the mood to contemplate the sadder truths of life. That’s even more true of Dead Man Walking, the kind of movie you keep replaying in your mind. Is there another film about a nun who is a real person, I wonder, and not a wooden saint or a cartoon? That alone makes the film singular. I got a copy of that videotape in which I hold forth on the wonders of QBank’s benefits. I wasn’t half bad, considering I was so nervous, I might as well have been in front of a firing squad as a videocamera. With practice, I bet I could learn to like this type of thing. March 27, 1996 Dear Jack, Today it’s freezing but yesterday a tang of true spring was in the air. For the first time in months, I found the idea of a morning walk through Central Park attractive. There were tiny signs of a new season blooming—purple crocuses arrayed around still-dormant lilacs and a few trees in embryonic bud. These are the year’s tender weeks. And I am at a tender age, I think, or anyway my nerves are tender, my sensibilities raw—from too many years of grating compromise? This is not a strange state for a woman of my generation. We were brought up to be malleable and sweet-tempered, to keep quiet, to keep our true selves girdled along with our butts. But we grew up, as did the times, and now we let it all hang out. I am much more forthright than I sued to be, and more spontaneous. The upside is a feeling of greater authenticity. The downside is a shorter temper, an unwillingness to suffer fools. I fear I will get myself in trouble at the office for this! Just today, in the cafeteria, I almost pounced on one of my boss’s directors (“Lady High-Strung”) because, once again, she started pestering me for not smiling. I was hurriedly trying to make myself a sandwich (it’s a do-it-yourself system)—is there some reason why I should have been smiling? I should grin at the liverwurst? The thing is, when I feel happy or amused, I openly smile. When I am in a contemplative mood or am concentrating, my face is in repose. When I’m agitated, my face will register annoyance or frustration. I am true, you can trust me, I don’t dissemble, I am not a phony. Why this causes some people to give me grief, I do not know. I think it’s because I’m a staff person again. When you are an executive, people respect you and allow you your authenticity. When you are a secretary, people (even some other secretaries) are constantly telling you to lighten up, to paste a smile on your face, to relieve their own anxiety by responding to whatever they do or say with pleasantries and pleasantness. “Smile, Catherine”—how sick I am of that phrase! Generally, I am not even feeling glum—until they say that. Sometimes I don’t think I belong in human company. Cat company—that would be better. I have dug up yours of the 3rd, a nice long reflective letter. You are absolutely on the right track, keeping active and involved and courting new projects. Eda LeShan, the writer, whose health is crummy at 72, wrote a pointed essay in one of the women’s magazines in which she castigated people for always calling up and asking “How do you feel?” instead of “What are you doing?” “How do you feel?” puts her in a bad mood, reminds her of her health problems, and makes her worry that family and friends don’t see her anymore as an accomplished person. . . . . I tried to hold out for the entire Oscar show the other night but fell asleep around 11:30. I was happy to learn the next morning that Susan Sarandon won though Emma Thompson merited the prize as well. That scene at the end of Sense and Sensibility where she bursts into tears after so much regal self-containment—it is one of the great moments in movies. My other picks—Joan Allen, Tim Roth and Sean Penn—did not prevail. I loved the Gene Kelly tribute, and I mourned the man when he died. When I was 13, and all the other girls were swooning over the Beatles, I was watching Gene Kelly musicals (which were old movies even then). My gorgeous nephew Damon was in town for a few days, traveling through New York before returning to Maine after a biannual 4-month stint in the Merchant Marine. This time he had been stationed in Greece for most of the time. What a job that is—maybe the perfect job for the type of antsy, adventurous man who would not be happy in business or academia. . . . He can be very funny, describing the different personalities. One captain he called “Mumbles-to-Allah”—for all he did was pray over the Koran when he should have been captaining the ship! Damon works really long hours, he works like a dog, but he cashes in on the overtime and then gets that 4-month breather before his next posting. I could dig such a schedule. I think Inherit the Wind is on hold due to George C. Scott’s illness. Perhaps MLB plays a church lady? In high school, I played the female lead in our production of that play—the minister’s daughter, innocent Rachel. By the time we opened, I had memorized the entire play. I was 15, green as grass, not even me yet, an incipient person. To this day, getting up and auditioning for that play is the bravest thing I’ve done. I wasn’t very good—my model for acting was soap-opera histrionics—but I did give it my all. It is scary, how relevant that play still is. Oooh, there goes a jet plane coming into LaGuardia, another gleaming jet. I wish I were off to the airport and going somewhere. I don’t know what’s in store for travel this year. I am so buried in work and felled by anhedonia, I can’t even fantasize about anything specific. Having Aged Parent in Maine limits one’s choices . . . . May 23, 1996 Dear Jack, . . . . If I recall your last letter, you had some travel plans for May. I hope I catch you back from the road. John and I are back from the road ourselves. We took last week off and drove down to the Delmarva again, lingering for four days. The timing was perfect—our trip coincided with a period of cool, sunny weather sandwiched between periods of cold, slobbering rain. A little, low-key trip and yet it made me new. The Delmarva is a land of pastures and ocean beaches and nature sanctuaries. I filled my eye with lone herons, minute munching dear, feral ponies. Ducks and geese were trailed by ducklings and goslings—sweet!—and we spotted a baby osprey craning in it tall nest. Fall is supposed to be when all the shore birds flock into the area; in spring, there are just a few holdouts but it all seemed fine to this city dweller. The nature sanctuary at Chincoteague is sullen in spots though, due to a deforestation caused by beetle damage. But we also went to the Blackwater sanctuary, on the west coast of the peninsula, an unsullied place with no visible “bald patches.” That’s where the osprey were, and the bald eagles. In Chincoteague the sunsets are amazing. It’s one of the few places in the east where you can view a sunset over water. We have discovered a few other places like that in our travels, though: Key West and Sanibel Island. A sunset over water is a very big draw! Another draw for me is to travel in the off season. Because we did that, one morning with had all of Assateague strand to ourselves—a vast place. At our hotel, we swam each afternoon in the indoor pool and had it all to ourselves. Yet there were enough people in the restaurants and on the trails to make us feel in good human company. I wanted to become refocused on that trip, I wanted to lift up my heart and I was guided in these quests by the perfect book, Kathleen Norris’s new one, THE CLOISTER WALK. I admire the work of many contemporary writers, but I don’t admire them as people, or, anyway, their character is a side issue. Not only do I love Kathleen’s writing, I honestly wish I could walk in her shoes. I’m sure you will be reading this book soon. When you do, you’ll find much on the “being versus doing” conundrum. Judging by your last letter, you are certainly keeping busy. Are you “making an idol of productivity”? There’s a question! I myself make an idol of sloth, but only get to indulge in it late in the evening when it seems more like mortal exhaustion. . . . . I bought some keen new summer clothes, too. Not many of last summer’s clothes fit me this season, my workouts being no match for middle aged spread. This has been a nagging disappointment in my adult life. I made a commitment to fitness when I was 32 but I have found that my regimes have had little effect on my looks. Only Auschwitz calorie levels make me thin. Somehow my contour always returns to its manifest destiny—about as wide as the continental U.S., I’d say. I have a new solution: be spiritual, enjoy nature, shun mirrors, love food anyway. It also helps to find a pool somewhere, with nobody else in it! The monks of Kathleen Norris’s acquaintance have it right. Just put on a cowl and fuhgeddaboudit. . . . . Just took a long break to attend one of Marketing’s monthly “Speaker Series” luncheons. Guest speakers have given us interesting overviews of such topics as marketing to minorities, innovative advertising trends, and so forth. Today’s topic was the internet, which is beginning to change everything. One of these months, I’ll have internet capability myself. You’re on line, aren’t you? Are you surfing the net? I am surfing no net but I’ll be skating thin ice if I don’t end this letter and get back to work. I do not exaggerate when I tell you how much MORE my job has become since my new boss took over. Ironically, my raise this year was awful and I may never get another increase because I have reached the pinnacle of my salary range. I seem to be ending this letter on a venal note ... so here’s a quote from tomorrow’s page-a-day Latin calendar: Formidinem Mortis Vicit Aurum. Gold has conquered the fear of death. June 27, 1996 Dear Jack, You are having so much fun! Going here, seeing there, having visitors from where, studying this, writing that. How nice that you are volunteering for Habitat for Humanity, one of my favorite charities. I didn’t realize you had home improvement skills. I wish you’d told me more about Yosemite! I need a trusted mind to reveal the west to me. I am an easterner and an uptown girl. Tuesday night we had an office party at El Teddy, a restaurant near Canal Street. Being dragged far downtown made me cross—though I did relish the cab ride home, up the west side, with the sun setting over the Hudson. I opened the window all the way and let the wind amplify my hair. At this party, we said good-bye to two fine people who will be transferring to QBank sites overseas. People are no longer getting promoted to director-level unless they transfer overseas. It’s a morale killer, since few people are able to make such a radical move. All but one of my boss’s eight directors are new hires from non-banking companies. The troops do not appreciate this state of affairs. Every week, it seems, somebody resigns. Resignation fantasies assault me daily but I have not acted on them. This month marks my tenth anniversary here—did I mention that? The corporation gives you a choice of gifts on key anniversaries, and I chose a Waterford crystal vase. I am proud of it, proud of my stick-to-it-iveness—I, who used to be such a flit-about and quitter! Now to more Arcadian matters. Since my last letter, John and I managed to get away for a weekend to Connecticut’s Litchfield Hills. An al fresco lunch at The Hopkins Inn, overlooking Lake Waramaug, was especially pleasant. We hiked up the modest Mount Tom where there is an old stone tower to climb (perilous stairs!) for a 360 degree view of ponds and estates. The next day we hiked a portion of the Appalachian trail which, for a time, follows the swift, spirited Housatonic river. We have a new hiking game, the name game. We “name” the singular things we come across, to wit: The Oread Steps I recommend the exercise! It’s fun, and it keeps the hike in memory. Anyway, we had good weather and enjoyed the escape from New York. We have agreed to get out more before another winter walls us in again. As for the Litchfield area, it may be bucolic but we were disappointed in the towns which lacked the expected charm. They were car towns, towns without sidewalks, and they inspired the enclosed poem. As a poet, I am concerned not only with “interior” things, but also with the way we live, the times we live in. I bring you good news from the Big Apple: egrets are spending the summer at the Central Park Lake. The sight of one thoroughly astonished me last Sunday! And I write to you on another mild summer day, all yellow haze, and yes, I am even drumming away at the keyboard with yellow polish on my nails. Yellow is my favorite color lately! It doesn’t do much for my complexion but it charms the soul. . . . . Now what. Suddenly I am sitting here, at work, in my cube, in a brooding mood, thinking about Jane Kenyon’s premature death of leukemia, and my mother’s protracted decline, and I wot not what sad else. I am trying to stopper my tear ducts before this mood gets obvious. What is bringing this on? . . . . As if things weren’t bad enough, in recent months presbyopia has wormed into my eyes. In a way, it’s kind of nice, reading without my glasses. John seems miffed when I whip my specs off to read menus and such, but he is two years younger; his day will come. God, how I hate the thought of bifocals! I don’t need the magnification—yet. Well, back to work, back to botherations, back to my boss at his bossiest and life at its glitchiest and me at my bitchiest! July 25, 1996 Dear Jack, Sometimes I think I am not only a Necessary Other (as you say) but Necessarily An Other. I have never felt that sense of “belonging” people praise—not in college, not in a poetry workshop, not in publishing, certainly not in banking. “To be the stranger lies my lot, my lot among strangers” (viz. Hopkins). Kathleen Norris came to view her “outsider” feelings as the particular cross she was given to bear. When one looks at it that way, one’s sense of otherness seems more meaningful and dignified. Personally, I have stopped fighting it. . . . . Are you watching the Olympics, did you see Team USA, those splendid girls, win a gold medal for gymnastics? The reporters have been questioning the wisdom of allowing Kerry Strug to perform that second vault when she was in obvious pain. I was in obvious pain just watching her! Her heroism is undeniable, though. When you question her second vault you are also questioning the whole notion of championship. The rest of us are cautious, but champions take risks in pursuit of excellence. After Kerry’s second triumphant vault, something in my heart bent down and bowed, no less than Bernadette once bowed, in the grotto, before the Virgin. Before I close, may I recommend a marvelous movie? It’s called Lone Star, by John Sayles. It is the Great American Movie, and let us give thanks for it during this empty-headed season of summer blockbusters. Halfway through this movie, I found myself silently weeping, not because of a particularly wrenching scene, but because the whole tapestry was so real and so perfectly realized. I’ll say no more lest I spoil it for you. August 8, 1996 Dear Jack, . . . . We are having a pleasant summer here in NYC. Certainly it’s been humid, and a great hooded haze has enveloped us, on and off, for weeks. But we have not hit 90 since spring. After a frigid winter, we are treated to a pretty cool summer. If the weather pattern extends into early fall, John and I will freeze when we make our annual pilgrimage to Maine around September 23rd. I hope to be walking the Marginal Way on my birthday. I can’t say I am enjoying summer qua summer, but something is different and wonderful in my life. I have become swept up by art! For a reason I do not understand, I suddenly could not stop thinking about it. I bought Janson’s HISTORY OF ART, one of those huge, beautifully produced books, and I’m reading a chapter a night. It’s a wonderful work, it puts everything together for you. Just last night, I became immersed in the chapter on gothic architecture. What a pivotal moment! An abbot name Suger became enamored of certain philosophic and religious ideas having to do with mathematical harmonies and luminescence. He hired a master builder who shared his enthusiasm and together they created the abbey of St. Denis, which became the template for Notre Dame, Chartres and Amiens. These were the great “high gothic” cathedrals, designed to help the spirit soar. It was the gothic structural innovations that permitted towering, vaulted ceilings, pointed arches, and immense stained glass windows. Imagine how the tinted light must have animated the interiors! One of these years I am going to go see it for myself. O I hope they haven’t lit these cathedrals with electric bulbs! I took a day off last week and spent five whole hours at the Metropolitan Museum, where I lingered over the Winslow Homer exhibition. Some would call me disgustingly old-fashioned in my appreciation for representational painting, as opposed to abstract expressionism and op crap. Really, though, what does anyone see in a Jackson Pollack? His medium appears to be paint-by-squeeze-bottle. For the office, I just bought a small reproduction of the Nike of Samothrace (Winged Victory). When I was 20, I viewed the real one at the Louvre, where she stands majestically at the top of a tall flight of marble stairs. She knocked my socks off. To remind me of the power of art, I have placed her little clone above me, on the top of a cabinet in my cube. She is my guardian spirit. You would not believe how many people here have asked, in all seriousness, “What happened to your statue’s head?” or “What’s with the headless angel?” Even my boss did not know what it was. Nobody seems to know that the Nike company named their sneakers after the goddess of victory! Hope I’m not boring you with more long tales of my “inner life.” My outer life is not too thrilling but I do have these inner resources to keep me going. My best dialogues are with dead people, I sometimes think! The Dead Poets and Artists Society. I just hope I don’t join their club too soon. My boss has supposedly been on vacation this week and last, but he keeps calling me and he keeps having phone meetings. I’ve already sent him a huge parcel of piled-up mail. So despite a week at the Olympics in Atlanta (with Visa footing the bill), plus a few days in Hilton Head and a few days in the Poconos, he remains managing director, marketing. I would perish if I had to deal with office matters on a vacation! Me staff, him officer ... me Bozo, you swain. August 23, 1996 Dear Jack, There was a reason for my second, rather abrupt e-mail last Friday. You see, my company has been installing e-mail on all our computers without providing instructions or policy statements. Then, suddenly, I saw a category called “Internet Policy” on one of my screens. It was scary: E-mail is to be limited to QBank business ... do not assume it is confidential ... it is the property of QBank ... , etc. I quaked at the picture of some bigwig here reading my notes to you about my boss or my career angst. It kills me to withdraw the invitation, but please do not e-mail me at QBank in the future. I may not adore it here but I do not wish to be fired for cause! I seldom make personal phone calls but e-mail—whoa, that’s right up my alley. Had a bit of a scare recently when I arrived home to find John standing by the elevator in an agitated state. He had gotten home first, only to discover that we’d been the victims of an attempted break-in. The fiend didn’t get in but in attempting to pick the locks he destroyed them, making it impossible to fit in our keys. So we had a revolting few hours of locksmith-o-rama. 21 years in the building and this is the first time thieves came (though some of our neighbors have been burglarized). Yesterday’s NY Times featured an article about your opera house, including a photograph. Yup—you sure are exposed to the elements. The article reported that a new roof is coming, though the sides of the opera house will still be free of walls. Four weeks and counting to vacation. I DREAD seeing my mother, I HOPE she is doing well. I DREAD the long drive up there and back, I HOPE we get into our usual mellow road mode, noting all the sights, listening to lovely tapes. I DREAD the possibility of catching cold or being cold; I HOPE we both feel fine and that weather is crisp and not rainy. I HOPE, I DREAD, I DREAD, I HOPE—I’m still a mass of symptoms! October 16, 1996 Dear Jack, Yes, I’d love to see you when you come to N.Y. Can you meet me for some designer coffee at Cafe Lalo at 3 PM on November 8th? That’s a Friday before a 3-day weekend (Veterans Day) and it will be okay for me to leave the office early. Lunch is impractical for me these days; QBank is not a lunch culture the way publishing is. I was a fetus the last time you saw me. You won’t find many wrinkles on my brow but be prepared for the “grown woman” look.
It was an uncanny experience, for I had been picturing the meeting in my mind for the last few years—ever since I read her novel COLONY, which takes place in coastal Maine. The jacket copy confirmed that Anne spends summers there. I felt shy approaching her, but finally I did, saying, “I just had a glass of wine so let me come over here and ask if you are really Anne Siddons.” She said, “Why, yes” and I said, “I once spent the night at your home in Atlanta. I’m Catherine Shaw, your editor on FOX’S EARTH.” She seemed happy to see me, as did her husband Heyward, whom I also clearly remembered from my editorial visit in 1980. She is a lovely, gracious southern woman who insisted that we come and stay with them next summer and who swore she had just been asking her agent if he know what had become of me—all of which is sheer Southern sweet-talk, but still agreeable to hear. Afterward, I felt as if I had rediscovered, and taken new authorship of, a chapter of my own past. During the trip, I felt melancholy about only one thing: my mother. She is 100% worse than last year. When I entered the Bay View Manor that first night, I found her right before me as I opened the front door. She was standing in the shadows in front of the interior staircase, laboriously trying to get to her bedroom, her leg in pain, her spine bent forward in a C-shape. Over the course of my three-day visit, I found that she could barely speak. She has a hard time making the connection between brain and tongue, much like a post-stroke aphasic. I wonder if she hasn’t had a little stroke. In the car one day, I began talking to John about a poem by Mona Van Duyn, in which Mona tells the story of her visit to her own mother in an old age home. At one point in the narrative, the poet describes her eyes spilling over as she sits with her aged mother, who then says something like “Don’t cry. Don’t you know I’ll always love you?” I said to John, that’s one thing I’ll never hear, my mother would not be able to form the words even if she’d care to.” The next day, as I visited with her in her room, my mother began singing songs, as she likes to do. The songs sound fine—singing and speaking come from different parts of the brain. Usually she sings the old Irish songs, but suddenly, as I sat there holding her hand, she started to sing “I’ll Be Loving You, Always ... With A Love That’s True, Always.” I looked up in astonishment. I had heard what I had despaired of hearing. Just when you are sure the world unredeemably stinks, grace transfuses a moment and buttresses your heart! What can be said about this type of old age? My mother’s skin is as raw-looking as a newborn’s, her mind rattles, her eyes are as under a caul. Ashes and crumbs fill her purse. Depends shields are stacked on her nightstand. Why anyone should live this long, in this condition, is a mystery. Changing the subject ... I decided to change my life and take a three-hour seminar at The Poetry Society of America on the topic of the “poetic line.” It was led by Dana Gioia. He’s a handsome man with an excellent speaking voice, and his seminar was involving—though in discussing the “sacred space” made by art, he went off on a long tangent involving the boxing ring! During the break, I let my shyness keep me from introducing myself, especially since there were about 30 people there; it was a bit of a mob. Dana was talking to a woman in the class when I heard him say to her, “Are you Catherine Shaw?” Was I hearing things? Then he said my name again, so of course I went over and said hello. He is familiar with my work from that book THE LITERATURE OF WORK and from the magazine ELF. That he knew me was a treat! He told me I could take up his role as the “corporate poet” since he has given up his corporate vice presidency and is now purely a poet-lecturer-freelancer living in California. Sorry I didn’t “card” you for your birthday so here’s a Halloween greeting. Jack and CS did meet each other at the cafe as planned, talking together for over two hours. When he asked her to recommend some contemporary poets, she pointed him to Richard Wilbur and Linda Pastan, as she had also done in letters. December 19, 1996 Dear Jack, You are enjoying Richard Wilbur and Linda Pastan! Richard must be the “happiest” poet on the planet, don’t you think? Most of his poems revolve around a goodness at the core of things. Linda’s view is more tragic, recognizing, as she does, that the happy moments aren’t embraced until they’re past, that grief is unending, that the body keeps reminding us of its eventual demise. Her work radiates with the wisdom of everyday experience fully lived and understood. Their work has magnanimity; I bet they have it too. . . . . Here in NYC, the atmosphere is dank and battleship gray, yes, we’ve had more than our fair share of dreary, drizzly weather as well as all-out gales and downpours. I just got over my second cold in two months. The germ-du-jour is said to be a stubborn, lingering germ. The other day I observed a neighbor throwing out three huge plastic garbage bags filled entirely with used Kleenex! Maybe it’s the sniffles, but I have never felt so alienated from the whole idea of Christmas, or at least the tinsel merrymaking that passes for Christmas in these times. You should see the Citicorp building here in LIC. You know those garishly colored, foil-type ornaments sold at Woolworth’s? Well, Citicorp’s decorations resemble those, only they have been blown up into gargantuan proportions and suspended and festooned all around our lobby. They are playing treacly Xmas music incessantly over the loudspeaker. It’s enough to turn The Three Wise Men into The Three Scrooges. I am counteracting the kitsch by playing simple carols and motets very softly at my desk, all day long, on the new CD-ROM drive in my computer. I also have a “mood” disk called Ocean Surf—puts me in a nice alpha state! . . . . Tonight’s the big holiday party for Bankcards. We’re having it on site, in one of our private facilities on the top floor of the Court Square Building here in LIC. I am taking December 26th off (a great shopping day), and also January 2nd and 3rd. On the 3rd, we’re going to see the revival of Chicago. Have a happy. 1997 became the year in which email became the favored medium of communication between CS and Jack. Where once they had written long lavish letters, now they mostly exchanged shorter cybernotes. At this point, the snail mail archive ends. CS continued to work at QBank, in a new area, Merchant Banking. It was a congenial position and her Australian boss was magnanimous and affable. CS especially enjoyed planning, and attending, an off-site meeting for the group in Key Biscayne, Florida. In the fall of 1999, her job was discontinued when her boss quit and his various areas were reassigned. CS accepted a good departure package and plunged herself into her writing. With the exception of a short-lived part-time stint in 2004, she has not held a paying job since. The free time has been a drain on her savings but a boon for her writing and her spiritual growth. In 2003, her full-length poetry collection Here from Away was published. In 2006, she launched an online poetry magazine, Umbrella.
On August 11, 2007 CS opened her email box to the following message and trembled: Jack Purdy died suddenly after suffering a stroke on July 31, 2007. He was 82. ——Back to Contents—— |
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