“What about your own life?....Just wait ‘till I die, and you’ll have to think of your self. How ya gonna like that?”
---Richard Brown (Ed Harris) in The Hours
I’ve got The Hours on the VCR, Fuzz’s mom picked up the tape cheap somewhere... I saw it in a theatre when it came out, and just finished the novel last night. I don’t know why it’s buzzing around in my head so. Maybe it’s because I understand Laura Brown’s feeling of being trapped in what is supposed to be a dream life, and a little of the mental torture of Virginia Woolfe.
Maybe it’s a sense of the futility of life. Maybe that feeling of futility is the essential nature of being a woman that Woolf captured and Michael Cunningham relayed into the mid and last of the 20th century. Whaddyaknow, I’m a woman, and I feel death and life and madness so intermingled with everyday common chores, like buying flowers and making birthday cakes. Especially in birthday cakes. I haven't a clue as to what to say to my mother-in-law, but I made them a hell of a 50th anniversary cake!
Something I noticed about myself long ago is how easy it is for me to start living in someone else's brain, just as Cunningham's Clarissa did for years, loving and then caring for the dying Richard. He was the tortured genius whom she felt mocked by, trivialized. Often the woman's job, taking care of the trivial stuff so genius' could do the genius work, or in other words, taking care of life for them. I never wanted to do that, be the helpmaid, as my mother seemed to do, but I'm not sure I know how to be the artist either.
Somehow, despite me knowing it, I learned that my job was to fix the others in my life, make them happy, and subjugate my feelings so deeply that I often haven't got any clue as to just how I feel. But ask me what X, Y, or Z needs to do to fix their life, and I've got 42 suggestions for each. I stay up at night thinking of advice to give my family and friends on how to better live their lives. I rage in my head, I lie in bed silently yelling, but when it comes to what I want, all that seems to come out is a fog of confusion, pressure behind my eyes, reducing me to fevered tears. I don't know how I feel, I don't know what I want.
I was lying in bed some morning last week, and like most of the mornings of that week I didn’t want to wake up. Feeling tortured as usual. Then it hits me, hey, I really AM a tortured artist. Just like Virginia Woolf. I am tortured. I torture myself. I am an artist. I can’t be the artist I want to be because I so torture myself. I want I want I want... what is it again that I want?
It was some comfort to think that at least I was fitting in somewhere!
2 comments:
Hey Maggie, I'm still reading your blog and I'm still in program. And despite having consumed way more grapes than necessary and wee bit too much dinner last night, I'm still abstinent from bingeing, and Sunday was my 1-month birthday of that. :) How odd that your post coincides with the piece I wrote on acceptance last night in my little notebook, and one of the main topics in my acceptance essay was fixing other people. Acceptance was the topic because my sponsor assigned it to me. :) Love, Sheila
Hi Sheila,
Congrats on getting that first month. I have to admit I don't sweat the small stuff either because it wasn't what got me to 300. As we get more in touch with our eating and our feelings I think we can also recognize when our eating is getting wacky and straying into dangerous territory.
Be good to you.
Mags
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