Her past seemed to be rising above her present. And for some reason she wanted to talk about her past; to tell them something about herself that she had never told anybody -- something hidden.
This describes a moment within Rose Pargiter, a character in Virgina Woolf's novel, The Years.
But this mental gesture also belongs to me, as so many bits and pieces of narrative and internal monologue in this novel refract and resemble moments of experience, thought patterns in my own mind.
She paused, gazing at the flowers in the middle of the table without seeing them. There was a blue knot in the yellow glaze she noticed.
The above moment belongs solely to Rose.
And soon, after an interaction with a much younger woman, Rose finds herself in frustration:
What is the use, she thought, of trying to tell people about one's past?
And that is something I can mouth, word-for-word, because there seems to be a uselessness to a project like mine, which I am nonetheless sunk in, bound to, and nearly 200 pages out from shore.
It's a memoir (isn't everyone writing one?).
It's a poememoir (thank you, Linda Norton for this term); it's written associatively, the way a poem might be, and I am "pasting-in" poems from different eras. It's a story about someone's life as a poet, whose choice of poetry was only partly conscious, but whose choice to not have children seems entirely conscious. And there's other things stuffed in, as well, like a tendency to reject roots, to consider many place "home," to fall in love equally with places and things as well as people.
The nouns of love: people, place or thing.
It's embarrassing and a bit scary for me to step up to the line and confess: This is my writing project.
So why do it, and in a blog no less?
Because it's a long and lonely project, and -- I need you to know. This is what surrounds me.
It's the castle wall and also the briars winding around, protective, concealing. (But inside -- inside the castle -- someone's woken up. Even if she looks like she's fast asleep, she's just -- pretending.)
There's a lot going on inside the walls.
I hope to share it with you.
I hope to finish it, too (this project), which will be a very big deal for me (I should paste in a photo of the boxes of writing I have in my study, carried from apartment to house to apartment to... here).
It's writing upon writing, this blog, though - that is not the name of the book. My original working title was blunt and not expansive enough, but it kept me on track for a good while... Never a Mother. Now the working title is Only a Daughter but that too doesn't say enough about what the book contains.
If you have thoughts about how to make your way through a writing project that appears to have a constantly shifting horizon... please share them in a comment.
Or any thoughts about the possible utility in the world beyond one's skull... of a "true story" (that's only as true as this one, this writer, can make it for herself.
Awkward, yes.)
Because: What is one's past?
That is Rose Pargiter's next thought, and also mine.
Comments
Post a Comment