October 6, 2004
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Chapter 7 – Felix (cont.)
Previous chapters sidebar autobiographyThough I was writing and Felix was painting, life began to feel far too surreal, this adventure on an island so very far from home. My martyred mother back in Oregon was feverishly trying to scheme me home again and also dealing with the paperwork involved in completing my divorce so that my husband could remarry a French woman he had met while staying on in Moscow a second year. We began to think about leaving the island (partly because I was now ill and had lost weight) and returning to the States, although there was complication about Felix obtaining another visa. In June, having survived six months in paradise, we headed for Paris to stay with Felix’s mother until we could go on.
In Paris, things became even more dramatic. Miserable and homesick, I simply walked off one day and wandered around the Left Bank until I found the same little hotel where I had stayed with my husband on our way through to Russia. I sat in a little room there for two days and talked to myself in the mirror on the inside of the open door of the closet, literally holding myself to sanity by sheer will. Somehow I hung on, returned to the apartment where Felix was, received money for return tickets by wire from home, took a train to Brussels, caught an Icelandic flight for the second time in my life, and on July 13, almost a full year since we had met, I was back in New York, exhausted, thin like a concentration camp victim, and within three days had found an apartment to sublet where I began to recuperate. It was here that I turned 25. Felix planned to come when he could get his own plans in order. It was the last time I would set foot outside this country.
(to be continued)
Deep Thought: It seemed to me that, somehow, the blue jay was trying to communicate with me. I would see him fly into the house across the way, pick up the telephone, and dial. My phone would ring, and it would be him, but it was just this squawking and cheeping. “What?! What?!” I would yell back, but he never did speak English.
Today I am grateful for: Edwards holding up as well as he did with the Pit Bull
Guess the Movie: “You can take our car, and you can take our keys, but you cannot take away our dreams! ” “Yeah, because we’re sleeping when we have them! ” Answer: A Night at the Roxbury, 1998
Polls Today: Kerry 232/Bush 285 EVP: “John Edwards won the vice-presidential debate 41% to 28% among uncommitted voters according to a CBS poll. An online poll conducted by MSNBC makes the margin of Edwards victory even larger: 67% to 33%. While the MSNBC poll was not a scientific poll, it did have 885,000 responses, so it was a very large poll of Internet users.The effect of the first presidential debate is starting to kick in. Kerry is surging and Bush is dropping. Kerry has retaken the lead in all-important Ohio by 49% to 48%, New Mexico by 46% to 43%, and Iowa by 48% to 47%. While all of these are within the margin of error, previous polls had Bush ahead in these states by more than the margin of error. Clearly the forward motion Kerry has been experiencing in the national polls this week is starting to show up in the state polls as well. On the other hand, Bush has taken the lead in Pennsylvania by a margin of 48% to 47%.”
End of Day – 9:02 pm
+ = Finished watching Angels in America just out on double DVD – stunning, extraordinary, must have!!! (review later on)
- = My hospital’s 16,000 doses of flu shots they usually dole out free to employees went down in flames because of the company in England that lost its license and which provides 50% of the shots for the U.S. (I luckily however scored a flu shot at my local supermarket pharmacy before they ran out today.)
Comments (16)
I am riveted by your spare elegant simplicity of your narration. There is so much in every sentence but every sentence is understandable. How do you distill competing events, which one to put in or take out. It is so coherent and focused. These are months and years in two or three paragraphs. If I miss a sentence, I’ve missed an episode. Awesome.
Thank you, hon. My method is that I scrapbook everything first – I gather all the letters and photos and various detritus I have from the period I’m writing on and carefully organize it. Then I sit down to write with that close by to refer to. It is really hard to pick and choose and if I can ever get all the way through to my age now, I’ll go back and embellish.
I agree it is a real pleasure to read and I have enjoyed your story greatly! you have a wonderful way with narration! I can only imagine how much you must be leaving out, that really is the trick figure out what to include and what to let go.
My wife scrapbooks constantly, it’s really wonderful how nice it is to have all the things she has made and even my kids at the age of 8 and 6 appreciate what she does! I hope your family will as well.
Fortunately for me, my mother kept every letter I ever wrote home, so I have a real treasure trove to look back on for details.
Wow, it’s nice to have that sort of confirmation of your life. My Mother was always one to clean to the bone, so most of that sort of thing is gone, and I have no one alive to ask. Too bad you can’t Xanga across the lines of death!
Your writing is fascinating. That kind of life seems so exotic…
Oh it was just the 60′s. Sometimes it seems like a dream.
I was feeling the pain….
I’m old enough to remember Icelandic being the cheap way across the Atlantic but not old enough to have done it. The odd way paradise grows old, the depth of homesickness even in the grandest of places, comes across here brilliantly.
iraq will play a bigger role the closer we get…
I live in southern california, one of the beach cities south of Camp Pendelton. Seychelles sounds a lot like seashells…which a merrow (a mermaid) loves to wear as a bra if statutes representing a fishtailed woman are to be believed.
I’d like to hear your review on that movie. I haven’t seen it but heard it won a lot of oscars.
Angels in America. So much of it was stunning. I thought parts were slightly “dated” but that’s obvious because it represents such a specific moment. I wasn’t real happy with how it ended. But overall, a must see. Watched it on HBO and was blown away. My favorite moment though was the conversation with the “bitter woman of the prairie.”
That was a good one. So many great moments. The big stars – Streep, Pacino – were at their best, but there were such great performances by the newer faces (to me anyway) – particularly the triangle of male lovers. And the abandoned wife. I think part of the slightly old-fashioned quality may also be due to its being based on a play. What a writer!
Boy, that drawing screams 60s. Beautiful.
All I could think, reading this, was how come it’s so hard for two creative people to balance their energies together? What is that? Some creative couples make it, and stay together. Others, it’s like one siphons the other somehow… and it’s not got to do with love or loyalty either, which can be very strong. But something else, not sure what… you were becoming more and more a shadow of yourself, it sounds like, and, yes, needed to separate, come home, be fed… xo
hello…the BLUEJAY in your tree…SHE/HE is from the realm of electric blue…they warn other BIRDS/HUMANS of possible impending dangers…They wear a bandit mask…they crack nuts with their hard beaks…offer solutions to probles…RE: tough nut to crack…Sacred bird…Associated with ANGELIC realm…ArcAngel Michael…lightening blue sword…they ,contrary to belief will not attack humans…unless as a matter of their young or self protection…they ALWAYS come with a message…or a wondorous gifting…thank you,it is pleasing to read of your adventures in younger days…hot and fireyb times back then…in a good way…still not many fears…beckon call/dovecaller 2004