am a woman, I
am warm, tender and nourishing. I am fecund and I am good.”
Such serenity came with this state of being
woman the mother! The humble, the menial task-performing mother as she had
known her in her own childhood.
When she found chaotic, hasty little notes from
Donald telling her where he was and when he would return he always ended them:
“You are wonderful. You are wonderful and good. You are generous and kind.”
And these words calmed her anxiety more than sabina had l fulfillment had, calmed her fevers. She was
shedding other Sabinas , believing she was shedding
anxiety. Each day the colors of her dresses became more subdued, her walk less
animal. It was as if in captivity her brilliant plumage were losing its
brilliance. She felt the metamorphosis. She knew she was molting. But she did
not know what she was losing in molding herself to Donald’s needs.
Once, climbing his stairs with a full market
bag, she caught dim silhouette of herself on a damp mirror, and was startled to
see a strong resemblance to her mother.
What Donald had achieved by capturing her into
his net of fantasy as the firebird (while in the absence of erotic climate he
had subtly dulled her plumage) was not only to reach his own need’s fulfillment
but to enable her to rejoin her mother’s image which was her image of goodness:
her mother, dispenser of food, of solace—soft warm and fecund.
On the stained mirror stood the shadow and echo
of her mother, carrying food. Wearing the neutral-toned clothes of
self-effacement, the faded garments of self-sacrifice, the external uniform of
goodness.
In this realm, her mother’s realm, she had
found a moment’s surcease from guilt.
Now she knew what she must say to Donald to
cure his sense of smallness, and the smallness of what he had given her. She
would say to him:
“Donald! Donald! You did give me something no
one else could give me, you gave me my innocence! You helped me to find again
the way to gain peace which I had learned as a child. When I was a child, only
a little younger than you are now, after days of drugging myself with reading,
with playing, with fantasies about people, with passionate friendships, with
days spent hiding from my parents, with escapes, and all the activities which
were termed bad, I found that by helping my mother, by cooking, mending,
cleaning, scrubbing, and doing all the chores I most hated, I could appease
this hungry and tyrannical conscience. It’s no crime that you have remained a
child, Donald. In some of the old fairy tales, you know, many mature characters
were shrunk back into midgets, as Alice was made small again to re-experience
her childhood. It’s the rest of us who are pretenders; we all pretend to be
large and strong. You just are not able to pretend.”
When she entered his room, she found a letter
on her table.
Once she had said to him, when his moods had
been too contradictory: “Adolescence is like cactus,” and he had answered:
“I’ll write you a letter some day, with cactus milk!”
And here it was!
Letter to an actress: “From what you told me
last night I see that you do not know your power. You are like a person who
consumes herself in love and giving and does not know the miracles that are
born of this. I felt this last night as I watched you act Cinderella, that you
were whatever you acted, that you touched that point at which art and life meet
and there is only BEING. I felt your hunger and your dreams, your pities and
your desires at the same time as you awakened all of mine. I felt that you were
not acting but dreaming; I felt that all of us who watched you could come out
of the theatre and without transition could pass magically into another Ball,
another snowstorm, another love, another dream. Before our very eyes you were
being consumed by love and the dream of love. The burning of your eyes, of your
gestures, a bonfire of faith and dissolution. You have the power. Never again
use the word exhibitionism.
am warm, tender and nourishing. I am fecund and I am good.”
Such serenity came with this state of being
woman the mother! The humble, the menial task-performing mother as she had
known her in her own childhood.
When she found chaotic, hasty little notes from
Donald telling her where he was and when he would return he always ended them:
“You are wonderful. You are wonderful and good. You are generous and kind.”
And these words calmed her anxiety more than sabina had l fulfillment had, calmed her fevers. She was
shedding other Sabinas , believing she was shedding
anxiety. Each day the colors of her dresses became more subdued, her walk less
animal. It was as if in captivity her brilliant plumage were losing its
brilliance. She felt the metamorphosis. She knew she was molting. But she did
not know what she was losing in molding herself to Donald’s needs.
Once, climbing his stairs with a full market
bag, she caught dim silhouette of herself on a damp mirror, and was startled to
see a strong resemblance to her mother.
What Donald had achieved by capturing her into
his net of fantasy as the firebird (while in the absence of erotic climate he
had subtly dulled her plumage) was not only to reach his own need’s fulfillment
but to enable her to rejoin her mother’s image which was her image of goodness:
her mother, dispenser of food, of solace—soft warm and fecund.
On the stained mirror stood the shadow and echo
of her mother, carrying food. Wearing the neutral-toned clothes of
self-effacement, the faded garments of self-sacrifice, the external uniform of
goodness.
In this realm, her mother’s realm, she had
found a moment’s surcease from guilt.
Now she knew what she must say to Donald to
cure his sense of smallness, and the smallness of what he had given her. She
would say to him:
“Donald! Donald! You did give me something no
one else could give me, you gave me my innocence! You helped me to find again
the way to gain peace which I had learned as a child. When I was a child, only
a little younger than you are now, after days of drugging myself with reading,
with playing, with fantasies about people, with passionate friendships, with
days spent hiding from my parents, with escapes, and all the activities which
were termed bad, I found that by helping my mother, by cooking, mending,
cleaning, scrubbing, and doing all the chores I most hated, I could appease
this hungry and tyrannical conscience. It’s no crime that you have remained a
child, Donald. In some of the old fairy tales, you know, many mature characters
were shrunk back into midgets, as Alice was made small again to re-experience
her childhood. It’s the rest of us who are pretenders; we all pretend to be
large and strong. You just are not able to pretend.”
When she entered his room, she found a letter
on her table.
Once she had said to him, when his moods had
been too contradictory: “Adolescence is like cactus,” and he had answered:
“I’ll write you a letter some day, with cactus milk!”
And here it was!
Letter to an actress: “From what you told me
last night I see that you do not know your power. You are like a person who
consumes herself in love and giving and does not know the miracles that are
born of this. I felt this last night as I watched you act Cinderella, that you
were whatever you acted, that you touched that point at which art and life meet
and there is only BEING. I felt your hunger and your dreams, your pities and
your desires at the same time as you awakened all of mine. I felt that you were
not acting but dreaming; I felt that all of us who watched you could come out
of the theatre and without transition could pass magically into another Ball,
another snowstorm, another love, another dream. Before our very eyes you were
being consumed by love and the dream of love. The burning of your eyes, of your
gestures, a bonfire of faith and dissolution. You have the power. Never again
use the word exhibitionism.
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