Author’s Note
T HE WAITING ROOM is based on the disjointed diary of the Forrestals which came into my hands many years ago. Susan Forrestal described this diary in one section as “her husband’s log book” but it would appear that she and possibly others were engaged in an art of fiction peculiar to themselves.
By fiction I do not mean to deny certain literal foundations but rather to affirm these absolutely as a mutual bank or living construction of events; those who collaborated accepted the enigma of such self-proportion and sought therefore to discover themselves concretely, as well as brokenly, in the mystery of a common vanishing life, day to day, year to year.
Susan suffered from an incurable complaint of the eyes and after three operations became almost totally blind at the age of forty. She was the mistress of a man who left her suddenly, it would appear, after a violent quarrel, and disappeared without trace. He remained nameless in the log book, though he may have, at one time, contributed certain entries which give details of his remarkable collection; ornaments and pieces of interest. Susan actually married someone else some time after this, who—from all that can be gleaned—was extremely solicitous for her well-being, but her original lover (with whom she obviously had had much in common) continued to haunt her (to put it in her own words) and to arouse within her a “living” crew or presence. And in fact “he” became—according to a peculiar entry in the diary—“hieroglyph and vessel of experience, the supreme positive fiction for me of nothingness.” By which she seemed to imply that a fiction which appears to grasp nothingness runs close to a freedom of reality which is somethingness.
Susan and her husband (mention of whom does not clearly occur until BOOK 2) died in an explosion which wrecked their home and much of their belongings, antiques, ornaments, etc. The log book survived, though certain sections were half-obliterated…. But this—while apparently depleting continuity—only served to enhance the essential composition of the manuscript that involved accidental deletions or deliberate erasures, reappraisals, marginal notes, dissociations of likely material (as well as associations of unlikely material) to confirm, and blend into, a natural medium of invocation in its own right.
And this disproportionate, sometimes shocking, condition , was the world in particular of Susan Forrestal, whose “operations” led her to accept her own “weakness” as a normal state which needed to confess its own broken existence to plumb and visualize its true relationship to a capacity for freedom.
I am only too well aware of my own shortcomings in attempting to uncover the curious unity I myself felt as existing between essential spirit or form and actual content of the log book.
W.H.
Postscript: In the text following I have used inverted commas around “he” to emphasize that the lover in Susan’s memory was indeed sheer phenomenon of sensibility rather than identical character in the conventional sense. Where I have neglected, however, to use such commas I trust the distinction is one which speaks for itself.
Book 1 The Void
ONE
Image of Conviction
S usan Forrestal was blind. She drew the palm of her hand slowly across her face as if to darken her own image, and to discover therein another sun of personality. “ He ” it was whom she began to discern like the ancient seal — the ancient soul of love.
The sun fell on the slumbering brickwork of her flesh. Through the blind or curtained window where “he” sat and watched FROM WITHIN HER SKULL , the tops of vehicles could be seen as they passed, and still beyond—upon the pavement at the opposite side of the street—passersby were reflected in a shop window.
The life of one’s time affected one, “he” thought, like a restless image or span which seemed to pass within and
T HE WAITING ROOM is based on the disjointed diary of the Forrestals which came into my hands many years ago. Susan Forrestal described this diary in one section as “her husband’s log book” but it would appear that she and possibly others were engaged in an art of fiction peculiar to themselves.
By fiction I do not mean to deny certain literal foundations but rather to affirm these absolutely as a mutual bank or living construction of events; those who collaborated accepted the enigma of such self-proportion and sought therefore to discover themselves concretely, as well as brokenly, in the mystery of a common vanishing life, day to day, year to year.
Susan suffered from an incurable complaint of the eyes and after three operations became almost totally blind at the age of forty. She was the mistress of a man who left her suddenly, it would appear, after a violent quarrel, and disappeared without trace. He remained nameless in the log book, though he may have, at one time, contributed certain entries which give details of his remarkable collection; ornaments and pieces of interest. Susan actually married someone else some time after this, who—from all that can be gleaned—was extremely solicitous for her well-being, but her original lover (with whom she obviously had had much in common) continued to haunt her (to put it in her own words) and to arouse within her a “living” crew or presence. And in fact “he” became—according to a peculiar entry in the diary—“hieroglyph and vessel of experience, the supreme positive fiction for me of nothingness.” By which she seemed to imply that a fiction which appears to grasp nothingness runs close to a freedom of reality which is somethingness.
Susan and her husband (mention of whom does not clearly occur until BOOK 2) died in an explosion which wrecked their home and much of their belongings, antiques, ornaments, etc. The log book survived, though certain sections were half-obliterated…. But this—while apparently depleting continuity—only served to enhance the essential composition of the manuscript that involved accidental deletions or deliberate erasures, reappraisals, marginal notes, dissociations of likely material (as well as associations of unlikely material) to confirm, and blend into, a natural medium of invocation in its own right.
And this disproportionate, sometimes shocking, condition , was the world in particular of Susan Forrestal, whose “operations” led her to accept her own “weakness” as a normal state which needed to confess its own broken existence to plumb and visualize its true relationship to a capacity for freedom.
I am only too well aware of my own shortcomings in attempting to uncover the curious unity I myself felt as existing between essential spirit or form and actual content of the log book.
W.H.
Postscript: In the text following I have used inverted commas around “he” to emphasize that the lover in Susan’s memory was indeed sheer phenomenon of sensibility rather than identical character in the conventional sense. Where I have neglected, however, to use such commas I trust the distinction is one which speaks for itself.
Book 1 The Void
ONE
Image of Conviction
S usan Forrestal was blind. She drew the palm of her hand slowly across her face as if to darken her own image, and to discover therein another sun of personality. “ He ” it was whom she began to discern like the ancient seal — the ancient soul of love.
The sun fell on the slumbering brickwork of her flesh. Through the blind or curtained window where “he” sat and watched FROM WITHIN HER SKULL , the tops of vehicles could be seen as they passed, and still beyond—upon the pavement at the opposite side of the street—passersby were reflected in a shop window.
The life of one’s time affected one, “he” thought, like a restless image or span which seemed to pass within and
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