What Thou Lovest Well Remains

The rest is dross.

Well, even Terry Schiavo’s blog is more up-to-date than mine, and while that should generate enough guilt to wrap myself up in, nice and cozy, all I really feel is the usual ice-cold mind-numbing depression. In my mind I’m seeing one of those Doré engravings from Dante’s Inferno, where our hero is led by Vergil through the Ninth Circle of Hell across Cocytus, a frozen waste where traitors are submerged up to their heads in a Sea of Ice, and Count Ugolino is gnawing on Archbishop Ruggieri’s head. Of course, all I know of Doré and Dante I learned from Dante’s Infernal Guide to Your School, a silly cartoon book I remember reading in high school, and Ruth Draper of course, whom I discovered later in graduate school, and Wikipedia, which now remembers everything for me. “’Midway along the pathway of our life I found myself in a forest dark'—we say: a dark forest, don't we?—'because the direct way was lost’ ….. Dante and Shakespeare: they seemed to know everything." And so off I go myself along the pathway, with none of their foresight and skill, putting one word in front of the other.

I suppose the quality I admire most in myself is my talent for self-amusement. (My insatiable curiosity is my greatest gift, but that’s a mixed bag.) For several years I was an only child, and an only grandchild, so perhaps this was one of those born-of-necessity virtues; but whatever the reason, I never seem to tire of my own company. And it’s doubtless a rare quality, since I so often tire of other people’s: how in the world do they live with themselves?

Driving to work yesterday I told myself Diana Cooper stories. Well, how to introduce Diana Cooper? Here’s an article I found from the August 25, 1941 issue of Time that captures something of the bubbly:

In a suite at Manhattan's Hotel Ambassador last week, newshawks were treated to a firsthand account of British farming in wartime. The agricultural expert was blonde, 49-year-old Lady Diana Duff Cooper, for many years "The Most Beautiful Woman in England," famed for her playing of the Madonna in Max Reinhardt's The Miracle. With her Cabinet Minister husband, Alfred Duff Cooper, she was en route to the Far East, where he will act as coordinator of Britain's war efforts.

Seven years ago Lady Diana and some friends formed a company to sell the gravel from the beach in front of her summer place at Bognor Regis on England's south coast. There beauteous Lady Diana slopped the hogs, kept two swarms of bees, tended two goats, 30 chickens, milked The Princess (a cow). "The Princess is such a lovely cow," said she. "I simply adore her. And she gives so much good milk."

From The Princess' milk Lady Diana made "a sort of" cheddar cheese. "I never believed farming could be so much fun," declared she, "but now—it's off to Singapore!"

Cooper continued to drive well into her 90s, although apparently not very well, and she would often simply park at will. For these and other occasions, she kept a sign she stuck on the dashboard: “Incredibly old woman driving – please forgive!” A friend from that time once berated her: “You know, Diana, we were supposed to have lunch last week, and you never showed up. I waited an hour!” “Well, that’s another marble gone!” It’s the sort of remark you imagine Katherine Hepburn tossing off, perhaps in some yet undiscovered Philip Barry play. Despair, tempered by resignation and acceptance and saved from tedium by that lagniappe of insouciance.

Diana Cooper always reminds me of Borges’ mother. In her later years — I think I must have read this in Grand Street, sometime in the 80s — Borges’ mother would read through a magazine, lay it aside, and then almost immediately pick up the same magazine and read it all over again, as if for the first time. I thought: this is truly a great gift: never to grow tired of knowing things! I told this story to my friend Dorothy over lunch one day — we’re probably still back in the mid-80s, when Dorothy was already in her 70s; she had just finished telling me about her first transatlantic voyage, a young girl traveling with her parents — anyway, Dorothy was clearly made physically ill by the dread the story conjured. Coming unhinged, losing control, unraveling ….. no, not polite conversation at all.

I can muster the same sort of nausea in myself by rereading just one sentence from Wendell Berry:

His mind, which contained the lighted countryside of Katy’s Branch and Catman’s Ridge, had a leak in it somewhere, some little hole through which now and again would pass the whole darkness of the darkest night — so that instead of walking in the country he knew and among his kinfolks and neighbors, he would be afoot in a limitless and individual universe, completely dark, inhabited only by himself.

For some reason I can’t ever read that line without hearing Charlie Haden singing Wayfaring Stranger in the background; all the talent, like Piaf’s, wrapped up in the faltering. To be lost to the world will drive you mad, but it doesn’t kill you.

Cooper’s remark was the inspiration for James Merrill’s “Losing the Marbles,” where he finds himself pulled back by one of his familiars from the shores of Lethe

These dreamy blinkings out
Strike me as grace if I may say so,
Capital punishment,
Yes, but of utmost clemency at work,
Whereby the human stuff, ready or not,
Tumbles one last drumroll, into thyme,
Out of time, with just the fossil quirk
At heart to prove — hold on, don’t tell me ….. What?

to the Athens of the Mind — this isn’t nearly as pretentious as I’m making it sound — and darting back and forth, stanza after stanza, between dying memory (and deteriorating body) and the beauty and permanence (and supple human flesh) marble represents. It ends with a birthday gift, a bag of marbles, which are stuck in the cracks of the pool deck, to catch the light and not get lost.

Long work of knowing and hard play of wit
Take their toll like any virus
Old-timers, cured, wade ankle-deep in sky

Well, when I was a child, if anyone had bought me a bag of marbles, I would have probably burst into tears. But I also remember spending lunch hours at B. Shackman’s, which I think specialized mostly in doll furniture — hmmm, we’re back in the 80s I guess, in New York, and I’m now in my late 20s, early 30s — and I recall being mesmerized by bins and bins of marbles of all kinds. (Who knew?) I remember the doll furniture was on the far left wall, as you walked in the front door, and the marbles were on the far right wall, in the back ….. and across the aisle, there were wind-up toys …..

Perhaps my credulity comes from watching television with my grandmother when I was young. I don’t recall there being so many cartoons then — there were the two Bolshevik crows, I recall, sabotaging our airplanes, and Astro Boy, with his big sad eyes — but mostly we watched dramas that had jumped the shark from radio. December Bride, for instance. I have spent most of my life trying to become Spring Byington, and come damn close. Thanks to IMDb, I also now know that Byington appeared in episodes of the Batman TV series (as “J Pauline Spagetti”), as well as I Dream of Jeannie (as Major Nelson’s mother), and when she died, she donated her body to medical research. And we watched The Loretta Young Show. The mini-biographers over at IMDb think Loretta just nifty, and she did win 3 Emmys, but even back then — and since December Bride went off the air in 1959 and Loretta in 1961, I’m dredging up memories that pre-date nursery school — even at age 3 I knew Loretta was pure saccharin. And not just saccharin, but a gateway to Powell-Pressberger, and from there, the really hard stuff: Douglas Sirk. (Loretta, by the way, was married three times, had an illegitimate child by Clark Gable whom she passed off as her adopted child, and was nicknamed “Attila the Nun." According to A&E: “She remains a symbol of beauty, serenity, and grace. But behind the glamor and stardom is a woman of substance whose true beauty lies in her dedication to her family, her faith, and her quest to live life with a purpose.” Well, until 2000, when she died.) I remember Loretta wore great dresses, though; she really knew how to twirl a skirt.

The man does not exist who, outside his own specialty, is not credulous. — Borges.

Or perhaps it’s my lack of specialty, in any field, that accounts for my credulity. My total inability to think critically — my lack of even any inclination in that direction — is another one of those gifts that cuts both ways. On the one hand, I know I take more pleasure in movies than most people: What do you mean, he doesn’t see dead people? You mean they didn’t blow up the White House? On the other hand, this deficit left me completely unfit for academic research. I once wrote an essay on incremental changes to the plow in Roman Gaul, and proposed a photo-essay that consisted simply of close-up shots of Roman bricks — had I persisted, I intended to be the Father of the Autistic School of Ancient Historiography. Whenever I had to think about the African uprising against the Emperor Maximinus Thrax in 238 A.D. (on behalf of Gordian I) I couldn’t keep from thinking that at the end of the day, everyone would go home, sink into the lounger, and everything would be How was your day? and What’s for dinner? Well, probably not.

I read Robert Caro’s biography of Robert Moses in the summer of 1974 as it was published, week by week, in The New Yorker. There almost every ill of New York City is attributed to Moses. I missed that completely. For me, here was someone who did things. I was hooked, and Moses was my hero. Some years later, when I had the chance to meet Caro at a friend’s house, I almost blurted out that he was responsible for my admiring this monster, but I stopped myself: not polite conversation over cocktails.

Last night, dropping off to sleep, I told myself stories about another one of my heroes, Leni Riefenstahl. Sentimental types who’ll believe anything, they always have a soft spot for fanatics: Riefenstahl. Ezra Pound. Mao and the Gang of Four. Baader-Meinhof. The Red Brigades. Prairie Fire and the Weather Underground. My politics have mellowed over the years, but every time I hear someone in the media describe Ted Kennedy as far left, or Dick Cheney as far right, my eyes narrow into tiny slits: neither one, to my knowledge, has ever threatened the violent overthrow of the US. They’re amateurs!

Wonderful, Horrible Life did not make me a fan of Riefenstahl; I was already that. She was one of the great filmmakers of the 2oth century. Her enemies denounce her films for being too good, and had she been a man, she would have been rehabilitated. The film did increase my respect for her though. In one scene in particular, the director is demanding she repent, and exasperated, she screams at him, “What would you have me do? Lie down and die?”

..... And that reminds me of Mikio Naruse’s When a Woman Ascends the Stairs, in which an aging geisha has come to a fork in the road: she can either marry one of her customers, or allow one of her customers to set her up in her own business, Trouble is, the customer she wants to marry is already married, and unwilling to leave his wife and family; but he’d be happy to become her silent business partner. And the customer who wants to marry her, she doesn’t love him. So at the end of the movie we find her still standing at the fork in the road; or more precisely, she is still ascending the stairs to the bar where she works, finding it more and more difficult to compete with younger and younger coworkers.

Reading Beckett in high school, the “I Can’t Go On, I’ll Go On” plays out on the most minimal of sets; but as we reach midway along our journey, we realize that life is far messier. Lying down and dying, even if we might wish it, is not that easy. Sometimes it’s easier simply to put one foot in front of the other. Habits, even bad ones, are hard to break.

So those are the highlights from yesterday’s stream of consciousness. What did we learn? Well, if as we tumble one last drumroll we find ourselves lost to the world, let’s hope we’ll remain poised, and focused on providing good milk. And if we find we’re lost to ourselves, let’s pray for the grace given Borges’ mother, and look surprised. And if those last memories are the swish of Loretta Young’s gown, well, maybe life wasn’t so bad after all.