Notes On Another New Life #24
Happy birthday, “Notes,” you are two years old!
As time goes by, I look more and more like my mother. It’s not true. I want to think it’s true. I do not know why I loved a certain man when I was 51. I gave him my mug from the Soho Grand Hotel. When I think about regret, I think about the mug. I remember passing women on the street, wearing something tragic and funny at the same time, and I would wonder how it happened to them. Now, I don’t wonder. I don’t use products on my face except witch hazel on my eyes in the morning. It’s interesting being finished with nothing.
This morning, I remember my father at the health food store on 52nd Street, owned by my sister’s husband. My father would open the place early in the morning and serve smoothies and breakfasts to the customers. I remember him busy and happy in a way that was familiar. In his place of business as a coat manufacturer, he wore handmade suits. In the health food store, he wore alligator shirts and khakis.
I’d load a cart with yogurts, meat in vacuum-sealed packages, frozen blueberries in thick, white cardboard containers, like soup containers in a Chinese restaurant. He didn’t care how much food I took. I don’t think he cared, but how would I know?
When I’d enter the store, we would see each other, and between us was a line of pleasure you could hang clothes on. He didn’t know who I was, and he didn’t need to know. I was his child. He had always wanted children. The mystery of who we were to each other is only something you see looking back, and maybe what you are seeing is the indeterminateness of looking back, itself. You want to start life with a good mystery.
Before my father knew my mother, he’d been a traveling salesman on the road, and I remember him telling me about women he’d had sex with. I remember this in a way that maybe didn’t happen. Maybe the woman was older than him and taught him about sex? Why do I see a blonde woman on a bed? It was her pleasure in sex he remembered. I thought of my father as tender and warm and sensitive. I don’t know how he wound up that way. I don’t know how I wound up the way I did.
One time on a line to buy books, I ran into a bad boyfriend I mistook for a former editor. When the bad boyfriend greeted me warmly and I thought he was the former editor, I returned his hug, although in the middle it snapped into focus who he was, and I couldn’t see a way out. I was trapped in seeming happy, and maybe that’s what I’m looking for in life.
One summer in France, I’m only just learning to drive. The rental car has a stick shift, and I back into a large clay flowerpot on a street and crack it. It’s 1969 or 1970. Bruce and I jump out of the car and pay for the pot. Another time, Bruce is driving or maybe I am again, and we’re in an accident. He’s lying on the road. People have come out of their houses to wait with us for an ambulance. Has he hurt his head? Is he stunned? In the hospital, where he stays overnight, the nurses are nuns with hats like wings. The food is excellent and is served with wine. Looking back, I can’t see what’s true because of how memory works. Memory works the way life works. If the person who was hurt doesn’t die, the blood and guilt are wiped away.
It’s cold today. Richard looked out the window and said, “Some of the cows are standing, and some of the cows are sitting. I like looking out the window and seeing cows.” I said, “I do, too.”
Two years ago, when I told him I was planning to write this column, he said, “It can’t do you any harm. People understand the age category you’re in.” I said, “Do you mean 76 is the same thing to people as 96?” He said, “No.” Then we didn’t know if 76 might be the same thing to people as 86, or if 86 might be the same thing to people as 96.
I like looking over and seeing Richard’s face. He’s across the room as I’m typing. He told me he’s surprised when he looks in the mirror. He expects to see brown hair instead of silver hair. Since I met him, I’ve enjoyed looking at him. The enjoyment remains the same every day. Maybe it's the shape of his nose.
On her 40th birthday, someone said to Gloria Steinem, “You don’t look 40.” She said, “This is what 40 looks like.” She was saying women had been lying and claiming they were 30 when they were really 40. Women were claiming they were 40 when they were really 50. Gloria was saying, I look fucking great, right, while the lesson she wanted to teach women was: don’t lie about your age.
When women want to teach other women lessons about their bodies, what do they think their job is? I used to be friends with a man who was a shrink. Not my shrink, just a shrink. One day, when we were in our 50s, we were talking about how we were going to adjust to our bodies as we aged, and he said, “You will figure it out. That’s what you do. You adjust.” It’s not true, although maybe it is by now.
When people talk about “facing reality,” I often think they are depressed. Many people are taught to believe the things that give you pleasure can destroy your life. Things that give you pleasure seldom destroy anything.
Lately, Richard and I have been streaming shows about spies and secret government agencies, funded by, well, that’s the new twist and my source du jour about how the world works. I’m talking about Black Doves, The Day of the Jackal, Night Agent, The Madness, and Prime Target, where, in all, the world is run by a series of information brokers, trading government secrets, resources, and weapons on behalf of the highest bidder. The highest bidder is some oligarch or other, funded by tech billionaires or the highest bidder is a tech billionaire on their own, becoming an oligarch, and living in shadows or behind a security force the size of an army. Spies and brokers no longer debate ideologies. The word democracy is seldom if ever spoken. The only value is the mechanism of the free market—the law of supply and demand—that is, who can pay the most for what they want.
In these shows, this is how terrorism is financed, and what is terrorism for? Some of the same old same old. Revenge, a sense of a humiliated people bullied by the West, militarism for the sake of controlling populations. Like in real life.
Who knows about how the world really works? Only secret agencies within governments, also funded by who the hell really knows. Only operatives within these agencies know about, let's say, a plot to use chemical weapons in Manhattan. The executive and legislative branches of governments? Not in the loop.
What do billionaire oligarchs and oligarchs funded by tech billionaires need? Sharp shooters and information brokers, protected by sharp shooters. Why do they do what they do? Because they can? How are these shows a mirror of our time? Because nothing is solved and no systems are disbanded, although they are all broken.
A few years ago, I was at a party, and I ran into the novelist Jeffrey Renard Allen. We had been fellow faculty members at an MFA program that held winter residencies in Oxfordshire, UK. At the party, I said to him, “Remember when we were at Wroxton, and I’d find you in the afternoons and I’d say, 'We're walking to Banbury. Let's go.'? And you’d come. You never said no’.” When I look back at my life, it’s the people who walk with you, you remember.
The walk to Banbury from Wroxton was four miles each way. We’d stop at a pub on the road before heading back to the 13th Century Abbey where we were housed. At the party, Jeff said, "It's lucky it doesn't get very cold in that part of England.” It’s true. Something about the jet stream or another weather belt keeps it from being freezing the way it is here.
Along the roads were tufts of wool caught on wire fences. If you picked one off a fence, you could smell the lanolin, and it was so soft in your hand. Certain smells in nature, even the rubbery smell of skunk, are so brilliantly glandular they remind you you’re an animal. On the walks, in the gray light of Oxfordshire winters, Jeff and I talked about our lives. We talked about being Black, in his case, and being woman in mine and what to do about always being misidentified. The trees cast moon shadows across the road. Jeff said, “Eventually, you laugh.”
Last week, Richard came upstairs and said, “Marianne Faithful died.” I said, “I know. It’s sad.” He said, “She was the same age as you.” I said, “Does that mean I'm next?” He said, “No, it means she was first.” I thought to myself, if she is first, then of course I'm next, and also we're all next.
I said to Richard, “I so enjoy thinking about that thing that happened with Sally, the way she turned me into a customer for her friend George instead of suggesting I meet the famous artist. I just love thinking about the way it burns me. I like disliking her, and I have no idea why. Also, I don't care why.”
Richard said, “I think resentment isn't something you want to give up easily. It's the pain that keep on giving.” I said, “Do you think our meeting of minds on resentment is a new dividend of being married?” He said, “Yes—our own sweet form of sharing.”
Hello darlings of Oldster-land, if you would like to come to the next Zoom conversation hosted by me and Richard Toon, it will take place on Saturday February 22 from 3 to 4 EST. The topic will be creating an intimate narrative voice that speaks directly to the reader, and we will also be continuing our discussion of taking risks in content and forms of writing--and life! If you would like to come and learn more about the event, please RSVP to me here: lauriestone@substack.com.
"Certain smells in nature, even the rubbery smell of skunk, are so brilliantly glandular they remind you you’re an animal."
Love this.