field notes; week of august 20, 2018
hey guys. this week’s edition is 50% patrick melrose, 100% plunging into the annals of grief and loneliness. yay!
tw: one mention of csa/rape in this edition, at quote one hundred and ninety-five. i’ll flag the quote in question so you can skip it if you need to.
one hundred and ninety-one.
people tell you who they are, but we ignore it, because we want them to be who we want them to be.
-- lisa albert, janet leahy, and matthew weiner, mad men: the summer man, 2010
have you ever wanted something so badly that you assume everybody else must want it, too? i’m not talking about possessions as much as fundamental human experiences: everyone must want to fall in love; everyone must want to be happy. want something enough, and you’ll begin to move through the world as though everybody else wants the very thing you want. if you’re not careful, you may end up pouring the thing you want over someone who doesn’t want it at all. empathy is all well and good, but you can’t know another person’s life in totality; you can’t assume that what’s good for you is good for them. i would say that the solution is to listen to people, but that would mean everybody wants to talk.
one hundred and ninety-two.
dr. edna: you know, i’m very proud of how you found a way to behave so well, even when you get so angry at your mother sometimes. it’s hard to control ourselves when we get so angry.
sally: she just doesn’t know that i’m mad.
dr. edna: as long as you know it. i told you, your mom acts that way because she has stresses. not because you’re bad or that you did anything wrong.
-- andre and maria jacquemetton, mad men: blowing smoke, 2010
dr. edna singlehandedly undid years of my own childhood trauma with these wise pronouncements. imagine navigating conflict without denying yourself your anger or using your anger as a weapon against the person who made you angry. imagine looking for resolution without accepting all the blame or ignoring everything that’s weighing on the person you love. this article has been a major help for me, in that regard.
one hundred and ninety-three.
they loved each other so much that it hurt when one of them left the room.
-- edward st. aubyn, mother’s milk, 2005
a considerable portion of mother’s milk is narrated from the perspective of patrick and mary’s infant son, and it’s full of simple, baby-logic pronouncements like this one, and it’s brilliant.
one hundred and ninety-four.
“cruelty is the opposite of love,” said patrick, “not just some inarticulate version of it.”
-- edward st. aubyn, bad news, 1992
i love, i love, i love st. aubyn for making no move to redeem patrick’s father, for never implying that patrick’s grief would dissolve if only he would forgive david. very welcome in a genre where the protagonist’s moral arc usually depends on, like, realizing that their abusive parent was a flawed person and thus all their abuse must be forgiven.
tw: rape, child sexual abuse
one hundred and ninety-five.
“so, what can one say about a man who rapes his own child?”
“i suppose it might help if you could see him as sick rather than evil,” johnny suggested limply. “i can’t get over this,” he added, “it’s really awful.”
“i’ve tried what you suggest,” said patrick, “but then, what is evil if not sickness celebrating itself?”
-- edward st. aubyn, some hope, 1994
viewing abusive behaviour as sickness has become a reflex, i think. it’s especially evident in the phasing out of “victim” for “survivor,” and in the preferred language of “recovery” and “healing.” and that may be a helpful framework for some, but i think its usefulness ends when it implies that the abuse happened simply because the abuser was at the mercy of some ravaging disease. “what is evil if not sickness celebrating itself?” is the most elegant, concise, and total refutation of that bullshit argument that i’ve ever encountered.
one hundred and ninety-six.
nothing was perfect in this sublunary world, thought patrick, glancing up devoutly at the moon which was of course hidden, like the rest of the sky during an english winter, by a low swab of dirty cloud.
-- edward st. aubyn, some hope, 1994
i used sublunary in last week’s e-mail, and i love how st. aubyn deploys it here, literally placing patrick below la lune.
one hundred and ninety-seven.
once you locked into language, all you could do was shuffle the greasy pack of a few thousand words that millions of people had used before. there might be little moments of freshness, not because the life of the world has been successfully translated but because a new life has been made out of this thought stuff. but before the thoughts got mixed up with words, it wasn’t as if the dazzle of the world hadn’t been exploding in the sky of his attention.
-- edward st. aubyn, mother’s milk, 2005
every time i pick up one of these books i wonder what the fuck kind of literary feat st. aubyn is about to pull off, and in mother’s milk the feat is a first-person narration of patrick’s infant son as he learns his first words and begins to conceive of the world in language and mourns a world before words, all through stunning prose, like, bitch… how? how’d he do that?
one hundred and ninety-eight.
her face was a cobweb of creases earned from trying so hard to be good.
-- edward st. aubyn, mother’s milk, 2005
the entire moral arc of patrick’s mother over the course of all five books is also A Literary Feat.
one hundred and ninety-nine.
things happen for the first time all the time -- what’s surprising is things happening again.
-- edward st. aubyn, mother’s milk, 2005
not to air out my personal bullshit in this newsletter, but the longest relationship of my adult life lasted for about six months, and really only continued as long as it did because it was mutually inconvenient to break up. which is to say that i’ve experienced a lot of first times, but not nearly as many second times. and i’m hungry for them. i’m hungry for second times and third times and 46th times. maybe someday.
two hundred.
robert imagined his mother talking to him when he had been sealed up in her womb. of course he wouldn’t have known what her blunted syllables were meant to mean, but he was sure he would have felt a current flowing between them, the contraction of a fear, the stretch of an intention. thomas was still close to those transfusions of feeling; robert was getting explanations instead. thomas still knew how to understand the silent language which robert had almost lost as the wild margins of his mind fell under the sway of the verbal empire. he was standing on a ridge, about to surge downhill, getting faster, getting taller, getting more words, getting bigger and bigger explanations, cheering all the way. now thomas had made him glance backwards and lower his sword for a moment while he noticed everything that he had lost as well. he had become so caught up in building sentences that he had almost forgotten the barbaric days when thinking was like a splash of colour landing on a page. looking back, he could still see it: living in what would now feel like pauses: when you first open the curtains and see the whole landscape covered in snow and you catch your breath and pause before breathing out again. he couldn’t get the whole thing back, but maybe he wouldn’t rush down the slope quite yet, maybe he would sit down and look at the view.
-- edward st. aubyn, mother’s milk, 2005
*me crashing through the wall of edward st. aubyn’s living room like the kool-aid man* how the FUCK did you manage to use LANGUAGE to convey THE TOTAL INADEQUACY OF LANGUAGE
two hundred and one.
“what can drive a man mad is being forced to have the emotion which he is forbidden to have at the same time,” said his father. “my mother’s treachery forced me to be angry, but then her illness forced me to feel pity instead. now her recklessness makes me angry again but her bravery is supposed to smother my anger with admiration. well, i’m a simple sort of fellow, and the fact is that i remain fucking angry.”
-- edward st. aubyn, mother’s milk, 2005
i don’t know if there’s such a thing as uncomplicated grief. but there’s definitely an emotion you’re supposed to feel during grief — sadness — and it’s definitely harder to move through the world when your grief looks more like resentment, or relief, or even joy, or all of the above. my grief feels like a bruise that never stops changing colours.
two hundred and two.
mary was such a devoted mother because she knew what it felt like not to have one.
-- edward st. aubyn, mother’s milk, 2005
god, i almost need a sixth book to find out if patrick and mary’s kids are going to turn out okay.
two hundred and three.
mary was utterly lost in loss, lost in imagining her father’s suffering, lost in the madness of knowing that only he could have understood her feelings about his death.
-- edward st. aubyn, mother’s milk, 2005
do you have any idea what it’s like to have the slightest contours of your pain articulated by the very person who is the source of that pain? when you lose someone who knew you intimately it feels like the marrow is being scraped out of your bones.
two hundred and four.
he slipped and bumped his chin against the table top.
“mama take you,” he said, spreading his arms out.
she lifted him up and sat him on her lap, rocking him gently. whenever he was hurt he reverted to calling himself “you,” although he had discovered the proper use of the first person singular six months ago. until then, he had referred to himself as “you” on the perfectly logical grounds that everyone else did. he also referred to others as “i,” on the perfectly logical grounds that that was how they referred to themselves. then one week “you want it” turned into “i want it.” everything he did at the moment -- the fascination with danger, the assertion of ownership, the ritual contradiction, the desire to do things for himself -- was about this explosive transition from being “you” to being “i,” from seeing himself through his parents’ eyes to looking through his own. just for now, though, he was having a grammatical regression, he wanted to be “you” again, his mother’s creature.
-- edward st. aubyn, mother’s milk, 2005
i have this habit of slipping into “you” when i write diary entries, when i write about myself privately. it’s never “i feel…” but “you feel…” like i’m addressing some other person, deep inside myself. like there’s two of us in here and i’m in the backseat, shouting at the dumbass holding the wheel. is it easier than acknowledging that there’s only one of me, and i can’t always steer myself right?
okay, the patrick melrose karaoke hour is over. thanks for accompanying me on this bit of grief tourism. i promise edward st. aubyn is not paying me to freak out about his books in your inbox. onward.
two hundred and five.
i can tell that you believe in yourself. but do you believe in love? because if you really believe in love, then fucking believe in love, full stop. don’t say, “i believe in love but i’m afraid it won’t find me!” don’t repeat, “why do i have to go through this?” until your torture becomes a religion. that is not believing in love… belief that can be stolen from you is not real belief.
...you believe in yourself but you don’t believe in this world, and you must yield to reality, yield to the glory of daily disappointments, yield to a universe of flaws, swimming around your face like mosquitoes, like period blood, like germs. i don’t know that you’re an introvert so much as someone who is resistant to reality. you like to keep things safe and clean, and that seems easier in a vacuum… you can love yourself and love your time alone, but eventually it’s time to take your circus on the road and share it with the world. it’s time to celebrate the way you are instead of staying protected from the real world and then feeling hurt by it.
-- heather havrilevsky, i like myself, but i hate being single, 2018
the ask polly column can get goofy from time to time, but this letter-writer’s issue is so on-the-mark it hurts: “As much as everyone’s ‘take time off and find yourself’ advice is a nice thought, I’ve already found her and she’s great. I’m ready to meet my equal.” heather’s reply is good. it’s advice i’m trying to take.
two hundred and six.
what i’ve actually learned is that the work of keeping your path clear is a continual process, one so all-consuming that you may not ever have the time to look up and see where you’re going. you may stumble into someone crossing their path with yours, you may not. and there is no way to get so strong that someone can’t still hurt you. you only get strong enough to keep going forward.
having tried as hard as i could, i still might be alone forever.
here is the actual side effect of trying: i had to tell myself i was making all these changes from some mysterious other who i would “earn” through devotion and trial; but it was all really for me. the only thing that alleviates the ache of solitude is showing up for yourself every day and taking a hand in all the little choices that make up your life. choosing something good for your mental health, choosing to spend time with people who like you, choosing to smile at yourself in the mirror, choosing to meet up with someone new. choosing to try made me a better person. it hurt. it was worth it.
-- aimee lutkin, i did everything you said and i’m still alone, 2018
in january of 2017, i set a new year’s resolution to remain single all year — no dates, no relationships, no hooking up, nothing — and i blew it about five months in, getting involved in a long-distance relationship and watching different female-centric movies every sunday (alien! thelma and louise! legally blonde!). it eventually faded out, but it was, for the most part, a positive experience. so in january of this year, i set the exact opposite new year’s resolution. and it’s nearly september, and i am writing this to you from the warm embrace of a pregnancy pillow that simulates the feeling of being little-spooned. all my other new year’s resolutions are on track, though. i guess love is not the kind of thing that can be resolved.
two hundred and seven.
that’s the thing about something holding you so close that it actually becomes part of your body.
-- hanif abdurraqib, on seatbelts and sunsets, 2018
he’s talking about seatbelts, but he’s also talking about love.
two hundred and eight.
let me help. a hundred years or so from now, i believe, a famous novelist will write a classic using that theme. he’ll recommend those three words even over i love you.
-- harlan ellison, star trek: the city on the edge of forever, 1967
hearing “let me help” is only romantic if you’re an absolute nightmare, though.
two hundred and nine.
it is ridiculous, also, to spill out one’s secrets about oneself, to compulsively offer one’s thoughts up to an unvouched for anyone, ridiculous, too, to have left a record behind of having lived so that even death itself will not relieve you of the burden of exposure. is there ever an instance in which a permanent record has been good for the person on whom it is kept? that’s what employers, schools, data-miners, and governments do to us. spies do this, too, and to write a book is as if to just go ahead and offer to spy on oneself. i would much rather be a mysterious person, but instead, i am a writer.
-- anne boyer, three, 2018
are you following anne boyer’s substack? you should be following anne boyer’s substack.
two hundred and ten.
courage is the solution to despair. reason provides no answers. i can’t know what the future will bring. we have to choose despite uncertainty. wisdom is holding two contradictory truths in our mind, simultaneously: hope and despair. a life without despair is a life without hope. holding these two ideas in our head is life itself.
-- paul schrader, first reformed, 2018
for the past several months, i’ve been searching for answers everywhere, prying into everything i read and see and hear for some kernel that might unlock my problem and give me clarity. last night, i found this: a complete answer. good.