4[a]
London – June
queer lucid blue green sky – odd neon lights – blue-painted street lamps – picadilly – Eros shooting earthward – water sliding down black pedestal, wavering – steps – great neons: red coca-cola bullseye electric ‘batteries’ – Piccadilly Circus – Soho: bars – brown wood, strutting pianos, singing – langorous dead air – blonde tarts on corners, in doorways – “Le Macabre”: skeletons – innumerable private clubs – cruising cars, tall Virgo bobbies – chez Auguste – vine leaves – wine bottles in great sweating buckets – flaming salvers, bread sticks – odd modern apartments here & there – cubed glass lavendar lights – great red double-decker busses moving
5[a]-7[b]
Ship-deck: 11 am – blowing, gusts, shadow on wooden decks of blown steamer smoke. Red & blue thick steamer rugs blue swimming light. Radiant medium blue sea over lifeboats to right – red funnel riveted, back slanting – cold wind at back of neck – deck steward tilting down with white china cups of bouillion & saltine biscuits. Clear blued shadows on white paint – white spray waves cleaving aside from ship. Children playing tag, collecting lady-bugs, red with black spots – sailor with scarred nose mopping edge of deck with squeegee – Passengers – squat; ugly, bad pots: Jews, coarse – tan-faced. Two bright negresses in gaudy colors: lime, tangerine, fuschia. sound: motors, wind, whoo of funnels – red, white, blue – vivid – dazzle – tyranny of present minute, present object: The Now and Here
vivid presence rules despotic over pale shadows of past & future
4 pm – Winter Garden: round & square white-linen clothed tables – people – wide-eyed freckled bony mother scolding & fratching at fat blond little girl in dutch cut; Jewish woman: plump, gray bob, pink lipstick: Brooklyn accent: “She was an exquisite person” “exquisite umbrella” – white jacketed waiters trays of white gilt-bordered cups, silver sugar bowls, gilt buttons – trays shoulder height. Flowers bordering frosted glass – red geraniums, pale unnatural lavendar hydrangeas – 4 o’clock gentility – round electric lights, like cream peppermint wafers – two mirror slatted columns – 4 portholes lit with light blue sky distinct from yellow electric glow – moment fills up – sudden “descent of angel”: brimming – overflow – tears – violin strikes up – piano, drum – deep blue of sea – whole room tilts – fills porthole – dark blue half way up – white caps – deep interfusion – “Mountain Greenery”
Night on ship – windowless cabin, dark – artificial light through slats in door – no sense of day or night. Gleaming endless corridors, red & green arrows – boat-drill – life-savers – shuffle-board players – ship Newspaper & daily events card – throbbing – coffin-like bunks – straight narrow, tightly made beds – compact, but crowding – if one person opens a suitcase lid, everybody else has to get in bed – sense of waking deep in a coffin – early morning light on deck – cold, windy, overcast rows of empty deck chairs – blue & orange zig-zag patterns – deep-black-green waves directly under ship –
Woman at table – NY secretary to lawyers – envious, arriviste – ‘But cabin class has so many more facilities.’ Going abroad teaches you to be satisfied with where you live at home. Nothing in common with French if you don’t know their language or share the same culture. Longing for “high-toned” “culture” – fancy – mucky-fine. Text-book man-catcher: “You must have a very responsible position.” gross clerics – balsy crying over prunes – sudden sense of renewed creative gift: ability to “make of the moment something permanent” – air: threaded through with “Blue Room” – clatter of cups & dishes – Negresses in fruity tropical colors – tangerine, lime, watermelon pink –
words begin: interior monologue re-creating scene, re-arranging – speaking it – flower pellet unfolding in clear glass of the mind – bloom – into what? novel? Make Diary – catch each pellet & let it unfold in the storage aquarium of rare blooms – keep the creating creative core & integrity (not selling less for more than its worth) & no woman can have more – continuous social life kills or betrays inner world: to make it rare & strange On bows – orange masts: 5 tons – black-blue sea – fierce wind plastering clothes to body, flipping whip streaks of hair – spray folding back from bow cleaving like white rich curd, blown thin rainbow in glass sheet of drops, growing from bow & arching back, to break, fragment & dissolve as spray fell, only to grow again, double, fray – as if ship were trailing rainbows, a wake of rainbows – glaring white paint – clear-cut – sense of the great whales moving, rising, shedding scuds of water from their great bulks and rising to view –
blue & red, round & square table tops – “everybody in ’ospital” “Never fails to rain of a Sunday – drizzle – mean – low gray clouds, flat ugly sea –
table characters: great stone-faced, red-knuckled, white-haired Scotsman – mammoth & silent eater – motherly huge talkative ribald Scotswoman “apple pie without the cheese”: “I can stand canned berries, cherries, everything but canned apples.” Loves Gordon McRae, Eroll Flynn. Likes movie: “all above love”. Fish for dessert: kippers, herring, haddock.
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Yorkshire woman: from near Hull: “looks darker than an Italian” – going to daughter in America who’s having a baby – fat – diets, rather quiet, heavily lugubrious –
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Black-haired secretary “to New York lawyers” – turning sour – pathetic effort to catch man: To impress balding married table-mate – “You must have a very responsible job”. Social-climber in half-wistful, half-sour-grapes fashion: “cocktails in cabin-class – “more facilities” – dining in first class “formal” – gray little wardrobe – best dress, expensive, neat cut, low-back, but gray, gray fuzzy angora neck – Polish-Jew background – “culture” – “You can’t have anything in common with French unless you speak their language or share their culture.” Discrimination – travel in Italy, Venice, Rome. Waiter: “If you don’t catch a man on this ship, you’ll never catch one.” Man: “Oh, she’s got one. She’s got me.” Girl: (Resentment breaking out) Yeah, but he’s well-married already. Elaborate sarcasm over ringing bitterness, lonely, lingering. Can’t sleep: too cold, noise of fan, ventilator (didn’t know how to turn it off) – sway of ship. Movie-vigil – “I was waiting for somebody, but I guess they’re not coming.” Saving seats.
Jolly balding cockney: short, black threads of hair plastered by hair-oil across bald spot – married – confiding – being sent by company to join ship in Bermuda – NY cruise – daughter married to American – going to have baby – kind man, frank – vaccination hurting – “fellows” in smokefilled cabin, exchanging stories, showing each other pictures – points out quartermasters going also to join ships – describes Jose Ferrer movie: “a lot of speaking, I like a lot of talking in a movie.” Describes first, 2nd, 3rd butchers, baked bread, pie – great refrigerators
12[a–b]
Pine Cone: Placed on its circular base on the table, the dried-out pine cone, woody gray-brown in color, rose to a rounded summit like a hived anthill. When looked at from directly above, it’s wooden petals flared, starting at the central and highest point with two tiny bent sticks not more than a third of an inch long and thinner than matchsticks. Two slightly larger brown-gray petals stuck out just below and square to these, forming a compass pointing N.S.E and W, set in a trefoil of larger petals, rising from the dark central nub of the cone and curving toward the middle, like the scooped lower half of a twig with pith removed, greyer and blunting at the tip. To the left, several petals were missing, so the next in the ruffle were a good deal larger and closer toward the base of the pine cone, while those on the right graded downward in a slow, regular increase of size after two frayed petals which showed a reddish yellow fiber where the gray woody surface peeled back. All the petals circling the centered trefoil fanned out, darkest at the base, shading through twist or warp to the whitish-gray tip, the whole cone forming a kind of stylized wooden rose of dull browny-gray petals, dead – stiff & brittle. Turning the pine cone in the hand and regarding it in profile, one sees the thin upper petals point skyward, gradually level out horizontal half way down, dark at the central stem and tipped with a whitish crescent, like a shallow saucer with a thorn-point base, and then, the lowest petals turn downward, spaced in a row, and the next row staggered beneath to form a fairly solid base of wooden frills.
26[b]–27[a]
Spaulding’s Trailer:
Silver-gray trailer, set with window-length on clearing, door & two windows opening into pinegrove, floored with dry reddish pine needles. Trailer about 10 yards long, curving roof at either end – window oblong at either end: door, silver-gray, with square window curtained in white-dotted gauze – green wooden steps – two, put up against door. Front side of trailer a garden of odds & ends: starting from left, under bedroom window – cardboard carton full of red & white-handled paintbrushes, cans of paint, dusty bottles of turp, scrub oak – sprout – yellow basket, plastic, full of mopheads – shovel, blue enamel tub, white dots – green & maroon rug & ash can, string & white wire-wooden table – covered with red earthenware pots, various sizes, green philodendron, green tea cups china, colander & baking pan full of red, purple, green beach plums, quahog shells, liquid soap. Under table: blue-sprigged pot, tinfoil, rubber plant, empty glass jug, green waste-paper basket with pink & yellow flowers, broom, pile of aluminium buckets, wicker basket of clothespins – under pine tre in front of door – geranium, red, in tin can covered with tin foil, pale yellow leaves, glass jug, green, with withered stalks. White china hen with 3 yellow chicks – large overturned waste basket, white, middle burned black on either end, scarred with red rust – plants – tin cans, red-leaves, philodendron. Wheel barrow of beach plums, rusty child’s cart, beach plums in news paper – wash machine veiled with transparent paper, capped with canvas, wet mops, dishrag on pine tree, clothesline strung between trees – rusty-springed bedstead – 3 tin cans of plants in ice cube tray –
corn vases –
About two feet high – corn sheaf, vase, furled center of main corn stalk, corn-yellow grains, row of 3, corn on left, handle – husk, lined – deep green-yellow tip. Boy stood out on base – oval base about two inches high – frieze of leaves and flower buds. Boy – foot high – straw hat with corn leaf stuck in it, brown face, delicate features – black curly hair, pinky purple jacket open, yellow band around neck & front, yellow jersey with blue-stripes, pink kilt up about waist, falling to knees, brown bare feet on yellow green soil, right foot stepping out. Brown corked jug held in right hand, another fat brown corked jug under left arm, light blue mug in left hand, can stick little finger in it, background fan of leaves, corn flowers.
Girl – charming, smiling brown face, right arm bent, holding pink string of wicker basket, complete to tear in straw on her back, blue blouse & skirt with pink & yellow border, wide pink sash, yellow apron full of green-leaved-vegetables held up & to side in left sheathed knife hanging at right hip – green leaves scrolled about yellow-brown base – corn grains – pink outlined – inside of vase – pale turquoise: black hair parted in middle, down over right shoulder – pink scarf, fringe draped over head –
27[b or c]
Story: The Great Big Nothing
Gertrude Twiss New York secretary: point of view –
Scene: Queen Elizabeth, June crossing to America.
Mood: failure, misery, lemon-acid. She has saved & dreamed for Europe trip. Quit job, bought expensive new wardrobe & gone. (grey, turquoise colors). Lonely trip implied. Search for man. Failure. Sees seamy side of everything. Europe “a great big nothing.” Undermines & blackens everything she talks about: England – dark, crowded little parlors, Rome – the nasty men. Main emotion: envy of all who have abundance of life –
Characters at ship table, tourist class:
little balding jolly cockney, married.
Great motherly Irish woman young married couple of lovers
Waiter’s cruel, casual remark: “If you don’t catch a man on this ship, you never will.”
Cabin class – dreams of grandeur – French doctor – glamor – intelligent – love – all commodities she can’t have – life: a great big nothing.
Statue of Liberty: irony: statue of own imprisonment in self, locks shut. “It’s not so much.”
Everything coming into NYC anti-climax – Nothing but bitterness in self, so she finds nothing of sweetness in outside world. Vicious circle.
41[a]
Mama McFague & The Corn Vase Girl
A House For Mama McFague
Spauldings: Myrtle & Lester: vivid character study. Work & sweat of Myrtle to get up summer cabins – yet she never has a house – designs kitchens, colors, slaves for money cleaning other people’s summer places – working for senile ladies – too good, too generous. Danger of heart attack, blood pressure. Husband: sickly, bland, dependent & blithely impractical. Land in pines. Quahog pile. Gets furniture from 2nd hand houses being demolished. No house – lives in trailer in summer – hardships: love of flowers. Quahog fritters. Beach plum jelly. Trailer flooded. Guests – locusts in harvest time. Ratty kids. End of rope. Kid breaks one of McFague’s statues. Now she can bear to sell the other. Love of beauty. Girl broken. Legend. San Francisco quake. Teddy Roosevelt. Down-payment on house.
41[b or c]
4a
4b Such collusion of mulish elements
2c As wore her broom straws to the nub.
4b She did not wear.
2c Hourly the moored clam & the crab
4b Lost in that welter
2c Of millstones, root & pith; the ebb
Anger jolts like heartburn in the throat
97[a-c]
Trafalgar Square:1 wooden benches, back to Nat. Gallery – hot June sun – sparkling & sheen: lavendar-pink metalled neck of brown pigeon – bums asleep under newspapers – round yellow-orange eye of pigeons, pink feet – red & white checked flag flapping in blue sky over Canadian-pacific clock – white & grey domes – back of black Lord Nelson on pillar – 9:30 am – fountains begin – spurt – drift of water vapor slicking the green back of the dolphins & mermaids
roar of traffics – red tops of great double decker busses moving to right, black cabs – white highlights – sun high at left – front – green leaves in granite oblong basins – gleam of brown metal desk lamps
traffic roar, squeal of brakes like high struck glass – guardian lions – white light on metal flanks – dark squadrons of pigeons
derricks & cranes: skeletal building in background – cool clear lucid air – drifted over by smoke, exhaust fumes, fountain spray – two wide fountain basins, light from pool reflecting on underside – flap & flight of hundreds of pigeons wheeling – woman in black passing – pigeons in basket, about sandalled feet – statue of mermaids – limpid & flowing green huge flapping wheel of pigeons round & round base of Nelsons pillar – rainbow in spray – green water – white-shit on paving church spire – blue clock face – gilt hands – pediment2
