#it will fuffil my greatest wishes

[suzannnemillerhistoryandresearch]

"IF WINTER COMES"/"THE CHILDREN'S CRUSADE" screenplay notes & assorted 70s/80s poetic/diary writing

UNDATED

She felt a visceral loathing for the story of Abraham and Isaac. Terry, armed with his beloved Kierkegaard defended it as an event of the highest faith. She found it brutal, submissive and representative of the tyranny of adults over children and God over man. They argued until there was nothing more to say. She could never marry T. and yet she knew he would be a loving, good man all his life. Something about these beliefs of his threatened everything that was just beginning to unfog.

UNDATED - 70s/80s?

I've been telling people for years that I'm writing a book, when in point of fact not one page has been written. I've gone to great lengths to establish this myth, masquerade or plain lie, however you wish to view it. Perhaps you, on some lofty level whereas I am low, most low. One thing, I've taken the trouble to convert my garage into a cozy studio; a writer's den, complete with long shelves of books, a big table, a comfortable chair that pivots from the desk-table to the typewriter sitting grandly on its white stand. O I love it! There are photos of famous authors on the wall. On the desk is a dictionary and a thesaurus, under the glass top are postcards from Florence (The Duours) and Avila (The walls) The authenticity of the place is Killing. I like to go in there and smoke. I do not like to go in there and write.

People are starting to suspect. No wonder, since I have shown my studio t all my friends, we've even had little parties in there, but I've failed to show them one bit of evidence that any work actually takes place there. How can I continue to keep this deception going? The fact is I can't. Oh, I could announce one day dissembling an anguished sternness that I've burned the whole "manuscript". What could they say against such a fair accompli! That would give me several more years provided no one remembers I have no fireplace. But what are a few more years really since I can't possibly tell that tale a second time. People would lose all patience.

UNTITLED - Early 80s?

Well, part of the problem was that people got so self-couerius about acting out their neurosis that they forgot how to act out their life! I mean, they got tied in knots, afraid of feeling, afraid of not feeling, afraid their actions weren't pure, and then their was a lot of back biting amongst the staff. They hated art, the women's movement, (illegible) well, life really. Only therapy was valid, was real. They were tremendously cripped people really. But the point is but it's a great experiment. I learned a lot. Only I had to get out of there back into the world.

You are probably one of new women, yes?

Perhaps. But what can I accuse men of that the greatest of them haven't accused themselves already? That's not fuffilment for me. My greatest fear is that I will leave this life with not ever having known what it meant. And then I think, I am not meant to know. But how do I know what I am experiencing. I am cold.

The grass is high.

The water moves.

The cat's asleep.

Is that it?

My days a mere chain of facts registered in my senses.

What of this:      I dreamed a terror

                        I hurt, I wept

                        I need something

                        I made a mistake

This introduces complication

                        And what of:

                        They kill one another

                        They fool me

                        They don't care

                        Nothing guides me

                        The cosmos is silent?

(Reverse of this page, potential Perils of Zenobia dialouge, crossed out.)

Z - I'm like to those people who give lectures and interviews about how they got there, that it takes time.

Z - O god I'm raving. Reduced to raving.

UNDATED - early 80s?

V - But Zen, really...

Z - Irreversibly, no. You don't even know it, Vivian.

G - That wouldn't be important. It's for you to say therby I acknowledge my relations with the universe.

Z - Relation? In what sense?

G - I mean, not ah, relationship. Your oness with the stars.

Z - It's a secret I've guarded for a long time. I don't want it cretinized.

Coming toward me her hulking semi-blindness, not so much walking as shifting into gear, crossing the room as it were a pot-holed road.

(Note: the above Perils of Zenobia dialogue was X'ed out)

(Note: the following writing on the subject of nuclear war appear to be notes for an unwritten screenplay, "If Winter Comes")

April 15, 1986

Kathleen’s father

Military man (?)

She + David can reach all the American children

She can contact them through her father.

David  + Kathleen

Middle class + very rich children

Phone

Mail

ham radios

_____________

blackmail - coe(?)est the ad (?) into international cooperation

total (disarmament?).

___________________________

Martin (?) - David + Kathleen

they decide to do something - what they decide to do is our film.

UNTITLED

David’s father an employee at a nuclear plant

Martin had a penpal

pen in che(?)

David ha too (?)

I couldd we get (?)

Kathleen father is a high General So other (?) to children in American (?) all over the

UNTITLED

I wanted you to have something soft and slinky on such a hard, hard day. Please accept this in memory of that wonderful day in L.A. when I presented you to Stella.

Luke 17:32

Peter There shall be no flesh saved

The earth + all things shall burn up

Coming of Christ = nuclear war

God will intervene

God has other plans. Kingdom of God will come.

UNTITLED

Physical Injuries - Burns above all      3rd Degree

Winds of 100 or 180 mph burnt ear drums - deafness

Lung damage from fumes

Retinal damage - blindness

Ruptured internal organs - hemorrhaging

Compound fractures - collapse of buildings

Acute radiation - mass infection because of invering of resisence

Decomposing corpses - epidemics

There would be no: Trained personnel intact

No burn center

No laboratory equipment + x-rays

No blood + plasma supply

No drugs - antiseptics, antibiotics

no electricity or transportation

THE GREAT HOAX - THE ILLUSION OF SECURITY

1 20-megaton explosion = 100 million people killed = 70 Hiroshima explosions

World arsenal = 50,000 warheads

"We have met the enemy and they are us." Pogo

We do not benefit by terrorizing the Soviet Union

Nuclear War Scenario

200,000,000 will be killed immediately

60,000,000 injured

80% of physicians will die

80% of hospitals gone

Food + water contaminated

Transportation + communications out

Fallout

OVERCOMING

PSYCHIC NUMBING

LOS ALAMOS

BIKINI

ENIWETOK - 1st hydrogen explosion

LIVERMORE 2nd weapons lab

UNTITLED

There will be no hospitals, doctors, nurses or medicines.

There will be no transpiration system.

Starvation and exposure will soon ensure.

Nothing will be produce and even so nothing could be shipped.

Education will stop.

The cultural heritage of one thousand years will be gone.

Farms will no longer produce without fuel power which can't be transported.

The things we are "defending" will be good: free institutions, free enterprise, capitalism, etc.

1 Hiroshima bomb = 1 million bombs in present world arsenals.

After 1 hour radioactivity = 500 million Kilograms of radiation

10 tons of TNT for every person on the earth

World Health Organization spent $83 million on smallpox eradication = less than 1 strategic bomber

David's War Room

Maps of possible targets and missile placements

UNTITLED

In the screenplay stay close to the actions of the individual characters.

The children + their parents

Specific characters the audience can say this is me, or my child

"More phony than a glass eye"

Scenes in classrooms of children (illegible)

THE CHILDREN’S CRUSADE - a screenplay

Opening shot: we see a peaceful, manicured neighborhood. Let it begin in daylight and then as if in a time exposure, we see the image of one begin with day and end with a night shot of the same house. Camera has been stationary. It begins to move toward the house, closer and close until it stops at a bedroom window. We see the shadow, or silouette of a child hanging by the neck.

Cut to parents getting out of car and walking into the house.

MAN

(getting out)

Because they’ve always brung up things I don’t want to hear about. Fannie, Christ what a subject for a party.

WOMAN

(they enter the house. C. follows them in)

yeah, yeah.

(Camera moves out of the house, slowly rolls back and a light appears in the hallway. There is a piercing scream which turns into an ambulance siren. Shot of ambulance pulling into a different house. The medics rush in through the house (or apt.) and examine a child’s body. It’s head is blown up + blue. (Unisex children) She - he has died of gas poisoning. Mother (shattered) points to open over, rugs against the bottom of the doors. Husband at table, head in hands

A funeral. In the crowd is a boy of about 15 and a girl of 15. The camera moves from face to face. The minister says the words. Cut to a boy girl walking away. The mother of the (second?) child. Stops him and hands her a sealed letter.

MOTHER

Cindy always looked up to you. She left this for you.

GIRL

Takes the letter. Did she leave any ---

MOTHER

Oh, yes, all about the world.

UNTITLED

Our hero leaves his room in a comfortable, warm feeling upper middle class house.

He goes to the servant’s quarters where he has taken over a vacant room.

Mother says -

(What does he do in there, Bob?)

(Bob - he says he doesn’t like to work in the same room he sleeps.)

Mother, that’s his reason?

Bob: Yes, that’s what he says.            - Bob is also doing something

else Find that activity

Cut back to David. he passes the family chauffer who respectfully nods.

He enters the room with a key.

He enters in the dark we see no light for more than normal time just the faintest blurred lights somewhere.

Light suddenly comes on

We see a spartan room.

        There are a selected assortment of photos of burned children, the Baby (?) in the ruins, (avoid the mushroom cloud for now) the burned city. Pilot’s face (Enola Gay) Also scientific pictures + drawn items for Elrich-Sagan book.

Dominating the room is a huge elaborate ham radio.

Friend “Hey man what’s this thing! Thi is from the middle ages. You’re in the computer age!”

UNTITLED

David collects information on all child suicides.

He makes tapes.

He distributes them, mail,

He begins his network.

He is obsessed as only an idealist can and should.

God, David, how long do you think if we worked hard, could we get to where we are now?

P. 120 - 122 Sagan

David and Gayle and ? have been studying in the room

They didn’t know it would lead to suicide of ---

There is a banner around the room - “Since 1945 the nature of warfare has changed so profoundly that the future of the human race, of generati(?), is in peril."

UNTITLED

Ed in

He loved the dialogue!

____________________

Opening children running, lots of children

(Roger Corman) Homage de Trauffault Trauffat Tra Truffaut got it!

Children are in a state of grace

1. 2 boys making breakfast for themselves

2. Create an ordinary American day

___________________________

child #1 - Well, I don’t have to do it till you can do it.

child #2 - I’m gonna do it.

#1 - Well, when?

2 - Pretty soon.

1 - I’m waiting for you

2 - OK, let’s do it Saturday morning.

1 - Yeah, ok.

Mom - what are you going to do on Sat morning?

2 - (pause but no give away)

        The yard work.

Mom - Great! Finally!

Anxious kid  Mommy, There was a whole city: now it’s all gone

I meant, they built it back

but it was all gone.

Mom - Darling, slow down. What are you telling me?

Kid - On T.V. this b(?), just one there was a big city and it’s all gone!

(UNTITLED)

Play or screen script

Young girl                 Act 1

                Mexico

young girl

                        New York          Act II

young boy

                        ‘ ‘                      Act III

Contact Women for Peace

613 Stanford Drive

93401

Mrs. Woolworth

6625 Brevity Lane

La Gorce Island

Miami Beach, Fla.

III

Scenario for The Children’s Crusade

A young boy and girl aged 12 have started an anti-nuclear protest which involves the volantary agreement of (some?) their fellow students to commit suicide. Scenes of freshman high school class oh, so normal on the surface ... underneath, anxiety. These two convince the others it is the thing to do ... discussion of (young?) die by me or altogether Many desparing, (?), responding.

Some agree but are scared to do it. Many secret meetings in a special “play” room in girl’s affluent house. “My mother never wanted me to play in the same room as I slept in. Play was taken very seriously!”

(?) Institute

Sherman Oaks

Robert (Souin?)

UNTITLED

Zalman King

Alfred Rufus Isaacs

Producers

Man - I wonder what you were watching? (Doing dishes)

Kid - Japan.

Mom - Oh. Yes.

Kid - Everyone burned up. Even babies. (He’s spreading a sandwich (or something more unusual.)

Complete night

Total winter

Everything dies, everyone + everything. Trees, flowers, animals.

Cold is unbearable.

There is nowhere to escape it.

All freezes over.

There is no sun.

(Felinni’s old man in the fog in Armacord. He says, this must be what death is like. I didn’t like it. No trees, no birds, no people, no wine. Nothin’! - he gives the great Italian up yours gesture.)

My mother, you know mother’s against nuclear war, she practically started it!

---

--

Bumpter stickers “Saw a new sticker today - -

---- -----

Our young hero has an experience with death, the death of a child in his family.

UNTITLED

David is talking to a close neighbor the father of his good friend who committed suicide.

Dad: but my boy, my boy

D - I know ...

Dad: My son

D: I know

Dad: Why, why he

David: Ouch that hurts

UNTITLED

Fundimentalist - nuclear holocaust is the unleashing of Armageddon threatened by God in the Bible.

But David says it is we who are doing it.

To (mirage?) a God guiding over head is to evade our responsibility, which is ours because God gave us free will.

The Catholic Priest reads a (description?) of the suicides in Hell.

Veronica describes a nuclear winter which is a worse Hell

because Earth as we know it will be gone.

Even though it is unthinkable, it remains all we can do in order to understand what we are facing.

Insane crimes against humanity are not prevented from happening because they are unthinkable. They have happened.

_________

Pascal: “It is easier to endure death without thinking about it than to endure the thought of death without dying.”

UNTITLED

The young see their parents not coping well, either.

(Shrug?) + get drunk - swear

Not good Christians but the kid to be

Divorce, (does?) time with the children spent

Parents spend time in their own interest.

War, accidents, violent deaths

Threat of global suicides

Kids can’t trust the parents. Not recognized as a person. No moral support.

Rock bands understand how I felt - Satanism.

Chronic loneliness.

----------------------/-/---------------

David argues

1 Exposure to ultra-violet radiation because of ozone reduction

You’d be severely scalded, your cornea would burn out from reflected sun as well as U.V. rays you would go blind! Birds and animals would all go blind, too.

UNTITLED

The argument - frozen into inaction by fear of retaliation by the other side

which is intending to do something and intending not to do it - a hideous contradiction

Argument! The sole purpose of possessing nuclear strategic arms is not to win war but to prevent it. So the terror has to be ongoing and relentless.

Terror cannot be allowed to deteriorate toward safety.

Monstrous logical mistake - the logic of the deterrence strategy is dissolved by the first strike that it is meant to prevent.

Argument 2 Retaliation is senseless.

What purpose a second strike if there is no nation left to defend?

Deferring an attack by the “appearance of irrationally inexorable commitment”

Brinksmanship as a solution.

Nixon’s “Madman Theory” of the Presidency. USSR would bow to the President’s will if they believe he has taken leave of his senses and was ready to risk holocaust.

Specious arguments

Terror = safety

Threat of annihilation = survival

(Debris of history.)

Specious - Preparation of annihilation to prevent annihilation

(Soverignity?) + national interests are the real reason not preventing the use of nuclear bombs

The nuclear power put a higher value on the National Sovernigity than on human survival.

We can chose to live. We can chose to unmake the weapons.

UNTITLED

Notes on winter

David + V are pleading we’ve got to think about it even though it’s easier not to.

When can it be judged acceptable for everybody to be killed?

We want to slaughter a population that is already suffering and oppressed.

Question of art in a nuclear world, even if I produced masterpieces that would have been timeless, there will be nothing but oblivion for them because there will be no me (will?) be around to experience them. Likewise all human achivement.

It is demoralizing my will to accomplish anything.

Extinction is the murder of the future.

It is not ourselves we wish to spare, but a form of respect and love for others, the species, and the unborn.

Love keeps no accounts. - Bible

“Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds” Shakespeare

We must rebel against this we must take action. The children face numbness and inertia whenever they turn to adults for arousal.

UNTITLED

War is ruined as a solution forever. We are asked to shape our world so that world politics no longer relies on violence.

We must arrive at decisions without resort to war.

We ask for disarmament. Negotiations to ensure the survival of all. That all citizens must demand it of their leaders simultaneously on this day.

UNTITLED

If Winter Comes

15 - 16 years old

3 friends one commits suicide

He becomes the catalyst for the other two.

- General reactions

Confessional scene: Catholic boy/girl - confess to the suicide plan.

Priest reads from Dante

>->-> Kid reads from Nuclear Winter

Idea: The groups of kids talking but they (because?) they have very faulty information

mostly fear

Adults also =

Newspaper publishing a record of the daily deaths all around the country then U.V. information, official report stating the numbers of child suicides in each nation.

The true figure of the situation in the Soviet Union is kept under top secret.

UNTITLED

If Winter Comes

I       Random Notes

1 Martin is Davd’s older brother*

2 Kathleen is Martin’s Lover at start *

3 Martin walks in the ocean weighted with stones. / At Night *

4 David inherits Martin’s war room

5 Earth exploding at beginning and Earth

6 Trailer at very end with famous person

7 Teacher arranging explosion for her class

NOTES FOR "THE CHILDREN'S CRUSADE"/"IF WINTER COMES"

Theme Epedemic of Suicide among children

Beginning with some isolated cases expanding to world epidemic

        (Note: Look up Children's Crusade in middle ages.)

Jerry Falwell family

Son emerges as leader

contrast of right-to-lifer with pro-nuclear build-up stand

Mysterious deaths by self-mutilation

Scene with child

                        cough medicine

                        uncle + grandfather tossing

Scene with special suicide clinic

Interviews with parents of suicided children

Video games

Punkers

even Star Wars (well, we like some war but not That one)

The media in general for children [Not to lay all on, etc]

Child's experience with photos of Hiroshima

Another's experience with an older person survivor

Child writing to pen pal in Korea Brazil

                                                        France Africa (?)

Brown University voted (?) should stock suicide pills in case of nuclear war.

Nuclear war is suicide.

If there's a nuclear war we don't want to be there. The houses catching fire, all the police, bombs falling, blowing up trees. It scares me. 6 year old.

I had a bad dream.

Police block off streets, so people couldn't get intp their cars + blown up

I dreamed our house will blow up

when a plane flies over, and I don't what kind. I'm afraid.

[Children are angry - futureless young women are angry with men because they

They are acting, they want attention

Let's play radiation sickness, fingers falling off on the playground.

They are cry babies.

They are crying out against the illusion that such a war is survivable.

Child:

On the news, if they say there's going to be world war 3 what does it make you think about

Dying!

My parents say we might + might not but don't be afraid you won't be hurt.

Do you believe them?

Personalize the Inconcievable

Teacher protests - my children aren't worried, they don't play nuclear games.

Of course they don't talk about it if you don't let them talk about it.

NOTES FROM SCRAPBOOK:

Play

characters:

2 demanding women in 60's

M+G

Goldie the dog (offstage?)

                       (or could the dog be invisible?)

Woman in 40's

To please them both: She loves them both.

Some situation in which one wants hidden from the other, some complicated naunce of a third relationship concerning a certain man, a drinker

Always return to your center

UNTITLED/UNDATED

It occurred to me that if I could quiet my brain long enough, I could get down to telling my story, perhaps earn enough to have some kind of income instead of living as I do in feverish idleness, smoking cigarettes, drinking wine, weeping and moaning. Not the kind of existence which arouses respect of admiration in anyone. Some years ago, I started writing in this old style book, the kind of blank book with the day and year printed on the top with a line underneath that reads 90th day ---275 days to follow, then a little box which reads clear, cloudy, rain, snow with a space for a check mark. I had stopped on friday, March 31, 1961 and I am sure I stopped because my life had stopped or rather gone away and it's been always somewhere ever ever since. How many days to follow I can only guess when at times I have the courage to even think about my life. I certainly never thought it would go like this. I am certainly surprised at the way it turned out so far. I am annoyed to have sunk so low, of course. It seems useless to explain that's all been a spiritual quest, Spiritual quests are fashionable these days. I suppose they always have been. There's always been a space for a few stimulating lunatics. And from the sheltering comfort of a chair, if that's where you happen to be while reading, you can say, how courageous, how awesome to have lived like that so on the brink, but no thank you, I'd rather not do it myself. The idea is to take someone through the journey, lead him down the abyss and pulling no stops, let him get the feel of the place and then with masterful navigation, deposit him safely on some high plateau of victory. To do this without hysteria, without being heavy handed, takes a mind steeped in serenity, a mind already conscious of having subdued the forces that would have crushed it. Let me say right off that I just can't tell whether I've won or not, all I know is that I've had enough. It all seems to be a struggle to ward off death. I say let it come, putrid though the thought it. I'm just another clinging, struggling worm no better than anyone else, my nails are giving way and I'm about to fall. Yet while I cling I have noticed the beauty of the flower, though occasionally plant life terrifies me, but I can't yet rejoice in the whole situation.

As for today, check the clear box, in fact the day is of a supreme clearness rarely seen in these parts anymore. I live in one of the last frontier cities, where nothing is old, a city full of the bad taste of all the bandits and reprobates who built it. Their greed for gold usually stinks up the air just as it must have in the old days when its founders followed the stench of the conquistadors. For stench is what this city truly loves though these dwellers pretend otherwise. I have no idea why I'm here rather than elsewhere. It seems a ridiculous place to live, but that is probably itself the reason. Grandiose perversity, that's what I've fallen to. I'm so degraded as to not even own a book or a scrap of music, not a trace of past refinements. A stench now follows me too and the city suits me just fine. It maintains in me such a high level of irritation that I have no time to notice how miserable I am. So there is no need to fear that this is a chronicle of whining complaints, rather than just a plain nasty book.

This isn't the way I wanted to write it. I had in mind a work of high seriousness, something along the lines of a Hilke or at least a Hesse, but I cannot stifle the twisted grin that gives me away. Surely those noble writers were spared certain demons. It's all up in the bringing of course, and mine having been of the lowest, shabbiest, crudest order, what can you expect.

One day I found myself leaving the city for good. It just happened. The place I chose has qualities opposite to the cities I had always lived in. Here all is lush, orderly, trim and tasteful. A small town of deceptive peacefulness, whose real sufferings are made invisible by a magic trick. There is an elusive agreement that all is well. I am urged to agree to avoid unpleasantness. Propriety and demeanor are highly valued.

        What I've taken to doing, when I have fulfilled my obligations, when I have maintained my bella figura long enough, when I can not stand the strain of compulsive sanity any longer, is to get in my car as soon as the sun sets, drive up into the mountains and wail at the night. This little bit of theatre is made more effective for my purposes, more authentic by the deeper blackness than the skies over the cities. The stars are more painful to look at. Their calm contrasted to my confusion. How I'd like to be a flaming gas. How I marvel at their existence free of feeling. I take my wine up to the high hills and risking a lot, I drink and howl. I pound the ground, screaming like a beast. Soon the shits come and I expound from my anus a lecture on the skids. I'm as deaf and blind and someone in a rut, panting for erotic deliverance, like those couples who must do it, even if the postman sees them. I must wail and laugh. Yes, laughter joins us, me and the stars, in clandestine clownery. My final defense is to laugh at my trick, playing truant from my pretty sleeping town to rage in the baser dwellings of coyote and rattlesnake.

        After I've tired myself out and all the wine is gone, I drive slowly, cowardly back to the sparkling order between the sea and the hills. I creep into my beautiful apartment, the one with all the conveniences. I am fastidious, so I purify myself and fall into a grateful sleep. I am aware of dreams trivial and silly, revealing a nature lacking in grace.

        I never make these journeys in the moonlight. Only the pitchest nights can pull the howls out of me. For the moon, despite it's recent diminution, sucks and lulls me into an amorphous mystery which silences me. Debilitates my anguish by throwing a brightness on my shield, glamorizing it falsely for I know it's covered with despicable stains.

        If I had my way, and I never do, I'd have the stars removed since they make the setting so grand. "A multiplicity of uniformity" someone wrote of them. The setting I'm trying to recreate would be a replica of my first consciousness. The black starless place of the birth canal where one's howls are unheard due to the lack of acoustics.

        But O, to be rocked in a cradle of optimism! I think to myself, you fool. Why can't you let yourself be seduced for once into the sweet comforts of life. Reach out for the blessed enjoyments, get hold of a mouthful of contentment and smile. Walking on Sixth Avenue one warm late night in New York, returning from some bad encounter or another, I was eager to get home. I can still feel the respectably serious expression I had on my face. Along came a man in a truck, slows down along side me and gives me a loutish order to smoke. I volleyed with something obscene. If I had my lance I would have run him through.

        Which brings me to something I've noticed. Aside from the commonplace crimes, the ancient ones that still appall people, mobilize their outrage; there are any number of spiky little crimes that for all their mildness have the power to evoke certain death by abandonment on those who commit them. If you want to see somebody turn from you with disgust, quiet disgust, speed away and never come back, then tell them how repulsive you are. It acts on them like dissentary. They rush to the toilet to shit you out, their very entrails are assaulted. And since they can't digest you, they must isolate you. Soon you'll be as lonely as a feotus in an angry womb.

Thou shalt not put theyself down. Thou shalt respect thyself and admire thyself. Thou shalt hold thyself in esteem for thou art one of the wonders (no matter if one were mindlessly fucked into being by two mindless people) and thou shalt stand up straight and walk thereof.

        Of course these hissings embarrass me. I too would like to play golf among the corpses in this peculiar world. Why do I pretend to have something to compare it with? Peculiar? Peculiar to what? How could i pretend to compare when I, as you, know nothing but this world? My mind imagines itself to know what it doesn't know. Whereas what I really feel is this business of having a whole life on my hands. I've been given all this without knowing what to do with it. One must choose, one must not just drift hoping for a solution, a niche even. One must decide the true course of one's true life. I know that. I know that. But how free am I? Not at all, a little bit, or completely? How can I know, when I am the problem, I am the puzzle. I don't like admitting to the collapse of my charm. The loss of my good looks, my mystique. Just another old fart of forty one. Well, my dear, I'm not complaining about that light that's gone from my eyes. That light with its mesmerizing tickle to it actually was caused by the diseases of hope, enthusiasm and tunnel vision. No, I'm not complaining. I still indulge with cozy self-deception, in that very light showing up in the eyes of some angelic pop singer. If I'm drunk enough I even say, How beautiful.

        What is making me so cancerously exhausted in this effort to safeguard other people's illusions, the fatuous 'joy of life', their uncontrollable greed for paradise.

        Once removed from the black tunnel, mentioned before, and eventually being promoted to the sixth grade, I encountered my first experience of exile in the round. The last little fears of mankind lined themselves up as neatly as electrons do when they want to. Entirely the outcome of all the hopes in my family being violently exploded one night - like a movie set. Daddy had thrown all the Duncan Fife furniture out the windows, and had to be 'put away'.

        My skin, my most telegraphic organ, took over the job of my voice and began protesting the events which followed. The flight in the night of my mother's old Packard, her subsequent depression, the meaning of 'put away' itself. It took the form of an untreatable series of scaly sores that spread all over my body. My classmates, immediately recognizing the signs of disaster and vulnerability, cut me out by a reflex so primal it's given me a life long nostalgia for pre-historic times. Bewildered by the impact, I lifted my eyes to my teacher securely girdled in her crepe dresses, plump and powder pussed. She, in turn, laid eyes on me which to this day sting like an adder. If I read them correctly, they said, why I am inflicted with this child? I who plan to spend my summer in my own way, far from these creatures. The outcome was certain, the whole class was miserable. My presence was dreaded. I graciously withdrew.

Playing truant with my little brothers in our tiny crummy house, the shades pulled down, I experienced some euphoric release. We draped the blankets from the bureaus to the bunk beds and made ourselves a tent. We lit candles and ate Wonder Bread with butter and white sugar. No one was the wiser. I wrote the excuse notes myself, forging my mother's handwriting, our dramas were taken from B movies and comic books and mother always found us cheerful when she came home from Champion Spark Plug. Ah, that magical name, Champion Spark Plug! Payer of our bills, provider of our baloney and Kool Aid, our Miracle Whip, and our roast on Sundays, our Savior factory. In 35 years my mother was only laid off once for a short time, they were a good employer all right.

Unbelievable as it was to me, they came and got us and reinstated me and my brothers right back in school. Why would they want to seek me out when they shrank from the sight of me? Caught between duty and murder, I suppose. And who the hell cares now after all those years. Now it's only an abscess for the mountains.

Dante's sin would have placed him in purgatory. He said so. Mine would place me in hell. Among the suicides. The sad thing about hell is that there is no way to work out the suffering. I may yet work out mine. I wanted to be an artist but all my energies have to go in recreating myself. This task takes it all. It has burned the poetry out of me and taken my craft away. It's an effort of great magnitude just to maintain the slightest communion with life, to give destruction the slip. I refuse to die evil.

UNDATED LETTER

Dear Mr. George

        Several months ago I spoke with you on the telephone about the possibility of teaching me class in the art of acting in your building called The Loft. I am a neighbor of the Casa de Maria and have taken daily walks through your beautiful grounds and appreciate the special spirit of the place which is conducive to learning and growing and healing. Just the kind of atmosphere I'd like for my students in order for them to understand that being an artist in the theatre is a high calling not just a way of becoming rich and famous.

        I come from an experience of 10 years with the New York Shakespeare Festival and I trained with the famed Stella Adler who teachers acting in New York City + Los Angeles. I am writing and directing a feature film this October called Gifted Observers to be filmed entirely in Santa Barbara and featuring Anthony Zerbe who is an Emmy Winner and a resident of Montecito. I am also a close associate of Daphne Rose Kingma who has conducted seminars at the Casa and can recommend me to your committee. Her number is 969-3710, in case you should wish to contact her for a reference.

        I will, of course, abide by any of your wishes regarding the privilege of renting your space 1 night a week, and hope you will find my request worthy of your consideration.

                Sincerely,

                        Suzanne Miller

#joseph cornell #suzanne miller #toledo #no nukes #antinuclear activism