miss you. I owe you a call: it surfaces in my mind every day but I’m usually only lucid enough to follow through with something like that at night, and you’re a mom who needs her sleep. I will try to steal a reasonable hour from myself at which to call you.
Crisising on a lot of fronts. Chemo over: no change in tumors. This means—what the hell is going to happen to me with this experimental cocktail they’re going to inject into me? General feelings of anxiety have disconnected me a lot from art: starting to worry that my poetry work is indulgent and insulated. I’ve been living with my parents all summer and all of last year: I’m terrified of getting back on the horse of living alone, especially considering how supportive my parents have been emotionally and psychologically. I also really really want to live alone. I don’t think I’m capable of functioning properly without a Not-Mom-Woman in my life. (“Not-Mom-Woman” is a blues hit, by the by.) This isn’t a good thing, but it’s a fact. There are some potential romantic prospects, one of which makes me really hopeful—but I don’t want to need a Not-Mom-Woman. I want to just WANT a Not-Mom-Woman.
P.S. “I always thought I hated washing dishes. But it’s nice to just dry a dish in the rain.”
So. Beautiful. A universe of wetness surrounding a home of dryness.
The scene that Max refers to is one in which the American woman and Tibetan man fall in love very suddenly while washing dishes together:
MOTHER:
I want to help you. I want to wash the dishes with you.
I—
FATHER:
You do?
MOTHER:
Yes.
FATHER:
Well, all right. Then I can’t charge you for your meal.
MOTHER:
Oh, that’s all right.
FATHER:
I insist.
MOTHER: (as in now our relations have entirely changed)
Then I’m no longer a customer.
FATHER:
No.
MOTHER:
We put our arms into soapy warm water.
FATHER:
We didn’t talk.
MOTHER:
We washed dish after dish.
FATHER:
Well, I washed.
MOTHER:
I dried.
FATHER:
I like washing.
MOTHER:
I like drying.
They wash dishes for a while.
These might be real dishes, or imaginary.
In any case, the audience’s attention slows
as they experience the feeling, real or imagined,
of soap and water.
FATHER:
Then she said:
MOTHER:
I always thought I hated washing dishes. But it’s nice to just dry a dish in the rain.
JULY 22
Oh, thank you so much, Max, for your kind words.
I am so sorry that the chemo hasn’t appeared to shrink the tumors yet. That must be very hard for you, and to contemplate the experimental therapy. When would the experimental therapy happen?
On other fronts:
Don’t worry if your poetry feels insulated or indulgent. Poetry by nature is insulated and indulgent, from Sappho to Whitman to Strand to Dickinson. Only some small degree of emotional restraint keeps it from being indulgent, and some small degree of sharing it with others keeps it from being insulated.
Also don’t worry if you’re not writing. You have plenty to contend with in the moment, and the writing will come when it needs to.
The Not-Mom-Woman made me laugh. I would say: living alone is overrated. Personally, I hate it. I only like living alone from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. At 5:00 p.m. I’m very happy to have a mom around, or a mom substitute.
Let’s find a way to connect this summer when we are all in California. Our house will have a trampoline in the backyard.
Give my regards to your mom.
xo,
Sarah
P.S. I just saw I spelled your name wrong in my acknowledgments! The k is forever banished!
JULY 30
Sarah,
That is all very good advice, and calmed me down a little.
It might be okay to need somebody.
Your play continues to ripple in me. Attached find a poem stirred up by it. I don’t think my poem is in a finished state and would love your criticism.
REFUGE
For Sarah
Rain falls on the house.
My mother dries dishes
in the dark house in the rain.
“I’m your little dish,”
I tell her, even though I ought to be a man.
“You’re a big dish.”
“You mean I’m very wet.”
I haven’t seen much,
and don’t see much:
The jungle of my short life is
