Having been writing on Jean Rhys’s Wide Sargasso Sea, an interpreted prequel to Brontë’s Jane Eyre, for my English dissertation I was certain I wanted to use the story of the ‘mad woman in the attic’ in some way. Rhys’s empathetic, partially autobiographical, novel details ‘Bertha’s’ life before marriage. Considering this text for my final performance would therefore not only allow me to address my ideas about there being more than one side to any story, but form a good example for my argument on which stories we privilege and why. I suppose that the drive behind this idea was me questioning the worth and validity of my own story – whether it would one day be overwritten and left in the attic or set upon the mantle for all to read.

An early draft…

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They say when trouble comes, close ranks. And so the white people did.

The Jamaican ladies never, approved, of my mother.

But, we were not in Their ranks…

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When I asked her why so few people came to see us, she told me that the road from Spanish town to Coulibri Estate – where we lived – was very bad and that road repairing was now a thing of the past.

My father, visitors, horses, feeling safe in bed          all belonged in the past

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One night, our neighbour who lived at Nelson’s Rest, Mr Luttrell, he shot his dog, swam out to sea and was gone for always

No one came to look after his house. The strangers came only to gossip

**They are falling apart, the old estates, all of them! Live? At Nelson’s Rest? Not for love nor money! An unlucky place **

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One morning, my mother’s horse was lying under a tree, he was not sick, he was dead

I ran away and did not speak of it. I thought if I told no one it might not be true.

“Now we are marooned” she said. “Now what will become of us.”

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She tied my plaits with string, there was no money for ribbon.

I got used to a solitary life.

Until Mr Mason

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I was a bridesmaid when my mother married Mr Mason and everything I wore was new. I had a beautiful red ribbon and a beautiful dress.

Everyone came to see them. There was music and laughing and dancing

**Dance?! He didn’t come here to dance, he came to make money. The big estates are going cheap.**

**A fantastic marriage and he will regret it! She is not like the English girls, she will put up a fight.**

They were happy.

She road into town with him for he brought more horses. She showed him the hidden roads through the hills…

He took her to parties and they held them too for he repaired the house and brought the staff back again

And I, was sent away to school…

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When I returned, she had been sent away too.

“Your mother is looked after there, she is, very, unwell”

I did not speak of it, I thought if I told no one it might not be true

“You may not visit”

I got used to a solitary life.

Until Mr Rochester…

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Mr Mason, I would never call him Step-Father, introduced us…

“I have asked some English friends to visit us here, you won’t be dull? I want you to be happy, secure, I’ve tried to arrange it. We’ll talk about it later.”

-Say nothing and-

When at last we met I played the part I was supposed to play, for better or for worse

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It nearly didn’t happen. I said, I said,

Say nothing and it might not be true

I said I was, afraid.

He said when I was his wife there’d be no more reason to be afraid.

“I’ll trust you, if you trust me”

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He did not like our honeymoon house at Granbois, hidden from view by the trees.

He did not like the rain or the rivers, the beauty of it, the magic, the secrets…

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I have seen to everything, arranged, everything. We shall not linger long here. You will be most at home at Thornfield, Bertha.

But what about, happiness I thought at first, is there no happiness? There must be. Oh, happiness, of course. Happiness, well.

He liked the rum, very much, and the maid Amelie

If I told no one it might not be true.

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**The marriage made him a wealthy man but now his father and brother have died he’s inherited everything – Some people are fortunate.

If you imagine this gentleman is the devil you never made a greater mistake in your life. I knew him as a boy, as a young man, he was gentle, generous, brave. His journey has changed him. **

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It is always cold here, in this room, cold and grey, with its locked door hidden from the passage by a tapestry…

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There is one window, high up, you cannot see out of it.

There is not much else here. Everything is made of cardboard.

There is no looking-glass in here. I don’t know what I’m like now.

Please take me away from this place where it is so cold and grey, I think I am dying.

If I told no one it all might not be true

I am very unwell

It isn’t like it seems to be.

I’ve been building up a collection of poetry, lyrics, quotes and general snippets of ‘script’, collecting it all in one document. Here’s what I have so far;

We must begin our story, sad to say, with an empty chair. If it were not empty, we would not have a story. But it is, and we do, and it is time to tell it.

Everything Changes by Bertolt Brecht: Everything changes. You can make A fresh start with your final breath. But what has happened has happened. And the water You once poured into the wine cannot be Drained off again. What has happened has happened. The water You once poured into the wine cannot be Drained off again, but Everything changes. You can make A fresh start with your last breath.

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startled into life like fire by Charles Bukowski in grievous deity my cat walks around he walks around and around with electric tail and push-button eyes he is alive and plush and final as a plum tree neither of us understands cathedrals or the man outside watering his lawn if I were all the man that he is cat– if there were men like this the world could begin he leaps up on the couch and walks through porticoes of my admiration.

What It Is Erich Fried: It is nonsense says reason It is what it is says love It is calamity says calculation It is nothing but pain says fear It is hopeless says insight It is what it is says love It is ludicrous says pride It is foolish says caution It is impossible says experience It is what it is says love

How wild it was, to let it be.

“Mind,” he began again, lifting one arm from the elbow, the palm of the hand outwards, so that, with his legs folded before him, he had the pose of a Buddha preaching in European clothes and without a lotus-flower—”Mind, none of us would feel exactly like this. What saves us is efficiency—the devotion to efficiency. But these chaps were not much account, really. They were no colonists; their administration was merely a squeeze, and nothing more, I suspect. They were conquerors, and for that you want only brute force—nothing to boast of, when you have it, since your strength is just an accident arising from the weakness of others. They grabbed what they could get for the sake of what was to be got. It was just robbery with violence, aggravated murder on a great scale, and men going at it blind—as is very proper for those who tackle a darkness. The conquest of the earth, which mostly means the taking it away from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves, is not a pretty thing when you look into it too much. What redeems it is the idea only. An idea at the back of it; not a sentimental pretence but an idea; and an unselfish belief in the idea—something you can set up, and bow down before, and offer a sacrifice to….”

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Do I dare, disturb the universe?

Of all the streets that blur in to the sunset,
There must be one (which, I am not sure)
That I by now have walked for the last time
Without guessing it, the pawn of that Someone

Who fixes in advance omnipotent laws,
Sets up a secret and unwavering scale
For all the shadows, dreams, and forms
Woven into the texture of this life.

If there is a limit to all things and a measure
And a last time and nothing more and forgetfulness,
Who will tell us to whom in this house
We without knowing it have said farewell?

Through the dawning window night withdraws
And among the stacked books which throw
Irregular shadows on the dim table,
There must be one which I will never read.

There is a door you have closed forever
And some mirror is expecting you in vain;
To you the crossroads seem wide open,
Yet watching you, four-faced, is a Janus.

There is among all your memories one
Which has now been lost beyond recall.
You will not be seen going down to that fountain
Neither by white sun nor by yellow moon.

At dawn I seem to hear the turbulent
Murmur of crowds milling and fading away;
They are all I have been loved by, forgotten by;
Space, time, and Borges now are leaving me.

 

How can I change the world in a week. I can’t. But I think I can change the world of those around me. In those small moments when the opportunity presents itself. When you make a friend laugh. When you hold the door. When you tell someone you see them. When you refuse to let evil win by participating in small acts of kindness.

My heart beats and breaks. A successive machine that doesn’t know when to start or how to stop. But I think I will keep on loving.

My heart beats and breaks. But I think I will keep on loving. Because I have so much to give.

 

What else can I say but the truth?

I can’t really put my finger on what it was, it just felt significant.

 

let me be something every minute of every hour of my life.

 

She was lost in her longing to understand

 

Dad, aged 61: Is there another story?        //    Harvey, aged 4: There always is ‘nother ones

 

See, I’ve been doing this for a little while
and I’m starting to understand things:
poetry is not about telling you the truth.
It’s about telling you the version of a story
that gets the most reaction,
the one that flows the best,
the one that has all the lines
that the audience is going to like.

See, maybe the truth
isn’t supposed to rhyme so well.
Maybe it doesn’t have to rise to a crescendo.
The truth

Jessica sat in the front row
thinking I could teach her about spoken word.
I lied to her, in metaphor, for a half hour
only to hear the silence of a fifth grade explosion;
Jessica explained it to her thirteen year old peers
how rough her father’s beard stubble felt when her was drinking
and how a foster family is just a fresh coat of paint over stucco
when you’ve been running against the wall.

She didn’t actually say all this.
Not like I can.
But I could hear the inhalation of truth
in between breaths of her poetry.
Her name is not really Jessica.
I don’t remember what it is.
But for a moment, I can make you care about her,
even if she’s not real.

Don’t ask me.
You wouldn’t know the difference anyway

 

Where is fantasy read, in the heart or in the head?

 

Of all the questions we face in our time here, I think the most predominant one is this; How much, is too much?

How much is too much mould to pick off a round of bread?

 

All I know, is everything is not as it’s sold.

But the more I grow, the less I know.

And I have lived so many lives, though I’m not old.

And the more I see the less I grow, the fewer the seeds the more I sow.

Then I see you standing there, wanting more from me, and all I can do is try. All I can do, is try.

I wish I hadn’t seen, all of the realness. And all the real people? Are really not real at all.

The more I learn, the more I learn, the more I cry, the more I cry, as I say goodbye to a way of life I thought I had designed for me.

Then I see you standing there, I’m all I’ll ever be, but all I can do is try.

All of the moments that’ve already passed, try to go back and make them last. All of the things we want each other to be? We never will be. That’s wonderful.

That’s life.

So it goes.

That’s you, this is me; we are. We are. We Are.

 

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
For a hundred miles through the desert, repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about your despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting —
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

If she was a book
I would memorize her table of contents
I would read her cover-to-cover
Hoping to find typos
Just so we can both have a few things to work on
Because aren’t we all unfinished?
Don’t we all need a little editing?
Aren’t we all waiting to be proofread by someone?
Aren’t we all praying they will tell us that we make sense?

We cross our bridges as we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and the presumption that once our eyes watered.

Everyone cares what everybody thinks but nobody cares about anyone.

She is not important, she is only a piece of the puzzle // Ever tried putting a puzzle together with one piece missing? It’s damned aggravating.

We do not grow absolutely, chronologically. We grow sometimes in one dimension, and not in another; unevenly. We grow partially. We are relative. We are mature in one realm, childish in another. The past, present, and future mingle and pull us backward, forward, or fix us in the present. We are made up of layers, cells, constellations.

You sill little girl,

You think

You’ve survived so long

that survival shouldn’t hurt anymore

/You are soft and alive.

You bruise and heal. Cherish it.

It is what you were born to do.

It will not be beautiful,

But the truth never is.

Come now,

You promised yourself.

You promised

You’d live through this.

The room is spinning
It’s all in my head
I can’t get to sleep
And the weight of the world
Is the weight of my sheets

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Honestly, what will become of me? Don’t like reality, it’s way too clear to me, but really life is dandy..

HAD I the heavens’ embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:	5
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

The geometry of belief.

We have nothing but our wit and our will with which to save this world.

 

Place your hand over your heart. Feel that? That’s called purpose. You’re alive for a reason. Don’t give up.

 

Take a deep breath and listen to the old brag of your heart; I am, I am, I am

One must be careful of books, and what is inside them, for words have the power to change us

 

At any rate, that is happiness; to be dissolved into something complete and great.

 

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This is just one, early stage in my text collection. Refining and reordering will be discussed in a later blog post.