I’m distracting myself with blogging because I have to rewrite a chapter of 15 ooo words. With footnotes.
And because it is Friday afternoon and I want to go and sit out in the garden and eat goat’s cheese and sundried tomatoes on focaccio.
My friend Trix and her drunken husband are coming to visit tomorrow. She called me and said she is worried that he will insist on driving home drunk. She is afraid he may have an accident or get arrested for drunken driving. Again. She wants me to persuade him not to drink too much. Or to stay over and sleep here. She wants me to worry about her drunken husband too so she can feel less lonely and anxious.
But I am not going to worry. Anton is alcoholic. He will drink beer as he drives out here at 10am. He will have his own supply of liquor in the boot. He will eat very little and get drunk and sing off-key Neil Diamond to us. He will not worry about driving back to town drunk and he will not stay overnight in a place without enough alcohol.. He will turn nasty and belligerent if I reason with him. So I refuse to worry about Anton or the accident he might have or his arrest or his nastiness. He is alcoholic and that is what alcoholics do. I tell Trix she can stay overnight if she is afriad to get into a car with him behind the wheel. I tell her I will understand if she chooses not to come out. She is ill with lupus and I want to spend some time with her. He wants to come along too. It is going to be a difficult day and there is nothing she or I can do to stop Anton making it very dificult indeed.
This is what Anton always sings after five or six beers and half a bottle of Scotch:
Love you so much can’t count all the ways
I’d die for you girl and all they can say is
“He’s not your kind”
They never get tired of puttin’ me down and
I never know when I come around
What I’m gonna find
Don’t let them make up your mind
Don’t you know
Girl, you’ll be a woman soon
Please come take my hand
Girl, you’ll be a woman soon
Soon, you’ll need a man
I’ve been misunderstood for all of my life
But what they’re sayin’, girl, just cuts like a knife
“The boy’s no good”
Well, I finally found what I’ve been lookin’ for
But if they get a chance they’ll end it for sure
Sure they would
Baby I’ve done all I could
it’s up to you
Girl, you’ll be a woman soon
Please come take my hand
Girl, you’ll be a woman soon
Soon, you’ll need a man
While all of us girls become women sit around pouring cups of tea and wishing he’d shut the fuck up.
I have always kept scrapbooks. I buy notebooks and make up collages of snapshots, typography, little pieces of fabric, grocery receipts, crayoned sketches, cardboard, old photographs and poetry or quotations. It is a way of creating something layered and cryptic and intriguing. I look at my life differently after pasting it up in fragments.
Jane Wodening, then Jane Brakhage, assembled three remarkable scrapbooks in the early 1960s, when she was the wife and muse of experimental film maker Stan Brakhage. Celebrated today as a pioneer in avant-garde cinema, Stan Brakhage was just gaining recognition for his non-narrative and hand painted films during the period documented by the scrapbooks. Wodening created the scrapbooks from literal “scraps” of their family life, Brakhage’s creative process, and the artistic communities of which they were a part. Pages are covered with the widest array of verbal and visual materials including but not limited to letters, manuscripts, photographs, original art, clippings, pamphlets, filmstrips, and flyers.
Scrapbooks: “…don’t see many of them around these parts any more.” Maybe I just am not seeing.
“Soon, you’ll need a man.”
Lots of friends–girls I know–and love–would laugh their a**es off if I said that to them. REALLY! LOL
I have kept every card, flyer, letters, name badges, etc. for the last 5 years since I got sober. I would love to put it all in a scrapbook. Not being very creative, it overwhelms me as to where to start. Best wishes on your difficult day tomorrow.
Your project’s (re-write) loss is our gain. I love your writing and hope that you eventually warm to the exercise or set it aside.
Either way, I wish you blessing and aloha…
I have my mother’s scrapbooks. They are wonderful reminders of all the parties that she attended, newspaper clippings, napkins, lots of things. I value them a lot.
Sounds as if Anton needs to listen to the lyrics of Neil’s song.
jeez. he sounds like a handful
yeah ive long since stopped worrying who will die an alcoholic death next. no point. just try to help the ones that want it. thats all i can do. attraction not promotion as they say.
Good luck with the 15 000 wds !!!