May
I am not so different in my history of abandonment from anyone else after all. We have all been split away from each other, the earth, ourselves.
Of course, he cannot do this alone. The atmosphere must allow it. Even for him to see, there must be others willing to look in that direction.
May
Jews, Christians, Muslims, sharing one origin. Warfare among the members of this human family who have been fragmented, scattered to the winds.
And Charlotte?
May
To a certain region of the mind, nothing is ever lost. Perhaps we imagine we forget. But this is not possible.
The colors she is using are so vibrant, I will carry these images with me for all of my life.
May
Infinitesimally small bits of an atom enter a body, leaving a record of this passage.
I am imagining her now. She is singing as swiftly she finishes her last painting. It is an afterthought. Where will it go in the series? She cannot say. The image is so simple. A woman fleeing.
May
Civilians hidden in bunkers underground, the words unspoken, fragments of an earlier civilization to be found in the earth, a hand over a mouth, submerged histories, that image at the margin of our vision, government secrets, camouflage.
As soon as it dries it goes into the suitcase with the rest. Quickly then, take them to the doctor, take the whole series to the doctor and ask him to keep them until the war is over. Until you are safe. Safe.
May
Stripped away. A hand in the earth touching a bit of clay. Perhaps three thousand years ago. Emerging, like the sight of two whales, breaching for a moment, out of the Pacific Ocean, a thought, maybe a memory.
Or perhaps you do not put it in the suitcase. Perhaps it is a self-portrait and you have painted it on your way to an escape. Perhaps you even leave it, in a room somewhere, or it blows out a window, and it is as if it never existed. No one will ever see it.
May
Everywhere one sees signs of something different, possible, another way of being. If …
Because maybe you have had a stroke of luck. Maybe among all these confusing choices, despite your concern for the child you carry, you have gone into the mountains. Why is it that it breaks my heart now to imagine you alive? You are in that pass that runs between France and Italy. You are staring into the face of those rocks. Looking at the lines etched there. Beautiful as your drawings are beautiful. You think perhaps if you had time you might even be able to read them. They are like whispers. Exquisite whispers. Barely audible. But still you are certain now you can hear them.
May
On the television last night, a program about astronomy. They say we are all made from star dust.
And you have the sense now of belonging. Because in the new mold that comes over you, right along with your hunger, your cold, your weariness, you know your story is the story. It is all one story.
May
And they say that what appeared to be a void between the stars is filled with star dust coalescing into new stars.
This is something you would like to paint, you say to yourself, the stones, the mountain pass, the people walking at night. If you survive. But of course you cannot do it alone. The decision is out of your hands. It is all the others now who must make choices. Those peasants living near the village in Italy. That woman who convinces her husband to hide you in the cellar. The baker who knows why he brings extra bread to your house. And perhaps even, the one in a million, that very exceptional soldier. He was so young when he enlisted. Just sixteen. He had no idea. His ideas were so foolish. He senses this family at the edge of the village is hiding someone. But he has also figured out something else. Something inside him that is buried. And so in this instant he looks the other way. Where is he looking? Numb and exhausted though he is, he wants to know, he wants this that he cannot yet even put into words but still he senses is there, and it is this promise, this hope, that keep him going.
May
A new edition of The Arabian Nights arrived in the mail yesterday. I open it. Read the beginning. Read about Sheherazade. How she tells stories to save herself, and the world she loves.
And you, though you don’t know him, though you will never even see him, will retain some sense of him as you begin, after the war, to put down on paper all this that you saw and heard.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A great many people helped me with the creation of this book. The late Elissa Melamed was my companion in this effort in numerous ways. She read the first chapters of the book, encouraged me, inspired me, and pointed me toward crucial issues. Fran McCullough, who has been my editor in the past, was the first editor at Doubleday. Her early belief in the book as well as her critical insights were very important. Loretta Barrett as an interim editor was sensitive and supportive. In an editorial capacity for a brief period, Susan Moldow gave the manuscript an enthusiastic reception. But the book’s principal editor has been Sallye Leventhal, who has given the book the kind of close, intelligent, and creative attention which all authors wish for but which is extremely rare. I am very grateful for her work. In addition, Diane Cleaver has faithfully and brilliantly represented this work. Jackie Stevens and Chris Stapleton both assisted me with retrieving volumes from the library; Kimn Neilson and Anna Lewis helped with proofreading and copy editing; Kacy Tebbel copy edited the final draft. And I was fortunate to work with two very able and helpful typists, Rosalyn Heimburg and Sari Broner. A number of people read parts of the manuscript and offered critical feedback and encouragement; others helped with interviews and research. Among these are Mioko Fujieda, Becky Jennison, Keiko Ogura, Betsy Blakeslee, Mary Felstiner, Wendy Roberts, Benina Gould, Joanna Macy, Edith Sorel, Odette Meyers, Alice Miller, Don Johnson, Suzanne Kahn-Ackermann, Carolyn Kizer, Lee Howard, the late R. D. Laing, Emilie Conrad Da’Oud, Chellis Glendinning, Lenke Rothman, Linda Tumulty and Dorien Ross. My partner, Nan Fink, read, reread, and offered insightful editorial comments, proofread the manuscript, and gave me invaluable emotional support throughout the last years of writing. My daughter, Chloe Levy, was supportive and encouraging. A great many friends and acquaintances, together with those I have never met, came to my aid during the severe crisis in my health which occurred during the writing of this book. They are too numerous to name here, except for a very few without whom I would not have survived this period. They are Nancy Bardacke, Joanna Macy, Marilyn Sewell, Nancy Snow, Ingrid May, Lenore Friedman, Mimi Sternberg, Barbara Hazard, Ruth Zaporah, Cornelia Schultz, Abigail Van Alyn, Naomi Newman, David Shaddock, Paul Berman, Annie Prutzman, Clare Greensfelder, Joan Sutherland, Martha Boesing, Emilie Conrad Da’Oud, the late Elle Maret Gaup-Dunfjeld, Gloria Orenstein, Burt Jacobson, Bob Baldach, Diane Di Prima, Guenther Wieland and Rhiannon. I would especially like to thank Marya Grambs and Jan Montgomery for their support during this time, and others who have given me important material support for this project. Among those who contributed privately to the support of this book, let me first mention Alice Walker and Sallie Bingham for their generous kindness. In addition, Sidney and Jean Lanier, Barbara Austin, Margy Adams, Robert Haas, Ty Cashman, Roger Keyes, Donna Korones, Ronnie Gilbert, Ellen Bass, Bettina Apthecker, Margaret Brennan-Gibson, Pat and Dan Ellsberg, Kate Coleman, Kenneth Cloke, Terry Ryan, Elizabeth Janeway, Anna Douglas, Morton and Gerry Dimondstein, Cornelia Schultz, Barbara Hazard, Tracy Gary, Kirsten Grimstad, Diana Gould, Deena Metzger, Nancy Bacall, Naomi Newman, Lois Sasson, Leslie Gore, Adrienne Rich, Lily Engler, Miriam Levy and the late Irving Levy, Milton Taubman, James Oglivy, Joan Drury, Wendy Lichtman and Jeff Mandel, Sally Belfrage, Janet Kranzberg, Liz Luster, Joshua Mailman, Irene Diamond and Suzanna Dakin all contributed. In addition, during the eight years that I spent writing this book I received support and grants from the Threshold Foundation, the Levinson Foundation, the Kentucky Foundation for Women and the Arts, the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, and the MacArthur Foundation for Peace and International Cooperation. I also wish
to thank the MacDowell Colony and the Djerassi Foundation.
Portions of the first draft of this book in progress were published by City Lights Review, Whole Earth Review, Hurricane Alice, The American Voice, Creation, and Open Places.
A Biography of Susan Griffin
Susan Griffin (b. 1943) is an American author, poet, essayist, screenwriter, and playwright. She has won the Northern California Book Award and the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Memoir/Biography, and her work has won an Emmy as well as being chosen as a finalist for both the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award.
Griffin was born on January 26 in the midst of the Second World War, in Los Angeles, California. As a child she spent many long days outdoors, climbing trees, riding horses, hiking trails, body surfing, and camping in the High Sierra mountains. Just as World War II gave her a strong awareness of justice, the landscape of California forged her fierce relationship with the natural world.
She was the second child of Sally and Walden Griffin. After their divorce, she was raised alternately by her maternal grandparents, her mother and stepfather, her father, and finally, as a teenager, by adoptive parents who gave her both an informal education in progressive political thinking and a model for how to make a life as an artist.
Though Griffin was separated from her elder sister, Joanna, at the age of six, they remained close. When Griffin was eleven years old, her sister introduced her to the poetry of William Carlos Williams and Denise Levertov and to the ideas of Sigmund Freud and the novels of Fyodor Dostoevsky. In high school Griffin discovered haiku, Lao Tzu, Chinese philosophy, Jorge Luis Borges, and Pablo Neruda. This was also when she first heard “Howl” by Alan Ginsberg—she and her friends read the long poem to one another sitting in a circle on the floor, around a candle burning in a bottle.
In 1966 Griffin married John Levy, with whom she has one daughter, Chloe Andrews. After her marriage to Levy ended in divorce in 1970, Griffin had three other significant relationships, each with a woman.
Although her earliest published works are short stories, Griffin was first recognized as a poet. Widely anthologized, her most notable collections include Like the Iris of an Eye, Unremembered Country, which was awarded the Commonwealth Club’s Silver Medal, and Bending Home. Presently, she is at work on a book-length poem about the Mississippi River.
Griffin has also written several plays in poetry. Voices was produced internationally, winning an Emmy Award in 1975. Thicket was written for and performed by the artist Ruth Zaporah and was published in its entirety by the Kenyon Review. Griffin’s most recent play, Canto, is a libretto about the massacre of villagers in Latin America during the 1980s.
A celebrated author, much of Griffin’s prose has the musical qualities of poetry. She has written over twenty books addressing a wide range of subjects, from motherhood to rape to ecology to nuclear war. Her work is known for making connections between disparate issues such as feminism and ecology through unique forms, for instance in the prose poetry of Woman and Nature or the juxtaposition of memoir and history in A Chorus of Stones. The latter is the first volume of a longer work that includes What Her Body Thought and Wrestling with the Angel of Democracy—a trilogy the author has called a social autobiography because of its mix of history, memoir, and political reflection. A Chorus of Stones was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize and the National Book Critics Circle Award. It won the Northern California Book Award and was chosen as a New York Times Notable Book the year it was published.
An essayist and feminist philosopher, Griffin wrote a landmark article on rape, which was published in Ramparts magazine in 1971. It deeply influenced feminist theory as well as criminology and judicial thinking with the central idea that rape is motivated more by sexual desire than by the drive to dominate. Twice a lecturer at the prestigious Schumacher Society in London, Griffin wrote an essay based on these talks, titled “Split Culture.” A number of her essays are collected in The Eros of Everyday Life.
Griffin has done research for several of her books—including for The Book of the Courtesans, a playful description of a heretofore hidden chapter of women’s history—in Paris, a city that has become her proverbial second home.
She has taught philosophy, ecofeminism, and creative writing for over forty years and lectured at international conferences, universities, and community centers. Her books have been published in seventeen languages throughout the world. In 2009 she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship. Her papers, including her manuscripts, correspondence, and research, are currently archived in the Schlesinger Library at Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.
Griffin is in the process of completing a novel, The Ice Dancer’s Tale. Inspired by her friendship with a Sami shaman, the book depicts the creation of an ice dance as a response to global warming. Griffin is also at work on an extended essay entitled “Sustainability and the Soul.” Beginning in the fall of 2015, she will write a monthly blog about literature, ideas, and art, called “Beautiful Letters,” via her website, www.susangriffin.com.
The author at age two.
Susan Griffin at eighteen years of age.
The author (at left) with her good friend Roxanne Winkler when they were part of the same circle of young writers in high school.
Susan Griffin (at left) at the Holocaust Museum in Paris with Line Loeve, a Holocaust survivor about whom Griffin wrote in A Chorus of Stones.
Griffin (at left) in Hiroshima with a survivor of the 1945 atomic bomb.
Griffin with Robert Bly and Yevgeny Yevtuoshenko before reading to a packed auditorium at the University of California–Berkeley.
The author (at center) with friends from Berkeley, including the writer and actor Leonard Pitt (behind Griffin), while visiting Paris.
Griffin with Jodie Evans, a good friend and the founder of Code Pink, an organization that began in protest of the Iraq War.
The author at lunch with friends in 2015.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
Copyright © 1995 by Susan Griffin
Cover design by Kat Lee
ISBN: 978-1-5040-1221-8
This edition published in 2015 by Open Road Integrated Media, Inc.
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SUSAN GRIFFIN
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