by Lucia Berlin
Ed, do you see why I am ashamed? That it was so easy for me. Everything is always easy for me, not inside of me—but in anything that I want. I am ashamed because I know that I could have made it more difficult for myself. I could have been a writer, but it would have been too hard to care more about what I saw and how I said it, than what I felt, what I was. I have to do this now, in order to feel that I am not cheating, to justify the EASE.
Does any of this make sense?
Here, I have spent 8 pages, all I should have said was that the proof and the praise that I thought was all I needed, doesn’t work. I am still not proud and I am not yet humble. Those are the things I want, that one has to have.
—Please write.
Love, Lucia
1960
106 West 13th Street,
New York, New York
Dorns
501 Camino Sin Nombre
Santa Fe, New Mexico
Dear Helene,
Thank you for the “goddamn sermon,” for your very beautiful letter to me. I have, we have, been “straight” since the manic-panic time when I wrote to you. I almost believe it won’t happen again—that I will complicate things—but if I ever start tinkering, I’ll read your letter. I will anyway, for it was very fine.
Ai—it is “hard” and a “thing” for me, marriage and love, because when I “learned about love,” only since we have come here, it was simply that for the first time in my LIFE, I was not doing love. Love had always been a task for me, not a “duty” but a thing of deeds, to show to parents etc., to do what they wanted me to do, and of roles to act out, with them and others and mostly with Paul. I had never known it to be otherwise. It is so “hard” not to connect love and care for someone else’s happiness with a feeling of having to do (any) specific things and most of all with the fear that whatever it is I should do, I will fail.
But this is so rare now. I’m sorry I wrote to you when I was feeling this way—it is a sin. Was what I meant long ago by selfishness and by guilt—how to stop imposing things upon myself, to get out of myself and just be. Do you know, Helene, that I never had been this in my life until recently, I had never let anyone be this with me. Can you understand the happiness it has been for me, and for Race too, but still that it is “hard” to accept, to give assent.
OK, cross my heart, last last of my problems, etc.
We are laughing now, in debt and broke and sickly and it rains, rains and we drink the Mexican chocolate and listen to the wireless, glassy-eyed. The trio has a job in Queens, which is a relief and a delight since it is a jazz gig, adding a good saxophone player. We made a pact for the 90th time, to remember not to get low.
Everything is so bloody relative and silly—like, we have big, fat supercilious dapper mice and they are great!
Another big, fat pressure off my reeling head, so now there are none, was that I finally had a meeting with Little, Brown, with “Oh, do call me Peter,” actually, and Volkening.
If I have said anything good about Volkening recently, like, FORGET IT. He is an agent. Namely, I had not understood what that meant. He is a goddamn pimp.
Anyway, we had a literary luncheon. In case you’re not hip this means 6 (stiff) drinks and lunch at Hotel Algonquin.
Volkening had 8 bourbons and sat around trying to keep me from saying anything so he could tell “Do call me Peter” what I was going to write. Oh, I can’t even tell, it was so ridiculous. I will tell only that, as I was peeing in the ladies room, he continued a deal for an advance of 500 beans for 50 pages more and while he went to the men’s room, I said to Peter I wouldn’t take it, I didn’t like the ruddy book and I wanted to start all over, and if they liked it OK, if not OK. Actually the guy was very sweet and stupid and decent and was so impressed by my “quiet modesty” (that’s how he talks, I have “silver prose” I’ll have you know), that he said just to send 100 new PAGES. Why the fuck not pounds or feet? I write lovely pounds. Jesus, and they would almost certainly buy it outright.
It was pretty awful. Volkening was mad about $ and because I said I didn’t know what I wanted to do with the book at all and he was mad because somehow the whole thing was between me and the editor (the damn guy read it 3 times, E for Effort, and sincerely dug many things, and while V. was out, admitted that it was lousy as a novel, but he can’t risk losing Volkening, you see).
Anyway, he, Peter, grew up on a farm in Colorado and is a weak would-be idealist, and as we took leave of him, there in the lobby he murmured how I was as lovely as my writing, and Volkening muttered, “Well, you’ve cinched that, honey.”
The only move short of kicking him into the palm pot was simply to say to hell with him, which I easily did and no longer feel any debt to him or Peter, etc. I went to his office and took back my old man and the apples story. I love that story very much—the others are pages, he can pimp for them.
And I feel great—maybe I’ll never write another word for the rest of my life, maybe I will. That, too, will never be a task again.
I am reading Hardy. He is a fine man too, and his sense of place—don’t you dig him?
Race is reading Zen and learning Chinese. He is the only person in western world I know in whom this would not be an affectation.
We are both so glad for knowing the Goodmans, that they are here in this city and for Max, who is great. He and Rena were here this afternoon and it was very crazy. She is pretty insistently maternal about (not with) children, which is a drag, but is very quiet and otherwise nice.
Denise is great and great too about turning people on, a lovely trait, like calling up tons of people to go and see someone’s painting that she saw and liked. I have read many things I would not have known of or loved—except Virginia Woolf, who I don’t dig at all.
Saw Peter Orlovsky in a hunting cap in front of the tigers in Museum of Natural History. We went with Nick, and lost him. It was pretty scary (and funny) searching for him thru elephants and gorillas. Jeff was gassed. Marko not at all because it was all fake, he was even a little mad. We all dug the birds tho.
They have Feelies now in N.Y. Something on the seats in movies, so you feel all the sensations on the screen and you can even attack and strike back.
Guerney is too much—he doesn’t even know me unless I go in with M & J, he can tell us by our shapes, otherwise he tells me the exact same things. He is a naïve REAL Rebel, like all by himself. I like him.
It’s Sunday now—we’re going to Abingdon Square so Race and the lady downstairs can sleep. She is foreign, very polite considering that “they go skipping, skipping and only on Sundays.”
Thank you H. for your letter, etc. Write, both. Is it Spring there?
Love, Lucia
P.S. Robins! It seems impossible.
1960 [November]
277 Greenwich Street,
New York, New York
Dorns
Pocatello, Idaho
Dear Edw.,
“Shit, you so much don’t care about all this.”
You are very wrong. My fault. I have left myself wide open.
I care about a ruddy lot of things—including my writing. True, it is a matter of commitment—this is where I am hung—this is what my “guilt” is—that it is hard for me to commit myself (to writing, love, god, etc.). I keep hoping people will help, hoped something like Little, Brown would help. It did only in that I saw it can’t. I simply imagined that you would see that, the main point, not come on with a letter about money and art. OK, and your paraphrasing sarcastic “you, who do things so easily.” I did not say that. I said things come easily to me, for me. I would like for things to be hard, I would like to be asked to commit myself. It is no help to be paid for something that hasn’t been read, perhaps won’t be.
Your letter for “El Tim” was the most help, demand, I have ever had. “You so much don’t care.” I am naive, I don’t understand how you can call me your friend.
Modesty and humility are not at all the same. I do not want modesty, I don’t e
ven like it. Humility implies respect for something else.
I had a birthday. Maybe I came of age. Altogether, that day a letter came from my agent—the bastard who came on like Papa Bear to hook me—and now he can say—in answer to the letter that I didn’t want to sign until they had read it. Forget it, sign—put your face on the book jacket and you’ll sell a million copies. Things come easily for me. And then a letter from my mother, who forgot my birthday, but remembered to tell me how I have never been anything but a disappointment to them. I told her to go to hell, in a letter, and in my heart. I too am sick and tired of guilt. Formal dismissal came, I “haven’t been worth the worry and heartache” I caused them. OK, it hasn’t been worth it trying not to.
Jesus, I am sad. Also, that day my pocket was picked, 40 dollars.
Race didn’t write after the first week, had nothing to say and spent weekends at his parents. One night, a pretty dam cold N.Y. night, I was feeling despair. I was sad. I am only sad now, but I felt self-pity, ugliness, and the phone rang, and it was Buddy. I could have felt terror, I suppose—at his circling, hovering for my soul—but he was there, he touched my head, it was good to hear him.
Bought a desk, to get it went up to sixth floor beat hole where a family had fled leaving behind everything including Mary Rose Saliba’s toys, a peanut butter sandwich and milk glass. In the desk, when I got home, were 25 of her notebooks from the beginning of the second grade to the end—arithmetic, she was very good, mostly Catechism—but even with all the shit the nun left in her heart—she left some words—I’m sending one dictation, they are all like that—words like chatter—crazy mystic nun—pobre Mary Rose. I care about her, Edw., and teaching, and children.
Pete moved into our house the day after we left—the kids live in the attic—that is crazy, a goddamn crazy thing how he won after all, without a compromise.
Love, Lucia
1961 [Spring]
277 Greenwich Street,
New York, New York
Dorns
Pocatello, Idaho
Dear Dorns and Finsteins,
Hey Finsteins, tell us how you’re doing in the wild west. Rena, was it as glorious as we said?
Homesick for the ruddy blue sky. Raining raining here but foggy, ferry rides are wild and it is crazy at nite—shutters banging, fog horns, and after 1:30 A.M. the only other sounds are the horse-drawn fruit carts, creaking clopping splashing. Wow, like listening to Gogol.
Race has been on road last 2 weeks with Kai Winding (trombone), a good gig! He called yesterday, sounded so damned great, they have sessions every (all) day, are playing at nite everywhere from Toledo to Camp LeJeune and also good things like Detroit Jazz Festival. The band itself is sort of nervous and scary but he digs the way Jimmy Knepper (Max & Rena—you met him at our house) plays (beautiful) and the chance to play himself. Also $ is welcome. He’ll be gone till end of month. Yikes, we are lonely, esp. here in rain and all. M & J & I leave tomorrow for lake upstate with Race’s Aunt Moe—which will be wonderful, boats and grass.
H, it is so good to hear from you. Tell me about Fred and Chani and Paul.
I don’t have anything to say! I wash clothes all the time. Finsteins, Wow! Was it quiet and sad when you left? Maybe we’ll use the rope and locks for our trip west.
Dorns, you remember that “El Tim” story? I rewrote it, wasn’t any longer a “happy” ending or such a case study. No magazine (about 100) would take it, they said because it was touchy, the Catholic “issue”—the horny nun, I suppose, and last week a Catholic mag. bought it for 150 beans. This time no “creative” pangs or panic—I am knocked out etc.
Mark told me today that my eyes were full of red cracks.
Hope, Finsteins, you’re finding a pad, etc. Damn, wish we were there. As it drizzles down hot water here, I think of New Mexico rain and clouds. Remember your (Dorn) trip to Alameda in the storm last year? (!)
Weird: the butchers downstairs sometimes work (very) late, come up the steps to the room where they shower. They wear heavy high black boots and speak German. Their sounds, at night, on stairs, very ugly. I remember the vicarious (baffled) terror from (childhood) war movies.
Made a swing in M & J’s room. Lovely—the cat is wigging.
Love to every one of you. Lucia
October 24, 1961, 7:10 a.m.
New York, New York
(Western Union Telegram)
PROFESSOR EDWARD DORN
ENGLISH DEPT, IDAHO STATE COLLEGE
POCATELLO, IDAHO
LUCIA AND KIDS LEFT LAST NIGHT WITH BERLIN. ABSOLUTELY NO WARNING OR SIGNS. SHE IS IRRATIONAL. TRYING DESPERATELY TO LOCATE. GOING TO ALBUQUERQUE CARE OF ERNIE JONES 415 SAN LORENZO NW PHONE DI 46196.
RACE.
December 28, 1961
Edith Boulevard,
Albuquerque, New Mexico
Dorns
Barton Road
Pocatello, Idaho
Dear Dorns,
The mountains are covered with snow and it is clear and balmy, all the doors and windows open, Mark, Jeff, and the cats are on the roof of the shed shooting, like Beau Geste, the propped-up dead soldiers, the cats curled up.
Everything here is getting straightened out, and there is nothing anymore that seems insurmountable, though everything did a few weeks ago, Yi. No, I don’t know Race at all either, it’s very scary and not good actually how absolutely little I can understand what he or the Goodmans (for it gets indistinguishable who’s talking) feel, especially since they keep, or kept (until we changed the phone), talking about Buddy and what a horrible desperate criminal fiend he is, consuming everyone, cruel and selfish … on and on. I don’t know any kinder or cornier person than him. Yi, I didn’t know, so many damn things about him and about myself, what living could be.
We’re going camping for five days, tomorrow. Mary Ann got the Porsche and we got a camper, with beds stove refrigerator tent, it is crazy, the kids are flipping. We’re going to Mexico, hope to get as far as Parral and see my uncle. If we don’t hear from Race by then, will stay in Chihuahua and get a divorce (and some rum). God, it sounds so simple, is so simple. How little our lives were connected, Race’s and mine.
Did I sound like I was complaining about Creeley? Can’t remember, think I was surprised that he should be concerned at all about some of the petty aspects of our whole scene. No, he has been very great and we have had some good nights talking and laughing. Bobbie has been very depressed, with Christmas etc. Jesus, how cheap and stupid all the scenes are compared to that sorrow.
Like, Max, who was here, ate and slept here and borrowed a sum of money and rides and bus fare to Taos, put Buddy down, gossiped about everybody, and told me Rena didn’t particularly care to see me. He and Creeley sat here drinking and Max was being catty and stupid, that’s all he is, simply a stupid small catty man. Buddy and I left the room and we hope never to see Max again.
Creeley has to read in Seattle in February. He and Buddy were talking about the three of us flying to Seattle and then to Pocatello. There is a clinic there (Seattle) which claims to have a drug which will cure drug addiction for life. It’s very damn hard for Buddy to stay clean, especially because there are so many people here determined not to let him. I couldn’t tell you the nightmarish aspects of these sadistic bastards. Well, that will be OK soon, would be better with something like that drug, which Jean Lash could have gotten, but she’s mad now, so won’t, hippocratically. Yi, like, I was hip, saw The Connection with the original cast and read Naked Lunch and all, and said flip things like “it is like choosing to die,” but I did not know. I shouldn’t talk this way since Buddy’s clean, but he is still not sure and neither am I and Mary Ann and the connections are positive he won’t make it. One of them came on Christmas Eve (who fixes himself in his penis) with his 15 year old wife, his 14 year old daughter, and his dog, all addicts. Dog too. He is on parole for murder and it is impossible to let him know how I HATE him. I am terrified of him and what he would, could do, to Buddy, one way or
the other. So anyway, we made it thru the visit, Buddy did miraculously, and finally they all left to go to midnight mass.
Otherwise Christmas was very beautiful here for us. We couldn’t get up much spirit and carol sentiment or make cookies etc. but what was left was that here we were, all of us, on Christmas morning. The neighbors here are very great, came over for posole. Had a party a few nights before that was wonderful, with goodwill and everyone laughed and ate and had a ball. I had never given a party and Buddy hadn’t either, it was too much, a celebration.
Buddy just called, we’re going to go buy food for the trip. Got to go get dressed.
(Later) Pooh—can’t go on trip after all. Imported Motors taxes etc. and have to go to Santa Fe for (more) of Mary Ann’s signatures. Will be strange to go there without seeing you. Also, new mess with lawyers who are charging Buddy $3000 (EACH), $6000 total for the divorce. Very complicated, all these scenes and there are about 4 lawsuits too. He might be bankrupt soon. Max, Race, etc. put Buddy down for being a “successful businessman and not doing a thing.” He can’t do anything halfway—he’s so involved with that overgrown scary business and it is too much really, how he manages all that.
Well, it was wonderful to see Fred and Paul and Chani—beautiful radiant Chani—how about that sparkle in her eyes! Fred, I would not have known at all, he is so grown and a young man, and Paul, that same shy sweet … Oh hell, I’ve looked at those crazy pictures a hundred times. I wish we could see you all. Write.
Love, Lucia
P.S. Hello. Hey, it is 1962. I never felt this way before, about a New Year.
At the end of 1961—the day I wrote above, Buddy and I went to the fucking lawyers to see abt the fee of $6000. The lawyer says “It is worth it, isn’t it, for all this not to become known to police, loan companies, etc.?” (Mary Ann’s addiction) etc. etc. Now like blackmail, only he is so self-righteous and nasty. So Buddy paid it.