What would Marilyn Hacker say to me now, sitting on a sunny Spring day enjoying citron pressé in Le Marais? Qu'est ce-que vous me direz, chère poète? The gay boys cruise, sitting outside the Open Café, and there's no place for a scandaleuse like me until six at least. Where shall I go?
I came to Paris to center, and I find that I enjoy the pull of a partner--in life or in crime. But to pull my own weight, I've got to write my own way.
Where am I going?
What are the parameters of my path?
- I will write.
- I will work.
- I will work to write, and write until work,
like Hemingway said about leaving it without plumbing the well dry.
And I'll write what's true. I can't lie anymore. Life, which is honesty, is too important to me. I'm sure radical honesty will reveal my faults all too well, but lying is a fault I don't want anymore.
I also don't want to give myself a hard time. I just graduated from university, and now I've few people to please except myself: my parents, my partner, my boss. How hard can it be, and how wonderful - exciting, joyful - to think of the ways I could do that.
But myself. I don't yet know all that pleases me - especially in the face of what I believe should please me. I struggle against shoulds, so much that I often don't just do. It's the doing that will please me, I just know it.
Is go a way to do?
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| Musée D'Orsay, Paris, 2002 |
