in the hall of mirrors

Distance

A television commercial with rather gentle falling chord sequences on orchestral instruments, in long held notes: very like the wistful Northern California minimalism of the 1980s.

I wonder sometimes why it was so necessary for me to leave San Francisco, with no apparent way of getting back. I know why everyone died, of course – I landed in The City such a short time before AIDS began – but I remain confused about my own story: why did my first academic job take me to the other side of the planet, and then why did the Sydney disaster leave me so much poorer, with so few choices left? And here in northern England – it was kind of them to give me a job when I had been out of work for a year, especially in such a small and unimportant academic discipline where so many don't find jobs at all; but this city has never been home, not for a moment.

The shimmering, falling gentleness of certain musical phrases is so bound up with San Francisco, as it was not only characteristic of much of its music from the late seventies to the mid-nineties, but was also just right in invoking the clear air, the gentle, intelligent, idiosyncratic people, the small houses climbing the hills....

Twelve years since I lived there: and I still don't really understand what went so wrong, that I can't seem to find my way back.

Christos anesti!

Greek – whether ancient or modern, two wildly different languages – is beautiful but so intricate, so incomprehensible: for someone like me who considers himself fairly familiar with a variety of Western European languages, it seems alien, unrelated. And yes, of course it's Indo-European – but from such a distant branch....

My mother's family, and her relatives; the chatter in Greek, the food, the close family relationships. Dark hair, dark eyes, and (let's face it) very strong features... and Greek Easter bread, baked with the eerie sweet sharpness of mastikha, an unmistakable taste unlike anything else; and many, many red-dyed eggs. Not to mention, of course, my uncle Gregory's (my middle name is after him) infamous red wooden egg, which he would palm and use at the slightest provocation in egg-bashing battles.

And of course the Orthodox Easter ceremony, walking around the church three times, startled by the drama of the call and response:

Alithos anesti!

bring back the seventies

The end of the second of three long days: long, at least, by my current standards – I have become, over the past very quiet year, rather unaccustomed to following other people's schedules, so three or four days of appointments, meetings, classes, seems like a great deal.

Very tired, thus: fairly winded. Didn't have a beer after the research seminar, just a low-alcohol ginger beer, but still sleepy and relaxed.

And even more relaxed from the lovely craic with Annie, my Irish postgraduate student; we giggle, tell stories and make jokes so fast they pile one on top of another. She wanted to borrow my CDs of the Great Lesbian Singers of the 1970s/80s, Cris Williamson and Meg Christian; I played her my favorite Meg Christian (Meg's not as fine a musician as Cris, but had a couple of good hits), 'The Rock Will Wear Away', which despite its sentimentality always leaves me teary-eyed; and what I think is a funnier song, 'Ode to a Gym Teacher.' Annie did think the latter predictably, and touchingly, hilarious.

The next track, for some reason, was something so utterly seventies... such a burst of exactly the right sound, it took me back, to when I was seventeen, eighteen, nineteen. It's real time travel, when you're tired or relaxed, and something that highly charged takes you back – I find myself, unexpectedly but very realistically, in an earlier body, for just a moment – when I was eighteen and excited by everything, and cute, and very, so very...

oh my. So far back now. Far back enough that going through that much time is a strain, it pulls at you.

Some of the same emotions must be floating around the gay community, as the film Milk opens this weekend.

I don't know how easy it will be to see that film... and the hard thing about going back that far is that we don't get to stay there. (Tangential query: why do the right-wingers not have any assassinated heroes? Is it because the left isn't as likely to kill people?)

After I was deported from Australia from being HIV+, and broken-hearted about place, time, and loss, I would talk to people about how I loved San Francisco, and Sydney, and other different places; and they would say, okay, so where do you want to live?

And I would say, San Francisco, but in 1976. And you can't get those plane tickets any more.

It was a joke: but a joke on me, it seems, now....

Framing the past

Having finished watching Parting Glances, I can see – yes, it is a good movie; but I don't think I missed so much, walking out on it twenty-odd years ago. An interesting and touching slice of a certain kind of life, and the party scene is indeed great fun; of course from my current point of view they are all so young – this is a film about, perhaps, 28-30-somethings in the midst of becoming whatever they are going to become. (Except the argument in the stairwell with the 20-something, who is so excruciatingly young as to be merely annoying.)

All of which carries me back, through the music, the behavior, the ideas... into the past. I couldn't watch any more AIDS movies (I'll do Les nuits fauves tomorrow, but not now; and I'm still putting off Longtime Companion and Philadelphia, yet again), so I put on whatever was on television – which happened to be Clueless (1995). Which, though it is the blithest and ditziest of comedies (despite some unexpectedly edgy bits – did you remember the mugging, or the kid throwing up in the pool?), itself constitutes a certain nostalgia, a certain memory – perhaps its innocent concentration on the life of a sixteen-year-old, and one whose every whim is automatically paid for and handled, makes it very much about youth and memories of happiness. As though its then ultra-current 1995 instantly became a cherished memory, just through being framed in a certain way.

I wonder how film scholars handle the endless backward-looking, the endless nostalgia, the idealization? – don't they get tired or confused about time and memory? As much as musicologists get tired of having their emotions jerked around by lively or passionate music, I suppose... or film actors get tired of seeing themselves eternally younger, prettier, and perfectly framed.

***

Another frame – the non-events of my day all seem determined to push me back into the past. Reading E.F. Benson's ghost stories is a pleasant diversion – not a very strongly flavored one, as they are not imaginatively eerie like those of M.R. James, nor of course as dense as those by the other James (no, of course I don't mean William). The truth is, the ghost part of each story is rarely that interesting; the pleasantest part of reading them is the exposition, with its comfortable prewar houses, leisurely days, and his rather obsessive fussing over large, well-appointed rooms. But the stories are amusing enough; and as I get to the end of a large omnibus collection, the last few show a little more work and imagination, and are therefore more interesting.

'Pirates', which he must have written in the early 1930s, is very simple: you can see the end coming a mile off – but it is still quite beautiful, much more delicate and subtle than anything he'd written before (perhaps because it is apparently based on autobiographical elements). A lonely, aging man remembers the house where he grew up with his large family, all of whom are now dead; he finally returns there, redecorating it to look just as it once did... and of course you can guess the ending. It's nicely done, though, and gracefully nostalgic (especially for an old guy like me).

These stories have a forward by Joan Aiken, celebrated and prolific children's author. She is a favorite of mine, but not the way you would think – I never liked her famous The Wolves of Willoughby Chase, finding it confusing (I didn't understand her alternate England with its similar but different history, at least not when I was young – why would anyone want a Victorian England with wolves and villains?). The one book of hers that I own, and still reread every few years, is Armitage, Armitage, Fly Away Home, a wonderful series of comic fantasy stories that unfortunately apparently never gave birth to a sequel.

My copy is actually a school prize, given to me as – I quote – "Library merit award... for the most creative annotated list of books read during the school year 1967-68, Mamie H. Spruill, Librarian". I was eleven at the time; you get the sense that dear old Mrs. Spruill, a kindly, rather horsey woman with curly blonde hair, was trying to figure out the appropriate spin for giving me some kind of award. Her book was really a perfect choice, being both fun and peculiar; it may be telling that I'd handed in a reading list that was interesting, but not a winner in any of the normal categories – that certainly fits my later life and work.

In fact, quite possibly, the only teacher whose hopes I've fulfilled has been Mrs. Spruill. Some other favorite teachers from long past would probably not be too disappointed with me – the tough and well-named Mrs. Sargent who taught algebra, Mrs. Hollingshead, who had me do an independent tutorial my last year to read Joyce's Ulysses (my chemistry partner, a football player, kept trying to borrow it to find the dirty bits he'd heard were there), the egomaniacal Mr. Hoffman who taught me music (he later died of apoplexy, which was completely appropriate); and others... but I didn't do much with math, nor have I written great novels, and I don't sing or play much music any more.

But Mrs. Spruill hit the nail on the head: at least I still read interestingly.

Time, and its frames....

Oz

A busy, successful two weeks: seminar in London, then here on my home turf; attending several student concerts, one quite inspired, the other beautifully produced – amazed at the capability of our kids, and wish I could have participated at that level at their age; and then tonight was a fine Late Thanksgiving – four Americans, a spouse and a best friend, a vast dinner with too much food, and laughter and stories and talking and playing records, and even harpsichord-playing, until three-thirty in the morning.

But that's not what I'm writing about tonight....

•••

Earlier this night of the full moon, not having heard anything about the Australian elections, I was playing Peter Gabriel's soundtrack for The Rabbit-Proof Fence – that noble/tragic film about the mistreatment of Australian aborigines; most of the score is pleasant enough, but the final track, 'Cloudless' (which I suspect I've mentioned before on this blog), is glorious. A circling pattern that cross through sad minor chords and back out from them, a mass of aboriginal voices rising over a long time to a great peak of sound – not quite tragic, but full of feeling and a great presence, an immense calm sorrow that seems to contain a vast amount of time and the strength to keep going.

And I was running over, in my head, the memories and arguments about my Australian debacle from six years ago: for some reason I have told the story again, twice, this week, to colleagues who had never heard it – of leaving a high-paying but boring job in Hong Kong, for an ideal life in the ideal world of Sydney, only to be sent away because of being HIV+. And thereby losing the only partner I've ever lived with, the only substantial savings I've ever had, the only hope of a successful and lively career – indeed the loss of all kinds of hope. Because what was really awful about the situation was that I had reconstructed my imagination around a new and happy future: the little house in Woolloomoolloo, the boyfriend working in the garden, the musicians and composers in a new glass building, the sun, the happy people in the streets. That I would be happy, in the wonderful land of Oz. Which means, of course, that when that was gone....

I don't know if you do this yourself: that when you are upset or confused, or even when you remember being upset or confused, you stage arguments, speeches, theatrical confrontations, in your head – something I've done from an early age (I remember doing it while mowing the lawn, up by the pine tree at the top of the front yard, and wondering whether it was a bit strange of me to do so – especially with such impassioned speeches, such accusations, such drama). That was what this was – replaying what happened to me in Australia, and what I would say if I were there. The joys of self-justification....

Then tonight I hear that, finally, six years later, Australia has finally dumped the evil Howard government that deported me. Good news I suppose: but it seems very distant – it sadly no longer has anything to do with me, although I e-mailed congratulations to my beloved John, now living happily with another partner.

It is a bit like a subtle novel, when characters remember something terrible or wonderful at a great distance, and they are more sensitive to the size and meaning of that thing than they were at the time – like Van remembering Lucy's suicide in Nabokov's Ada, perhaps.

Sadness, remembered griefs and hopes, a dazzling full moon....

Awake

Early, gray but with enough light to waken me. Among various work, and things not done, and a few things done: still a certain drift, this frequent anxiety that my inept use of my own time puts my life in the category of 'unsuccessful, also ran, not quite sound.' Not quite a failure, certainly not a success.

Woolf's diaries again: so comforting, so everyday. She is also disappointed in her life, between bouts of exaltation – of course there are things that seem now almost humorous in their incommensurability: "here nothing but odds and ends", in the midst of writing To the Lighthouse (still my revered favorite of all her books), and meeting with Hardy and one of the Sitwells. Odds and ends from some perspectives, maybe.

In little things – plane fares, what to do next with the book, days when nothing gets done – I of course want to turn to V. Have a fairly childish, peevish sense of missing somebody that I want to be around, somebody I need to depend on. An odd image that has drifted into my mind several nights, as I'm going to sleep: of me carrying her – she was very thin, it wouldn't have been hard to do I think; though I never did pick her up – and walking towards – I don't know what.

Memory of V.

[Read today at V.'s funeral, after other remembrances by H. and one of her French relatives.]

With Vanessa, the sheer range of enjoyable things to remember about her is a bit daunting – so much hard work, so much fun – writing, shopping, dancing – talking with people from all over the world.

The endless drive she showed in her research, her teaching, her projects: she was so involved, so energetic. She seemed always to be making passionately, and politically, committed articles, talks, symposia, concerts – she was always in the midst of things, always doing so much with so many people who could hardly keep up with her. I was always about six months behind her on the book we were co-editing, but she would push me back to work without rancor, gently but quite persistently nagging until I got back on track. She was instantly kind when we lost the thread – Ian talks about how she would sit next to him, rest her head on his shoulder, and say, “you okay, sweetie?”.

She seemed to know simply everyone: she wasn’t only part of every network –across the university, and across several disciplines, continents and time zones – at times it seemed as though she was the network, she was what held us all together, flashing around the room, meeting everyone, and introducing them all to each other. She recently finished an Internet center for her students that was so successful and so obviously beyond the call of duty that even the University administration was impressed. I honestly don’t know how we’ll stay in contact without her – the mass of e-mails from North and South America, Australia, the Caribbean, and across Europe, telling us how much fun they’d had meeting her at one conference or another, how lively and interested she was in such different things. Her blog has a photograph of her hang-gliding in Rio, when she was there for a conference two years ago – and that, as her mother-in-law pointed out, says it all.

One of the Latin Americans gave her a fine compliment, especially from a Southerner to a Northerner – that “she could not only talk the talk, but also dance the dance.”

Because she could dance, and she did have fun: she enjoyed a wide variety of things, most especially luxuries – chocolates, liqueurs and good wines, rich foods, bath oils and lotions – she taught me how to get through northern winters, strewing candles and essential oils in her wake. The sheer indulgence of shopping with her, or the movies and restaurants we went to in groups she pulled together with an organized barrage of e-mails; or just wandering among shops where she knew just where she wanted to go, and in what order. Picnics in the tiny back yard, where she and David would produce a variety of cocktails for a day-long marathon of fantasy or vampire movies, and you’d realize you should have eaten less of the first courses because there were always more. She bought wonderful things for friends, too – the impressive gamut of professionally organized Christmas presents; as Anne sadly pointed out, who will buy such birthday presents now?

And her clothes: transforming her thinness by making it an excuse to wrap beautiful fabrics in layers and scarves around herself like a model, using her own palette of oranges, pinks and browns, which she sometimes set aside for a dazzling creation in white silk embroidered in blue: a flash of southern France, of the Caribbean islands, brought to Newcastle, and Middlesbrough.

Lastly, an aspect of Vanessa that was remarkable, and one that, if you’ll allow me, I know something about: facing her own health, her mortality, without flinching. Of the people I’ve known for the past twenty-five years, including many dealing with terrible illness, Vanessa was among the most clear-headed of them all. She handled hospitals, surgery, doctors, and an obscure condition nobody understood with a firm hand, not allowing them to get to her, to stop her from living her life. It seemed as though illness and death were just – a thing: a difficult thing, an annoying thing, but not an important one – less important than her life, than the people she loved, than her work – far less important, in fact, than this lively, demanding, strong, affectionate jewel of a woman.

When we lose someone who matters, we try to keep a little bit of them with us, to keep us going, to remind us of what they gave us. The little bit of Vanessa I’ll carry around will tell me, when things get rough, to keep my head up; to get some work done; and, above all, to enjoy the day, and all that it gives us.

Memory

Do other people get as confused over the implicit values of their memories?... maybe it's because I've moved around so much, and am so dissatisfied.

When something reminds me of certain angles of life in LA: the Santa Monica bus as it passes that big, difficult-to-negotiate intersection near Rodeo Drive; the cheesiness of Santa Monica Boulevard in places – I wonder whether my desire to live there instead of here actually makes any sense, whether it is rooted in anything that actually exists. The extraordinary bleakness of such moments, the sense of suspended but pointless time....

A brief clip on television, that moves across sunny streets and intersections that are so innately, so casually, so perfectly LA.

And San Francisco: aren't my memories, when they are good ones, highly selective, based only on leisure moments?

Even Australia, though I may not have been there for long, I imagined myself so deeply there: and even a food program that shows a corner restaurant, of a kind I recognize from Sydney, pulls me into a space, a place, a set of smells and possibilities: a whole life that didn't happen, that nevertheless aches.

Dislocated

Feeling, late at night, peculiarly disconnected, dislocated: not merely in time and space, but in intention, in dream – I feel as though I don't know who I would want to have been, what I would want to have happened.

Regrets, as you no doubt know from the rest of my blog, are not unusual for me. Many things dissatisfy me, some grieve me, many things are not what I wanted them to be; I can be philosophical about some, others not so much, though I'm certainly not as angry or resentful as I used to be about it all. I would like for things to be different, but –

Trying to go to sleep: but my mind is, for some reason, trying to construct my life as I would have wanted it to happen. And I can't settle on anything at all: nothing looks right, nothing looks plausible – any place, any position I would find myself in now, seems like the most undeveloped of two-dimensional pasteboard fantasies, or something shot through with problems and flaws, or something that I doubt would actually have been good anyway. What if Dad had put in for a patent and we were all rich, what if I had gone into the sciences, what if I had moved to New York, what if the virus had never mutated, what if I had made so many different choices at so many different points, what if....?

Perhaps some of these feelings of vertigo are because of recent applications, attempts, dreamed-of changes: applications for things I may or may not get – and of course things that I may or may not want, and the wanting is largely contingent on where I am now in my life (which raises the query: am I working hard to get to places I don't even want to be? – a not unusual situation, of course) but hardly contingent on, well, anything else. As though there is no back, no solidity, to any of these things, or to anything that I might want or might have now: as though it is all pasteboard – it doesn't much matter what cards I draw – because they're only cards.

It is perhaps not unexpected, living alone far from anywhere I ever imagined living, in circumstances that aren't rooted in any of my earlier dreams or plans, that I would have the feeling sometimes that if I turned too fast or reached out carelessly, I might inadvertently rip through the backdrop. Or might accidentally wander off the set, into some dusty, incoherent backstage of battered plywood and discarded props. But this is more like an internal dislocation, as though I've lost some internal compass or gotten some internal rudder tangled, making me feel that I can't even imagine where I would want to be – or, more accurately, and more uncomfortably, who I would want to be.

Oddly disorienting. It's as though – I can't sleep, because – I don't even know what to dream about...

Snowstorms

Not real ones. It is colder, and there will be snow, but we haven't seen any yet.

But I kept thinking of one of Peter Altenberg's postcard poems, the one sung in the first of Berg's wonderful but rarely performed Altenberg-Lieder:

Seele, wie bist du schöner, tiefer, nach Schneestürmen.
Auch du hast sie, gleich der Natur.
Und über beiden liegt noch ein trüber Hauch, eh das Gewölk sich verzog!

Hmm, don't much like the translation in the CD notes – let me try; these texts should be short and neat:

Soul, you are more beautiful, deeper, after snowstorms.
And you have them, just like nature.
And over both a breath of mist, till the clouds blow away.

Good days, bad days. They told us in those 1980s seminars that, if we really lived our lives, they would be like roller coasters – good things would happen but also bad ones.

Sometimes I think I'm just not very good at life – it goes too fast. A good excuse, though: this is what other people are for, aren't they? – which is why you should have someone to come home to, someone who says, so how was your day?

But I'm not doing too badly. Life keeps happening....

[Painting by Turner.]