Sailing away Oct. 5, 1985

 

So, why am I so critical of Maryann?

Let’s leave truth out of this, True or not, it is not my business how she lives her life.

But her letter this week shows I touched a nerve with her, and I’m scared she might severe our friendship entirely since she is being pressured on her side to follow a certain way of life, and my observations threaten to push her to a breaking point.

Why do I push it in the first place?

Some of it has to do with how sad I felt when she left, most has to do with the perception that she is running away from a problem that she’s carried with her there, only doesn’t have alternative voices to listen to, when she was back here with me and other friends.

I’m really, really upset by the fact she gave up her writing in exchange for love, somehow her amazing poetry had become a tool for Satan she needed to surrender in order to find “real joy.”

Too many people give up their art like that, stealing from the world artists whose voices we need to hear.

Even Michael – who I consider a friend and a great poet – seems on the brink of surrendering his craft in order to take his orderly place in the ordinary world.

I’ve always wondered why there are so few great writers when there have been so many people with such amazing potential. Now I know, they give up.

Few can survive the rigors of their art, not the technical craft, but the social cost, the inability to sustain themselves when there are so many bread and butter issues that get in the way, such as paying rent or feeding one’s self.

Some just lose interest or intensity, trading away talent for more practical gifts.

It is very difficult to go back once the juices have ceased to flow, especially when you have turned off the tap yourself.

For some the purpose of writing vanishes. Kathy ceased creating the moment she found a man. Poetry for her was an expression of pain.

Roland gave up because his poetry showed just too much of who he really was.

Maryann gave hers up because it had too strong a connection to a life she can no longer lead. She says she wants to return, yet each time it touches on something that scares her most.

Where do I fit in? How can I profess to love her and still be as critical as I am of the decisions she’d made?

Part of it has to do with the story I sent her earlier this year, and the revelations of my desire for her.

But perhaps a more significant aspect is my fear of doing what they are doing, stopping cold, and giving up.

Writing is a tough life, it is a lonely life, and there is the temptation to give up when I see so many others surrendering.

When Maryann burned the story she wrote about the porcelain doll, I was shocked to the core, as shocked as if she had drowned her child.

Hers is the story of my generation’s failing dreams, of selling out, of going back to that mental slavery their parents and grandparents endured, of embracing a new dark age with a host of TV and pop star pontiffs, all focused on keeping people stupid and compliant.

I see this happening again with her and I feel helpless to stop it. It seems impossible to rescue her dreams once she has surrendered them, to revive what once was – peace and love that she and others once espoused.

And yes, I feel abandoned, watching a wonderous being sail off, even sell out, not to better herself, but to satisfy someone else’s idea of betterment, retreating to a place far away where she can’t see the shore she sailed from or the mistakes she made, far enough away so that she won’t be tempted to revisit the scene of the “crime” and somehow make restitution.

And I stand here like an idiot unable to do anything about it.

 

 1985 Menu


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