9/4/04

Holding Harold's End for the first time...a letter I wrote to the other creators of this book.

I am sitting here with tears rolling down my face very unexpectedly. I have the galley of Harold’s End on my lap. I am so surprised by my feelings. It's been so long since I’ve felt joy, that I almost don’t recognize it. I’m surprised, too, that I am so moved by this book. The images have become so dear, so familiar to me, the text.....too much so, to the point of nausea. But this it is like the baby being born.

The familiarity you think you have with that abstract idea in the swelling mound just cannot prepare you for the actuality of holding the birth. And here it is and I am just overwhelmed with emotion.

This is why we do it.

And it gets clouded in so much of the preparatory work. As if I am forever looking at wallpaper for the nursery, and never really believing that there will be a baby, or that I will feel any differently then I do then, choosing an acceptable pattern for that baby’s eventual arrival.

But I do. I do, and it really surprises me, like I said. I am so moved. I feel all the past, the work, not just on this book, but the accomplishment of life to get to this. I feel an overwhelming feeling of appreciation, of wonderment, like when I looked on our new baby, at the perfection of him. We are part of this? The work you did, I feel so much astonishment. I can locate it in my stomach as the ache of love and gratitude and a profound awe. That this can be? From an idea? I feel that feeling of something greater existing, beyond my constant self-involved fears and need for control, and assurances and struggles. Just an amazement at what can come of a merging of creation. And it makes me weep at the loveliness of it.

Cherry, there is nothing I can say. I can only try to describe how I feel. I gaze at your work and feel as I first felt, but it is so strange. It is like looking in a mirror that is angled against others so the image repeats into infinity, so much so that you can not recognize what seems so familiar. I fall into the paintings and feel like I can gaze into them and I will always find new layers, new stories.

It makes me remember the importance of story telling, that which takes over and lives beyond us. And it makes me regretful for how, lately, I think it is about me, how I’ve got bogged down into that. This surpasses us.

Holding this book, this breathtaking creation. That makes me know that something higher guided me to y’all at Last Gasp. That Ron and Bucky-- that y’all would not be able to birth this baby so fluently if your soul was not as loving and open and giving and once as scarred as these characters in this book. My gratitude is just overwhelming to me.

The words Michael Ray wrote, I don’t know if I can stop crying. Coz I just feel very silly, too. Lately, as y’all know, I’ve had a very rough time. And I just have to decide each day that I will make it through the day. And this book here just makes me feel so small, because this happened DESPITE me. And it is good. It is glorious. I don’t care what anyone says, I know it is perfect. We made it. And I survived. It is proof. It is proof. And I’m not alone, telling stories to myself, praying that one day I will be heard, that I won’t feel so unremittingly alone. This book feels like an utter miracle to me. And it makes me cognizant of all the other miracles that are in my life. I forget them. I keep alive the words of the past, being not enough, being nothing, being a awful person, on and on so nothing I do is ok, I am always trying to outrun it.

But holding Harold’s End, for now I am ok. This fills and stills me. This gives me satisfaction and joy. I don’t know how long I can hold on to it. I am pretty invested in my self hate but I would like to try. Because looking at all the genius and love y’all put into this book makes me believe, makes me feel so much hope. So much fuckin joy. I know folks will pick up this book and they will experience it. Feel something stir within them beyond the words, these paintings will bring folks to another level of emotion. We will create a bridge into others souls, one based on the depth of brilliantly, gorgeously crafted truth. And that is what it is about. That’s what it is about. And I am so grateful you gave this to me to remember.

More thoughts

I am just holding this book and weeping. And it’s been a long time since I cried. And it’s very strange coz, mixed with my joy, is this massive depth of pain. The past as become something very abstract, something I avoid, because its become an interview subject. It is something I’ve become removed from, numb to, and practiced at making it an abstraction. It’s become this vague dreamlike memory that I avoid. I haven’t even been in therapy lately. I just want to move past it and it is so ferociously in my life, with the film, and interviews, and my way of handling that is, well not handling it, it is like talking about something you know by rote. Like repeating a catechism. But the wreckage of the past settles in all I do, how I converse with myself, avoid the world, attack myself, on and on. Everything is a constant struggle. And for some reason holding this book just brings it all up. It is like reaching the summit of a treacherous mountain – the victory is an acknowledgment of the suffering you endured to get there. And that is what I feel and it, it hurts. It is hurting and it surprises me, because I thought this was gone just leaked out with the words already spilled around it. But I have to also acknowledge how very much it still is snaking around in me that I have not outrun anything. I still have so much work to do....and my running from it is part of what is tripping me up. It’s like being a chef, being immersed in food all day and coming home and thinking because you were around food, you don’t have to eat. I haven’t been eating. ya know--dealing with my past. It’s just become this vague story I am forced to answer questions about. I mean I’ve talked to folks, about how to take the very personal questions and bring them out to a more all universal reply. I mean like with the film. I think it brings up issues beyond my story and to make it less specific about ME and my details.

But it’s this weird thing about my connection to my life, my past.

I am not wanting to go into it at all. Scared what I will come up with.

I spend so much time pulling away from it, to dive in feels like drowning. But I can’t avoid it. I just called Terry, my shrink. Dr. Owens. I need to reconnect. In every sense of the word.

I really wish I could show this book to my mom and that she would, just be able to give me something around it. That makes me cry. How much I still want that. How much I thought she was an abstraction and how very very tied to her I still am. How much I would still give to get that from her.. her approval. But I don’t think I would die for it.

But in my own way, I have been. Every day, I have been by running so fast I can’t breathe and I can’t move. That makes me so sad. And look!

Here is this book. Somehow. Something wasn’t immobilized so concretely that this could escape out.

Momma look it. I did it. I did it.