Djuna Barnes - Ladies Almanack

He had Words with her enough, saying: “Daughter, daughter, I perceive in you most fatherly Sentiments. What am I to do?” And she answered him High enough, “Thou, good Governor, wast expecting a Son when you lay atop of your Choosing, why then be so mortal wounded when you perceive that you have your Wish? Am I not doing after your very Desire, and is it not the more commendable, seeing that I do it without the Tools for the Trade, and yet nothing complain?”

In the days of which I write she had come to be a witty and learned Fifty, and though most short of Stature and nothing handsome, was so much in Demand, and so wide famed for her Genius at bringing up by Hand, and so noted and esteemed for her Slips of the Tongue that it finally brought her into the Hall of Fame, where she stood by a Statue of Venus as calm as you please, or leaned upon a lacrymal Urn with a small Sponge for such as Wept in her own Time and stood in Need of it.

Thus begins this Almanack, which all Ladies should carry about with them, as the Priest his Breviary, as the Cook his Recipes, as the Doctor his Physic, as the Bride her Fears, and as the Lion his Roar!

THIS be the first Month of our Christian calendar, when the Earth is bound and the Seas in the grip of Terror. When the Birds give no Evidence of themselves, and are in the Memory alone recorded, when the Sap lies sleeping and the Tree knows nothing of it, when the bright Herbage and flourishing green things are only hope, when the Plough is put away with the Harrow, and the Fields give their Surface to a Harvest of Snow, which no Sickle garners, and for which no Grange languishes, and which never weighs the home-going Cart of the Farmer, but sows itself alone and reaps itself unrecorded.

Now in this Month, as it is with Mother Earth, so it will appear it is with all things of Nature, and most especially Woman.

For in this Month she is a little pitiful for what she has made of man, and what she has throughout the Ages, led him to expect, cultivating him indeed to such a Pitch that she is somewhat responsible.

Patience Scalpel was of this Month, and belongs to this Almanack for one Reason only, that from Beginning to End, Top to Bottom, inside and out, she could not understand Women and their Ways as they were about her, above her and before her.

She saw them gamboling on the Greensward, she heard them pinch and moan within the Gloom of many a stately Mansion; she beheld them floating across the Ceilings, (for such was Art in the old Days), diapered in Toile de Jouy , and welded without Flame, in one incalculable Embrace. “And what”, she said, “the silly Creatures may mean by it is more than I can diagnose! I am of my Time my Time’s best argument, and who am I that I must die in my Time, and never know what it is in the Whorls and Crevices of my Sisters so prolongs them to the bitter End? Do they not have Organs as exactly alike as two Peas, or twin Griefs; and are they not eclipsed ever so often with the galling Check-rein of feminine Tides? So what to better Purpose than to sit the Dears on a Stack of Blotters, and let it go at that, giving them in their meantime a Bible and a Bobbin, and say with all Pessimism — they have come to a blind Alley; there will be no Children born for a Season, and what matter it?”

Thus her Voice was heard throughout the Year, as cutting in its Derision as a surgical Instrument, nor did she use it to come to other than a Day and yet another Day in which she said, “I have tried all means, Mathematical, Poetical, Statistical and Reasonable, to come to the Core of this Distemper, known as Girls! Girls! And can nowhere find where a Woman got the Account that makes her such a deft Worker at the Single Beatitude. Who gave her the Directions for it, the necessary Computation and Turpitude? Where, and in what dark Chamber was the Tree so cut of Life, that the Branch turned to the Branch, and made of the Cuttings a Garden of Ecstasy?”

Merry Laughter rose about her, as Doll Furious was seen in ample dimity, sprigged with Apple Blossom, footing it fleetly after the proportionless Persuasions of Senorita Fly-About, one of Buzzing Much to Rome!

“In my time”, said Patience Scalpel, “Women came to enough trouble by lying abed with the Father of their Children. What then in this good Year of our Lord has paired them like to like, with never a Beard between them, layer for layer, were one to unpack them to the very Ticking? Methinks”, she mused, her Starry Eyes aloft, where a Peewit was yet content to mate it hot among the Branches, making for himself a Covey in the olden Formula, “they love the striking Hour, nor would breed the Moments that go to it. Sluts!” she said pleasantly after a little thought, “Are good Mothers to supply them with Luxuries in the next Generation; for they themselves will have no Shes, unless some Her puts them forth! Well I’m not the Woman for it! They well have to pluck where they may. My Daughters shall go amarrying!”

THIS be a Love Letter for a Present, and when she is Catched, what shall I do with her? God knows! For ’tis safe to say I do not, and what we know not, is our only proof of Him!

My Love she is an Old Girl, out of Fashion, Bugles at the Bosom, and theredown a much Thumbed Mystery and a Maze. She doth jangle with last Year’s attentions, she is melted with Death’s Fire! Then what shall I for her that hath never been accomplished? It is a very Parcel of Perplexities! Shall one stumble on a Nuance that twenty Centuries have not pounced upon, yea worried and made a Kill of? Hath not her Hair of old been braided with the Stàrs? Her shin half-circled by the Moon. Hath she not been turned all ways that the Sands of her Desire know all Runnings? Who can make a New Path where there be no Wilderness? In the Salt Earth lie Parcels of lost Perfection — surely I shall not loos en her Straps a New Way, Love hath been too long a Time! Will she unpack her Panels for such a Stale Receipt, pour out her Treasures for a coin worn thin? Yet to renounce her were a thing as old; and saying “Go!” but shuts the Door that hath banged a million Years!

Oh Zeus! Oh Diane! Oh Hellebore! Oh Absalom! Oh Piscary Right! What shall I do with it! To have been the First , that alone would have gifted me! As it is, shall I not pour ashes upon my Head, gird me in Sackcloth, covering my Nothing and Despair under a Mountain of Cinders, and thus become a Monument to No-Ability for her sake?

Verily, I shall place me before her Door, and when she cometh forth I shall think she has left her Feet inward upon the Sill and when she enters in, I shall dream her Hands be yet outward upon the Door — for therein is no way for me, and Fancy is my only Craft.