Djuna Barnes - Ladies Almanack

Or such Words as this: “I may have trifled in my Day, or in Days to come, or today itself; or even now be rifling Hours for the penning of this to you, but though I gather dear Daffodils abroad, plunge Head first into many a Parsley Field, tamper with high strung and low lying; though I press to my Bosom the very Flower of Women, or tire myself to a prostrate Portion, without a Breath between me and her; toss her over the off-leg to bring her to rights, say never that I do not adore you as my only and my best. To her I give but a Phoenix Hour, she is but the hone to my blunt, which shall Toledo to you. To you I give my Bays, my Laurels, my Everlastings, my Peonies, my hardy Perennials and my early percipient Posies, that bloom for such effulgence as shines alone from your Countenance! (Viz., to wit: were she haggard, gray, toothless, torn, deformed, damned, evil, putrid and no one’s Pleasure; or if on the other Hand she were lovely, straight, marble browed, red in her bloom, bright in the Eye, headed with Hair, and Venused to boot—’tis all one to a Girl in Love!) For you alone I reserve that Gasp under Gasp, that Sigh behind Sigh, that Attention back of feigned; that Cloud’s Silver is yours — take it! What care I on whom it rains! The real me is your real yours, I can spend myself in Hedgerow and Counter-patch, ’tis only the Dust of my reality, the Smoke that tells of the Fire, which my own Darling Lamb, my most perfect and tirelessly different, is yours, I am thine! You compel me.!”

Compels her! Yea, though the Recipient be as torpid as a Mohammedan after his hundredth Ramadan, as temperate as a Frost in Timgad, as stealthy as a Bishop without a Post, still and yet, and how again it will command her; so encore. Were it of as good a quality and as sharp as Madagascar Pepper, Still it commands her, it can command her up-stairs and down, right side and wrong, peek-a-boo, or all fronts-face, in Mid-moon and Mad-night, in Dawn, in Day, yea, still it will command her, so pricked is she with longing, and so primed to a Breath, that should her Honey-heart hang mincemeat Tartlets about her Waist for a Girdle, would she preen to the Pie, and clap with Delight; or should she be ordered to wear a Wig backward, with its curl well over her Nose, still she would do it, a Lamb both fore and aft and all at the one look, saying: “You know my quick Step, my real Run, my true Bite. My intake and withdraw are at your behest, I am but a Shade of myself an I am not by your Side, and what I am is because you are, and should you turn and not find me, it is because I have taken that not worthy of you to another, who may blow me bright again to shine toward your Lightning, a Sun to my Beam!”

Nay — I cannot write it! It is worse than this! More dripping, more lush, more lavender, more mid-mauve, more honeyed, more Flower-casting, more Cherub-bound, more downpouring, more saccharine, more lamentable, more gruesomely unmindful of Reason or Sense, to say nothing of Humor. Nowhere, and in no Pocket, do such keep a Seed of the fit on which to sneeze themselves into the fitting, they be not happy unless writhing in Treacle, and like a trapped Fly, crawl through cardinal Morasses, all Legs tethered and dragging in the Gum of Love!

And just as some others are foul of Tongue, these are sweet to sickness. One sickens the Gorge, and the other the Heart. For what can you, an a woman thus leans upon the purple, and so strews Blandishments that the clear Nature of Facts are either so candied and frosted to a Mystery, or so bemired that they are no find. Surely it is admirable to have a Fancy and a Fancy when in Love, but why so witless about a witty Insanity? It would loom the bigger if stripped of its Jangle, but no, drugged such must go. As foggy as a Mere, as drenched as a Pump; twittering so loud upon the Wire that one cannot hear the Message. And yet!

DISTEMPERS

WHAT they have in their Heads, Hearts, Stomachs, Pockets, Flaps, Tabs and Plackets, have one and all been some and severally commented on, by way of hint or harsh Harangue, praised, blamed, epicked, poemed and pastoraled, pamphleted, prodded and pushed, made a Spring-board for every sort of Conjecture whatsoever, good, bad and indifferent.

Some have it that they cannot do, have, be, think, act, get, give, go, come, right in anyway. Others that they cannot do, have, be, think, act, get, give, go, wrong in any way, others set them between two Stools saying that they can, yet cannot, that they have and have not, that they think yet think nothing, that they give and yet take, that they are both right and much wrong, that in fact, they swing between two Conditions like a Bell’s Clapper, that can never be said to be anywhere, neither in the Centre, nor to the Side, for that which is always moving, is in no settled State long enough to be either damned or transfigured. It is this, perhaps, that has made them too fine for Hell and too swift for Heaven.

Be that as it may, say we, ’tis a gruesome thing when a Woman snaps Grace in twain with a bragging Tongue, for truly such have clack in our City, and run about like mad Dogs, as if Love and its doings were a public Smithy, where all Ears are shod with: “She is so large, so wide, and said she, when we went down to Duty, thus and so, and so she did!” Or as if Love were a Saw-mill whose Dust must be cast in every Eye, or as if it were meet to discuss in public assembly that which by Nature was hidden between two Pillars. The very lowest Ruffian, the most scabby Pimp, or the leanest Wittold would blush and scrape his Shins for Shame of her. Presently then it appears and seems and is in verity, sad chronicling this that all Women are not tidy and neat of Perch, for when a Woman is sick she is sicker sick than any Man, as a rotten Plover is more stincking than a rotten Stick. Even the Cat scratches to make Hide of his Intimacies and whispers to the Earth his Secrets, dunging apart not to shame that grave Necessity which was born in the Penumbra, and goes to the Shades.

Nay, not so shy are all Women with their Loves, but doss aloud, and cackle and crow over the last to Bed as if she were an Egg and not a Darling, and run about the streets after hawking her about, wriggling and alive, for all to see and piss against! Oh fie! Oh shame! She fouls everything she touches with the Droppings natural to her lost Condition!

She is shameless and shameridden! She is haggard at both Ends, and is the greater shamed that she bleat of twice one and both the same. And while many a Man speaks no better, nay often and ever far more naturally in this Vein, it is but his Nature whining. For that which is a Mystery, which amazes, terrifies, is sought after and raised high, that will a Man hound, spring against and befoul, for very Chagrin. But, doth the Hand tell of the Palm, the Eye of the Iris, the Tongue of the Mouth? Nay, ’tis a foul Bird that fouls its Finch!

Again, just as there are some Fellows who will brag that they can teach a Woman much and yet again, and be her all-in-one, there are, alike, Women, no wiser, who maintain that they could (had they a Mind to) teach a taught Woman; thus though it is sadly against me to report it of one so curing to the Wound as Patience Scalpel, yet did she (on such Evenings as saw her facing her favorite Vintage, for no otherwise would she have brought herself to it,) hint, then aver, and finally boast that she herself, though all Thumbs at the business and an Amateur, never having gone so much as a Nose-length into the Matter, could mean as much to a Woman as another, though the gentle purring of “Nay! Nay! Nay!” from the Furs surrounding Dame Musset continued to bleed in her Flank.