Djuna Barnes - Ladies Almanack

What then is this but a Vanity, and a pouring out of Despair over ourselves; and doth it not prove, all that Man has said to the contrary (bringing the legitimacy of his Offspring to the Bench as reason) that it is a Lie alone, and that the Seat of the Matter is in his own Pride?

Take away a Man’s excuse and he weeps the same, though this time it will be a desolate and unarguing Melancholy. Yet withal ’tis more honest, and the more honest a thing be, the nearer it strikes against the Rib. So it is with Woman. They have no Platform for their Jealousies but the true bitterness of that Folly, and where they weep, it is for Loneliness estranged — the unthinking returning of themselves to themselves, if they but reason — which is improbable: for where there is a Grain of Reason, there is a Grain of recovery, and where there is a Grain of Recovery there is a Blade of Indifference, and where this shoots up, there may be a Garden of Oblivion in which to ease the Breath.

Nevertheless we have become so used to calling Vanity by its other Name, that even a woman wailing for a Woman has not taught us of it. And those who lie down in this Lament turn to the Wall as completely as Penelope lamenting her Husband.

It is a Maze, nor will we have a way out of it, though we know of long that way. Much turning of the Spindle thins out the Thread of Despair, and much leaping of the Shuttle threads Trouble to a Purpose, yet we will none of it, and step the Treadle without Aim, and cast the Shuttle without Food, and weave the air into a Mantle of Sickness.

We shake the Tree, till there be no Leaves, and cry out at the Sticks; we trouble the Earth awhile with our Fury; our Sorrow is flesh thick, and we shall not cease to eat of it until the easing Bone. Our Peace is not skin deep, but to the Marrow, we are not wise this side of rigor mortis ; we go down to no River of Wisdom, but swim alone in Jordan. We have few Philosophers among us, for our Blood was stewed too thick to bear up Wisdom, which is a little Craft, and floats only when the way is prepared, and the Winds are calm.

THE Vixen in the Coat of red,

The Hussy with the Honey Head,

Her frontal Bone soft lappéd up

With hempen Ringlets like the Tup,

The Doxy in the Vest of Kid

Rustling like the Katie-did,

With Panther’s Eyen dark and wan,

And dovës Feet to walk upon.

The Jockey with the Pelvis plump,

The high-hipped Wrestler with the Rump

Of yearling Mare, firm, sleek and creased,

The Tamer smelling like her Beast,

The starry Jade with mannish Stride,

The Sister Twins in one Sash tied,

The humpback Jester at her ease,

Her Jollies coiled on their Trapeze.

The Virgin with the Patridge Call,

Stepping her rolling azure Ball,

The Queen, who in the Night turned down

The spikës of her Husband’s Crown

Therein to sit her Wench of Bliss

The whole long Year will be like this!

For all the Planets, Stars and Zones

Run girlish to their Marrow-bones!

And all the Tides prognosticate

Not much of any other State!

THERE was a time when still rhymed to the wild Rib that had made her, Woman was atune to every Adder, every Lion, every Tiger, every Wood thing, every Water-wight, every Sky-wanderer; every Apple was to her a whole Superstition, and to quiet and to tame that Bone, she whispered “Lord! Lord!”

But yet a little while and she is most grisly impudent. As the Earth sucked down her Generations, Body for Body, became she less hollow for the Lord’s priming. Any prating Fellow with a Lute at bottom, a handful of Frills, a Knee turned out and a sweeping Feather, could, in one Verse, sing her full of Earth, and indeed for what our Minstrels have to account themselves guilty, will perhaps, with the Tibia of Caesar, lie unchartered in the Tomb of no Man’s memory a long lethal Æon. He was Lord-my-own and Cock-Sparrow of her trembling, he was both Adder in the Grass and Pippin on the Bough, he was the rush waving and the Bolt upon the Door, and the exceeding crammed Larder wherein she sat filching, a nibbling Mouse of Pang and Pang again.

And yet by yet a Body and a Body went under, and she lost both God and man. So deviled of Appetite that no Food was her winning Portion. God passed, and Man passed and Maternity went by as but the Dust under the Heel of wan marching, and she saw herself becoming thin Batter and no-why’s Bread, and she leaned at her Casement and wept most bitterly. She climbed down the Stairs, by Stair made her moan, and into the Streets went by Lamp-post and Pillar, singing and sobbing: “Aupreède ma blonde!” by Haberdasher and Butcher. At every Gate and Post she lamented and hummed, her Hands upon the Copings, passing and bewailing, and went yet further and heard the Lark singing, and listened until it was the Heron crying by the Sedges, and the nightfall’s true rising nightly nightingale. The Birds were off the Earth, and the Sky covered with Claws going South, and she sat where the Wheat sprang not and was now a Cud in a Winter Mouth, and she saw that her Years were mounting, and she returned homeward, and Godless and fearless, made Fear and a God of the yellow Hair of Dame Musset, wandering about the grassless Sods of her Garden, leaning aver and anon upon the Sun-dial without its Hours, or bending over the Fountain that never poured forth that gentle Spray for which it and she were pining, or just plain walking, her Hands well wrapped in the Folds of her dust-colored man-saver, or, as it was originally registered and patent applied for, Winter-woolens for-the-Woman-over-forty.

Did then Daisy Downpour, for so she might as well be called as any other, let down her mouse-colored-insufficient-hemi-spherical-quantity of Hair, thrilled loose a Shoulder, thus exposing to the gaze of Dame Musset (had she looked) the machine-hooked glory of a Pair of near pink Undergarments, most luringly loosened in the Weave at full good four Points. “If this,” said Daisy, “does not secure me God, then a linen Rose tossed at my Love’s hour of Need, should bring her to my Surface!”

And casting it, Dame Musset went around and around. Under Foot it went, and down into the Earth, and there descended, Dame Musset still pacing and thinking of a Girl’s Eye from which she had skimmed the Milk of Love, and whether she should again promenade the Impasse des deux Anges , and trust to the Bed-airing instincts of the said Girl, to bring her in Mob-cap, and all June of Bosom to the utter third-storey Window left, from which point of Vantage Dame Musset had first seen her winking a House-wife’s Eye at the little Scullion in the Pantry Window opposite, from whom the Bed-airer had removed her Wiles and Ways for a short yet thrifty Glance in the direction of Musset, — or should she not? For Flank on Flank, Jew on Christian, had bedded throughout her gentle Forefathers to the tune of many an aristocratic Artery athwart many a crude Civilian, to give her the uncertainty now in the Hooves of her Feet, one Heathen and one Gentlewoman, and to make her yet Angle before she stopped to think and to withdraw the Bait from thick Waters and from thin, pleased in the one vein with the Housemaid and in the other sighing for Quality.

Nay, it was beneath her! As was also the prying, overlooking Eye of Daisy Downpour, for she was known in the Arrondissement as Corset maker, and a woman so much of the People that she had clung to them, Palm on Palm, down to the very first, who had decided to plant Orchids in his Bean-rows, and thus started all the strain of difference between a Lady and no Lady at all.