Any Woman's Blues_ A Novel of Obsession - Erica Jong [102]
I take a little marbled notebook bought once in Italy and begin to scribble at random, catching stray thoughts like threads snagged by a crochet hook.
What am I here to learn? [I write] for there is no other point to this passage that I can see. As far as I can tell, I am here to learn how to pass on, how to flow, how to greet and how to take leave, but above all how to take leave, for life is a perpetual leave-taking.
I believe I am here to learn to praise. Before AA I would never have said that. I thought it was my job to learn how to curse—I thought this was the essence of sophistication, of satire, of art, but now I know it is praise that is rare and blessed. A glad heart is a perpetual feast.
Wayne wanted to take me to the dominatrix supposedly to show me the essence of our society but really to share his cynicism and pain with me. Perversion is curdled love. I wanted to be like Ada, to be a bitch who could command men, but back here in the country, I know that is not what I want. I want to learn how to love—no matter how many times I fail, no matter how unworthy the objects, no matter what betrayals I experience—for nothing but love is worth the passage through life.
But I have defined love too narrowly. I have defined it as sexual love, as the love between a man and a woman. It’s that, and it’s far more than that. Writing in this notebook is love, feeding my twins is love, nourishing my roses is love, painting is love. . . .
At Madame Ada’s Psychodrama Institute I saw children playing with power and pain, in despair because their limited notion of sexual love had failed them. I found myself intrigued, convinced, converted—for a night. I, too, believed—briefly—that curdled power was what I sought.
Wrong. Love does not seek an equally weighted scale (and is not angry when the weights are unequal); love does not speak of give-and-take, of dominance, submission, of slave and master. Christ spoke of love, but the church that bears His name deals in power. Every proselytizing religion eventually is corrupted that way. The only pure religions are religions of attraction; we come to them when we are ready. The closest clue I have to love is how I feel about my twins. I do not count the cost, I do not measure. If I could love myself that way, my work that way, the world that way, nothing would be impossible for me. Perhaps someday I could even love a man that way, but if not it would hardly matter, for I would have transcended “I.”
Everybody writes about alcoholism and cocaine addiction, but no one tells the truth about it. It’s fashionable to convert on the cover of People magazine and make a sober comeback. Getting sober is far more complex; it’s really about getting free. The disease is cunning, baffling, powerful. The grand pronouncement of sobriety is, in reality, another layer of the disease. To pronounce yourself “cured” is to remain incurable. To pronounce yourself “sober” is, in reality, to remain drunk. To pronounce yourself “recovered” is to be unrecoverable. The disease is like an onion; it has all these layers. You can peel forever and never get to the bottom. Therefore, to write about getting sober is the ultimate danger—danger of drunkenness, danger of death.
The only safe thing to do about sobriety is to shut up about it. “Love seldom lasts after it is divulged,” say “The Rules of Love.” I feel the same about AA. Hence the importance of anonymity. You could lose the magic by writing out the process.
And yet it could be important to tell my story, any woman’s story. I would certainly write it, heart in throat, knowing I was breaking the last taboo, endangering my own sobriety, my own life.
All the great secrets grow only in silence. To write is to betray the deepest truth the heart knows: that silence is always