Tuesday, August 28, 2012


From Paris Review -- The Art of Memoir No. 1, Mary Karr



INTERVIEWER
In your memoirs you barely mention your college years, or the years just following. Why?
KARR
You remember through a filter of self. The periods in your life when that self is half formed, your memories are half formed too. In Lit I wrote in passing about lurching around, getting drunk in punk bars. My best friends had a band called the Suicide Commandos who toured with the Ramones, so I hung out with them a bit. But getting drunk with the Ramones—who cares? The through-line has to be a change in your character, and being loaded seldom involves psychological advancement. No character change, no plot.


No character change, no plot.  I have to wonder, this is my problem.  And with a very similar set-up.  The barman who goes on drinking...  that's not much of a story.  And probably the problem with my own 'memoirs.'  No real change in character.

Change is difficult.  Change you have to be brave for.  Maybe you feel shame, "how long have I been doing this (with no growth, no advancement, the same old same old.)"

I get ready to tie one of my work shoes tight, a pair of Doc Martens, a sort of sneaker-shoe, of leather hiking boot like trim over light brown canvas like synthetic (I suppose), a non-slip sole, in which are a high quality full length arch supports.  It is wine tasting night at work.  I will ride my bike there, going through the woods, where perhaps I will dismount, to take in the airs of the forest.  Last night there was the Jazz, and it was a night that, by ten o'clock drove me to drink.  People make it look so desirable.  Hunger is strong at that point.  And it's as if the hands are all stretched out toward me, fill my glass, whatever you think.

"There's devils on each side of you, with bottles in their hands..."  There's not a lot of progression in that song, though.

I make myself a turkey sandwich with Ezekial bread, a leaf of romaine, a sliver of white onion, a couple of asparagus spears.  I fill a plastic cycling bottle with filtered water and think of the last bastards who will show up late, near kitchen closing, and exact out of me the last severing of the nerves holding me.  As if to say, drink, drink with me, join me.  And once I start the feeling will never be right until finally I give up and go to bed, exhausted.

There's no  way out, but quitting that job.

Yes, how could I possibly not want a glass of wine after that bombardment, all those people making wine look extremely desirable, making it look like it tastes so good and indeed it does.  How can you possibly escape that great thirst?  Yes, I know there is something called self-control, but where is it found? Where is it when you get home and there's nothing on TV but the GOP Convention, and the fatigue having fallen concentrated in all your joints from twists and turns, riding the bull of the night, the strange sudden rush for chilled martini glasses, a complicated drink order and the business men wanting beer before they go downstairs for dinner.

My youthful co-worker, wise beyond his years, and tired from working two jobs, somehow senses my deep quandary.  "You have to be a different person with everyone you wait on," he observes as the night calms finally toward 10 PM and the magic hour of the kitchen's closing, upon the background thought that I could write about the experience of bar tending, though not in the fluff way you'd want to if you wanted to sell a lot of books and get rich from some self-helpy advice type thing about pick-up lines and how to find the right mate.  What would I know about that anyway?  All's I know is that an adult relationship in my line of work seems utterly impossible, further away the closer you get, like that Stephen Crane story of the men on a boat looking at the coastline so close that they will never get to.   Why?  Why is it impossible?  And yes, I should just admit this to myself and hang up the old towel, move on.  I'm never going to have a place of my own, never would want to.  Time to get out, if that wasn't years and years and years ago.  Funny how time passes, sliding away, disappearing, days of wine and roses.

But if you are a writer, that is your religion, your true life, and you must admit this and be true to it.  You need some bravery.  You need some clarity.  You need some exercise and yoga, you need some time off, a leave of absence at the very least, a grant, an easier gig.  You need to accept utter economic defeat, accept that you will never follow your father in his footsteps of being a great college professor who taught many many young minds expanding them.  You need to go back and accept your own awkward juvenile self as you are...  Isn't that what it's about, if we learn anything from the brave people who are gay and brave enough to be who they are, that lesson a gift to humanity at large, "I am gay," "oh, that's cool, I'm a writer, a poet, a deep thinker, trying to come out and be, be who I am, and not some poor schmo bar peon who secretly doesn't give a shit about wine except that it tastes good, is calming, adds significantly to a meal and maybe conversations, up to a certain point."

But how the fuck would I know, I haven't lived a normal life since maybe my first year out of college twenty four years ago, and even then...  Then I went to the library, the college library, going with my father up College Hill in the sweet mornings with him as he went to his office in the science building, to look at books, to try as well to capture the thoughts darting through my mind as I felt the pressure of trying to be adult, trying to find some sort of job, a serious job, which I have utterly failed at, and all I could basically think about was some highly unsatisfactory romantic condition there was no way out of.

Is the Buddha lesson, to put completely aside the Ego, the lesson I and everyone else is supposed to learn?  But then what do you do about gainful employment and all sort of thing?  What about the relationships you obviously crave and need?  Solitary confinement, no good.

There is in life some particular problem I have never solved, and I do not know what it is exactly, or how to solve it.  I can only begin with an apology, regretful that my ego came forward, did things, said things, when all along I was just consciousness, peace, happiness, contentment at the beauty of life.  Why was I, apparently, an excitable partly seemingly disturbed youth so prone to bad influences, a sort of peer pressure.  Why did I chose such a wrong path in life?  That is the very condition I must stare out of when I am asked to wait on people.  That is the ugly and hidden truth of my job, even as I find that a strange source of my compassion for them, even as I envy them and their together lives moving forward.


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