The Therapy...
[…]
Mp: I had just woken up and I felt sick when I read it.
BW: Yes?
Mp: Well… I wasn’t expecting it… it was like something
coming in from behind me with a knife and… and I didn’t see it coming… I hate
not seeing things… It felt like she’d got into my memory.
BW: Yes, what kind of memory was it?
Mp: A good memory, something I hold to my breast… something
I cling to.
BW: Yes?
Mp: But what if I was wrong [about the memory]. That thing
that seemed so certain and so romantic was… disdainful… What if it was a theatre production? All that pretense, playing a part… in a romance that never existed.
BW: Yes?
Mp: Giving love, intimacy to someone that doesn’t want it –
doesn’t know what to do with it… thrown back in your face. “Love is bad, love
is wrong… disgusting almost.” It is something you give, that you don’t have, to
someone who doesn’t want it.
BW: Yes?
Mp: Maybe it’s in the giving… I mean creatively I understood
it [the poem]… but it was more than that – something I didn’t control or understand.
Inside my memory, changing it, suddenly it seemed like a foreign object inside
me, a strange… infected object.
BW: Yes?
Mp: It used to be safe… it was always there… I could rely on
it [the memory], it was never far away… now it is gone… transformed… she took
it…
BW: Yes? And now it is dangerous, and new, and not yours.
Mp: They always take things from me… I always feel that they
take things from me… I have lost control of it. It’s not mine anymore…
BW: Yes?
Mp: It [the memory] doesn’t belong to me anymore… and It
really got me when she called me ‘Marty’ because it was affectionate somehow…
personal… like she was taking it without knowing she was… like she was doing it
with…
BW: Yes?
Mp: …love…
BW: So it was a good thing?
Mp: …
BW: Yes?
Mp: It was a good
thing… maybe it was less an infection and more a new opening…
BW: Yes?
Mp: …Maybe she is the antidote… she tore up the script… I
tore up the script… is this not what poetry is?
BW: So you can write a new one?
Mp: So I can write a new one… and learn to love it afresh.
[…]
Email to Lizzy Palmer on the above piece – 13th March 2016
It aint very polished, but that is the way i want it i think.
I think it will require a bit of context. Of course in the piece you are
actually a mere symbol acting in relative terms to the structure of my
fundamental phantasy - that tentatively being that people (with a special
caveat for those closest to me*) are thieves trying to take something away,
some mysterious tenet of my being that not even I comprehend but am terrified
of losing. This is of course sewn into the Pettitt genealogy (my mother being a
hoarder of physical objects for instance - in constant fear of someone taking
something away from her - that first toy taken from her by her mother as a
child), this is our tragedy and I like to think the piece I reacted to went
some way to cementing the realisation within me that letting things go is not
only necessary but also terrifying and beautiful. This is what you are and
where you came in within my imaginary and symbolic relationship to the world:
the one that removes the linchpin and reveals the Real, the chaos beneath, that
it is imperative that we love in all its monstrousness in order to create anew;
but I'm sure you knew that already ;-).
Hope you had a spiffing weekend
Mp
*"Even the dearest that I loved the best/ are strange, Nay, stranger than the rest..."
Hope you had a spiffing weekend
Mp
*"Even the dearest that I loved the best/ are strange, Nay, stranger than the rest..."
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