How angry am I? You don't want to know. Nobody wants to know about that.
I'm a good girl, I'm a nice girl, I'm a straight-A, strait-laced, good daughter, good career girl, and I never stole anybody's boyfriend and I never ran out on a girlfriend, and I put up with my parents' shit and my brother's shit, and I'm not a girl anyhow, I'm over forty fucking years old, and I'm good at my job and I'm great with kids and I held my mother's hand when she died, after four years of holding her hand while she was dying, and I speak to my father every day on the telephone -- every day, mind you, and what kind of weather do you have on your side of the river, because here it's pretty gray and a bit muggy too? It was supposed to say "Great Artist" on my tombstone, but if I died right now it would say "such a good teacher/daughter/friend" instead; and what I really want to shout, and want in big letters on that grave, too, is FUCK YOU ALL.
Once aware of my isolation, I was afraid not of it but of its interruption.
Claire MessudJust because something is invisible doesn't mean it isn't there. At any given time, there are a host of invisibles floating among us. There are clairvoyants to see ghosts; but who sees the invisible emotions, the unrecorded events? Who is that sees love, more evanescent than any ghost, let alone can catch it? Who are you tell me that I don't know what love is?
Claire MessudLife is about deciding what matters. It's about the fantasy that determines the reality.
Claire MessudIt occurred to me, not for the first time, that Lili's world was not so different from my dioramas, or even from Sirena's installations: you took a tiny portion of the earth and made it yours, but really what you wanted was for someone else -- ideally, a grown-up, because a grown-up matters, has authority, but is also not the same as you -- to come and see, to get it, and thereby, somehow, to get you; and all of this, surely so that you might ultimately feel less alone on the planet.
Claire MessudI kept thinking, as I was telling Didi, that somehow what was in my head--in my memory, in my thoughts--was not being translated fully into the world. I felt as though three-dimensional people and events were becoming two-dimensional in the telling, and as though they were smaller as well as flatter, that they were just less for being spoken. What was missing was the intense emotion that I felt, which, like water or youth itself, buoyed these small insignificant encounters into all that they meant to me. There they were, shrinking before my eyes, shrinking into my words. Anything that can be said, can be said clearly. Anything that cannot be said clearly, cannot be said.
Claire MessudBut can I say, now that she is dead, long dead that I only half believed in her. I wanted, I needed her to revolt. I know, revolutions take vast energy like volcanic eruptions. I know. And the sick must husband their resources even as they are resourceful for their husbands. But I couldn't help wanting for her, couldn't help the feeling that she'd given in, that she had measured out with coffee spoons what it was that she might ask of life and having found it lacking, tragically, gapingly lacking, had decided none-the-less to accept her modest share. I wanted her ignoble, irresponsible, unreasonable, petty, grasping, fucking greedy for the lot of it, jostling and spitting and clawing for every grain of life.
Claire MessudMots clés acceptance anger mothers daughters women-s-roles
My mother, toward the end, had said to me, but with a sweet smile, "Life's funny. You have to find a way to keep going, to keep laughing, even after you realize that none of your dreams will come true. When you realize that, there's still so much of a life to get through.
Claire Messud...that cheery, flimsy distraction from Death; or in a pinch Law
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