I’ve been reading my journal for May 1993, and came to this description of a possible book about Nika, the artist part of me. The original plan was to use journal entries about my attempts to express myself in art. I completely forgot that I had written a bunch of fiction as well. I no longer have a digital copy, there may be a 3-ring notebook somewhere with hard copy, but I haven’t tried to look for it — an indicator of how exhausted I am today.
Nika: I don’t think of myself as a lesbian, I’m just a woman who fell in love with another woman. All my sexual relationships before Sharon were with men. Although I acknowledged my attraction to women I never did anything about it. If Sharon had been a man, we would probably be married, otherwise our relationship wouldn’t be any different.
It’s so amazing, writing Nika’s life. I always thought I didn’t have “the gift for fiction”, but that was wrong, I didn’t trust my gift for fiction, was always inhibiting my power to make things up by feeling that I didn’t know enough about the scene. I remember when I tried to write about Taliafero as a member of a rock band, or Kahoulain’s adventures with the Indians, I always imagined somebody who knew about such things reading my book and judging me as wrong. I see now that they were too far from my experience. But writing Nika’s story, I’ve made up weaving commissions from interior decorators and been vague enough about the details to get away with it. And when I needed a way for Nika to buy a house of her own, “Great Aunt Julia” sprang to mind, complete with character and history. I was telling Dana about her on our walk yesterday and he gave me a puzzled look “Was that how it happened?”
Taliafero and Kahoulain are characters in The Company of Thirteen, a science fiction story that appears in sketchy form in The Feminine of History is Mystery.
Deena Metzger‘s suggestion to “lie” has opened the door into the realm of fiction. And then of course I realize I’ve been doing it all along, all I needed for a story to happen was to set pen to paper and start writing. I think of the woman building her house (Foundation Stone) and the “Story of Joan” and all those stories of women living alone. What I didn’t have was some kind of a plot idea to hang a long story on, and the faith in myself that would have let me keep writing, discovering the details as I went along.
I did several workshops and two week-long retreats with Deena. Don’t know where the other stories went, if they are preserved in any form.
It’s interesting that my plan for Nika had been to shade the truth just a little bit, that is, to write nothing that could be contradicted by reality. But giving myself permission to lie allowed me to expand. The most interesting thing is to see how Nika is complete in herself, her story has structure, coherence, inevitability. I can see how one of the alters of a multiple personality gets formed, complete with a history that may be different from that of the core person. I can see how authors could really enjoy writing fiction, it’s a process of discovery as well as controlling and shaping the material, I can see how they would enjoy living in the world of the novel, and be sorry to leave that group of characters when the book is over. I can also see that it would be useful for a novelist to have some experience of life, and how they would be constantly observing people, conversations, settings to gather details for their work. I can see that Nika was too self-absorbed to become a novelist, her art has grown primarily out of a concern with the inner world: even the geologic ages and the Balmer series grew out of a sense of the structure of the inner world.
One interesting byproduct of writing Nika’s story is that some works of art, which “never made it to manifestation”, look like they might, after all, take on some form. I thought that I might do sketches or collages to represent larger works painted by Nika in oils. I can do verbal descriptions. I’m thinking about doing gouache paintings of “Geologic Ages” and “Balmer Series”, also quilt paintings. (Jeanne was very impressed with one of the quilt paintings in the Black Book.) I also thought about doing a sketch for the Moonladies triptych, which I had planned to execute in quilted fabric. (I bought the fabric: it’s still sitting in its bag somewhere.) Then suddenly, Friday night it was, I saw how I could do the Moonladies in white clay — I was so excited I couldn’t sleep. I can see the first two panels fairly clearly, and hope that the third will come into focus once I get started.
I’m intrigued with the sudden outpouring of energy for this project. What is painful about reading this now is seeing that “Nika” had a chance to manifest in my life, but it never really happened. I don’t know why yet, I don’t seem to have noticed when I reread this part of my journal in 2019.
First mention of Nika in this blog is in Journal Background.