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. \u00a0The original plan was to use journal entries about my attempts to express myself in art. \u00a0I completely forgot that I had written a bunch of fiction as well. \u00a0I 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 \u2014 an indicator of how exhausted I am today.<\/p>\n
Nika: I don’t think of myself as a lesbian, I’m just a woman who fell in love with another woman.\u00a0 <\/span>All my sexual relationships before Sharon were with men.\u00a0 <\/span>Although I acknowledged my attraction to women I never did anything about it.\u00a0 <\/span>If Sharon had been a man, we would probably be married, otherwise our relationship wouldn’t be any different.<\/p>\n
It’s so amazing, writing Nika’s life.\u00a0 <\/span>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.\u00a0 <\/span>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.\u00a0 <\/span>I see now that they were too far from my experience.\u00a0 <\/span>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.\u00a0 <\/span>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.\u00a0 <\/span>I was telling Dana about her on our walk yesterday and he gave me a puzzled look “Was that how it happened?”<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
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<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Deena Metzger<\/a>‘s suggestion to “lie” has opened the door into the realm of fiction.\u00a0 <\/span>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.\u00a0 <\/span>I think of the woman building her house (Foundation Stone) and the “Story of Joan” and all those stories of women living alone.\u00a0 <\/span>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.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I did several workshops and two week-long retreats with Deena. \u00a0Don’t know where the other stories went, if they are preserved in any form.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 <\/span>But giving myself permission to lie allowed me to expand.\u00a0 <\/span>The most interesting thing is to see how Nika is complete in herself, her story has structure, coherence, inevitability.\u00a0 <\/span>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.\u00a0 <\/span>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.\u00a0 <\/span>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.\u00a0 <\/span>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.<\/p>\n
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.\u00a0 <\/span>I thought that I might do sketches or collages to represent larger works painted by Nika in oils.\u00a0 <\/span>I can do verbal descriptions.\u00a0 <\/span>I’m thinking about doing gouache paintings of “Geologic Ages” and “Balmer Series”, also quilt paintings.\u00a0 <\/span>(Jeanne was very impressed with one of the quilt paintings in the Black Book.)\u00a0 <\/span>I also thought about doing a sketch for the Moonladies triptych, which I had planned to execute in quilted fabric.\u00a0 <\/span>(I bought the fabric: it’s still sitting in its bag somewhere.)\u00a0 <\/span>Then suddenly, Friday night it was, I saw how I could do the Moonladies in white clay \u2014 I was so excited I couldn’t sleep.\u00a0 <\/span>I can see the first two panels fairly clearly, and hope that the third will come into focus once I get started.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
I’m intrigued with the sudden outpouring of energy for this project. \u00a0What is painful about reading this now is seeing that “Nika” had a chance to manifest in my life, but it never really happened. \u00a0I don’t know why yet, I don’t seem to have noticed when I reread this part of my journal in 2019<\/a>.<\/p>\n
First mention of Nika in this blog is in Journal Background<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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. \u00a0The original plan was to use journal entries about my attempts to express myself in art. … Continue reading