Mockingbird

DAY ELEVEN

Things have begun to flood over me. I feel shaken as I write this, shaken to report what I thought of today. Yet it was so obvious, so clear, once I saw it. Why have I never thought of it before?

It was during a film. An old woman was sitting on the front porch (if that’s what it is called) of a dark little house. She was in what was called a “rocking chair” and holding a tiny baby in her lap. Then, looking worried, she held the baby up and the picture ended momentarily, as they do, and these words appeared on the screen: “Ellen’s baby has the croup!” And when the word “baby” appeared on the screen I suddenly realized that I had not seen a real baby for longer than can be known! Yellows, blues, reds: years beyond numbering, and I had not seen a baby.

Where have the babies gone? And has anyone else asked this question?

And then the voice in me that comes from my childhood training says, “Don’t ask—relax.”

But I can’t relax.

I will lay this aside and take some sopors.

DAY NINETEEN

Nineteen. This is the highest number I can ever remember using. Nothing in my life has ever been worth this high a counting before.

Yet it would be possible, I suppose, to count the blues and yellows of one’s life. Useless, of course, but it could be done.

Often in films I see large numbers. Often they are associated with war. The number 1918 seems especially common. I have no idea what to make of it. Could there have been a war that was fought for 1918 days? But nothing lasts that long. The mind reels to think of anything that long or that large or that extensive.

“Don’t ask—relax.” Yes, I must relax.

I must remember to eat some soybars and gravy before I take a sopor. For two nights together I have forgotten to eat.

Sometimes at night I study Dictionary, to learn new words, and at times that helps me become sleepy. But then at other times I find words that excite me. Often those are words the definitions of which elude me—like “disease” or “algebra”. I turn them over in my mind, and I read over their definitions. But those almost always contain other unfathomable words, which then excite me further. And I am forced to take a sopor after all.

I don’t know how else to relax.

The zoo used to help, but I haven’t gone there lately because of those children. I have nothing against robots, of course. But those children…

DAY TWENTY-ONE

I went to the zoo today and spoke to the woman in red. She was sitting on the bench by the iguanas and I sat beside her and said, “Is the python a robot?”

She turned and looked at me. There was something strange, mystical, about her eyes—like those of someone under hypnosis. Yet I could see that she was thinking, and that she wasn’t drugged. She said nothing for a long time and I began to think she was not going to answer and would pull back into her Privacy the way we are all taught to do when we are troubled by strangers. But just as I started to shrug and get up she said, “I think they are all robots.”

I looked at her, astonished. Nobody ever talked quite that way. And yet it was the way that I had been thinking, for days. It was so disturbing that I got up and left, without thanking her.

Leaving the House of Reptiles I saw the five children. They were all together, all holding ice-cream cones, their eyes wide with excitement. They all looked at me, smiling. I looked away…

DAY TWENTY-TWO

One compelling thing that keeps appearing in the films is a collection of people called a “family.” It seems to have been a very common arrangement in ancient times. A “family” is a group of people that are often together, that even appear to live all together. There are always a man and a woman—unless one of them is dead; and even then that one is often spoken of, and images of the dead one (“photographs”) are to be found near the living, on walls and the like. And then there are the younger ones, children of different ages. And the surprising thing, the thing that seems characteristic of these “families,” is that the man and woman are always the mother and the father of all of the children! And there are older people sometimes too, and always they seem to be the mothers and fathers of either the man or the woman! I hardly know what to make of it. Everyone seems to be related.

And further, much of the sense of feelingfulness that these films have seems profoundly connected with this being related. And it seems to be presented in the films as good.

I know, of course, not to try being a moral judge of anyone. And certainly not of people from another time. I know the life in the films is contrary to the dictum “Alone is best”; but that is not what bothers me. After all, I have spent days at a time with other people—have even seen the same students every day for weeks. It is not the Mistake of Proximity that bothers me about those “families.” I think it may be a kind of shock that the people take such risks. They seem to feel so much for one another.

I am shocked and saddened by it.

And they talk so much to one another. Their lips are moving all the time, even though no audible words come out.

DAY TWENTY-THREE

I had gone to bed last night thinking of those risks the people long ago were taking in their “families” and then the first thing this morning I went through a film that showed just how serious those risks could be.

On the screen an old man was dying. He lay in a strange old-fashioned bed at his home—not in a hospital dying center—and he was surrounded by his family. A clock with a pendulum was on the wall. There were girls, boys, men, women, old people—more than I could count. And they were all unhappy, all crying. And then when he died, two of the younger girls threw their bodies across his and heaved with silent sobbing. There was a dog at the foot of the bed, and when the man died it laid its head on its paws and seemed to grieve. And the clock stopped.

The whole spectacle of unnecessary pain upset me so that I left the film unfinished and went to the zoo.

I went directly to the House of Reptiles and the woman was there. She was alone in the building except for two old men in gray sweaters and sandals who were smoking dope and nodding over the crocodiles at the pool in the center of the room. She was walking about carrying a sandwich and not seeming to look at anything.

I was still disturbed—by the film, by everything that had been happening since I began this journal—and