she was a famous writer by now.
in the winter many people wanted to talk to her. in the winter
many people took her to dinner, and touched her knee, and wanted
her to know them.
in the winter she was more and more on the streets, in the winter
she fled from the people who wanted to take her to dinner, and touch
her knee, and have her know them.
in the spring she left the city, she went to the ocean, she walked on
the sand, she walked up and down the oceans edge, over and over
again, she did not remember what it felt like to be sad. she remembered very little,
in the summer she wrote down everything she remembered,
in the summer people crowded onto the sand and at the oceans
edge so she went to the mountains,
in the fall a famous actor made love to her.
in the winter she forced him to leave, in the winter she called him
terrible names and felt great rage and forced him to leave,
then spring came and she went to the city.
in the summer she was tired, in the summer she became weary into
the marrow of her bones, in the summer she became so tired that her
physical vision diminished and a darkness began to close in on her.
in the summer she was so tired that the streets were blurred and she
could not see well enough to read.
in the fall she tried to remember her husband, and her first love,
and the first 4, and the four by fours and the three by threes, in the
fall she tried with all her might to remember.
in the winter the snows came, in the winter she stayed in the city
and she couldnt remember, in the winter she died, she was 29.
some awful facts, recounted by bertha schneider
(for J. S. )
bertha schneider, nearly 31, was too disturbed to have any friends,
she was like all the other schlubs running around out there, loss was
driving her crazy, loss was eating up her heart, loss was defeating her
cell by cell, corpuscle by corpuscle, loss was the desert in which she
was lost, life had finally forced her to shake hands with the great
democratizer—loss, bertha schneider, lost, was at last just like
everyone else—lost.
her cycles of loss traditionally divided into 3 year periods, a double
cycle was 6 years, there were no half cycles, she had had several double cycles sequentially, these she had put behind her. who could remember so much loss, even her loss was lost, except when she slept
and spectres of loss, all flaming and brazen, assailed her. but most
often even sleep was lost, beyond her immediate grasp, remembered
dimly, imagined badly.
it was this current cycle, only in its 2nd year, that had made her old
all over again, too soon, before her time, at 18 she had been 84.
Schneiders Cocktail—drugs, sex, radical politics mixed with a lot of
banana cream pie—had done that, at 25 she had been 100. m arriage, the good old fashioned kind—beatings and cleaning interspersed with the
