The Journal Keeper by Phyllis Theroux

Author:Phyllis Theroux
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
Published: 2010-04-10T04:00:00+00:00

ON THE PAIN OF LOSING A FRIEND THROUGH MISHANDLING

I think it is so difficult to lose a friend because there is a side of ourselves that is forever hidden except in their specific presence. We miss them, in part, because we miss that part of ourselves that is only activated in their presence. Conversely, there are people we avoid because they bring out parts of ourselves we would prefer not to look at. The sad thing is that when friends withdraw from us it is often because we bring out the worst in them.

A quick trip to New York made me long to be there more. When I emerge from Penn Station into the soupy air that smells of grime and chestnuts, old urine and sun, I feel connected to the world again. Everybody I brush by gives me energy, so that by the time I am halfway down the block I feel huge with life, even if I have no one to meet.

Subways are particularly evocative. I watched a young couple standing by the doors, swaying gently toward each other, so filled with attraction I marveled at their ability to keep their clothes on. Aboveground, there is such brilliant packaging of goods. A two-block stretch of Columbus Avenue easily relieved me of a hundred dollars: magazines, a shirt, a cup of coffee, and several bottles of olive oil and balsamic vinegar from a tiny, perfectly appointed shop that sold nothing but Italian oil, vinegar, salt, olives, and dipping dishes. Next door was a shop that sold nothing but products containing lavender.

Without a place to land, except a Starbucks, and having to drag a suitcase behind, one feels semihomeless. But what a rich human feast it is! My mind is restrung, my senses are more alert, and I think of Thomas Merton’s line about “everyone walking around shining like the sun.”

The joy to me was being with my friends Robert Ellsberg and Molly Friedrich for a few uninterrupted hours, talking about books and ideas and people while never running out of enthusiasm. Both of them are so alive, with a kind of wholeness and humor that pours out of them.

Molly’s house in Bedford Hills is perfect: a rambling yellow empire with places in and around it where children can develop, like negatives, in their own time. I loved the dog-wood at the top of the hill, the vistas of fields and trees, the way the house snakes around like a story, not revealing the whole at any one time. And no room is too big or too small for what it is.

During lunch with my editor friend Joan Bingham, her remark about the value of writing fiction—“you get to know a lot of different kinds of people”—struck me with force. This might solve a certain lack of stimulation in Ashland.

There are times when Ashland seems like a desert of inactivity and my life without purpose or importance. The phone does not ring with pressing developments, people wanting my company. Maybe it never did.

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