Charles Baudelaire
In Paris Spleen (1869), Baudelaire imagines a freed-up kind of writing he seeks to produce: “Who has not . . . dreamt of a poetic prose, musical without rhythm or rhyme, supple and choppy enough to accommodate . . . the undulations of reverie, the bump and lurch of consciousness? It is above all in the habit of huge cities, the endless crisscrossing of their ways, that this obsessive ideal originates.” When he speaks of “the sanctioned madness of a city, the very thing to disrupt the most resolute loner’s brain,” he means the sounds of a city and the sudden brushes of strangers on the streets.
Today, when I came upon this book, I was taken by Baudelaire’s comparison of writing that jumps around—this thought leading to that thought—to walking in a city, where you bump into dramatic exchanges and discover unknown neighborhoods around a corner. Baudelaire is describing writing that is a flaneur and that I think Richard and I have been practicing since we met, 17 and a half years ago at the artist colony Yaddo.
Years ago, we had the idea of producing a book that would cut back and forth between the pieces we wrote in our notebooks (2006 - 2009). The book was called Unmarked Trail. We were mostly living in Arizona at the time, and we were learning about each other’s pasts from whatever popped up in the pieces we wrote. We’d sit together, as we still do, write for a certain amount of time, and then read the stories to each other. For this practice, you have to write either a narrative or a meditative essay. That’s what makes it a writer’s notebook instead of a diary or a journal.
I looked at Unmarked Trail today and fell in love with Richard’s writing pretty much the way I fell in love with him. I wanted to share a sense of our early life together and the pleasure of his prose. The idea of the book was that our pieces would advance arm-in-arm, like walkers in a city or on a wildlife trail, and I thought I’d give you a sample pairing. The first one is Richard’s called “Greeneland,” and the one that follows is mine called “Richard.”
Graham Greene
“Greeneland,” by Richard Toon
One
I was reading “Under the Garden,” a story by Graham Greene published in 1963—although the idiom and references make it sound like it was written many years earlier. It opens in a doctor’s office. The narrator is looking at X-rays of his lungs and is reminded of grainy photographic maps he’d studied during the war, searching for caches of weapons. Often in Greene we’re in a world of stringent necessity that makes it seem as if World War II will never end. Office workers in Greeneland still use manual typewriters. Railways stations are drafty, and in shabby pubs men in tweed jackets drink gin and tonic and chat up blowsy barmaids.
Greeneland can materialize in Mexico, Cuba, Africa—anywhere ex-colonials inhabit uncomfortable outposts with broken plumbing. Where, too, people ache for the love of an absent God, and grace enters through double agents. The seediness, the agony of the soul, and the small solace of Catholicism glinting through a cracked window, all this reflects its actual origin: the newspaper office in Nottingham where Greene worked before the war, lodging with stingy landladies and discovering the loneliness of dead-end work.
Laurie and I have just visited a patch of Greeneland in southern Scottsdale at the oxymoronically named British Gourmet, where a sour-faced countryman of about my age offers depressing-looking foodstuffs to recent American tourists and marooned citizens of the UK. On display are McVitties digestive biscuits, Cadbury’s milk chocolate, Gayle’s lemon curd, Hartley’s jam, and Wheatabix. The shelves are sparsely stocked, suggesting postwar scarcity. I half expect the proprietor—I’ll call him Doyle—to ask for my ration book. Assembled are the nostalgic brands of Little England’s back parlor—no multicultural UK here, no taste of the West Indies or the Indian subcontinent, not even Eurofood. It’s a theme park celebration of British austerity, intolerance, and bad service.
Doyle maintains his station behind the counter, averting his eyes from our movement down the aisles. He doesn’t really belong in a shop, his manner says, no, he’s awakened from a hazy sleep to find himself mysteriously stranded in one. He’s chatting with his chum Andrews, another ex-pat. They banter about the bother of children and then Andrews says, “And women, like gongs, should be beaten regularly.” They crumple up in laughter.
As a customer in Greeneland, you begin each exchange with, “Would it be too much trouble to ask where [let’s say] the Typhoo tea is located?” Doyle directs you inaccurately with booming annoyance. You find your item with its egregiously inflated price and bring out your credit card. “Oh,” he says, the corners of his mouth turning down, “you don’t have enough cash today?” You finish your transaction with a bright chorus of “cheerio, cheerio,” to punctuate the mutual loathing.
Two
Every year at Humphrey Perkins, we would look out our classroom windows in late October to see the first layerings of white across the rugby pitch. By lunch the storm would pick up, and when the snow reached half an inch the headmaster would announce the school’s closing at 2:00 and direct those of us traveling by train to leave for the station by 1:30.
At half past the hour, we’d trudge off in a bedraggled line to meet the 2 p.m. to Leicester. No sooner would we arrive at the platform of Barrow-upon-Soar than the station master would shout across to where we were huddled that the train would be delayed an hour. Jeers would rise up. Someone would hurl a snowball at the stationmaster’s cap as he retreated to his little office to warm himself by a coal fire. Then we’d begin a snowball fight in earnest that wouldn’t end until everyone’s hands were so frozen and their necks so drenched from dribbled ice we could not move. The wind would howl, and we’d be trapped there in shorts, barred from entering the waiting room by the watchdog sixth form, our knees knocking until the train pulled in.
That an inch of snow, arriving like clockwork every autumn, could cripple British Rail was greeted as a custom in Greeneland, where you are trained to expect the worst, refuse to prepare for it, and refrain from grumbling when it arrives. If we kids objected, we were told we had it soft and that in the winter of 1947 the trains stopped for months, roads became impassible, villages were cut off, and people ate each other. There was pride in the catastrophe; trying to avert it would have been unsporting. Monty Python humor of extreme forbearance in the face of, let’s say, having your arm hacked off is closer to documentary than parody.
Three
I’m in Leicestershire on a visit from Scottsdale, and it’s taking more than an hour to wash three shirts in my sister’s machine. I fear they will emerge as miniatures. Everything here looks shrunken. Lynn’s cups are so small I need two for one drink. At the parents’ it’s the same, and I’m astonished by the amount of crockery used every few minutes as another round of tea is prepared. The activity explains why dad looks so small. He tells me he is two inches shorter than he was a few years ago. I know bone density declines with age, but I think he’s scaling down to the cups. I sound to myself like an arrogant American, and I don’t care.
Yesterday at the parents’, dad finds me in the lounge and says, “Oh dear, oh dear, how are we going to get to Lynn’s if we can’t get into Val’s car.” Val, my younger sister, is visiting from London. She has a large car you have to step up to enter and my father finds it difficult to stuff himself and my mother inside. “I’ve been up all night thinking about it,” he says.
I don’t know whether to laugh or fall into a depression. Every meeting for dad, every family gathering requires this dissection of challenges. What is the best way to get everyone together? When should they leave? Who should travel with whom? At moments like this, my body floats up and I go through the moves like a natural participant while feeling so much dread I want to pick up one of mum’s glass paperweights and smash it to the floor. To suggest a solution will prompt more anguish for dad. To say nothing will leave him turning the single worry like a stone tumbling in a polishing machine. I laugh and say, “Why don’t you just stay home and we’ll go off without you?”
Dad moves toward the door, puzzled. I feel guilty and say, “Okay, Lynn can come and fetch you. It’s only a twenty-minute drive. She’ll be happy to do it.” I know that happiness will not fill my sister’s heart to perform yet another duty on behalf of the aged P’s, but I know as well she believes it’s her job to look after them. Val, the lawyer, has power of attorney. Roy, the social worker, runs interference with National Health. I am the one they ask nothing of and are overjoyed to see.
“Here’s another thought,” I say. “Why don’t you just come outside now and see if you can get into the car?”
Dad brightens. “Good idea.”
Lynn says the family doesn’t socialize as often as the current round of meetings suggests. She says, “It’s because you’re here.” But her photo albums prove otherwise. Given the numbers in the extended family, there must be a birthday, a graduation, or a wedding anniversary to celebrate every few days. Lynn keeps track of it all in scrap books she’s learned to produce in classes. She holds with the view of a character in “Under the Garden” who says, “News is news however old it is . . . . And it comes round again when you least expect. Like thunder.” Yesterday on the phone, I described scrapbooking to Laurie, using the word escape as if it were an innocent pastime. Today, I find it indefensible, as well as the fact that Lynn’s dryer takes 80 minutes to finish my shirts. Also, its drum is minuscule and has obviously been designed for dolls’ clothes.
“Richard,” by Laurie Stone
One
Richard is lying on the floor of the bathroom. His head is on a mound of towels, and his bare feet are on the wall, when he asks me what my mother said as I pushed her wheelchair up to Columbus Circle. I said, “She called you a poor slob.” He laughs and says, “That’s not so bad.” I say, “How can it not be bad, a phrase with the words poor and slob in it?” He says, “It’s a bit ironic, sweetie.” He pronounces the t sharp. I say, “There’s no irony in my family. We are buffoons and barbarians.” He says, “Exactly, poor slobs. The phrase comes from an earlier time. It’s pity verging on empathy. You’re grudgingly identifying with the person.” He touches my knee. “Let’s look it up.”
We move to the living room. An entry on Google reads: “The next poor slob is the next software developer working on your project.” Another is from Breakfast at Tiffany’s, when Holly Golightly says to her rain-soaked cat: “Poor slob! Poor slob without a name! The way I see it I haven't got the right to give him one. We don't belong to each other. We just took up one day . . .” A third entry reads: “Why would some poor slob on a farm want to risk his life in a war when the best that he can get out of it is to come back to his farm in one piece?”
It seems Richard’s understanding is right, although, days earlier, it had entered me as a knife. We’re side by side on the couch. He says, “I don’t have a lot of money, and I can’t get any job I want. Your mother was saying I’m not worthy of you.” I say, “Oy, are you ever off base. She was saying I can’t do better than a poor slob because I’m a poor slob. She was saying you’re a poor slob for loving me.” He says, “Maybe, but ‘the next poor slob’ suggests a line of poor slobs, and we are all on the line.” He hugs me to him, and I don’t know then and I will never know the possible good of learning the way my mother sees me, or if what she says is how she sees me at all. “There is no getting off the line,” he says, and suddenly I don’t care.
Two
Richard is in bed when I bring him tea. His head is propped on pillows. His eyes are open, and his words are incomprehensible. There’s always a lag time in recognizing a low sugar.
I say, “Let’s do a test.” He says, “I’m fine.” I take one of his fingers as he tries to pull it away and I jab it with a little spring-loaded device, squeeze out a drop of blood, and hold it against the testing strip in the glucometer. The number is 56. A good number is between 70 and 140. I bring him glucose tablets, and he chews three of them fast. I give him toast with jam, and when he returns to himself, he can’t remember anything. His muscles ache, and his t-shirt is drenched with sweat.
Later, he reads on the couch while I work at my computer. When I turn around he’s on the floor and says, “I feel funny. Something’s wrong.” His voice is coming from down a corridor, and he’s dripping wet. While I get the testing kit, he tries to get to his knees, but his head goes down to the floor, and he looks through me, smiling. He says, “I don’t think this is just a low sugar. Something is really wrong with me.” I test his blood, and the meter reads 42. I give him orange juice and make him a sandwich. He chews slowly, like an animal at a formal dinner party. He shivers. I get him a fresh shirt, and he has trouble slipping his arms through the holes. When he’s back from the low, he says, “I didn’t know my name. I didn’t know who I was, but I recognized you.”
Three
It’s my sixtieth birthday, and I’m at Yaddo, and Suzy, my photographer friend, says, “You have to stretch toward people.” Strangely, I feel lighter.
As if Suzy has set in motion the butterfly effect, where seemingly unrelated events are linked, Richard invites me for a walk. Usually after breakfast, he strides off by himself along the wooded paths that snake around the four small lakes dotting the gigantic rich people’s estate. The day I arrive, I spot him in a little parlor off the dining room, a slender man with salt-and-pepper hair, who looks autumnal in brown and gray gear except for the fancy, rectangular glasses he wears with flashes of orange and blue. He has a musical British voice and eyes that smile, although more often they sit catlike and watchful behind his specs. Human beings have an on/off switch that indicates: you, yes; you, no.
We walk into the cool morning air, and we’re alone on the paths, strewn with wet leaves and fallen branches. He says his dad would disapprove of the untidiness. We circle the lakes, and our jackets swish, nearly touching. I’m used to being alone and I like solitude, but existence without intimacy is dull and flat. Richard is describing his early days in New York when he’d go to a diner on Columbus Avenue and order eggs over easy and every morning receive either porridge or waffles because no one could understand his accent. He’d eat it, anyway, and I can picture him, too polite to send back the food, and I like his forbearance and idiocy. “It’s my birthday,” I say but don’t mention which one, although I think he can tell because a tear falls down my cheek.
At the colony we’re 20 in all, quite the little microcosm of ages and personalities, and we take to playing a parlor game called Mafia, in which someone, randomly, draws a card that appoints them a hit man. I am routinely the first to be suspected and killed off. When I ask why, people say, “You look guilty.” Richard, on the other hand, is trusted, no stray need escaping him. At the end of his stay, when we drive to the airport and can’t find the entrance, he says it’s a sign he shouldn’t leave.
When Richard recalls Yaddo, he says something turned over in him after dinner one night when I cleared plates and silverware from the table—deftly, from the right, as I’d been trained to do as a cater-waiter. He saw an act of service, something soft and generous that hadn’t surfaced before.
For me the decisive moment came the morning I woke up with an idea: consciousness and religion arrived together, the one mistaken for the other. I pictured our primate ancestor, wandering across a savanna. Hearing hooves approach, she looks for escape in a tree and, finding none, she registers the danger in her head. She hears a thought, and it must feel like a voice originating from another source, a power greater than the animal and outside it. She mistakes her thought for the voice of God! I wanted to share this idea, and the next thing I knew Richard was in my head.
We ran into each other in the little parlor lined with books. There were throw pillows on the sofa and chairs, although they were straight-backed and uncomfortable. At first his hands rested on his thighs, and then he picked up a black stone with white stripes someone must have brought back from a walk. It was smooth as skin, and he rubbed it absently.
I said, “Can you picture our ancestor?” He said, “Picture her? I am her.” He talked about the numinous—moments, like our awareness of death, that are terrifying and fascinating at the same time. I was lost in this talk about thinking and dying, although I tried not to show how much.
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oh, i loved this. the "cheerio, cheerio" as code for mutual loathing, the unspoken "luxury!" in richard's part two, the russian nests of "poor slobs," the human on/off switch, and the last paragraph: perfection.
"We ran into each other in the little parlor lined with books. There were throw pillows on the sofa and chairs, although they were straight-backed and uncomfortable. At first, his hands rested on his thighs, and then he picked up a black stone with white stripes someone must have brought back from a walk. It was smooth as skin, and he rubbed it absently."
As I am discovering in everything you write, the layers are deep and unstinting, objects at first seeming bystanders as the story moves forward. But the layers are there. Working hard. Unstinting, offering new layers to be explored and discovered.
This scene reminds me of an early scene in Madame Bovary when Tolstoy describes the carpet and the toy train.
Thank you for this piece. There's so much to learn from it.