¹  It was the particular feel of him that made me want to go back:  everything that is said is said underneath, where, if it does matter, to acknowledge it is to let on to your embarrassment.  That I love you makes me want to run and hide.

 

²  It is not the story I know or the story you tell me that matters; it is what I already know, what I don’t want to hear you say.  Let it exist this way, concealed; let me always be embarrassed, knowing that you know that I know but pretend not to know.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

³  One thing the great poet confessed before biting into her doughnut:  a good poem writes itself as if it doesn’t care—never let on that within this finite space, your whole being is heavy with a need to emote infinitely.

 

⁴  I never uttered that loose word;  I only said, “I opened my legs and let him.”

 

⁵  One thing the great poet would never confess was that afterwards, she took me into the back room and slapped me for loving her.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

⁶  The illustration also represents various states of being.  The student of art should be particularly cautious of interpreting such depictions without proper background training, as it is often easy to confuse source light with light from another world, as in movies when it is easy to confuse internal sound with external sound.^a   Sometimes the artist, as does the director, plays tricks for symbolic purposes.^b

 

^a  In cinematic terms, “actual sound” refers to sound which comes from a visible or identifiable source^* within the film.  “Commentative sound” is sound which does not come from an identifiable source within the film but is added for dramatic effect.^**

 

^b  See footnote 1.

 

^*  By “identifiable source” it is meant that there exists a presupposition, an understanding that an opposing “unidentifiable source” exists.

 

^**  By “commentative sound” it is meant that there exists a presupposition, an understanding of a “commentator” who is thereby executing the “commentary.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

 

⁷  The visit to the circus is of particular import if one considers this passage from a letter written to the man whom she regarded as her guardian angel (to whom she also dedicated a great number of poems).  Dated in her 23^rd year, the letter states:

 

               . . . I told Lousine that I was terrified of clowns; no, not just childishly afraid like being afraid of the dark, but really, really fearful, like starting-your-period-for-the-first-time scared.  Anyhow, she looked at me serious-like and made me promise in that strong Armenian-Brooklyn way of hers that I would never reveal this to anyone because anyone could be an enemy.  She made me swear up and down and on graves and holy books and the needle in the eye and all sorts of crazy shit that drove me insane.  I can’t help but think now that something bad is waiting to happen and that there’s this little man staring at me from between the fence slats.  I can see his little eyeball sometimes, showing up in the various holes in my apartment.  But you know what scares me the most?  It’s that clown in Anthony and Cleopatra who says to Cleopatra, “You must not think I am so simple but I know the devil himself will not eat a woman.  I know that a woman is a dish for the gods, if the devil dress her not.  But truly, these same whoreson devils do the gods great harm in their women; for in every ten that they make, the devils mar five.”  So you see, Andy, I have been seriously stressed.  Am I marred?  E. says he cannot love me now and that I have a dark side he is afraid of . .  .

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

⁸  It wasn’t that the ice-cream man came everyday; he came whenever the child heard his music.

 

⁹  The confessions denoted here are lies, as it would be senseless to list my true regrets.  The true regrets are indexed under the subject heading “BUT EVERYONE DIES LIKE THIS,” found at the end of the text.

 

¹⁰ Given this information, the definition of “footnote” is of particular interest to the overall understanding of “bedlam.”  Consider, for instance, this denotation:  n.2.  Something related to but of lesser importance than a larger work or occurrence.

 

¹¹  See also De Sica’s Bicycle Thief; thus the leitmotif of this body:  What will I have found in the end if I am seeking as if I am seeking one thing in particular?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

¹²  The great pre-Socratic philosopher Empedocles did not keep the commentative sound of his life a secret.  He says of the source of mortal things, one should “know these things distinctly, having heard the story from a god” (As told by Simplicus, Commentary on Aristotle’s Physics 160.1-1 = 31B23).

 

¹³  It should be understood that Heraclitus also lost a bicycle.  In Miscellanies (2.17.4 = 22B18), Clement of Alexandria quotes Heraclitus as saying, “Unless he hopes for the unhoped for, he will not find it, since it is not to be hunted out and is impassable.”

 

¹⁴  I Corinthians 13:5  “Doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil”; 13:7  “Beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things”; 13:11 “When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a woman, I put away childish things”; 13:12  “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”  Given these passages, it is easy for the reader to infer that the protagonist, aside from despising her pubic hair, also believed that she was being watched and thus began her odd behavior of hiding and casting her voice into a void.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

¹⁵  Ms. Boully must have been confused, as it was actually ________, not ___________, who uttered “______________________________________________” and thus became such a symbolic figure in her youth; however, critic and playwright Lucia Del Vecchio (who is known to transcribe some of her dialogue directly from audiocassettes she and Boully recorded during their undergraduate years), argues that Boully was well acquainted in ______________.  As this is a suspicious oversight, Del Vecchio cites evidence from a recorded conversation where Boully argues __________________

______________________________________________________.

 

¹⁶  Although the text implies a great flood here, know this is seen through a child’s eyes, and here she actually played in sprinklers while loving Heraclitus:  “A lifetime [or eternity] is a child playing, playing checkers; the kingdom belongs to a child” (Hippolytus, Refutation 9.9.4 = 22B52).

 

¹⁷  Although the narrative is rich with detail and historical accounts, the author is blatantly supplying false information.  For example, the peaches were not rotten and there were no flies or rain for that matter.  The man she claims to have kissed never existed, or rather, the man existed; however, she never kissed him, and because she never kissed him, she could only go on living by deluding herself into believing that he never existed.

 

¹⁸  The last time I saw the great poet I brought her strawberries, hoping she would ask me to bed.  Instead, she only suggested that I touch how soft her fuzzy pink sweater was.  I broke down crying as soon as I made my confession.  I told her that I had written a bad poem, that in the space between me and him, I emoted too much through speech and touch, and I made it known that I was willing to emote infinitely; the poem was so bad, he left.  I was hoping that the great poet would kiss me then, but instead, she slapped me and forbade me from telling anyone that I was her student.  I left her, and I never told her that I was on my hands and knees, picking those berries for her.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

¹⁹  After the author’s death, it was Tristram who went through her various papers and came across the many folders labeled “footnotes.”  It wasn’t until years later, when he was curious as to which papers the footnotes corresponded that Tristram discovered that the “footnotes” were actually daily journals of the author’s dreams.  Del Vecchio recalls a later audiocassette recording with the author saying, “I have it all worked out.  I write down my dreams because I understand them once symbols become written.  They’re all so sexually charged and I almost always feel ugly in them; they’re embarrassing and filthy.  But I have it all worked out.  No one will know.  I’ve relabeled everything in my study, including my books—you think you’re getting Shakespeare, but really, it’s astrophysics and cosmology or you open Hesse and you actually get Kierkegaard.  I’m not so off am I?  But really, I must confess . . .”  Del Vecchio, in her words, says, “And then she started going on and on about this Robert Kelly ^c guy.”

 

^c  The following excerpt from Robert Kelly’s “Edmund Wilson on Alfred de Musset:  The Dream” was pasted above the author’s various beds in the various places she lived:  “Dreams themselves are footnotes.  But not footnotes to life.  Some other transactions they are so busy annotating all night long.”

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

²⁰  Besides the obvious lost marbles or stolen purse or misplaced lottery ticket, the theme of loss preoccupied her even in sleep.  The following is from a dream dated in the author’s 33^rd year:

 

               (But then, I remembered in my dream that this was only a dream and that when you lose something in a dream, when you wake up, you realize it’s still there.  Of course, the reverse is true as well, as when I dreamt I had silver eyes and wings, but upon waking up, upon looking into the mirror, I discovered brown eyes, no wings.  So, in my dream, I woke up from my dream in my dream, thereby correcting the situation on my own.

 

               This reminds me of Kafka’s Trial, in a passage deleted by the author:   “. . . it is really remarkable that when you wake up in the morning you nearly always find everything in exactly the same place as the evening before.”)

 

²¹  Ezra Pound:  Questing and passive. . . . / “Ah, poor Jenny’s case” . . .

 

 

 

© Jenny Boully / from The Body / First published in Seneca Review, later in Best American Poetry 2002