INTRODUCTION TO AUTOBIOGRAPHY
IT IS DIFFICULT TO IMAGINE OR ASSUME ANOTHER MAN'S REASON or motivation for writing a piece of fiction or telling an imaginary story of any kind. Of my own ambitions to do such a thing I can only say those reasons were never sufficient to finish a work or to imagine a proper ending, possibly, and of this story it can only be said that it is ever ongoing and therefore impossible to leave any way except unfinished. I might think a man writes fiction as a means of telling of an invisible thing he saw pass between other men, possibly a moral good or a crime; he might wish to "strike a blow," of some sort, against the state, or earn himself a living, (I have never felt that I had the right or the ability to speak for a woman so I will not attempt to do so here). To write a piece of non-fiction I can suppose he has in his mind an entirely different motivation than that which I am experiencing now. This is to say simply that it is a piece of non-fiction I have in mind to write. It is really impossible to express the possible cause of such a desire other than to state that I ,wish to write the thing any goddamned way I please and not caring what anyone will think of it. If it is pretentious to say of it that it is a gift to humanity or go even further to support a claim that it is no way my property to sell or to use in any way to promote myself I should probably congratulate myself for aspiring to an even greater measure of pretentiousness considering the murder I intend to do to a few of the characters involved. If it is superfluous to hope to recall things lost by recounting all that remains of my memory then it will have to be enough that this reason will have to do.
It can easily be maintained that all stories are works of fiction in that they exist only in the imaginations of minds and are transferred one to another and never without intention or slant as the various details are remembered and forgotten, but it can also be said that therein is the beauty and ugliness of books; a story can never be repeated in nature but not for lack of trying and insistence that it is or can be, as there are many among us who believe there are but a handful of stories, "archetypical," repeated endlessly, the fable and the epic; I would therefore openly pursue the creation of a piece of literature both fiction and "non," feeling it interesting that from humanity we most often speak of the truth, as least in literature, as a "non-lie;" rather we might not sell as many books if the categories to choose from were labeled "true," and "not-true," or perhaps "fact," and "non-fact;" we would be forced to give them away like so many booklets containing directions to the newest machines and textbooks in old schools, (along with so many many other hated things); it seems better to imitate the bible, it should be supposed, if one is going to begin to presume he migh write the best selling book of all time, it would be beneficial to know what book he needs to beat.
It is quite likely a bad idea to take another trip through the past, and certainly my father would agree.. the psychologists of the day are warning against "re-traumatizing," the traumatized child with too much therapy, but because the decision it entirely my own I'll have to give it my best guess.
I had a woman not too long ago identify herself as a "secret admirer," of mine.. and it might have been a mistake to ask what she found to be "admirable." She mentioned my "brokenness." (I supposed as that applied to another quality she related to, in that she thought we both "want to be a better person"), but I did not ask for clarification, though, immediately thought of how stupid it would be to go shopping for an appliance, such as a washing machine or an automobile, and ask for the one that doesn't work right.. or might some other way fit into the category of "broken things;" she might of course thought something of a man who has been broken like a horse.. but again, I did not ask. It seemed to me a little too armchair-psychology to get all excited about. The relationship did not last.
Herein lies the answer to the question of why this might be valuable, none of the previous relationships with secret admirers have lasted, none of the relationships with admirers right out in the open have lasted, which is a short way of saying "admiration," in general seems limited to all those people who know of me.. and that's all.. or I remain forever admirable to those to whom I remain forever a concept.. (just really wanted to get the word "concept," in there somewhere.. as it is a very popular word or concept itself for denying anything too personal out of anybody else's mouth.. "asshole," for example, is just a concept).. people love flaws, I mean, so long as they remain concepts.. like "poor people," pull at the heartstrings when they are on the TV instead of living next door.. or, ("God forbid"), in the adjoining bedroom.. which brings us to "adjoining," or "attached," (yes, as another concept).. something you have to look at everyday until it gets worn out.. and this goes back to my "brokenness," being attractive.. or my already being worn out.. can I go gracefully, is the question, without making the least effort to defend myself; it might be that my worn-out-ness is admirable after all. That would surprise me. Rather, go into the thing with no expectations.. that's another useful concept. Keep the bar reasonable. But I have clearly lost the point.
Attachment is the unavoidable.. what's the word.. not "preliminary," not "free style," hmmm.. you know, in "gymnastics," the word for "must do," AHHA! "COMPULSORY." Attachment is compulsory, and I am going to skip the various "attachment styles," altogether.. and get down to the ones we all know will not last, or work, or work right.. or are completely broken.. even if we're looking for that precise thing it's still a bummer when it happens.. this is why Dads don't go shopping with anybody.. shopping only proves how incredibly stupid the world and everyone in it really is.. not immediately of course.. but quicker and quicker..
But I'm going to leave that alone incomplete and move on to the idea, "it's not good for man to be alone," (see: the Holy Bible).
THE FARM WAS NOT A FARM AT LEAST in any contemporary understanding of the word; no crops of any kind were ever planted on it in the years recorded here, no vegetables or animal feed grown, nothing of that kind produced for sale in any market, there was no livestock kept.. but this is not to say nothing was ever sowed and harvested on the property.
RENEE DID NOT WHOLEHEARTEDLY WANT TO BE pregnant in the fall of the year we begin this documentation with, (what is known one supposes everywhere in the world now as 1963). 1963 is something of a famous year here in the U.S.A. It is unconnectedly and uncoincidentally of course the year John F. Kennedy was assassinated but the two events just mentioned could not be more unrelated to each other; two things rather could not be more unrelative to each other and we mention this as a way of saying a lot of things happened in 1963 that were just as, if not even more so, remarkable or fantastic, just as substantial or worth talking about than the President of the United States getting shot in the head and a nothing girl finding herself pregnant and isolated on a filthy backwoods dilapidated farm and out of the way piece of dirt.. and we say it also as a way of saying there were lots of people all over the world and in the United States who knew little to nothing of John Kennedy and were otherwise not troubled in the least by the news of his getting shot in the head, (to say they heard anything of it). Renee would not say too much concerning any feelings she had about either occurrence that year or comment on very much of any news of the day and this would be a habit she would take into her later life, that of being a contemplative woman. She certainly did not wish to be pregnant at that time but this was expressed by an even deeper silence.
It is probably best to leave speculations about her quiet intentions out of things or to try and guess her motivations for remaining silent about much, but this is impossible to do; Renee, like everyone else, suffered the necessity of maintaining both a private and a public face, as is common to everyone who ever lived, (we can imagine there are some cultures at some point in time and some other place who enjoy a smaller gap between these two persons, but it is not here now). Renee moreover had a rich laugh and did not come out of a silent household. If an interesting parallel might be drawn between Renee and the man she would be married to in 1963, it might be the circumstance of her having grown up the middle child in a lively home with two boys as siblings compared to Bud, who was born between two sisters; it might be a rather obscure parallel as that between noise and sound themselves, as it seems perfectly unlikely the two would never notice such a thing or ever speak about it; the commonality or mirroring of circumstance or that the difference was one of gender, these were things of future generations then.. so it is just as unlikely to think they made anything significant of it. His name was Victor but he was known to everyone as "Bud," then, and he did very much come out of and prefer the house silent. It is because of this the children born in it can only imagine any dialogue that passed between Renee and Bud in their private moments alone together, (if this is different for any child in the United States), but because of television and for reasons we should make clear, (if a story should have any value at all), it is very likely that something in the nature of "Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolfe," (an unhappy play of the times available on YouTube), would be perpetually resounding in the house if the two had remained married to one another.
This is to say that the two together were very much a poor man's "Liz and Dick," (as Bud himself might have worded it), as people mimicked the television and the television mimicked people. If there should be no reality to either, one story might as well be the other, if anyone does not see his or her "self," in the Art of the time, he or she might go on to create something else, if there is something else. This is to say it was a time of exactly this.. the great exploration of the "self," and the "Artist," (in the U.S.A.), hoping to claim some legitimacy in the world.. the private self of public persona being splashed onto the innocent.. willy-nilly and precisely. If the "true crime," genre was yet an infant, of sorts, by now we expect crime.. if the brain is a slave to its own making stories of things, this necessity of making sense of the incredible.. the incongruous.. the stupid and profane.. if we hadn't yet been inundated with adjectives like "senseless," or "pointless," or "unnecessary," when speaking of human behavior.. now life is very nearly reaching its apparent goal of becoming completely meaningless, in the "collective," but this cannot be a reality.. but that all that should be meaningful to one is somehow less meaningful to another.. and this is an absolute reality.
IT WAS A GREAT SUPERSTION THEN THAT PEOPLE SHOULD never "speak ill of the dead," and this was a belief Bud kept along with his showing himself at every funereal; we can only imagine the inner ill chattering away in everyone's mind. If the child knows by the tingling in his skin alone, it all goes beyond words in such a way as to stop the mouth completely. This is a thing man should never succeed in doing.
The reader will be confused immediately by the introduction of another "Renee," so soon in the story, (an immense woman, this other Renee, wholly two of our little "Lizzes," put together), but there is no helping it. This Renee dressed in all blacks and whites, greys and sometimes pale blue-greys, except for some flesh colored stockings peeked out about her ankles and calves whenever she sat down.. the flesh color would be seen beneath all that what would later be identified as "the habit of the nun;" it was not attractive and just the opposite, very incongruent, the visual, a thing looking almost like bandages wrapped so inhumanly tight that no circulation is possible, these white-bandage-looking socks showing through the stockings.. (we can't even describe it), to imagine there was more stocking underneath, or no leg at all, if that was her leg, all color was washed from it and put back on in the manner a flesh colored stocking might provide, but there must be undergarments, and no flesh of any leg exposed, (except of course her face), in that habit of the nun. And if there should be any purpose to autobiographies we should think the smashing of superstition to be a good thing, beyond the "wake," of its passing by.. we should hate to malign either Renee in the sense most given to the word, speaking spitefully and slanderously.. with so little to go on, only inference and polite society.. the public face at home. We get so lost in our wish for community that we despair it as a possibility now.. that the public face should meet the private.. with every one sitting in the living room and not splitting off into the bedrooms and dens.. a clean declaration of what is.. and that what is is what is.
NOTE: So much of this background is picked and pieced together that is seems like foolishness too even include it.. and we despair of ever doing our good work, (the ghosts and my self); a boy can't make out the confusion of two things being called the same thing and one can only wonder how much more mind-spinning it is when the things are people, and more than that "family." This second Renee was a nun in the Catholic Order of the day, and it seems impossible to open with the first Renee without dragging in the second. for the other was the namesake of the first mentioned, and sister to the woman who would become the mother of the mother of me.
RENEE DIED AN OBSCURE DEATH ALONE in a studio apartment on the tenth floor of a subsidized high-rise housing facility, the likes of which can be found in any large city in each of the fifty United States of America.. (the very definition of "obscure," one should think). DJ was there on and off visiting her the last year of her life, (if the reader should wonder at all as to the veracity of what is written here).. some will say this was a choice and some will say it was a fate.
Chapter One
SHE HAD THE LOVES AND HATES LARGELY of a child, (RA), and the voices to quiet them, (she could not name), we know them as violence and ridicule.. (of a child). She meets these unreasonable feelings with the same derision and scorn, but with the same nameless impulse. And we hate to be analytic but we have a lot to say and little time to say it.. her outbursts and tantrums were met with violence, her squealing, (uncontrolled "ejaculations"), of joys brought ridicule.. and so we begin.