The thing that worries me is that I am so different from other
writers. Connecticut is just another state to me. And nature -
well, nature is just nature. When I see a tree whose leafy
mouth is pressed against the earth's sweet flowing breast, I
think, "Well, that's a nice-looking oak," but it doesn't change
my way of life.
Now I'm not going to stand here and run down trees and flowers.
Personally, I have three snake plants of my own, and in a
tearoom I'm the first one to notice the geraniums. But the
point is, I keep my head.
However, I've been reading a lot lately, and it's clear that I'm
out of step. Most serious writers of stature (I consider a
writer serious when he makes more than twenty thousand a year)
are giving up their psychiatrists and going back to the land.
You can't pick up a book these days without getting all involved
with the inspirational saga of some poor, harried writer who was
making sixty thousand a year and taking the five fifty-one back
to Larchmont, but it was all ashes - ashes.
Then he found this old abandoned sawmill in Connecticut that was
three hours from the station and twenty minutes from the
bathroom, and there he found contentment.
Right from the beginning the golden days were flowing to the
brim with the real stuff of life and living. No matter that the
maid quit because she wasn't used to cooking over an open
hearth. As soon as the wife opened a can of Heinz's spaghetti,
sprinkled it with marjoram, chervil, anise, and some dry
vermouth, she once again felt the sweet fulfillment of being a
mate and a mother. The children were no problem, because they
had to walk eight miles back and forth to school and were
scarcely ever around.
And Truth itself came knocking one morning, along about
ten-fifteen. It was a pretty spring day, the buttercups were
twinkling on the grass, and the only sound was the song of the
whippoorwill until the chimney broke off and fell down through
the dining-room ceiling, scattering beams, bricks, and mortar
here and there and quite demolishing the French Provincial
table.
Our writer came upon the wreckage on his way back from the well.
Although he was dismayed at first, he took hold of himself and
did what anyone else would have done in the situation. He went
out and sat on the back stoop. Pretty soon a chicken came
strolling by. He picked it up, and suddenly he became aware
that it was warm and that it was making little cheeping sounds
and that it was his chicken. He held it against his last clean
shirt. Now he was lost, lost in the miracle of the warmth and
the scratching and cheeping - even though, as I understand it,
cheeping is not at all unusual in chickens. Forgotten was the
hole in the roof, forgotten the dining-room table. He realized
that nothing else really mattered: from now on it was going to
be him and this chicken.
Well, you see how different we all are. I simply can't think of
a household disaster that would be in any way mitigated by the
presence of a chicken in the back yard. And on the day the roof
fell in, a smart chicken would keep out of my way. At a time
like that, it would be nothing for me to go out and kick one in
the tail feathers. But then I hate chickens, with their blank
beady eyes and the silly way they keep shaking their scrawny
little heads.
Formerly, when our writer lived in the sinful city, five o'clock
was a nightmare of cocktail parties at which he could never get
a martini that was dry enough (his own method with martinis
seems to have consisted in keeping the gin locked away in a
separate closet and walking past it once a week carrying a
bottle of vermouth). Now five o'clock finds him up to his
elbows in cows. "The Boy and I finished the milking, and there,
in sight of the cows, we sat down with a pail of the rich, warm
brew and refreshed ourselves." Of course, he may only mean that
they washed themselves in it, but doesn't it sound like they
drank it?
Then he adds, "My, how The Boy is shooting up. He is already an
inch taller than The Girl." I don't know what gets into writers
when they move to the country. They can't remember the names of
their children. Two weeks in the dew-soaked fields, and the
best they can do is The Boy and The Girl. Notice, though, the
way they keep tabs on the livestock. You're always reading how
"Lord Peter Wimsey got a nail in his hoof today," or "Thank
heaven, Edith Sitwell finally had her kittens."
All is not work, work, work in Utopia. Oftentimes, in the
evening after they have finished spreading the fertilizer, the
writer and his wife sit on the fence - with a wonderful sense of
"togetherness" - and listen to the magic symphony of the
crickets. I can understand that. Around our house we're pretty
busy, and of course we're not the least bit integrated, but
nevertheless my husband and I often sit together in the
deepening twilight and listen to the sweet, gentle slosh-click,
slosh-click of the dishwasher. He smiles and I smile. Oh, it's
a golden moment.
But to get back to the writer. Even from his standpoint, there
is one tiny flaw in all this bucolic bliss. What with setting
the winter potatoes and keeping the cows freshened, he hasn't
done a lick of writing since he got there. Of course, he has
kept a diary - and this becomes our only means of studying the
effects of contentment on a writer's style. The effects are
awesome.
Here was our boy, writing lovely, depressing stories for
the more advanced magazines. (I remember a typical one
about a stout woman of fifty with an Italian haircut, who
got very drunk in a club car and proceeded to tell a lot of
perfect strangers why she wouldn't give Harry a divorce.)
Now listen to him:
"Up at five-thirty to help with the lambing.
"Saw a yellow-bellied snipwhistle.
"Oh, such excitement as there was today. The corn shucker
arrived."
Help with a lambing at five-thirty? That settles it. I won't
_be_ a writer.
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![[rofl]](/xen/styles/default/xenforo/smilies.vb/013.gif "ROFL [rofl]")
