Jane Rule - Of Second Paragraphs
On Wednesday,
I took my daughter Hilary to Burnaby, after making dinner for her in Kitsilano.
On my way back I listened to a splendid Ideas on CBC Radio that was dedicated
to Dorothy Parker. I was not aware that she had coined the expression – what fresh
hell is this?. I then looked up her poem Resumé
which is a funny take on suicide:
Resumé
Razors pain you;
Rivers are damp;
Acids stain you;
And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren’t lawful;
Nooses give;
Gas smells awful;
You might as well live.
That had me
thinking of the pile of four books in my downstairs guest bathroom. I am sure
that few if any of my guests would sit on the toilet and begin to read them. I
have them there to remind myself of the importance in reading and in particular
these. One of my faves which connects to Parker’s Resumé is Jane Rule’s Taking
My Life.
Quite a few
years ago, Books in Canada called me
and the editor asked me, “Alex how would
you like to photograph a 6 foot lesbian? I did and she charmed me.
It is that first
paragraph that remains in my memory:
Writing an autobiography may be a
positive way of taking my own life. Beginning in the dead of winter, mortal
with abused lungs and liver, my arthritic bones as incentive for old age, I may
be able to learn to value my life as something other than the hard and
threateningly pointless journey it has often seemed. I have never been suicidal
but often stalled, as I have been now for some months, not just directionless
but unconvinced that there is one. No plan for a story or novel can rouse my
imagination, which resolutely sleeps, feeding on the fat of summer. And so I
take my life, with moral and aesthetic misgivings, simply because there is
nothing else to do.
