Thank You, Naivety, For Failing Me Again - Laura Marling and Bringing Forth Armageddon

Mrs. Dalloway’s journal sits on the nightstand, hidden under some novels with bookmarks sticking out, next to the sleeping pills and a glass of water, hidden but not unused, and there is Mrs. Dalloway herself,

Looking for answers in unsavory places (Don’t Ask Me Why), like if she could browse those pages enough, go backwards long enough, the same exact words would be found there, maybe in a different order, but nonetheless the same words. Clarissa took her glass of water and walked out. The burner was hot now, and she was making scrambled eggs, a breakfast heavier than her usual soygurt with fruit, but she felt particularly frail today, the faintest hint of head ache behind her violet eyes gathering force in the manner of an imminent storm, making ready to take her into its grip for the remains of the day. She spilled a little, pouring coffee into one her mugs, her Thursday mug, because it was Thursday, wasn’t it, or was it Friday already? Her neck was tight, she had slept the little she had like a contortionist, like in that picture she had of herself as a baby, with her neck in L-shape along the outline of the crib. She took pains in wiping the spilled brown drops from the counter and the floor. She realized it was in need of a decent mopping, and how long had that been? But hadn’t she just mopped the entire house yesterday? Or had it been a dream? Well, another muscle relaxant later should fix that right up, maybe with a painkiller chaser, because why not, it wasn’t like she had anything of extreme importance to do, was it? If she only had the energy to try and immerse herself into sleep without the drugs, but if not this week, maybe next week, or the week after that. She glanced at the wintery view, pouring the beaten eggs with rich cream, the twenty percent stuff, because why not, and a dash of salt, on the pan. Pine trees, with snow coats on, like very tall asylum guards.

I will not be a victim of romance (I Was an Eagle), like when Mrs. Dalloway was living on her own in that big house back east, and no one would answer the telephone for weeks on end, and why had she been asking for bloody forgiveness in the first place, you could not bring back the past, and why did Gatzby have to refer to everyone as “old sport” anyway? Now the house appeared in her dreams, the demolished house where she had once been so happy, until no one would answer the telephones anymore, and she had to pull over in the rainstorm because she was unable to see the road from the violently banging drops. Now all there was left of the house was a landscaped hill so the rich could have clear view of the river. The whole car had seemed to be under water.

It’s not like I believe in everlasting love (Ghosts), and what did it really matter if the doves had flown all the way from back east to coo her into another spring morning, when the morning was just another in a succession of many, Mrs. Dalloway awoken from a jumble of nightmares and visits to her Dream City, where she was suspended at the curb, waiting for the button place to open to mend her coat, unable to cross the street, or she was waiting on the freeway ramp, suddenly realizing she was able to see the asphalt through the floor of the car, and there really was no floor at all, her feet were touching the freeway now. The backseat was swarming with crabs, and she was trying not to touch them, but all the buttons were weighing her down, and now they were spilling on the road from her pockets, and my goodness those crabs had enormous claws, was it normal for them to have such enormous claws, but no one was paying any attention to her distress, because they had all driven away hours ago, and it was twilight, and she could not start the engine anymore, and the crabs would surely get her. She wiped a thin film of sweat from her forehead, and touched the vacant pillow beside her. He had gone to work. The doves lived in the fir tree outside her bedroom window, and the cooing was very loud now. Mrs. Dalloway realized she was just a fool, entertaining the child-like idea that the birds had flown from home to cheer her up, but it was the only thing that sustained her now, the similarity, the familiarity of the sounds, like waking up in her mother’s house.

But I am your keeper and I hold your face away from light (Devil’s Spoke), like he would tell her when he was forced to wake Clarissa up from her nightmares. She had some faint idea, afterwards, of what it was that made her scream in her sleep, but never more than that. Until that first time she had never before had any sort of night terrors, but with the sleeplessness came also the nightmares. She couldn’t handle the light being turned on at all, only the softest light from the venetian blinds that striped both their figures in bed, because of the street light that was right outside their bedroom window. His hand, streaked with dawn’s pink and peach colors, stroking her hair, and his whisper in her ear that it was alright, he was there, she was safe.

But you never did learn to let the little things go (Blackberry Stone), like what was he doing, bringing her all these roses, when Mrs. Dalloway had specifically said she would get the flowers herself? Red roses, yellow roses, and pink roses, and now there were so many of them that they no longer fit in the vase, and she had to split them into two different vases. What was he doing, apologizing like that, all poetic and tearful, and how was he able to erase the impact of his angry, thoughtless words? I will go out to the lighthouse by myself, I don’t need you, and you are not invited, because you hurt me, she almost spoke out loud, filling the clear vases with warm, cloudy water, carefully cutting the ends, starting to situate them in colorful arrangement. I cannot, will not, be anybody’s Daisy, she thought. Time is a killer, not a healer, she thought, putting a bleeding finger in her mouth. They are so beautiful, though, and so fragrant, she thought.

Yes, I am a master, I have you, bad man (Little Love Caster), and she took her love to be a warzone, now, and she had to have her defenses up all the time. Words were bombs, words were everywhere, and if he didn’t detonate them, she would, and how she had come to loathe words, all words all the time. Words in edgewise, words behind closed doors and by the threshold, waiting to be tripped over. She screamed for him to shut his mouth, she couldn’t take it anymore, but it was always her words that were more destructive, more effective, more violent, and more regrettable, than his. Because they shared a love for words, it was so easy to do harm. She was the master of destruction, now, the master, all bow down to her reign of terror. No one escaped her terrible net of words. No one got out alive. She was drained of words, and yet she possessed them all.

The woman downstairs just lost her mind and I don’t care how (False Hope). It would never end, it would go on forever, and her face was so different, the features of someone unfamiliar and hostile. Clarissa had disappeared now. There was just the numb, hollow liar who told her doctors she was fine now, because it had been over a year, and no one realized how horrible it was, so why fight it now, there were no loved ones, only enemies, the smiles insincere and mean, the concerns arbitrary and fleeting, the advice full of obnoxious superiority and contempt. Everyone could just go to hell with their gossip and their innuendo and sick hope that she would disappear. They had had their wish. She who had once been Clarissa gave up.

I banish you with love (Soothing), she began in her journal, because wasn’t it so that we become enamoured with our decease, it becomes like a black rose we nurse in the dead of night, like those razor sharp diamonds that cut us when we try to touch them, nevertheless not being able to let them fall from our hands, because they are so precious to us now, we are already accustomed to the pain, the memory of life without the sore spot inside our mouth already so dim it might not have happened at all. Sleeplessness, Clarissa wrote, will be defeated, there will be no more waking up with the sheets all jumbled and wrapped around my legs, no more feeling I would even die before any more of this, this is a sickness, I can’t help having caught this, but I can help getting rid of it, and for that to happen, I need to let you go now.

You crawled out of the sea straight into my arms (Crawled Out of the Sea), like when Mrs. Dalloway was on her daily walk, and she had decided to put something nice on, it was summer, and she felt elated and beautiful, and she had rummaged her wardrobe and found a lovely floral patterned dress, light and appropriate for the flaming sun. She had her straw hat on, and as she was walking past the rows and rows of different colored rowing boats by the shore, a huge Great Dane, all covered in mud from frolicking in the water, leaped right up to her lap all of a sudden. Mrs. Dalloway screamed in surprise and instant delight, laughing when the owner hurried after his dog, bellowing and fearing terrible trauma for the lady in the old-fashioned summer dress and summer hat. “It’s quite alright, I’m not afraid at all!” Mrs. Dalloway responded, caressing and patting the big dog, forgetting all about her meticulous dressing up for her walk. I’m not afraid at all, she thought, smiling.

She keeps a pen behind her ear (Wild Fire), and when the mood hits her, she writes down trite things like make yourself happy, or she who waits for her lover to rescue her will be waiting until her dying day. Just like she couldn’t have, wouldn’t have rescued him, either. The ringer is there, still, dormant now, and sometimes she takes it out and looks at it, and wonders how there was a time once that she thought it was all she was, and his love a mere trick, something to get over. But she extracted the thing herself, and now she is Clarissa. Clarissa full of love. And he must love her, having survived the demon. She hasn’t screamed in her sleep for almost a year. Still, he would caress the silver in her hair, telling her it was the most beautiful silver he had ever seen. She guesses she is lucky. It was luck that they ran into each other. Not everything comes out trite.

Words in italics are Laura’s. 

For M.