The Face My Mother Gave Me

(k) Text reads as: The idea was to take a photograph every day, to watch my face that way and see what was happening.  I expected to see myself relax, and grow rested.  After three days, I lost my resolve, forgot to ask, waited because I didn’t want to interrupt.  I didn’t make the tape recordings; I couldn’t write much about what I felt.  I couldn’t remember what the point was, why I wanted to expend the effort, how I was going to use the information.  THE FACE MY MOTHER GAVE ME

(l) Text reads as:  It is as if her domain extending into my thoughts.  It is as if I were undergoing a lobotomy.  (My mother’s piercing needle eye).  It is as if she could see into my head. It is as if she could see I didn’t like her.  It is as if I needed to be punished - as if I had sinned.

(m) Text reads as: The way I think I should behave, where does that come from? (I had put on good behavior like some old coat and was suffocating under it in the overheated houses.  Slowly, from lack of oxygen, brain cells began to deteriorate; the cover began to have less to hide; I was fading out from under. I would disappear, leaving a mold in my place.)  It is the habit of adaptability, the fallacy of thinking that it is safer to function anonymously, that I can move freely under cover, that I can appear to be what I am not, that I ever could.  It is the idea of disguise that trips me up.

(n) Text reads as: It doesn’t take very long, you know, before I don’t remember who I am, what I believe, before I am in transition again, moving back and forth.  It is as if my armor had been pierced or as if I didn’t have any and didn’t remember I needed it.  It is as if I had been turned inside out and the raw flesh that had kept me full and functioning had been scraped away.

(o) Text reads as: Waiting to leave; waiting for something to happen (One by one my ideas slip away; I can’t remember what it is I came for; I can’t remember what I intended to do). I forget where I live… I forget who I was before I… I don’t know who I am now… (Imbedded in the spaces between things).

(p) Text reads as:  “In essence, what we have found is that parents who continually intrude upon their children prevent them from constructing adequate borders.  If a parent makes his child feel that he is 'owned' or that he cannot function acceptably disconnected from the cord, that child apparently fails to believe in his integrity of his own body.  It has been speculated by some that the child does not at first distinguish his body from that of his mother.  Presumably, mother and child are so close and their interaction so intimate that the child feels as if they are part of one system.  It is said that a fundamental step in his maturing is learning to distinguish his body from mother’s -- to become aware that his body belongs to himself.  Many mothers fight this process. They are gratified in various ways by being able to experience the child’s body as an extension of their own.”  p34 Fisher. Body of Consciousness

(q) Text reads as: 12/27/73 A.M. Vito went to the airport with me so I had an easy, pleasant time.  Mom and Dad met me in Indianapolis at 3:30.  They had a small accident on the way down.  Stopped and got a new headlight and then a tenderloin sandwich, French fries and a chocolate milkshake, then to Mom and Dad’s (henceforth referred to as home), ate coffee and cookies then to Patty’s to talk more and to see the kids and had popcorn and Pepsi. Went back home about midnight and Vito called.  I sat up and looked at the Sears catalog while Mom and Dad fell asleep on the couch.  The house is fantastic.  They panelled walls and carpeted floors and painted and built shelf in and it looks like a magazine.  My mother keeps things perfectly clean and orderly.  Can’t help but be struck by the difference.  They are in town; I am sitting by the window watching it snow.  Can’t find a tape recorder to start the voice piece.  I probably should have brought more than 3 tapes. Exchanged gifts with my parents.  They gave me an electric skillet, a blanket, a bible, a blue flowered bathrobe and blue fuzzy house slippers, a music box motor that plays Anniversary Waltz, a flashlight, a set of brown flowered towels, a set of stainless steel flatware, and an orange ball that swings in a mirrored half-sphere.  We had a lunch of beef w. home-made noodles, carrots and potatoes, coleslaw, coffee and cookies.  Later Patty and her family came by, we had supper of Spam, pickles, leftover stew, orange juice (instead of milk).  They gave me a set of blue and green flowered sheets, an adjustable wrench, a hammer and 3 Pentel pens.  My farther took the first of a series of photographs of me.  I photographed a disarranged setting in my parent’s house.  I learned to play Silent Night on the [illegible] organ and saw the Marx Brothers on TV.

(r) Text reads as:  12-30-73 I am not getting into this like I should.  I’m not getting under the surface at all.  I’m just stopping off, waiting to get back, to get to work, to see Vito.  Maybe this is more about what growing up here was about…going through the motions, waiting – waiting for everyone to go to sleep, waiting to be alone, waiting to leave, creating as large a personal world as possible – and having it turn out to end at my skin (not even my clothing, just contained inside my skin).  Got up 10:30. Patty and the children came for lunch of meatloaf, baked beans, potato salad, hardboiled eggs.  Played with the kids.  Went to see Aunt Margaret – and her bedroom she fixed up and her craft projects and her quilts and her carpentry.  Rode around town.  Dinner of hot ham and cheese, French fries and a coke.  Ate sugar popcorn. Home – helped mother start using her acrylics, she put buttonholes in one pair of pants. I sewed most of another, did half of Mary’s necklace, called Vito, watched Star Trek. Parents went to sleep so didn’t get photo.  Did get some tape.  My knee hurts.

(s) Text reads as:  12-29-73 I have hives, a sore neck and a headache.  Slept until 1:00, fitfully the last 2 hours.  Didn’t want to get up with a headache.  Betty Hodgini came over and showed me pictures of Tommy’s wedding.  Breakfast of [illegible], grapefruit juice, cookies and coffee.  I put Mother’s heat-up vibrator on my neck and slept for an hour or so.  In the meantime Mother cleaned up the necklace I was making, the sewing I brought down to ask her about and my notebook.* I feel like I may be a disruptive influence.  Came to Patty’s for a special dinner – Hausenpfeffer, mashed potatoes, corn from the garden and stuffing.  Played with Christie and Kenny Scott (Cathy prefers to watch TV or draw by herself and even seems to resent intrusion.  I wonder how I turned out to be the way I am.  Mother seems to concentrate pressure on me to do things a certain way… (*threw out the last of the espresso and tried to insist that if I fell so badly, we could call Patty and call off the party)…seems like it’s always been that way.  Yet there is something in me that resists, but by closing off and bottling up.  I wish I could get a tape of some dialogue.  Fell on the ice outside a supermarket (buying more coffee) and [illegible] up further the same knee I racked up Dec 23 by banging it on the refrig. handle atdiarrhearun.  I have diarreah now.  Neck still hurts.  Woke up in the middle of the night because the dog was barking. Took some aspirin.  Can’t go back to sleep.  I miss Vito.

(t) Text reads as:  Saturday house – carry out stuff  Laurie Anderson’s opening Harmony Hammond’s opening  Sunday house – carry out stuff   tear out more bathroom clean  P.M. go over to Rosemary’s and borrow  vacuum cleaner and get my work and stools.  1-5-74 Trying to figure out how to clean.  Everything full of dust and grit.  I don’t know how to clean, what to do first, where to start.  Discouraged.  I have my radio here; that’s pleasant.  Called Anna and Vito’s mother.  Dusted the front third of the studio and went over the floor with a rag.  Vito is spending every minute on the film and it’s giving him headaches.