{"id":133460,"date":"2019-02-08T09:00:00","date_gmt":"2019-02-08T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/?p=133460"},"modified":"2019-02-08T13:07:54","modified_gmt":"2019-02-08T18:07:54","slug":"notes-from-kathleen-collinss-diary","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.theparisreview.org\/blog\/2019\/02\/08\/notes-from-kathleen-collinss-diary\/","title":{"rendered":"Notes from Kathleen Collins\u2019s Diary"},"content":{"rendered":"

When the writer and filmmaker Kathleen Collins died in 1988 at age forty-six, her level of fame was disproportionate to the heights of her talent. With a singing, singular voice, she wrote stories of black women in and out of love. The release in 2016 of\u00a0<\/em>Whatever Happened to Interracial Love?<\/a>\u00a0introduced her pioneering work to twenty-first-century readers. Now, Ecco has released\u00a0<\/em>Notes from a Black Woman\u2019s Diary<\/a>,\u00a0<\/em>a delightful grab bag of Collins\u2019s letters, plays, film scripts, journal entries, stories, and chapters of an unfinished novel. Below, Collins revisits her diary and reflects on the nature of writing, loving, and living.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Kathleen Collins. Photo: Douglas Collins.<\/p><\/div>\n

November 19<\/em>
\nIt rained hard today. After lunch I sat in the kitchen sipping a can of beer. The beer made me very sleepy, so I came in to take a nap. It was one of those deep naps, where the wind and the rain conspire to take you into a deep, secure slumber. Every muscle goes limp. You awaken, as you awaken sometimes after really good lovemaking: spent, but incredibly rested and content.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

February 8<\/em>
\nRiding in the car, the day was suddenly dreary, bleak. And life seemed monotonous and sad. I wanted to cry. It seems that I have watched enough winters come in, turned the clocks back enough times, watched the rain turn the world black too many days. Only my children really hold me to life. They give me the patience to wait it out for a new day.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

January 13<\/em>
\nOn my desk sits a photograph taken in the \u201930s of several young women gathered for some festive occasion. They are all in their twenties, all the daughters of prominent black families. They are smiling, some holding hands. One of them is to become my mother. Another is to become the mother of my first lover \u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

January 23<\/em>
\nThe extremism, the tenacity in me. I will hold on. I will<\/em> to hold on. Until all the cards have been played<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

February 24<\/em>
\nOn the phone with B\u2013\u2014 over an hour, about men and women. In the end I am close to tears, recognizing that all the things we take so personally, all the things we suffer over so dreadfully, have so little to do with us. I try to describe to him the terror I feel in the face of a man\u2019s freedom, the boundless arbitrariness of it. How ruthless it can be in pursuit of itself. Men become themselves out of a refusal of certain kinds of limitations, women out of an acceptance of them. Women are<\/em> bound. They must come to terms with a whole centrifugal force of taboos that they cannot violate without doing severe violence to themselves. We are<\/em> in bondage to life. A woman\u2019s life is a terrible thing. Make no mistake about it. And I believe in liberation, but I don\u2019t believe it is at all the thing we think it is.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

March 18<\/em>
\nWe can\u2019t fight time. We can\u2019t get over anything faster than we\u2019re supposed to. Whatever we have to live through we have to live through until its time is up. I\u2019m saying all this to say that I think my present sense of clarity is not my victory, but time\u2019s.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And so it goes. As if the words could weight down the fleetingness and force it to exist in some more physical, more irrevocable way.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But I don\u2019t think that explains it all. If it is<\/em> only vanity that makes me write, it is a more full-fledged, more encompassing vanity than those entries would betray. Because the diary is also an effort to justify the choices I\u2019ve made, the ??? of life I\u2019ve chosen. As if I am explaining myself against some later moment when I am to be judged \u2026<\/p>\n

April 11<\/em>
\nI could have occupied myself with race all these years. The climate was certainly ripe for me to have done so. I could have explored myself within the context of a young black life groping its way into maturity across the rising tide of racial affirmation. I could have done that. After all, I\u2019m a colored lady. My father died a somewhat broken colored death. My mother ended it all at my birth. And my second mother practiced a far too studied gentility. But I didn\u2019t do that. No, I turned far inside, where there was only me and love to deal with. I turned far inside till I could measure every beat of love\u2014love living on sex, love emptied of sex, love scratching and screaming in jealousy, love neglected until it turned itself into a life so solitary there was almost no way out. Instead of dealing with race I went in search of love \u2026 and what I found was a very hungry colored lady.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

July 19<\/em>
\nThere is no such thing as a helpless black woman (even M\u2014\u2014, who plays the helpless creature, plays it to D\u2019s whiteness, plays it to his white ideas about women \u2026 ). There is no cultural conditioning, no unspoken expectation anywhere<\/em>, that would allow me to believe I could afford to be helpless. The attitude of helplessness, of dependence, is foreign to me, based on assumptions that are alien to my upbringing. There was only one dominant theme in my childhood: holding on, no matter what \u2026 shifting and turning and choreographing and juggling and manipulating life to stay inside it! To live! And perhaps even grow! If a man came along \u2026 all right, so much the nicer \u2026 But the game goes on, the necessity to be a self goes on. I don\u2019t know how to be helpless. I don\u2019t know how not<\/em> to make things work.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

October 12<\/em>
\nIt is all about an urge, a powerful and overwhelming urge, to fulfill myself, to fulfill this life that is inside me, to fulfill it in every way, leaving nothing untapped. That is what it is all about: the excesses, the anxiety, the restlessness, the pain, carrying around in me this irrepressible need to fulfill myself in every way possible.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Sometimes I know I go places in the diary that take my breath away. As if there were someone else living inside me with her own determined will to see and speak clearly. Because I don\u2019t write to protect myself or to say things I don\u2019t dare say to others. I don\u2019t cater to any pampered image of myself as a too sensitive soul for whom the world is too much and the diary her only friend. I am neither too fragile nor too sensitive. I have many true friends, and the betrayals I have known I have asked for. I don\u2019t write to hide from the world.<\/p>\n

If I write because of some illusion, it is not that<\/em> illusion. But I think there is another one. Once on the phone with a friend, she made a comment about me that caused me to pick up my notebook as soon as I hung up \u2026<\/p>\n

January 17<\/em>
\nOn the phone with S\u2014\u2014 her perception about how a thing is true in my head long before it has any concrete reality. True! I live way ahead of myself in some ways, seeing things long before it is their time to come into being. It even makes me lie, caught in a wave that takes me beyond myself, inside another moment not yet fully conceived. That is the basis of all my lies, all my really fantastic lies. But there is more to it than that. There is also a reluctance to bore, to be found dull and sad; so I spin my little webs to hold others at arm\u2019s length. I know<\/em> the moment when another\u2019s pain becomes tedious. I know<\/em> the tolerance level of compassion, how thin it is, how rapidly it dissolves. We must<\/em> dignify our sadness. We must wrap ourselves in some thread, some magical spell that allows others to see us as we\u2019d like to be! I know it isn\u2019t true<\/em>! But it has a pale, incomplete, and somewhat fragile virtue: it distracts! And look how much better everyone breathes with a little distraction, a little appearance for fantasy\u2019s sake. But oh, dear God, don\u2019t punish me for my lies, don\u2019t punish me for putting the cart before the horse. Because if it turns out that no one will ever love me for what I am, at least people will have loved me for what they thought I was \u2026 And it may be, finally, that I was the most terrible kind of realist.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I begin to think I write to keep control of the present. And when I\u2019m not interested in the present, when I\u2019m waiting for something to happen, then I don\u2019t write so regularly, the notes become sporadic avoidances. The most voluminous volumes are when I am living very much inside the present, waiting for a child to be born, living out of the city to write, and so on. Then I make endless observations about the most trivial, fleeting impressions, moments, thoughts, feelings. Entries like \u2026<\/p>\n

February 15<\/em>
\nSomething is happening to me. A kind of clarity. A cementing of my life to the here and now. Every day is wonderful through here. It has a kind of affirmation to it. A force. Even in its most tedious moments.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

March 23<\/em>
\nBright and sunny. And a real ordinary Sunday. Went with B\u2014\u2014 for a walk. Drank wine and sat in the sun. Nina and Miwo came in about six\u2014dirty and wet from playing outdoors all day. Dinner, then a bath for both of them.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

March 16<\/em>
\n2:00 A.M.<\/small> Nothing is ever as it seems. It is an absolute requirement that we come to terms with the abstract notion we have painted of things and distinguish it from the real \u2026 All this prompted by a dog named Juno whom I agreed to keep for a few days. But he arrived tonight and left tonight after a ferocious whining and banging scene in my kitchen. My agreeing to keep him, of course, came out of some abstract notion I had about all dogs being friendly, easygoing, and wise, so that I refused to zero in on Juno\u2019s peculiarities, which make him difficult, obnoxious, and stupid. The same mistake pins down my difficulties with ML\u2014\u2014. I had in my head some abstract notion about a friendly, cheerful, devoted housekeeper, good with the children, making cookies and doing things with them and altogether lifting somewhat the burdens of Motherhood. But again I tripped over an abstract notion only to stumble on ML\u2014\u2014 mute, wizened, self-righteous, incapable of communicating with the kids, and altogether\u00a0increasing<\/em> the burdens of Motherhood. If it were not two o\u2019clock in the morning I could probably get a lot more mileage out of this discovery. I am sure it covers a wide expanse of territory, affecting many of the decisions I have made and many of the roads I have traveled. Perhaps it is all we are ever doing in life: constantly sorting out what is real from some abstract notion we\u2019ve taken a fancy to. What a relief to have Juno out of the house.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

July 11<\/em>
\nFrom my 5:30 A.M.<\/small> vantage point I have watched the day come alive. Watched the river go from a cloudy mist to a soft, bright sunny fogginess. Listened to some mournful, repetitive bird humming a sad refrain and the boat bells hitting the wind. And now my room is full of sunlight and it is 7:30 and I am alive.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

When I look back over those days I see how centered I was in the present, connecting myself to the life in hand. Even now it is a period that makes me nostalgic. All those periods in my life when I have been very alone\u2014waiting for a child, in the midst of a play or a film script or a story\u2014 those are the periods when growth seems to come in bursts. I am still. I listen. I learn. I\u2019m not very concerned about tomorrow.<\/p>\n

But at other times, life takes over and the diary recedes. Then I feel in me a kind of determination to soak up life. Then I run away from these notes and make only cursory remarks.<\/p>\n

September 21<\/em>
\nI would like to catch up on some days left discarded \u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

September 24<\/em>
\nI seem to avoid these notes like the plague. As if I don\u2019t dare take off, don\u2019t dare say anything, so tentative is everything.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

September 27<\/em>
\nI really cannot write much these days. What is clear to me I am unwilling to pin down too quickly. I want it loose, like I feel it.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

September 28<\/em>
\nI don\u2019t write often these days\u2014not here, not in these pages. I am abstracted, in limbo, hanging on by threads. But it is difficult to speak about this limbo, to describe it. The journey is too personal to write about \u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The most that can be said is that I trust these shallow periods, when I have left the solid ground of the present. When I leave that ground, it is because I am healed and the danger is past and a more risky life is manageable. One day toward the end of one of those times I wrote these notes \u2026<\/p>\n

Sunday, August 24<\/em>
\nRain. Alone in the house. I\u2019ve just finished a book about the psychic experiences of a woman named Jan Bartell. While I have never known any paranormal events, I know I lead my life psychically, not only the larger moments of it, but the very smallest. I am always listening, knowing that if I listen I will be guided correctly, even if it means pain or discomfort. I cannot ever recall being without this \u201clistening.\u201d It is almost a feeling of being watched over and protected. I remember at a very difficult time last spring my car kept breaking down and draining away the little bit of money I was budgeting so carefully. I was standing in the kitchen thinking, This is just one thing too many, I can\u2019t cope with these car problems \u2026 when the phone rang and the bank had cleared my very shaky credit for a new car. When I hung up, I found myself saying thank you to the space around me \u2026 thank you \u2026 you knew that was too much for me, didn\u2019t you, that I\u2019m just hanging on by so little \u2026 I don\u2019t know who I am talking to at times like that, but the \u201clistening\u201d dictates everything I do\u2014when I go shopping, when I stay home, when I put myself to making money, when I decide to live broke and write, when I have children \u2026 always I am listening for the right moment, always I am trying to make a complete circle and come back where I belong. I don\u2019t know why this is so, why I try to stay in touch with what can take me further, make me stronger, give me greater self-containment \u2026 I don\u2019t know why this is so. But I know it is at the source, that all my electricity, all my running power, comes from this field around me with which I must remain in tune. And when I come to a dead end, when things get muddy and my mind races overboard into a fog, I have to go somewhere and sit. Then help will come, a direction will be made clear.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

Kathleen Collins was a pioneer African American playwright, filmmaker, civil rights activist, film editor, and educator, and the author of <\/em>Whatever Happened to Interracial Love? Her film <\/em>Losing Ground is one of the first features made by a black woman in America and is an extremely rare narrative portrayal of a black female intellectual. Collins died in 1988 at the age of forty-six. Read her story \u201cScapegoat Child<\/a>,\u201d which appeared in the Spring 2018 issue.<\/em><\/p>\n

Excerpt from <\/em>Notes from a Black Woman\u2019s Diary<\/a>, by Kathleen Collins. Copyright 2019 by the Estate of Kathleen Conwell Prettyman. Excerpted by permission of Ecco, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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