Letting go

Sue drove me to Powell's with two boxes of books I hoped they would buy. They took about half, after I waited 2 hours. They only give store credit now, no cash, and they only buy books on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

I thought I was ready to let go of one of my prized possessions: an autographed first edition of Marguerite Young's Miss Mackintosh, My Darling (1965). I met Young when I was twenty, suicidal, and pregnant. I was a student in the creative writing program at the University of Arizona. She inspired me: a woman who forged her own way, who wrote as she was to be writing; who wore capes festooned with feathers and bells, who uttered a siren call to me. We had a long conversation that affected me for the rest of my life. "Come live in Greenwich Village," she said. "We'll help you. You belong with us, not in this godforsaken place. Come, we are your people."

Five years later, I made it to New York. I found an apartment in Greenwich Village. By then Young was off in Iowa teaching, and I had decided on a career as an actress, not a writer. She was right, there my people were, and for a while I lived among them.

Sue was curious about the book, and when she started reading it, she was entranced by it (as I always have been). We decided I would hold onto it longer. Here's a sample:

"...deep calling to deep, illuminations of the eternal darkness, recognitions in the night world of voyager dreams, all barriers dissolving, all souls as one and united. Every heart is the other heart. Every soul is the other soul. Every face is the other face. The individual is the one illusion" (p. 5).

Every child is our child. Every soul is the other soul. I have believed that all my life.