A Book of Ours

WRITTEN, DESIGNED, AND ILLUSTRATED BY GRACE GOERS

4

Copyright © 2022 Grace Goers.

All rights reserved. This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means— electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the publisher, except as provided by United States of America copyright law.

For permission requests, write to the publisher, at “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at the address below.

All photos are property Grace Elizabeth Goers, courtesy of my iPhone Camera, Facebook, and the scanners in the library of London College of Communication.

Printed by Grace Goers, Inc., in the United Kingdom.

First printing, 2022.

Grace Goers Publishing 7A Stockwell Green London, UK, SW9 9JF

CONTENTS

1 8 12 16 18

HAPPINESS

Fire and Rain Moments of Grace Songbird Gracie

DESPAIR 2 24 26 28 30 32 34 38

A Little Life Flightless Bird, American Mouth Between the Bars The Bell Jar Before the Lobotomy The Turning The Awakening

HOPE 3 42

“Hope” is the thing with feathers

The Grammar of Light The Idiot The Way My Mother Speaks Skyline Pigeon

46

50

LOVE 4 54 56 58 60 64 66

How Do I Love Thee Joan Didion To the Lighthouse Phenomenal Woman The Goldfinch Kafka on the Shore

Fire and Rain

James Taylor (1968)

Just yesterday mornin’, they let me know you were gone Susan , the plans they made put an end to you

I walked out this morning and I wrote down this song

I just can’t remember who to send it to

I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain

I’ve seen sunny days that I thought would never end I’ve seen lonely times when I could not find a friend

But I always thought that I’d see you again

Won’t you look down upon me, Jesus? You’ve got to help me make a stand You’ve just got to see me through another day

My body’s aching and my time is at hand

And I won’t make it any other way

Oh, I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain I’ve seen sunny days that I thought would never end I’ve seen lonely times when I could not find a friend

But I always thought that I’d see you again

Been walking my mind to an easy time

My back turned towards the sun Lord knows, when the cold wind blows

It’ll turn your head around Well, there’s hours of time on the telephone line

To talk about things to come Sweet dreams and flying machines in pieces on the ground

Oh, I’ve seen fire and I’ve seen rain

I’ve seen sunny days that I thought would never end

I’ve seen lonely times when I could not find a friend

But I always thought that I’d see you, baby

One more time again, now Thought I’d see you one more time again

There’s just a few things coming my way this time around, now Thought I’d see you, thought I’d see you, fire and rain, now

Moments of Grace

Carol Ann Duffy (1993)

I dream through a wordless, familiar place. The small boat of the day sails into morning, past the postman with his modest haul, the full trees which sound like the sea, leaving my hands free to remember. Moments of grace. Like this. Shaken by first love and kissing a wall. Of course. The dried ink on the palms then ran suddenly wet, a glistening blue name in each fist. I sit now in a kind of sly trance, hoping I will not feel me breathing too close across time. A face to the name. Gone.

The chimes of mothers calling in children at dusk. Yes. It seems we live in those staggering years only to haunt them; the vanishing scents and colours of infinite hours like a melting balloon in earlier hands. The boredom since.

Memory’s caged bird won’t fly. These days we are adjectives, nouns. In moments of grace we were verbs, the secret of poems, talented. A thin skin lies on the language. We stare deep in the eyes of strangers, look for the doing words.

Now I smell you peeling an orange in the other room. Now I take off my watch, let a minute unravel in my hands, listen and look as I do so, and mild loss opens my lips like No. Passing, you kiss the back of my neck. A blessing.

Songbird Fleetwood Mac (1977)

For you, there’ll be no more crying For you, the sun will be shining And I feel that when I’m with you It’s alright, I know it’s right To you, I’ll give the world To you, I’ll never be cold ‘Cause I feel that when I’m with you It’s alright, I know it’s right And the songbirds are singing, Like they know the score And I love you, I love you, I love you Like never before And I wish you all the love in the world But most of all, I wish it from myself And the songbirds keep singing Like they know the score And I love you, I love you, I love you Like never before, like never before, Like never before

2 d e s p a i r

23

A Little Life

Hanya Yanagihara (2015)

what was

“But

happiness extravagance , an maintain, partly difficult to articulate?”

but an

happiness

an impossible state to partly because it was so articulate?”

Flightless Bird, American Mouth Iron & Wine (2007)

I was a quick wet boy Diving too deep for coins All of your streetlight eyes Wide on my plastic toys

Then when the cops closed the fair I cut my long baby hair Stole me a dog eared map And called for you everywhere

Have I found you? Flightless bird Jealous, weeping Or lost you? American mouth Big pill looming

Now I’m a fat house cat Nursing my sore blunt tongue Watching the warm poison rats Curl through the wide fence cracks Pissing on magazine photos Those fishing lures thrown in the cold and clean Blood of Christ mountain stream

Have I found you? Flightless bird Grounded, bleeding Or lost you? American mouth Big pill, stuck going down

Between the Bars

Elliott Smith (1997)

Drink up, baby, stay up all night

With the things you could do You won’t but you might

The potential you’ll be, that you’ll never see The promises you’ll only make

People you’ve been before That you don’t want around anymore That push and shove and won’t bend to your will I’ll keep them still

Drink up with me now And forget all about The pressure of days, Do what I say and I’ll make you okay And drive them away The images stuck in your head

Drink up, baby, look at the stars

I’ll kiss you again, between the bars Where I’m seeing you there, with your hands in the air Waiting to finally be caught Drink up one more time, and I’ll make you mine Keep you apart, deep in my heart Separate from the rest where I like you the best And keep the things you forgot

People you’ve been before That you don’t want around anymore That push and shove and won’t bend to your will I’ll keep them still

The Bell Jar Sylvia

Plath (1963)

I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story. From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn’t quite make out. I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn’t make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.

Be fo re the Lobotomy Green Da y

We’re

The brutality Of reality

Is the freedom that keeps me from Dreaming

I was only dreaming Of another place and time Where my family’s from Singing

I can hear them singing When the rain had washed away All these scattered dreams Dying Everyone’s reminded Hearts are washed in misery Drenched in gasoline Laughter

There is no more laughter Songs of yesterday now live In the underground

Dreaming

I was only dreaming Of another place and time Where my family’s from Singing

I can hear them singing When the rain had washed away All these scattered dreams Dying Everyone’s reminded Hearts are washed in misery Drenched in gasoline Laughter

There is no more laughter Songs of yesterday now live In the underground Life before the lobotomy Christian sang the eulogy Signed, “My love, a lost memory From the end of the century” Well, it’s enough to make you sick To cast a stone and throw a brick But when the sky is falling down You burned your dreams into the ground Christian’s lesson’s what he’s been sold We are normal and self-controlled

Remember to learn to forget Whiskey shots and cheap cigarettes Well, I’m not stoned, I’m just fucked up I got so high I can’t stand up Well, I’m not cursed, ‘cause I’ve been blessed I’m not in love, ‘cause I’m a mess

Like refugees

We’re lost like refugees Like refugees

lost like refugees

Though it seemed so beautiful, the world around us was eternally dangerous.

The price of spiritual freedom, we learnt, was eternal vigilance.

Such a high price for so long.

A Book of WRITTEN,

DESIGNED, AND ILLUSTRATED

of Ours

ILLUSTRATED BY GRACE GOERS

The Awakening Kate Chopin (1899)

But the beginning of things, of a world especially, is necessarily vague, chaotic, and exceedingly disturbing. How few of us ever emerge from such beginning! How many souls perish in its tumult!

The voice of the sea is seductive; never ceasing, whispering, clamoring, murmuring, inviting the soul to wanter for a spell in abysses of solitude; to lose itself in mazes of inward contemplation. The voice of the sea speaks to the soul. The touch of the sea is sensuous, enfolding the body in its soft, close embrace.

41 hope

“Hope” is the thing with feathers

Emily Dickinson (1891)

“Hope” is the thing with feathers

That perches in the soul, And sings the tune without the words, And never stops at all,

And sweetest in the gale is heard; And sore must be the storm That could abash the little bird That kept so many warm.

I’ve heard it in the chillest land, And on the strangest sea; Yet, never, in extremity, It asked a crumb of me.

The Grammar of Light Carol Ann Duffy (1993)

Even barely enough light to find a mouth, and bless both with a meaningless O, teaches, spells out. The way a curtain opened at night lets in neon, or moon, or a car’s hasty glance, and paints for a moment someone you love, pierces.

And so many mornings to learn; some when the day is wrung from damp, grey skies and rooms come on for breakfast in the town you are leaving early. The way a wasteground weeps glass tears at the end of a street.

Some fluent, showing you how the trees in the square think in birds, telepathise. The way the waiter balances light in his hands, the coins in his pocket silver, and a young bell shines in its white tower ready to tell.

Even a saucer of rain in a garden at evening speaks to the eye. Like the little fires from allotments, undressing in veils of mauve smoke as you walk home under the muted lamps, perplexed. The way the shy stars go stuttering on.

And at midnight, a candle next to the wine slurs its soft wax, flatters. Shadows circle the table.

The way all faces blur to dream of themselves held in the eyes. The flare of another match. The way everything dies.

The Idiot Elif Batuman (2017)

Your atom, I think it will never go back to peace, to cereal or rocks or anything like that. Once it has been seduced there is no way back, the way is always ahead, and it is so much harder after the passage from innocence. But it does not work to pretend to be innocent anymore. That seduced atom has energies that seduce people, and those rarely get lost.

The Way My Mother Speaks

Carol Ann Duffy (1990)

I say her phrases to myself in my head or under the shallows of my breath, restful shapes moving. The day and ever. The day and ever.

The train this slow evening goes down England browsing for the right sky, too blue swapped for a cool grey. For miles I have been saying What like is it.

The way I say things when I think. Nothing is silent. Nothing is not silent. What like is it.

Only tonight

I am happy and sad like a child who stood at the end of summer and dipped a net in a green, erotic pond. The day and ever. The day and ever. I am homesick, free, in love with the way my mother speaks.

Skyline Pigeon

Elton John (1969)

How do I love thee

How do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love thee to the depth and breadth and height My soul can reach, when feeling out of sight For the ends of being and ideal grace. I love thee to the level of every day’s Most quiet need, by sun and candle-light. I love thee freely, as men strive for right. I love thee purely, as they turn from praise.

I love thee with the passion put to use In my old griefs, and with my childhood’s faith.

I love thee with a love I seemed to lose With my lost saints. I love thee with the breath, Smiles, tears, of all my life; and, if God choose, I shall but love thee better after death.

Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1850)

“I’m not telling you to make the world better, because I don’t think that progress is necessarily part of the package. I’m just telling you to live in it. Not just to endure it, not just to suffer it, not just to pass through it, but to live in it. To look at it. To try to get the picture. To live recklessly. To take chances. To make your own work and take pride in it. To seize the moment. And if you ask me why you should bother to do that, I could tell you that the grave’s a fine and private place, but none I think do there embrace. Nor do they sing there, or write, or argue, or see the tidal bore on the Amazon, or touch their children. And that’s what there is to do and get it while you can and good luck at it.”

For now she need not think of anybody. She could be herself, by herself. And that was what she now she often felt the need of – to think; well not even to think. To be silent; to be alone. All the being and the doing, expansive, glittering, vocal, evaporated; and one shrunk, with a sense of solemnity, to being oneself, a wedgeshaped core of darkness, something invisible to others... and this self having shed its attachments was free for the strangest adventures.

Phenomenal Woman Maya Angelou (1995)

Pretty women wonder where my secret lies.

I’m not cute or built to suit a fashion model’s size But when I start to tell them, They think I’m telling lies. I say, It’s in the reach of my arms, The span of my hips, The stride of my step, The curl of my lips. I’m a woman Phenomenally. Phenomenal woman, That’s me.

I walk into a room Just as cool as you please, And to a man, The fellows stand or Fall down on their knees. Then they swarm around me, A hive of honey bees.

I say, It’s the fire in my eyes, And the flash of my teeth, The swing in my waist, And the joy in my feet. I’m a woman Phenomenally.

woman,

Phenomenal

That’s me.

heels, of my

hand,

‘Cause I’m Phenomenal

Men themselves have wondered

What they see in me. They try so much But they can’t touch

My inner mystery. When I try to show them, They say they still can’t see.

I say, It’s in the arch of my back, The sun of my smile, The ride of my breasts, The grace of my style.

I’m a woman Phenomenally. Phenomenal woman, That’s me.

Now you understand just why my head’s not bowed. I don’t shout or jump about or have to talk real loud.

When you see me passing, It ought to make you proud. I say, it’s in the click of my heels, the bend of my hair, the palm hand, the need for my care. a woman phenomenally. Phenomenal woman, that’s me.

The Goldfinch

Donna Tartt (2013)

Whatever teaches us to talk to ourselves is important: whatever teaches us to sing ourselves out of despair. But the painting has also taught me that we can speak to each other across time. And I feel I have something very serious and urgent to say to you, my non-existent reader, and I feel I should say it as urgently as if I were standing in the room with you. That life—whatever else it is—is short. That fate is cruel but maybe not random. That Nature (meaning Death) always wins but that doesn’t mean we have to bow and grovel to it. That maybe even if we’re not always so glad to be here, it’s our task to immerse ourselves anyway: wade straight through it, right though the cesspool, while keeping eyes are hearts open.

And in the midst of our dying, as we rise from the organic and sink back ignominiously into the organic, it is a glory and a privilege to love what Death doesn’t touch.

For if disaster and oblivion have followed this painting down through time—so too has love. Insofar as it is immortal (and it is) I have a small, bright, immutable part in that immortality. It exists; and it keeps on existing. And I add my own love to the history of people who have loved beautiful things, and looked out for them, and pulled them from the fire, and sought them when they were lost, and tried to preserve them and save them while passing them along literally from hand to hand, singing out brilliantly from the wreck of time to the next generation of lovers, and the next.

Kafka on the Shore Haruki Murakami (2002)

Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back. That’s part of what it means to be alive. But inside our heads - at least that’s where I imagine itthere’s a little room where we store those memories. A room like the stacks in this library.

And to understand the workings of our own heart we have to keep on making new reference cards. We have to dust things off every once in awhile, let in fresh air, change the water in the flower vases. In other words, you’ll live forever in your own private library.