I've always been very envious of beautiful women.
And yet, I've always been a sort of puritanical personality
who truly felt that life is as important as anybody makes it
for himself.
And then, in fact, no matter how you're
born, whether you're born rich or beautiful or talented or
intelligent, it's still up to you
to make something out of those resources.
Well, it's easy to complain if you don't have those resources.
In a funny way, perhaps it isn't any easier
to have the resources to make something out of them
and not have them and still try to make something.
That's what I keep telling myself if I struggle.
"I Have Had to Learn to Live with My Face."
You see me alone tonight.
My face has betrayed me again.
The garage mechanic who promises to fix my car and never does.
My face that my friends tell me is so full of character.
My face I have hated for so many years.
My face I have made an angry contract to live with so no one
could love it.
My face that I wish it would bruise and batter and destroy,
napalm, and throw acid in it so that I might have another or be
rid of it at last.
I dragged peacock feathers behind me
to erase the trail of the moon.
Those tears I shed for myself sometimes in anger.
There is no pretense in my life.
The man who lives with me must see something beautiful,
like a dark snake coming out of my mouth
or love the tapestry of my actions, my life.
This body, this face, they have nothing to offer
but angry insistence.
Their presence.
I hate them.
Want my life to be more.
Hate their shadow on even my words.
I sell my soul for good plumbing and hot water, I tell everyone.
And my face is soft, opal, a feathering
of snow against the cold black leather coat, which is nice.
You, night, my face against the chilly expanse of your back.
Learning to live with what you're born with
is the process, the involvement, the making of a life.
And I have not learned happily to live with my face.
That Diane which always looks better on film than life.
I sternly accept this plain face and hate
every moment of that sternness.
I want to laugh at this ridiculous face of lemon rinds
and vinegar cruets, of unpaved roads and dusty file cabinets.
Of the loneliness of Wall Street at night
in the desert of school on a holiday.
But I would have to laugh alone in a cold room.
Prefer the anger that at least for a moment
gives me a proud profile.
Always, I've envied the rich, the beautiful, the talented,
the go-getters of the world.
I've watched myself remain alone, isolated, fish
that swam through the net because I was too small
but remained alone in deep waters
because the others were caught.
Taken away.
It is so painful for me to think now, to talk about this.
I want to go to sleep and never wake up.
But self-pity could trail us all.
Drag us around on the bottom of shoes
like squashed snails so that we might never fight.
And it's anger I want now.
Fury to direct at my face and its author.
To tell it how much I hate what it's done to me.
To contemptuously, sternly, brutally even
make it live with itself, look at itself every day,
and remind itself that reality is learning to live
with what you're born with.
Noble to have been anything but defeated.
That pride and anger and silence will hold us above beauty.
So we bend down often with so much anguish
for a little beauty.
A word, like the blue night.
The night of rings covering the floor
and glinting into the fire.
The water, the wet Earth, the age of song,
guitars, angry busloads of etched tile faces,
old gnarled tree trunks, anything with the beauty
of wood, teak, lemon, cherry.
I lost my children because I had no money, no husband.
I lost my husband because I was not beautiful.
I lost everything a woman needs, wants,
almost before I became a woman.
My face shimmering and flat as the moon with no features.
I look at pictures of myself as a child.
I look lumpy, unformed, like a piece of dough.
And it has been my task as a human being
to carve out a mind, carve out a face,
carve out a shape with arms and legs.
To put a voice inside and to make a person from a prison.
And I don't think I'm unique.
I think 1,000 of you at least can look at those old photos,
reflect on your life, and see your own sculpture.
I have made my face as articulate as I can.
And it turns out to be a peculiar face
with too much bone in the bridge of the nose.
Small eyes, pale lashes, thin lips, wide cheeks,
a rocky chin.
But it's almost beautiful compared
to the sodden massive door I started out with.
I wonder how we learned to live with our faces.
They must hide so much pain.
So many deep trenches of blood.
So much that would terrorize and drive others
away if they could see.
The struggle to control it articulates the faith.
And what about those people with elegant noses rich lips?
What do they spend their lives living for?
Struggling for?
Am I wrong, I constantly ask myself,
to value the struggle more than the results?
Or only to accept a beautiful face that has been toiled for?
Tonight, I move alone in my face.
Want to forgive all the men whom I've loved who've betrayed me.
After all, the great betrayer is that one I
carry around each day, which I sleep with at night.
My own face.
Angry building I fought to restore.
Imbued with arrogance, pride, anger, and scorn.
To love this face would be to love
a desert mountain, a pillar, rocky, water hard to find.
No trees anywhere.
Perhaps I do not expect anyone to be strange enough
to love it but you.