September 19, 2006

  • Bunny Four-Missouri-Family-Secrets

    2

    Dear Ellie,

    These are the plans as recieved via Kendrick last night. The fellow with the Jeep will perform the wedding. Kendrick and Lorena's mother are getting on the plane on Wednesday. Kendrick wants pictures of the wedding. LOrena's mother will stay, and go to Mexico with Lorena and ____. She will see that they are set up, and try to teach the boys Spanish. Lorena was teaching them Spanish, but everyone was worried about what they were saying. Kendrick needs a break and will run around with me in the truck that wee borrow sometimes. We want to look for other trumple blocks, or the remains thereof.

    In the spring-- it is nearly spring, Moriah will fly back to Salt Lake. Allie is going to fly to Salt Lake , so that Willie and Josie don't abscond with her. There is something about taking her skiing in Park City. After they have had thier fun, and Moriah and Ellie are on the plane, Ellie will fly to me in Kansas City. Our most recent plan is to take a tour of what is left of the Riech--train stations,gas chambers, incinerators, the usual sort of cheerfull stuff. Then Rachael will fly on to Ouziel and Benezeer, when Enoch's son and little Lorena meet her there. I am planning a long stay in Morrocco. I do not know when Ellie will plan to fly back.

    I do miss Enoch. I am leaving Ferry with the lease on my apartment in New York. She has gotten spectacula reviews in the Las Vegas of the East. It has something to do with the girls coming out with thier backs to the slavering crowd, in what appears to be evening dress, then swinging about, so it appears thatthey are wearing nothing. She had to use stage glue on this one, and delicate little chains accross the front. Next, the girls come in from the oppostite direction, in formal evening dress from the front. They swing about, revealing that they are wearing nothin in the back, except the afforementioned stage glue, and a little fabrick around the edges. The rest has been up to the choreographer, who is said to be brilliant. He must be, because it all sounds sort of silly so far. I'm not sure anyone would want front row seats on this one. They have them done up in silk stockings of some kind. What do I know about any of it, I'm just an old lady. Collie

    Dear Collie,

    I was glad to hear that Kendrick, Enoch's boy and Lorena's mother all arrived safely. It sounded to me like they had a bit of rough weather. I do not enjoy flying, personally. It is a bother to be in a familly where so many do, and never even really know what your talking about, if you worry. I'm glad you liked the letters we copied out for you. Here are two more.
    My Dearest love,

    We are in Singapore. I was saddened to fail to find a letter here from you. I suspect our Ruth to be at fault, and not that your affections for me have failed. Ruth is a queer girl, much afflicted with her times as a kind of ague. The esteemed doctors have set it in her mind that her frailties must be laid to someones charge. It is not of course only the doctors, but Polly and Opal and mother and the magazines. She is enraged that it could be suggested that her failures of body could be regarded by you and I as being the fault of her dearly departed angel mother Nan. They are not Nan's fault, or so far as I can see, anyones fault. Why must anyone be at fault? If I had taken upon myself some part of Nan's frailty, which I do not regard as anything more than an inconvienience and obstacle. It could not be from regular and intimate marital congress with my departed dear one.

    Ruth has been convinced by the doctors that it is your fault. You, in having once been married to a polygamist with whom she is sure you are in more than common conversation now, are the victim of base and unnatural carnal desire, which causes ancient and feral tumors to arise from your body to afflict the innocent. These are reincarnations of the medical notions of the sixteenth century. I think no better of them. Ruth has belabored me with the notion she regards as obligatory, and I have proved a stupid father indeed for not adopting them as a credo. If I wanted young frail girls, I certainly could have indulged these tastes in Utah , as others did. Complicated and high minded designs for obtaining release of this type, and enjoyment of the both pretty and vulnerable are not lacking in the world. I have met women in my wanderings, whoi were badly lamed and doomed to a life of infection and pain, for fear that they would not otherwise be able to obtain a husband at all.

    In such sad condition, are still many of the women of China. Even in the countryside they labor in the fields and on the threshing floor, with feet only fit for a nine year old. If the Brittish had passed laws against it, it was to some measure only so that they might have enjoyment of such helpless creatures themselves.

    I have taken to gorging myself. Having reached a level of initiation more suitable to detail. Ordinary men of our class are most often fat. If we attempt our purpose in possesion of too little, it will not appear that we are stopping at monastaries in a random fashion as any traveler might do.
    Our caution is not without reason. In 1891, curiously, the time, or very near the time that the federal matter came to it's first resolution in Utah, tens of thousands of Daiosts were murdered by Nanchu mercenaries, having been found out by one means or another.

    What are mens thoughts, and what remidiation is there when history proves them a plauge in many ports at once? Was it Victoria, with her base to launch a thousand ships, who led the lofty to such high minded carnage? If there are secrets among men, and thier kindreds, can it be said that any fair face may rule supreme?

    There were signs that the worst was coming. It was as always the poor and unluckywho fell under the knife. The rich leave early and establish themselves elsewhere. Mr. Han had a first uncle, a brother to his father, and a third aunt, a sister to his father, who fell with some of thier familly to the Manchus at the end of thier reign. Thus I eat, and try to understand the people among whom I am traveling. They are rightly bereaved. Your friend,
    J.M.

    It saddens me that Sophie never saw this letter while she was alive. Lizzy wishes she had known of them. Ruth could not have kept them if either had spoken. Kevyn knew. He says that Mr. Marshall said that Ruth had probably burned them. For hers was the kind of spirit that burned the books of Germany in the war. He said this only once. Keeping the letters was a part Ruth played in her morality play. Mr Marshall thought it more likely that Ruth still had the letters and hoped to be asked. Not being asked had setled into her silent bitterness as backdrop.

    Kevyn said that Mr. Marshall believed that Ruth had been taught to see herself entirely from the outside. Pshycological improvement could only come from an alteration of the external situation. He thought it true that Ruth's inner life would have been easier without her persuasion that she was diminished as Ruth's unfortunate view of her mothers religion. She was, in her eyes, a tragic heroin, victimized by the unfortunate beliefs of another.

    She bore her fathers connections as a stigmata. A kind of scarlet letter. Nan said it was often the first thing Ruth had wanted aquaitences to know about herself. Kevyn had asked her once why anyone need know at all. Both his mothers had been Mormon, and he rarely mentioned it. Ruth seemed to fear that she would be rejected if people found out about the Mormonism after forming an impression about her, or they might not understand why she had so many problems, and like her the less for that. Mr. Marshall thought that she talked to too many doctor for too high a price. They were like this, and hoped to create the world again in thier own image. We had Kevyn over for tomales, and the guessing game about the secret ingredients. Mariella's new secret ingredient is accent. She dumps it in everything. Emilie's brought her brood too, and we had to make quite a lot of tomles and Jello. Lizzy added a Morroccan salad made with mint. We played board games, and Kevyn beat Dan at scrabble.

    Ally and Dan continued the arguement about Jung, and Kevyn tried to referee while donald worked at placating them with tidbits.

    Kevyn said that Mr, Marshall believed that Jung had never understood the East, but tried to throw it in as mumbo-jumbo to stop the early raids of the Nazi's on hospitalized patients. The idea was that an entirely new imperical science was being formed and so no one should jump to hasty conclutions. John did not think that the use of the East had anythingto do with science at all. He thought that it's wisdom lay in the quieting of the constant obsession of the West in finding something new to be important about, or more important than. He mentioned often an anceint text that said that when a master of the house was at peace, all knew thier tasks and went about thier work willingly. We thought we might have a god of this type, and that is why we heard so little from him.

    Kevyn remembered a day when he had aasked the old man, why then, did not people go about thier business quietly. Mr. Marshall had said that it might only work when the master of the house was visible. That was why Christians and Jews prayed for the messiah to come.

    If Amy had taken her master, perhaps his study of Eastern wisdom would have helped her.She sought athourity in the recognition of others. Kevyn said that it was Amy's bewildering accounts of the accounts that she had recieved of herself that had wanted him to study the phenomenon of the modern malaise.

    Kevyn and Emilly have not been around very much, and it seemed to help Dan to have them here. He does not know what to make of Papa and his wives. That kevyn and Emily think it is silly to bother about it, boggles him. It pleases Dan to be boggled, and he leaves off attempting to boggle me.

    Kevyn and Emilly aren't trying to boggle Dan. Dan is trying to get my goat. I think it's mean, and that it is mean to Papa. I think sometimes to go live in New York with Ferron, but will not leave while Donald and Lizzy are alive. Ferron must need someone to keep house for her. Dan likes the papers and likes Donalds money. I don't think it is just that. I think he is afraid that I will leave him if he tries to keep me in the city. Then he would lose the twins entirely to Ally, and Ally would have the better of him. He is only just beginning to view them as human, for they have just begun to speak. I liked them just as well berfore.

    Kendrick says you must go to Mexico, for no one else knows the proper use of a Jeep.
    It will have to be you in the Jeep.

    Your friend,
    Evy