Fragments: Poems, Intimate Notes, Letters (3 page)

Oh damn I wish that I were

dead—absolutely nonexistent—

gone away from here—from

everywhere but how would I
do it

There is always bridges—the Brooklyn

bridge—
no not the Brooklyn Bridge

because
But I love that bridge (everything is beautiful from there

and the air is so clean) walking it seems

peaceful
there
even with all those

cars going crazy underneath. So

it would have to be some other bridge

an ugly one and with no view—except

I
particularly
like in particular all bridges—there’s some

thing about them and besides
these
I’ve

never seen an ugly bridge

Stones on the walk

every color there is

I stare down at you

like
those
the a horizon—

the space / the air is between us beckoning

and I am many stories
besides
up

my feet
are
frightened

from my
as I grasp
for
towards you

Only parts of us will ever

touch
only
parts of others—

one’s own truth is just

that really—
one’s
own truth.

We can only share the

part that
is
understood by
within another’s knowing acceptable
to

the other—therefore
so one

is for most part
alone
.

As it is meant to be in evidently in nature—at best
though
perhaps it could make

our understanding seek

another’s loneliness out.

I can’t really stand Human

Beings sometimes—I know

they all have their problems

as I have mine—but I’m really too tired for it. Trying to understand,

making allowances, seeing certain things

that just weary me.

On Hospital gowns

My bare

(darrie) derrière

is out the air

in the air

when I’m not aware

aware

several

Handel Concertos

Vivaldi Concertos

Benny Goodman

My (pair)

Beethoven

Last 6—quartets

Ravel
—the Waltz

Bartok—quartets of his

continued on other side

of list of records

Marilyn in the garden of Hotel Bel-Air, Los Angeles, 1952 Marilyn reading Joyce’s
Ulysses
, Long Island, summer of 1955

“RECORD” BLACK NOTEBOOK

AROUND 1951

As she often did, Marilyn filled only a few pages of this notebook, about twelve out of the hundred and fifty it contains and at obviously distinct periods. The first pages open with a heartfelt “Alone!!!” followed by reflections on fear and feelings that can’t be put into words; these were probably jotted down in response to acting classes, which may have been those given by Michael Chekhov that she started attending in September 1951. On page 135 of the notebook, there is a poignant text about the panicky fear that sometimes overtook her when she was about to shoot a scene because of her dread of disappointing; her deep-seated sense that, despite the good work she had done, the bad outweighed it, sapping her confidence. Here the language is very strong: “depressed mad.”

On page 146, she jotted down in pencil one of the few lines she delivered in
Love Nest
(1951), a film by Joseph M. Newman, in the supporting but nonetheless crucial role of Roberta Stevens, who was the former wartime (girl?)friend of the hero, Jim Scott. The notes on pages 148 and 149 of the notebook indicate diligent reading on the Florentine Renaissance, unless they are class notes from courses she attended at UCLA in the fall of 1950, after she had already begun acting in films. However, this school-like exercise is surrounded by an older story that most likely preceded her star status, as she writes of traveling in a crowded bus. Could this have been the same bus in which she met sixty likable Italian sailors, then a headily perfumed Filipino boy, ending up, half-crushed by a sleeping five-year-old almost slipping from his young mother’s arms, in the middle of sailors far too young to feel sad?