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The Golden Girl of the West

By Daniel Wright

She was Leanne, the golden girl of the west; so Henry Miller had described her, so he had told her, so Henry Miller had know her grow from that, away from that. Leanne, the golden girl of the west, with mod mini and everything; just as Henry Miller had described her. Along the Pacific Coast Highway, Highway 1, the road at the edge of America, the edge of the world, the world before Japan and the magic east - the magic Orient - she took an axe to a roaring fire, and watched it as the floor burned. Golden girl in flames, the Pacific Ocean in mourning.

Henry Miller really had said that to Leanne, my mother can verify, and I know that she knew him very well. Married to my grandfather during the sixties, he was Miller’s doctor and close personal friend, she has a copy of Anaïs Nin’s ‘Little Birds’ I believe, Nin’s copy. Jack, my grandfather, said very little about it; Leanne, overpowering Jewish queen that she was talks for him. Cancer had him and probably broke him, though he could speak just as articulately as before; perhaps with less vigour, without lust. Cancer did what Leanne could not. But then cancer does a lot of things that we cannot, impregnated inside us. We nurture it don’t we?

Leanne spoke for Jack, but I wanted to talk to Jack. No telling her. She is crisp, cutting, over the top. A melodrama on legs, the golden girl of the west was a melodrama on legs, and I wondered how long it had taken Henry Miller to realise that, or perhaps he was unaware.

Yes they were close, they spent days and nights in his house, drank his wine and ate his food, though Jack being an alcoholic would have drunk the wine and nothing but. I would have drunk the conversation, I wonder if they had good conversations? I wonder if Grandpa Jack performed around Miller in the way he performs to everybody else? I wonder if he flaunts his illustrious knowledge, savage sense of humour, his crippling trauma of alcoholic hazy memory. I wonder where the guilt escaped. Perhaps in a drag of marijuana and the mist of the psychotropic, a room of green steam, happy eyes and crazy brains. Maybe with a wife at home practicing mothering children, practicing the Buddhism of the east, the magical orient, and with a whispering meditating brain there was some inkling, nagging, gouging horror at the golden west, the west he had escaped to from the steaming swamp of Southern America, the west he owned so young, this golden girl clawing him and eating him. And maybe in Henry Miller’s house together he would drink down the pleasures of bohemian conversation and lust after Nin in front of Leanne. Maybe Miller didn’t mind, maybe that’s what they did in the green steam rooms, the Bordeaux bottled rooms, the rooms lined with volumes and books and tea and tokay. I didn’t ask.

Leanne still speaks. He spent long years in Paris, she proclaims, his books are about Paris, but I prefer some others to the ‘Tropics’ - (I’m sure) - your mother and I really know the world in some of those books, his Big Sur books, try ‘Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch’. Your mother and I know that world, jeez we knew.

To me, who knew California but briefly, the golden state floods back hidden in all Leanne’s prosiness, all those memories, and at seventeen the prime of my youth. My awakening. My life began in Big Sur, my life will end in Bug Sur, hopefully. The sea roars so far down the cliff but you can’t see it in the morning because the fog is so thick and dense, no light, hardly the sun, its like being in a cloud. And then the freezing sea, the whipping winds. Oh but the sun, the sun the sun of God surely. The beauty of such a sun on such an abyss of water, never ending Pacific Ocean and only until we reach Big Sur do we understand the nature of pacific, of pacifism so calm and gleaming, graceful, ever wonderful endless sights of pure pleasure - the natural awe, splendor, en-dazzled shrinking earth beauty sea of Big Sur against the dry flaming grass, the trees and rooted mountainside, with the violent edge of it as it lurches towards the shore. And danger, the road bleak and open and expansive, never ending yellow line, but curving and falling sometimes to death at the bottom of a cliff, following on from the college tragedies of many who fell with their cars to their miserable ends; death death death in a land of life. Falling off the edge of America, the edge of the world. The cars of America fall from the edge of the J. Edgar continent and mangled, rusted and spattered, sit sedate at the shore of peace; hear the screams. My mother once told me of her first love: Jean-Baptiste Gellar. He died aged twenty three, claimed by those rocks. Drunk, falling asleep at the strong wheel of his Cadillac, Dylan ringing out - ‘How does it feel?’ he asks wryly. The twisted metal barriers at either side of roadside exit-wound, a dark spot on the paradise road, reminding us of mortality in a human heaven.

My mother likes Blonde on Blonde, I like Highway 61.

Now James, you must call us again.

Yes Leanne.

How about that lovely girlfriend of yours, how is she? She was so sweet

Yes she’s still sweet (I know she’s forgotten her name, but she is the golden girl of the west)

How’s university (Jack back on)

Its good, I’m really enjoying it (is my stock phrase). I’m not sure how to answer.

Well that’s good. Where are you going?

Its an arts college, you won’t have heard of it.

Oh, okay. Your mother informed me that it was a prestigious institution, well established, in the centre of the ol’ empire. (Mock British accent) You chaps must have it rather good mustn't you?

The old Jack shines out in his mocking. Leanne interrupts eventually and ending our conversation asks after my brother. I put him on, the sun sets over the view from my window, dazzling my eyes, and lakes of red lined green float about for a few minutes after.

Leanne was the golden girl of the west, Henry Miller had told her. Mod mini and everything. I don’t know what this means, but she hacked at a roaring fire, she took an axe to it, until the floor burned, and she laughs. My mother walks in, and brings with her a clam breeze. My mother is a calm breeze, she is a human wind: still, calm, violent, persistent. When she smiles, her sadness becomes real. I think of Leanne and Jack and how Jack destroyed my mother, and then I see her smiling and talking and everything is fine, just for a moment.

I met Anaïs Nin too. She gave me a wonderful book from her book shelf. I think she liked me a lot. Graceful, gracious.

And her accent lilts and curves through the room, pausing, slow and thoughtful.

- Leanne talked for Jack as usual.

I know, she says, nothing he can do. He’s quieter since the cancer

He’s not dying though.

No. No not anymore.

The moment of calm vanishes where it begun. The engine steams and resumes its work and thousands of miles across an ocean and a continent, the golden west starts another day as the sun sets over the magical east.

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