[Life and death and chaos and self- preservation…

        

                I chose a photo titled Rome, 1977 by the American Photographer Francesca Woodman.  Woodman had a particular interest in self-presentation/self-preservation, space, and the “long single exposures that blur the trace of the subject”. I can’t help relate Woodman’s interpretation and portrayal of space and the momentariness of the blurred girl to the ways in which internal/external, public/private space are working in The Golden Notebook. I am particularly interested in the relationship between domestic and public space and how/if Anna’s interactions and experiences within these spaces enable her to form, preserve, or more clearly forge her identity. Anna denies order but fails to acknowledge the necessity of form to understand the seemingly overwhelming chaos and what it means to "crack up." Anna dwells in the out of body liminal space, the space of "I" and "Anna".  Although the term “cracking up” implies a fragmented array of chaos and disorder, there is also a sense of integrity associated with active moment of “cracking up.” Although the term cracking implies a division, breaking, or disconnection, it simultaneously preserves a moment of action where the entire or whole object shares the moment with the potentiality of separation; this moment preserves or even traps Anna in patterned process of cracking up, the space between the various dichotomies established throughout the text.  As discussed in class, much of Anna’s anxiety derives from her desire to define/label/reveal a reason for her existence. These distressing surges towards self-discovery force Anna to rely on other people and her environment to constitute an a sense of self. Anna’s experience on the train urges her to demystify her obsession with “cracking up." The transient motion and public space of the train challenges Anna to physically collide/interact with the “yellowish grey and large-poured” man and the intimidating “living city” environment. The short, fragmented s descriptions of the Anna’s repulsion towards “the face” following her further indicates her initial inability to view things as whole or complete; Anna refuses to convey an integral image of the man, and we can, consequently, only envision parts or sections of his body and face, unable to see him as whole or human. These seemingly threatening moments reveal Anna’s reliance on the distanced space between the dichotomies that plague The Golden Notebook: living/dead, feeling/thinking, and internal/external, physically/mentally, and order/chaos.  Overwhelmingly, once Anna enters the Tube, she must include her external environment in her attempt to forge an identity. In this sense, the collision of the public space with Anna’s desire to be defined and her simultaneous fear of order enables her to almost preserve a whole version of herself in a world where she can be "alone in chaos” (285). Anna “felt a swaying”, “and saw the sway”, and is finally “feeling the shake and sway” (373). The development from “felt a swaying to “saw the sway”, and finally Anna’s “feeling the shake and sway” suggests that perhaps Anna was able to successfully defeat the physical/mental dichotomy and merge her mind and body in an instant of momentary completion. Furthermore, Anna finally refers to the face as a man after “touching the smooth” fruit to counteract the intimidating ugliness of the “living city”. Even though Anna can momentarily exist in the collision or “swaying” motion of the patterns created by the process of “cracking up”, she reverts back to the calming “immunity” and facilitates the distance created through various oppositions, by buying the fruit. Instead of acknowledging her identity as one that is cracked and therefore also whole (in the pattern of actively cracking) and in this sense, ordered through the process of chaos, she retreats to the side of the living fruit and further distancing, fragmenting, and disconnecting  Anna's physical act of purchasing the fruit and "smelling at the tart clean smell, touching the smooth or faintly hairy skins” from her internal world; Anna hides in the calming sensory moment of the fruit instead of  feeling, acting, and thinking her way through the challenge of a "crack up."
               Only evanescently, after a dream is she “both giddy and afraid”) without struggling to maintain a balance of the various divisions that external world demands (373). Although Anna comes to close to self-preservation of a whole self in her external environment, she nears a more perfect  moment of collision in the domestic space of her flat: “She went into the kitchen, and ran a glass of water, slowly: running the water to watch it splash and sparkle, to hear its cool noise. She was using the water as she has used the fruit earlier-to calm… ”, or in this case, the dash relates a distance to distance associated with calm. In this instant, Anna momentarily realizes the necessity of collision instead of distance or space by confessing “I’m right off balance” suggesting that she was once on balance and now takes refuge in the impossibility of attaining the type of balance required by whole of society. Instead, this realization in the private setting of her flat suggests the importance of both a domestic and public space to enable the experience of a “figure that sprang into shape and personality against the defining light" (378). The potential “personality” or identity for Anna awaits if she accepts the notion that chaos is capable of producing form/shape, meaning, and finality. Just like before the dashes and fragments thwart the connection of thought, Anna, and act of cracking up: “And she thought: this time intelligence, it’s the only barrier between me and-but this time she didn’t finish it, she knew how to end the sentence. Between me and cracking up. Yes” (378).
            Anna’s attempt to live and preserve her identity in the moment of various patterns that make up the process of cracking up, is analogous to our experiences as readers; we experience the patterned repetition of the notebooks and, like Anna’s tendency to define herself in regards to people and spaces, we want to define our identity/commitment to a particular notebook and “crack” the seemingly mystery of the chaotic format of the book. We are experiencing the frantic process of reading a novel riddled with chaos in anticipation of an end, finality, or conclusion of some sort. She doesn’t want to make meaning of the chaos because that would impose of type of order or pattern; a fixity or wholeness that Anna would be outside of instead of safe within. Once we have claimed to have solved this novel then it’s over finished; whole, complete…where does that leave us? Which “notebook were we preserved in? Will Anna ever become preserved and accept being composed of fragmented chaos.