Dear friend, far off, my lost desire,
So far, so near in woe and weal;
O loved the most, when most I feel
There is a lower and a higher;
Known and unknown; human, divine;
Sweet human hand and lips and eye;
Dear heavenly friend that canst not die,
Mine, mine, for ever, ever mine;
Strange friend, past, present, and to be;
Loved deeplier, darklier understood;
Behold, I dream a dream of good,
And mingle all the world with thee.
-- Alfred, Lord Tennyson, In Memoriam, section XXIX
Daria, Poem Unlimited
by Project Pegasus
Part I: Trial Pieces
Chapter I: Ingmar Bergman and Jane Lane
I had nothing on my mind that day except for Ingmar Bergman and Jane Lane: Ingmar Bergman because he was the subject of the term paper that I just could not seem to finish and Jane Lane because she unwittingly robbed me of the first stump of sleep I had managed to steal in almost two days. Looking back on that day, I really gave no thought to either the blizzard that seemed to transform Raft into an iridescent, white gem, or the sickness that had first invaded my head and sinuses before surging into my chest and occupying my bronchial. The creaking, cast iron radiator along the wall was enough to keep the elemental cold of the North Atlantic storm at bay, and the cough syrup I swigged periodically complemented the cigarettes and coffee that had held me steady through the night and well into the next morning. No, I had nothing on my mind that day except for Ingmar Bergman and Jane Lane.
It was late afternoon when Jane called me. I fumbled for the beckoning phone, fighting through my grogginess and annoyance to answer it and get it to stop ringing.
I looked at the clock: four thirty-five.
I had napped for an hour and a half. I faintly recall a dream of having afternoon tea with someone whose face I could not look into. Or perhaps I was leaving the cinema with someone after a late night screening of a film I did not understand. If I really had had either dream, the man was the same in both of them.
He was gone though by the time Jane's voice whispered into my ear.
"Daria?" it said.
"Jane?" I called back
It was the call I had been waiting for. I knew immediately by the way the voice touched me what had happened, what it was going to say. I do not even remember it telling me that he was dead. I only remember my own sense of irreparable separation from him. There was no shock though, because somehow I had a presentiment that this was fated to be: when I learned that he had enlisted, I knew that he was doomed.
I remember also that I it was not my time to grieve. I knew that Jane grieved deeper than I, and at that moment she needed me. She was manic, and her pain would not suffer her to remain silent. Through her weeping she repeated the same three phrases again and again:
"The Army officer pulled me out of class."
"Shot through the head."
"Blood and water."
Though she looped through the same three lines, she would never say them the same way. It was as though by trying as many variations as possible, she would finally stumble upon the arrangement that would lead her out of her anguish. Or by exhausting all permutations, she would somehow be able to master her trauma or at least allow it to pass on. At times, she seemed to whimper the lines out, lost and bewildered. Then she would say them dispassionately, as though she were not the one experiencing the loss, as though she were the Army officer dispatched to notify her of the casualty. Interspersed throughout, her voice would grate out the phrases menacingly, and the further she went on, the more this tone began to predominate the others.
Despite our distance from each other, I wanted to hold her in my arms, and wipe away the tears from her eyes. But I knew that if Jane had been sitting next to me, she would refuse my sympathy. I wanted to tell her that everything would be all right, but I wanted even more to believe it myself. After a while, I stopped worrying about consoling her, what I would say and how I would say it. I resigned myself to listening to her until she spun herself out into silence. The phrases repeated themselves through the receiver, but rendered progressively slower, quieter, until they ceased altogether.
After she repeated her last cycle, we sat together without speaking a word. Alone in our common grief, we communed wordlessly, our shared memories of him the only comfort for the other and ourselves.
"Daria," Jane finally said, "I had better go."
"Please," I replied, "I have a seminar that finishes at seven. I'll call you back then."
She hesitated.
"You shouldn't be alone," I insisted gently, "Not now."
"Ok," she conceded, and then hung up the phone. I knew that she wouldn't pick up, and she didn't when I tried to reach her after my class later that evening.
I reached over and wriggled my mouse, waking my computer out of sleep mode. My paper lay as incomplete as it had been when I had fallen asleep. I did my best to forget about Jane and him, long enough to present the fragment of my term paper to the rest of my classmates in the seminar. I printed out the rough draft as it was: confused, contradictory, and unedited. As the paper fed through the printer, I gathered up my coat, tied my scarf around my neck, found my wool cap and laced up my worn combat boots. On my desk I found my last cigarette alone in an otherwise empty pack of Lucky Strikes. I slipped the cigarette behind my ear and threw out the box.
After the whining printer spit the last page of my essay out, I gathered up what I had, locked the door of my dorm room behind me, and again remembered to forget about Jane and him. I had to forget, for I had Ingmar Bergman to think about.
Disclaimer: All copyrighted materials are property of their respective owners (and you know who you are). Daria Morgendorffer and Jane Lane belong to MTV and the soul of Ingmar Bergman belongs to the Swedish Ministry of Culture (just kidding, it really belongs to The Criterion Collection.)