One night, I found myself circling a question I was loath to ask George, knowing the answer in advance. At last, out it came: “How bad did it get? Was your life ever at risk?” And George answered. Seconds after hanging up the phone, I felt guilty for pushing him to open up to such pain. But then back flowed the elusive obvious: George was not my father, locked in his box of pain, but a man of his word: I will try to be an open book.
As never before, I realized that exclusive devotion to the written word was a poor cousin to simply living in the sensuous world of the spoken and unspoken present. Talk to me. I’m breaking the spell cast on the isolated boy, sentenced to life to the crafting of perfectly straight British lines, a slave to the letter of the law and the law of the letter.
Two years after your death, Sally, my mother gave me a Super 8 camera. She did some things right; motherhood will forever remain the toughest job in the world. At the time, neither of us realized she was setting me free: the camera made me feel like Superman. Then I traded image making for wordsmithing. But it’s not too late to turn back to the bliss I failed to follow; in the beginning was the image, and I now picture myself making them again.
Sadly, George was denied the late-in-life fulfillment of a dormant ambition. In 2016, when he offered himself as the B.C. Green Party candidate for North Vancouver in the upcoming provincial election, he hoped for the capping of a career in public service as a silver-haired, sixty-nine-year-old ecoconscious Canadian incarnation of Bernie Sanders. The party led George to believe he was their man, and he launched a well-crafted save-the-planet campaign. When, months later, officials got around to formally vetting his candidacy, George declared himself an open book, as he had done with me. But when he revealed the extent of his immersion in the counterculture as a young man, along with his experimentation with psychedelics in the wake of the sudden death of his first love, he was suddenly dropped. The brazen hypocrisy of an ostensibly progressive political movement lent a cruel twist to the sixties mantra “the personal is the political.”
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Thanks for listening, Sally. I hope I have not, as we used to say, laid too heavy a trip on you. You were the first to bring out my best self, and I’m thankful you were not the last.
The publication of Dreaming Sally has been synchronized to happen in August 2018, a full half century since we all converged at the crossroad of 1968, the year of your graduation, the year of your betrothal, the year of your death. We will both turn sixty-eight, a fitting realignment with the annus mirabilis. What are dates, rituals and reunions if not tattoos, buffers against time and loss, an illusion of certainty and control? Or are they an impediment to the blessed self-forgetting we knew as children, barefoot on the grassy edges of the August dusk? Impossible, of course, to plan a surprise, but the conditions seem propitious: will our fiftieth reunion serve as a launch pad for a gush of coming-of-old-age stories? What will spark when all of our minds and bodies come together in the same space and time? Something big, something small? Something over-the-moon? Something unwritable?
I once thought, Sally, that composing a book would finish you off; I have merely finished myself off as a book writer. An isolated childhood predisposed me to a craving for meaning that would lead me out of a dead-end street. Decades on, I release myself from the impossibility of finding the meaning of life in the landing of a mortal blow, by chance or design, on the back of a girl’s head. I am a human, simply being, part of a privileged yet still-juvenile species, a Grand Tourist savouring his detour and his return. You are guiding me back to the roots I never knew, back to the sandy beach, and a chance at peace. I hereby tender my resignation and resign myself to tenderness.
The long, strange trip continues with and without you. We are all accidents meant to happen; joy and woe, gratitude and disappointment, guilt and redemption woven silken fine. Oh, what a time we had, are having and will have. Here you were, are and will be, a part of us all: a summer wind caressing the lip of the volcano, a sip of iced vermouth, a dictated letter, snooker-ball pebbles clacking on the Mediterranean shore, sky of crystalline blue blanketing a Swiss pasture, bird swooping through open window, Tuesday tears of afternoon rain, out-of-sync gas and clutch, pendular swish of windshield wipers, unhinging of door, falling of body, a haunted Parisian courtyard, a primal wailing in the Canadian wild, a healing chairlift over the Rhine Valley, the new tellings of old stories. Mothers, talk to the souls growing in your wombs. They hear your silence, they hear your voice. Stay in touch. Mysterium tremendum et fascinans.
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I am now typing out the last words you wrote to George (the last words I will write in the form of a book), the letter he received just before August 18, 1968, the second anniversary of your blind date and the day before your funeral; the letter he gave me in 2010; the letter he could not bear to read, for on the back of the envelope, you wrote, “Don’t forget August 18!”
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Munich, West Germany
August 9, 1968
Dear George,
Boy, are you going to be surprised when you get this letter and the strike isn’t even over. Marywinn’s parents have a friend who is a pilot for Air Canada and if we send our letters to Frankfurt, he will fly them home to Toronto. I’m afraid this is going to be short cuz we’re putting all our letters in one big envelope and we want to get it off as quickly as possible.
Our hotel is fantastic, really modern, nice big rooms, each with a bathroom. Today we went to the concentration camp, really morbid, but very interesting to see after seeing movies about it.
So far I’ve bought seven pairs of bikini pants and one with a matching bra. Got the bra in Vienna and found the pants here in Munich. Was going to get a slip but they didn’t have any my size. I think you’ll approve. They’re all kind of sharp.
My money is rapidly disappearing but I’m having the time of my life spending it. You’ll see what I mean when I get home three weeks today, thank God.
Really want to write more but I’d rather write less knowing that you’ll get this. So this is the end of my letter.
My love to everybody but mostly for you. Be good. I am. Sending telegram Aug. 18. Miss you.
Love always, Sal XXOO
PPS. Just read the newspaper if strike is over so no telegrams ’cept our anniversary Aug. 18.
P.S. You can’t reach me between August 16–20 cuz I’ll be in Holland somewhere and I’m not sure where or when. So Paris till 3 o’clock Aug. 16 or London from 3 o’clock Aug. 20. Then T.O. 4 o’clock Aug. 30. Can’t wait. I love you. Don’t forget.
SALLY
LOVES
GEORGE.
Ending of Sally’s last letter to George, August 9, 1968
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am grateful to the many people who served as sources of support and inspiration during the creative evolution of this book, but I will name only a few.
Borne along by her inexhaustible spirit of challenge and caring, I remain in awe of my editor, Anne Collins at Random House Canada. Over the making of our two books together, I came to see myself as a somewhat over-vigilant male of the species who, better late than never, learned to absorb the riches that women have to teach us. I’m also very grateful for Sarah Jackson’s close reading and her work with me on the photo sections.
I never cease feeling buoyed by the dedication and enthusiasm of my agent, Hilary McMahon. The gifted poet, Nick Power, responded generously to my first working draft, while Katy Petre, Teressa Gold, Naya Kee, Steven Carter, David Kingsmill and my siblings, Shelagh and Michael FitzGerald, each added their own thoughtful perspectives to subsequent drafts. Throughout the process, Eva-Marie Stern has served as an indispensable emotional midwife, tending to my inner pendulum swings with the sensitivity of a born artist.
I also appreciated my fertile stints in the artists’ community of Artscape Gibraltar Point on the Toronto Islands and the Pierre Berton House in
Dawson City, Yukon.
Without my miraculously loyal, honest, patient and understanding partner, Katy Petre, I would not be the person, and writer, I have become.
As for my friend George Orr, there would be no book without his brave commitment. I consider him a co-author, and I know that at some indelible point on our converged paths, our shared love of words moved subtly yet permanently into a world of love, the place where the story never ends.
SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY
Philip Bromberg, The Shadow of the Tsunami and the Growth of the Relational Mind, 2011
Doris Brothers, Toward a Psychology of Uncertainty: Trauma-Centered Psychoanalysis, 2007
George Devereux, ed., Psychoanalysis and the Occult, 1953
Nick Duffell, The Making of Them: The British Attitude to Children and the Boarding School System, 1994
James Elkins, The Object Stares Back: On the Nature of Seeing, 1996
M.D. Faber, Synchronicity: C.G. Jung, Psychoanalysis and Religion, 1998
Sigmund Freud, The Uncanny, 1919
James Grotstein, Who Is the Dreamer Who Dreams the Dream?: A Study of Psychic Presences, 2000
Carl Jung, Synchronicity, 1960
Gregorio Kohon, ed., The Dead Mother: The Work of Andre Green, 1999
Roderick Main, The Rupture of Time: Synchronicity and Jung’s Critique of Modern Western Culture, 2004
Victor Mansfield, Synchronicity, Science and Soulmaking: Understanding Jungian Synchronicity Through Physics, Buddhism and Philosophy, 1995
Iain McGilchrist, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, 2009
Thomas Ogden, The Primitive Edge of Experience, 1989
Thomas Ogden, “Reading Winnicott,” in The Psychoanalytic Quarterly, 2001
Thomas Ogden, “Fear of Breakdown and the Unlived Life,” in International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 2014
Michael Parsons, “Why Did Orpheus Look Back?” in Living Psychoanalysis: From Theory to Experience, 2014
Leonard Shlain, The Alphabet vs. the Goddess: The Conflict of Word and Image, 1998
Gibbs A. Williams, Demystifying Meaningful Coincidences (Synchronicities): The Evolving Self, the Personal Unconscious, and the Creative Process, 2010
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A more extensive bibliography is listed on the author’s website: jamesfitzgerald.ca
European Odyssey 1968 video is accessible on YouTube.
PERMISSIONS
Grateful acknowledgment is made for permission to reprint from the following:
“See You In September” by Sherman Edwards and Sid Wayne. Copyright © 1959 (Renewed) by Music Sales Corporation (ASCAP) and Holly-Hill Music Co. International Copyright Secured. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission.
“Lay Down Sally.” Words and music by Eric Clapton, Marcy Levy and George Terry, © 1977 (Renewed) Eric Patrick Clapton and Throat Music Ltd. All rights in the U.S.A. administered jointly by Unichappell Music Inc. and WB Music Corp. All rights reserved. Used by permission of Alfred Publishing, LLC.
“The Letter.” Words and music by Wayne Carson Thompson. Copyright © 1967 Budde Music and Lovolar Music. Copyright Renewed. All rights administered by Bike Music c/o The Bicycle Music Company. All rights reserved. Used by permission. Reprinted by permission of Hal Leonard LLC.
“On The Way Home.” Words and music by Neil Young. Copyright © 1968 by Broken Arrow Music Corporation. Copyright renewed. All rights reserved. Used by permission. Reprinted by permission of Hal Leonard LLC.
Quotation from The Temptation to Exist by E.M. Cioran reprinted by permission of Arcade Publishing, an imprint of Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.
Quotation from The Object Stares Back: On the Nature of Seeing by James Elkins. Copyright © 1996 by James Elkins. Reprinted with the permission of Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.
Quotation from Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco. Copyright © 1989 Rizzoli Libri SPA, Milan.
Quotation from Equals by Adam Phillips, Copyright © 2002 Basic Books.
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In the event of an inadvertent omission or error, please contact the publisher.
Educated at Upper Canada College and Queen’s University, James FitzGerald spent over forty years in the fields of journalism and book publishing. His first book, Old Boys: The Powerful Legacy of Upper Canada College, was a controversial inside look at the attitudes and values of English Canada’s ruling class families rendered in an oral history format. Revelations of the sexual abuse of boys at the school, first published in his book in 1994, sparked the criminal conviction of three former teachers and a successful multi-million dollar class action suit against UCC. His second book, What Disturbs Our Blood: A Son’s Quest to Redeem the Past, was a multi-layered exploration of madness and high achievement within his prominent Toronto medical family. In 2010, the book won the Writers’ Trust Non-Fiction Prize and was shortlisted for three other major literary awards. The last in a thematic trilogy of creative non-fiction, Dreaming Sally is a true story of first love, sudden death and synchronicity set in the summer of 1968.
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