Alice Walker Interview, 12 October 2000

That's great because someone did tell me, you know, I never heard of Whoopi Goldberg and this friend of Robert's when I was with Robert said to him and to me, you know, that there's this wonderful woman at the Rose Theater, you should go and see her, you know, because he knew we were looking down and I loved her immediately. So, you know, he could very well have read this and thought, you know. At the same time, I'm not sure if it was before or after San Francisco, but she did do these various monologues at that point. I guess I just read the book at the same time.

For a class on film, to use that film and the book and the screenplay, just to really show how these things work and how they can be changed.

It is. I agree. Yeah.

So, much of my work has been about encountering what is absolutely taboo, not just wife beating and child molestation, but genital mutilation, interracial level, all of that. It's been very exciting to write about what hasn't been written and to understand that by doing that you are making a mirror for people. That's what you said. And I remember also a couple of years ago, I had an idea for a book called The Book of Life. It was a book that I wrote and I had a panel discussion with some women's theater group of women playwrights. And the question I raised to all the women was Suzanne Laurie Parks in Wendy, Washington, and others. I said, are there any subjects that are taboo for you as writers? Right.

I suppose how all three, book, screenplay, and movie all work and exist.

Pardon?

That book, screenplay, and movie can all exist independently.

Yeah.

Which are you very interested in?

Because, you know, I know some people have a problem with this but I was never, I didn't feel threatened by collaboration. I was excited by it. I thought that, it amused me to see how people, to see people's take on certain things. And I kind of knew we were creating something different. And I guess what I really was concerned about was that it keep all the heart and the spirit.

Right

And Suzanne Laurie spoke up right away. She said, any time that I hear that a subject is taboo, she said, that's what I want to write about. Yes. And I thought, in a sense, that's almost what you were saying.

The great nature of the controversy over it makes you want to write about it. Is that your follow up?

Well, it's about liberation for me. It's about seeing an area in which people are not free and having such a strong instinct for freedom and wanting people to have it, that it's almost unbearable to know that somebody is not having at least the possibility.

I'm still sorry that Mr. is not embraced at the end, that he's outside.

I was going to say one of the most moving things about the book you wrote about the movie was your letter to Danny Glover.

Oh.

In which you said and how much you, not only did, but also learned about your grandfather.

So, yeah. And then if you add to that, that there are subjects that are literally taboo. I mean, they kill people in some countries who even talk about female genital mutilation.

Yeah.

He did a really fine thing there for me, Danny.

I just saw him and he made a film of Hoosman and Lena.

And, for instance, did you know the first woman, black woman, the African woman in South Africa, who publicly declared that she had AIDS, was stoned to death by her community? See, I mean, so something like that, when you hear something like that, you think, my God, you cannot then let all the rest of the women in this country think that if they say they're sick, they're going to be stoned to death. You cannot. So immediately, that would, you know, however, I mean, I didn't have to because there are all these other people now who are just as shocked, just as upset, and in fact, you know, they re-educated the people in the community, and they've had a big education campaign in South Africa, and they now consider this woman, you know, a kind of hero because she did have the courage. I mean, she'd been infected by her husband. And then, you know, to gather her courage and say for the first AIDS Awareness Day they had, and to be stoned, I mean, isn't it just?

Yes. How was it?

It was very good.

Good.

Very different from other versions. It was him many times on stage and the other movie. But he's such a good actor.

Yes. And he's a very good person.

Meridian, whichever book from the movie is here, never made.

One day. I hope. Because I think it would be really good for people, especially the younger people, to see the civil rights movement and the people who made it from that personal point of view, and that real... I think what most people, when they think of the civil rights movement, it's all about external exterior actions. But what about all of us, really? What about the girls who were just coming to life at that time and understanding what was happening and what the possibility was for a different kind of life? What about the young men who were beaten up so badly or who were killed? What about their love relationships, their relationships with their parents? And when I was writing it, I was really very conscious of wanting to leave a record of the interior life.

Is that the sort of thing that you might want to write about?

Maybe, but I don't know. I mean, you know, I feel, you know, it's just, it's just that, you know, I really do get it that I've been given something really precious, and I have to wait. I have to wait until I really know, you know, that it's time to use it. I can't just, and when it's clear that this is for me to do, then I, you know, I can act. And see, this is what meditation does for you. It makes you able to wait. Also, there's a danger, I suppose, in people wanting to use you. I think of that anecdote about, was it Ford? Which butcher used your picture? People try all kinds of things.

Not just… Because I figured we'd all see enough bar hoses and dogs and police and Bull Connor. But we wouldn't see those little acts of heroism, like people literally standing up to Thompson's tank. There was a tank in Mississippi when we moved there. There was the mayor of the town, Mayor Thompson, bought a tank to use against us and he painted it white. And the people just basically faced it and he eventually had to do away with it.

Didn't you feel the danger that you were in? The actual threat of it all?

Me? Did I feel it? Oh, yes. Absolutely. But you know what? It was preferable to feeling afraid in the North and not being able to go home, which is what happened to most of my siblings. They left. I was the last. That was the youngest. And the whole time I lived in Mississippi, my brothers, I have five brothers, one of them has recently died, they never came to see me. Too afraid, really. The terror, the absolute terror.

What are the things that come across?

Well, the most painful one, actually, is just the people who want me to endorse books, I mean, and blurb things. And I do a lot of them because they are very, you know, necessary and important, but sometimes I feel it's just too much. I mean, I can't read all the books. I can't see all the films. I can't, you know, I can't respond to all the requests for, you know, whatever. And I actually had to change my assistant from a woman who was completely accommodating, tried to be, you know, at my expense, to one who was able to just say, well, no, she can't do that. Because, as you know, the need is great, I mean, you know, for the change that we need to have happen. And when people feel like you can help it, I mean, you know, and you can't blame them for wanting you to help, but there's just so much of me or you or, you know, whoever. But it's also meaningful to those writers, for example, that you would, you know, in the same way with Oprah when she does put a book on her program, it automatically changes lives.

Their fear wasn't around that. I think that their fear was just, you know, as black men in Mississippi.

What's that about? Learning from adversity. And it seems to me that a lot of the art has come out of adversity.

Exactly, yeah. I have such admiration for her. You know, I don't watch television, but, you know, you don't have to. She's such a force, you know. You can't miss her.

Yeah. I think that happens to many people. And you know, I think it's another kind of gift that sometimes when you're wounded or you have such incredible suffering, you know, your people are, you know, put in concentration camps, your people are lynched, your people are, you know, disappeared. You know, what do you do with it?

I mean, you can't miss her. And her impact has been, I think, really incredibly positive and, you know, miraculous. I mean, here she is, this woman from Mississippi, and, you know, I'm just amazed.

Are you walking on a book tour? Is this a book tour?

This is. I go to, I do a Barnes and Noble reading tonight, and then I go to Boston, and then I go home for the weekend, and then I go up to Seattle and Portland, L.A., another weekend at home, and then I go to the south.

What do you do with it? You know, if you can't make art, what are you going to do?

What are you going to read today?

Well, sometimes you put away the closet.

Well, or you kill yourself or you, you know, you abuse people, you, you know.

I don't know. I just got to wait until I get there and I feel how it feels, and then I'll know. Another thing meditation does, it makes you in the moment. You trust the moment.

I know a number of people whose parents were hollering about victims of one way or another who somehow never talked about it. They find out, this one actress that I knew, she's a good friend of my son's, found out much later in life that her father was survived in the situation that he never told her.

That's a good lesson. Can you always trust the moment?

Well, it's the only thing you have.

Yeah.

Just bottled it up.

I mean, someone might stand up and ask, you know, a very offensive question or something.

Yeah. Yeah

Oh, they have. Believe me. Doesn't matter.

They could have told her in different ways.

You don't respond with meditation, do you?

But now I wonder why, I mean in his mind, I wonder why he felt he couldn't tell her. Shame?

I respond with whatever is in the moment for me, and sometimes they're shocked. And sometimes so am I.

Tell me something. Why pretend? Do you point to any of the incidents?

Well, it has many possibilities. Shame is one of them, but refusal to sort of face it, confront it, refusal to say, consider how it might have changed his life, and it probably did. I don't know. But shame and embarrassment would be probably high on the list, I don't know.

Oh, God. My memory's not that good. But it's just that, um.

Dessert if you prefer. We have cappuccinos, espresso, lattes, regular decaf coffins.

One special dessert.

I don't think so. Not for me.

They're very good if you like dessert.

The dessert special today is like espresso creme brulee with sambuco whipped cream with a fast-fry cookie. Coffee or tea?

And maybe a degree of disbelief still that it could have happened. I remember when I was, you know, going around talking about female genital mutilation, especially in London, where they had recently, they were trying to pass a law to stop it from happening in London. And I remember an African woman once saying to me that she was upset because I was working on this. She said because now every time somebody sees an African woman on the street, this is what they'll be thinking. And, you know, how embarrassing and how, and humiliating, and it is, you know. However, so I said to her, well, what is the alternative? You know, what is the alternative? And we just sat there, you know, with that between us because, you know, the alternative is that you do nothing and then every African woman you see, or so many that you see, will have been wounded as children and nobody will have said a thing about it and it'll just keep going on.

Coffee or tea?

You're going to have anything?

I'll have coffee.

Okay, I'll have tea. Do you have herbal tea?

Peppermint and chamomile.

Good. Chamomile.

Anyway, can you think of an incident?

Oh. Worst incident. Oh.

Do you have any information about the incident?

Oh. I can't really. I mean, there's so many, you know, that seem borderline. But not so much anymore.

I mean, I think when people would get up and, you know, try to tell me that I should not have made a movie of The Color Purple, or that I should not be involved in trying to stop FGM. But the funny thing is that, you know, when you feel like you're living your life as close to the way, you know, you have to, I mean, just because of your own spirit, and you answer out of that, it takes away the sting of the hostility. I mean, in other words, my point is always that, you know, I am just being. And this is what you get. And there's nothing I can do about it. And you're free to not like it.

I would think it would be things like that that keep you writing, that that inspired a book. And I suppose other times it would come across to me.

Maybe. Maybe, but I'm not sure because, you know, maybe what's being born is something that's not so interested in adversity. Or maybe what's being born is something that wants to just go and be with the adversity and not write about it. You know, just be the person who's there to hold somebody. I mean, that's important. And sometimes I think that's where writing is leading, which is fine. You know, just drop the pen and grab the person.

Well, what about the people out there, including critics, who would say, why didn't you write another Color Purple?

Oh, good grief. Why? That's like saying, why don't you have another child? One is plenty. Really.

Laughter.

How could you relate your poetry to your fiction? Are they connected to the whole world?

You haven't been happy with your critics at all, have you?

I have not had really good ones, generally. I mean, I feel like most of what they say is so superficial and boring, and it's not about what I'm writing about. And so often I have to say I don't read them. I mean, because it's as if they're writing about somebody else. When I have had good critics, I've enjoyed them. I mean, I remember there was a woman, Deborah McDowell, that I liked a lot, because she would, her criticism was very thoughtful. She sort of had a holistic view and knew some of the history. But you know, I feel the honest truth is that I don't think critics can help me. I really don't. I mean, I feel like I'm really doing the best I can do with what I see my job here to be. I mean, I really am. And I'm doing it in the way that, I have to say it this way, that my ancestors really like. And that they're tougher on me than critics are. Much.

You know, they are. I mean, I realized I was reading in Chicago a couple of nights ago and I decided, you know, I was going to read from the new book and read some of the section from my young husband. And I was thinking, well, you know, I'm going to go back and read some love poems from Her Blue Body, Everything We Know to just show people, you know, to be able to talk about love, you know. And I went back and I realized that I had written many poems while I was actually in all those conditions I described later in the book, you know, in the memoir. And they were in poetry. You know, the depression. I mean, there's a poem that goes, your soul shines like the side of a fish. Come live in me again. Each day I walk along the edges of the tall rocks. Something like that. That was out of the deepest depression. I mean, it was just trying to live in that environment.

At what point in your life is that what you're talking about?

Well, there was that feeling within your family, don't put me in the book. Wasn't that kind of a...

In Mississippi. Yeah, sorry.

You mean my Aunt Sally?

Okay.

So, yes, I mean, they, I was, and I was telling this audience that the poetry often comes first and it sends the signal. It's like a little flag that says, you know, this is a place that has, who knows what it has, but, you know, it's a place to be marked. And I was surprised to see how, you know, even when I thought I was, quote, just writing poetry, I was also marking these places that needed to be looked at more.

Yeah.

Whoever she is in this story. I don't mean that even, because she was alive when she said that. But I mean that I feel very much accountable to literal ancestors. I mean, people who have been dead for the hour long, they've been dead. And that to maintain the connection that I feel with them, you know, I have to maintain a certain level of, I don't know, commitment, fidelity, truth. And beside that, the criticism is just so sometimes beside the point, I mean, really.

Okay. When you're writing a novel or a story, do you stop writing poetry?

Hmm. Well, you know, you can't really do that. I mean, it's, I mean, I can't. Because of all of them, poetry is the most free. I mean, it just chooses its own time. And I just hope I'm there to get it. So sometimes, but you know, less, yes, less. That doesn't happen as much when I'm writing a novel. Because I'm really so present for what's happening in the novel, you know. Although sometimes the characters write poetry. See?

Not to mention how painful it is to realize that you just almost completely misunderstood.

Well, that's the worst I would say.

It's very hard. I mean, when I learned that there were people who actually read The Color Purple and thought I hated anybody.

Especially men, especially black women.

Which is also your poetry.

It was so difficult. I couldn't understand how they could feel that way. I really...

Right. It sneaks in because it's there.

And also the implication of that was, you know, difficult because, and I've seen this lived out. I feel that because of that criticism, I have been cut off from a generation of young black men. And I think this is a tragedy because reading me could have helped them. And I know it. So it's very painful. You know, because they've been really taught and indoctrinated that, you know, I hate them and that's all there is to it. And why read somebody who hates you and da da da da da da. And so it's only been in the last, you know, I guess five or six years that that has really changed. And I'm getting a connection to, you know, young black men who read for themselves and think for themselves. And are not so swayed by the older men who are more threatened.

What did you talk about in Rosie O'Donnell's show today?

It went so fast. Oh, she loved the Mae West quote.

I was going to ask about that.

And I said to her, well, you know, I love large women with attitude.

So she's at, here, here.

She gave you a hug, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I was kind of surprised what Mae West was doing there.

Oh, don't you love Mae West?

Yeah, I've come to like her.

I do. I think she's great. And I love her especially for these one-liners, you know.

And anyway, I was saying to Rosie that, you know, it's so easy to get trapped in your reputation. And you have to really learn how to step out of it. And I said, for instance, you know, there are many people who have the reputation for always looking young. And then they clutch that. And by the time they're 90, they're still trying to look, you know, 30 or 20 or whatever. And it's just so obvious that it's a trap. It's a trap. And it makes you miss then all of the other stages, you know, which are just as amazing as the young stage, you know, really. The thing about the Mae West quote is I thought of it as kind of like a cultural signpost. And then also the reference to Mary Tyler Moore several times as you were watching Mary Tyler Moore's show.

Well, that's a good sign.

It is. Yeah. Also, I think because I've been really involved in the Mumia Abu Jamal case, been trying to get him out and, you know, so young black men who are politicized around that issue, you know, actually get to see me, you know, being active and understanding of that situation. And so it's helpful.

I thought that was kind of interesting and unusual.

And then there was a reference to the movie The Bridges of Madison County where she said you love her.

I didn't love it the second time.

Did you watch the debate last night?

That's impossible. Mary Tyler Moore maybe.

No, I was in the. I did something and then I went out to eat. So we missed it. Do you see it? Yes.

Oh yeah, no, I like Mary Tyler Moore. But, you know, that was all we had. That's it. There wasn't a lot of diversion in Mississippi.

Yes.

It was just brought to mind one moment in which something said about that that man who was his name was dragged to his death in Texas. The subject was brought up and Bush said with kind of a sort of a kind of a silly grin on his face. He said, well, he said, we're going to kill it. We're going to kill the three people who killed him. And big smile on his face like, you know, he's a madman.

Well, there were books.

I read them.

What did you read?

Oh God, everything. I mean, I guess my favorite writer of all time is Tolstoy. And I read him wherever I was, certainly in Mississippi. And it was there that I started really discovering and reading a lot of black writers. A lot of black writers, African American writers. When I was there I was reading, I discovered Their Eyes Were Watching God. And Kane by Jean Toomer. Kane, C-A-N-E, Kane. And, I don't know, we were big readers. Both of us.

He is. He's a madman.

What a response. You know, he killed somebody every two weeks. I mean, I was reading that somewhere.

That's the point. He's going to kill three more. Actually, only two out of three had it wrong.

But he would do it with a sort of like a we got him.

Yeah, no, no, that's really terrible.

Yeah, I'm really I would like Ralph Nader and Winona LaDuke to be on the you know, to be heard.

Oh yeah, I mean I, when I was a, why? You'd have to ask Howard Zinn. When I was a student at Spelman, right after my freshman year I went to Russia. And I was so innocent I didn't really know hardly what was going on. So when I came back I took this course with Howard Zinn who was teaching Russian literature and language. Not that he spoke it really, but he had a few words and he very generously taught them to us. I don't know, I mean I used to think that Russian writers would just... I mean what they could do is just almost unbelievable. You know, I mean in creating worlds, societies, human anguish, passion. And Tolstoy is just a master. He's a master at all of this. So, you know, I was reading him very early, is my point, and loving him very early.

You know, I think it's just absurd that we get to listen to these two people as if they're the only people to listen to.

They're not. Believe me. What's the interesting point?

If Nader was actually on that debate, I mean, he would. I mean, he never has a chance, of course, but he was like, pick up.

Imagine what it would be like just to have ideas that are different and views that are different.

Or a program. Exactly. And we're desperate for it. I mean, I mean, we deserve better. We deserve, you know, to hear all kinds of views. I mean, we're very varied as a country.

Why?

And I have to say, you know, I'm so I'm so moved by the fact that Nader just keeps going and he just keeps plugging away.

You know, the only future. There's no, you know, nothing there for him in a sense. But, you know, there is and it's for him and it's for all of us is to see that there is someone who represents us, because just as he's not permitted to speak in that forum, we aren't.

You know, and he makes us really see that. And that's really good.

Well I guess the surprise is that his book seems so different from yours.

All those people who really think we're living in a democracy.

Yeah.

I just wish Gore were a better person.

In fact I couldn't think of almost anything more, well I think it was something more. Is there a connection at all? I mean, how do you put towards the land, the people, and the land that connects you?

I know.

Sometimes I like him. You know, I mean, there's a way in which he's he can be very.

I'm sorry. I just I wanted to tell you that your story to hell with dying. I had a serious. I read it a hundred times.

Well, I think the thing is I really fell in love with Tolstoy himself in the same way that I love my grandfather. They were so much alike. Which is again ironic because he was Count Tolstoy, my grandfather was a poor farmer. But in terms of how they grew, they're very similar. Tolstoy was really a rogue and a devil when he was young. And in fact, you know, one of the sadder things about him is that he raped some of the Serbs, the women who lived on basically his plantation. I mean, and he was just a dissolute, irresponsible, head of a person as a young man. And then he started seeing how it all goes, what life is. And he grew and grew and grew until he became this old man who didn't want to own anything, you know, didn't want to be married.

You are so welcome.

I had a Mr. Sweet in my life. Bless you.

That all the time. I do. I get it often. I'm so glad. I love to see.

I know I even feel like I can identify maybe it's just because they come up to me.

But sometimes I feel I can tell the people who read my work because they seem a little freer. You know, they seem a little less burdened by, you know, the crap from. And I like that. I like that.

And died alone?

No, I'm not finished.

And died alone?

My son.

And died alone, trying to get away, you know.

More.

Run away from home.

Yeah, actually I see that though as, did you know that when people are dying they often try to run away? I mean that they often say, I gotta get out, and they try to go out.

This is a very interesting interview that you did with the woman I know, Eleanor Wachtell from the Canadian Broadcasting Company.

Did a telephone.

Haven't thought about it.

They do.

A couple of things. One was referred to your advantageous heritage, which we probably pretty much talked about. Sometimes you think that struggles about identity will never will never end. That was that. Do you mean that on a personal level as well as a.

I mean I've been kind of getting very interested in dying and death and how we can be as a society more, you know, human about it, really.

Human what? Human.

Human, you know, which is to say people shouldn't die by themselves unless they just insist, you know, that there should be a community. I mean I'm really getting more interested in hospice work and things like that. Anyway, so, I feel like his, you know, he had enough strength to leave home, get out there, and get on the railway station. And that that was actually part of his dying. He was trying to get out, he was trying to leave. It's lovely.

I guess what I mean is that many people are unable to face their identity, and especially as it changes, it's not fixed. It changes. And so you you're you're asked to continually sort of reassess what it is.

Could you describe yourself now?

Well, a few of the things I know about myself is that I have a tri-racial. Tri-racial. Tri-racial. Black, white, Indian.

Anyway, I love him because he could see that he was the whole spectrum, you know. And he was able to write about the whole spectrum from the point of view of someone who had done some really despicable things. Maybe I just like rascals.

Yeah. African-American, Native American and Euro.

You know, the Scotch Irish part.

Probably tri-spiritual as well.

You know, I was raised as a Christian and, you know, now I love Buddhism and I love Earth religion.

You weren't Jewish when you were married to a Jewish man.

No.

No. That would have made it quad right.

That would have made it quite right. Exactly. And I also love both women and men and trees.

So that's three trees. They're all three. You can always hug a tree.

And your grandfather was a storyteller too.

My father also.

So and that's always changing. I mean, it's always it's always getting more. It's always, you know, it's very fluid.

It runs in the family?

I think so, yeah.

How do you figure that? Is this partly a substitute for other entertainment?

And I think one of the reasons I love Buddhism is because one of its primary observations is that there is no self.

No television.

What about radio though in the early days?

Yeah, but we didn't have much radio. I don't think we even had a radio for years and years. And no television, which was such a blessing.

I mean, you know, that is just so we're all made up. We think there's a self. But if we sit long enough, another thing that meditation helps you with, you see that, you know, what you think of as yourself is always changing. It's always, you know, it's here and then it's not here. So that's what I meant. You know, just that, you know, the way other people see you, the way they need to classify you. People unfortunately just get stuck there trying to pin down something that's really always moving.

Oh, I'm so glad. It's interesting though, you know, I was in the Amazon in May. I've been studying plant medicines.

You were in the Amazon?

The Amazon.

Not Amazon.com, the Amazon.

The Amazon, yeah, yeah. I have all bites everywhere.

What were you doing?

I was studying plant medicines and entheogens. These are medicines that change your consciousness. It's like peyote. But this particular one is called ayahuasca. It's a plant that is a teaching plant, and it's been used by indigenous people in the Amazon for everything. I mean, they use it for psychological healing, for physical healing, for everything.

And always will move.

Yes, hopefully.

Because I find with myself that I love I love watching myself change. I love seeing that there's all there's more here. There's a bigger room to move into. There's and I don't know about you, but, you know, your dreams often will tell you that you're about to move into a bigger area. You know, in your what you can hold psychically and in your consciousness because you will start to dream about houses. And you'll be in a house and suddenly you'll go to through a door and there'll be a couple of rooms you never knew you had in your house.

What were you there for?

To study it.

Just to study it?

You know, studying with a shaman who uses it is his work. What it does is it makes you have visions. So you have these incredible visions, and it's very much like being taught by a person. I mean, it's a remarkable, incredible, unbelievable transformation. Anyway, so my point is though that the people refer to this, the visions that you have, as the television of the jungle.

Has this ever happened to you?

Yeah, as a matter of fact. And I wake up and I wonder where was that house?

You are the house. You are the house.

And some whole other area. Is this Freud?

You don't have to plug it in or anything.

Isn't that great? I mean, it's true. I mean, there you sit, and even if your eyes are wide open, you only see your internal vision.

No, this is just this is just paying a lot of attention to your growth. And understanding how your dreams are totally about you know what's going on.

What kind of vision did you have? Can you describe it?

Oh, I can't. I can't. I mean, I will one day maybe, but I can't. It's partly because it's a... Well, you know, what I'm learning is that the indigenous take on everything is just so different from the Western thought. For instance, one of my favorite books is Black Elk Speaks, you know, that book. And in there, Black Elk talks about this vision that he had, you know, that everybody, they had a whole part of their culture revolved around people having visions and being guided by them. So he had this great vision, and it actually foretold, you know, the destruction of his people and all of that. But what I got from that was the other thing that he said, which is that when you are given a vision, and it's not great in terms of, you know, bigger than anybody else's, it's your great. I mean, it's like, you know, even if it's this big, it's a little bigger than, you know, so your little great vision. You have to act it out. You have to create it so that people can see it and use it. And that's how you keep it going. You can't keep it for yourself. So, I don't know the form that my vision needs to be shared.

I'll think on that.

Yeah, it's true.

But houses is not just because you want to get rid of our deadbeat tenant who doesn't pay any rent.

That's not what I dream about.

But houses is not because you want to get rid of a deadbeat tenant who pays nothing or hardly anything in rent.

You mean that's what you have literally literally.

So you think that you said you were dreaming about the house that dream about a house somewhat emptied house.

Well that's interesting. It's possible. It's possible. It's probably more personal. I think you're probably right. You never know.

Are you reading anything now? Any book at all recently?

Oh yeah. I'm always reading something. You know what the most wonderful book is by my Dharma teacher Jack Kornfield. And it's called After the Ecstasy the Laundry. It's wonderful.

And these drugs might be used for medicinal purposes?

They are. They are. Always. Yeah. Because they're so hard. They taste so horrible. They make you vomit so much.

They better do some good for you.

You couldn't be recreational if you tried, believe me.

Your ex-husband has read the book.

Oh yes. I've sent it before I would publish it of course.

Have you been to the Amazon before?

What did he say?

No. And I probably will never go again. It was a very difficult trip. But now I have so much empathy. I used to just really not have much feeling for the people who settle in the Amazon, you know, because they're usually poor people driven out of the cities and they farm. They cut down the forest and they make these little farms and they don't last. I mean, you just see mile after mile after mile after mile of desolation. And having been in the actual Amazon, in the forest, my heart is so moved by the thought of these people coming out of the cities being given, you know, let's say 20 acres of land to clear with a machete. And they have to try to, you know, grow bananas. Because it is just like, have you been in the rain forest? Oh, it's just like, whew. I mean, I was in it. And it's never quiet. It's never quiet. And at night the frogs are so loud, it's like you're living right by a train station.

He loved it. Poor thing. Oh I say that because you know he's just a dear person. It just ended. It just ended I say. That's all. Well you know it ended and then the friendship ended. And that's the hard part. And I think it was just too much on his part to maintain. I don't think he knew how. I don't think. I mean it didn't seem. You know when we were married his mother sat Shiva.

I don't know if that's in the notes but there seems to be more of a tolerance for just trying to cut things off.

And it doesn't work well. You know I mean it just doesn't. I think for him. I mean he is he he thought that emotionally it would be better and probably less painful or whatever. But I think after 20 years there is a sense that we both have of loss. You know because there there's nobody else on earth. That we can talk to about certain things that happened during the time that we were together there. Nobody.

I never thought of that.

Do you tend to write about it at all?

What?

Do you intend to write about your trip?

No. In a way, it feels so good to keep things for myself.

I just read the piece that you wrote for the Times about meditation.

Except you could talk about it in your writing in some way. Well you know I could. But you know what. When you don't have somebody who that you talk to that remembers. So you just kind of. You know it loses something even even in the writing. I mean I have written a lot and I think he he tends to he really love the folk language in Mississippi. He started talking like we used to see that we said well you actually sound more like a cracker. But he would you know he would talk the talk. And I think that was his way of trying to remember.

Oh.

It came the other day. I was very impressed.

You meditate?

No.

We probably shouldn't talk about that because we're going to go a separate way, but it was in the point of interest of you.

Should I meditate?

Yes. Definitely.

What would it do for me?

Oh.

How often do you meditate?

I'm looking at the...

Oh, I see.

I'm looking at the liveliness of your eyes. And I think it would do a lot. Because... I mean, you're obviously really alive anyway. But meditation sort of fuels that. It helps it to really, you know, stay steady. And it gives you a little time each day to duck out so you can recharge that. So I recommend it. Tell them Alice sent you.

How was your time at Sarah Lawrence.

Well it was mixed. It was great for my writing because people understood what writing was. I loved you know my teachers. But it was extremely lonely. And I was you know probably the poorest student they'd ever had at the school. That was hard.

Exercise doesn't work the same way, does it?

No. No. Nothing does. And actually, I'm so interested in talking about meditation at every opportunity because you know, violence and drugs are both, in my opinion, really obsolete. I mean, they're just obsolete. I mean, they don't go anywhere. And they cost money and they cost...

But you're saying I'm OK.

Can't get rid of them.

I mean, they're just, you know... But meditation is totally just you and your breath. And unless people start charging you for breathing, you can always afford it. So I really... It's just such an amazing gift that we've gotten from India, basically, in a way. India and Asia.

You are.

Do you hate anyone?

No. Nobody.

Quickly, just like that? No.

No, I know I don't.

You don't?

Do you?

Oh, sure.

Really?

Yeah.

Ten eleven.

Really?

In varying degrees.

Why?

Well, on two levels. People on a level of, say, Adolf Hitler, and people in my personal life who have done injustices to me or people who are close to me.

What was the last?

I had a book out last year a biography of Edward Albee.

People in my life who have done injustices of one sort or another to me or people who are close to me. And maybe it's not really hate, but it's pretty close to it.

Really. What's it called.