A sustained meditation on personal past and the secret nature of reality, this multi-volume work unearths a wealth of hidden meanings from the first-person-historical dimensions recording a Southern California girlhood, moves to Berkeley, Nevada and Michigan, and the chain of great expectations developed along the way–built out of Hollywood movie dreams (“imagining our lives, instead of living them”) and inevitably shattered by disappointing and betraying real-life relationships. The bittersweet and ironic evocations of the failed loves of her life make this among the most moving as well as revealing of Wakoski’s books.
From “His Bedroom Voice”:
He leaves a message on our answering machine,
a simple one, plain, expedient, he needs a
letter of recommendation, but as I listen without
much thought/I realize I don’t mind anything he asks of me