Notebook
Guts Into It
I love this documentary portrait of Jini Fiennes, novelist, essayist, painter, photographer, so talented in so many ways, who nonetheless, whenever she had to fill in her profession on a form, always wrote just, ‘mother’. She would tell her seven children, in pursuit of some goal or other, that they’d ‘got to get their guts into it’. She herself lived viscerally, though at the same time with consummate intelligence. She turned a childhood marked by absences and an early breakdown into tasks to be fulfilled creatively, with precision and beauty. She demonstrated by her life a most important point: it is possible, by perseverance and grace, to pass on graciously to others what one has not received. In a poem she spoke of her freedom being ‘spilt and poured’ into others’ needs, though because the spilling and pouring were desired ends, her freedom was not ultimately compromised. It grew. It became love.