1st March 1994
Went to bed in the evening and have woken at 1:30 from this dream. I go to his house to have it out. He doesn't say directly, but what he says lets me know that he was feeling me but then something opened up elsewhere, Sylvia I assume. And now he doesn't want - the hint is enough to move on and I move fast and hard. I had said he was an honest person, now I'll say more. I'm angry and watch what comes out of my mouth with reckless satisfaction. "You're honest but you're stupid, I don't want to spend another minute thinking about you. It was me who made it possible for you to open up to her." I'm going to storm out. It's pouring rain. "Take a raincoat" he says. I'm not going to. I rush out and notice I have a raincoat on I didn't put on. He runs after me to tell me I'm going the wrong way. I pick up rotten dried fish to throw at him. He escapes into the elevator. I'm throwing another piece as the door is closing.
There is something I'm half noticing then. Is the person who escapes in the elevator a woman? An older woman, maybe the elevator woman, a cockney sort, is going to direct me. She says take this road. It's the opposite direction from the one I was starting down. It's cobbles amid old stone walls, like coming out of a British station - Leather Lane. There are school fields on the right, like that school in London where Roy said Hopkins taught. She says to me, Your Scottish friend was a master there, he taught leatherwork. I'm turning into the cemetery and pass a young man. A young cheek. We've looked each other in the eye, and pass.
Is this the main thing about love woman, that she is vulnerable to seduction by the enemy?
No, that you don't know how to look after her
I've tried to look after her by choosing weak men. Is K weak that way
Yes
Is it better to look after her by finding a strong man
No, to not have a man at all
But isn't it her nature to want one
Yes
So how does that look after her? How can it be good for me to give up that liveliness?
You'd give up the heartbreak too
And be so dull
No
I have to accept that my father wrecked me for that kind of love. Did he want to?
Sort of. He couldn't help it.
Then what must I do with her longing
Tell her you're in charge and she can't have what she wants
Love woman will go back underground. You're serious - I'm supposed to repress all this passion?
No
Not repress it but refuse to act on it
No
WHAT?! Work?
No
Oh please be clearer. Who is speaking?
Wisdom, surrender to the inevitable
I should imagine never having a lover again
Yes
Tell me
I could do good in the world
Are you saying become a nun?
Sort of
How do they do it
Their community supports it
I hate this!
But it is the message
And what would become of love woman
She'd be fulfilled
Why did you tell her she'd have him in the end?!
I don't want to lose love, bliss
Put it into art
When I was like that you said bring love woman on again, now you are saying kill her
No, love her by protecting her from her weakness. She is a madwoman.
This feels like very bad news
Love. That is an instruction
I think it has gone a notch down from struggle to apathy. Dreams don't help, cards and string and voices don't help. Rain is pressing down on us day after day, I have blisters on my mouth, in two days I'll be cleaning again, my forearms are scratched from battling underbrush, there sit my parents in Clearbrook like two trolls. There's Louie busy succeeding in South Africa, another troll. There's Rob with his self-canceling face, nice nose and dreadful teeth, like a pretty girl with a disease. Then there's K like a picture of vitality flapping at me, saying come and get me.
And vitality says back to him, you're honest but you're stupid, I don't want to spend another minute thinking about you. That was a good line, is it the line I use to exit the struggle?
Let's do this: I have been saying he doesn't want me, and it is easier than saying I want him and I don't want him. I want him mightily, his not wanting me lets me have that. So now I'll say I don't want him. Who is speaking when I say that? Is it the same as saying I don't want her? No, but I feel it as if were. Am I seeing how this has to sort out? I want her, I want the passion you inspire. (Why do I say you there?) What don't I want. I don't want to live with him. Do you? Can I find out where are the points of conflict, exactly? I don't want to be as conventional as he would want me to be.
[page-long list of qualities and actions with columns for work woman and love woman to see who wants what]
- Are these mind and heart? NO two different
mind-heart organizations.
- Is it true to say one side of my body fell deeply in love with him
- In the conflict it feels as if one or the other has to die not true
- Is it in action they can both be there
- How do they make their goal in friendship
There have been long cycles of alternation.
- When I say he doesn't want me does it always mean I don't
want him
- Is there an I that can switch
- If Euridice is inspiration, does she have to stay in the uncon in a man yes, in a woman no
- What is a woman's relation to Euridice distorted by ideology
- Do women need to find her yes they need to see thru ideologies to find her
- Is there an I that can switch
The form of the Orpheus story is itself an ideology.
- Do I need to find work that marries the far ends of these
yes high tech and woman passion
- Is it possible to marry them in marriage
- Better to marry them in work
- Is it a matter of form and content
- Balance these by exaggerating them
- I don't know how to switch do it with imagery
- Love woman has two sides? withdrawal and aggression, a young man and a young woman
- Is it possible to marry them in marriage
-
Fields of orphans. Bumping on tight paths between coldframes full of babies and children. I wave at one. Then rooms full. There is a young woman I speak to. She has written a book in English. How has she learnt English and learnt to write in such narrow confines as these, beds so close it's hard to walk between them. I walked into a room with twenty or thirty children of different ages on beds, and nobody saying a word. Silence. I'm walking in a corridor with the young woman I met. We meet Jud. Oh yes, she's an orphan too. Jud do you know ---? Something like 'Val'. Yes. She does but I can see she doesn't like her or mistrusts her. I'm sitting with Jud and some of her similar fiends at their lunch table. Listening to them talk, trying to feel what they don't like about ---, who is not there. Their lunch is very simple, dry bread, apples. I'm looking at one of the young women thinking they all have that quality, they are lovely, thin, poised young women, light spirits, a way of holding their heads. They haven't engaged themselves in heavy lives yet. Their faces have an unfurrowed quietness and pleasedness. It's a universal young woman quality. They could be Edwardian, they could belong to another century, and here they have it because they are outside contemporary life in some East European backwater. But talking about connections, one says my mother met --- at ---. I say my mother was never in Scotland in her life.
1st March
How is it. Tuesday morning, Joyce later. I called for a cancellation when lions and tigers raged in my breast, and there was one suddenly yesterday - and I have the money in my cubby. It's not raining but damp and dark. A little wind moving a red washcloth held by two clothespins.
Yesterday I got into the work proposal. It is getting in. Not always possible. It means I'm her rather than her. After the dream, obsession was gone and I could work. Deferred, I know. Now I'm talking to Joyce. Let me talk about her for a minute. - I didn't want to say "for a minute" but the rhythm needed four syllables. There but not here. There again. Do you see how the handwriting changed.
I want to say where I'm not sure I can trust Joyce. Will you help?
I'm glad you're asking.
She seems to me to cut off two impulses - I don't know what to call them - two beings - that I want accepted. One is the pleasure and excitement of men and sex, one is high ambition in art. She pushes religion in a way, and I mistrust her New Age stuff as substituting for ego pushes she's felt she had to give up. Did she 'resolve' honestly, and can I trust her?
You could say that to her.
I know, but if she hasn't resolved them honestly she isn't going to do it in front of my eyes so we can get on with it.
You can fight her point by point.
That would be responsible but - something.
Say how it feels with her.
As if she is telling me to jump to her sort of moist-eyed compassion without going through the stages, or by blocking the part of a daughter that could compete with the mother in two crucial ways.
Did your mother do that?
I don't know. It's tempting to say she did, because I worked for mind as long as I was at home. (From grade 9.
It was Mr Mann who twigged to what you could do.
Obedient from 14 to 24, ten years. Then Roy, 24-30, then them and Jam. Mind starting again on another foot, freelance, 30-40. Then Michael and garden 40-45. Then school.)
Really my mum supported neither mind nor sex, I don't know whether she discouraged. The push was for prestige. I thought of her as an example of what happens if you choose sex.
What is Joyce good at.
She gets me to the core of love of my own being and she does it in an hour very skillfully.
It's what you'd need to know, for love and sex to stabilize. It's what you'd need to know, for high art to be more than impressive.
Yes, okay.
Now. How to do: resumé, learn how to print application, evening hours for Centre, write paras for descript goals background, decide title, referees. Next week go to SFU with proposal for doc, get procedure, see Barry.
-
"You want a man to love and value and cherish everything about you, contain you. And my feeling about this is that the men do want you but they don't know what to do with you, you're too much for them." And then I say, "But I'm quite nasty to them too, they don't know what hit them, I'm always rushing to get out the door before they do."
What does she want, Joyce says. "Oh she wants to marry him," I say in all the safety of not saying it myself. "And then what?" "That's just it." "What does she say?" "I'm frightened of letting her speak." "What are you afraid of" says Joyce. I feel in my middle for it. A large expansion. It's joy. And excitement. "I have to sit over there if she's going to speak, to make it clear she isn't me." "What do you want to do next?" "I just want to be with him and like him and learn how to do that. And say to him 'I want you, and if you want me too, this is what you can do.' I said that already and he said he didn't know, and I said 'Take your time.'" "You didn't say that, she did." "Oh - yes, it's hedging." "And that's taking control back. If anybody said that to me I'd say fuck you."
"She thinks she has to look after me. But is it me she's looking after?" "Ask her." "I don't know. I felt it was you who were hurt but maybe it was me who was hurt because I was sending you away."
To LW: "What do you want from her?" "She could make the long range plans." To me: "What do you say about that?" Me, panicking: "I don't know how to make long range plans because the ones I make she doesn't like." Then we were out of time. Morning writing she said, 3 pages without lifting the pen, 6 or 8 weeks without rereading it, just emptying.
-
"That voice" he said grumpily. I was breaking ice, I said. "Break away" he said. "Do you want to do something Saturday or Sunday?" Why am I having to tell. Because my feelings are hurt.
You said you'd help if he hurt my feelings, and he did. What I did was hard and I did it for you.
[love woman] Say.
He didn't say yes, he didn't say nice to hear you, he said things weren't going well for him and didn't ask about me. He needed to info-dominate me about bee-diseases, he was angry I'd suggested he make a shed. And why am I turned on down there? And then, I'd been so valiant and it said I should talk to you because I hadn't let you speak.
So now I'll talk to both of you. You were frightened and you phoned. He was frightened and surprised. He didn't want to be happy. You've set him up before. You're alike in your fragility. I adore him but you judge him every minute you can, you're so relieved when you can find something to hold against him. But it isn't him I'm asking you to give in to, it's me. I won't let you be abused, I promise you. The more you see how you resist me the more you will see how he resists you. You'll see through it. I promise you. Your feelings will be hurt to the extent that you ignore me.
Now, to you - Kenneth - if it were my phone call I'd say - "Hi" - and listen - "it's me" - no plan. Something looser. (You were lying abut timing and he felt it - he's good - a very good nose.) "Do you want to do something sometime? I'm here, I'd like to see you." That's all.
I was so frightened. And I knew I'd have to be unfrightened to do it right. And I couldn't make myself unfrightened.
You have some time before the weekend and so does he.
Will he meet me with his craven self?
You'll begin to like that one not because you can exploit it but because you can be gentle with it. He's near the skin in that one.
I'm liking it now. It's the remedy to my hurt feelings today. Can I touch him if I feel to?
If it's this, if it's glow at the heart.
In that glow, I agree to adore, I adore to, but frightened in front of him I don't believe it. Him? I'm saying - this guy who can't know me?
If he couldn't know us, we wouldn't be feeling for him. He can know you deeper than you want to believe, but you have to be transparent to yourself. That's the whole work.
I suppose I have to ask you about Sylvia, as if that's not my business. How do you feel about her?
This is what I have to say to her: listen, I really want to be with this man and I think you do too though you aren't saying so. I'm not going to back down and neither should you if your intentions are clean. Maybe this story is not a story of winning and losing, and maybe it is.
If I'm transparent to myself I'll embarrass myself and him with jealousy.
Transparent means transparent not whiney. "I'm jealous and uncertain" you say. "I'm frightened" you say, as if none of those things disqualify either you or him.
So I admit and you adore.
I adore you too, and you get to admit you adore.
Maybe he's going to say no.
Then I say: I won't chase you, it's up to you. If you change your mind, I'm here. Right? And stick to it, don't chase him.
Why don't I say those other things?
They aren't necessarily ingratiating but he'll take them as.
Can we work now? Will you help me get my focus?
-
Description of project. I want to do the first stages of research for a film/video that extracts small amounts of visual imagery from film/slide and video sources and places them in an abstract digitally generated landscape. Artistically, I am looking for two things: 1. a particular, very granular visual texture and 2. ways to animate features of this texture with motion that is visibly lawful (as for instance the motion of a tree branch in the wind) and yet abstract. The technical possibilities I will want to investigate, then, include:
- Image capture and rendering systems capable of giving me the visual
textures I want;
- Physical animation, particle dynamics, and mathematical visualization software to produce the qualities of abstract motion I want;
- Methods of creating sound driven by the same data that are used to animate the image.
- Title: The Orpheus pilot
My immediate goal is to produce a five minute video pilot, ie a visual/acoustic sampler of the visual and acoustic textures and motions to be used in longer work, which will be a version of Ovid's story of Orpheus and Euridice. In visualizing the underworld where this story is enacted - intuition's unconscious workshop in the brain or body - as a realm populated by fragmentary images, swirling with digital grain, and swept by currents of digitally generated sound. Larger benefits could include new adaptations of science- based software such as mathematical visualization packages to artistic uses.
Summarize background:
This project will bring together three interests I've developed in the past twenty years;
I've been an experimental filmmaker and photographer whose work has concentrated on the perception of natural and abstract motion in various kinds of landscape; I've been a writer investigating the fine structure of perception and imagining in the telling and reading of stories; and I've researched current work in cognitive science which models mental events as digital or analog connectionist computation.
2nd
Will running-off leave any impulse for here? I can see it's a faster way to get dreams done.
Oh can I talk to you for half an hour before I have to go work. I wrote the application suddenly last night, didn't refer to note pages, just wrote it. Why do I balk?
Let's not do psychology, let's not do it first - hello sweetie.
Oh I see.
See something pink and fuzzy.
Pink grain, an air of pink mist.
(Breath.)
That exercise has a driven driving quality.
Put another color into it.
Gold, it's like gilt edges but just the gilt, little curly lines.
Are they still or moving?
I saw them still, they could move, they're over on the right, near each other as tho they are parts of the outline of something that isn't all there, that's inferrable but not seeable.
Come forward in among them.
I want to lean on them, they're quite firm curly lines but they never get big, it's more as if I get close to them without their size changing. I haven't got that.
Go through them, no it's come through them.
It's like a clearing in the mist, goldy light not from an outside source but from the space, the space is self-shining.
Come into it, it's me.
I'm worried you want me fixed in the blissful void.
This realm is very wide in all directions, many blisses, I'm all of them not one.
I'll check the time, half an hour - I saw scribbles of light among the poppy stalks.
That's it, and you saw where they are on the foxface.
In the forehead and also - oh I see why you put it there - are we really going to go deeper into what we've got? - in among the little stalks, so beautiful.
You lit a candle.
Was that me?
You caught it.
This is so much - trying to write fun - don't you like that word? Seems not. Do you want fur?
Try fur.
Back there - okay - the fur I like - you like - the fur off chrome - can we do that?
Put a mist around it - yes, any color you like.
Pewter grey a gleaming mist, a point with those lines streaming and catching.
I saw that catch about fame, don't worry we can run them off, stay with me.
I had another thought but I'll let it go. That motion, the streaming out while staying still. The sort of throbbing catch. And the tiny color in the threads.
You can be any of it you want.
Why am I thinking of him now, should I check it?
(Breath.) No, not check. You're scared of getting stuck but this is what you can do, find the thought in me.
A fire in a mist, not the still fire but a fire with strong flapping and snapping and flaring and raising polished blades shining with that esoteric polish of mirrored molecules - is that it?
Look.
Have to wait 'til it's dark. But I find myself rehearsing.
Rehearse if you do but keep coming back to me.
The underworld was pink.
'Bye - maybe you'll see me during the day. Get gas. Drive safe.
3rd
Hi.
Hi too. It's you.
Don't have to rush. Look around. We have an hour.
Say It's you again, I love that.
It's you. Is it really you? Not somebody else? Like Louie?
Louie too, everybody love makes in you, but no, it's me.
We did that application. It was tedious for you.
Those knees on the wall, those blue bark knees, the way they're held, the beautiful tree.
I imagine Ja-Min seeing them.
Why not.
Alright, you say not to because I will be defeated again. She would be defeated if he liked my work better, but I would still be defeated as a woman. You take a hard line.
Yes.
I don't understand why you want me to just swallow that shattering shattering defeat.
Because it is true. It can't be undone it can just be compounded. You mustn't give yourself the illusion that it can be undone.
But I hate her for that defeat. She had no right to come into my life and do that to me. Were you defeated too?
Sort of. Happiness was defeated.
Do you mean she stopped me from having an affair with him?
Yes.
Oh I so much want to get her for that - I'm angry.
No, frightened.
Frightened she's done my spirit lasting harm. She's a viper.
Sort of.
Am I rid of her?
Yes.
Is she prospering off my defeat.
Yes. It isn't a matter of revenge it's a matter of recovery.
I was weak at the end. Did you do that to me.
To let her get away more fully.
She showed her hand with David.
Yes.
Alright, what now.
Your period. Your birthday.
And what?
Losses and reverses.
Do you mean him?
No the losses that are in love woman.
Losses that can never be restored?
No.
4th
Daylight came as I ran off dirty water. It's Friday. The application in its package. Can such ugly language be useful. Has anyone ever written about the child listening to language it doesn't like. A native Ellie. The other ethic never taught - that, later, people will recognize each other by, but that the child has to feel an unescapable unhappiness.
Hi.
Lo.
I like your little o, I didn't think I could make such a nice one.
Triangle.
It said force increasing toward a center. Which force?
Generosity.
What's at the center?
Original nature.
Is it right that what I feel for DC is original love and what I feel for KS is responsible love?
Yes.
Did the sequence mean something? I had to be dipped in original love before I could get to responsible love?
No.
No?
You had to work with original love before you could get to responsible love.
Which I haven't got to yet but I can see it.
You've got to it.
Is it alright to say to him I get exasperated.
Yes. Tell him why.
I'm afraid that when he doesn't give me anything I will be - what?.
Helpless.
It has happened. With him too.
Not with him.
Not helpless, just freaked. What should I do when he doesn't give?
Ask then.
Is that enough about him?
Ask about fantasy.
?
Imagine it ahead.
He'll be grumpy. Will there be something else underneath it?
Well-being.
Will I be able to see it?
Yes.
Should I call him on his grumpiness? "I think you're glad I called you." "I think you missed me."
Yes.
Should I tell him I missed him?
Mm, somebody has lied to him about that.
I'll have to hold myself.
Yes.
Oh will you help?!
Brilliance and courage.
I'm doing your work.
Yes.
What do you want him to be.
In love.
Why?
Passage from difficulties.
More? What?
Let inspiration teach you.
Can I tell inspiration and impulse apart?
Yes.
I doubt it, unless those exasperated slashes were alright. Were they?
Yes.
Do you mean I don't have to be only meek.
When you have exasperated slashes make them transparent.
So I see them through a parent.
No.
I show them thru a parent.
Yes.
His mum got exasperated.
Yes.
Because he wouldn't give.
He did give. She didn't accept. She wanted it on her terms.
So it's more important to accept from him than to give.
Sort of.
Is that enough?
No.
NO?!
Strength in reserve.
Do you mean sleep with Rob.
Yes.
It seems disloyal.
It will help you.
Can I go now.
Bye.
5th
The last two days physically very hard. Not sleeping well. Heart strained, it felt. Allergic ache. I look old grey sagged under eyes and chin, and feel - now that I stop to feel it - sore in my muscles. Allergy - to dust. The allergy also makes me punch drunk. Allergy to one thing makes allergy to another worse. And candida presumably. Yes. It makes allergies worse. Give up sugar altogether? Just stay away from dried fruit. Should I stick to coffee? And less? It's not the caffeine, it's the sugar. Grapefruit helps but vit C doesn't. Beta-C helps. Multivits generally? No. B vitamins? No. Should I give up the supps and eat more? Yes. Soup, salad, etc. Keep having meat in the mornings. Try to get organic meat. Not fish. B-carotene now. Is there anything else I can do now? Steam bath not worth the money. Do Rob's electrics help? Sex helps.
Hello sweetie, it's Saturday, you said let's court.
Those yellow ones.
What about them?
The top one.
The way the yellow comes down or forward.
I see.
No good writing it but what to go on to.
Into.
I saw a figure like Michael's woman (the beauty of his lines, the blue and orange edges around them when there's a lens). I saw her going in but Michael's woman is coming along a path. a lone, classical woman made of bright lines. Like caustics that form figures. Is that what you see?
Wait. Her right hand.
Is it she feels something in the air.
Yes.
That texture is feelable not seeable. Is that what you mean?
Yes.
There's a figure above the place where she's entering (it is like the secret slough, marsh), don't look at it directly. How to not look at it directly in film.
The figure is like the woman in the caraganas, the woman on the wall in notes in origin.
A huge face, goddess but not mother, and just a head?
Get it clearer.
I looked toward the foreground grass on the right. I'm hearing tona, Latona? Horse goddess, is that right?
Yes.
Mother of Diana and Apollo, Leto. latere to be hidden latus wide, broad. lattis latte lathe. A wide female intelligence hidden in branchy places, is that right?
Yes.
Is it he who I feel up there?
Everywhere.
Is it my mother as I felt her when I was a child?
Try again.
Is it a real goddess? (huge sigh)
Yes.
Are you part of her?
Yes.
Am I?
(silence)
Alright, I'm not. Is it the goddess of femaleness?
Yes.
Am I in service to this goddess?
Yes.
Tell me something else.
Emperor.
Does she oppose emperor?
Emperor opposes her.
Do you have a name for her?
Recovery.
I'm working for that. I'm a fifth columnist for her in the empire.
Yes because we're able to bridge.
Mm.
The empire is male technology?
No. It's duty, doing what you think you should.
-
Where are we?
Breathe. Where did you go when you went out?
Huge sappy scars weeping hardened resin. Bought chocolate cake for tea. Hard clear little binding on the clematis leaves. Inviting K and Sylvia to my house. We're in the workroom. She reads How to love E, how to love K, is about to read it aloud, I say "Don't."
The cherry scars say delay. The cake sez birthday. The leaf says clear edges. The store sez she is trying to intervene.
To what effect?
Misfortune.
Will she succeed?
No.
How should I go on in this day.
How old are you now?
Frightened.
Of.
Fright? That I'll be too frightened to do it right. I want to hide out, not answer the phone, not go down there. That will be the suspense, which I don't like either.
Blooming cherries. The cherries you saw yesterday dressed in sparse lace and light. Lo que la primavera / hace con los cerezos.
Allow yourself the love you'll feel. Just that. See? It's excitement.
-
No, it's pain. It's sadness.
Oh you.
Then I went away and did what I haven't - junked. Will we get through? Or there. Or what.
To heart. Say simply.
I went out thinking to find him and didn't, was it that? I read a book about marrying, how to enslave a man, and was sick at heart. Was it that?
YES.
Because I can't do that. Because there's such contempt. Because it would work on him. Despair. Not an old one, it says. Today's. What should I do?
Feel the way you're heartbroken.
[Birthday card from my mother, written in blue ballpoint:
Happy Birthday E -
Years ago it was much easier to write to you - you are a very strong, very demanding person in the sense that you won't accept what you don't want. You are truly much more your father's daughter than mine personality wise. You told me that years ago, remember? So where does that take us. I want a daughter I can reach and you want a mother that understands you and cheers you on your adventures in the world that I do not understand or value as you do. So - but we do have much in common, places where our values are the same. And I do respect you as a person of value from whom I want to learn something. Let's see what we can do relationshipwise. Maybe someday you will again sign your letters to me "with much love". Your mother.
I have written between the lines in black felt tip:
She would have liked a person who didn't grow past early adulthood. That's sad. It is the person who insists on giving what isn't wanted who is demanding.
No it was you who told me that years ago - it was always a threat you could brandish: if you aren't like me you will be like him, a fate you knew I didn't want.
You want a daughter you can reach, rather than wanting to reach a daughter. That isn't wanting a relationship, that is wanting to live in a different life.
You do want something but what you want is something your mother didn't give you. There will be no love until I consent to be your mother, which I have been resisting. It is the lie of your love I can't stand - it is not love it is need.]
It says don't mail it so I won't. It says be perfect if you want what you want. It says be her mother, don't be a child. It will be endless responsibility. Yes. It will make me dull. No. How can I deal with her if she won't see? From abundance. Where's this abundance? On the other side. Am I close to it? Yes. Do you mean responsibility not duty? (tears) Yes.
In the country where I used to live. Looking back toward a hill, it is a rise I can't see beyond. But on the right - I am facing east, approximately - I can see toward the south - directions aren't named and I'm not sure they are that - but there on the left if I am facing the hill crest with trees is a deep wide gradual slope with many lights. It is the country toward Dimsdale? That country southwest of the highway past Hythe. But another sort of land, so wide, and now there are so many lights. It is so settled. And down there a river flowing very fast, it is the salmon season. I can see, very small but clear, fish boats being borne with the stream, the men on smaller boats, two for each. I want to say trawlers altho I don't know whether they are that. The rowboats are running just ahead of the trawlers, the men standing on deck looking straight ahead. The river is rich with fish and with speed, the men are taking in their catch, neither they nor the boat are doing any work. They are being carried like arrows in perfect order.
I am on the deck of one of the boats with young men crew. I say something about the dining room. They kid me. I know that isn't the ship name so I make a joke and they laugh. We go up to eat. The dining room is empty. The young cook says trays are in the rooms. We are, I know they are too, disappointed, we thought we'd eat together and make friends. But now we have to find our cabins. The upper deck has some but probably not ours.
A little boy dressed in new sweater and cap, very nice, dark blue. They went out, Shannon with --? Someone. The child is looking well cared for, I think of it as responsibility and like it. The little boy and an older child. (He isn't going to call this weekend - he is fighting with himself - but I still have to stay around and not abort.) There are people from professional film, that look of middling moxie, large men, Toronto manners. I speak to one, who was there on the street where I took the kids. I see into his room. Say, It's a fairyland cave. And more, he says. There are sorts of display areas [small drawing] that shape, made of different things, I can't make out what exactly, many colors, I can see one now, lapped like shingles. Another is maybe dark blue like a thick soft card, embossed quite subtly. He says it is about levels. Is he a recording engineer? As if it is a contour map of all the levels in a piece of sound, which helps them set overall levels. I see other things he has designed, different ways of packaging CD sets, one is in little wrapped bars like margarine. They fit together like blocks. The room is full of displays at angles. At the far end is his rumpled bed. We meet each other the way I have been meeting professionals I clean for, a kind of fast strong taking in in the first moments.
Meeting Peter and Joan years later.
I am more peaceful. Last night again such pain.
Tell me about the river.
The landscape is my life. My origin is beyond the crest I can see. What does it mean that it is so much more populated? I'm worried about being more civilized. Civilization is ego's action.
The river is life returning to origin with what it has gathered, what it has been given. The two small boats who go ahead are parts of a person - the men on deck are attention. They are going back to the sea.
K and I eating alone this weekend. He is trying to decide about Sylvia. Do you know what he is going to decide? Yes. Should I ask? No. You want me to endure uncertainty. What am I supposed to do with it? Come through it. Come through it means feel it. I have been. Yes. Am I safe to go to the Calabria? Yes.
Is there more to know about this dream? Overview. What's the overview telling me? Energy. That it is carrying me to origin. YES. At the origin what will I find? (Power.)
I don't understand, I'm very wrecked now. Just tell me what you want me to do.
Feel your separation.
Was that a sort of control room?
Yes. Circuit patches.
About memory?
No, feeling.
- There I see this page, its fibre and ridges and shadows and reflected red, a sort of space in the shadow.
It's the body, so sore and trembling at the heart. What is the trembling at the heart?
Hard-heartedness is being shattered.
Am I supposed to just sit with this? Alright.
- aphrodite's garden volume 19: 1994 january-march
- work & days: a lifetime journal project