dames rocket volume 5 acid notes april 1977  work & days: a lifetime journal project [acid pages typewritten - seem to be a compilation of memory and journal written at the time] acid is taking me, I hope it finds me   it shakes my cells     coffee isn't good with acid I am addicted to coffee: it wants me addiction means that it puts itself into memory in a certain way   the practical decisions   I'm willing to give up every poison to be able to remember it. remember myself in it       the body isn't the temple of the spirit it is the spirit speaking to itself       what is eaten by acid - is it the muffler     the hood     remember to ask what mind we're in together     find out what writing is     in luke's young days I was him too he gave me himself in me, as a tenderness we are together not apart, he's there     the beings must act outside in order to communicate with the others in the same self then there's no reason not to act and every action, like putting the coffee down the toilet, becomes a part of the structure that then makes the self's armature     trying to go alert into acid and make bridges   city sense     who is seeing in, hardly think of it deny anyone could I deny that people can see in rather than make a house that is meant to be seen into house then exactly a picture of one's being in the world     the way way we posture ourselves in the world     take it from here.     I look at my thumb    taking notes makes slow journeys     but recall is too partial     I look at my thumb and see it a different shape than I thought in the fingers, meat, not smooth, red     what does the face tell    division, ravage under the eyes, my body is finding this drug hard.   remember it from inside tabletop, dictionary open trapezoid back from the window     there is the magnifying glass for looking at the redness of the thumb, and it is in my left hand, in the right is the pen making lines in the journal     a mirror on the left propped up against the window frame and a small mirror directly ahead       the face in the mirror is not one face but the two halves of two faces   it is in me all the way down not one body, two half-bodies knit together     I want to have a picture of it my face head on with the tuch and on the left looking sideways at itself, both faces are looking straight out at me     the hand with the magnifying glass the hand with the pen         no film in my camera that is when I ask josie for hers realize I can't at all learn how to use it in this mind     there is sibhion's picture of a baby too I had told her it was a sneering baby she said no it was a serious baby like robin     sibhion's beautiful textures and colors   these machines offend me   josie, I say, are you really into something right now, would you be willing to come in and document what's happening?     I find her the film I have and she becomes a clicking     I am taking things out of all the cubbyholes sweeping them into trays dumping them in the corridor     I think she is getting it but she is still loading the camera     she's there very peripherally I am filled with the gestures I'm making I feel priestly as if I am doing it for her too     I move the table back and bring in the orange carpet, bring in the beautiful plants and set them around the carpet under the window, reds strong live greens the carpet brilliant two small mirrors sending solid silver light among the brilliances     I get the indian bedspread and cover the fridge and stove with it   if that's paul and his feelings are hurt will you tell him it's alright, I just can't speak to him right now and I'll call him when I can     it is and she shouts that she told him I was really into something and he shouldn't take it personally   I go out to buy film    outside the air is so good     walking lightly     outside     remember   I bring in the film and the money and realize I am inside again and outside is far way, I'll stay and work on what I'm doing   writing, my hand moves along a distant long space: how large the letters how small the hand writing such a paralysis     telegrams I say, meaning such a paralysis that was a message to me now but I can't understand it   hand moving down such a long slope it is the writing which paralyses the being makes it slow and heavy, that's it   the jaw trembles   why is the being afraid of drugs   it journeys there so alone.       who's speaking?     the scared of being lost feels like I have to find an explanation   what it is is that I'm scared of     drugs and powers   I have in me the possibility of getting lost   ah - feel in there     it meant this: the voice is responsible   constantly anxious all the time, writing about whether it's possible to get lost   all that time trying to invent the solid person   never was one     I am with its adventures   they know how not to try to be the same thing all the time   I decided: the exercise now is to stay inside of myself and not throw myself out my sense windows   who     the voices so vivid making decisions asking questions the acid is moral and says yes and no   if I look at the wall the beautiful movie is there but I don't stop to see it I have this moral work to do   I was saying to myself, is this me, is this as stripped as I can be   it began to be a quest for the essence of I am   contracting the life enough to see what's in it the jaw trembling still   all the dirty glasses speaking of consciousness every glass surface is a responsibility   each object must be only itself each object in the house must be only itself       I'm carrying things out this is where it starts, the terrible earnestness, haste the ugly things taken out, the beautiful things brought in I set the mirror up and sit on the carpet in front of it     josie is clicking in the distance, there's my face among the blazing richness of the plants and glass surfaces all of them together all the right objects sorted in this way so they are alone together with me     I love and marvel at them and then I understand that I must leave them because in their wonderful rightness they keep me in them, whenever I see them I am stopped and give myself to them instead of to my being they stop me from knowing who I am not because it is wrong for them to be and to be seen but because, in my house, hoarded, they make me a miser who sees only the hoarded treasure and not the marvel dazzle change of the world and the neighbourhood   my essential self and the neighbourhood     between them the house occupying and enclosing distracting symbolizing me   symbolizing me     symbolism: I am in flight of symbolic action talking to myself about how symbolism is wrong   symbolism is making things outside the body that are there to remind the self of its inner needs and nature especially the needs the poverty: the things the self is hungry for, beauty wholeness perfection abundance glamour power colour colour colour   the shells: of the being     personality, interests, memory   body house and friends and children neighbourhood wider, expanded     city, country, etc     all the dirty glasses speaking so loud of consciousness and absence every glass surface is a responsibility I wrote   I could see josie's face in the mirror looking at her machine: she was somewhere else, but I was hoping she was seeing what was happening sometimes I had a rise of joy because I felt she was seeing it   this is for you too it's our housecleaning   then when I'd had just a moment with the beautiful things, I looked at my face wracked and old really suffering and trembling     I had washed the windows before sitting down, that was part of it, scrubbing and gasping with the urgency of cleaning them, mists of window cleaner and all kinds of cloths     now I had taken off the costume and was there with hair disheveled in the white cotton shirt, very bare with the beautiful things, shaking, seeing the wall granulate into rainbows but not willing to stop for them no I love you my beautiful clean perfect live made things, and now goodbye   carrying the beautiful things into the bedroom there they are all together these things on the white floor together making a blaze of pleasure, velvets weavings carpets pots plants the red and white checked quilt they are there together in an order that has no room for people in it, they are piled under a window they stand here as on moving day radiating in each other reflecting each other intensifying amplifying each other the three lemons the rolling pin the antique wooden tea box, the velvet quilt the red and white checked old quilt the begonias one with pink and one with red flowers the orange moroccan carpet and the pink kurdish carpet, the plants so incredibly alive   all carried off, and then the spices cleared out of their pigeon holes the pictures torn off the walls, the writing pried off thumbtacks pried out the picture of hegel the quotations   a message written on the wall by the pantry door, it is forbidden to perform a song alone I spit on a finger and scrub it off, josie is there taking a picture of my scrubbing it off, and I do it a bit longer than I would have   now there's only the stove refrigerator and table, they'll have to stay I take out the sink then I drag out the parts of the counter, long laminated beams with a hole where the sink went, they're heavy and I struggle     josie is in the corridor taking pictures of me pulling them out     then the chairs and the bench, the legs of the counter only the table left I struggle with it can't get it out the door, have to screw off the legs   then only the room and the stove and refrigerator and the journal and the mirror     I set the mirror up and look at myself in it, in front of the window     the window is wide open and there is air pouring in through it     here it is me in the mirror my action around me I will stay here and look at this   no, it is time to go, goodbye to you too   lay down the mirror flat on the floor, move it so it reflects out the window bright the clouds brilliant with little variations in their grey moving with the wind   goodbye mirror out into the corridor   journal:   it wants to speak what wants the human being what legend is this   it speaks there is a speaking there is a seeing there is a coldness in the body that keeps itself apart from what the eyes see   at every stage it is the same scene it is time to go, I've hardly known you     the journal goes     I look at josie there's been a glee in me too, I'm laughing   when I look at josie, putting the journal out, I laugh to say, this is for you too we both have to move     alone in the room, josie on top of the refrigerator taking pictures     ah the air pouring in     I go to the window and kneel looking out all the things that are happening this clean wind the green house with pink windows the alley the woman sprinkling food on her cabbages   the reason I don't get into it right is that I'm prepared to lie thinking of 'writing'   go to the window and kneel looking out of it     the freshness is wonderful there are many things to see and many things to understand I love to see and understand them     after a while I get the journal back and put it open on the sill josie goes downstairs and I hear her moving around down there     endless time     the play is over     out the window, I write it was the morality play     this person speaking wire lines the wire lines writing in the head too they are as if read   what would be a being without the kind of inner speech that writing is   that question is still there what is essential if I got rid of the writing what would there be   the morality play doesn't want me describing it as it happens, that slows it down too much and prevents too much   this place is responsible to no other place it should be let to fly and explore but I hold it down trying to make it speak and do things that the other spaces and selves will be able to use, because I know I will have to leave and go back, this kitchen will have to be useful again   but perhaps not, there is a thing in it that feels I could change much more than I am changing, if I let go of the other place and let myself really find out what is this self confident mind that knows so much   it is true I came to it with a question but it had seemed the question could be dropped if it seemed worthless     yet it kept coming back the question of house relation and the question of writing it   there I am in the empty room, away from the window now, with the main question   I can't decide: think, or be? that was, now shall I think about what being is or shall I enjoy this beautiful wall   and writing if I don't write it, the written thoughts won't exist and the other thoughts will be only there, no bridges to this time   I love this mind where I am so much myself, and I want in this time to teach myself unmistakably, how I can come back and stay here: what is this here it is huge energy: for thoughts coming so fast it's assurance and it is so full of laughter and delight at what it sees and thinks it moves so fast it is so interested in what it sees it is so light in its body, it is willing to give itself to people and delight with them in the questions of what it is to be     begins together in the world   forget documentary now leave that to the time it's for         a sense of all the questions being false questions   where is the essence?   there's a choice, I write another telegram what is it saying? is it the choice for or against memory we are tempted to leave memory if we do not give up memory we have to document because memory is too partial   but if we document, we slow down the present and make it speak the language of the past in order that the next or future present can understand it    we have to spell it out we have to work to understand what our future person will be able to make of our telegrams and we don't know our future person, so we have to give more information rather than less and that begins to feel like journalism for the lowest common reader    and that makes the present more stupid because it cannot lend itself to the journalistic voice without having only journalistic experience   but if we do not give up memory    the kind of furnishing it is in fact another form of hoarding ourselves    memory: do you need it until we understand that we are multiple and other people are multiple, and then when we have mirrored our multiplicity, can we set ourselves free of memory cast off from memory should memory be the first to go    is it the machines no it is the books and papers the documents   the machines are something else, they are the means to make the documents also they are the things with which, in our poverty, we set ourselves to paying attention taking up the camera in order to see taking up the pen in order to think taking up the projector in order to have pictures in our mind, to study and feel out to have a look at the world    taking up the pen in order to invent a landscape oh maybe the tools as attending aids are corrupt but not as inventing aids    no children in their easy community make up stories among themselves plays movies architecture   our grown-up creation is meant to get us credit, except where it is to share the vision which we could share if we were looser without the excuse and intervention of art   I couldn't get it down:   there seem to be a lot of stories going on at once   thoughts changing the mind rapidly but the same questions coming round again and again     I was trying to move back and back to essence without false questions without business and it seemed that I was having to walk backwards and might suddenly come upon the sense that this was it the bedrock the axle home     there's so much and writing won't tell it     all I could do was set down statements about the sense that language is too slow, the difficulty of making a statement to take out because writing is too slow in the spaces between language are also the pictures     now, talking to trudy in exact comfort playing, and finding her so ready and supple, oo you really are a fish you're wonderful, laughing and laughing I was in my head with her voice and my voice there together when I blew my nose she said, did you blow your nose in your shirt? and I had   with all this lovely time around me! I cried    she knew I was flying I called my friend into my head and told her where we were, in the room with nothing in, she said she was sick, I said you aren't sick, you haven't got a sick being in you. she said, I'm in shock, she said it more than once and finally said she has her new airbrush and then we talked about how it is when you have a new baby machine and you're shy with it and about her darkroom and her clouds and I stoned her with the first four exchanges she was willing to go right there and it seemed so much the way she is when she's flying and maybe in fact I found her flying in me saying goodbye I had her in me for a while as a certain expression on her face a vanilla brown translucent smiling playful trudy her fish so flip-flip eyes smiling the whole time I felt like I'd found trudy's essence as the joy of swimming with another fish, dolphinidae the two dolphins I cried wanting to swim like that with somebody   I told her about the woman giving food to her cabbages   then I went out in the black dress and the fur vest I went out like a native of another country but in this neighbourhood it wasn't hard, I walked along the skirts of the park, marveling at my lightness and how fresh it was, no one there but me, the houses vivid filling me up leaving no memory walk walk slowly along the long side of the park looking at the trees and the blossoms a smell stopped me I looked at a purple bush all its thick of thin branches reaching out around me tiny leaves and smaller buds then I saw a trail going in under the jack pine a children's territory I could go into and sat on the pine's root looking at crows who were briefly among the falling birch branches and the slightness of their new leaves flecks the crow jumps into the air and rows away I stay until I find that I'm gone, and then I go home   and as I come to my alley there is daphne with kit and raf I think, I cross and smile she hasn't recognized me hours later she says I thought you were someone new in the neighbourhood I didn't recognize you until I saw your face (wasn't I limping?) and then I thought ellie must be in a strange mood   I said, do you want some plants? she was coming with me my house is a little oh no, I'm saying quick on the instant, not what you're thinking, different past the junk on the porch it's all disorder and then the corridor and the kitchen we stand here and I tell her what I've been doing   I take her to the bedroom and show her the beautiful things she says it looks like a patio with the bamboo seat there, and the plants and pots we talk about easter she is willing to play with me I say does she believe and she says she doesn't know anymore, she thought she was an atheist but she finds herself telling kit the bible stories and he likes it, it goes along with their superhero phase   in the kitchen when we came in the two cameras were there sitting on the shelf looking down she says do they work? do you mean are they in working order? they're in working order but who knows what they're thinking   a big enjoyment of that   she picked up an iris stalk and started to tell me a story of how it reminded her of an eighty year old woman she was interviewing they have a birthday party for the city and she always bakes the cake I missed the beginning of it but came in enough to know the flavour of what she was telling me and her name was pearl that's a whole story I said I seem to only find myself telling those stories not writing them but you could write them it doesn't happen when I write, it only happens like now when I'm talking to you   in the bedroom leaning one on either side of the door frame looking at the piles of things I remembered the good friday in greece she gave me time confusedly to recollect it I was bringing it right there and making it in front of us, the servant girls peasants taking me off and grooming each other, doing my hair laughing and having a good time and all the churches five or six or however many there are in a town all of them with their doors open and music coming out the doors because of the brothers singing, and everyone strolling through the late afternoon and into the evening and at every church going in to look at the epigrammata? looking at her to see if she knows a full size image of christ, put into a coffin, with glass over it of course, and everyone coming to kiss it   why's it called good friday? I ask her that's how it started she said yes, it should be bad shouldn't it and then I tell her the story   epigraphita? the kettle is boiling like a waterfall in the kitchen and we go back there, I take the little wooden box and say, I'll let this come back, it has the tea in I get two little white bowls and make the tea and she and I sit cross-legged on the floor I've taken off my robes I don't get honey or milk we have it plain tea   talk about luke she says that at her house he sometimes has a hard time because he doesn't know if he wants to be in the group mind oh, then he's taking on my structure I cry she says that when he isn't sure his contribution is welcome he gets aggressive and they all jump on him and sometimes it is too much for him   and I tell her about having friends for the first time in my life just in that sense of being willing to go into the group mind and about how the self that writes has been all safely kept separate and the self in the world has been ungenerous and how they are trying to learn to mingle   she says in her house there are so many things and mostly she says generated by her unfinished projects letters to answer debts the sense of debts   I notice them all accumulated on the piano and I just sweep them off and then they pile up again if you could have no debts, none at all, what would you do? there's this book, for two years you'd take that one with you? oh yes but it is a project from a past time but it is my reason for being here, if kit didn't need me, and if I didn't have that that's what keeps me here if you weren't here, but if you weren't here, where would you be? why I'd be dead she says it with something tearful in her voice I'm surprised at her, it is a kind of self pity to need a project, to stay alive? and I'm yearning to have no projects just the sense of self journeying at the rail a fresh wind at sea looking and understanding everything to know   but this is what she means by death, it is being without memory or responsibility, no debts no projects only consciousness   ah: I want to know what's in here alone with me   the coagulate here precipitate   the coagulation here of what's essential, precipitate   at this instant I discover, I name, my long nostalgia for death remember the desert? the corridor? death, the light, oh, the light!   so much life in the death I want   I am not realizing that it is good friday, twelve to three and at three they ring the bells, the temple veil torn open, the mysteries exposed   the self is just asking, what is the self? wanting the soul wanting so much to be only the soul   you too cheryl: there is our companionship, we are hungry for death absolute consciousness no wonder we hunger for each other purple: "I am attracted to people with purple around them, or sometimes blue"   for then shall we know even as we are known   learning to die we are in quest of the knowledge of how to die learning not to be afraid to die learning to be conscious of our souls in all confusion all changes so that we can cross consciously and know where we are   she said: every person is a place I can be, I make connections and in between them I do things to keep them possible   we live in houses we have friends these essential shelters   for the time being   these things keep us from choosing to be angels angels are dead people, yes   there is me and my child   getting to the skeleton   to have wind and light   no thoughts in wrong clothes no vested interests   in a right life I imagine such a clean place around that the easter egg would be itself light coming to it from all sides   death and irresponsibility, I say ! she says, it isn't quite like that the phone rings it's kit wanting her to come home he's already eating? she goes home I'm satisfied that it was fine especially when she talked about reading comics and she said her favorite was sheba queen of the jungle and I saw her so vividly with the leopard skin on swinging through the trees laughing, oh I made her cheeks pink telling her how well it suited her   when she'd gone I went into the bath trying to remember what I saw about her but it was moving too fast and then there was my body as the water drained off it and went away altogether, satin satin, beautiful shapes breasts ribs belly hipbones thighs standing up with water pooled on the sternum reflecting around a puddle and it had got almost dark, this body was so extremely beautiful I dried it and took it naked to the bare room and sat there in it for a while   understanding about hoarding: documentation and hoarding keeping memory, beauty, friends beautiful things and bits colours all the things the world give us for free more and more a stream all the time, and new too, clean when it comes in without debts in it nothing but lovely time rushing clear as air such a right element days and days so many of them   deciding: the library books go tools and documents get put away to where they don't exist unless they're called food and food tools no longer for decoration, they go too, and come out in their beautiful way when they are called   then luke comes and I ask him what we should put back into the kitchen he says the table and the bench are you sure we need the bench? yes, because sometimes we need it to do things on and where shall we put them? the table should go here, he says   he's tired, I go to lie down with him, I tell him that in his room he can now have it exactly as he wants it I'm full of joy imagining being able to see uniquely him in his room and he's feeling funny I'm feeling funny he says in a self-conscious voice, I'm feeling like I can do what I want we talk about his ghost, what can we do I'm so wonderfully interested in him I can ask him all the things that bring out his amazing wise luke he says the ghost has eyes and a nose drawing them in the air and a long white dress no pants no mouth he wants to take down the door or paint it I say, if you decide you really don't want the door, we'll take it out and you can look to see if the ghost really is in there he says me and brad looked in there one time and we saw some goblins only maybe they weren't really goblins, maybe they were dressed up like goblins or maybe there were goblins dressed like dressed like dressed like babies he says he has to go to sleep I lie next to him with the light out after a while I think he is asleep and get up to go, my thoughts are back to the house he says where are you going and I lie down again when he is asleep I say are you asleep? I love you and I am married to you and I am going to have you in my life   then I go to the kitchen and light a candle and write and think again it is all moral   luke must choose, in his room, absolutely   in the kitchen we'll choose together tomorrow and commit ourselves to making it right   there'll be no unconscious parts of the house   orderliness of course, not because anyone says so or doesn't say so   orderliness that leaves no hooks out for consciousness   documentation has to go unless we find we need it the seed idea was to take everything out and bring back the things that need called   documentation is like irresponsibility it is leaving instructions to someone else   the things that have to go are (leaving instructions)   the symbolic acts? no the wrong and unaware symbols (thinking of the easter egg luke painted like blue water earth seen through clouds)   knowing how to choose right food by taste and smell of course   then stopped writing and went down to ask josie if she was alright and found her having made the picture that is the expression of my desire for a transparent house and sat and talked pouring out thoughts and perceptions looking at the picture and feeling it as the work she's doing, technical problems meaning of colours   was there a long time and then came up alone the lovely sense of alone my bed rolled out on the kitchen floor with the candle, other objects taken out, lying down with it rising around me   lay down full of thoughts but could feel sleep coming told myself it was like dying but not dying trusting the body, thought I would like to imagine it as practice death but also imagined I could inadvertently die, imagining it   the drugs we think we take psychotropisms   when I acquire something I should take things away to make room for it   woke in the morning with a regret     volume 6 going for broke 1. dames rocket volume 5: 1977 january-may work & days: a lifetime journal project