| edged out 10 part 6 - 1985 february-march | work & days: a lifetime journal project |
1 February 1985 My father has been putting windows into their house. Corners are glassed open, the diagonal corners NW and SE. Go out and see the garden too, part of the renovation, bricks and plants. She pleased and shy as we look around, "What if I'm going to like this house?" And I'd like to use it when they go away. From outside amazed he's gone even further to gilt Baroque arches at the four entries, night-lit splendid. Saying to the man "He doesn't know anything but he's blended styles." Nearly mindless, letting almost everything by. There isn't mental energy. 'Power.' - From Denman - what happened - what it's like - the way I am in fights - retract - stop - have to get away - confusion - I don't follow - being at Denman - shall I phone - it'll be too soon for a good - (but not careful, just moving) - not careful to sound the voice - it's formal not as it has been. Not very there - looking for a café, there was choppy dark blue water cold wind and sun at the corner, in Burger King - formally beginning to talk about the story, but there's about the opening - oh do we have to clear that first - "Did you smoke?" - "belong to them" - afraid it will be the way it was - panic - just want to quit - the explanation confusing - what she thought I meant, that it would have made her fuzzy - I didn't - but now I think maybe - what I think, that now she'll be mean - behind that, thinking now I have to quickly replan, I'd been getting dreamy about us being able to do it together - what do I still think: it's too much for her, unless I hold back. She's saying a new interpretation I don't understand. Changing to another café. Talking about the story. She, a detective novelist. The two sacks of potatoes. My head very tired. Bored? Exhausted by not understanding what she says. Walking to the bus she flares out - I don't understand - "You choose your pride" - I'm worried about my time - she has a tear - she's feeling something but what - "You don't even know when I'm pleading" - passionately but what - "such a massive suppression." 2 Would have been today. Candlemas.
Drug relativity
tree potentials, the sun apparently through an electromagnetic mechanism, the moon through a gravitational or gravitational-electrical mechanism Sore throat and nose blocked, heavy x again (no root veg but sugar, bun, coffee, ice cream, oranges) - fat ragged face Tried out writing Jill. It isn't full-heart. Uneasy misrepresenting Michael. Other doubts, is it another instance of not wanting it when I've been with J. 3 Morning wondering if I'm not seeing how sunk I am - and she does - has decided to will to take it on with me. [notes on fabric]
4
It isn't the way it was when we were in love - "It felt something"
5 Riding on an apple cart, apples piled, one at the apex, I fall off. It's Michael who jumps off the wagon to see if I'm alright. Elevator very slow. We want to go up one to 4th. The big one doesn't come but one up the hall. We dash. Someone, maybe Judy, keeps not running for it when the doors pause or reopen. We seem to be on the big roof of the elevator. Someone, she, rolling backward in her wheelchair, off the edge, but lands on her wheels and pivots around. Climbing up the nets and ivy trying by the outside. Has someone - it's like a dorm - an other - climbing through, someone has seen us. I tying her up, she's little and squirmy, plain, think I'll touch her. Etc about hiding from Mennonite choir. J is there. 6 Going out of the house for the day, it's quite dull, not the radiant autumn of last year, dark, haven't got my notebook, turn back from the verge of the hill and see the house a castle behind a row of Lombardy poplars out of leaf. It's been made a castle by building up, the left side built new almost from the ground. At the back, 4-5 levels, iron bridges across separate rooms up in a column. Morning thought I should work on some essay while I don't have energy. Dorothy. Then, what I'm mulling every day is about (coincidence in) time. Don't know how to -. Using someone to do what. Gather my phalanx. "There are indeed nonmutual or nonequivalent relations."
7 Sewing - what's hit - fear - what I've got into - what bought me - typesetting - Robert - fuck - tarot - the smell of chicken from T, that she's in my house, that not knowing her enmity is making me vacant. The panic was she was thinking of making an appointment with T. 8 What can we gather from: Our telepathy
9 Wakes at five puts on her red flannel pyjamas, goes downstairs to the kitchen, is going to make hot milk but the cook's up, says "I'll bring it - brings it with two hot muffins and some wet roses - in the guest rooms friends sleeping who'll have the muffins with their coffee. Early morning is for recollection, sitting with the ledger under the lamp at the round table beside the fire. Late breakfast is where the secretary, her beautiful orange hair, sits in red and white print dress next to me in the library. The cook brings breakfast, sits down too. Garden man comes in, housekeeper one day per week. Fruit salad, steak and eggs, pancakes. We feel the day and set up afternoon doing. Guests having breakfast either in their rooms or with us. Then it's school till lunch, the tutors - economics, physics, linguistics. Guests and city persons come and stay to lunch - soup and bread and cheese and salad and pie. After three business meetings - lawyer, accountant, broker, publisher, galleries, farmers. Supper is leftovers unless it's formal or out or the guests make it. The La Glace Trust Go first to London, set up house, get educated in economics and finance and physics, global economics, investment, and set up trust. Then begin to deploy people. I'd want to get close to physics, perception research, sound and light, meditation. Panic Singing - it prefers the unleashing of that energy - too strong - stopping 'the language of hurt' What Elaboration - how else does anyone think - stopping at the end of a sentence - energy too much for the limited run - mobility, waiting for the other - we should speak to each other as if we're working - saying everything twice.
Wasting discussion - not having a poise - making points - If two people form one system, one person's taking freedom stops the other Grabbing the mirror's head
Oppression - feeling of unequal - the other's madness - if it's energy - procedure - anachronism - unimmediacy - sins - The future can't be fixed. It depends most on the alertness of the present moment. By thought. Reference and tying ends. There isn't time for past or future. Seeing seemed to flux in and out of the visible light spectrum from black through red, suddenly a brilliant white The fluttering forms of color sparkling from objects and people, marvelous rainbows and energetic forms What does thought retreat from. 11 Charis and Peitho, attraction and persuasion, illusion. Putting into play a complex web of illusion affecting sight, sound and smell. Light hearts and brave attire 13 Oh the deadness. I was alive when I thought I was going to see - She pushing - the two days here - last night the cold night - she has a pressure like I had - odd the way I want to feel sorry for myself and abdicate - lay my head down in front of anyone - don't want to tackle anyone - energy - no learning or sense that I'm learning - J is so eager now. She wanting me to say I'd like both her and M, it's true, relieved, yes, but then when she says what are you afraid of, that there won't be anyone else. When she says one gives up what one wants - about roles - I say "Then there's no caring" - she, "There's more! I love you much better now!" - both in tears - I don't understand - she's saying it about the baby one, that I've put myself where I have to learn - but how is the bridge to be made from not caring to caring. I could go on writing if the past writing were received. 14 She seems now to not have ashes in the heart. But I do. Seeing notes about M: being put off. Thinking of real adoption. Lazing reading two novels, stinking. Caroline: "You're sounding young today." The missing piece. "Look at the rushes and discard and discard." Then J sweet with S wants to wrangle about M. Imagined getting free of me by getting me free of it.
15 The young man who's come together with Trudy. Then a small child come kissing goodnight. Three mouth kisses, he's trying something. 16 With Ammi to Lighthouse Park. Emily Carr. Isolation and displacement, distance from all commitments. To live as if everything around you is temporary and perhaps trivial is to fall to petulant cynicism and querulous lovelessness. The baby put to sleep behind the seat in the third railway car. The car's got uncoupled and is somewhere lost, sent round the country. After two days it will have died. What it was to have mental energy. Lethargy. Brain feels water swollen.
18 Behind a bush screen, found something, don't want them to see me there. Goats pressing around, to get out I climb up the structure. Attic - finding a bag of small beaded moccasins, assorted silver little things. Should I take one, if it were a girl I could, for her. The man with the thin young girl, "Pull her head back by your hair, don't bow it, it makes you look stupid." "She's beautiful," he says. "Yes she's beautiful but she's not my type." Stepping back to open the door and get in the pickup that's come for me. Shabby man with bad teeth, whiskers, like someone from my family fetching me for the weekend, says he's the one who should have babies with me. 22 The two of the placenta - what relation to cord - the one thinks he has it but it's in danger - the other, that he has it, it was always part of the other - ie how much of the dyad is mine - the double is also the mother-child for the reason of otherness. 23
How do the contacts select, collect, sort from the none. I am a spirit. That's the beginning of fear. You over there - where you are coughing and rasping - fragile - thank you. 25 Married morning - summer light through the bamboo strips - stroking the smooth plump - uxorious - hugging and asking - the early mornings of dining table - paper boys - a night awake being careful not to die.
Skin less greasy, better J-M Sunday morning dreams two hemispheres set with flat sides together, the center became the yellow light. "When I was praying I would find myself more interested in the yellow light." Not an organ. An explosion. Sunday morning I dreamed the images of houses in Tibet, one on a rock, one carved in snow. Passages cut, doorways series far back. Then I am at the hotel where the lama stays. This wall cut in rock, front wall maybe constructed opposite. The advice posted against pink sky, on the left a red rose, "success". A line of geese fly across. On the right an emblem in a circle, geometrical, maybe like a Masonic, a thin triangle, forget what it was called. Didn't read the text for either. In front of it's a collection of rusty implements, rust red. I loved the colors. Woke to energetic air, strong light, unusual high pile of clean clouds over the mountains so they could be higher and blue white snowy Tibetan.
26 Pat Smith on her bike run over by a man in a van, at one in the morning, First and Commercial. Said: there isn't room for very many to be known. In the disorder of Amnon's plots. "I am much more expensive than that," but not clear, am I? He often sighed. 27 What was this dream of J and him. Hearing her eagerly telling him her work and then seeing her in a green sheer blouse arching unmistakably flirtatiously, and she slimmer. I say amazed "You're acting like you're in love with this guy!" a slender old man holding himself very upright standing on the shore. His eyes were light blue-grey. the tall fine-boned man who stood outside. He was wrapped in a dark cloak which was pinned at the shoulder with a delicately worked gold broach. The best time for a human being to pray to the first cause is one or other twilight. At midday it is better to pray to the sun. fatal susceptibility to passionate touch that hypnotizes them into disasters. Their awareness of the future of the present is broken. 2nd March The purple cloth. Breathless walking. Going home and lying down. The ideal, hope and trying, is gone, resistance is gone, I'm docile, she's obliging, I'm the tumulus, sex goddess. Her back is sleek. "What a man-maker you are" And how is it. I'm an image but it's body not head, now. Didn't know it was this you lacked, the skin between the breasts, their fat cheeks. "I want you to know that ..." and then a shock, see her in the way I do lessening it. The way she came early to where x wouldn't have been in a few minutes. "I won't have anything to do with her anymore." She gets me instead to talk about what it is with R. "When I see that body talking to Ronny and Lucy." "Your friend likes a lot of power." Knives on springs. But with us it isn't rancor though she may desire as she does and I know. "I don't want you to lose" and I believe her. In body allowing anything, watching allowing anything. Not often verging but with no objection, saying inwardly, wondering, it's not as I was, is it a death? The brilliant morning. At the film the way it is these afternoons, discomfort so I feel I'll die if I don't sit down. 3 Pat's afternoon. Without being told gradually standing up to sing Bread and Roses, choked with crying. Alone in the balcony or downstairs. Why are there so many I hold off from. In bad conscience because I see ugly ones, or there's something unforgiven. Sandy Renee Lazara. Mei-lin, Josie. A red warrior girl I thought was Sibhion, oh she's fine, but then she was dyed black, lipstick, a mean look, why - [memorial for Pat Smith in the Ukrainian Hall across the road on Pender] From Norma she's stranged, what - she'd said, in 15 years, 65. "What a beautiful constitution." Mary formally. How that small wire woman, her heart torn, head injuries, could say things to all these. (If I'm not with these, who -) "Worked with her." Not afraid of. Pouring phosphorescent water with jellyfish. She went out at the crucial age, 35, of those who go all out - is it? 4
Letter from Elizabeth, Laiwan says next week, Amnon, Dr Gruson says blood glucose normal. While I'm writing about Betty Jo Stamm J touching in. Ms international, yes there, outside of national governments, global policy. 5 Today De Bono. Michael's time to arrive at the door, I'm stepping out of the - then he hasn't had enough and comes back - woodcuts, violent men - "You'd kill me" - "I have very nice times too" - stuck, missing - "I don't want the responsibility".
7 6th at her house. Haunted by the man [at the zoo] saying dogs frighten the monkeys so much, if there'd been a baby it would have died. Lying down talking, arms around. She and the con of fertilization, I see that maybe what she's after is expanding the size of - (Door opens downstairs, voice - oh, the turn around - fright - "when you talk to things it's serious" - locking the door.) Understanding - to: why is a child come as it does, in a particular time - place - timing - what is the agency when there is synchronicity - saying what I'd like to work on now is understanding that. "I did feel when I heard that music it was for me" - a theory of special distance connection - rub and rob two boys. 8 Her present rejected [Jam gave Trudy a pool cue for her birthday on the 6th], she thrilled by the sound. I'm annoyed. We talk about pretension. "What's your pretension?" "You tell me." [Trudy courting Jam when she's at my house by long whining notes made by a violin bow] - [looks like written in the dark] read the clues search for the girl - I might find her the new beginning and the useless zone I wonder if it's more a question of the outside looking in or the inside looking out - Early. Dazzling mornings. Amnon's duck's back. Up there the trees are red furred alight deep in the weave. Tweed. Air with chlorine tang. Sidewalks bask. Heart shock thinking of the heavy man and frightened with Barry, why. Carnegie Women's Day. How it feels at home. Brig taking the moment to speak, worn, thin, but not my haunt. We each know one thing about the other. And bright Laurel, and the woman whose son is wild. 10 Weak and ill since yest. eve. Marching from Victory Square. At the gallery the girl on heavy shoulders. She holds her mouth the way I feel mine. I want to stay near, timidly. If my child could turn out to be you. J about repulsion - what I fear I am - infantile greedy distorted - "Your body wanted it but I had to put up with your ideology." She forcefeeds me - starves - confines - rapes - bores - spies on. [ie I do] 11 Camping in the bush - somewhere. It's Switzerland because there's a Swiss guesthouse - has brick paths below the level of the banks, for cows? The family checking four cubicles, no, they're full. English and German talk about breakfast (toast and eggs). A nice-looking man holding a baby. What are these very nice looking people doing here. Coming with a religious group some distance, to settle, instructed to keep eye on the rail, traveling lying down - it seems that seeing the blur steadily brings images and knowing. We come to a water part with floating beads instead - olive green - the (murshid) says these can't be watched that way - I'm in the first of the line to emerge into our house, just a minute, move the bag of flour from the door, then open the door and we can go out into our new yard. A house (we came out of) with roof trusses half bare, half the tiles are gone, half the walls too. We'll rebuild. Murshid's wife saying the glasshouse will be here - built on. Going into the further room seeing two of the men already bedded down with their horses sleeping. Murshid looking around. I tell him I'll find out the name of the contractor who did the concrete footings on the other buildings, we see around - my dad's garage. See the old house in its stand of dark firs, very close around, vines, we still live in it, I mean it's still us living in it but I didn't realize it was so close-planted. We're finding ourselves in the section behind the house-bush, the men are going to be tearing boards off the old buildings. I see down in one of the moss hollows some good clothes embroidered satin tunic and trousers laid out as if washed, in a kind of rope hammock. I see a woman is camping here - I tell them down there to lay the things aside. In the other room of the moss hollow, more of her things, folded in a boat, little underthings as if folded after washing, little vests. A book in plastic sleeve, more a magazine photo but columns of numbers. Others of the women bringing other little things, pen, lighter or candle. Feeling who she is - she must have walked out from La Glace, or further from the bigger towns, and found this grove to camp in. a stranger. Still, a feeling as if she might be Julie. We're leaving carefully. I'll take the candle out last, can you see outside past the big log? Looking back - a few spots in the moss smoking lightly, should I go back and put them out. Standing in the hollow I'd been feeling I could come out of the house early in the morning and camp here myself - the bright open field. Starting vegetables - being without comforting movements - wanting less mapping. 12 Eating as energy. "Talk their way out of a paper bag." The Europeans. That Oliver [Hockenhull] takes Trapline as a model and was wanting to talk about TSK. [Tarthang Tulku Time, Space and Knowledge] Fine bright day, afternoon sleep. 13 War on the home yard - war has been declared this day, that means the Germans are here in the midst. We group to leave, not with them, with our own company, the ones bunking together in the traveling dorm, like a bus. Something - rushing along zigzag red-earth banks road, at some moment realize it's out of control and pitching over. Today made the purple pants. I love them. Violet stuffing food, sewing, listening to radio, gluttony with newspapers, what is - Wake night hashing Ammi - J first cranky then manic with plans didn't want me to come. 16 There's a design she says we agree to. We go into f without romance, plainly, lightly. It begins the real where but slightest change of rhythm stops it. One kiss, then oh I want more. Depressed from the Ides party, just the food. The dopers setting themselves away together, the musicians upstairs. Painfully: they have their society talking, it's a cramp. "As if you're not intimate with yourself when you're alone." What do you mean by meditation? Wanting to be learning, wanting to feel, mobile in being. J in starving and exhaustion, mind keeps generating. I'm often silent. Sunday 17th My father when I'm out has been reading my journal. I yell not very put out. After remember the incest dreams. Two women to give birth in beds beside each other. She's delivering her, caesarian, almost immediate, dappled brown like a fritillary, has been in with feet pointed like a diver. My woman has been gassed for a caesarian, going to have her feet cuffed to stirrups, is thrashing - calming her but then remembering to look, her stomach's flat with a bulge at the bottom, the head just going to come out. I catch it, two boys. Luke at a record bar, the man has a surprise, he puts on Luke's child version of a song - Luke speeds off in disgust, we thought he'd like it. A spread of buildings, one I'll live in, where's Judy's? 402, upstairs. Cafeteria, how'll I arrange payment in this story? By an electronic card I carry but don't have to show. Wieners and beans - weaners - cabbage - the man I liked the look of, a ham roll. 19
These days feeling the stop against them as wanting to come to that mind without it being theirs - felt as, indexed to. Feeling the unintegratedness still of 'that time.' I'd like with this young one to be from the beginning in the deep relation, without being incapable and bewildered. Dreams of this morning - seeing the beach there - sea water raised so a house has it to the top of the porch but lights still on - that can't be right - see it again boarded - I come out of the water in a bathing suit water makes transparent, past some people, taking my soaked pants and shirt to cover - looking at my breasts - M coming to rub against - "Remember what it was like" we say - he's gone away ahead carrying long pipes - something tied to the ends - M of my father, he's thinking to pay with a large cheque. In London taxi - the posh family's house, I'm going home soon but they pour a large whiskey - "When I get down to here it will be dawn breaking" she says - the young man next on the couch touching my hand - an album in front of us - their family album in stone covers - each image moves - this is the one I'm in, we visited during my childhood - that's me - "I remember this visit" - the only one - the hostess younger walking in a dress he comments on - low sash - Mediterranean scenes, sea ripples - Vivian Becker the ---'s girlfriend her face by the sea - covered in mud - being sculpted by caterpillar tractor. From these - why I want to recall - their vividness. Last night - she suffers about 'Michael' - I get sad - the electric intensity in legs and hips, try to hold attention - morning very mild unconcentrated nook and then holding peacefully as we've been - she filled with vegetables and worry - the house going precisely in order - working on TSK in presence of 'show'. [Amnon had invited me to present the notes in origin show to his class at SFU] 20 Holding so sweet. CFDW Cari. Street corner Esther with softened face. Appointment with Coburg. 22 Laiwan Olivier Patricia Ammi. The field evaporating. "Because if you listen to the world you have to know the world speaks." Rough and personal.
24 [Amnon has invited me to show the multimedia Notes in origin to his class at SFU. Cari Green and Catherine Montgomery of the Canada Council come.] At the corner my road. I don't give them the appearance of mastery. The students gradually all left. Then Cari and the Canada Council. The touch on the arm, I was thinking it 'warm', it was appeal. Was I in explanation begging to be given life. Laiwan white and steady but there's no love leaping in her for me. And young Ammi's greed, yesterday. I came home empty, didn't hear from J, next day the shock, she's not available. I wasn't in safety to know it had gone 'badly' or find out why. Fleeing to a fantasy of 'competent work now'. The night not able to know why I'm mad at T and then J's voice saying she can't talk - and I have to flee out to a public day and library books - child novel of fine self and family, a grey-eyed man - and in the evening she says she's been all day working with Max ensuring her success tonight - that she'll share out to T, R, and Max. If I go I'll be having to go home alone while she goes out with them. Or push in insisting falsely on a legal bond - the way at Pat's afternoon she didn't want to be seen with me. In the back room sobbing so the rival downstairs hears and knows. How did it seem to me - the lake house story, the field evaporating, last writing. Ugly students. And where I can't go now - shall I still decide to give him - away - and then begin again. 26
Only 152 this month. Complaint of doctors is they won't enjoy or participate. Rosy Amnon. 27 A second floor and third in a Chinese house. I clear it at first. Things to sort. Drawers with cutlery, dust. Once I go up the ladder with a broom and sweep rust off the wall by the desk. I find the room cleaned and painted, the desk gone. Something like a sofa covered with the yellow rug. Metal warehouse doors, I go closing some, there's a crazy girl out on the balcony knocking against the doors, even when closed, knocking to fall maybe, I beat her with a metal pipe on the bum, thinking I'll fuck her after, but she's lying there still with the bruises beginning to blush up on her bum. Come up another time when there are guests with the Chinese family, they have a baby - I'm carrying food thinking I'll invite Jenny up to eat - she downstairs dining with a snippy young sister - ask the roommate if I may - see a part of the far end of the long room roped off fresh painted in the afternoon, white floor and sills, new bamboo furniture, a crib, for the guests. Then that my end too has a fresh crib and next to it a baby's floor mat, they've noticed and given. In the grounds I've gone planting, their grounds, I haven't asked but just brought in my plants, beautiful settings of small agave by a path border, then by and in their concrete pool, but the lettuce I see they've cut - better not plant food, the grandmother will harvest it - the lettuce was in the pool, where the level's deeper than it was, flooded. Walking in the big estate - to ask something - their house up toward the gate, guests' cars entering, a woman with a hawk I met last year, the crazy shaven head young man who wants to grab my little camera case, he's got me grabbed from behind, I'm yelling and dragging him, will those men help, louching truck drivers, no, they're positioned to cut me off, a washroom I burst into, is it shelter or dead end - something, don't know how it goes on. At the last, about willow, salix, it's for borders, wherever there's a border to the underworld. I forget, in first waking kept repeating, to take it out. The ditch willow, the swamp and slough willow, her Indian grandparents, and red veins in a form of space. Stopped at a border, incarnation. Amm calls about Birdman. Press Gang Dorothy about paper. Incisive speaking. The first print. "It's a very interesting poem." Ie the first print read! J about what the doctor said, to be proud. The voice relation. Strong. 27 Thin twitch agent. "The perfect negative." I don't rise up true - accept the boundary, going down through my town - smiling steps - want to give Press Gang wine, that's my launch. Kriter. The long story in the night - thought I had one image to bring all - it was shoulders - and yes, I do have. In the house at home, there alone, Michael and I in (Judy and my) bed, a noise, one car chasing another past the front windows, across field over snow, quite near - knock at the door, he wants to hide under the cover, don't answer but sit up and when the door opens and the girl in party dress, looking back at others, partying bad look, is inside, I jump up to meet the invasion - "I can make you some bad coffee" - house full, they ask for linen, I say I don't have - it's all night seeing them there, they want things - then looking out the front windows in sun daylight seeing on the snow another group of people sitting picnicking - raise the window and call them to come in - they stand at a little distance as if there's a moat around the house, they're blind - I have to reassure them - as they pass through the window/door I give some of them a hand on the arm. The people there already don't seem to want them,
they're as if the other car, but I watch a man begin to touch and speak
to a woman in the armchair, he knows her, they've been lovers (among others)
and one of the women hold and jiggle the sleeper foot of a sleeping child
- it's ---, she says - then, as if each of the blind takes on one of the
first set, the house is cleared, they're all gone - also going into kitchen
finding M under raggy quilt with a girl.
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