| edged out 4 part 1 - 1982 november | work & days: a lifetime journal project |
2 November 1982 The not-knowing in that molecule broth - broth - what's its relation to the sense of power not struggling but usedness, power matching. C arriving last night not lucid, in protest, and I willing to say nearly anything to keep her out and get her gone and then after it seeing the next move to call Ellen - which was what she was doing. The sense of both watching vulnerably to get a magic working of the broth and suspecting it is simply, or also, a vulnerability to the feeding needs of everyone I'm in bond with. Not knowing how to tell. The two might be the same. So deep in speculation, feeling it a crazedness maybe, is it them, how they work, is this what artists do, is it what performance is, specifically. Not knowing whether canceling was losing the chance to bring it through in the intensity of the day, ovulation, shock with J. Watching to see if she could tell, have I been done out or is this what will make it possible to get it clearer. Connection. I show it, I don't know it. Dear Jamila. Your syllable songs and new writing. Will you still have it. Yes whynot, I'm not the only one. In there for both is the silvergrey understanding of the one who is visiting in turn. Before I slept I saw its head, why. It's too near. Am I in its field with what I'm knowing. Yes. and so. That what I've always known and you always disputed is all true. We'll see it, and what does it mean that you dispute it - oh knowing I'll be able to think without dialogue. Cell sensitive to the color green. Some cell might be sensitive to the orientation of lines at a particular angle
I was hearing that I could read code just by taking metaphors straight and then what's the agreement that keeps it hidden - it must be a common dread that covers over spots in exchange or else there is in 'metaphor' a distractor. Matrix of potential experiences is encoded in the frequency domain. Lens-like structures. A white painting, color a little mixed in or showing through. It's big - has color lines - the clean primary very thin and small somehow - pieces - it's the salt piece - what am I in the middle of there. The whole completely written The social hologram a pattern of interconnectedness of individuals Most of our scientific understanding is built on lens-like structures which tend to objectify. The facts themselves meanwhile are not true. They simply are. Truth is the function of the beliefs that start and terminate among them. 3rd What we say together, she's jealous, she can't stand she's mor [?] ("You're more of a man than she is") "She's a delicate -." "She has to have a wife." "I helped her be a poet and she hates me." "Do you stop her too."
The way you don't love my being. ("I'd rather be in the category she has you in.") I love something of you - I love into your well - your brown shining, dark brown shining apart from me steel stone diplomat eye-strong central. "Her light gay voice." "Could do it if she would but she won't." "I'm sorry it took so long to know you. What you can't do." I don't love your relation to me.
"The beautiful light footstep (going downstairs) very early." Oh universe.
What has it been. I've weakened myself arguing and teaching. What else, I've doubted myself wanting to learn something marvelous. Haven't wanted to cut my way. And what is today's wanting to be seen grieving.
Rune secret conversation dune wind pushed What is the grip (in any) That the mysteries have come home to this life. There isn't event yet.
Nothing can be seen without being seen through the patterning.
The relation of that preoccupation to beauty and juice. Difference between seduction and compassionate seeing.
5th
The rose prunings, armful from the yard of the Chinese grandmother, dark red stem, dark green gloss, fine, pointed fat bud. [sketch] Who was she. What has happened. What relation does it have to being mean to Paul and Cheryl. What relation to T and R. What to work and ambition. What has been done. What is it for her. What relation to her work. September the bad dreams, the man grabbing her - "I'm being superceded" - coming to say I'm out - the cabin will be closed - C and T trapping me in the basement - Sara being killed. October - red overlayered - the witch in the other room has shaken herbs that she means to kill me, she'll eat my friend - she dreams she throws Ezra off the balcony, queasiness - Ritter and Patrice - the horse in my dream had been with a maniac writer - starved as she - feeding in a thin grey and mean spirit world - the seal, it's nosed by one and allowed to enter - the leaf shrinking to brown. Oct 5 fight C, Oct 8 fight Paul.
Will be out of money and starving again soon. Rain. Though on this Sunday morning, when the clouds lifted up there was white mountain left under. Oh universe. "What combination of connections making it exciting for them to be together at all." 8 Karen's bloat. The lipstick on her more pig mouth. Little house. She says "Welcome." Combining color. What I say sounds intellectual, I came in pain. "I'll feed you" in American tone, what is it. The area pink green olive turquoise. On the other side colors I hate. Many pieces I don't like over all, then in the basement the beginning of a ravishing one perfectly subtle and vivid, overall and in the single red thread. Tale of not sleeping for a month and a half, "Jim went to work, I slashed my wrists, when he came back I was lying there covered in blood. He couldn't make love to me for five months. He wanted me to be patient but I wasn't, I had an affair with his friend. He's afraid of me now." Showing me the two grids - lines of the same three colors, one makes a solid, the other a lovely shattered rain. She says I'm seen as a recluse. She talks about the gay man and smiles a hideous smile. I stare across the room at it thinking I'm seeing and hardly believe I'm seeing the smile of social malice. She tells the story, then "Well I have some things I want to accomplish this afternoon." A smile placed. Sitar. "I don't think I'm a recluse. I have two friends." The candles in the garden calling friends - see it - dreaming suicide wrapped in the pink quilt lying in the garden near the stone table. Candles at the head of the brimmed tub of black water. The incandescent grain floating and shaking. Stone circles floating. The bamboo and poplars bed head plumes up from the black. That's where to reenter, lie down in the water. Are they a wake. Then I tell T, then I break it, she says I should've played with it. I will be bright again, upright, "She misses the real things, and then what's the point," feeling a question as I am exposing her to the ones she believes more than me, it's either, she's mad, or else, she is in another world. I'm so much wanting there to be another world (there is), I entertain her singularity at my cost.
So what is she. T says she stopped at adolescence; I say 2, or 3. Then - I know nothing - she is not stopped - what is she - what does she say - so what are you if I listen will I know. If I talk, will I describe myself.
"Your work is universal. You want it to be and it is. I am more like a research worker, trying to push a border somewhere," pushing with my palm, right palm, southwest.
In the tape, evasion, unlogic. [I taped a conversation with J about our area of madness] Why do I think of her as smart. What does it mean if I was fooled, the way I was fooled, ie with Roy and Cheryl too, and before that, Carmichael, if what I think I want is an intelligence that turns out whenever I think I'm with it, to be false, it means - my intelligence is false - (if T says it's true and like hers and her friends, that means - ). Whose is more true - M who knows what anyone will love, is only being loved - but who can't fight. Goethe saying Only think less of your views than your eye. A complex relation of spontaneity and the managing of it. In the night a sequence of images, or images and thoughts, quite a long sequence that opened the body sexually, in love. I didn't focus, was hoping to see it go on. Waking next day at 4, in pain, thinking of the area below Hastings, where I went before, in pain, and found the garden, where I've now wanted to go again, in the field, small rubble. Thinking of all location and movement as 'dreamed,' J is in me as an inhibition and failure. The separation has been so I haven't wanted to write anything about it, but I've been stiff-necked as once before in pain with her and as if nerve damaged, tottering, falling sideways. I want to ask other people how she is, does she have what she wants, did Rhoda tell her the candles. The separation is firm, no impulse to cross, though I have a fantasy she'll arrive before she leaves, as she does, when I've got happy again and forget to insist, this has been the first dawn pain in this change, I feel failed marriage, I failed, and she did, in perception, I failed to feel her pain and so she has no loyalty, she the same and even more, that she wasted me for an obsession. There is an opportunism, I am afraid of saying You failed that, you failed being married, but it's over, you'll go on. I don't like the usual callous in that, it is leaving out the screaming loss of what intimacy is, that I will have to go on shut down in my father's way, never having learned, and I know it's the same for her, really having failed to get the whole person into being with someone. I feel her callous and opportunism jettisoning me, all she hasn't learned. It's true we both know this is right timing, if she can gather herself before she goes, and then go alone, she might find her right life, she's been so far out of, in her silly projects, it's certain it is the way it has to be done, I feel she'll stay in Hong Kong, I have been expensive to her keeping her from her progression, and she me, but, it isn't her place in my time, it's her, I suppose the fascination of seeing the changes, we weren't real to each other, someway, except in the hooked-up times when we were thinking together or feeling the exquisite occult. But that, was what we were there for and the price for her was the vulnerability to obsession, and for me, some bodily confidence, my old juice and joy. I as if feel Hong Kong, assume she is preparing, I see the warm air, with longing to go myself, it's near the time we did, that was a time in so more faith, the heart was coming through though there were terrible shocks. When she turned and came back in the cemetery. We didn't learn to mend hurts, as can be so easily. Or to be simple in pain. For that, what, have to believe the life together is right, that it belongs rightly in our time. If a woman comes under the dominion of the unconscious, the darker side of her feminine nature emerges all the more strongly, coupled with markedly masculine traits. Assertion/attention. Ying/yang. the speech of passers-by Bones, the flight of birds, the fall of rice grains, barley gruel, footprints, rods planted in the ground, the speech of passers-by. "I beg leave to present to you the results of certain experiments for your contemplation." Said Newton. Oh universe. This contradiction, I'd like to be a woman, the Eton Street love, happy, smart, expanding, goodlooking, feeling, and it had to go on because it knew it wasn't impressive. It was clear but limited in a girl. But now I've been wanting someone to say, You were brilliant there, be a girl again with me. It's been only Paul who's wanted to read and see that, it did me such good. She was working and I've worked on. Want to know - did I get a subtlety - wild oats - the slides, yuh. Holy mouse story, story of father, field drying, roselight heartbeat. C at my show. Two pieces of film on thumbtacks blown in room's air, taped sound. Snarling with Don, he'd remarked something was about my leg, she snarls till he leaves, I get her out the door, scruff of neck and seat but see the door hasn't a lock, to the fountain, get my shoes off her, my pink pants, leave her bare bum, but when I get upstairs she's there before me in a skirt and boots. Said my show was terrible. Reluctant to write her this one. If I lose the subtlety what will you lose, your beauty. - That by asking about images, separated existing, I would have to get to the womb. Why others don't ask urgently that way, they haven't the structure of perverted fertility. Why they don't. That it can only be justified if it's skilled, if it becomes objective skill and/or if it demystifies itself, ie takes away again the charge of attraction.
If there is a different world outside than in but the difference has not been made clear. Observation is for both. Homology. I must get clear the question of circularity. 13 She had left a note, I read, while a meeting's gathering, in her small house. The caretaker knocks, we're out of sight, she doesn't answer, he shoots in, comical when he sees us, "An apple left for the miss, when you make her muesli in the morning." The note is in cartoon. A mountain she stands on? Meets someone on? An Indian woman. Boxes I don't understand, herself drawn embracing the Indian woman, last box, she's looking at herself as a white-haired woman with feathers. She went to the Indian woman, the comment says, to see that. I insist I have to know, though she wants her meeting, whether she means she and Lee Bob. Wake in pain. See the cartoon is in Lee's style of drawing. Think of her flashing her patch. Motherness. Equivalence. "I am being superceded." At night and in the morning and now being filled with pain. In the story of medicine seeing that science brings me good news, brings women good news and bad practice. - I was writing an essay for R, she was writing one for Barry, they were saying language is from the womb. Then to living within sight and between The relation to leaving C, the relation to leaving R Summary is to be less ugly Relation to setting away from Phone Jan-M Write Daphne - get phone number Phone Canada Council re late arrival of supp. material Edit, clean print, film section Remount, clean, slides Rerecord holy mouse, father story Write names of sections Frog oscillation White film (snow) for later Flip and repeat field -
"I did something quite terrible." "You stepped on it?" "I spoke to Jam the day after -- -- --. She said she'd dreamed of me." That was alright, it completed -- --. "I didn't want to hear it, I don't have to hear every dream. But I couldn't stop her, I didn't stop her. She said she dreamed I wrote something and it turned into a picture. She said 'I think it's Ellie's'". "Oh! You mean you thought it was hers?!" There was a small doubt, so I should have asked. The water heater. Maria Sabina where the sand is born. Everywhere you go. You're putting red on the room, on the radio. Ever since, I've had a headache up the back of my neck and now at the top, low forehead gouged eyes. Lentils. There may be no money next week either. 1, 2, 3, 4 will be ready. They praise but don't debate. Trudy didn't much like the Kawabata. The garden and oh the Russian winter garden. The table, the red withes, dark red, the thin shadow of the water poplars standing right across to the wall. The order and being of the garden now that it has grove table bench and winter light. The water is clear black from the poplar leaves fallen in. More. the garden itself what it wasn't before. It is an estate and time. Thin light and shade. Height of the trees. Few stiff large leaves swinging at the tips. The ground scatter black and yellow, that makes the woods, the creek. I like that the pool floods and I know the leaf acid water. The sweet William with leaf stuff on them with in front of the table, to the side, clump of narcissus, standing up through it next spring. The rose cuttings today. This strong green gloss leaf and red/pink fine pointed thing. Troup of paeonies under the plum where the path will go through thick seeded poppies California poppies gypsophila night-scented stocks, alonsoa dill linaria.
Have suspended thinking you of her, it's like discretion, waiting to see if there's a sincerity, if she had died I would be you, knowing she's in distress too - this is like C - knowing what her distress is like - the child moments of it - blind distress - is it my fault, is that the romance fault - would it be even without - illness loving to take care - waiting to see whether there will be a sincerity, this one, of working some, being friendly when invited, and in vacancy the rest, except in the gazing at the garden, with neck, back of the head pain. (Hunger.) Knowing I'm ugly and afraid of strange people. Wanting London, Hong Kong. Is work my strange city now. Can I get to concentration too. The spoken missing of last year, the sense of quality of what I miss, is suspended. It may start but it is faint, I doubt it, there is opaqueness in front of it, I mean the emotion is, the knowing that I miss is here, intimacy, come open mouthed excited to the house of my own friend, the agony across from it, false position, unsafety, nothing makes this one my own friend, this one in a minute can be someone else's own, the glamour dizzy impressive concentration and oh muck madness quite helpless. "Gertrude saved me. She sat me on her lap. She said 'This is a table, it isn't anything else.' It brought me back, I was way out there. She went and stood by the window. She had to go. I was sad but I knew she had to go. She said she had to go to others." 15 Can I see - what is she, in bed, I woke with, if women are contempted because they are willing to be with men, and if men are further because they're allowed to be with women, and so if women who are with women are the only ones with a chance at 'work', then her work has been her god from the beginning - if the way she isn't able to see herself out of simple difficulty, if from having been unwilling to let her machine learn some world-skill (but I didn't with social), is to keep an otherworldness of the writer - "You want to be a very good swimmer in it, but it really is my element" - is that true or an attempt to kill - in our argument about Joyce and Richardson, the way she was unthinking, unthought, on the side of the man form. She was unable to support my work from outside but when I had been with her my work was better - is that true - she supported my work from inside - is that true, and what of the way I'd be physically greyed and fat after her. The magic - can I do it without her or will it be - she got to the beautiful syllables - they're Chinese - she's got Chinese - I've got woman's perception of place - I've got, had, snake rhythm - she has glorious ultraviolet perception - she hasn't got good sense. She said into my ear in the Astoria phone box "You don't look after me so I can" - she's in distress with the bathroom toxins and doing it badly - was away from her genius and in panic seeing she wouldn't be able to do her newspaper either - and I wasn't just wounded - "I never thought you'd really do it" - whose true meaning which she doesn't know is - I have never been sure what you think of the quality of my mind. "Until you know that you are my woman." "The key, I want the key." What does it mean, if I hadn't been a feminist, the same: she killed her own woman so she could be a poet, now she has to have a woman beside. Why don't I know - because how she is with any woman, drawn and weak, crazeable, inspireable to the most beautiful heart, without defense except in meanness. "Because she has to be a poet and doesn't know how to be a friend of a poet too." "I am trying to do something in a mixed form. I have letters, excerpts of journals, dialogues, anecdotes." "I think the novel is far from being exhausted. On the contrary, a lot of it hasn't been explored." is occasionally inhabited by a god and then acts beyond herself, living on the edge of wonder Drawn and weak, crazeable, inspireable to the most beautiful heart, without defense except in meanness. That reason - if I weren't father-damaged what could I do - I would hold it in my wide mind firmly - it offends me - it is exactly counter to my fertility susceptibility - I would hold it firmly seen as the weakness that's the root into the heart - but I could work with her weakness and she couldn't with mine, but she could, with the other - the two hearts I had with different roots - we were also closer than before - not in our ideal minds - in our existence in the whole of the contradiction - the strength we had to have in it. I fear - in Kawabata the gentle vision of sexual longing - the loss of her Oriental knowledge of my sexual body - without the delicate knowing, I looked for everywhere, will I have tissue, tissue It's not for my existence I wanted it, it's for writing. For existence what do I want - oh I did want it for my existence - is it coming to racial difference - her delicate feeling of tissues, to be replied to by the delicate help of her weakness. The fineness I looked for everywhere and can't match because I am in solid space, and she - could I ever. If I'd been willing to live near, and have her be the one to see and I the one to help. "I fall through visions." and she would know that her true lover in the outer world would have to bear this image for her and develop it in himself for her. "Don't you know that you're not one body anymore?" If in the 'sexual' we are both crazed knowing ourselves unsafe, we really do want owning, and are by nature, in that, not ownable. If in figuring-out we work alongside, without jealousy, and also with other. In human mothering company we neither can do it. What do I want to know in this way - it's a dense head, lost day, Jane's letter, rain after yesterday's heaven light, the back of my head still stiff, UIC tomorrow. Pushing against a shut wall. I want to know how it's going to go.
What did I do - was it sense - was it a mistake - I said - I can't go on with you because you can't love me in my work. That baby madness has to change form. I say simultaneously reason's with me, she's impossible, she can't bear me to be, and, but, oh, what a unique dear creature, I can't replace, I should have found a way, the whole strangeness was my marriage and I've lost it by hanging onto a limit, I should have done anything to get big enough to - I want to say - enclose her. What prevented me - ease and oblivion - what have we left - the terrific stress - is there anything worth doing if we've left that - odd, it's quite different from leaving Roy, I don't feel that my old joy is waiting, though maybe it is - with Jane's letter a shock-tear, not trusted, thinking maybe now we'll each just be in service, and be sent people to help. It is a feeling of maybe though it is a loss to me, doing it because I know it's what she wants - last winter and this summer - the stress wouldn't let up, we were always in anguish, is this goodbye, or in doubted reassurance - but does she, the other, of knowing she so much wanted me pledged, there - "who needs you so very much" - I don't know that the one in her who wants to be free really is 'better,' I think it poses and is often wrong. She says not but she does also 'need' (is it delusion?) to be loved. She was coming out. Is this when I should be there and am dropping her. Should I be concentrating on seeing her through, letting my work go. am I doing it to end her awful dropping me when I was in distress. She's not writing like this, she'll be drinking and talking to Sandy and Sandy will be, turning her against? now's her chance - and then HK. But prepared. I do leave you at the right time. She's coming out of a building to a limousine, open car, young Chinese man stretched, must be the driver, others, family. I'm carrying plants. Long ropy one I say is water lily, doesn't quite (lotus maybe - Kawabata), others, in my arms. From standing with her on the steps going up the road. Really want to get in the car. Hope they'll come by. I'm looking back. they don't. I set down my plants, at a window into a basement, go back, she raises her brows. Got to gather my plants from beside the bridge, am in rubber boots, step into slush, it's deep and holds, I call for her to help, say it isn't going to pull me through, she goes first over to my right, where there are two grey-blue hands up through the snow. I think they must be a drownd person's. She's feeling them, I think they must be dead. She says "It's a child," tries to pull it up through, doesn't come up. I go look on the other side of the rail, there's nothing there, no body, we pull up a piece of board, flat box, opens. A little gilt animal sticker. What animal. Maybe rabbit. Thin wood leafs. Under, a few more gilt animal stickers. The feeling of the box is occult, maybe contaminated, like a dead person. We should throw it back in the creek. She says we'll put it in the garbage, sticks it in a pail. Someone could still find it. The danger of the box is as if it's alchemical/Egyptian, old, though the materials aren't, maybe poison chemicals, germs, bad magic. I scold her she's putting so much into separating and wouldn't put into being with. 16 Do you know I've understood what you wanted. But how could I have - Today, the check, fruit, on the street outside the bus stop, prawn sellers, I wanted to make dinner for - could easily invite - wanting it nice - then not having the consciousness for it, in fright, the gin getting me talking about going to U - "I had all third and second class, I had only one first class" - "You cut your bangs, why'd you do that" - Lupe and Frieda Kahlo - Diego's passion. [I invite T and R to dinner and make prawn soup] The reality of the place - "May I look around" - "O please!" - "It's beautiful" - four rooms in beautiful light, the corridor with the light downstairs. 18
"I'm after the weather, the day." 20 Hayloft, T and R, R lays herself down by me, I get up say this is outrageous. What it is in relation to Jam. But she is the one who - (is near me). Into Freud to debate with her. The righteous tone in my arguing - is it the righteousness of the obedience child - she won't (in that q) accept syllogism, 'the unconscious.' Being proud in relation to the Slade, that now I'm grown-up and with the best intellectuality. Wanting to think of unconscious not as a machine but an inner person. But by entering into connection with the unconscious tendencies during the night They have become degraded as it were We gather in detail what the peculiarities of the Unconscious are Whether unc is woman, for him, or more the other way, unc = unknown by men The curiosity in case studies, maybe a story will reveal a real find. Someone saying that seeing thoughts turn into images, falling asleep. He saw his own state in relation to sleep, ie self observation, is also in dream. The neurosis makes use of such inferiorities as a pretext. When ego didn't approve of the love choice ("libido repressed"), the love is felt as a drain and taking it back to the self is like "the restoration of a happy love." When ego approves it's straightforward. Whoever has what the ideal needs, becomes loved, especially by the neurotic "whose ego is depleted by excessive object-cathexes and who on that account is unable to attain his ego ideal." Incapacity to love resulting from massive repressions. When the Balinese walk across a field, they may be consciously aware at the start but they lapse into the consciousness of the hypnotic state halfway across the field. An observer can realize there has been a sudden change in the walking. 21 After party night unsleep forehead cramp, Rhoda's dazzling dance with cigarette, suspicion Sandy's welcome, her look across the room eyebrow raise says I'm going to speak to you, surrounded by listeners. What I came to the party for (and food). "She cancelled out." "Are you going to bloom now?" eagerly across, thoughtless. "Later, later." In the night not knowing what I was making of it - and now - except the head/neck pain is back - not a release joy - "You're asking a question fast" - disappointed - and not able to be lucid with Freud - the wine maybe - waiting - only wanting to read about melancholia - how could we (have) made it clearer. Never willingly abandoning a libido-cathexis, in the meantime one rather abandons reality - she must be freed to find her way - if I could've seen and worked with - it's for uncertain wanting - the pretext - but is it true - that rotates - did I love - I loved the being-with - we'll see what we want - I can't weather the brutalities - necessary to - she can't weather the primacies - when I drank it releases enthusiasm for my own time and work - seeing him on the low chair - hearing the interest of it but knowing it wasn't an impressive hyperconsciousness - that I'd shown an inferiority, and watching for it. Sleeping in the sweet light - the lovers I need with you, the man to be the real of your fantasy, the girl to be your real - we're in Hong Kong. I have a room. Your parents never see me, you visit. The French window, the blue kimono. The hatred of the girl for the man who makes her sexual, then she can be happy with the second husband - if the love is still roused but not allowed it will go to someone else, the substitutions - are they, for her, too, yes. Waking feeling that our loving leads us into, an acuteness of death, acuteness of countered knives. Living with her, waking and falling asleep going through the agony of fear of death. But isn't it away from me that she has the agony of. What I want to know, in the instinct-boil reading, is whether there's an intellect morality. antagonism between the two instincts, the sexual and the egoistic. Why couldn't I just know her and keep separate and clear whatever I wanted apart from. "You've betrayed me in every way, why do I still trust you."
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