| volume 4 of edged out: 1982-83 november-february | work & days: a lifetime journal project |
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Part 1 begins in shock of having canceled my show because Jamila said she wasn't going (shock I take into work that is included in the finished version of the show a year later). She leaves for Hong Kong and Nepal toward the end of part 2. In part 4 balance returns for a little while. Reading notes: Pribram, Jung, Freud, Faas An interview with Robert Bly, Olson?, Catal Huyuk, tonal languages, Leboyer Birth without violence, Constable, tarot, Michaux on hashish, sky and light physics, Dorothy Richardson Pointed roofs, Doris Lessing Martha Quest, history of semiology and structuralism. Mentioned: Luke, Jam Ismail, Cheryl S, Rhoda Rosenfeld, Trudy R, Karen Chapnick, Janeen van den Berg/Postman, Roy Kiyooka, Maggie Shore, Beth Jankola, Roseanne Konrad. Honey's Cafe, Macmillan Bloedel Conservatory, Universal News and Books on Hastings. Kawabata, Le Guin Left hand of darkness, Semmelweiss, The mass psychology of fascism, Mozart Ave Verum Corpus. |
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. 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.Watching have I been done out or is this what will make it possible to get it clearer. 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. 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. 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 3rd "I helped her be a poet and she hates me." "Do you stop her too."
"I'm sorry it took so long to know you. What you can't do." I don't love your relation to me. 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.
5th 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. 8 [Visiting Karen Chapnick] 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. 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. "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. That's where to re-enter, lie down in the water. Are they a wake. It's either, she's mad, or else, she is in another world. I'm so much wanting there to be another world, I entertain her singularity at my cost. So what is she. I know nothing.
"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.
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. 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. 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 callousness 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 callousness and opportunism jettisoning me, all she hasn't learned. At the same time 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. 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. 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. Want to know - did I get a subtlety - wild oats - the slides, yuh. Holy mouse story, story of father, field drying, roselight heartbeat. 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. 13 Lentils. There may be no money next week either. 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. 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. Knowing she's in distress too - knowing what her distress is like - the child moments of it - blind distress. The glamour dizzy impressive concentration and oh muck madness quite helpless.
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"I'm after the weather, the day." 21 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. Waking feeling that our loving leads us into, an acuteness of death, acuteness of countered knives. Antagonism between the two instincts, the sexual and the egoistic. 22 Monday. It's agony without release all day, garden bricks and stones, Freud saying you're nothing but unsuccessfully wanting to love. No money no coffee no food. This morning putting up Jane's face with the red line of mourning across, hooked from Luke. Endurance endurance endurance endurance. The you gets quite abstract in this pain. It is more now than before. 27 Hey. Kenner. Young sprout. Wealthy head's spring between neck and brow, young one, prince's oblivion guarded, I know, sincerity is not, impressive, to the Chinese prince girl, who hangs by alertness equal to, salty water, immobile. Salty. Thin flesh chest there you're touchable crying old one, amah. Oh. Gone. "She realized she had to go." A spring connects what I say to what I don't want to know. I seem to be losing the knowledge of what the suspension and loss are. Who. I. Who. We did cry together for it. I'm afraid we'll go on committed to our limits. They're still struggling to formulate, with an immense paraphernalia. Why did you leave me. Why had you left me. It's very dark. Sunday. The rain from one shingle to the next: When I am in considering a thing to describe is when I'm mediumistic - what I want to know - what does it mean that attention looks at one thing to get a message about another - mediumistic in that tiny way - especially when that message may be one I could have had direct, it is ordinary enough - is it a developed doubling - more than earlier days of having an 'outer' life - in which the fine shade came as an angling of a word - I'm occupied in something commonplace - let's see if that's true. What do I want - I don't want it to be a marginal life - I don't want to be a stupid spirit - Yes I'm the one in and from the dark and different light. Sunday 28 "Do you think I'm imagining there'll be somebody else with whom it won't be impossible! I don't imagine that at all." December [When Jam is about to leave for Hong Kong and Nepal I go to her house, for which I still have a key.] On her table is it the piece she intends for tomorrow quoting a loving thing I said - using my dictionary form - not very well . Coming in, Ezra hardly greeting, going upstairs, taking the books out of the suitcase where they're almost the only things packed. Am going to set down to write "I'm sorry, I have to have these books, you can get them at ---." The door opening, the greeting to Ezra. What I'll do, I have my anger programming. I mustn't let her have anything, I must absolutely cut her. Here are these letters, they're yours I've come downstairs. It's a minute before she recognizes me. "Excuse me, I'll give you your keys. I think this is yours. I have to take these books, I'll tell you where you can get them." She's saying it's alright. I know it has taken the floor out of her dream, the connection she wants as she wants it, not admitting. I should just be supporting her with love, being her friend, knowing she's stripped - but she won't know - she never will realize that what she's contemptuous of is what makes it possible for her to be fine and rare. "You aren't going to visit?" As if there'd been no -. I anticipated this, she'd invite me to stay, to get me to change position with her again. (There are things she has to realize before -.) I didn't know she'd be so cleared today. "You look better today." "So do you." I'm with the door open and won't let her have it. "I know," and pull the door closed and turn and walk down and I hear the door open again behind and keep going. Am on the bus exhausted, the charge gone, headache, wilted. 17 "Hi Sara it's Ellie, I wanted to wish Luke a happy birthday" - "I don't think he's asleep yet" - "Did I wake you?" - "Oh no I hadn't gone to bed yet" Luke's voice - small sober - his radio - set for 7:30 to Terry Willis - - why this sober small voice - "I'd love to see you" - I let him have the silence to do something with, or tumble on, not wanting to put him on the spot - he is going to ask something - "Is it snowing?" - he's going to ask something - "Kit is in Seattle?" - "He'll be back next year, I think already in summer" - "Are you still doing Lego?" - that one's important - "Yes. I have more space Lego" - "Just hold on a minute, I want to turn the television down" - "This is costing me lots of money, I should stop" - "Love and kisses" - "Good night" - remembers it last minute, "God bless," Roy's life, his family life - "You too" - I hang up. The man called Yule found, in an iced puddle under the trailer of his tractor-trailer, a just-born little girl. The trailer and the child's head and chest naked in an incubator, lacerated face lying head to the side, arms opened out like an ancient one. A beautiful one, thin and beautiful lacerated hand taped to an IV, laid on her back like a nailed one exposed under night and day fluorescent, laid out without hope already being saved, named Holly, offers pouring in, but she should be with a skin. Three months and then she'll be adopted. She looked k.o.ed, flattened, her beautiful head and chest being TV filmed. 4th January 1983 A black evening before Christmas, pouring rain, waiting for the 22 in the library vestibule, through the glass to: at the counter, a tall man in glasses, on his shoulders a small dark-haired girl holding his forehead, looking around her comfortably with bright intelligent eyes. He was carrying a briefcase, handing in books, never would put up his hand to steady her. Night of the 7th
[I go to Saturna to investigate the Campbell's cabins] The beach, thin clear very slim clean bitty beach, knife edge. Touch the water, taste the salt. A last cabin, smoke but I'll go past looking in the window, two coal oil lamps, clean, onto stone, south slope pines! Path, stones, great split stone platforms. The windows are well proportioned, good cabin tongue-and-groove around the table, corner-cut shelves set in above, clothesline over the stove, he brings cut rounds and leaves an axe.
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25th Sleeping in the day. Going to buy something to eat. From sleeping in the late afternoon, waking in spirit fear. Gnostic star. What am I doing here.
31st Cat shit. The place in its fur opening and closing. Crawled off the cushion onto the newspaper crying ow ow ow. [I find a wounded kitten on the street and bring it home, name it Rabbit]
Sometimes today a catching back: existence. Night Tide, Old Red and Biscuit. [Clearing out the downstairs landing and painting its skirting boards and doors and the steps and bannister.] The delight of Biscuit and saying biscuit. Crowd around the tangerines table, Taiwan small very brilliant 59 cents a pound, picking energetically through. I'm slower and more easily satisfied, round firm bright ones, don't really have to dig. The woman next to me is rooting through, gets one, puts it in my bag, goes on standing next to me, rooting, choosing, handing to me. I'm grinning. She's doing it for the pleasure. -
Though I knew I must be more or less wrong I don't think I'm in the wrong region. An ego which, unlike ours, was licensed. "Unconscious patriarchal parochialism" The carat of attention
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