3 June 1983
[On the plane to London]
White noise and a dark one. Flying through lumps. Sitting with a plastic
glass, three new pencils, in such an old narrow plane.
Going without cuddling to the lip of a real dark plush - not light lines,
a dark erotic quite blurred, wanted - and in it a little marvel aside, that
now I'm willing to do that - it casts off what I wanted to hold, the story
of self and other, there isn't much other or self, it's a blur, thorax.
Has a clear thing been made of noting enthrallment.
In an airplane locked into the seat folded tight under a blanket with
head on a paper pillow seeing the early light up there like the feel my
hand has in my hair.
5th London
There is still a light in Luke's face.
8th
The first evening, Queen Anne's lace verges, loud birds, smell of it
and May tree, elder. The mown cemetery, rectangles of London pride, buttercup,
through the front-room panes straight out the back, walking unknown in an
unheard of place, coming back to a door I open with a key. Clothes, my new
clothes, traveling things, companions. Walk to buy real milk for tea. Morning
coming to the station, buying a Time Out and a Times, so interested
to see every back yard, goods yard. The hare on a gravel pile watching the
train. Being looked at, red shirt, army pants, journal, the army bag, the
heavy red one, and boots, here comes Combat Woman, she's brown and sweaty,
they call her luv.
And today was printing a circuit through downtown, you [Luke] must have
the freedom of the city, I must show you, routes, landmarks, some for you
- Forbidden Planet, video arcade (geometry faster than I can see, comet
arcs, initialed scores, AAA), the game shop - I learn to go in too. And
some from me. The portraitists. Westminster Reference Libe, show you the
third floor, you see the view by yourself. Your landmarks, in Leichester
Square, Oxford Street. Liking the wonton soup so much. The front seat upstairs
in the bus. There are polite smiles, and remarks, and then alright things,
I can show you the blue glass building that really is so beautiful and we
can each say what we see, "Do you like to fly?", fig ice cram
and bilberry ice cream, the pamphlet brought thoughtfully back. It's possible,
it's possible! to begin to tell stories, make a picture, prairie ice cream.
Memory of the front door's round thing. Merridew, an English boy with those
clear eyes, school uniform, the difference knowing something will go on.
9th
Opened a door and saw - ELLIE! - Sal, arms around, I'm so big, the bodies
feel the same, small, hand on her back and on her belly, "Sal thin,"
and sitting awkwardly talking, Rose English, making talk like pushing it
forward, pushing it forward knowing all three are like me in being engaged
in looking thoroughly, pushing smiles and talk into the space we're seeing
- finding myself loving to look at Sal and liking her voice too - her beautiful
color. "My life has changed so much."
11
"Trying to make passages to work my way through but without obstructing
the other ones. It's like a maze." [Luke says]
14
[Helping Luke with homework]
La Novège, la Suède. Outside, leaves in motion in the dark.
I can see your room, I can feel myself on the lower bed looking into the
room where I am with the one I look for, in narrow clothes, rough in the
back, public fibre, writing out l'Ecosse - kisses. The tender accent grave.
Order, a curtain, small figures, powder burns, bookshelf, bedlamp, an army
bed. El Toro's horn.
15
- Some people seem to need more seeing than others -
- Sal and I looking gently at each other.
-
- The corridors of the city in orange light
- Brick city. Intersection.
She let me light up.
16
Smoke in the sitting room - do the numbers of things in the lair daze
me - I think the place does - counting Josh up his ages - "And then
how old will you be?" - "Twen-ty one."
20th
Aldgate waiting for the 22A, all the red buses that come around the corner,
the taxi having to back up and turn around in empty cobbled Watney. Wapping.
Coming into a room with a square, open doors brown water is flowing across.
Ducking behind to see him see it. Brown, brown, a boat."It's half river."
"! It's more from here." How to not stay long. We'll go down and
walk. The filthiest rive. Luke finding blue painted ware. The clay pipe.
Muck.
In the lanes alongside the river, baked construction site. We see Tower
Bridge. A wall says Beware of Dogs. We look over it. He jumps onto a sheet
of galvanized. Begin to be crowds. We've walked as far as St Paul's. Through
empty banking streets but then the Strand. Jump off the bus. Peets-za, a
glass of milk. She brings the banana split like a masterpiece. He likes
the parasol. I like the elephant. It's got us giddy now. Speaking in silly
voices at the bus stop. Trafalgar evening, spray. He wants to sit on a lion,
takes a run - a young man and a young woman one each on a paw. Changing
buses three times on the way home.
21 Tuesday
The house on the corner with side windows, long wall with very old New
Dawn blooming from the front yard, the length of it. 15 Burnaby Gardens.
I felt like her. [Went to see one of DR's sisters' houses south of the river]
23
Ow. The dirty school. Dirty and stupid children, poor-looking, white,
badly shaped heads, come out screaming. Dirty windows.
24
- The movements of her mouth, quirking. Seeing that the dress and cardigan
are a Scottish village. Perfect cleanness of her skin . [visiting Annabel
Nicholson]
- Annabel is late because she is packing to go to Greenham.
-
- When we were over black and white barrens, 33,000', the lakes still
frozen, nested in the narrow seat, blanket, pillow and sweater, child asleep.
Then an instant of the real suspension, what am I, the emotion of it. I
realized then that I think of it as the only real I am. What am I for.
-
- I was flying on thinking that it's fear I think of as the only real
state.
-
- The moment's falling asleep.
-
- Roy's voice.
-
- Das wir uns nicht vergiessen.
[back in Vancouver]
"Your panic about Laing, you were putting on the brakes" -
what do you mean! - then I remembered, it wasn't what she thought but -
oh I get it! I've got it, I've remembered - the whole piece is saying wanting
a child, to be pregnant. (Or: is it saying, wanting a man.)
Then, I have to not show it, and have no work left. It betrays me.
Then, the panic wasn't long, I looked at it again and thought, if it's
saying that, let it, I'll stand by the form my actual desire has taken,
I won't go on being frightened of a secret it tells, that they see and I
don't know. That it will tell something I haven't known. How I've cheated
myself. That I want what I make a career of not wanting.
- Seeing, watching, how she's figured out explanations while I'm gone,
how wrong some of them are, others, the persuasion, or - yes, that's it.
I say: companionship is in the quality of focus.
To myself: don't let focus leave, for anything, don't give it up, for
anyone, any help, if focus depends on vigilance without comfort, telling
the truth I know without sophistication, without regard, humor, feeling
of competence of handling. Still there isn't a choice because without focus
there is nothing, no road.
What do I think focus demands - an absolute giving up of advantage.
What did bring it - what does - yelling - going through the crazy circuits
even without telling everything - crying - fighting for my life in her brushpile.
9
Standing facing the mercury ocean in the twilight. There've been many
passing speaking. Mercury stillness. Water rolls out of the thin edge, rolls
out to no thickness, comes apart on the fingers.
14
I offer to work in the back yard. She says a walk. The beach, our voices
grinding, I suddenly hear overheard by the bearded man under the shelving
cliff. She saying would you still come to me with your writing if we had
lovers and didn't tell each other anything about it - see how this writing
is irregular recalling it - I saying how much we both would like sexual
freedom if it were only possible - but the real question for her, would
you do it with men too - "Of course, I'd do it with anyone I wanted"
- she is out of focus saying I mustn't deny myself for her - I'm exclaiming
I don't do it for her, it's giving up one thing to be able to have another
- and get angry saying what about the other deprivation, it's six years
since I've been able to have a woman's body in my arms - and in that, am
separated willingly, and go away toward the bus.
At the corner store want to buy a Penthouse, do buy it, put it
under an Omni so only the price shows. The instinct is that I want
it. Before I read it, Trudy turns it over. She says are you (in heat), I
say I don't know that it's that, but I feel sad that I'm restricted, as
when I was younger. She says "You and Jam won't always be faithful
to each other, you'll go through it and you'll still know each other."
I read especially the forum letters. I don't want to work. I want to go
to J's house or phone her. I say, I want to fuck her and she wants to fuck
me. Feeling desire I feel strong and clear. I phone her and say can I sleep
at her house again on account of the paint fumes.
When I come into her room she's laughing in bed at Three's company.
I go straight into her arms. She takes me in as if she knows. She says she
was crying because who would she find to talk to. I am feeling all over
but she stays with the show 'til it's over. I don't mind, am willing to
be alone in my interesting body. Lying still next to her my limbs are humming
in communication. Kisses are possible. I am longing to get to where she
moves in there but I love the sensations of waiting. She says she's
full of wine and I'm afraid she may be easily exhausted, or stupid in touch.
Sandy phones. J talks to her for an hour. In the last part I am lying in
bed visibly waiting. I love the hungry sensation. And also, yes, the play.
I had wanted to say, tell me what you'd do to me if you were my husband.
I'm being the mistress. When she comes into bed I am no less there. I can
touch her neck, other skin, in ways I haven't found, brushes. I want to
get her excited enough to match me. I am able to love the shapes of all
the kinds of touches.
What she does touching my breasts isn't yet profound, it isn't the touch
that goes right in, it's a little grey, I want it but I know it isn't getting
there. The getting into, the seal, little finger worming, I want just that,
but the variance of the rightness of the touch - the touch with the right
weight behind it - whole body - the shakuhachi's variance of line, curve
of the edge, the overtones rolling forward through it - it's all rapture.
At the end the little fat shallow fuck fuck fuck fuck - velvet - I want
to do this so much I want to go on doing this I'm not afraid of this this
is what I want to do and do.
Hugging and cuddling more than is quite true, just for thanks that it's
possible, that you really would do that with me.
Going to sleep in the other room, waking, breakfast, and I bring out
the poem, she loves it, she is willing to talk about its disadvantage, being
close to other kinds one wouldn't read, poor and feminist and bad writing.
I can say the advantage of being seen as masculine, that I might never be
noticed. "You should publish soon. You must do something with Dorothy."
The sense of my career, that she's in more, suddenly, because I'm going
to see Ellen.
Forgot to say: at the oven door, she saying what other period of language
has been like this - I say Renaissance - she was thinking too - I bring
out the notes on Elizabethan and Hundred Years War - Richard Mulcaster's
"the parties be contented" - used it to flirt - the delight of
the language - I say Dorothy's sub(ordinate) clause lumps - "both for
the bodie of the tung it self, and for the customarie writing thereof."
... content all parties, both by whom and to whom
the matter is delivered, it seketh both home helps, where there be sufficient,
and significant, and where the own home yieldeth nothing at all, or not
pithie enough, it craveth help of that tung, from whence it receiued the
matter of deliverie.
When the mind is fraught with matter to delieuer,
it is still in pain untill it be deliuered, and therefor to have the deliuerie
such, as maie discharge the thing well, and content
What is it - an hour of petting without going in, then she says she'd
like a nap - is she being cunning - I'll cooperate - I will be gladly prettily
starved - don't be shy - yes worm - it isn't long before she is loving it
and has all of her body behind the jointed stroke - and I'm getting soft
and dark - lying still without poses - she finds the short fat stroke again
- oh - the shift into trust has come, she is going to go on long enough,
steadily, I've only to watch it, speeds it some, but it's still right, it's
dark strokes like the overtones rolling through (there were pictures of
the textures) in or behind them steadily rolling up, the flesh star convulsing
in arms like a starfish, it beautifully exactly is contracting, contracting,
she says my nipple goes hard.
In the morning the two short pieces, trying to get something abstract,
she says I'm glad you know about that.
How it also was: she said transfixed, 'in love,' watching wrong things
come out of her mouth - the way I put on the girl voice, 'infantilized,'
willing to be enthralled in sex, but then next day still able to, more able
to, say and show thought.
21
Actors. They invite me to join the acrobats. I
want to accept with pleasure but realize I'm to be the token crippled dancer,
leave.
Dear dreaming will you begin to be clear.
Yellow and white kitchen, porch wires alley moon summer triangle, the
light on the sage bush, the sunset light that passes through two windows
to fall in the garden. "Rhoda saw it."
26
- in fear (what is to be seen) there was someone
- steadily there that technical
achievement,
Technical achievements - having passed through the voices saying writing
isn't living, you must be seen to be reworking what comes to you as if you
own it
No. My skill is 1. in finding/making my way into a life that can be written
without cover, 2. navigating the moments themselves, of that time, as they
are, so that what comes is attentively met, in balance, with the whole range
of skill, 3. remembering, recall, resolved, patiently without generalizing,
without short cuts, and registering, riding the time reentered, 4. and then
the multitude of balancings that make it possible in this world to publish
writing many will not be willing to follow, in competition with writers
who are more easily willing to ingratiate.
28
[Ellen describes herself as] The daycare worker - she touches her left
shoulder - to look after the crying child, or children, while you integrate
what's visionary experience, what's ---.
"Forebrain - it has to do with - inference, it's like a new computer
that works very quickly, it gets to information that I haven't been given.
I think my father has a notion of it, undeveloped."
"She might convince me that my feminine brain really is inferior
to her masculine brain, and then I'd stand cancelled." "Oh, I
see you really have taken on for yourself the essential form of the gender
question!"
2 August
The confusion of this writing question and my ways of thinking, trying
to - what, trying to be impressive enough, trying to separate myself from
what is against me, trying to see what it is.
J that coot sulking in her big house. She's got little stretch. Comes
out in beautiful love but the retraction is so disarrayed. Thinking about
something - I wish you would, but are you, I don't think so, I think you're
punishing me for saying I'd be as if you're out of town, while you finish
your construction. And because after that sexual opening I closed myself
before you were ready.
5
Misery about writing, in the garden by the anise hyssop. Long time of
one way, writing, and unable. What.
With Ellen today in her long skirts. "Have you thought of making
her one of the people you see just sometimes, and going somewhere else for
your ---." Where's to go. "Your father withholding, you might
have had enough of that."
7
I thought what would come of not being with Jam, not having to fight
her, or struggle to see her, or - would be that I would be a harsh and balanced
grown-up again, knowing the limit of every contact, not confused, contained,
and giving out measured arms.
10th
"2 fucks a year 4 sweet episodes and the rest your baffled hogwash.
Go be a genius somewhere else. Maybe your racist friends are more easily
impressed. And aren't I dying for a real man anyway."
- Redneck delight. She'll enjoy it.
- And is it unforgivable?
- She'll know it's designed to be unforgivable.
New moon.
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