| edged out volume 8 part 5 - 1984 march-april | work & days: a lifetime journal project |
20 March 1984
Cheryl - looser than mercury, piling north - magnetic dust - fall - the hyacinth blue - I can choose - fire - hearing the cracks, like glaze - safe breath continuous - the sea I'm visitor, she reveals - she has changed herself - for breakfast, she has small metals - I'm sorry she left the body I liked - bearded close face - kisses me, I agree - his thin long tongue slides well - flat - "How did you afford the operation?" "I got up at eight every morning, a paper route" - "It has a little anus here" - a little one above the bigger one - it's small, but it's not erected now - what difference is it in us - would I - (the way she held out her arms) but she is saying when I leave, I don't think we'll be able to know each other now, you keep being toward me as if I'm still the way I used to be." A square of scatter - graphed - lines sail - barometer rising over the stove - rice unlocked - I'm going back to St Alban's Road, up the steps, all seedlings, poppy, a density - and then the slope is long - grey plants - what house last night.
When we stand on the tops of things - and like the trees, look down - the smoke all cleared away from it - and mirrors on the scene - just laying light - no soul will wink except it have the flaw - the sound ones, like the hills - shall stand - no lightning, scares away - the perfect, nowhere be afraid - they bear their dauntless heads, where others dare not go at noon, protected by their deeds - the stars dare shine occasionally upon a spotted world - and suns, go surer, for their proof, as if an axel, held -
What about - the way she tacks every syllable - equity - sharp tongue - tucks - of dainty interspersion - in the - like dotted dot -
Sewing in ether acre Thou'rt neither - neither - thy capacity - brought what I'd lost until now - after dark - the row burnt out - I have something stored - the first house stands, but the second, gutted - passing through the upper floor along the whole - the hippie people with their things, in bed, rags, counterpane, the second or third to last, seeing how they'd made it - I was here once, I know the careful beauties, that deep carving, the stair sill, a curved metal on the wall, rich and particular London woman and man - I follow the stair down, did they have this wing onto the south of the next house, blond wood cactus and bad crocks, is it theirs? Looking back see them in their shell, he saying We can make it against somewhere else - someone says the whole row was done up the same way once, cheap students' latex, but that must have been a long time.
Carrion poet - rhyme's - badinage Rowing in Eden - ah, the sea! Might I but moor - tonight - in thee
And then a plant in reason, broke, and I dropped down, and down - and hit a world, at every plunge, and finished knowing - then - St Alban's seedlings, London woman and man - thinking of Olivia - Janeen and her boy - "something about Carmichael" - and writing - it's the March equinox - Luke's day - was today. 27 Albania obs. Scotland, the Highlands At La Glace school Clare gives me glasses - big and dark - among the girls - why are they so tinted? - it's because we're in the dark here - I go out in them and see I'm badly dressed with layers of shirts and sweaters, take many of them off until I'm neat in white shirt - what's it like in the glasses - I see the inside reflections - seeing is steady and clear, though smoked - very clear - I come in from La Glace street to tell Clare in the school pharmacy "They're good, but they're tight at the bridge" - she shows my category, laughs - something like fine-nosed - making up a white packet of glasses accessories, for me? - was she here grinding the lenses - in a wire rack on the counter a little book, "about dying." Walking over cobbles and dragging boots, when I stop dragging them, I notice, they still hum - I'm on steps noticing that though I've stopped walking I'm still moving, as if on an escalator, the steps are falling back, and then the street equally, I've learned how to move psychically, I can take on something more difficult. I've gone over the highest mountain where no one's been before - sliding down brown weed on the upper slopes, breezily - I come after a while to a campsite, a ledge, a box of grocery garbage, maybe a table or shelter, maybe a shepherd, a man passes - this must be as far as they've got coming up from this side: base camp. I'd like a friend where I laughed at home. that we achieve, if we do achieve, in little sedentary stitches as though we were making lace An awe came on the trinket! The figures hunched, with pain - then quivered out of decimals - into degreeless noon Then - close the valves of her attention - like stone Is gotten not of fingers - and inner than the bone And he unrolled his feathers and rowed him softer home - than oars divide the ocean, too silver for a seam It struck me - every day - the lightning was as new as if the cloud that instant slit and let the fire through Inherited with life - belief - but once - can be - annihilate a single clause - and being's - beggary And back it slid - and I alone - a speck upon a ball - went out upon circumference I had not minded walls - were universe - one rock - I'd tunnel - till my groove pushed through to his - but tis a single hair - a filament - a law Good morning - midnight - I'm coming home Until the north - invoke it - creator - shall I - bloom? And yet - existence - some way back - stopped - struck my ticking - through To simulate is stinging work - to cover what we are Than a solid dawn - confronting With blue - uncertain stumbling buzz - between the light and me and then the windows failed - and then I could not see to see But miles of sparks - at evening - reveal the width that burned That must be watched away - as grains upon a shore -
The sensation of refusing a writer I've seen - I won't be impressioned by that one - enemies in femininity - that isn't it - toward the stranger - someone who hasn't taken on enough pain. They don't dive - what's writing - it's useable minds - working rhythms and speeds - evidence of themselves. the doctrine of naïve accessibility the very concept of wholeness which in all its forms has held us captive, unknowingly complicit the half-saying, concealed or unspoken subtexts, the use of symbol and rhetoric of camouflage as incomplete, partial, an imperfect 'half life' which exists not to valorize its author/ity but to be activated in the process of reading/making/collaborating 'coherent' The connectors clog it, derail it. That is why successful drama is always a combination of the familiar and the novel What about allusions as a literary pleasure, and making something with too little familiarity. While farther up - the maker's ladders stop - and in the orchard far below - you hear a being - drop My garden - like the beach - denotes there be - a sea A species stands beyond - invisible as music - but positive, as sound Oh Jesus - in the air - I know not which thy chamber is - I'm knocking - everywhere Called to my full - the crescent dropped - existence's whole arc, filled up A half unconscious queen - but this time adequate - erect, with will to choose, or to reject As if my life were shaven, and fitted to a frame, and could not breathe without a key When everything that ticked - has stopped - and space stares all around And waltzed upon a farm - then stepped straight through the firmament - and rested, on a beam We see - comparatively Oh lover - life could not convince To hold my life for me - till I could take the balance - that tips so frequent, now The second like an ocean rolled and broke against my ear - I laughed a crumbling laugh - that I could fear a door It would have starved a gnat - to live so small as I - and yet I was a living child - with food's necessity - upon me - like a claw - I could no more remove - than I could coax a leech away - or make a dragon - move - nor like the gnat - had I - the privilege to fly - and see a dinner for myself - how mightier he - than I - nor like himself - the art - upon the window pane - to gad my little being out - and not begin - again 23 The changes in plants (arising from solar light and the character of the soil )- it's johnny-jump-up - "and maidens call it Love in idlenesse" - "so is mine eye enthralled to thy shape" - "I am a spirit of no common fate" - phairies - and now I have the Boy, I will undoe a midsommer nights dreame - May Eve, Valpurgis - a marriage play 1595 maybe - fairies and India, east of Jerusalem. Ovid, Diana - "and the margin of the sea being haunted by nymphs" - elfin queen - steal children from Titti Lake - silver bow, the magic cup, and the triple crown - Diana, Latona and Hecate - moon, plant, spell - night goddesses. Some women acted at the Blackfriars in the year 1629, and one the previous year. Faerie Queen 1596 Greene - Aster Oboram - Oberon King of Fairies - that loves thee because thou hatest the world - elfe - did in the gardins of Adonis find - 24 Advertising an outfit of clothes - I could win - a woman standing in wide sombrero, some black layers, I distinguish gradually as it goes on, a grey 'top hat' I think of as a bowler - looking at the advertisement's oddity, to for too, other mistakes, layout border with thick at some parts thin at others, I think I can win, I'll lay out as they do, it's like me - writing in large letters, it's come from under the hand too big, and in incongruous style, fey - it can be won in russet, a woman's head orange, hair, the toque in brown oranges I hate most, her relation to the clothes not certain, if a model, an ugly one - the designer perhaps - it itemizes, sombrero, heavy leather plainly sewn - is it a long coat, or a jacket over something - a long dress, long sleeves, "to come down plainly" not ballooning under the vast sleeves - (the pool dream comes back as I wrote that - feel hurried toward the end with Jake) then maybe a semilong coat - I'm thinking of my Moroccan (Syrian) dress - is this cotton - "cord-ed cotton" - and the blue silk vest. While thinking about the clothes, as if - something happening with bricks, across an embankment (a London dream earlier, restaurant, drinks?) Looking out the left side window of a train - I haven't been looking but it's beautiful - prairie? - a bird broad wings near the grass in seed, reddish, tawny, what light, as if light, but at night, quite complex - we're traveling alongside a steep lacustrine drop, I'm thinking of ours but this is a longer drop, stones on the floor, I as if imagine many and see some, am suddenly noticing the train has turned ninety degrees, we're heading out through the lake plane, this seems wrong, we should still be going (west). From a distance overhearing the man who's going to retire, asking the young aide, what he'll do next - Jake Kroeker - has a coherent plan, is it foreign service of some kind. On a high stool beside a table, my back to Jake making harsh sounds on the flute - the older woman saying, You taught yourself that? - he plays a tune, do I know it, classical - is he doubling the line? I'm listening carefully and can't tell because then she's singing with it, didn't know it had these words - I'd like to be singing but I'm holding myself as if not here - I don't have a shirt on, is he looking at my back, or the edge of my tit, I look down at. And then I don't know the transition - I'm in his arms and he's in mine - he's just my height - his wonderful strong shoulders - we could try kissing - I begin it like a fantasy experiment - heavenly kissing, and then squashing tongues - the solidness of my arms around to his back, I move them higher - it's a different take. A German saying he has ready - "I don't have that kind of ..." - (my hair in sun through the skylight - to the bed - the kettle, continuous in stream - my optic fiber, magenta certainly, I think but don't see, green - the lines of white - so fine a gloss - individual - translucent). We're going to his house - Bernice takes me by the right side, to run - he moving at a distance on the left - am I running away, or racing, I'm wondering whether she means to get me away from him, or whether this race is a good bridal - we're running fast, I feel it's right. The girls at the cliff cry out, someone has tipped over - he and we stop to take charge, we look over - "It's a doll" - he says something to the girl whose doll it is, I admire his quick effect, like the German proverb, I don't have that capability - the little usual withdrawal in self-doubt, am I less than him, will I lag. Coming to his family, two cubicles, size of a toilet stall, a plexi door, I can see through, a tiny person as if on the toilet, twisted, not as small as I thought from - Jake says "This is my father," opening the door back, his arm introduces me - what my parents said. Small person with one leg, he's twisted sideways so his leg is straight, a little spindle, I sit on the floor across the cubicle, to talk to him - will it be awful - he has a sweet head with curls - he speaks like a being - I'm gathering not from him but as if from Jake on the other side, something about Swiss and New York, was he in foreign service too, a long life of work before this old age, I see the white haired man I knew, he had many children, he's speaking a paragraph I as if read, about the person who sees ----, the --- of the ---, ---, a series of perceptions in different layers or registers, I say how does he know that - we're speaking near ourselves, I'm there - "You must have been a writer" I say - he shakes his head - "But I had a son who was. We shot him" - the bridge - "He is sorry they didn't have the wideness to keep him with them" - I say thinking of my one child "But you have so many more" - I notice Jake has been stroking my hand, now I look at it, my hand, his forearm, my left leg, laid so they coincide. The father is saying in a different way "Why didn't you wrap my (cakes)?" The old woman is there immediate and competent, "He means he wants his potty." Looking back as I leave, two cookies on the shelf above him, does he mean those. Waking peaceful. Jake [Kroeker]'s harsh voice - the debate where he shocked me taking on the politician's style - the assembly liking it, and I disapproving - I staked myself on firm thinking - he's making himself special by bold assuming - the preacher's and politician's contempt - did they like to see the high school boy take on authority's voice - I was speaking like a citizen, he like a demagogue - was there something I wasn't understanding - is that what they like, what insults them? Coming into the pool building maybe after hours, is anyone there - the large pool - I'm looking for the one I've been in before - a small deep tank, one corner separated like a well - a hot one - it doesn't seem to be there, looking across, thinking it's the Ladbroke Grove baths, not pulled down but rebuilt, I see a long pool where it may have been, have they incorporated it. Yesterday: I come off the ferry - the boat's in - the man leaning on the rail smiling before I see him - I smile - speak quick. Free on a new road - the Farm's concatenations, gate, mud hole, angular cow, chalet roofs, a field of daffodils, track - I find the place to climb - "You can follow the telephone line up" - strong lambs in the field - turn away from them and into the brush, no certain trail, maybe I see scrapes on moss - maybe deer trails - I stay under the wire, it goes up a seam - at first on poles and then takes the long step up without support - at times I can't see it, looking up from possibly loose rocks under a moss wrap, decayed wood I can't trust, crawling up unfirm dirt, under bushes, and then the scarp, talking to him, "I don't like the northwest Pacific forest, it's slippery and slimy and decayed" - "slimy and decayed, and - barbed" - writing it, I step on a tab jutting from a cut log, it breaks - a rock slipped, my right ankle slightly wrenched - feeling its looseness in the boot upper, sometimes lifting the right knee with my hands - Landlord, Necromancer - why am I chanting that; what does she mean - she talks about magic - landlord, does she mean the sender of the sequence - maybe she has an idea of, she has some sense of what she does in the depth of her attention - creeping along the foot of the bare rock, it's running with water, thick moss dripping, sedum, is there going to be a cleft through - I try further right, under the wire, it's only ten feet I have to climb, but slimy - I lean on the back of a tree to look - there's a V, that must be where they pass, but can I do it - I step forward, I think I can - a slight stagger, half fainted - go partly up, I might be able, but it's overhung and very wet - speaking to him, "with my leg and a half," "I'm not experienced enough, on rocks, to know my capability" - "This isn't yet the time of year to lie overnight with a broken leg" - "I refuse to die" - "I knew you'd find me" - "Why didn't you tell me there was rock climbing at the top" - "You're gracious but not paternalistic" - his hand shaking on the map - blunt pencil - he sees too - "I don't need much instruction." I don't go up - he and Jimmy climbing it easily in the dark - I'm in danger of death. Come down direct not looking for paths, holding fir branches and the strong underbrush. At the forks on the dirt road, choosing what I think he said, the left - it's falling dark, speaking to Emilio, Ileo, I have to get down before dark - emerging at the dry brow and going over - when I came out into the small alder at the base, it's too dark to see the goat paths, I've had to come randomly in the torrent's way over heaved rock and deadfall. Lying down: what will I dream after that wild jumble of sight. At night, awake a long time, need to drink, uncomfortable bones, am I kept awake by its intense repair in hips and legs. I really went, was strong again. Nekromancer - she hangs out with the (thought of the) dead, and she divines by feel - (in her body of space). his salt greene streames She's Shakespearian - matched in mouth like bells, each under each, a cry more tuneable
The idea of plenitude - To that odd fork in being's road - eternity - by term - retreat was out of hope - behind - a sealed route - eternity's white flag before - and god - at every gate. But when his power dropped - my soul grew straight, I cheered my fainting prince - I sang firm - even - chants - I told him worlds I knew where emperors grew - who recollected us if we were true Tucks - of dainty interspersion - like a dotted dot Wild flowers - kindle in the woods - the brooks slam - all the day I watched the moon around the house until upon a pane But like a head - a guillotine slid carelessly away - did independent, amber As syllable from sound To my small hearth his fire came - and all my house aglow did fan and rock, with sudden light Because you saturated sight I could suffice for him, I knew - he - could suffice for me - yet hesitating fractions - both - surveyed infinity - "Would I be whole" he sudden broached - my syllable rebelled - t'was face to face with nature - forced - t'was face to face with god - withdrew the sun - to other wests - withdrew the furthest star before decision - stooped to speech - and then - be audibler The answer of the sea unto - the motion of the moon - herself adjust her tides - unto - could I - do less - with mine? No numb alarm - lest difference come - no goblin - on the bloom - no start in apprehension's ear, no bankruptcy - no doom - but certainties of sun - midsummer - in the mind - a steadfast south - upon the soul - her polar time - behind He - must pass the crystal angle that obscure her face But a demurer circuit - a geometric joy - the posture of the key - that interrupt the day A long-long sleep - a famous - sleep Did place about the west - tonight And marry whom I may and dwell a little everywhere
We talk in careless - and in toss - a kind of plummet strain - each - sounding - shyly - just how deep - the other's one - had been Dropped into ether acre 665 The soul that hath a guest doth seldom go abroad - diviner crowd at home - obliterate the need Be not expressed by suns - alone - it is the gift of Screws Conscious am I in my chamber, of a shapeless friend
As if the sea should part and show a further sea To go elastic - or as one the camel's trait - attained Beetle at the candle Cunning reds of morning make the blind - leap - still at the egg-life - chafing the shell - when you troubled the ellipse - and the bird fell The spirit is the conscious ear, we actually hear when we inspect - that's audible - that is admitted - here - for other services - as sound - there hangs a smaller ear outside the castle - that contain - the other - only - hear Shifted like the flakes when gusts reverse the snow How excellent a Body, that Stands without a Bone The dust replaced, in hoisted roads She staked her feathers - gained an arc - debated - rose again - And now, among circumference - her steady boat be seen - at home - among the billows - as the bough where she was born And when adjusted like a seed in careful fitted ground Had there been no sharp subtraction from the early sum Bride of the father and the son Bride of the holy ghost Other betrothal shall dissolve - wedlock of will, decay This consciousness that is aware of neighbours and the sun will be the one aware of death and that itself alone is traversing the interval
To my quick ear the leaves - conferred - the bushes - they were bells As lightning on a landscape exhibits sheets of place I am afraid to own a body - I am afraid to owe a soul
Tell all the truth but tell it slant - success in circuit lies Too bright for our infirm delight The truth's superb surprise 25
What seemed non sequiturs in her thought turned out to be a reply to the question you should have been asking. I was right down there with them and everything got big. I was able to see the internal part of the chromosomes. When you have that joy you do the right experiments. You let the material tell you where to go, and it tells you at every step what the next has to be because you've integrated with an overall brand new pattern in mind. You let everything you do focus on that - you can't help it, because it all integrates. What could be seen with the uneducated eye and what could be seen only with the help of the long chain of logical inference. Its real force is as a story of eyesight and of the continuity of mind and eye. intense and systematic observation and interpretation. She called it 'integrating what you saw.'
Believing in building a computer
He can sense on the side of his body the approach of a herd of springbok on the far side of the hill, because the animal's dark stripes are transmitted to his own person foretell the killing of game because he experiences a sensation as he walks along of blood dripping on his heels - the blood of the animal he is going to carry home. [Laurens van der Post probably 1958 The lost world of the Kalahari] "They look like you. They are very exact." "The bringing home of May" hawthorn branches
Pharmakon - Pharisaios perish or cleave - pharoah of the great house - pharos peninsula and lighthouse - pharynx throat - pharanx ravine - faer peril sudden attack - feire holiday - fae - fay - fata - fear, far - faran to go, travel - fearh young pig - fear barren - feortha forth Drug, Egypt, throat, ravine, fear, celebration, farness, travel, barrenness, piglet, quarter, fairness Aine of Knockainy the Irish fairy queen
Naming and listing
Without being able to know what it was I was integrating I understood the phenotype ... it means that I was using a computer that was working very rapidly and very perfectly. She was developing skills she could hardly identify herself, much less impart the complex working of the plant. She was confident that, with due attentiveness, she could trust the intuitions the one produced of the other. something quite seriously wrong. I wasn't seeing things, I wasn't integrating. I wasn't getting things right at all, I was lost. I had to go out under those eucalyptus trees and solve what it was that was causing me to fail. I've run among buildings into a strange house, for shelter from a murderer - see a movement at the open door, step to the porch, someone behind the door, who when I come after is felt fleeing down the road - black pants, white shirt, a flat cap like Jam's. On the road a motel room, tideline just at the back window, and sea at the front door too. I must go back after one night, something about money. Coming into a room where I'll sleep, other visitors, a longhaired woman speaking to another in a way I realize is as lovers, just. The room fills with women who'll all sleep there. Clare was in it somewhere - J was with someone? Coming into her place, something happens, I'm leaving in the way I have before, maybe it will be final, where'll I stay in the last month. Night often broken, loggy sleep late into dark morning. Omni and McLintock, Shakespeare sonnets. I'd like a friend who'd discuss things I said in letters. 26 What does it mean, thinking the placenta belongs to, or taken by, the mother. What do I think she took. Give me back. Support for strength. 27 His thing - he's vain of it and makes much of it - that both genders have the same relation to it - "fantasy of its presence in the mother as an internal object" - shock of finding the mother doesn't have it, and he does - "We took these things from the women." 1. Embryological sameness and womb chemistry 2. cut cord. Quite excessive blather to cover not having it - her relation to the one who has the thing like it but not it, which she potentially 'has': and both have had. Language - from the fact that it is from the locus of the Other that it is emitted. Therefore the child is the signifier of desire. The other always had it - it was the connector. Sometimes when I get a picture of you, your body's shape and your stance, you seem to me a sort of fairy. Your hands and feet and the way you hold your head. the sense of inferiority from not having pleasure
Pleasure - rest - sesshin, travel, childbirth, Talwen - certain near sleep - sound - image - complete memory - a slight temp? - some dreams (mythology, color, breadth, strangeness) - laughing Love - color, vision, movement, talk, sound, rest, images, understanding, warmth Sex - mythology, raunch, texture Dope - music, vision, space, sex, color, texture, taste, depth Music - harmony relations, tone, sequence/movement, moving helps Movement - driving, love, travel, dance, seeing water cloud fire, skating, flicker, work LSD - color, significance, mobile self, thought, newness, memory Reading - reference to pleasure Sesshin - sound, mythological images, texture Being good looking -
- Inner mobility A way into pleasure A way to stay in high discrimination and pressure for work Wide enough social balance, to be with doers Confirmation in work and have it used Enough money for mobility and need
To see Luke To be good looking - Piles
Essays on Doris Lessing, last part of Golden Notebook Reading: Dispossessed, DR, Mulcaster, From the legend of Biel, Olive Shreiner, Mulcaster, Tiptree, Deren, Hhas [?] - Focus in a moment Distance with (Roy), defensive seeing by effect, how control Staying active behind the silence Being able to think without writing Being able to move against resistance Mobilizing similar instance to pick a way Mobility and command, speed of computation Seizing perception Being able to move quickly down the line of a concept to cancel it - "It's like a new computer that works very quickly, it gets to information I haven't been given" - forebrain and inference
Bodily involvement and spectator two systems of the nervous system involved, one provides rock-like stability, the other feels every nuance of essentic form Ie stable spatial orientation and sensed changing, the way an afterimage is experienced as stable in relation to the head - because one holds ones eyes toward it. so free of hostility and yet so full of vitality Can I think of it as ballet, teaching it to flow and also to stop and pull [sketch]
30 From town. At 5:30 in the front room. It's summer morning. Sleepy fairy in pink silk a wind of hair. Yesterday digging, thin chest one in white t, beautiful happy one talking baby on the other side of the camellia. Daniel sitting on her thigh with his back to her. The steps heat. Oh lovely one. I'd like - She isn't impressed to be happy and beautiful. I'm impressed and worried I'm not like that. But I can say - Now you could do just about anything and I'd still -
Looking at the rock with waves - if I suspend the correction for illusion, I have something to see, hard to see - what is it - something flowing in bands - but not away - stays and jiggles - bands of difference, different size and clarity - with seeing, pleasure being - then dope is the not-being in correction.
|