up north 1 part 2 - 1978 august-september  work & days: a lifetime journal project  [alternative edited version] 21 August Monday Grande Prairie [I fly back to Grande Prairie from Vancouver, find the car disabled] Waking out of a sleeping through, J has been telling me how to see the house from the inside and the outside both, façade outside, windows on three floors different degrees of dark. Dream teacher tell me again. J needed me and I gave up my vision thinking to make a continuity between sleep and wake, moments next to each other. We decide to stay in bed, I go back to sleep and dream the fence I can't get under or through, woven with wire net and charred sticks, and so I face the bull, a charred hulk himself, and turn him. We aren't able to talk about the frontier. She can't say what she means and I don't understand. Try to touch and fade right out. At the airport it's impossible to be together and I send her off, she doesn't turn and I can watch person and dog. And the outside even flying can't get to me though I try, car won't start, flat tire and broken glass. Far into grey but here again. 22nd Olson house northwest of Valhalla Centre The taxi-man knocking on the window, dawn and cold, he has to connect nuts on the solenoid to start her. Breakfast at the Hotel York. The waitress who said Don't you do that, ever, to a piggy man. He kept saying She only works here. Gym class at the college, how the eyes of the young ones embarrass me. No eyes for country, the school with stuff in it, Mary is fat and goes on making a noise but then starts to absorb the map very fast and pleasurably. The school isn't right but a farmhouse, the yard, the creek. Three faces of Eve, thinking, no, testing the parallels, 'conflicts'. Meeting the man and instantly feeling their fantasies working on my aloneness and then have to steer and pose. Is there another way, and do I do it? and how to protect the territory. My skin does it. Can the leer be filmed. Thoughts for a little while, and grass. [Corbett Thigpen 1957 The three faces of Eve Popular Library] 23 Woke upstairs among the stains, thinking of the door papered shut, drum, opening it for a movie. Cold, aimless, carry things from the car, by evening it's becoming a centre, table, shelves, and a stove coming. Her good dark face unashamed / the surprise of faces when a door opens. Two old people. During the day I'm thinking about events, how one is connected to another. 'Destiny.' Everything that comes. The odd sense of this place. The sense that mine is the only life there is, the hall of 10,000 mirrors. The whole tissue, Feeling whether J can be here, it seems inevitable but I'm waiting before I say so. What connection of dreams. Such a long education. The café in Hythe, ugly, and the woman, and the painting. Laundromat. The water, when it starts to smell sulfur stronger, it means a storm. Dope the leaven. Joe. I keep finding more. But then shall I know even as I am known. I'm unhinged but. It's partly that my eyes are odd. They've been brutal so long. Overcast, rain. [very large handwriting - trance induction - don't know where it goes] all swarming only listening close very close only this voice and what you live close attention breathe stay deep in stay with breath out in out focused on breath in out (2 min) now stay deep focus clear remember the door see the door see it with childhood's eyes and dreaming eyes the door the door you looked for without finding the door you found put your hand on the door and open it fearless clear aware with best awareness stand gathered and then the staircase very old stone in stone well down step by step around deeper fearless perfectly clear around deeper down through the dreamland deeper slowly deeper a step at a time and then at the bottom the water in darkness the sound of it and smell the air a boat blankets be among them in the bottom of the boat drift rock gentle rocking sounds a light growing the boat moving into a light passes out of an opening and into sunlight floating the breeze and smell sense birds and fish the smells gently downstream all senses are there still drifting down still floating down and then the boat scrapes gently on shore and you're walking in grass you feel the grass and the air you smell and hear and are aware of the presence of plants and animals your body is happy and light next to the tree and in the shade you sit and take pleasure and are at home in this fine time all that exists here is home and one, you are all of it and right nothing holds itself from you you hold yourself from nothing clear light focused music is coming hear it on all the surface of your body, as touch all your flesh will be excited by this music it will move around you and through you in and out of the body you will be more and more sensitive the music more and more will be rapture exquisite in all the flesh and skin now now there will be another music and this time all the senses will know it you will see the music taste it smell it touch it and hear it all the senses will know it separately and then they will know it together, each strengthening it in you now this journey is about to end and in a moment you'll be led back to come up with the count, every count will bring you closer to the surface, 20 19 18 17 16 15 energy enters your body through the soles of the feet a tingling and energy, when you wake you'll be alert and rested 14 13 12 11 10 halfway back 9 8 7 6 5 alive and energized more and more 4 3 2 energy coursing stretch feel how alive the body and as I say 1, wide awake as I clap my hands WIDE awake 24 In the morning, cold, waiting for the stove. This house is so removed from outside, a thick shelter. Feeling Roy these days. Also feeling back to the Sexsmith house as bliss, it's later in the year and that hot delight won't come again. I'm lonely here for that single inside/outside room. Don't know where to start working. Ducks' and squirrels' voices. Want to register these meetings with men and stop mistrusting myself in them if it's possible. Wood / building / The awfulness of tradition. - What I trust in talk should be good enough for writing, but talking to who. No, talking tries to be what I want for writing. What this moment is, asking opens it, for the instant before I answer: humming refrigerator's tyranny. Off. And then do it, move the chair, walk, unconscious, aimed at the action, how, I could hear the chair move, when I asked, the plug black and cold, where to put it, a moment holding it and decision, back to the chair, another intention, in the meantime, body holding its unnoticed position, feeling comes in, was ready there under the hand, book, but not writing to explain to you, third finger, thumb and palm each feeling differently, line pressure on the side of left knee crossed over and pressing outside of right knee, the back has a And then decisions, posture, chair, which? No, table. Don't think it's easy, taking the easy way, no, excited, the hard way. Here. Decide and do. Remember. It slips away when I do. That was an instant's sorting. There was an interval of sorting, looking at objects or imagining them. Decision came, but where did it come from. What's best. Straight back, a chair, a higher table the desk, lamp moved. How it is to do. Imagination had a habit of making something into something else. His profile, each face and a decision made about it. Costumed for marrying. This face, if I'm seeing I'll look at it, the flesh falling. Is this true? It must be the light, change the angle. Deep sink under the eyes. Look and look, what's different and the same. The chin come forward, fat shine of cheek. This one, with a silly name. - Things I notice: errors, checking on the absent-mindedness. Remaking. What's lost identity? She wasn't good enough, I had to change her. What's the relation between desire and 'essence', seduction and loss. You have so many faces. A solidification of events around a light. When I want salvation, work, it's hopeless, but when I want the journey, it's there. I need the fitting for the pipe. Instead of going for it myself I wait. When he comes he's brought another neighbour, another bachelor. This time he asks whether I drink and whether I've ever been married, goodlooking woman like you. They fit on the stovepipe. "Bring it down tenderly," Nordhagen says. The tension in the room because I'm a woman alone in a house in the country. I push against them in the undercurrent of everything I say. Nordhagen is an assault. I watch for what else he is. Everyone he brings, he tells how I walked barefoot, You're sure tough. Yes I'm tough, I say. When they've gone I wonder how I look, but I think it's only my situation that's turning him on. Moodie turns it aside by saying he used to know a woman who hung out her clothes barefoot in winter. I say there were South American Indians who went barefoot all winter, wore furs and had only a little hut. My voice changes to false enthusiasm. They quickly leave. In there was a moment when I tried to look him in the eye and see behind, but what stops me is when I don't like to see. Another pickup, younger man, an offer of wood, I say I have, I can soon tell it will be easier, I can ask for information there's more space around this one, a catskinner, tells me about the fight he had with his brother Billy, broke his little finger. "He broke my jaw and I broke a rib on him." "Pulled the wires out myself." In these meetings I am at bay and can't remember much after, except the way the tension moved. Three kids and a puppy on binder twine, clear and exact. My sense of life. I'm trying to solidify. - [The Studebaker engine seizes] Stumbles through the truck's lights and hands something through the window to the driver, he has come drunk to see me, this local person, his country and the stranger, what does he want, the car stopped a mile up the road, Father locked in his crazy repeats ("They mocked me then, but now -"), M worshipping the infant and me not able to see Rudy. The clouds piled up. A pretty blindness with the sun low. Driving hard singing, not minding the crackles on the radio, and then the engine starting to tap. Trying to get it home regardless, foolish. Evening cooling waiting for a car, seeing mist set in certain lower parts of the road. Thinking when this dream gets into trouble like this maybe I can believe it. Today's bad, is it the crazy dark of the moon. He [Arden] was saying "I think this generation is less stable than the last one. My dad went out and shot a moose when he was 13," motions the height of a five year old, "I go out and I can't get a moose at all." "I've read the Bible more times than you'd think." At their house I was in old times again, reading magazines, eating hard chemical icecream, chattering. 25 Satur's day, trouble. [Later: It's only Friday.] The dawn was good. After that, oblivion until the car stopped. The black pictures. Joann. What did last winter have to do with Rhoda. Permeability after the soul's loosened. Cold clear. Many stars. - mrs flaten. sitting in the kitchen behind her, watching her cut cauliflower, sharp creation of nice white things, find myself looking at her body, neat and light, it has a round pot but she's interesting in her legs. her face is pale brown and haggard, with a dreamy smile like a girl who reads. I find things to say, feel I'm being just like them but notice eccentric posture on the chair and get interested in whether I can lead her into her actual sense of memory. he comes in with his pig baby look and I can tell he's decided he doesn't like me. she keeps looking out the window after he leaves, she's saying she has to do something now. the way she didn't sit down until the counter was clean; she speaks like somebody who's been seductive, and knew to tell the memory of the garden full, like a field, of flowers, 'I think they were poppies' restless horse moving fast around its post, on a white rope, in the strong wind that took the steeple off their barn experimenting with toothache, the self healings fail. I went down, tired, and wanted an advisor. foot. leg. male. head, mask? a devil, red mask, decide not to stop (faltered), see the cock, it's in the air with its balls and I realize it's to fit into the hole (tooth), but then I take charge and invent light and controlled movement. then I see it much bigger, big as a well, red, feel sorry for it, put a circle of light, a little sun, into it. warm and circle rhythm, that seems right, down at the bottom where the abscess was, pat it like the earth, planting (dream) but it still hurts. the woman with the flowers, her - - correcting the computer not knowing how every method is a prison   best times measure origin. the outside, part of the person's trained soon it wants to be different, in some and is different, liked or not, for difference what is like is not really difference   don't know what it's set for, long life, children pain says don't   what I know about the computer errors. sometimes without attention does a thing like homology the wanted one are they expressive   the absolute and opposite thinker frightens easily ready to reassure too fast   cause fineness, quality. a bent hypnotism. trust and good concentration attention, liking, space, time, travel, fright, increase amplitude of alpha while maintaining synch of L and R   thinking was dialogue, writing continues wants to learn its independence, with I did that but forgot how   it's searching, why and for what it's reordering. but. why so much time. because it nags one who doesn't do it   body has its constant relation to its world comes when it's called by   - Events and how they're organized. Unconscious making, one thing leads to another. The moose's second antlers. - Whether or not to pay attention to people. Dutiful. What are they doing. Ritual. "Well I guess there'll be more rain coming." "Yuh sure looks that way." Curiosity, ritual also. (Placing.) Family business. (He turned his back to talk on the phone, she didn't.) Taking information (I do). Acting out how I imagine I'm seen, covering. I think paying with confusion for confusion. Booze, stories. Season. One kind of list turns into another kind. Their ways. My ways. Richardson, the smells, selfconscious travel through the fields to the pointed dark trees, her detail like a smoker's, that concentration in and out both there. Jamila's story. I put leaves into my pocket without justification, I felt myself the old deep one and imagined J pleased in me, by it. Fright of the drugs, what can I know about it. Earliest times when I met it I was elated and wanted to marry it (Noffke), and Carmichael. People who were there, and then Madeleine who wasn't afraid to speak herself, but was irresponsible with beings and disappointed them, inflated her meetings because she didn't imagine a future. Somebody's there, funny, in their presence your imagination relaxes and plays, and you feel yourself. I referred to some of the times. Olivia and Don from their beginning, they didn't offer me. Once with Greg, he fainted, I don't remember anything. Ron, acting himself boldly, the same: I learned, but argued for depth with some / the teawater fuck and taste of cheese. Judy and Michael. Still submerged. Peter and booze. Roy had, been through school. Looseness, brilliant play. I learned the posture from Roy without apartness from messing myself or losing the long line. Keith. Andy, when I didn't know. Joe - yoga and Sufis set me up. Paul and John, less sure of themselves. Maggie. Got contact highs but her and their unrigour and cowardice. My original highs: world, music, writing, movies, reading, taking pictures, traveling, singing. Lessing. She started to get mystical. Laing, Herbert, Duras surely. The Sufis with their science of states. Richardson? Joann, Sal. Tony - booze let him out, but doesn't like dope. Daphne. And then - rigour and play. Have watched lovely unborn wanting friends and my own inspiration. I don't know the long story and hardly any of my heroes have been without it. Blais, the shaman. Cohen. It needs courage and quality. What I could see if you were looking too. I try to see it for myself. - Hello dear person. Starting to speak to you like this there's a moment that says Where am I, and then wants to tell you. The fire has a strong draft and makes music in the stovepipe. The air waves next to it. Outside, a tree with its own strong wind (push) and I think that's a crow riding it. Grass on the yard, I can't hear it but mistook the sound of water beginning to hiss in the pot. Your tea, the lid makes me happy. I've had little heavens with peonies, but it think it's the small red blue and green. Last night I hated art, this morning I love it even though my car is a mile up the road with something serious wrong. We can see return All things however they flourish Turn and go home to the root from which they sprang This is called calmness [Tao Te Ching] -   Circumspect, like one who in winter crosses a stream Watchful, as one who must meet danger on every side Ceremonious, as one who pays a visit Yet yielding, as ice when it begins to melt   Which of you can assume such murkiness, to become in the end still and clear? Make yourself inert, to become in the end full of life and stir.   Those who possess this tao do not try to fill themselves. Push far enough toward the void Hold fast enough to quietness And of the 10,000 things none but can be worked on by you   Who knows the always-so has room for everything Who has room for everything is without prejudice - Last night a pickup drove onto the yard and one of my neighbours stumbled through the lights wanting to be friends. I'm going to have to understand the desperation, it's hard to look at. The men, this one's a catskinner, brutalized and lonely. They work and drink. Rudy said about oilrig work The people you work for are animals. My father's mind loves allusion but he doesn't know anything to allude to but nursery rhymes. Ellie, do you know how it happened that the cow jumped over the moon? Had to do with a short in the milking machine. Could you have enjoyed that? Writing's phony because it's slow. Writing's false when it's slow. I'm wanting to build the fence with wire and charred wood. In notes from two years ago I found "dreamed just now a bit of old wire screen which if folded over once and held up to the light would have instead of a moiré a picture, often head and shoulders, of a man with some detailed background. I showed other people and exclaimed, refolded, showed. They were indifferent and I shouted that it was a wonderful thing, exactly like the mechanism of dreaming, ie seeing pictures out of grid on grid." I found the note this morning. last night working with the xeroxes of last winter I discovered that one of the xeroxes of old screen had a face in it. I don't understand how any of these things work. In the xeroxes it's the white/grey/black that's so voluptuous and fine. Sometimes love is the navigator and then it puts me out of my depth and I call in doubt/resistance. It's love that works. It's seeming to me that the doubt is the same in person and work love. Work says let yourself fall it's bliss. Oh touching you (twice a year). Changing the vehicle, a swimmer. Space without top or bottom and no ground. When we learn how to swim in all the elements we'll start to laugh. If you get tired and can read fiction, I left From the legend of Biel in the kitchen and I'd like to know if you find anything in it. Pound is like you say you are, scared he'll miss something. If people find a way to live in what they love most have they missed anything? Here they'd say "if a person ..." 26 Looser lighter and easier - sitting to the xeroxes in love with black and white - a few things finding themselves, the underspirit is working and finding again - writing J, then Flatens come to help with the car. Coffee, writing an hour and then walking out and finding the spruce place, meeting the owl, the smells and small coloured leaves making child's year, Arden and Donnie drinking Canadian sherry getting looser telling stories, the time lightning hit Donnie's house, took the heads right off the nails so the boards fell down after a while; split the aerial tamarack post, bust the radio apart. They were all out for a while, my dad got burns on his legs, the legs always get it worst. Don't ever piss on an electric fence, and then electric fence stories, the time --- wrapped fence wire around a board and put it down the outhouse, they were having a Ladies Aide meeting, old Mrs ---, she's big, she's so fat she can hardly get ---, she took a piss and turned on the charge. She came out saying Ooch, ooch, she thought she'd had a heart attack. They came out with my fantasies-tricks, mind reading, fortune telling - and when I was putting wood on the fire once more I thought an Eton Street upstairs dream had arrived. - Days. This day, staying below after grieving Luke, top of the head gets cold, it is cold today, is it the coldest? Cap, old grey coat. An animal just ran above the ceiling south to north, can't read the sequence of sound only its quality and a volume arc. Bernice [Horneland]. Taking credit for job. Helmer's greyness eyes hair mouth, what would he choose. Setting out the coffee cups. He's not far from himself. She too, spite, gossip, unembarrassed, with her it's the pigness that fascinates me. Not hard to find a position to it, obey or not. But I warp too. The way ideas come in to the side, a little darting sideways indication, fragile. The first part of a sentence, stops, considered, without words / yes or no, and then on. Thought about thinking and then it was lost. The way the unconscious machine works, finding its accuracies and speed, and errors. Been watching to see what its calculations leave me free to feel or - Reading frees up the lateral for single conclusions. The balances, 'it' demands, local and planetary, time and ? - After that went to Richardson. If I wait for anyone, it is for one who will show himself to have been hailed by the same kind of happiness. This is later in the life. Who did? Many, sometimes. Ol' Roy but some happiness back. the hard work of silently discovering near things afresh The warrior of contemplation. I'll not ever know the secrets, then it's energy, predilection, going on, as she found her way, watching and recording. Ideas for use, but no question of true. This way everything is fresh and miraculous. We die partial deaths, repeatedly, to let others live. Go to the causal zones and fight the child-errors of local culture. In the journal about Roy. The idealism, simple longings set themselves up and after them the complex things referring to them - marrying, the companions - so that what happens outrages the initial power/longing but is in itself interesting, forcing. Hatred and how to transcend. R's casting himself into many people - wanting one person, wanting to be one, actually connected to many, actually being many, so? J and the insecurity. I seemed to think marrying was there to be entered and what happens instead is ---. Only being interested in the other not a fit of persons. "I depend on Luke to share that with me." Molecules. Oh J - back there was a time when I imagined surrendering, and the way my flesh fired and you could get far in, and then for a while you were a 'man' and I was beautiful and helpless and in that was vulnerable to nature in a way you can't protect me from, and struggled out myself, but having to leave you and become once more a man in myself. Peace is the condition of flying within the greatest impulse that can come from the unknown. [DH Lawrence] 27 Richardson, enthralled. Into stoned revelation writing, I was learning or working on seeing air - kitchen and outside - ghosts still, images before sleeping - a log in a woodstove grate embers and a blue flame coming up, I got up to look at my fire but it was different, sleeping with aurora and woodsmoke. Not quite here. Second image a pair of transparent wings [sketch]. In the stoned writing the only part that holds me is Luke's sayings. Dry mouth. I think experimented with sealing right eye. Left could see close and clouds but blurred medium. The difference in scale, rocks bigger than hand or foot. Looking for body's weaknesses. Dreamed that famous writers get all their ideas from the simple popular writers. - cannibalism she wants something first one, right one, I'm going to find you and live in you are the times that feel like dreams so thin because they were already lived / happened during looking at the journal / this moment has a different quality, the dream sense had the power pole in a different position / it was only a sense of situation without detail 28 Carmichael and J (scare). Found TV speaker for record player. [There was a record player in the old house, with a collection of classical LPs.] Reading composers' lives to see whether they died young. Walked across fields to Valhalla, the white stone set up against a tree, jabbering on account of coffee at Flatens, on the way back, the reversal at the bridge. Dry mouth. Milk came when I wanted. [Bought in two-quart jars from Nordhagens.] Tired, blear. - in the early stages of their slow re-orientation The creative workers of the world, they have necessarily made a direct contact with the soul and are therefore wide open to those intuitive ideas which are the source of their creative work. The desire to know In childhood looking at people thinking they're lost or not. Writing being. How exactly was it. The changes in a person. Relationships / qualities of word play Writing books reading books being beautiful visiting strange people and houses Boys sex sister Conscience philosophy Religion crazy people journal Self betrayal Wrote from inside spirituality Closest to the top of my mind are the defenses, ie get away from them, be alone. Judgment, don't trust anything you read. Held off, Cheryl getting rid of me. They take you over.   But also Luke should come back, don't smoke dope. The contest of minds. This one wants to know experiences but it was in some way false. I have a disconnection between question and answering work. Responsibility. 29 Began tired, lay in sun, made the circle distractedly, came back couldn't read physics, mind quite mushy. Clara Wells and the store, the fairy man and his 13 year old daughter driving the truck, Moodie, "my little pal", then reading Richardson and cooking supper cleaning washing windows. The late arriving energy. Writing J a sad sincere letter with Richardson's voice. Turned off the light and Mendelssohn. 30 Making a list of animals in my rising waking, heard the mental voice saying quite a different list. From dream of Paul on a roof, I said he could put it in me but it was sore and I immediately told him to take it out because I remembered I was fertile. The rocks for circle, smoked. Sat in the first circle and felt a difference, listed my preoccupations. Evening. Opened upstairs room. Methodic thinking. - [section missing] of being directed. Hear a sound, imagine my fate come and me set up, a bear. Get up and go to the circle, still thinking. Sit in the middle of it where the grass is pressed down, already the circle has a strong presence especially stepping into it. Sit there, thinking maybe I'll concentrate, but the rain. Which direction. The circle makes sense of choice of direction. North. Had looked west because a car was passing, intenser dark behind a fanned-out light moving. Think about the new person and her absentmindedness. Think maybe I can trust her, suspend it as possible, not decided. Think of the movie, make prayers, slight selfconscious prayers to invent something lovely that is true in both worlds or as many as I live in. On my left the stand of taller black poplars making a sound both clapping and clicking with rain and see the darker shapes of the branches against the dark grey sky, moving and clotting with the sound, standing up and nearing and passing each other, with all those pointed leaf-shapes on them, thinking about a movie with sections, different kinds of play and understanding in two and a half minutes. Sometimes falling over, interrupted. 24 chapters. Falling asleep the wandering and a sudden stop like a dark door, a black rectangle, in my way. Bang. I wonder about it. Aches in my hips. Wake from a dream, a friend (magician) says we don't like to show ourselves doing it any more, just show we've done it. Opening the paper doors onto the cats' cage. I was to wait in the room for the three of them, held back a curtain, a tawny blurred light, beside the light I wonder if she'll see me, she bounds to the bottom of the room like a lecture room, she's small but electric, then she runs up, I've opened the curtain in confusion, and escapes down the corridor. I shout to the magician that she's gone but then the next two, blue kittenish young tigers, run down and scramble up into a playpen. Felt the expression of Paul in my photo of him writing in his journal. The dream seemed to tell me the inner world has expanded again and is again the land of adventure. I lay happily daydreaming about how I'll go fearless into it. Thinking about 'obedience' and permeability, Paul, the way I was sunny in his and John's sunniness, and Roy in mine and later Cheryl in mine. Taking on the character of whoever -. Going along trying to invent a person who does well. The lies that come from refusing to admit what we use people for. Memory - when I remember in the way that is 'me' I remember a feel, with sense - it's complete - a time, without words - as in the pottery school, Mrs Hattori (names) - I could go back into it and look around. Stoned it comes with meanings, oh that's what - The stone adds its presence to that time. Reading that opens memories. Smells. Sincerity Able to give its full development to his own nature, he can do the same to the nature of other men. Able [etc] ..., he can give their full development to the nature of animals and things. Able ..., he can assist in the transforming and nourishing powers of heaven and earth. Able ..., he makes with heaven and earth a series of three. The superior one can find self in no situation not self. - when I get to a fineness, by bold refusals, I feel a panic of having to 'work' when it's impossible - because I don't know what's worth doing also their methods have taken over in me so I don't know what mine used to be, and I know I didn't fight for them well enough to know if they're well lost, the navigating ideas is there something wrong with deliberate creation? I used to belong in life and made in passing, now I feel responsible for the world's soul again clarity, oh move in secret knowledge that there is the peace of eternal being within every aspect of the field of temporal becoming and the deceiver, who when all had been excellently made, entered into every particle sight and imagined sight what my imagination loves writing imagining the full void finely divided sight and sound, concentration assuming a benevolent or evil controller in the beginning I wanted to be one who is awake - an artist - one who isn't afraid to see or feel - energy - and does not waste a sense of suspension over void when I think of finite lives in the sorrow with roy, or all the big sorrows, what mattered was keeping a clear knowledge without comfort when I think back there seems room in a life for so few happenings on one scale [waxing half sketch] intoxication, 'discovery of strength' it means faster (tea?) and looser     'ideas' today had a freedom from the beginning, walking first, without very happy vision but liking the wind and to be out, destination was only that, not a time to stop in the bog, the black and greasy earth attracted, only that. I thought about whether/how to use it concentration, daphne's letter, first part but not later using. to make something, what is it. something attracts, shines, I think it has a power and want it for my process and product. it's immoral and cheap. it's working to refine / find / show what's good in the world and means something or refers to the unsocial parts of the person. today I justified it as practical magic, to study it, work with the different parts of me and therefore world. intimations, the gaze, second attention, but. task, reconnecting to practical magic in body's world many words intoxication. excitability, enjoying thought, had much fantasy about praise, not so much thought, self praise. looking at the grasses I was more intense in loving them while I thought there was film in the camera, but loved them - oh, more - didn't forget to like my blissfulness. the way something beautiful was all along (but not after turning home) the light on the stove, its match to moon pictures, the air shaking over it, putting the tripod up, inventing triangle stand, what the zoom could see, imagining a beautiful shot. imagining more grandiose long movie - aerial, satellite, meeting experts and funny people, being able to do more, bigger, other parts of the world impressing friends, taking a bigger field for action but not losing modesty or navigation sense, it wasn't a religious or sweet one - full of ambition. and so. making the stone circle was self important too I was self conscious (gurdjieff) about the quality of the energy and about thinking how to use it, the speediness, indecision and how I moved fast from one thing to another in the circle, trusting the first impulse he says when you get more conscious you have to be conscious about everything you do I'm attached to my fine instinct. Was bragging to imagined j about it by accident, good results I can't claim ie intoxication was full of fantasy bragging swagger 31 From arriving at J, she and Sandy and Steph were going to watch a movie in pyjamas, it was mediocre and about a gay man. I was in a rage of frustration, said something witty Andy beamed at me for. She said that at first she'd thought I was seeing through her devices, but later she'd taken advantage of my preoccupation to mislead me. I had my hand against the wall and someone held it, I thought it was Paul, but it was a taller younger man in a jumpsuit. Urgent to the telephone, on the way, grass, the way the colors and sorts come together, restless thoughts, J was happy and at first had an oboe in her voice, confused time, both of us get lost without focus, sometimes almost there, it's the focus on voice and parts of talk, to find each other out. Things to say, looking at. Wrote Roy and Luke. The form is: focus on the voice to find the other person before anything can be made. Preoccupations sometimes have to be expressed. We were both distracted and I wondered. Afternoon, table for upstairs. Wrote in journal and went to bed outside, slight sharp rain. Aches, long movement to sleep. Cars scared me. Looked carefully at the creatures on my eyes, very beautiful enclosed chains and saw on sky. - j on phone. 'I haven't heard that intoxication for a long time' ('you don't know how it still thrills me drive in the dark') was it charming?   with the tale, the pictures of its teller, my ingenue I'm feeling the distance between us the way I was in touch with you was in brief messages that came formed and quite certain about touch penetrating respect/work that our good persons are married but not all the rest September 1 In bed body very wanting after tiger dream, T, and the long pole of phallos, I still work at it foolishly but when I come it's up the thighs to the knees and stays in the diaphragm. I imagine closer attention. Where have I been all these years, in my attention. The other world is also this world. Studying calendar, wind came up, the beauty of battery parts, excited but couldn't focus, afternoon intent on calendar into night. 2 Morning without remembering, excited over language thoughts with and against Fenelloza, for Daphne, tea made me twitch, and hunger, on the road, the horse, the beautiful detailed mouth, hairs, it also has asymmetrical face. It smelled me intently, jacket, arm, and something with its nose, a quick rub upward of the skin, some other kind of sensing (this morning the weasel, its light long jumps, its legs start far back on its body, the way the neck went down and quickly up on the other side). With the horse, the sense of heaven being lived, a connection with beasts that isn't brutal/sentimental. Thinking how some parity has begun. Hitchhiking easily to La Glace [to see my folks], climbing into trucks. The man who clears leases. Vegetables, at the barn waiting for the rain to end, imagining the little barn as cabin, why she talks interrupted and slow and is she thinking? At supper a fatigue I break with the electric fence stories, I track carefully, surprise myself, Do you understand that? directly into the face, as if to a person, the faded eyes, a faintness when I look at that face, it takes all his courage to use his eyes, the specialness of those minds is very delicate and can be broken. He was preaching to himself about integrating, for a richer life, and I said she has a right to be alone - the story was like a push - are you willing to conceive there was someone else there - he wasn't - my weeping came up from a delicate shuddering. Afterwards I was cold and exhausted but the fields and sky gave themselves. And the beaver and the smell I sat on. Oh Jammer. Oh boy Homer. [Ed says] 3 Full of grey chat about yesterday's struggle, I'm outraged at his rejection (escape), meanness and offside there's her fluster at being left out, she flew into all the old blinds - a flap of arms, "I feel like I'm in the middle." Evening I went through the woods, a thick damp place, scared me, pushed through and sat on the blanket and a smell from childhood, the strong swamp smell, I had to sniff for it and found a small mint-like plant, the smell was more important than anything in the day, it was the smell of privacy and rapture, these smells make it seem that I exist as myself still. When I smoked I found many things to think about. But gave up because my mind wouldn't make connections. One morning, I think it was Saturday, I woke from seeing light lines making geometrical thoughts. I hit the wall and said that's it. A different evening I was thinking about thinking and remembered - I've forgotten since before Sexsmith - what it is to feel I'm lost - it is that the mind sees itself off on a branch of itself, along with its world. [Later note: No.] - [from a letter to Jam] Color must be food. When I walk and see how fast they're changing I don't want you to be missing them. This quiet house. The fire breathes, continuous inhale with particle crackles. Today when the landlord stopped by and saw my blankets on the outside bed he said 'aren't you afraid somebody will r-r-rob you'. Today's fine concentration. I used part of it to hitchhike to La Glace and after supper I set my spine very vertical and led him, instead of away from, toward his crazy vortices. It takes such - no it makes such - a sense of brave balance for me to look into his terrified eyes. He and I have never looked in each other's faces except very fast on the way to somewhere else. And I hold him, now, sometimes for almost a second before he veers right, and down. It's still hard for me to see past his fright because I have to work so fast and accurately. It's a kind of concentration where my speech comes up from below and I have to rely on what comes. It feels like sheer risk, because it goes so against the long practice in guerrilla warfare. And she's holding her breath, her long practice in distraction. She can hardly bear it. Sometimes I have to head her off or cut her off. And he dodges into his old safe hideouts and I rout him out, I move fast because if I didn't I'd lose my nerve. When I was in it I didn't know at all where it would go, that utter relying on the moment. I liked it too, it took me out onto a limb. I wanted to tell him something I had held against him. He was out of his chair and to the door and I kept him there until it came to a showdown, I said I needed information and that I wanted to be relieved of it. He couldn't let me tell him. When we'd got to that bald ground we were in an electric silence, both returned to ourselves, held so still, and then I felt a very delicate shudder and realized I was going to cry, and that I would have to cry out in the open. It was such precise crying. I felt you in it. He was on one side of the room and she was sitting opposite me and we could all hear the little tick, right and left and right and left, of the tears hitting the table. It seemed fine to me. Then he went out the door (but not 'til I'd stopped) and she made a desperate flurry to get him back. She didn't understand how it was working or how strong I was at that moment, but I stopped her and he left and then she I was cold and exhausted and I realized she was feeling so left out and wasn't understanding. She needed comforting and I didn't have any left. So she took me home. He came too. She tried to talk but I wanted to be out in the wide west and long shadows. My eyes were happy. I haven't found out what I wanted to know, why he's so scared. Today I had the backlash, the voices in me were muttering and quarrelling with him most of the day. I was annoyed, I wanted to read Fuller. I felt my friends in me during that meeting. Trudy sometimes spoke and you were like a shield making me impersonal - no I mean that I was in some way with you and not in myself - no I can't make it exact - I was there steady because I'd come from you 4 From waking inside, spent the day feeding the fire and reading movie mags, women's mags and comics / the old drug / it insulated me from the fight with him / and now, evening, this uniform given-up day, thirsty, sore tongue, I'd like to work. Being in mags and comics having very simple familiar experience in an unchanged pattern, little changes in what can be said, but the forms - mesmerism that has in it contempt, visibility of the grabs. How many of the middle year memories have me in them from outside, the young ones are inside. Moth crawled on my naked body and had a path on my face, over my lips, when I was naked in the dark soaking foot. Still looking for attitudes. 5 Still wondering about memory, what it does, trying to be fair to all the functions - Blank light and again, reading custom car magazines, resting but some guilty, going out to phone, seeing almost nothing, the Hansons and the public health nurse, Glenn Roland's courtesy to customer, taking it to the machine shop, the public health nurse, a wife but not safe, most uncomfortable person. "Do you have a family?" so she could tell me she did. A social servant. The Hansons kind but not foolish, her powdered face fascinating like a crust. Still surprised to have 'physical existence' but Readers Digest about polar explorers' feet rotting and the struggle to cross space, 50 miles, weeks, crevasses, dog liver, I wondered whether to believe. And think about woodpile, teeth, money, how to look after Luke, another stove, householding discomfort with J, She and I equally ostrich and hawk, both a fraction dove. Stupid, but I had to push myself to be willing to look at some. The strips of sky under cloud either side of sunset, south pale blue, north yellow green pink and blue, melting where it went down, fusion. I still think about cancer slightly every day. 6 From Flatens' coffee nervous and yammering, junk-language people-thought, walking along the creek. A poplar yellow right to its middle but more on the outside side away from trees, the white/cream/beige/maroon straw colors and less smell. Scare thinking of black bull death. 7 Undertook the laundry to Hythe. Piled clouds, the sun color inside them open west. J flat-voiced in her public and family no-hope. School with diseased teachers and school smell. The old couple, Röhnes, who timed themselves by accident to take me home, she was scared of the hitchhiker. The wide sky with all its ink/water blues. The Indian who said, What're you drying, your panties? Listening to the visiting in the café, under that wall painting with its deer stepping into sky water so lovely it takes me in, the strange and wrong reflection of a fawn. It's heaven in that dark place. Reading Campbell, a few lines came out of the oblique poet. Rain in the morning, waking dreamless in full gossip. Herd of black bulls at Lee's, white rings in their faces, that stood up when I went nervously by with the postbag hung from shoulder. 8 Dreams, the one of running in a night snow field with nothing on but a shirt, wrote it to J and worked at the green journal, taste unengaged except by the few things that snag. Set out to mail, with the receipts, Nordhagen, "the violin, yuh." Walked the two miles, looking at colors but the eyes making disruptions, and very dry mouth. The Canada Council envelope was wet from being held under the belt. Evening the orange horizontal light, I went out along the road, looking at the summerfallow with long shadows, the poplars with orange round bits held up intense with a dark blue sky far behind them. Then as the sun lowered a curdling in the sky where no cloud had been, of wavy pink vapour. The fine showy west. I crouched in the reeds close to the slough to look at ducks (I could hear them) but instead saw thousands of light-colored moths jumping and fluttering out of and among the bent reeds, all around me, and especially in the near dark between me and the dark red in the west. I knew it was a moment from legend but I was looking for myself in it, and didn't come trying, trying to see it all around. - [from a letter to Jam] For part of the night I was in a field of snow, night, with only a shirt on, running, happy because I wasn't cold, frisking. There were friends and maybe a dog. At the edge of the field a house where a mother and two daughters. The eldest daughter was exquisite and passionate, the mother was in love with her. From the field we could see her pointed face shining. The other daughter passing gave us an ironical look. Later you and I were at a gathering my father organized. He complained that he'd made it so people would be his friends but they weren't. It was muddy. When I wake I lie in my bedroll on the floor thinking and this morning I thought that what I'm working on is hiatus, making emptiness for sorting. This place is not the present, in a day many times circulate. It has to go on but I'm bored with its pace. 9 Seeing back into many dreams but not clearly. Luke, and a bull that chased us up a high spiraling ramp, we hung by a cable when he chased us off the edge, I carried him in my arms in a hospital, telling him we'd soon be together again. A city, that city I'm sometimes in - stranger. Working with journal, then outside with the camera (making many movie notes on bits of paper) - wanting a good camera again, a close-up lens. Stones and shadows, when I'm shooting the force of decision makes me learn and see more than speculation, and it seems to be more my way. Shadow turns corner, I want impeccable focus for all the grain of rock and shadow and color - the fine color in the ditches, have to learn putting rectangle around those, today it seemed possible. Lichen. Every rock with its color and story. Fill the frame, with a drop-off into shadow. Plants and rock interlife. Still far from the concentration I can imagine, question what's happening here and am I clear in it. Crystal vision. And oh the sound. Wind creating trees. [rock photo] [ditch colour] Sign said Bridge out - not a crack but old damage. Liz telling me her dream, a black cross, if you put water in the middle it could pour out all four directions, the gold-flecked plexi cross, choose which to wear with the muddy dress, it relieved a tension. Loving Liz [Elizabeth Gray] but refusing the photograph she ran back to give me, "But he's your brother." "I wouldn't know what to do with it." Chuck describing the sound of plastic at the windows telling the quality of the wind, and how a mosquito sounds different when it's inside the mosquito net. - "Even if they're on unemployment and welfare, they improve the neighbourhood." This time Luke and I, we pass a pen with a bull and other cattle, climbing the ramp, the bull comes after us, we spiral very high, have a long cable attached to us, we go off the edge escaping from the bull and the cable holds us. Not enough of this one to say anything, although in sleep I was already working on it with some dream person. Later Luke in Hong Kong, visiting a school I wanted to send him to, too expensive. He was in the hospital, I was putting him into his bed saying he'd soon be living with me again. - What does it mean that my vision is all color, what this person looks for and is satisfied by, is colors in things. There was that lilac grey stubble field with darker stripes converging toward a blue ridge, with a green row somewhere this side of it. Right in front, the yellow-green, headed, moving, particular, open-edged, grass. Any area of color, not to analyze or even reproduce, although I took pictures, it's immersion in love and I don't take it apart. It has grown. Language is getting more careless, it moves along with sudden eccentricities of concentration. Emily - this is conversation - held onto her own made language, and I in my young nobility - Eyes less secure but more for themselves, touch moves into them. Nose notices little, has practical sense for smoke, decay, uneducated, nearly unconscious but a happy sense. Ears they have to work to understand, touch can move into them but doesn't. Touch it has gone to work, gauges things, waits, gets a pleased surprise feeling something alive in the pocket, cool and wrinkling, leaf, leather. It likes to put itself into my hair. Secret pleasures. Taste is so brutalized it is not even good to keep me from harm usually, any tea, however strong the acid ridge. Imagery I love it when I see odd things but lately I hardly do, too far from the viewer, or else the 'outside' is enough. Other senses: logic; attraction, interest; resonance, mythology Logic prior to reason and a movement of imagination, it has gone out of language to move faster - Any event maybe fatal, or a message. Many things can be safely ignored, they'll call. Compassion, is it the alternative to wisdom. What kind of work can this time make. In the times when I'm in pain of not ever being able to know everything it's really not being able to know at all. The centre of experience shifting Direction having gone over to an unknown centre Free of the spell of the parents 10 Falling asleep was seeing J in some discussion and heard my voice saying Luke. Woke up to try to locate what it was about. Lethargy, and reading Readers Digests, hatred and despair, the caged, loneliness, that F wouldn't come through, Nordhagen's eyes going to my crotch and me smiling, laughing, heading him off. The heavy sky, all the desperations in this world, cheap tricks, little dodges, expensive safeties and the alternative desperation of the void. Nowhere near it this is the old ugly self-hating pain of implication in cheap cheap. I expected them today. Oblivious and garbage. Last night with the water bottle going to sleep outside, gently, looking at mossy stars and thinking of Lellie and Lucia [1966] and how well they liked me and I them. Eh you how're we going to stay out of the shit. I did the reasoning test in Readers Digest and got averaged. 11 From sawing wood to finding the revision writing and liking it, to Valhalla mostly walked, quite blind (I was lonely and didn't know), under the flier and after I'd cursed, the card and across the road, a ring and a half, I was brought to listening, twice while she talked away into something I found myself listening glad to hear her say anything, she started from Sheila and gradually came to me, it was after we were both nearly crying, I in my phonebox and she in her apron, China, her writing, and we will be - and I confessed housekeeping embarrassments. And down the road, the big surround, slight red among the alternately dark and light grey rape swaths, in the ditch the brown spots from clover heads among green and other colors, the love color puts into me, and my eyes after J said she wanted to be with me and was every night, were better. The tank truck and the American I started to like, for his curiosity, just before he pulled up at the driveway. I revenged myself for last time by praising Roy's tenderness and good looks, and then he offered me an After Eight. The wood. Sunset started and I went - the willow bushes, weed in cream-colored grass and the grey underworld water. Got excited talking to M about writing and gave advice - write from inside, exercise fantasy and concentration or else it's useless. She dreamed Arta was dying and she was very sad, didn't know why she was so sad. 12 The first thing was blue sky over there. Fast? The argument and as usual I decide not to be mean but. And don't like the breakfast but like making the fire. Cleaning house there's familiar stupefied this world existence. In the pasture, cropped, look for old magics and have the rectangle, find new ones, the abstraction, a small shaded channel of brown creek, some light into the bottom (can I go with Luke to China?), surface leaves to take care about, dimly, I like what I make, there's something everywhere, it isn't a drive, it's a sort of casual finding I then try to be conscientious about, underexposing for the lit reeds on the brown creek. Work on the religion papers, speculations, Don Juan and the Corbin and Shah Sufis still speak. Frustration thinking of writing or any making, trying to justify it first, it's my hobble, not knowing how to believe it's real work, throwing the rationalizations away, religious instruction is it for the lost and not for the real workers, who don't need it - I'm frightened of finding I've been sorted out of the ones with a chance and yet have fantasies of good work separated from the local - Walk to Dolemos - Bernice and Helmer - the smell of this country road - the jubilating sight of bright moonlight on the way home. The owl circling at the ring site, lying on my back with 360 degree grass and it going around low. Came all the way back to the outhouse in dark. 13 Fasting. Was reading Jung. Lay down feet toward fire and drifted - 'thinking' if she were the wrong branch, at first I'd feel a strong tension and then later it would be less, I had the diagram [sketch] and then there was a slip as if into another zone, and I saw the thought - here it isn't clear - and as if the wrongness of its method - the path of the path - and then I had a sense of enlargement and exploring, Sandy was there, but I wanted to go back and see what happened, and then it was comical, as if a slipping (I was nearly asleep), I kept repeating if she were the wrong branch ... I'm remembering the way I sometimes catch the two parts split and now from the diagram it seems that the wrong path is the one she's not on. The mouse in the water pail this morning, its head was dry, fluffy, with whiskers standing up out of the water curved forward, the rest of its body was partly submerged midsection tufted, and completely underwater, the legs stretched out stiff and thin with the long tail between them. Little white feet, the delicate shanks. Five mouse turds floating near it, expanded. I threw it out. Flies and their fine shadows. Sun on the curve of the paper. Something has collected it. Light and blue. 14 Went into oblivion from early, dislike but gone into Richardson, so that when Bernice came to the door and they wanted to parade me, do Epps a favour, I went but dull and resistant, Pedersons, their sort of innocence, and the way Mrs Pederson held onto my hand with more time than I had. I was going to say, I hope you soon get better, she said, I hope I soon get better. The odd sensation walking into La Glace, shrunk sidewalk, out of a house I was never in, in childhood, to the garage where a Friesen [Menno] rebuked me for talking like a man, the strain of pretending it real, entering it as if a ghost and still having to speak where I have nothing to say, M's transfix telling the story of her day in class, eyes held wide above her glasses, the tension of it. And the difficulty of M with Bernice, "Artists are a law unto themselves," and at the last, looking at the pictures, it blew, I said of the one they said they liked, "She's a cow, she's fat and stupid," and he at my left said "That's how girls should be at that age." A moment holding blind still in it, recognizing it, and the way without decision I was turning on him regardless, "What kind of sexist remark is that?" He misunderstood. "You said it, I didn't." "You wouldn't say that about a boy. Nobody should be fat and stupid," regardless of the fat stupid persons there. 15 This morning pent, holding last night, too wild to work, onto the road, fast, Moodie and his easy way, Bezanson. And the letter, coffee because I want it, saying I'll learn to use it (later sore and dry tongue), it let out a crying and then I sat raving to her most of the day and went into Hegel because she sent me, and there was guilty of irrelevance although it was an exercise - now it isn't to outwit existence - maybe to meet some of it - rereading her letter trying to false it and there are parts of it that are real, I believe. After feeble yoga thinking in the dark of the headshot section, before and after. Neighbours. Wind. Wrote T asking about identity. Helpless, speaking to her knowing myself stupid, but it's how I feel stupid with her and always will, that I have to eventually somehow resolve. [2006] - [from a letter to Jam - don't know whether it's here] Friday Full of wildness and desperation, got onto the road, in the wind, and at the post office put my key into the little door raging. Found the yellow envelope, saved it 'til I got home. When I read your pages I cried pounded the wall and had the inner screaming that goes with the sense of being exiled with such ugly people here because I'm bred and taught in that ugliness and therefore can't make it with the ones I love. I wash the floor in cold water now. Here, I've succeeded in making the world solid again, it hardly ever leaves me hung out over nothing and terrified of lost soul. Don't remember my dreams and am not frightened by omens, even the drowned mouse in the water bucket. I'm not permeable and thinking my friends' thoughts nor floundering in religion looking for the right path (not often) nor forgetting things. But I'm looking for oblivion in garbage reading, the old way, and disliking myself. If it goes on I'll get fat. The letters I've written and not mailed are in the breadbin. Sometimes I feel an establishing faith - I've never believed in faith but now it seems there's no alternative, I have to believe this life. - [Hegel 1807 Phenomenology of Mind] Philosophy is about experience as such. Contradictory descriptions are not really contradictions, but moments of a development. The beginning of the struggle to get out of the immediate experience has to be made by general ideas, which are supported or not by a sense of what they refer to. This is overtaken again by the experience of life in detail, and the general ideas used to penetrate it. Truth only exists in ideas, our consciousness isn't in security of immediate sense of reality, it has lost concreteness and knows it's lost. What it wants from philosophy is concreteness back. Frivolity and boredom say something new is coming. The newness has begun but only as a direction in a few individuals, it isn't worked out in detail. Understanding is thinking, activity of experience in general. Everything depends on expressing the truth not as substance but as subject as well. It is the process of its own becoming the suffering and labour of the negative the process The truth is the whole. 16 Went early into Jung, wrote intensely, version of Golden Flower - ate intensely all day, but coffee and energy - and in the afternoon The cloud of unknowing - I'm not near to myself. Night, the brown sky and the moon thrilling pulling out but I wasn't free for it. Dreamed - having to pee, the door I chose took me onto a ledge, men and even policemen down below could have seen me, I peed close to the wall, nearly falling off (balcony), the other door had enclosed toilet with a gutter leading onto the roof - having long beautiful sleek hair again - with Luke somewhere. Touched the sore breasts, I'm haunted by what's wrong with them, I can sometimes put heat into where I touch. Washed and sat in front of the fire, with my back to the draught, 'meditating' mantram but really letting it run, all the characters J T C R him and her. The light-off washing is my lovely ritual, every day the contact with fire, all day. Cutting the vegetables, putting them in the black pot, letting it turn into stew. - Cultivate the ability to resist the glamour! The wind blows where it leans. So is everyone born as a spirit. The gods blow through me and I'm here alone. - [From The secret of the golden flower] p'o - white demon - enters at conception hun - cloud demon - at birth, with the light world Whatever it is that is prior to experience, we call Tao. It is like light, inherent in seeing. Tao is like air: it is the element of experience. Air: our element, as fish's is water. Teachers say to hold onto air, circulate the light and stay in the centre. The work of circulation depends on reversing the flow of thought. In the place of thought is emptiness and life. Light is what lives there, if you circulate it the energies of the whole body will pass through, each doing its work. The light is easy to move but hard to fix. If it is made to circulate long enough, it crystallizes and that makes the natural spirit body. Heaven is the place where physical life is born as creative. Collecting thoughts even longer develops another spirit body. The method for changing consciousness is very fluid and needs extreme clarity to know how to apply it, and complete absorption and quietness to hold fast to it. If the thoughts are quiet the source can be seen, that is human nature and life. Having seen it, one doesn't hang around in the opposites. The primal spirit wakes in the forehead but the conscious spirit lives in the chest, is emotional. The way has three magics: sexuality (water), thought (fire), intuition (earth). 100 days concentrated for concentrated work April May June removed from human interference clean conscience coincidence with high energy in the year right livelihood Thought works, intuition is what it works with, and eros is what it bases itself on. The body is not only what you see. It is also the p'o, which is the substance of consciousness. As long as it isn't interrupted it continues in generation. But besides this there's the hun, which in daylight is in the eyes and at night is in dreams. Dreams are the wanderings of the spirit, through all the realms human can visit. Whoever is in a dark and withdrawn mood on waking is held by the p'o. Therefore the hun is concentrated by circulating the light and in this way p'o consciousness cut off. The circulation of the light is the way of reducing the dark and mastering the p'o, by this means one returns to the Creative. If during life the primal spirit was used by the conscious spirit for power and other sins, it is turbid at death and becomes a demon. To maintain the lightness of the primal spirit one must subdue the emotional consciousness. The spirit must be allowed to dive down into the abdomen and crystallize. When one begins to apply this magic it is as if in the middle of being there were non-being. When in the course of time the work is completed, it is as if in the middle of non-being there is being. Only after concentrated work of 100 days. [many pages more] [from The cloud of unknowing] You must do whatever will help you forget everything but what you call god. Forces will simplify your work; other forces will work against it. Other humans will be helped by your work in ways you don't know. If you feel a strong desire to do it, the work is easy. At first you find only obscurity, you don't understand and you don't love, so be prepared to stay hungry in darkness for as long as must be. Time covaries with will, which is the worker of you. This is the work human was made for and all things were made to help in this work. Failing to do it leads deeper into error and further from love. It is best to aim for the naked being of the source, to praise and love it without attribute. You are to try to pierce that darkness with longing love, and not retreat no matter what happens. It is because love may reach the source, but not knowledge. Our body tends to put fantasy into our understanding of things. What will clear it is a strong and profound sorrow. One way or another you should always be working. The work needs a great calmness, an integrated and clean disposition, so take care of yourself. The sounds and sweetnesses that come through the windows of the senses, if you are astonished by them in the early stages - for they are quite out of the ordinary - it will be a benefit for you. Hold your heart firmly and verify. Who does this work right becomes attractive to everyone, has a correct judgment, is in harmony with all, wise and useful in speech. Those who censure others too soon, and are obsessed with their errors, have only one nostril. There are many who come this far forward, into the pain of wrong being accumulated, who because the pain they feel is so great, and because they miss their pleasures, let their attention return to physical things. Whoever continues eventually feels some pleasure and expects some success because he sees many errors corrected. He continues to feel pain but it becomes less. If you think that nothing else you do satisfies your conscience unless this secret little love pressing on the cloud of unknowing is present, then you are called. [and many more pages] 17 This morning the Taw- until it got sophistical, this morning, raring, dragged the bed upstairs thinking of J in it, dancing to the Beatles, played first songs on the fiddle, worked the religious instructions again, sense of less backlog and some need to get back to it, urgent call from J, so I go when the fire is down, to Wells' kitchen, and she's stunned from her car being both scraped and then stolen, a heavy omen for her, its little parts, and since speaking to T "two or three nights ago" 'til 4 AM. Today I'd argued with T, accused her of cheap tricks for power, J saying the sense of "her Ellie", "how unrequited her love for you is" so she's feeling she's a second best, "you see I'm not without wits with your friends." 18 Morning end of a sequence, the last wood setting the order for leaving, cold, wondering about the letter and set out, heavy bags, think I'm oldtime, sweat and cold wind, hard, past Flatens' change arms and keep on, the truck, at last a pickup, between truck and pickup held up my thumb, nods, letter isn't there and keep going. Sit on bag at mile sign, cold, the pickup that stops and a fine man, complete, fascinating, between us an incomplete one, being someone, easily, warm to Grande Prairie and left on Richmond Avenue. The easily made nerve and distance from Joyce's trouble, a high hand. [I stay overnight with my mother's friend Heide Holst and her husband on the way back to Vancouver to see Jam.] And then another sort of time, he makes it, pulling his eyes forward and down, the white over the pupil, looking reading - slowly setting down the reservations - as if speech counts - he's inside - making it so interesting - she's cooking - it's strenuous, I'm watching to see if it's competitive, why doesn't she talk more - he asks, when I ask about possession - Perelandra and when I wash dishes he interrupts Heide and I stop him - he goes into a spin - I don't understand his intensity - am silent and wait for it to mature, it's fine - go to the bathroom and look at myself - come back and say What happened? "What happened? Okay what happened." Goes on to the story, "My mother wore the pants." Struggling, I have to be silent because I believe he needs it actually. Listening intently to his quality - "This human creature " pointing thumb over his shoulder - "... is my slave" - and finger to his head, shaking it, "... and I'm the slave of a guy called Jesus Christ. One derelict, one bum met another bum. In you you have something that wants to destroy that order, that will kill you. And he told me to tell you he's put that in men's hearts everywhere." "I found it in women's hearts too." "Yuh," nods. (I was thinking of Sarah.) "I'm a man crucified." She comes and holds him from the back. He's gone silent into himself. "He's let me up," looks up, smiling, darts, "it's over, it's gone," and plays with the cat. "This human creature," pointing thumb, "that's a beast, and a beast is a mystery."     part 3 up north volume 1: 1978-1979 june-january work & days: a lifetime journal project