up north 2 part 4 - 1979 july-august

work & days: a lifetime journal project

[alternative unedited version] 5 July, the Lake House In the night squatting over a basin in the next room. At first it was shit and then it poured out. Then sleeping better and not getting up.   In Hythe it's hot. Laundry. Pharmacist with red lipstick. OMNI magazine, one for her and one for me. She slept and I lay in the sun next to the car reading it front to back.   The color of the orange poppies, and the rows behind them. Lettuce draws my eyes. Brushing her hair. I liked to do it and get her to take her glasses off.   Young men show up drunk in a car. "I guess I'm lost." They were local, I knew. I was turning myself into a shield on the path.   Fire and stones, iron, crockery, Ezra, food.   Reading about earthshadow by lantern light while she sat looking at lightning.   6   At 6 it's time to go to work but then clunk, dead battery. Then not feeling right. She paints slowly. White. I'm upstairs drinking coffee.   It's as if summer's peaked.   Excited, not intelligent, looking through the lens at grass points, gnats.   She gets stuck on the track and we break willow branches to stuff the ruts. Go to M and Ed's, I remember it's their anniversary. Liking Michael who offered a riot. Mary's topknot. "Your mother's a funny lady." Ed waited for openings to heavily speak. Judy walking as if watched. Jam's white shirt and first fart.   They brought pizza and a cake, we olives and cashews. Everybody's heavy. Akasha's bee-sting and treat day. He walks whistling hands in pockets across the yard.   This morning in Camelot. At breakfast she worked, I told about White in his marshes.   7   Back to working with notes. Too many crossings, want to be alone. Turning the car around and starting it. Morning pressures, thought moon. Wanting deep attention. Our speech bad, held myself away from it.   In the grass field found yarrow. Hung it in the corridor.   A young squirrel on the gate spuce who looked with penetrating curiosity, a child. A mother squirrel with teats.   When we visited, local people used to walk us to the car. Judy did yesterday. 8 Stares and not speaking, or stiff. Hate.   Judy and Michael bring the canoe. I catch Michael with a false smile that startles me. Try to find things to give instead of heart. Lemonade, books, salad. Akasha easiest. Michael likes to direct. Our wills battle tentatively.   She tempts me with wine.   Through the screen, flies, a swarm evening. Is this their full moon.   "I've been saying things about you you don't want to hear."   9   In the morning she comes up to hug me.   The parcel is only catalogs.   Pound liked the film Perry.   Morning and Pilgrim's Progress. It doesn't take him long.   Foot on the table for the sun to warm it.   In the afternoon she writes still, and I am painting the kitchen white with a brush, thinking of Andy and Janine, C and T and R. Brushing brings mild circulation of friends. Woke from being pregnant, there were babies wanting to come into the world. More of a train we were going on together. Elevators looking for the old apartment. Go back to Vancouver to have a baby.   Ugly language still.   And back to the tree planters.   10   On the road to the swamp it's easy talking to Liz. But at the last lurching through water sliding into holes - oh.   Woodcock and nest. Current bushes. Hanging about listening to Dirk and Joyce and baby Baba.   A strong smelling herb. Water. Stretch of swamp. Fallen logs under grass.   Raining, walking back a slog, falling into the water, the stick leg making it hard and ugly. Their sympathy as they swiftly passed made me grimace and then rage. Squashed crying in my throat because I can't balance.   Bed early in the tent.   11   Morning's planting Liz and Suzanne looking after me.   Breaking camp. The muddy path. Cookshack structure comes down, the high clear hall.   Suzanne said this amazing lady. I said thank you for the sight of you.   Dirk in white clothes holding the baby, thin hug with one arm.   Menlo was always there and played a hand game.   A convoy through deep mud. "Thank you 4-wheel Jeff." Bowed and shone. NASA Skylab orange hardhat.   Home easy, on the last strech beep the horn, I'm home high, fast talking. Get my feet into hot water.   A shocked person. "Did you get the love I sent you yesterday?" 12 Morning lying with heads along parts of each other's body talking. By evening she's angry about Menlo and her unsafety. At night tells me to leave.   Daytime she works downstairs. I'm in my room.   At the Seven Lakes Motel sitting with Liz, Brian, Yoann, Peggy and her. Animated technical talk. She moves her chair back. I say something to say she's my ---. We imagine both planting. Suzanne's kiss.   Supper chicken wings, spinach noodles. Happy skillful cooking. 13 Rain. To town. Radio. Long hills, pushing the car straining from the knee, careful. Yellow fields, oil derricks, traffic spraying onto the windshield.   Genique and Yoann at Sandy's, Genique's small jewelry business and faded green shirt, Yoann's witch eyes when she talked about images in her energy healing.   Luke's $518 ticket sent out and not knowing, but I think -   The ditches on La Glace road, clover sequence. Shining white sky, plants, field and old wood granary.   Maria's beautiful old mother said "I'd gladly meet you again also."   Meddachs'bloum.   Playing with Akash from tree planter freedom. 14 Auction sale. Buy a long table. Akasha between us in the car. Ezra's heart cry of loneliness. 15 Morning early. Mist. Walking past trees. Plants showing single in ditches, the road round ahead. Red light from the full red sun on red mud tracks. Gather bluebells and strawberries on stems.   Offer and am refused. Upstairs sleeping, eating.   Judy and Michael bring Tony Tiller. We eat at the park. Judy tells stories in ease.   Akash's white head without lips.   Chicken soup. In the evening we talk about far form depth, money, and work and going to bed images. Two running zebras striped like tigers. Then see the sunset in a bubble in blue coffee pot lid and watch colors come up from the sides, turn, form a peacock's tail, run circularly and abruptly pop.   -   Bubble in the coffee pot lid a thin film sphere reflector. On the rim spruce trees dark points into a colored sky, on the lower edge the house a black block and points too. All there in the circumference, my head nearly the size of the house. She passes toward the fire in the sphere, small whole body shape moves around the edge. A first clear color begins to form. More swings up from the horizon oscillating. Turning, it elaborates in blue, green, gold, foliate, feathered, making itself. Colors flowing in spots up from certain areas of the rim toward the clearing. I see all of it can abruptly shift, an arm can form, stop, partly unwind. An arm can reach from the side abruptly across. Red, orange, yellow streaming up from behind the trees. It moves fast and abruptly is gone, pop. Try again once. It sets itself into fast rotation. Looking doesn't grasp it, can't remember which way it revolved. The last time it was black and white. Invite her to try. It won't form, or for me again. Next morning "Models shouldn't be elaborated," decisively.   Mary, face and body slidden. Animated. Heavy dark strong vibration. The beauty of her rhubarb pies. She was holding against her irritation with Akasha, 'patient.'   And he aquiline and a light in the green eye, greasy clothes on a frame hung over the table reading the paper. Conscience heard him listen to my babble with Akasha, envious and contemptuous.   Disinterested. Don't have a light for them.   16   In the morning see the moon at waning half. Mosquitos hungry in the evening.   Breakfast talk about how she doesn't know the fright though she seems to know the depth. Sandy said "woman's depth." Living in this century seems to be a convention. Watching to see if she'll stick with it. Without shirt, black pants, I look at her neck and shoulders, touch her breast simmering toward but she wants to know how it was.   The garden is the pull for love, do I feed it its extraordinary life.   How she looked on one foot, one heel, in Chinese pants in front of the outside stove.   Squirrels.   Lay in the meadow nearly alone, bare back.   Talk of winter. Argue whether to kill mice, and about wasting food.   Lamplight.   The Hopi, Mahayana.   17   Angry but said. Elf face, she too. Pancakes. Talking about Shiela [Watson] and Robin [Blaser] Picture. Voluptuous. Meister Eckhart. Went down to be kissed and upstairs to dream. It's so dicey with you, making jokes but not right.   Heat.   Hythe in the evening, walked some alleys. Seven Lakes Motel macaroni salad. Excited telling about Penelope. Pleasant to drive with a pearl smoke east. Scent of yellow fields.   Met Rudy at a crossroads. Back country. 'Enclosed.' Brown brome slope. Her childhood friend's enclosed garden. I said about the beautiful old woman, she encouraged. "Harbinsche ek'."   Sourrump [Low German for sorrel].   I was her courtier. She came in with her hair down.   The two basket people and their laughing baby.   High road pink in the north to the right of the usual. Mosquitoes bit a lot as I washed.   At night she's voracious and I'm out of it wondering how to stop it. Fright of dark/vampire/Satan and reviewing the evening.   The neighbour taking out his thing, then T and C remark about balance, and then I have to tell because my absence scared her, and we had the missing part but not calamity as feared. 18 Brief long days, hot. Wanting to move in the evening, unable, cars. Impatient with adaption talk in the morning. Thinness.   She slept in the next room.   Looking at the forms of that person, Compact like her father young.   Johnny Tofteland breaking a grass stem.   Awake at night, cool. She goes through the garden and grass with the lantern. I watch with and through the camera. Shadows, her brown pant legs, a violent sweep through the porch rails. Moves and stops, sets it here and there. A good program, timing of smart looking.   I go into the field to shit. See light upstairs in a blue room, downstairs in the white red and black porch. Stars. 19 Tuesday 9 am Johnny and the booster cable. Tea, he sits on the porch.   To Valhalla for gas. Hot. We go to Ronnie Anderson's for a compression test. Then we come home and get ready to travel. Lemonade, boiled eggs.   The ditch, camera, slough. Clovers. In the meadow brome and flowers, bright.   Hazel's house on rollers, she in a straw hat.   Thinking through the lens or just being surprised. At the dugout strawberries, tadpoles, the wallpaper water. She knows I'm odd about the house. The muffler falls off. Going to borrow tools. It's easy for Walter who's near naked.   Squatting to speak to Ronnie Anderson.   Then the stove comes and I'm caught with the stovepipe. We sit on the porch and she tracks me to three confessions. Getting away with the goods, a spite against. "Do you want me to tell you what's the most horrible part of these stories."   Then clean the house. 20 Don't want to talk, away. Dreaming of travel, reading, IDLE.   Dream of a telegram about Luke. Among acrobats, pretty body of three piled with a ball. She knew there was a dream and said she felt hers broken and pulled toward me.   Heat and the northeast wind we noticed making fire for breakfast.   Lying reading Exupéry. The moment he watched his heart to see if it would stop.   Longing toward big life, refusing the materials of this one.   She couldn't calculate the steps to wash her hair.   Escaping in the car. A wedding went through Valhalla, stopping at two houses, women dressed up buying presents.   At Mary's she's busy, in a ponytail, Akasha's a gnat, I sit in the living room reading magazines remembering last year's hut and naked life, the roof hole and flowing cloud.   Film haunting.   Lightning.   21   After one glass of wine she says the electricity is gone from not living near enough the edge. I'm hurt and she follows the plow but I know it doesn't stay connected. Estranged: the wind has turned around and blew all day.   Morning from the dream of staying on the repossessed old farm with them and helping them make it lovely, from my gifts. In Hythe the young man cutting a stovepipe.   We talked about money.   Afternoon struggled with pipes. More idling though wanting to work.   Story of Sonia and Rhoda.   Walking through the fields at sunset, shadows on the field, the Chinese blue and green of oats in bouquets in rows. Cracked ground.   She said she's old.   "We want to take root and we aren't taking root," I'm getting more negligible all the time. 22 Sundays they had congee and other. Scuffling. "Are you in the middle of something?." Laugh, she was addressing the postcard. Then I was injured and shouted, then we went, then we came back. I sat upstairs. Then we went then we came back (about Dianna) for hammers and saw, then the camp and trailer and two trucks with young men strangers helped. We crept home with time to look at more and more ditches. Then we cooked then were exhausted and she had fun with postcards and I was lonely and then we were exhausted and now it's night. I threw beans on her floor she pushed me into nettles and by then I'd agreed to let her send what she liked.   Then she came up to see someone she knew, and didn't, came when I was saying no, head north and buzzing. She looked wet.   23   I dreamed the maid with embossed flowers on her arm. She dreamed she shouted as a bull would, Help me, twice, or she'd kill me. After she told dreams she said she smelled milk. Then we towed the car and Rudy said Roy phoned, Luke is coming on Wednesday.   We were at their place, during the Bach I looked up, a love wave, moved by the music, saw her and didn't hold it.   Went to Valhalla to phone, looking for her. They drove up. I hung around making chat with Akasha 'til supper, for supper and to be with people glad Luke is coming.   All day low cloud piles, shreds, the color bliss, road, fields, sky. Blue, that blue, white, green, yellow. Tony said two thunderstorms, Mars square with Jupiter, three deaths recent in Valhalla. We three and the dog at the crossroads, the truckdriver above us, clouds over, sky in the road. She went into the grass. It was easy to say my kid is coming. 24 [Jam and I drive to Edmonton, I in the Lark and she in her MG, I to pick up Luke at the airport and she to visit a university friend.]   Testing compression the weak sound. Raining outside his workshop. "Where are you from?" "La Glace." Well tuned amusement.   We ride together for business. Ezra to stay with Mary. "Coherent today." I liked to see her speak and how Mary listens.   In Grande Prairie the key man, "Howcome you're so handy?" Curious listening to the Huldaman speak on the phone in a normal accent about trucks. She and Joe gas intent on the MG, Joe lying back unable in the car. She was cranky. Fed, she was better, and then the car went.   Sun behind beautiful road, Persian blue and green, with and apart from the other traveler.   Night driving. Lights marking. Pure space exercise at speed. Let the truck sweep it out ahead. Her even distance behind, I'm finding the road. She drives more cautiously than I. Contemplating only left the road once. The parks on the side of the road, parkland.   Intimacy with drivers who signaled I should dim, in the faith launch of blind and minimal clue driving. A car's white light cutting into the red taillight. Dark. She pulls me off the road to love me. Fine concentration less after stopping to put on socks.   In the campground, "There are a couple of kids down there." Trees in windows. Before falling asleep a pain misgiving, I thought she was with T.   "The words I've concentrated my thoughts in, mirrors, symmetry, synonymy." Thinking in shapes. We flunked each other's thoughts. High voices. "In Hong Kong when it wasn't too hot I'd take my clipboard and ride the trams and trolleys around."   25   Early, white sky, condensation on glass. She says it's noon, I say no no it's still morning. Long waking. You're mad at me. Little high voices, lost. I roar up the highway wondering.   The botanical garden. Fright coming downhill.   Devon Road and the airport. Striding to buy an Artscanada in red shirt and blue-white pants. She was in the aisle I passed and called out what she'd rehearsed, "Did you think you could leave me with all the food." Waiting on the grass the paintings made me want to take pictures of her asleep, out of focus around her, under the fender. Soft red lip.   Waiting for 3:15 and then watching the Amsterdam flight come off and greet. Children. At first standing then finding ways to help with the doors. Little girl at peace resting hands or head on her father's big professor head. At the last wanting to join the children crowding for a glimpse through the door crack. Straight, with a cap, he looks beautiful! A shining face and the offered hand. She stepped back but had her plans (Ezra) and took pictures.   [Luke and I leave Jam to drive back up north.]   Ignition fire. The towtruck and truck manager. The man at the service station who gave him ten cents. Then the tire shreds on a bump and another service station and formal conversation, "Originally, ..." Seeing the familiar face, feel. 26 [Driving back with Luke.] 27 Waking with Luke, he gets up and goes as far as the hayfield. Morning with owls flapping away. I'm glad to see them and want to tell J. Breakfast on the porch, he sits reading comics and I give him pennies. Go upstairs to 'work' - read Heidi and a Ransome book. Heidi another orphan conquerer. Heidi, Freckles, Anne, Emily. How they're written, nature, orphan and loving heart. The Ransome is competent children with each other. What do these books keep known.   Later the sense of 'dream' is strong. "Usually in groups, he's the leader, it's interesting to see" [Judy says of Akasha, watching Luke lead]. Heard it through the back window it seemed.   Whistling for Luke it landed on the corner tree. I said, if you're the owl I know, you're welcome. Michael said in Ruanda if an owl calls near your tent or house it means someone in your house is going to die. "I don't believe that." Judy said among the Indians when an owl calls your name it means you're going to die. Then told me a vampire movie, she enfolds and takes the life out of children, then has a sexual energy. "Nous sommes pareils, Richard."   Akasha "Banana pop." I quailed for Jam. 28 Sharing breakfasts wanting to go upstairs. Luke and Akasha. Sometimes drawing upstairs, singing.   Wrote Josie easily. Banana milkshakes. The store women don't know how to take my having a son.   Easily tough and loving. In the Artscanada looking for description of how it is, Frankel.   Secularizing.   Oddness between in and out, the out is not wanting to be functionary.   Sitting near the fire he, she, I and Luke making giddy jokes after supper. 29 He came upstairs to wake me, I was awake. Around that I see the light of the room.   I broke eight eggs into the red pot, each made a bell. Luke and Akasha made the fire. Judy mixed the batter. I put on the griddle.   When I chopped kindling Luke wanted to try. That is his red plaid shirt and stance in front of the block. Said for someone else because of reading Leduc.   Akasha said "There's a little mouse there." I said "Maybe it's Holy Mouse." Judy said "It's a very small mouse." I looked and it was, I heard myself remarking about its unworldliness. I meant: I love you Holy Mouse Put my shadow over it among the stinkweed stems eating small white flowers. Then my hand, until my finger was at its head. I said "I'm touching it, it doesn't even know I'm there." Two fingers, it seemed slightly to smell them. Then laid its head on the two fingers and closed its eyes. I was in the scale of mouse looking at the short, warm and longer hairs of it, small red crabs on its fur, white, long-fingered star feet. I was enlarged talking to myself in wide fast beats, is this really happening. Michael said "Leave her alone, she's in intimate communion with her mouse." When Akasha said "Can I pick up the mouse," Michael said no before I did.   Waiting for the mouse to go away. This mouse has put itself in my protection.   When Akasha cried because Luke hit him because he'd scared away a squirrel, the mouse went under the washbasin.   Evening pink. Luke woke. We went in the car.   The owl. A lantern upstairs.   30   Luke's dream of a witch. "Mum," far away cry. Woke me from walking through a doorway, leaving the lonely dance, a good fiddler played a waltz, pregnant, looking down at my black dress, two entering overheard saying how can she be pregnant, she's never with anyone. Anguish realizing I'd have to choose, the loss either way. Then he called.   Came upstairs with cover and pillow, in the morning I touched myself slightly.   Later in the day it was intense, went downstairs for again. Hid in the north room. He and Ezra were looking for me.   The mail was a postcard of our wash stone.   Mary was expecting us, Michael's birthday. Maria and Abe. The boy I didn't like Ed doesn't either.   Supper sad.   Began reading The sword in the stone to Luke, Luke falling asleep.   Couldn't phone through. 31 A banging at the door, cheerful boy wanting to give us things. Luke's bike tire pumped. He had long excursions.   Restless reading Needham. Stupid desire. Away into building guestroom shelves and bed. Mistakes, 'incoherent' all day. Not wanting to cook. Lonely. Larry and Betty Jo arrive at different times.   Carmichael and I and J. He embraced me, said we must think about why we don't give ourselves to the one we most long for. I agreed I'd think about it. Walking arm around waist in a former way. J was there as a flame, not bright, not unhappy, head like a dark flame. I kept looking to see whether she was going to be hurt. She wasn't.   Telephoned. She tracked my voice. I was defiant, don't do your subtle ear on me, don't you make me feeble, and I will not give you the dream. Angry. "I front-ended my car, it'll be about a thousand dollars" she said.   Disliking myself this morning, what work etc. Building was right though not well made, only rapid. August 1 Slept in afternoon. Luke came up to show me boots in a catalogue. I sent him down. Made fried potatoes and lemon pudding for supper. Read the fish chapter of White on the evening porch, Larry there. When he'd gone to bed I had livening for darkness as if venturing. Wrote excited but it stops at fragments. Flow of pictures, movie, making, then wearies out.   Bright half moon.   2   Luke's sleeping later, mornings, 9:30. Pancakes.   I came upstairs. Reading Borges I thought I had a line. "It is possible but forbidden." Making intoxication, fiction. "The world is real alas, I am Borges alas." Working but break at new refutation of time. In Borges sickness of the aliens. Those who belong together, where there's no place for me. Pound and him.   It is possible but forbidden. Her given task is to sort on the line.   J's journals and volumes, professor evaluations, "the brilliant modest teacher," "wit and discernment," "justice and balance, elegance." Rank and position, "Why are you giving it up for some triviality of a house without windows?" says Anna.   Sore. Luke easily leaving for the livelier place.   3   The pain night. Physical cut in the abdomen, a vision 'ahead' into failure, losing you and the agony beyond, unreplaceable friend. Awkward, poor, family unhappiness unchangeable. Having to leave family and neighbours who'd be unbearable if no one in the world knew me. Maybe everything sacrificed to some 'work' I'm programmed to, which needs me in anguish, unattended. Burning the house, her journals, my equipment. Sitting still telling the fire. Sleepless. The pain I've held off, it's the pain that's her giving me up. And I'm hopeless, useless, bad, damned. Under it a perkiness about what freedom would give, mixed with minding her foreignness, abstraction, unwarmth.   Luke sleeping away this night. A drop. Eating roughly after starving for days. Mary's ten dollar bill. We met on the road.   Very tired, wrecked face. At their house with Akasha, Luke and shy Marilyn. Away into schoolgirl friendshiip dream, leave him. His plan to humble himself in the same way as last year.   Luke's balance, song, play, willingness, beauty. Cooked fried potatoes, reading a chapter among hawks.   The Valhalla Centre women start to want to not charge me. In the evening reading a Vancouver journal. A plan. Clean house. Hope. 4 [Luke and Ezra and I go to Hythe to meet Jam on an early bus from Edmonton]   Most of the night awake beside sleeping Luke. Early, 5:30, make fire and toast in the clean house. Drive to Hythe high, shouting songs. Downdown derry derry. At Connelly Wong's walking in empty streets across to the elevators. The bus. Stumbling, heart hurting, would she - Standing beaming. Ezra's joy. At breakfast wanting to hear the story about Sheila [Watson]. In bed telling about Luke and Larry. Luke coming to look.   La Glace fair. Judy, Michael and Akasha, Mary's long hair, lemon pie, bad conversations. Flower arrangements, looking carefully.   Larry's house and garden.   J home to sleep. In the evening reading chapters to Luke. Went to bed lying heads together darkness talking. Sheila, and then giving my grief for the loss of the kingdom, going blindly alone into it but able to trust her good understanding. Giving peacefully on a strong floor.   Luke came to join us. 5 Morning. I make muffins. All waking.   She began to be ill, in the afternoon bitter complaint that she didn't have right food. I'm dismayed she's broken the glad reunion so fast. She lies down. Luke listens carefully. I'm patient and see blissfully in strong light.   Helmer and Bridgitte, they're happy. Then at Medanery's - fart and fairy, Luke cracking up - Judy, Mary and I telling our days singing at one another. Putting on the Sachdev flute. M and E eating mushroom soup at the counter, Judy, Michael and I laughing at the table about impregnation by pollen or wind.   Go home, she's asleep.   The strong moon. Walking in it I see but she doesn't. Her look of distress, the frozen young father. How the grass swayed as high as my eyes, heavy heads on fine bodies. They were sentient. A cold wind grazing the face. Helmer's loaf. The flowers I sent with him.   6   Says she's well, can we have breakfast in bed. Try to look at the journals, already it isn't working. Threw National Geographics hard. Sorted a slide show. Then sat among flowers, she on the porch speaking very quietly.   Showing the winter slides, they can't see them or not as I do. I get angrier.   Luke and Kash cracked up by seeing Luke naked, his interest in his slides of airplane and car.   Taking him home. The Schumann A Minor private unmarrying music.   I was disappointed. She pulls me, a tall slight force. I was banking on you.   When she follows I say she doesn't imagine my child here.   I want you to do whatever will turn you on. I looked like both. She said she wasn't ready yet. When will you be. 7 Early. Nervous, excited, wake up, make a big fire, a journey. Tea. Are you still unfriendly. Sitting in sunrise reading notes realizing maybe I'm frozen by a wrong over-awe. Bring down snakes. An embrace that fit warm in whole body, "You know what I mean," beaming that she likes it.   Luke's fast waking. Hythe: laundry, bank, post office. It's brilliant. La Glace credit union and the red truck.   Driving fast, you in the middle. The dirt pile beautiful black. She said stones on a field because it makes it a field, like a sky. I said cross section.   Luke the fine young lad going into the fair with ten dollars in his pocket. "You have a fine son," she says under a tree in a Grande Prairie park. Bus depot. She gets cross again, something about the tarot. How Ezra went right up, into the bus with her picked her seat, lay down under it.   Driving. Then all the places, Laundromat, supermarket, library.   Sexsmith café supper. The dream snake.   8   Luke ill. Reading a novel, Song of Solomon. Luke naked on the porch.   Slept next to him, his sleeping outbreaks of panic, listening to his breathing remembering Doctor Barber in the room at Burghley Road.   He watches wasps coming to a nest above the door.   9   Still sick. In the morning the fright of waking to his crying.   Falling asleep, the mention of the Han Dynasty gave me a sensation, a fragment of somewhere.   He's asleep, confused. "What about the man?" he says. He means he has to pee.   Squirrels come into his room through the net curtain.   Evening happiness, lamplight, flowers, paintings, blue and orange, stove, Luke safe, Chinese music from his room. Lying with him feeling myself slightly ignited, imagining the intensity of J with T and the loss and what it would reopen after. He's listening to the music carefully. 10 To Hythe to the doctor. In the evening reading Writing and différence. Excited.   11   Bright face, "I'm all better." Waking in sun.   At Epp's Ed the uncomfortable stranger as audience. Judy's animal face. Clown inventions. His dark malice "Has she gone back to Edmonton? Good, contributing."   Before we went there, the last two chapters on the porch. I wanted him there knowing Wart would be king. When he was in the courtyard, "Come along, my dear embryo, and find your tool," tears. Pushing the reading.   Rudy's Penthouse. Marveling at the stories of dope letting them do what they want and what does it mean.   Michael building, Judy intoxicated, dressed up, asking me to think of their bums.   Asking Mary about the slides, she said what a self contained place, shuts everyone out.   This evening coming home the pink into blue, dusk dark, different dark twilight, the stand of red/pink poppies.   -   If I ask to feel it more, a shallow red-brown room with suspended light particles. Luke isn't unsure of himself. He's an aluminum or silver helmet. Displaced, is he hysterical from feeling his displacement. Early ordinariness, school, loneliness, contempt, invention, alternation, steady like Luke's. Then starting to be extraordinary and delighted at identity, will, finding out how to think of myself as a story, happiness to be a story, working on strangers to make them episodes. Losing it to Olivia, did that make ordinariness again. Growing the last year's competence after it. Roy to turn everything, conscience, making refusal of romantic, academic. Luke and growing imagination. Tony bringing intelligence with the tactile. Film. Politics getting me to them and then done, they to turn everything. And then this slow return. Being particular. That there seem to be references to constructions I don't want to believe, participate in. When they're there philosophy doesn't come. Opening books, refusing, there's no time for this community (Hegel, Husserl). Richardson's Miriam, allow a few ancestors some life. Playing with Akasha and Luke sensing that I can do it by imposing my mood, without knowing 'them', knowing into them. Ed's passing nastiness was personal like nothing else today, Judy's gift to say we're each other's, Akasha's silver head hysterical, Luke's brown happy calm. When I jump Mary with a preoccupation, the slides, "I always feel when I show them ...." Interpreting what she was able to say, "I thought of them often during the week. You could use them to set a mood," "as if they have nothing like that in them." Realizing she almost had it and then giving her the direction, satisfied about them for the first time, thinking of Cheryl saying serene. 'In essence' with Luke and Akasha playing at pouring Koolaid, the wait, our ears had measured equal amounts, for the last twig to fall out of the pitcher, an exact match. Three laugh.   part 5 up north volume 2: 1979 february-october work & days: a lifetime journal project