Work and Days: The Golden West vol 16

the golden west volume 16 part 3 - 1999 february work & days: a lifetime journal project

2 February

Reading Island, which I read somewhere in college. When was it written, 1962. "All the yogas of increased awareness" - he was there to support what I knew.

Hello he didn't say how to grow slowly
Is that what I should say YES
How to grow slowly is by working with you YES

I should consider what I would do if I had time YES
Gibson applied to magno YES
Is going to give it to me YES
Is there focal magno

-

Luke wrote an email that was signed, "your Luke." I felt him, reading it - that ache of love so much my own - I felt him as a space, a quality of space - wide and warm - something like a tint of clear warm brown - his grace of writing - a tempo in his thoughtfulness.

Tom Russell coming out from under my car in the dark. Fine hands up to the wrist in grease. He's one of those light fine boy bodies hollow in the belly, thinking in a Texas accent, speedy, transparent, unconsidered. Touching the car was making him himself in many times, and he was telling them as he speeded through diagnostic logic.

4

If I had time to do this right, what would I do?

How to think the what/where distinction. Gibson's description of vision. Connectionist description of matrices for action and vision. Auditory where and what. Kinds of retinal receptor fields. Evolution of vision, relation to other parts. Temporal vs parietal; the corner between them and how space connections could be used for language. And maybe at the end the Kantian stories as suggestions.

5

Is the moral of the Tom Russell story that I should use my own judgment about the car
And never Tom's
Has he done any lasting damage to it no
Was it a mistake to have Eliz come and get me YES
Will you tell me why it makes you seem less competent
I should seem more competent than I am at her stage of liberation illusion is required
I'm dubious it's a question of supporting your true judgment
What is true in my judgment YES
I should maintain authority

Was I wrong to speak to Tom Russell the way I did YES
So I made two major mistakes yesterday YES
Because my level of alertness is not high enough YES
Will you tell me why my level of alertness is not high enough because of anguish
An anguish I'm feeling YES
And not dealing with
An anguish I'm used to YES
The answer to that is something like meditation no, childhood
Is there more you want to say about that about childhood - you need to recover it by art
Do you mean I should write about it YES
About the anguish

8

Hello losses
I do compare him unfavorably
I do argue with everything
I do try to improve him
Please say more fight
Will you say more about the fight the structure by which I control my mother's betrayal

Is it just one structure
I control feeling it YES
By controlling other people YES
Is that the core of what you mean no
Another sentence you use a male device
Browbeating YES
It's a shielded stance YES
Like a little bully YES
Tom used to get through it
By betraying me no by threatening to

Is that shielded stance the core of what you mean YES
Then when there are people I admire I don't have a defense YES
Is there a correct defense wealth
Do you mean the kind of wealth Louie has YES
Wealth of response and inner life YES
I'm with Tom because I don't have enough of that to be with a better person YES
And the reason I don't have it is because of that defense YES

Well, alright, I admit it feel it
'I'm bad but I am what I am' - it's a dull feeling
Is that the defense YES
It's a rind YES
Can you tell me what I'd be feeling if I weren't controlling anger, heartbreak, your mother, sharing
Is this a list YES
I'd feel those things in relation to my mother YES

Right now? no
Those are the things that are missing from my wealth YES
'If they are missing, they're missing, I'll have to get along without them" - that's it YES
It's hopeless passivity YES
And then I fight against that feeling YES
By aggression
That's the feeling that makes me feel ugly YES
Like a solid little dwarf no
Like a compacted child
A child who doesn't have much flaminess left YES

What was I like before that secure
Those delightful spurts of naughtiness YES
That's the best of what happens with Tom these days YES

Do you want to say any more partial loss, reserve, subtlety, giftedness
That's what I've partially lost YES
And I feel it YES
As a core of disappointment and resignation
I felt that in relation to Trudy YES
In acid it was gone YES
But the core of disappointment and resignation IS the loss no

I've named the loss
I've named the disappointment
I've named the defense
And they'll go on as before YES
Do you want to say anything about that you sound angry
Yes I'm angry YES

Okay anguish
Something about it child's
Angry at myself for being less YES
Was released in dope YES
And that's what I browbeat with YES
Okay what's next early love
Will you explain writing, money, brilliance and courage, missing
That's where those things are YES

Have they made the decision about the SSHRC no
Will I get one no
And then I'll have to go back to Vancouver
With the doc not finished YES
I'll have to leave Tom
And get some sort of job
Heart hurts losses
I am going to lose Tom for economic reasons
Please help me decision
What decision to make money

Now I'm all in disarray
This is the fear I had to deal with
Who will look after me
It was economic fear
Which I have needed to feel again and again
And it's connected with loss of love
And so the armour also makes me forget my economic circumstance
A heart of fear and pain
Which is being controlled by browbeating YES

Will you lead me the child
Talk to her
Oh my little one, I'm going to look after you
Her anxiety has kept me from dealing with money
Next step pour it into the other side
With breath

-

Monday in the shabby living room of the young [the Gas Haus]. It's evening of one of the many, many days. Where I've been today - in anguish of worry that I don't have the postdoc and so there'll be no money after April. Shouldn't have dipped into The English patient, a corrupt romance - I believe - very impressive, very beautifully lit, researched where only the best would know to look, but as if sniffing death to try to feel alive. Making a syrup by boiling together the essences of powerful names: parrot, Heroditus, cypress, brown skin, lightning, turban, bonfire, painting, injection, candlelight, tent, cave.

9

What am I imprinted with. Tom and Lorrie. Why. Because it's sexy and I'm not getting any. There's Tom buttoned into a white shirt tight to the skin at neck and wrists, new black dress pants on the bottom half, keeping his balls locked up in a tight-waisted sack, even when he's sleeping next to me. He's afraid that if the tomcat comes out of the bag he'll lose control and it will be all over - everything safe he's got, safe beautiful room, everyone's approval, a woman who doesn't lie cheat or steal, salary every two weeks with enough over to feel his wallet full, good conscience, freedom at last from anguish of shame. Good health, good clothes, good years ahead. Lost so easily, lost in a minute. So he's keeping his wildness where it will do no harm - in Clinton's trial, 60s nostalgia.

I said this morning, truth is always wild enough.

Only the disciplined can afford to be wild. Like Louie who trusts herself and has means to get her balance back. This has been my paradox, oh my. And Rob who has secure control of his will. It's the woman with the red lion.

13

Drive shaft and U-joints. Tom paid.

STD clinic on Rosecrans. We don't have AIDS, syphilis, gonorrhea, or clamydia.

In a booth in a road restaurant, sitting next to me in his work clothes, white shirt and dress pants, Tom said, Since we have a clean bill of health we could - I thought he was going to say, have a poke - get married, want to? Ask me in a year, I said. He did that well, his voice when he said, want to? was young. Light. I did that well, too. I didn't miss a beat.

And then I found I was turned on in the way I've missed. Flow in the skin.

14

Manzanitas were flowering. We drove Mesa Grande Road.

I'm quite silenced. Now it is not so much pain as dislike. I am still saying 'you' as if I can persuade. You will say you are sorry but I believe you are sorry to feel you could lose me, and not because you like me but because you are afraid of what you feel when women leave you. It was a spew of contempt - what you said about the way I need to do more than just drive through. Let's stop somewhere for half an hour and have a nap, I said lighthearted as if I could be myself. I wanted to be there, touch a hot stone, hear a rustle, sit there until I could feel it. Then you drove in a seethe of rage that the wonderful thing you were giving me wasn't making you my hero. I was not complying. You kept telling me where to look. Look over to the left, it's panoramic. I was looking at the manzanitas on my side.

You're angry I dragged you through the VD tests. And it was true I was out to get you for the way you have kept infecting me by not paying attention to where your fingers go. The way you've gone on doing that after explanations and reminders means it has been either spite or incompetence amounting to brain damage. Either way. But worse is that you lied about having had an AIDS test. You were willing to kill me to avoid having to go through a needle in the arm and two weeks of stress.

You're not a good man. You've tried to be good so you can have a good woman, but the good Tom is conventional, obedient, timid, sexless, tasteless and stunningly right-thinking. The bad Tom can speak a line of prose with zing, but he's arrogant, violent, racist, tyrannical, spoilt rotten, and needs me completely under his control. When he makes a plan I must have none of my own. When he drives I must be happy. As to fucking, it is his way or no way. He has been too spoilt to learn competence. And then he is so afraid to feel his incompetence he cannot bear to be taken off his habitual trail. There are a hundred taboos, things we can't do, things we can't think about, things I mustn't say, ways I mustn't look at him or touch him. I must be happy with him but I must not do what will make me so.

As always you are locked in homo-aggression with some shadow man at work. It's where your passion is. How many of them have there been since I've known you. Joe. The guy at Northwest Industries. Now Jorge.

As for sex, you are the high school jock who's let himself get sucked off by girls he despises and so has never grown up to learn to touch a woman.

What am I doing with this spoilt boy and his zombie right-think puppet. What have I done to deserve him. I know the answer. I tried to save my dad so I'd be safe to love him, so I could be the love I am, so I could be safe to be the unsafe and crooked love I am. What follows now I do not know.

15

I feel the stern angel pronouncing in me. What it is saying is true but the impulse is wrong.

So it's time to let him go NO
Will you explain it's about to get better
He is bringing his demons to be accepted
Is there something wrong with the way I want to be in touch with the land
What it's a place where you don't have to come through
I use it the way he uses music YES

I wasn't ready for this latest fit
I was right to call for confession
But then I couldn't handle it

It's a place where my spirit opens up
That happens for him at rock concerts
Because it's a place where his demon is safe
And it's [the country] a place where my devotion is safe
His demon is what's excluded
And my devotion is what's excluded
It makes sense that we want each other to come to these places
He does not want to come to devotion with me no
He does not want me to go there without him
When I was kissing him I was there
The female heart is devotion no, you are

His demon is basically male energy
Warrior rage
My demon is devotion no it isn't a demon
What is the difference a demon has to depart
Do you have a name for what devotion is a fool
What does a fool have to do understand her father
I suppressed devotion but kept it intact
So that moment of kissing him was not a high moment no, it was because it was true
My devotion did not grow up
Because I suppressed it
So being with Tom has been my only hope
And is devotion growing up? YES
And am I understanding my father no
What's to understand his struggle
Against the demon
Who was strong in him no, weakness

Is there anything you want to say about this NO
For now I'm going on with Tom
Is there anything I can do to expedite the work grow slowly by working with the fool's judgment
For that I have to allow myself to be devotion YES
Where? where you find it
But I suppress it no, it's there

Is that enough for now no - it will be slow
Should I give up completely on helping him
Should I tell him I don't think he can make it
Should I tell him I have to attend to my own business
Doesn't this amount to saying it's over
But you said it wasn't time to let him go YES
You said it was about to get better YES
Is this a contradiction NO
It's over but it isn't time to let him go YES
Will you explain no
It's time to see that he is gone YES
He is gone
Gone in the sense that he's not with me
He's in the battle with Jorge no, he's nowhere

You're saying it's hopeless and about to get better YES
Will you tell me what I'm missing here responsibility
I'm being irresponsible no, he is
He has said goodbye to me YES
By making a decision not to grow YES
I do think that YES
The decision isn't mine
So it's over by his decision no

I do need to know whether Tom and I are going on together or not YES
Can you give me a clear answer no
Why not because the fight isn't over
We both have to say what we have to say and then we'll see
Okay

The devil is animal masculinity. Some not all men through no fault of their own are chemical bezerkers. Those men are sentenced to a lifetime of struggling not to be themselves. My father was a man like that. There were many evils he wanted to commit and didn't. He was a very bad man who succeeded in being much less bad than he was. He wants that acknowledged. I'm seeing that the nonsense of the religion I grew up with had not much to do with me but very much to do with helping bad men contain themselves. That's why there is a crucified man in it. In Kosovo the warrior men have jumped down off their crosses.

Tom has been saying I don't give him credit for restraining his beast. Then I'm thinking, jeez - thank you for not beating me, killing Jorge, getting fourteen-year-olds pregnant, shooting Mexicans, dealing drugs. I'm impressed.

And then for him it's as if he's struggled for nothing. Because I don't believe in the badness he is I jeer at his achievement. It means I don't see him. To see him I would have to see that he is a bad man trying to be fit to be loved. - Depends what you mean, it says: a warrior man who is not licensing his badness.

I haven't believed in the strength of the animal male in him. It's visible but I've been oblivious. The question is, can I love that?

If I had plainly seen my father's nature I could have loved him. If I had loved him I would have plainly seen it. I didn't see my father. I didn't see what his existence was for him. That's my immaturity as a woman. Trying to fix Tom is a way of not acknowledging what he is. I don't want to know my father fights with the devil. I don't want to feel unsafe. Evil Epp. Other people knew it.

When I've seen what Tom is will I love him
But not romantically
And then I will no longer need to love anyone romantically YES
And that will be the end of sex
But not the end of joy and physical well-being YES

16

I bought the paper yesterday to see the phase of the moon. Sunday was the eve of the new, sure enough, the part of the wheel dipped in the dissolving acids of the breaking of strength. Which doesn't break strength: it takes us to visit the weak places which are always there.

It's quarter past eight. There is a military rumble of bombers taking off. Naval exercises with troop hydrofoils in the bay, I think. A sunny morning, Tuesday. It's spring. Yellow oxalis in solid drifts. The evergreen pears in thick white bloom in the streets.

Every day I'm sitting down to slow labour with my sheets of neural detail. I have no choice but to do what it takes to have it done. I'm worried about time. Afterward there is going to be the ordeal of writing, and it will be longer than it has ever been. Meantime I'm not sure of my brain. I mis-write more than I used to, and in the boiling down of notes I often seem to have forgotten what I have already done. But I'm integrating in a broad and deep way, and maybe that's why and it's alright.

Do you have anything you want to talk to me about your fight
Is it over for now no
Is there a demand I should be making YES, that he should name what he's afraid of
Should we think of sex in a completely different way less, lose control of the animal, turn for the better
Let the dogs off the leash YES
My dog won't go off the leash
His dog only knows how to run back and forth
It's pretty hopeless YES
Now I'm sulking no just stuck

17 February

Reading Fuster very easily. Makes sense to me. What I said about wide nets. But now I know the places mentioned - hippocampus, retrosplenial cortex, anterior bank of the middle temporal sulcus, orbitofrontal, and on.

-

Leonardo 1452 in a little town on a hillside about twenty miles west of Florence, left handed and devoted to the power of eyesight.

-

Tom came up the hill after work on the bike. He said he was never going to be spiteful again. I said he was just starting to get natural. He's not that nice of a person, just walking down the street is not easy for him. Other guys often know that about him, he said. He's a warrior, I said. But I was stronger than him this time, he said. Being a warrior isn't about being strong, it's about being irascible, I said.

19 February

Series: the way dreams do rows, piles and variations. I was in a garden looking at a very full section: apples growing up against each other in square areas of straight rows. Particularly fat pears. Beets in a row close by. I'm looking across the field to the long potato rows, one plant per mound, and after a while notice that what I took for potatoes are really large single beet plants. There was more about people who live in the house, watering, etc. Oh, another series, I was looking for something to carry some vegetables and found piles, more piles, of large metal pans with lids, like roasters - more and more, as long as I'm looking. It is as if the social threads of the dream keep it moving but it iterates visually - it cycles in place, or cycles somewhere else and activates categories, which proliferate variations with small fluctuations in the send.

There was more, I was walking with my fat little boy through cafes and hotels displaying piles, rows of piles, of things to eat. Purple rock cakes with other kinds of muffins. Then a shop with identical shoe boxes lining the wall above the counter. The series are nested, I'm seeing, in a series of scenes that are variations themselves.

Do you want to suggest a question what is defeated in a dream
You mean dynamically no
Do you want to tell me anxiety, honesty, Ellie's strength in reserve
Anxiety is the engine YES
It's uncoupled from its object
The fact that the object is blocked causes the form of the dream

A specific anxiety blocked in this night? YES
Will you tell me what it is no
When I have miscellaneous dreams does it always mean block
Is it more important to understand this than to understand series YES
The anxieties are endless no
It's basic maintenance

--But will you explain series to me
Iteration in a category
Is iteration itself a category no
Iteration is dynamic
When we see a pile of things do we see each one
We do series because it's category descent YES
It means the activation is coming from 'higher'
Is category a subnet in a level no
Another level
'Large cooking pots,' 'roasters and canners'
Unstable activation from above

Is the condition of seeing an actual pile YES
The commentary follows the scene
But the scene changes lead vision
Are scene changes set up from the hippocampus YES
Hippocampus coordinates scenes no
Hippocampus is scene cortex YES
And sprays out no
Mainly to vision YES
The all-aroundness of scenes

Is place like a template YES
Viewer independent YES
A sense of rotating in oriented space
Hippocampus is spatial template w/o sensory content YES
When we hear computer music space is that hippocampus no, parietal
SPL
And IPL no

Synthesized perception is not the same as metaphor
IPL is basically metaphor
To dream a place, hippocampus is the template but parietal fits it out
Parietal is created by optic flow
Primarily no, totally
A highly geometrical engine optical
Geometrical in the sense that optical is straight lines
Mathematics uses that optical geometry YES

Parietal is the sense organ of optic flow
Perception by means of motion YES
Saccades touch light structure YES
So is parietal visual no
Optical rather than visual
Acoustic spatial sim uses visual
In the blind it still uses visual YES
The SPL is not at all understood YES
Parietal should be thought of as optical touch YES

Like sonar sweeps no
Like sonar sweeps if it was 2d
Think of the retina as 2d rather than 3 no
But think of the sweep of the retina as 2d

Is logic more prefrontal than parietal no
Logic is IPL organizing SPL

20 Feb

After My name is Joe last night, about to go to sleep, Tom talked. He said when he is with me these days he doesn't feel for me what he used to. It isn't personal. He is realizing that he is up against things he will have to deal with. One is the way he feels about women generally - his grandmother, his mother, his aunt and the nuns. The other is the way he feels about the fact that I am smarter than he is and have better taste. For many years he has allowed himself to be careless in the way he thinks. He used to read serious books but he hasn't since 1985. He likes to think he's smarter than the average bear.

He said all that because I said people can make contact at any moment by saying what they really think. He said I should say what I really think. I said I was puzzled why he was being social.

I was remembering what the book said: he has said goodbye to you by a decision not to grow.

This morning he said the gunfighter will have to dig up the box he buried - his guns oiled and wrapped in a rag. I said, no, the guns stay buried. Now is the time for warrior to become king, making good decisions for the prosperity of the whole community. And he did look more coherent this morning, but more like a rocker than a king. I looked at him with a somewhat hungry eye but knew better than to indulge. Then came home and dreamed the man with kingly touch, with whom the wolves would know themselves safe off the leash. It's not this man. This man has no desire to be a king. It would be boring, he thinks. I said, no, for the king nothing is boring, because he has the large picture and is fully engaged.

-

Louie says she is heartbroken. Every day when she meditates she cries. I say this and that, she works so hard, etc. She says after a while that she thinks she'd rather talk to the book. It says she's angry. She's heartbroken instead of angry. She's afraid to be angry because she's afraid love won't be there afterward. She says that in the old days when she was with me she would phone me and she'd feel it was a way to still be open. How can she still be open now? Be angry, it says. You are not understanding that anger is an open heart when you are angry.

The conversation got us somewhere. I came out slightly quaking at the heart. She said when I wasn't the book I was cold. I was sincere but I wasn't feeling anything. I was preachy.

There's just one week left of February and I need to think what I have and don't have. I don't have Kantian stories. I don't have a clear grasp of how the parietal works though I have just put two months into it. No one has a clear grasp. It hasn't gelled. I am not retaining and synthesizing the empirical stuff well.

The ASL section is okay but it just says one of the things we do in speaking is use imagined space to organize ourselves.

The perspective section says imagining background space is a parietal function. I have no clue whether it is.

The development of writing section says math notation could have developed from imagining spatial actions with objects. Parietal is part of a very extended net for that.

Schema theory for math says math is based on metaphoric use of basic object-action stuff. Also very distributed.

The bat sonar piece is good.

I can develop some sort of analogy between audition and optical flow function in MSTd and probably on. But I don't know enough to connect Gibson's correct vision with the neuroscience results. Lesion stuff is too inexact to be useful. Single cell stuff doesn't say enough about distributed response. PET/MRI says a lot of areas connect. Vision by means of movement is key in parietal but it doesn't connect to rep uses of any kind.

I can talk about rep uses of imagined space. I can talk about theory of rep. I can say all the rep media evoke potentially the same nets. I have a solid critique of the rep metaphor.

I am too far onto this line to spend much time doing something else.

Do you still say I have a thesis YES
That can be published as a book
I don't see it
I'm up the creek aren't I (twirls)
Will you lead me persist
In this tracking
Usually I have better luck in finding missing pieces
Alright I'll persist but I don't know what to do next something about balancing in what you have and don't have
Have I left out anything important YES
Do you mean something about the basic distinction YES

Versions of the distinction: retina, LGN, early vision, fine/object vision and motion vision, 39 and 40

Do I have enough to write about it no
It has no relation with rep uses of imagining YES

I'm frightened YES
At the heart YES
I'm frightened of shame? no
Of economic failure no
Of discovering incapacity no
Of defeat YES
Which would make my body decide to die no

Is there anything about defeat that I should understand better YES, something about rest
Think of it as resting YES
Kantian stories is defeated no
I am

What next judgment
My judgment is that I don't have a thesis
Is that what you mean
Will you lead me (twirls)
I don't know how to go on
Have I overreached no
Please help me not yet

I have worked so hard. I have been so rigorous and brave. I wanted this to be my ticket to more money and more common respect. I wanted to succeed. I have been so poor for such a long time. Other people have so much money. I am driving a car I am in constant fear about. I watch every dollar. I lose my days in almost nothing but work. I thought I had a way out. Kantian stories would get me money and a book my parents and relatives would see. It would show my accomplishment at last. I would come through to having nice clothes and a nice house and something of my own, and being able to educate Rowen. I gambled and I haven't won. Why so sore a heart of fear, I asked. Then I started to cry. I want to belong with people like Gilles and the Churchlands. I want to belong here. In my early days when I worked I succeeded. I am not succeeding any more, though I am still working. Why don't I succeed? Why don't I have what other people have?

Well, that's true no
I was dreaming of success and it isn't happening no
Will you lead me it's a fight
Will you lead me you've been withdrawn
Please help me - I want to say something about the fight
Okay you're processing it
Do you mean I'm programmed to fail
Now I would like to succeed no
I would like more money NO
I would like better company no
I would like something so my relatives could see my quality no

Alright will you correct me something about strength in reserve
Are you saying that is what I want YES
Do you mean I want to feel better than I am no
I don't understand this

Do you mean I'm not using all my strength yet
Will you talk to me delayed, aggression, reserved, fight
I'm not successful because I don't work to be no
Then what persist
I don't want those things enough YES
I don't want those things as much as I do YES
I feel soggy now YES
What I reserve is desire
I'm blanking
Is this something I should release, the lock on desire YES
If I allow myself to want to succeed, I am afraid I will not succeed in the best way
Am I right to fear that no

Dearest me, I am willing to free you to find your best success
Is there more
I am willing to free you to want your best success
Do you accept
Is there more no

22nd

Hello Monday.

Oh a hard day yesterday. And into the night, lying awake beside Tom who conked out at ten, feeling, it's over, Tom doesn't love me any more. It was beautiful when we started but it's gone dead, he has left me because he doesn't want to grow. I got dressed and walked through the lobby and drove home through midnight surprisingly cold, very black, simple few big white stars.

Here's sunny morning. That blooming tree is laurel, David said [pittasporum undulatum]. A scent in the yard for weeks, sprigs in a glass on Tom's bed stand, white scatter on the ground in that corner. I see it in many yards.

What am I going to do.

I dreamed something, a death. Was it Louie? Someone had died and there was an explosion too, separately. A plane dived under a bridge and dropped a bomb. Red flash spreading. I was thinking I had to notify her people. Then I woke with my solar plex a hard dark bar of dread. I thought it might be Tom waking in the morning and finding me gone.

Yesterday when he'd biked up and came in the door in biking costume, I was struggling to teach him how to give me emotional shelter. He couldn't help doing what I said he'd do - contradict me, try to distract me, come up with uninformed suggestions. I was lonelier and lonelier. Then he tried something else. He held me and agreed with me and paraphrased me brilliantly and cracked himself up. "And I don't have any wolves and so I can't make them eat shit and die." That was delightful. And so was when he said Cabrillo Point was in early spring, all the little budlets were budletting. But oh the normal level of BS that comes out of his mouth. What a timorous cowering beastie to lie so low when he could be so fine.

- But what am I going to do. This is the week I hear from SSHRC. My heart speeds up when I say that.

If they say no I invent myself from here. If they say yes I'm under the gun to finish, and don't know how.

If they say no, I still must finish but I'll have to get a job.

Today I'm not afraid of my fate either way. I'm not afraid of losing Tom, I'm not afraid of keeping him. Though my heart speeds up and I'm biting my fingernails.

What do I know about spatial perception. I think it's what it seems, there's object at focus, and space, which is partly remembered objects, to the sides, and me, part seen, part felt, part tasted, and overall implied, here.

I could start with the stories - deixis, math metaphor, electronic music, perspective, writing and tokens - and ask what is known about how it's done. Say what is different about being able to ask in more detail. Kantian stories is the first chapter. In the second chapter ask what's known about how it is done. The book is called Imagining space. A chapter on the what/where controversy. The chapter on Gibson and sonar.

Is this correct YES

I looked in my folder of papers and found the Dennett paper. I'm quivering. I easily forget what I can do. Heart is so struck I'm just sitting here thrown down in my chair.

-

Here's something I don't understand. I'm reading What the hands reveal about the brain remembering Gilles' seminar and how I felt there - illegitimate, as if I was pushing myself into a context I haven't earned. There's that about this whole project. I have overreached. I haven't earned what I've said about myself. And yet the Dennett paper is amazingly good, and not recognized at all, by anyone. So what is it, am I a fraud so far as I go, or am I an unrecognized? Something odd about this uncertainty. Am I both? Am I fraudulently and very uncomfortably trying to do what I cannot, and be where I am not accredited, and at the same time an unrecognized wonder at something I am not doing? Why am I always vaulting into something I'm completely uneducated in? Is this a deep old structure, what I am isn't recognized so I'll struggle to be what can be seen? If somebody else were what I am, would it be seen? Do I somehow hide to make sure I won't be seen?

Will you help me sort this out YES
I am overreaching in this project no
Do you mean I really have something to say no
Is it because I get bored when I understand something YES
I like to be where it's too deep
Is that a good way to be NO
Did you call it addiction to learning
Am I talented enough to be in this company no
Should I have just kept on in the garden no
Should I just get some kind of hack job no
Is there something I should get into and just do YES
Please please will you tell me what no

Do I make sure I'm not seen
Will you lead me something about oppression
Sentence ask about the delay in your honesty
There's a way I'm lagging YES
In the work I do
Is there some sort of honesty that is supposed to catch up with me YES
Will you help it to catch up now no
The Dennett paper was honest no
Brain and metaphor was honest
Brain and imagining was no
Do you mean academic style isn't honest
Do you mean Imagining space has to be personal YES
But that means it will have no community YES
Honesty has led me to poverty no
Constant anxiety about money

Will you lead me some more understand, something about father, bravery, balance
My father wrecked me in relation to the arena YES
I'm supposed to understand how much bravery it takes to balance there YES
You're saying my real self doesn't dare show
Will you give me an example of what it doesn't dare show competence
The competence specific to my real self YES
Will you tell me what my real self is competent at (hiero)
Will you specify completion
Do you mean what I did in the Dennett paper YES
I'm doing less than I can because I don't want to show HOW competent I am YES
I didn't try very hard YES
So I write more things like the Dennett paper and nobody can see them
And I still don't have money
And my family still thinks I'm failed
Is that what you want for me
More total poverty
They wouldn't give me my doc if I did what I no
Would they?
I wouldn't get postdoc funding no
Is this grief about my dad YES
Is there a way I can do this so it's real YES

part 4

the golden west volume 16: 1998-1999 december-april
work & days: a lifetime journal project