the golden west volume 21 part 6 - 2000-2001 december-january  work & days: a lifetime journal project

31st December

Bo's party. What life did I see. A middle gender, small men and short-haired women. A bare blank atmosphere, something bodiless in the space. Maybe it was the light, or else the music was white noise. Sensory deprivation, somehow. I couldn't warm to anyone. Bo's voice was the one living thing, her both-cheeks kiss hello, two vivid spots, her damp scented face, a tiny corner of her mouth. Her voice is slow and has a nub, like a stroke down over cloth. Her beautiful black and white screen saver over in the corner. If we could have visited in its space, an all-over glow of grainy substance loosely held in curves and sweeps.

There is a crow walking the asphalt-shingle roof ridge in the rain.

-

I've rewritten everything in the introduction chapter except the description of the project. So what is the book about?

Part I. It shows how to think aboutness without dualist/representationalist language, by thinking it as structural relation, and by thinking neural structure as a means. Chs 2-3.

Part II. It shows a basic frame, basic presence, simulation. Central: example of the where system for directing perception/action. Chs 4, 5, 6, 7.

Part III. Representation using presence and simulation. How representing practices allow thinking in four kinds of complex context. Chs 8, 9, 10, 11.

What the neural descriptions are meant to show. I start with an artist's description of what knowing and coming to know are like: recognition, self-collaboration, pleasure and irritation, structure-borrowing, self organization of a field. Neural descriptions are compatible with this description by being all-over structure, distributed, parallel, integrated, multiple, multifunctional.

-

In the workbook seeing there are parts of the project I am blind to: what is its business, what does it do, how are other people served by it.

Are these the right questions    
Do you know the answers    
About people     turn for the better
A particular kind of people     excluded
Will you tell me what it does     (pp)
Will you tell me a different way     writes
I don't understand     tempers, graduates, comes through, balances forces
Fosters people who love land    
By finding support for them    
Will you tell me where it gets money     looks for it
Grants?     private donors
This isn't concrete enough to work for me     direct improvement of losses and betrayals
"Think of a place you love that has been destroyed"    
"Say who it was destroyed by, and why"    
It was destroyed by someone who doesn't see and feel    
"Think of a place you love that has been created or preserved"    
"Say who it was created by, and why"    
So it's the seeing and feeling in people    
Which is fostered mainly by good mothering    
And cannot be recovered in therapy    
I can't make that    
But I can support people who see and feel    
Their presence in a culture would support seeing and feeling    
Leave this for now    
Anything you want to say     obscure withdrawal because of illusion of betrayal
Shutting down    
Do you want to talk about anything else     love woman
One card?     is excluded
Feeling and being     YES
Anything else     about writing, balance in the midst of change
The project is changing?     something about losses
It is rectifying     withdrawn love woman is writing honestly
That is happening     YES, direct creation coming through responsibly
 

Siberry drunk with love woman.

Thinking of my photos which were not drunk but intent in unhedged early love.

Mystes - initiate - second born - meaning, having gone through the pain again - which integrates for ability.

Do you want me to just work in the raw like she does     no, turn for the better
I am working for paradise    
Will you lead me    

3rd January 2001

That was not good     no it was
Sitting through that monster     no
Seeing how she is    
Should I try to turn her    
It's the loneliness of love woman    
I should be talking to her abt it for her benefit not mine    
I was giving her power     YES
That was not good     no
Because I could see it    
Do you mean no harm was done    
Art should be connected to early love    
It's corrupt when it's demonstrating mastery over early love     it's corrupt when it exploits early love
Will you tell me what is the correct relation of early love and art     betrayed love slowly growing honest
There's bliss, then there's betrayal, then there's bliss tempered in understanding betrayal    
Bliss full force, betrayal full force    
Exploiting early love is leaving out the betrayal    
Color is directly connected to early love    
Betrayal can be betraying as well    
Bliss and having betrayed it    
It's better dealing with it directly    
Then art should be conscious intervention    

-

Coming down a slope and seeing a bush against a fence. Is it some sort of hydrangea? A light, loose one. As I'm nearer I see it's a daylily, the small pointed kind, orange with narrow black outside edges, like an outline in a drawing.

In the same dream a town on one bank of the Fraser Canyon. We're driving a road that is built along the edge. A stone wall we're looking over, on the right a long way down. Then the road cut through rock so there is a narrow jagged edge that's the guard wall. We see over and between the peaks. And then a section where there is a walkway built out over the drop separated from the road.

Later I'm wanting to go back and walk there but I am carrying some kind of case I want to take back to the truck. It's not mine, I should find a lost and found to give it to. I open it and find it packed with large flat packages of medicinal herbs. I leaf through them. A traveler's collection.

I like these for the invention but what I want to note, what I have been wanting to note, is the way a dream is improvised from one instant to the next. It works off what there is. It isn't that the hydrangea turns into a daylily. Looking more closely at the bush somehow brings daylily. Looking at canyon from road somehow brings rock walls. Looking at one flat package brings the next, it was riffing on exotic herbs.

Somehow a good night, I'm feeling.

Something much earlier about flood waters up to the edge of the house on the farm. I'm looking from one of the west windows seeing it almost at the bottom boards.

4th

I've almost got the flow of chapter 1, I'll have it tomorrow and start ch 2.

Talking to Tom tonight, happy. "You're rowin' the boat," he said. He is too. When he described what he said to Dick, which took him straight up into the upper air of a miserly spirit, my solar plex smiled. Yes, Tom.

I love your generous spirit. I love your fine-cut street speech. I like it that you're working class, canny and heartful. I love your enjoyment of lights and weathers. Later I even like your rage, because it comes along with your passion of appreciation and remorse.

5

Elated finishing chapter 1. I discovered that chapter 11 answers the question I ask in chapter 1, and renamed it. Boldly declared my intent for chapter 12.

And library books. California light with beautiful pictures of paintings; Marjorie Grene on Aristotle, Gibson and knowing as perception-based; Djikstra on Georgia O'Keefe and the eros of place vs the gender paranoia of art criticism since Greenberg.

I'm lazing in the mornings and sitting to write in the afternoon. Have five or six hours of concentration without stopping. Cannot read slowly, have to rip over a chapter a minute, sometimes starting at the back of the book.

Marjorie Grene 1995 A philosophical testament Open Court

Bram Dijkstra [essays in] 1990 California light, 1900-1930 edited by Patricia Trenton and William Gerdts Laguna Art Museum

Bram Djikstra 1998 Georgia O'Keefe and the eros of place Princeton

7

Marjorie Grene's old-woman summary. She's peppery about academic philosophers, barrels on writing books. Her summary about knowing is Merleau-Ponty and Gibson. She freely says she doesn't understand this and that or misread Heidegger and Aristotle. That's the way to do it, confidently. The men are sharp but trivial, she says. They like gadgets.

10

"What astonishes me about your thesis and your work on metaphor, is not only the rigour of your investigation, but that, within it all, you retain your own voice. The poet speaks through the philosopher. The achievement is extraordinary."

In the process of replying to Peter's letter, I figured out what he wanted to say about Godard and intuition. It was what he said about me, his first paragraph. That's intuition: one organization speaking from another. I got it after I said I'd gotten it. I wrote "'his need to see before he writes,' that's nice. It's the key." Then I described listening and watching from the left to something forming on the right. What is said to be antithetical is something else altogether.

This morning I rewrote the difficult last section of chapter 2. Very clear. Then I lost the whole thing, vanished, five hours work steady and pointed. Couldn't rewrite it today. Went down and tried to remember Pagemaker. Found Peter's letter and answered it.

"Suddenly, at a later try, the site appeared. It is wonderful. And overwhelming. You continue to amaze me. Indeed, more and more."

11

At the computer desk yesterday I was describing my computer's memory glitches. The sharp young man said it sounded like a virus. We go on. Yes, that's a virus. A virus will do funny things. I should take it in somewhere and get it fixed. I've been trying to work around it, I say, starting to walk out. He calls after me, loudly, so I'm still hearing him as I'm passing the second door, insisting I must have it fixed.

I woke realizing what it was about that, for me and maybe also for him. My nervous system was attacked by a virus. I do not know everything about the results of that damage. I work around it. That is not analogy as it is imagined, it is speech from a structure already active but not spoken from. It's structure that manages to speak at the same time that other structure is speaking, because there is an overlap.

12

What do I want. It's Friday morning. I'm in chapter 3. Grey air at the window. I want to be in touch with the other side. I was, when I woke. Something I lost when I didn't track it right away. Tom was being intellectual last night, and it put me to sleep the way it does.

Dichotic vision experiments, where they pour ice water into the ear, stimulate the parietal, cause laughing. It sometimes happens that they'd see the vertical and horizontal bars at the same time, as if, they said, hemispheres had been segregated and alternating. Only one had been hyped at a time, but, by fiddling, they got them simultaneous. That's interesting. And that the two eyes can see different things at the same time. Of course - the way when I write I see the page and I imagine what I have to be imagining. That's what makes writers have one eye larger than the other.

No, it says, there is a different reason. Honest art loses organization. One eye is fictional and not coherent with the body it is in. Writers have enlarged right eyes, more tense.

It's tense from simulation    
The left eye is the eye for the page because it sees the writing hand    
So the other is being used for thinking    
Simulational eye motion    
The differences are parietal    
Left eye is organizing eye and hand movements rightward, which makes it the writing eye    
Left eye and left hem for that reason    
 
Will you talk to me about the organization of chapter 3    
Do I need everything I've got    
But I need to disperse it    
Interlard it    
Say more about why wide net    
Keep coming back to how it's imagined    
Do you want to talk to me about organization     begin with streams
Imagining and describing     YES
Then talk about evolution and development    
First units, then regions    
More?     balance, decision, is the work, in structuring
Alternation?     no, integration
More?     be direct
Say what the difficulties are    

13

Section introductions. For Representing say it's the section that deals with what they think they know. It's their metaphor, the public realm. It's also where I work, and it's the realm where I find the phenomena that are my evidence that it must be thought differently.

They imagine all forms of basic cognition in terms of representation and I imagine all forms of representation in terms of basic cognition.

I've broken Wide nets into parts so there will be the other voice between the neuroscience sections. Should I be worried about time? It's the middle of January. A lot to do, still, on chapter 3.

Do you want to say anything about chapter 3     early love
Are you recommending it     no
Praising it    
The patience and service     young balance shattering the structure of oppression
Nobody is acknowledging how good this work is    
Will it be acknowledged in my lifetime    
More     foolish, art, illusion of, coming through
Mine?     no
The foolish like art that gives the illusion of coming through    
There is real coming through     YES
I am not going to be able to go on with Tom    no
He stuns me with boredom    
Will you comment     come through to improving his liberation
You want me to do it    
Improve him    
Will you tell me how     early love, ego, change, exclusion
He's boring when he's excluded, unconscious    
Do for him what Louie did for me     YES
Is Cheryl okay     no
Will you describe her with one card     hasn't come through
The worst betrayal    
Hasn't done the work on the father     hasn't given up, graduated from, completed, the father
I have come through in the sense that I'm integrated in my work     honest, feeling, is teaching, about fantasy
Anything else you want to talk about     no

14

A Christian Scientist on the radio saying that after a car accident she went day to day asking what she should do.

The parts of religion that make sense.

I'm a dedicated anticleric and a tender worshipper. When they say love and trust I understand. When they search the silly scriptures for rules I'm disgusted. The institutional virus is patriarchy. I mean by that, unexamined male motive, male rupture, shut-down defense against early love: guns, preachers, prohibitions, prurience and hypocrisy that follow prohibitions, violent control, ruined capability, stupid, hapless populations, ugly towns, spoiled landscapes. Religions are power politics for men. But older women get religion, why? Jan-Marie, Joyce, Diana, Daphne. They are all Buddhists after menopause. What does it mean that they tolerate the male bosses of Buddhism?

Will you explain it     to improve withdrawal and come through exclusion
They don't feel capable of making their own frame for it    
Are they capable     YES
Do they like to feel pious     YES
I hate to feel pious     YES
Piety is something like liking to see oneself in a role    
Are the cards a religion     no, a psychology
Is paganism a religion     no, a philosophy
Does liking to feel pious have to do with wanting to belong    
That girl thing about being safe in a herd    
Nattering primates    
Would I have been like that if I hadn't been excluded     no
I'm a scout    
Is it worth asking you how you are    
Are you always the same     no
Are you well     YES
Will you tell me how you are     integrating, the search, for why the mother, is withdrawn
Do you mean at this moment    
It's about Mary     YES
She is pious    
She was pious    
Her piety prevented her    
Luke wrote them off because they are pious    
Did Luke do that for me     YES
Are you sure     YES
He fined them     YES
 
You are an integrating structure    
Are you in the forebrain     no, all over
You're built by the work    
The hemispheres can't be on at the same time because they are incompatible organizations    
You are the ability to mediate them    
Overlaying the vertical and the horizontal    
Can you be evoked mechanically    
But not sustained    
Are you a different frequency     no an inter-net
Are you a separate personality    
A 'higher' self     an inter-self
Back from the forebrain    
When they say topdown they mean from the language hem    
And bottom up, right to left    
Did I begin to organize you in writing     YES
Did Hegel have a feel of you    
Do you have a hyphenated name    
Phos-phoros    
Is the callosum your only connection     no

15

I'm lacing a boot with a lace that is too long. There are round seeds on it. I see it is the wire stem of an asparagus fern. Having laced, I've laced my hair so it is a mass I am seeing on the other woman's head. Medusa.

A change from shoe to boot, foot to head, me to her, and then from carrots to oranges to purple tomatoes. They were carrots on a string. When they fell off they were oranges. The nice moment was when I heard singing. One voice, then joined by many others. Many young cooks standing working at a long table. I want to say nine of them, cutting things, singing in beautiful harmony.

A moment earlier in the night where I wake in a bed in a strange house because a crazy old man in a room further up the corridor is shouting as he masturbates, You're coming, Marnie, you're coming too, Ellie. The room and the corridor too are full of people sleeping here and there.

-

Some of the things Tom has learned in five years: he's managing his money, he's eating well, he's keeping his room organized, he's cleaned up his language, he's calling to tell good and bad news. He can hold his temper at work, he's taking care of his clothes, he tells the truth, he listens.

I'm saying this after he called this morning to tell me he got a raise.

16

But also: when he called and said, How'r you doin'? I said, I'm a little wobbly. I was in fact on the way to Dr Sylvia to find out my pap results and whether I was having a heart attack because I felt whoosy. He said, I feel wobbly too (because his paycheck was xy) and never did get back to what I'd said. Just so I don't overpraise his listening.

-

California light, 1900-1930. Plein air, "informal committee of cultural ecology." "Expressive of a strongly desired ideal of selfhood." "All aesthetic choices are moral choices."

-

The point about rep is simple, don't talk as if persons or parts are related to inner structures. There are structures that are means by which. Like all means we talk about, they are partial means. They are means ceteris parabis. Go on from there.

People are related to things, first. Being related to aspects of things is part of that relation to things. But color, but color...? Before dyed artifacts, people are related to sky, sun, plants, skin, earth. The pleasure in color is ongoing life value response to these things. Dyed artifacts are convolved simulation. I'm related to a real rug but my pleasure in it is simulational pleasure in fur and sun.

What I like about this way of thinking it is the understanding of biological gratitude. Seeing green is seeing leaves and the value of leaves. 'Color values.'

But I can see a color in my head. No you can seem to see a color.

17

Today my car passed AirCare except for the gas cap; the student loan papers came, $3000; Tom phoned unexpected and praised me for the length of an entire phone card, eighty minutes, and then called back to keep going.

He said things he's said before and some he hadn't. He poured. When he put down the phone last night he was two inches off the floor, he said. All day he was full of love. He woke at 5:30 with a big boner and imagined my beautiful ass, and his sperm jumped up and hit the carpet.

I listened very awkwardly. I giggled. I was interested when I heard what he likes about my asshole and what he was thinking when he first saw me limping across the lobby. I was feeling what I sometimes do, Is this the afterlife, it is like a coming true beyond the limits. I was squirming the way I do when I agree to listen rather than talk. I felt we should start being together so we could get used to being interested the way we are, so I could know what he's seeing while he's seeing it.

The first half of ch 3 is good.

The fruits of the spirit, isn't it.

I could never have done this without Joyce.

18

Next morning. The contradiction was there in that hour. I was being praised for my mind but nothing I said was heard. He was a torrent of action and could not allow me to be anything but a boulder in the stream. I was lying awake an hour ago in the dark remembering Oma and Clearbrook Road. I was seeing the house, the brown radio on the corner of the counter next to Opa's chair at the kitchen table. The feeling of their success, that house and land, young people driving up and parking on the yard, fruit trees, nut trees, grape vines, current bushes, bright floors and a dining room window to the south. How they made that wealth from nothing, with eight children, in thirty years. Oma's humor and Opa's command. The clean order their work achieved.

When I was thinking of it I felt something for an instant. It was as if the center of gravity of the time and place. I felt something drop in my body. I thought of Grandpa Epp's place in that time and felt it drop further. This is not sayable.

Does it harm me to be with Tom     no
Do I lose something essential if no one listens to me     no
It's better to be active than passive     no
Wouldn't it be better if I could tell him about my grandparents     NO
Wouldn't it be better if I were with a man who could give me a house and a garden     no
Wouldn't it be better if I were with a man who listened responsively     no
It is so lovely when a man listens responsively    
That kind of torrent demands that I be passive    
Has he realized that     no
He is building an ability to act     YES
And so am I    
Do you want to comment     love woman, overview, action, gain
Should I think of myself as completing an immigration    
They established themselves in a land; I established myself in a mind    
My parents are neither here nor there    
Love woman has a larger view of action     YES
Allowing someone's action is action    
Am I already more able to act than he    
Is there something I should do with needing to tell and be listened to     deception, hidden, imagining, shared pleasure
There is a hidden deception in imagining shared pleasure    
Was there, in the pleasure of telling David about the things on the tree     no
Because they were there    
The sharing I want is an illusion    
But the wanting is not    
Will you say something about it     direct, defeat, of competition, of anguish
It's a defense     YES
Can you tell me simply against what     flow, temperance, coming through, imagining
Remembering is fantasy     YES
Fantasy prevents tempering flow    
This morning was I preventing    
Is the flow occurring now    
I needed to temper anxiety about passivity    
Love woman has a long plan for Tom    
Is she grown up now    
Her plan for Tom is to finish raising him    
Anything you want to talk about     losses, turn for the better, by the work, directly
Rather than sharing you mean    
Okay I believe you    
More    no
 
That experience was actually quite evil    
"Prime cut"     YES
"I can stick my dick into that"    
I can trump that    
"I'm such a lucky man"    
If I can stick my dick into a noble creature it means I am king of the hill    
Something unconscious was being told    
It was competitive    
He was absolutely triumphing in shutting me up    
He was showing deepest misogyny    
Very double-binding    
He has not earned a right to sweet-talk me     YES
Was this a capital crime     no
He does compete with me but it's subtle and has been secret    
Was there a reason it happened now    
He has always done that with women    
I feel like I should dump him     no
The demon roared up    
Was it a sign of integration    
He felt it as a release    
A boy was insulting me    
Is he realizing any of this    
It was not love, it was war     YES
Fucking or hanging with a noble creature in no way certifies him, that is a misunderstanding    
Believing so is a weakness    
Being fucked does not demean me    
Those are superstitious beliefs    
A boy was insulting love woman and I stood by    
If Louie felt it, it must have been deep    
I failed her     no
I was reserving opinion    
Is he attacking me because he wants to fuck somebody     no
Demon hides hate in love    
Is love woman harmed     no
A boy was boasting of demeaning a goddess, "I can burn incense to you and then I can fuck you"    
Burn incense    
Was he burning all the good things     NO
Was he mad at me for some reason     no
He was releasing    
Do you want to comment     unconscious child, end of illusion by means of the work
His work     no yours
My child can be bought by praise, is that what you mean    
Still    
He hog-tied me with praise    
He intended to     YES
Is there a counterstroke     he is processing early love
Is he gaining     no
Boy's revenge    
Is flattery always an act of war     YES
Was there a moment in the previous conversation that released it    
A moment of weakness     no
Something he said    
He can't bear to hear me because he's strenuously defending    
Against hatred     no, fear
When he can't bear to hear me it's always that    
He feels sticking his dick in as demeaning and trumping    
And I've endured that    
The moment he fed me was something different    
Do you want to say more     no
Thank you Louie    

I'm forlorn a bit, am I? Alone, a bit lost. The middle of the network section has been very slow, I'm not sure it is sorted yet. I haven't felt a grip. I'll look at it tomorrow.

Let me be simple-hearted about what happened with Tom, if I can. Am I ashamed, am I afraid, am I lonely. Lonely. Homeless. Did something very bad happen. As if. I don't know. How do I feel. Soft, sore. Do I feel abused? Was a child called forward, and did I offer her throat to be slit by someone casually brutal? Did Louie feel a blow I didn't feel properly myself?

I have to keep calling myself to be simple. I want to reason myself safe.

I don't doubt it is the way he feels and is.

I believe it's better he poured it out.

The energy of defense in it is clear to see.

And yet. Did I take a blow I should have known to turn. Am I dull and confused, not alert enough, asleep.

19

[Frank died this day]

What is it with this section of the work. It's as if I can't read it. I don't come to grips with it. I don't see where I repeat. I don't see to organize it.

And now I'm at the same time thinking about Tom's performance. The energy in it. An hour and a half of sometimes interesting verbal invention. A writer's performance. "I burn incense to it and then I stick my dick in it." That was uncommon self-description, for him. That's the demon poking through the ring of flowers, from right to left, a core of masculinity. It absolutely is not love, neither the admiration not the sticking are love. Love risks and investigates. It says, I will know you.

For myself, understand something about wanting to be praised. I want it because I am denied it everywhere. And yet it turned me to stone. He was saying things many people should have said and refused to say. I couldn't refuse to hear it. And yet it was not true in the moment. There was not a speck of investigation or mutual creation in him. He was like a tennis player who only can serve, who when it is the other player's serve looks blankly at the ball and stands where he is -

I think I'm through the tangle finally. I've got to subnets and the net metaphor section is clear and integrated. This is a long chapter.

20

Billy Elliot and Traffic last night. Was there a split second of anything in either? No. Yes, but corrupt: a dark-haired pregnant woman in a white nightgown lying back on pillows on her bed at night, seen with a long lens through a window. The nightgown had string straps and half-held her swollen breasts that were falling sideways off her chest. Billy Elliot's little face. The Mexican scenes in Traffic tinted desert yellow - all the Mexican scenes. The powerful and the poor - the way Traffic went back and forth from the cold blue light of power in Washington to that shit-brown landing strip south of Tijuana.

What do I know about drugs. To be in a state of fullness needs moral action of great bravery. If one fails in that, one is cut off from joy and exploration, which is unbearable, so then inner and outer drugging. The solution to a drug problem is only and ever always everywhere personal courage. Person by person. Drugs should be legalized and people should trust life and tell the truth.

Is that it    

We live in heaven and make it hell.

Does this follow, of any landscape ask what lies are being believed there     YES
Do you want to say more     turn for the better by writing to shatter the structure and grow slowly
Do you mean journalists    
It's the writer's job    
Is that a job you want me to do     YES
It's not defense of the land, it's defense of being able to feel it     YES
Which is heaven    
Do you want me to be a freelance writer   
Do you want me to do the land and mind foundation    
Do you want me in an academic foundation     no
A journalist    
More?     losses, secrets, search, to complete
My own?    
Theirs    
Is it wrong to imagine that house     no
But it is a lie    
Will you say why it isn't wrong     something about action
Because I don't act from it     YES
Lies that organize action     YES
Are masturbation fantasies wrong     no
The house is creation    
But does it build the brain wrongly    
So it is action    
Is my brain built wrong because I imagine the house     no
Is there a difference between thoughts that build the brain and thoughts that don't     unconscious structure comes through to balance
Those thoughts don't build badly    
Fantasy that doesn't know it is fantasy captivates other people    

21

On the Christian station out of Blaine, last night, the Darwin's Black Box guy who has written a book called The wedge of truth instructing conservative Christians on how to 'win the war' to, for instance, have creation taught in schools. The liberal arts no longer teach value, he said, meaning that the universities themselves are discrediting the humanism that pushed back the clerics. There are two things, he said, first that there is a creator, and second that it is possible to be in a wrong relation with him. His argument for creation was a code argument: the proteins in a cell are so complex there is no way they could organize themselves. There have to be instructions written into the cell. Begin with the weaknesses in Darwinism, he said. There will be other things they will be ready to hear later.

Is there going to be a conservative resurgence    
Is it going to get into the universities     no
Is there a way to benefit from it    
Is it better for stupid people to be believers     no
Is religion a better help for addiction     no
Will Bush be a one-term president     no, two
Will he push back abortion rights     no
Will the House be democratic next time    
Is there a reason the Christians are so awful    
When I was a child were they as awful as they are now     no
Is it the corruption of believing nonsense     no
Christianity has been co-opted    
Moral authoritarians and financial interests    
Is the basic motive patriarchal     YES
Is this alarming me for personal reasons     no
Does humanism need to be renovated    
Should I be worried    
Will the pressure from the Christians improve humanism    
Is humanism what I mean    
Pagan humanism    
Are Christians overall stupider than they were    
Brain-drain     YES
Pagan meaning nature-worshipping    
Does this push need something specific from me     understanding of betrayal
Is that it    
It is what the Christians don't have     YES
Betrayal and shutting-down     to deceive, seduce and desert, to deliver-over to an enemy
After deception, seduction and desertion one delivers oneself over to an enemy    
Which is what the Christians have done    
The weakness is not acknowledging one has been betrayed, that is self-betrayal    
This should be the bedrock of humanist psychology    
The right moral foundation is agony and aloneness of betrayal accepted    
People accept external moral authority to avoid that    
It means accepting betrayal of nature too    
My god my god why hast thou forsaken me    
The resurrection is because of the agony    
Have I got this right    
So accepting Jesus is accepting crucifixion when it is true     YES
If you don't admit to being betrayed, you can't admit to betraying    
Admitting means feeling it    
Is there more you want to say     integrating heartbreak improves energy
Those who have integrated will be more effective    
More?     gain improvement by coming through processing
More?     processing love improves exclusion, come through illusion of oppression to gain
Is this personal advice    
Do I have the illusion that I'm oppressed    
By religious threat     no
Will you tell me by what     judgment
Other people's judgment    
Do you mean in general     no
In relation to what     success
Being judged unsuccessful    
I have an illusion that I'm judged unsuccessful    
Am I judged unsuccessful     YES
Is the illusion that it oppresses me     no
The illusion oppresses me    
I'm judged successful by my relatives     no
By my parents     no
By the best people     YES
Do you mean I should feel it more    
Am I judged successful by the Churchlands    
By Kathleen     YES
Will you tell me what is implied     successful, quest, for persistence, in relation to betrayal
That I've done it     YES
Add something?     slow growth from vain regret to fighting to share pleasure
I leave the illusion by fighting to share my work    
Do you want to say more     addiction, of the lovers, coming through, foolishness
Give me a clue what this is about     responsibility
How responsibility develops    
By dealing with addiction    
Which always has to do with having shut down    
And needing to force connection    
Anything else you want to talk about     losses
Specific?     no, in general. The work comes through by completing what has been evaded
You're telling me things I know already    
Is there a reason     no
Is it so I can read it to someone else     no
I'll finish section I today     no, tomorrow
 
Do I have to deal with what is done with macaques     no
Do you mean not now    

-

"What opened my eyes to my own temperament as a writer was Sons and lovers." "A very deeply physical and celebratory side." Says Amat Choudry on Wachtel, with his fluent, pebbly/bumpy Bombay accent. Stylistically, Woolf, Mansfield and Joyce, he says.

I finished ch 3 today, section I, and it is right. Once over, the whole of it, tomorrow, and print it. The tone is more even, I think that now I shade from technical to lyrical extremes, and enfold the two in some places. I am looking forward to part II. It helps to think in sections rather than the sweep from 1 to 12 unbroken.

"Temperamentally a modernist, but part of a post-modernist world."

"I don't think epiphanic possibilities exist in the post-modern world." "You don't have the ability to trust that if it comes to you."

Is that right     no
Is this an error in the way they think it    
Will you explain     it is set up in the oppression that comes of the withdrawn child
This guy is believing it but he doesn't feel it    
An epiphanic moment is something, dynamically    
People are on the wrong side in this     YES
There's disillusionment but there is coming through    
There's a difference between illusion and self-trust earned by coming through    

-

And then a talk with Tom that went through the roof. He described the Bush inaugural, C-SPAN's steady-cam coverage. He was brilliant for an hour straight. I was brilliant for the first half hour. It was Tom and Ellie as Bill and Hillary, waltzing on the balcony - while the Bushes cooled their heels downstairs - saying to the telephoto lenses, postmodern does it better. At their inaugural Maya Angelou recited The free bird / spreads its wings. All the black people..., I started to say. IN THE WORLD, he said.

He was so brilliant it was as if what shot out last time was a big fibrous plug. It was not just what he said, it was recognizing what I said about it and surviving.

Buddhist slash paganist slash humanist slash post-post-modernist.

24

I mailed to Nicole, Kirk, Nathalie, chapter 1.

26

The way Tom's voice relaxes. I listen to him laugh, I feel how far he's come. I realize as I say this that I would like it too and don't have it. I listened to work stories, which I like. His moves with the men behind the desk, his scene. He's thinking like a leader. That was what needed to come next. I'm pleased with our work, I know it is mine too.

I want to say, and yet. Should I say, and yet? Yes. What do I want. Something for me. To feel that central relaxing into the pleasure of myself in company, so I have many things to tell and give and show. What I keep alive in the journal because I have it nowhere else.

You wanted me to learn to give it    
And I have learned to give it    
And I'm dying in the one-way of it    
Tom will never be able to give me that    
He thinks he's giving it    
He can't give it because he's a man     YES
Louie gives it    
Can I give up the job with Tom     no
Will you lead me     YES, you are balancing, in the overview, of tyranny, in the family
Understanding patriarchy     YES, slow growth in anguish, betrayal, and exclusion
Teaching one patriarch     no
Serving a patriarch    
You want me to be the servant of a patriarch    
Are you trying to tell me I wanted it     no
You want the patriarchy strengthened     no
You want me to serve a patriarch indefinitely    
Why     passage from difficulties, to recover, constructive action
Because those are the conditions    
It would be better if someone served me    
Does he     balances your speed
When I'm with him    
He serves me energetically    
Do you want to say more     turn for the better, by slow growth, of action, by means of the work
Just keep on with you    
But it is lonely    
Do you want to say more     fantasy, completion, of heartbreak, by art
Imagine completing heartbreak by art    
Is that an instruction     YES
Get by art what I don't have with Tom     YES
Can I do that    
Soft and relaxed and full of things to give    
Can I do that purely out of myself    
Give up on Tom    no
Give up wanting him to give me what I give him     no
Don't give up wanting it    
Understand I'll never get it    
Don't demand it    
Get it somewhere else    
Is that it    
 
 

 

volume 22


the golden west volume 21: 2000-2001 september-january
work & days: a lifetime journal project