the golden west volume 22 part 3 - 2001 march  work & days: a lifetime journal project

6th March

I'm 56.

Hello day, blowing my nose still, fasting. There's sun on my head, on my palm when I hold it up. I see ridges like on fingertip skin. A shiny yellow-pink hand in sharp warm light that I can see has entered the flesh. Look how suited it is to this light. Sometimes the small heave of a pulse at the origin of the lifeline. It's my left hand. If I hold the fingers together it has the hard-skinned look of a primate hand.

My friends have been dropping out of the sky. I feel I have many years left. I'll die at 82. That's my guess. 26 years, as many as there have been since I came to Vancouver.

Awake at night I imagined myself in the pink-floored house writing memos into a laptop. Send a writer and photographer to Vanaja Ramprasad's project. I'm noticing an impulse to censor what this morning state says as too grand. But go on. I imagined a house seminar with Ramprasad, Le Guin, Debbie Rose. It's a mind and land seminar. Country. I show the slides from my country and say how I came to make them. Le Guin would read to us. The foundation hires photographers and writers to do beautiful documentations, and then it places them in magazines. It publishes books. Before a house seminar beautiful documentation has been given to everyone.

Am I on the right track with this     yes
Would someone support it     yes
Lots of fundraising     no
For now I'm the director     yes
My confidence vacillates     yes
Is there something you can tell me about that     your, decision, comes through, when you love
It's the work love woman wants to do     YES
Will you name what doesn't believe in it     intemperance
Will you say that another way     slow growth
It means, when I don't believe in it, process     yes
This is right     YES
Should I get ready to live very lightly     yes
Sell furniture     yes
In order to finish     yes
Even the rugs     no
Even the glass piece     no
Burn the journals     no
 
Is there a way this work can go faster and still keep quality     it will improve by processing love woman's deceptions
Ways she is deceived     no, ways she deceives you
Can you name it in one     aggression
Fears of aggression     yes
Bite into it more     yes
Pressure myself     no
I can see they are different     yes
Love woman sees them as the same     yes
That's her deception     yes
Okay     yes
Tell her to think of it as biting into the waves     yes
-
Will you tell me what is going on for Tom     complete, decision, to shatter the structure, of illusion
He has     yes
Does that mean letting me go     yes
Does he think I have let go     no

The day has gone by and Tom has not called. He's not picking up the phone. The machine isn't on. Last Friday night, was it, he sounded drunk. Is he in a bar? He said he was pleased about something, as if by something he'd bought and sent. I assumed. I didn't remind him because I wanted to risk it and know for sure whether he's able to forget. Now I'm scared.

Not scared like I was.

Will you lead me     it is over
Suddenly     YES
He broke     YES
Was he unfaithful     no
He just broke     yes
Was it my fault     no
He wanted to be free     yes
To go back to wildness     yes
Is it anything to do with being attracted to a man     yes
Something happened at work     yes
Am I going to go into excruciating pain     no
Did you know it was going to happen     no
Is this true     yes
One card     shatter the structure
Will you tell me which     indecision about writing, Tom, betrayal
Indecision about asking him     yes
Will you say more     process and come through love woman's loss

7

Did I do that     yes
He was lying     yes
He forgot     yes
The fact that he was lying was worse than that he forgot     yes
The fact that he was lying means something else is wrong     yes
Does it mean he is drinking     yes
Does it mean he's toking     no
Is this a good time to break up     no
What do you advise     gain completion of childish exclusion
Mine     no, his
Should I phone him tonight    no
Let him stew     yes
Should I ignore his birthday when it comes     yes
 
Louie thinks I'm being grandiose     yes
It shows how people hold one back     yes
It means find people with a larger view     yes

-

What do I want chapter 4 to do, what's the important thing. Some of the how of spatial engagement because it's the core of embodied aboutness.

What is it about reach and grasp differences. What is it about place sense. I don't know what I'm doing in this chapter. It should be built around visual focus but I don't understand the saccade stuff. Reach and grasp are each built around focus. Reach shows the earlier system more. Grasp is getting toward representation. The contrast shows the systems independent and coordinated. The IPS area shows matrices whose order has not been discovered. Multifunctional is important. Mirror cells are important. Gradients and distributed, gradual, are important.

Do I need to do more primary research?     no
Think it through     yes
Am I right to leave out saccades and motion     yes
I have emphasized task axis, is that key     yes
Reach and grasp as examples of task axis     yes
Place opens up     yes
To memory     yes
So it's a transition to simulation     yes
Is that the structure of the chapter     yes
Conclude by talking about the signification of both     yes

8

Dreamed I was finding my way through a rapid series of branches on a highway. I chose the wrong one and found myself shooting southeast on a road that first rose on a steep hill and then dropped fast. Below I saw a truck slide sideways, quite a distance, and then straighten and keep going. When I got to the crossroads he had been next to when it happened, I turned off, wanting to go back to find the right road. There was heavy equipment on the side road. A transport truck bearing down from the direction I'd come from. A piece of equipment was being lowered almost onto my car. I was watching from outside and shouted. I stopped it in time.

9

Ray says it's tremendous.

The land and mind foundation. What I have is right but it's vague. I don't know how to start. Start with supporting people I've found. Document it. Start a donor list. For now it's private funding and publicity. Ask UCSD woman for a job. For now do both myself, later a fundraiser and writers, photographers.

Start with a website, try to place in magazines.

10

It's 7 on a Saturday morning, cold.

How're things. Went with Louie to Before night falls last night. Louie and I see each other at the ends of days, without energy, familiar and unfeeling. She feels my skepticism about her dedication to achieving always more extremely nonfunctional shapes of the body. I understand that if she's going to be a yoga teacher she needs to be in the in-est yoga crowd, and the most admired, but it costs her all her time, is not making her better looking, is not taking her to the next stage of her much more interesting talents, is compacting rather than liberating her spirit, it seems to me. Is a de-spiritualization, bourgeoisification, solidification rather than what I've always known yoga to be when done much less and not in that grasping spirit, a refining fire that makes beautiful, quick, smart, sexy, graceful and deep of intuition.

Second thing: I'm wondering about Being about and the land/mind project. I don't have inventive energy for Being about, and I do, though I vacillate, for the other. Am I dropping Being about before I've seen it through defending and giving it, is it abandonment? My dreams last night seemed to say. Abandoning it for grand fantasies. It's as if I don't care about it, have no hopes for it any more. I slog because I have to. It is better than I imagined it would be, and yet I don't have energy for it. I'm doing dribs and drabs in a day.

A subtle illusion that men are in control of its reception, it says. That's true. Okay.

Is Latour a threat     YES
Are they state of the art     yes
There's a wrong motive     yes
Strange fear of objectivity     yes
 
Am I right about Louie     yes
Is it doing it too much     yes
Is it the mercantile intent     yes
She overrides her spirit in it     yes
Are extreme positions useful     no
She is afraid of her true power     yes
And slaves to produce a false power     yes
It has to do with control     yes
When she drives herself in yoga, ego is in control     yes
Her other power is uncontrollable     yes
Is it ego that bothers me about Louie and yoga     yes
Talk to her about this     yes
It's ego that's making her less good looking     yes
She is building an ego like a block of wood     yes
 
Will you tell me what's wrong with my relation to Being about     a subtle illusion that men are in control
Of it     no, of its reception
That it will fail no matter how good it is     YES
Are women in control     no
I am     yes
So I have to get behind it     YES
Are you still saying the land and mind project is right     YES
But I should suspend it     yes
And put creative energy into marketing Being about     yes
Graphics, contacts     yes
Spin-offs     yes
And marketing my name     yes
Think of land and mind as its context     yes
Make a press release     YES

11

Did I mean that     yes
Was the birthday the last straw     yes
Can I handle a breakup now     yes
It's the right reason     YES
Does he know it     yes
I miss myself in this relation, is that correct     yes
Am I going to have to go through all sorts of pain now     no
Is this about childish exclusion     no
It's correct     YES
Just handle pain when it comes up and don't elaborate     yes
Do you want to say anything     child's integration is complete and you have come through
I've done enough with him     yes
And he knows the reason is just     yes
It just boiled up in me     yes
Is it possible to find what he lacks     YES
He knows he hogs     yes
The book is actually going to arrive     yes
He did lie about calling me     yes
Will you give me advice about how to handle the next while     let early love be brave and responsible to shatter the structure
Will you say what structure     loss
Shatter the structure of loss     YES
Will you explain     strong, integrated work on withdrawal
I was out of line     YES
It was the baby's wanting something     yes
I was holding a grudge     yes
Is he realizing something too     yes
Whenever I ask what can I get, it's the baby     yes
Whenever I say what can I give I'm not     yes
Call him back and apologize     yes
I was unconscious of being angry about my birthday     YES
He didn't comfort the child whose feelings he hurt     yes
And I didn't show it     yes
I still don't know if he was lying     yes
It's true that I haven't had quality attention     yes
Should I wait to call him back     yes
Wait until tonight     yes
It's true that he is self-absorbed     yes
Will you comment     integrate, complete, responsible, shatter the structure
What is self absorption     complete childhood exclusion by feeling its childishness
That's how to handle self absorption     yes
Just go ahead and work the rest of the day     yes
Wait 'til tomorrow to call him     yes
Next week     no
Does he think it's really over     NO

-

Down a level. Conversations like midlevel managers who have to deal with each other a couple of times a week, not showing all their cards, believing bad things about each other. Being glad not to be in pain, not alert enough to call the other out of it or investigate, a life without feeling, fantasy instead of feeling, is it a level of corruption, rather believe bad things about each other than investigate.

Is there anything you want to say to both of us:

Tom is looking for intelligent speed. Fight withdrawal by balancing the child. When there is withdrawal look for the child. Search for an overview of heartbreak and anger. Slow growth of responsibility for child's losses. Act for true unconscious betrayals.

Tom's dream - fix his teeth, live in Mexico, new hotels, promote himself into concierge. His impatience. "I want to improve my money machine." The intimacy and trust and love, aimless bullshit, you call it and then the conversation is over, being called self absorbed. Unfinished business, punishment.

Talk to the book before I talk to you, on my side, callousness, I believe he doesn't care and I'm protecting myself, I have been in a lack of faith.

I don't have Joyce, I don't have Louie, I don't have any one who knows how to open my heart.

I don't know anyone who'll speak tenderly to the child     yes
I'm in despair     yes
Help me be present with heart     yes
This is heart - frustration, rejection, being cut off, being overriden, being unrecognized - is this his feeling     no
 
Waiting on my birthday reactivated     YES
And then he's been callous     yes

-

Can I do this     yes
Is it worth doing     yes
It is so endless     yes
I cannot see an end     YES
Am I working well enough     YES
Will you talk to me     shatter the structure of excluded child in Tom's slow growth
Is this related to my work     no
Are you talking about him now     yes
Are you praising me     yes
Are you saying I did the right thing     yes
I found my way     yes
Did I speak correctly to the boy     yes
Saying I couldn't help but I saw what's what     YES
That began something     YES
More?     decide, the illusion, is complete, mystery
Will you say which illusion     success
Now are you talking about my work     yes
Success with the work is an illusion     yes
The work is going to fail     NO
I'm not having break-throughs any more     yes
There are so many more chapters     yes
Each of them will take a month     no
The remaining chapters are not well written     YES
I cannot hurry the process     yes
Chapter 4 is another week     yes
Chapter 5 need to be rebuilt?     yes
I don't have enough money     yes
I can get to the end of ch 6 or 7 at this rate and then be out of money, on welfare     yes
Should I quit     NO
Get as far as I can and stop     no
Is this happening because it's the wrong project     no
Is there something wrong with me     YES
What     complete, men, search for friendship

Let me try this just talking - I'm scared and sore - I'm just slogging every day - reach and grasp still isn't good and there are two more sections in chapter 4, and then I need to run through the whole again. I feel lost in the whole, I don't know what I'm doing. I don't have the whole in my head. I'm crawling. At this rate I may not have got past section II when my money runs out at the end of April. Then what.

My heart hurts. I'm scared. Then I'll have parts I and II and they'll be pretty good, but I'll have to stop, go on welfare, find some sort of job. I still won't be able to be with Tom. There will still be no touch or heart life. I can't go forward, I can't go back, I'm smothering in the birth canal. I'm scared. There's no one who can help me. I don't understand why I can't go faster. I have always gone faster. Is my brain dying? Am I working the wrong way?

Please help me     yes
One card     you are recovering
Psychologically     yes
I damaged my ability to work     no
At the same time as doing this project     yes
I'm scared     NO
In pain     yes
Should I have faith that there'll be enough money     yes
Just go on doing my best every day     yes
Was it a mistake to go to Oregon     no
Will you lead me     something about intelligence
What     friendship
I don't understand     this is about completion
Something about intelligence and friendship     yes
I'm tired     no
Resisting     YES
The nightmare edge of this is the enduring and waiting     yes
Being a friend to the poor little thing who is waiting     yes
Should I keep going     yes
Partial loss of the work to recover the way, partial loss of that work to recover the way     YES
Is my ability to do that work while I recover something else     yes
Will I get it back     YES
And is the way being recovered     YES
Will you tell me in what sense     success, action, father/husband, judgment
Those things are being recovered     YES
Is it a list     yes
I should think of myself as working with a handicap     yes
I was able to turn very quickly this morning     yes
Should I work harder     YES
As hard as I possibly can     yes
Can I stop soon     yes
Is there a last thing you want to tell me     end of illusion your child's anger
Instruction?     yes
End the illusions that come from child's anger     YES
What happened this morning was a fast turnaround     yes
She showed her anger     yes
There were many     yes
And I am ending them     YES
And my heart hurts     yes

I guess it has blown over but I'm lonely, still.

Sunday night. I haven't worked today. I bore the struggle with Tom on and on and did what should be done in it but I didn't get what I need - do I? - compassion I think, like Joyce or Louie's seeing into the heart.

What burst out of me was anguish of need. "If I find someone who likes me more than you do, I'm going to go for it." The book said I was being a baby and I saw it was true, and said so, and yet what am I to do when I am a hungry heart. Tom has no compassion for a child's heartache. He has no compassion for his own. I would love to be with a man who has compassion for himself and me, and so could be interested and curious about many things. A warm man. I can struggle with Tom and sometimes he is better.

What is the truth about my situation. I don't want to say something harsh, like I used to. I'm better than I was, I don't rush to believe the worst. And yet when I offer heart and am brutalized I do shut down. The way he was when Frank died was brutal. My birthday was brutal.

I haven't been freaking much when those things happen. I've been saying to myself, I don't really want to be with this man. I've been liking it when I don't care about him. I've been thinking I'm closer to being free of him. He doesn't care for people. He cares for the old men in the hotel. He cares about people's opinion but he doesn't care about people's welfare. He's like my dad in that. I've worked so hard to be with a man like my dad and now I'm with a man like my dad and I'd rather be with a man who cares about my welfare. But I'm with a man like my dad. I am sentenced to purgatory for my crimes. If I do my best, if I'm faithful with the task, one day it will be over. Is that it? One day I'll be let off the hook.

I haven't earned a man who cares about me. I don't really like Tom very much. I'm sentenced to him for my sins. That's true, isn't it. I'm like Don Juan Mateus learning impeccability by living with a tyrant. One day it will be over. Is that the way to think of it? My task is to learn to have compassion for the man who cannot care for me or anyone. That's my task and I should be glad to be given it because I asked for it. I didn't know what I was asking for, but if I am faithful in it I will be more able in the rest of my life. I think I believe this.

If it's true, I have to pay for therapy the rest of my life because I won't be able to stay alive in feeling if no one can see me.

12

I'm thinking there is something wrong. I'm in a zone where the work is never done. I'm in a nightmare.

I had all my chapters worked out. I thought I only needed to check out the brain stuff and put the chapters together. That was in 1998 in fall in San Diego. I applied for the postdoc and didn't get it. I broke up with Tom. I expected just to be able to write. I kept going through my notes and making outlines. I couldn't write it. I came home broke and made up with Tom and worked in gardens. In fall and spring I TAed, got loan money, and tried to write. Found I had to make a new foundation in evolution and aboutness. Wrote it in the spring semester and then said, I have the summer and can write. Wrote all summer. It was very bad. TAed in fall, and in spring got loan money and reworked introduction and chs 1-3 so they read better. Now I can maybe get through chs 4 and 5 before I'm broke. That leaves chs 6-9, four chapters for the doc and a fifth to write later. Better if I could get it done. Half the thesis left.

Am I stuck in a nightmare zone     no
Am I crazy in some way     yes
Do I have too high an opinion of myself     no
Is the project ill-founded     no
Were all those delays necessary     no
Should I think of it as taking another year     yes
Am I stalling because I don't want to be with Tom     no
Why does it make me cry to say that     disappointment
Disappointment that I don't have a home for my weakness     yes
When it's done it isn't going to be good     no
It isn't going to be recognized     no
Will you tell me in what way I'm crazy     mourning searches for illusions of balance
Is this project part of that     NO

13

I worked well yesterday, organized the last two sections and then could fix reach and grasp. I had concluded that I should understand I won't finish by April. It might take a year. I must find money for the summer and TA in fall if I have to. Send out sections. Begin to work on mind and land. Relax and work harder. See if I can get UI. It's getting good. I don't have to finish before I'm finished.

-

If he is lying about this one, it is over. I'm frightened. Barnes and Noble, someone called Liberdad, says The Anza-Borrego from A to Z shipped on March 2nd. When he said he was sending another one it scared me.

Colin spoke to me today about my first section. What I say about artists he says is very wobbly. I am marveling at that. Kirk too. They hated what I said, which wasn't much and I never imagined controversial. So it's something about my stance. I'd have to send a nod to Derrida, he said.

I speak in child simplicity when I speak as an artist. They maybe think of their artist self in terms of mastery, is it? Presumably many people do. If art is tapping early love, and early love is heavily denied, they won't like it to sound simple.

13th

Frank lost his farm when he was 45, around the time when Rowen was born, 1986, a while after I last saw him, which might have been 1976 or 1977. The day he died he was calm. He sat with Marj and watched a Christian broadcast on TV. When she went to her volunteer job at the school he asked when she'd be back. She said she had a chiropractor appointment at 2. Throughout the morning he answered the phone when it rang. Three people spoke to him, the last at 1:30. One of them was his sister Judy. He put on his jeans and work boots and his old blue jacket. He set the stepladder next to some of his stuff stored in the garage, honey from his bees. The coroner said it was an expert hanging. He used electrical cord and tied eight knots.

Talking to Marj was like talking to an imbecile. I said mm encouragingly and tried to listen through what she wanted to say. She didn't want me to talk to Sharon. She thinks Sharon would tell lies about Frank.

The psychiatrist said he was very intelligent and therefore hard to help.

She said, You couldn't bullshit Frank. Tell him the truth or don't say anything at all. I said I didn't think it had occurred to us to bullshit each other, there wasn't any need.

Last October he arrived one morning in a terrible state. He had dreamed that he hanged himself. She took him to the clinic. He had electroshock six times in October and November.

What happened to him was a failure of his culture.

Is it a good idea to talk to you before I talk to him     yes
I'm not liking him     yes
I resent his uselessness     yes
Should I go into what I resent     yes
He wasn't sympathetic about Frank     yes
He won't be sympathetic about my boredom     yes
He won't be able to handle hearing about talking to Margaret     yes
He won't be interested in what I'm working on     yes
He'll be sensitive about hearing I'm going to talk to Colin     yes
He will bore me with his routine     yes
Or tell me blankly to talk     yes
He has no intellectual interests     yes
He has no curiosity     yes
He is making tapes and saying it's for me to justify spending money on music     yes
He keeps saying he's going to do things and not doing them     yes
He's interesting about the West sometimes     yes
But he doesn't make anything of it     yes
I don't want to call him     yes
He's so fucking limited     yes
I'm bored with him     yes
I'm bored anyway     yes
If I cut back on contact I'll go into attachment fear     yes
Should I go on like this     no
Should I say what I like about him     yes
When we do things together he can enjoy the moment     yes
He's sometimes sexually bold     yes
He sometimes gets brilliant     yes
He can open up into deep remorse     yes
He goes into worlds of music     yes
He thinks I'm beautiful, genuinely     yes
He thinks I'm a genius     yes
He has been loyal to me     yes
He has grown in grace     yes
He is enduring confinement and responsibility     yes
He has energy     yes
He looks for brain refs for me     yes
He always comes through     yes
I feel I have a man and am not hungry     yes
He has emotional simplicity     yes
He thinks about keeping us out of yuppie slime     yes
More?     no
Do you want to say something     he lets you find family heartbreak illusions
Which are central central central to my failures     yes
Act to improve family and come through     yes
Is that what you want to say to him     YES
He has family heartbreak illusions     yes
Do you have advice about this conversation     complete something
What     an improvement
Will you suggest to what     his writing process, struggle
He has an illusion about writing based on family heartbreak     yes, deception, loss, defeat, anger
Is that a list     yes
He thinks the writing process is those things     yes

14

I dream I am being driven in Ray's car which is an old-fashioned luxury car, very high off the ground. Under a sheet I am carrying a naked baby against my skin. It's a baby I'm taking care of for someone else. The baby is asleep in my arm, very relaxed. I notice I'm in sensual pleasure with the feel of the baby and other things. A man stopped next to us asks Ray if the baby is his brother. Somewhere in there Ray says I likely won't get the doctorate because they are changing the rules so there is a time limit. When we park Ray walks ahead. I have to make my way carrying the baby. At one point a little boy, five maybe, jumps up to help me at a step or barrier. I don't remember why but I see his eager alert face. Then I have to push through tree branches in a back yard. There's fruit on the tree, an unusual kind like loquats, though the tree is like an apple.

Is there a reason why I'm reluctant to go into work     yes
Can you tell me what it is     community
Child's     no, present community
It doesn't want me to do the work     no
A psychic effect     no
Do you mean lack of community     yes
Are you telling me something I don't already understand     yes
I avoid the work because I'm lonely     NO
Do you want a sentence     inner lovers must come through to subtle integration
To be able to do the work     yes
Ray and the woman with the baby     YES
He goes off and leaves me holding the baby     yes
I do that in the work     no, outside it
Is it the woman with the baby who is reluctant     no
The philosopher     yes
Because of not being connected yet     yes
Would lying down and feeling help     no
So the question is how to get the lovers joined     yes
By having them speak to each other     no
Something with the hands     yes
Writing exercise     yes
Would I have to be typing     yes
More?     wife tempers action and judgment
He drives, she feels     yes
Does the work need a warm-up     NO
A switch     yes
A visualization     no
Work from the last chapter     yes
Can you tell me exactly what the reluctance is     love recovering honest feeling
Does that mean I shouldn't be doing it     no
The reluctance is honest feeling     yes
So go deeper into it     yes
Is that the way to do it     YES
Enquire of it     yes
And that reconnects     yes
Is that it     yes
 
Is it true about dogs     yes
That makes hemisphere differences     yes
Dogs are not bifocal when they are alongside     yes
They are when they look forward     yes
How does a horse anchor itself visually, two foci?     yes
Have I stumbled on the origin of lateralization     yes
The hemispheres have to be able to switch     yes
Right hemisphere landscape, left hemisphere prey     yes
Do predators have a preferred side     yes
Parietal has to coordinate two foci     yes
It isn't calculated, it emerges, a covariant field     yes

16

When I woke at night I was telling Jean Waite a story about Tom. I said it began the night next to the fence post on the ranch site on High Bar Road. 1994. I prayed for a strong heart. A year later whatever I had prayed to said to me, if you want a strong heart, my dear, I have a project for you that will exercise it. A year after that I was next to the stream with Tom. He had his head on my lap, telling me his real story. He climbed the mountain on his broken feet. We read the skeleton woman story on the way home. I put my rock into the stream.

This doc is the second project that began at the High Bar site. I drove back to town to start school. What did I think I was doing. Making a living. I said I would do something about scientific visualization partly because I wanted to see the tapes, partly because I thought the men would want to fund it. I would not have been funded to do what I am doing, although what I am doing is what needs to be done. The men would not have wanted to fund it because they didn't know it needed to be done and would not have believed I could do it.

Alright. Let's see if I can be as clear about this project as about the other. I know what the parts were: perceiving, imagining, metaphor, digital studio, audition, vis tapes, brain, math, connectionist philos of mind. I thought it was about spatial imagining but to be about spatial imagining it had to get to the ground of being about. So I went there faithfully and set spatial imagining in that frame. But now I still don't know enough about how spatial relation is done. That's my hitch. I'd know what to do with it if I had it. I'd say there's simulational aboutness using the same structures to be as if about. And then there's the different ways spatial simulation is used culturally. My frame is fine. I just don't know enough about how it's done. There's a hole at the center.

Do other people know more     no
Can I know more     yes
Do I need to stop and spend a month     no
Will you tell me what to do about the hole at the center     teach, gain, feel, yourself
My reluctance about the dorsal     yes
I know Gibson is right     yes
I know task axis is right     yes
I know gradient and progressive coordination are right     yes
I know SPL is about moving in felt, peripherally seen ways     yes
I know IPL is about focal and foveal hand and mouth     yes
I know Talmy is right about the participation of a felt, sort of abstractly seen, spatial sense in speech     yes
I think it's SPL     yes
I think the two hemispheres can be about different things     yes
They can have separate axes     yes
The body integrates them in practice     yes
They are integrated in conscious experience     yes
Having two hemispheres is like having eyes pointed in two directions, even when there is focal convergence     yes
Dorsal and ventral does that     yes
When we write there is no background, the background hemisphere goes into fantasy     yes
Seeing and imagining at the same time is an important innovation     yes
With an animal like the dog the hemispheres have different roles at a given time but they are symmetrical and switch     yes
Lateralization of hand and eye occur together     yes
L IPL bulge is accompanied by R SPL-frontal bulge     yes
It's temporal cross-lateralization     yes
Being unable to speak about my disability is defeating honesty     yes
Is that what I mean     yes
Should I spend the day getting to the bottom of that     yes

I need to do an outline that says what the major new ideas in it are. Maybe a box in each chapter.

I've lost muscle in my right leg and foot     yes
L SPL top into medial     yes
Those areas are colonized in a different way     yes
That area does not like to feel itself     yes
It is not integrated with other things     yes
It's in the language hemisphere     yes
That part of R hemisphere is more developed, connected     yes
Are you saying my thoughts about lateralization are contaminated     no
But it's something about why I have trouble with the SPL     yes
Will you lead me from there     the structure is working from heartbreak and loss
Do you mean the area of physical loss is imprinted with emotional loss     yes
Not to mention the surgeries and so on     yes
Right there is a place that evokes pain     YES
Which is why I got immobile     yes
Are intuitions of this spoiling my intuitions about the SPL     no
Was that winged figure seen with magno     yes
Are you mainly saying I haven't seen the use of this stuff for my interests     no
You're saying it's why I don't deal with the SPL     yes
Is your main message, deal with it     no
What is your main message     persist in excluded child generosity with loss
Talk about it     no
Will you point this with one card     no
Two     yes, brave deep change
Of the project     no
Of me     yes
Do you mean go into that area     yes
By means of feeling the foot     no
Directly     yes
For purposes of changing it     no
For purposes of knowing it     yes
Does it have to do with feeling it rather than seeing it     no
Both at the same time     yes
Trying to move it     no
There cannot be deep change of its function     yes
So it's a deep change in feeling     no
Should I ask what needs to be deeply changed     loss of subtle feeling and speed
Speed in action     no in feeling and knowing
Do I have to do this before I can finish the project     no
I finish the project with the hole in this chapter     no

17

Two things at once, Tom this morning and Peter Manning last night.

Tom is wanting to say he is having sexual breakthroughs and has my number. (I've been trying to give it to you for years, I say.) He isn't telling me what he has realized but the word suspense is coming up and I think he may have got it. I'm supposed to think about what his number is. I think I know, but I have gone nowhere near it because I have been waiting to see whether he could be willing to learn mine.

If so, then so, and we could notch way up. We should enjoy the fear, he said. Yes. Empowerment, he said. I am thinking a strap-on, a big one, a big black one. The thought makes me laugh and warms my bones and warms my zone.

He has never fucked a woman in a way that gives her his actual sexual self, he says. That has to be true.

Now about Peter Manning. There was someone next to Barry who looked so British it had to be him. Big eyebrows. Sideburns, curly hair. A portly man with beer puff in his face. Looked like a Yorkshireman, a hobbit.

His piece was pleasure from the beginning. The large sounds had shapes and movement. Inner texture and foreground detail. They were clear to me. I felt I could see everything in the piece. There was nothing I didn't like. A very perfect sensibility, calm, exact.

At the intermission I went directly to him. Barry was waiting to set up the introduction. I brought out my piece of paper. Sweet of you, he said. We can't have that, I thought. I don't know whether it's sweet but it's true, I said. He was standing next to me in the narrow space between rows of seats, not much taller than me, 5'8 or 10, not fat but portly, with a hobbit's round tummy. Grey tweed jacket, open collar. Mild British voice. His hand maybe a little smaller and cooler than mine. I said immediately that the difference between his piece and the student pieces was that there was more form over all and more detail. At that point, I think, he took off his glasses and held them so the right flange was poked against his right temple. He looked across the seats to the stage. He agreed calmly. I went on. When I said I'd like to talk to him about space in his pieces he said he would be glad to. There was a moment, I'm not sure exactly where it came, when he had turned back toward me and we were looking in each other's faces. What I was seeing amazed me, under or amid the effort I was making to direct the communication. What I saw was the person who makes the pieces, invisible up to then, or invisible to me in the Toby I had been seeing. I saw a young person, neither boy or girl, mid-teens maybe, very clear and calm, small-featured and slender, looking fearlessly and steadily at me.

We agreed we'd talk on email. The intermission was over. We separated hurriedly.

What I saw was the truth, wasn't it. He looked like that because he was seeing me. The meeting had the transparency of that look because I worked hard to call it there.

Will he misunderstand the note     no
Will you tell me what he was seeing     an excluded child
Was he pitying me     no
Did he see me before I saw him     yes
Did he see my face change     yes
Was what I was seeing also an excluded child     yes
Do you want to say something     you processed exclusion and came through to completion
Is that the subtle feeling and speed you mean     yes
Do other people have that kind of meeting all the time     NO
Does that quality mean something romantic     no
Did I get us there by the way I steered the conversation     yes
Will he like anything on my website     YES
Is there a landscape he is connected to     yes
Should I direct him to chapter 1     yes
And then the computer music section     yes
Should I think of myself as corresponding to the person I saw     yes
With     yes

Tom said maybe we'll live in the Anza Borrego one day. I got specks of tears. It's too much to ask. To be able to walk out into beauty every day.

I told Tom the story I imagined telling Jean. He felt it.

Something else that came up. I tried to talk about the sense I've been having as I read the newspapers, that Christianity, as a culture, is rapidly becoming much worse. I see it as blackening and shriveling like a frozen potato. I've thought it must be happening to all the religions because the best have left them. It gave me a perspective I've never had - that losing me, all the versions of me, has been a catastrophe for Christianity. Tom and I imagined shipping all the Christians away. And Jesus can stay with us, I said. I believe something like that. I think what I do with the book and what Louie does, in as much as she does it with her intelligence rather than her rebellion, and what Tom is doing in his life at the Golden West, is Jesus alive outside the churches. Tom is not worked-out enough about religion to be able to bear what I said about my leaving being a catastrophe for the church. I could hear him fleeing.

Does it mean I should have stayed in the church? No, it means we should think of ourselves as building where we are. Cultural quality for the ecological movement, I said. I'll ride with you on that, he said.

[Electronic composer Peter Manning's In memoriam CPR, 12 minutes, octophonic, in the annual SFU electronic music concert]

-

[Notes from Trevor Harriot 2000, Qu'Appelle Valley, Sask:

long grass bottom land

nostalgia of the right kind that sounds an ethic of claims it makes on us

the birth of our last child, Sage, five years ago

journeys to recreate the world in movement over land

What if we had allowed the Indians to become tribes of modern pastoral people ranging herds domestic and wild over the entire Great Plains?

stories that can only be told when the snow is on the ground, with appropriate ceremony

the grandfathers, spirit buffalo

underlying fear of aboriginal entitlement

the creeks a network of remnant native wildness

The earth's crust on the northern great plains is still rebounding from the pressure of glaciers.

authentic efficiencies

Robert David Symons
 

field biologists or naturalists leading me to research sites on their home terrain

The camera has made our visual experience even more distanced and facile.]

 
Are those slides as wonderful as I think they are     yes
Is it that people haven't been able to see them     no
There has been hardly any response     yes
Do you understand why     no
You don't understand either?!     yes
Do you want to comment     illusion, that Ellie, is excluded, is completed
Is there some way I could give them     yes
Will you tell me how     unconscious, bravery, defeat, and slow growth
Is my feeling about them an illusion     no
They are stunningly wonderful     YES
I would like to give them to everyone     YES
They are both the place and the meeting     yes
Is it possible to give them to everyone     no
To many     yes

19

I think I've got it though I can't prove or defend it. Say it but play it down.


part 4


the golden west volume 22: 2001 january-may
work & days: a lifetime journal project