| in america 13 part 3 - 2007 june-july | work & days: a lifetime journal project |
19 June Lemonade and maple syrup and cayenne fast for two weeks - see whether I can fix bp because it's been scary, these mornings 190/105, 165/105, 166/100. Sore and shaky. I will get ready for another day and start tomorrow night. What else I want. No newspapers. Work disciple of some kind. Walks. Clean house. New clothes. 20
21 Thursday. Have just drunk a quart of warm salt water, see what happens. I'm visiting death, is that the thing to say. I have to learn to be this age. I'm thinking my shut-downness used to be about attachment but now maybe it's more about health worries. I avoid doing things because they stress me, and mostly I don't know what's happening. I just listen to something that says no to them and go on without dealing with what could maybe be fixed. Devices that are unconscious - TV at night to bring bp down. I don't walk and do yoga because muscles hurt after. And during. What do I know. Tea in the morning isn't working for writing anymore and it raises bp. If I go to Starbucks and have more, it can get very high. Soaking my teeth in salt water before bed keeps them from being sensitive but maybe raises bp. I've been using calcium for sleep but it's maybe wrecked potassium balance, which could cause tachycardia. There's a whole complex balance where trying to fix one thing can spoil something else.
- Tom offered a job in another site at UCSD, $48/hr with 2 hrs overtime, 3 days a week. 22 First Ave and Upas, the sidewalk café. Ice water, third day of the fast. I'm more relaxed. I'm softer someway. Look at that eucalyptus, naked stem a greenish cream. I just stopped at Scott's house. His front door tree is wide and dark green and has a dozen little gold balls. The white rose is blooming behind a bush of mountain marigold. The grapes! Are swarming the pillars. The burgundy-leafed one has clusters of dotty things. In this not-eating state I can do things - for instance stopping at Scott's, ordering new docs, shopping for clothes yesterday. Is it the relaxation? Is it being unstructured? 133/79. My left arm is much weaker and stiffer than the right. Are other people like this more? I can happily do nothing. 23 Hardest day so far, the 5th. Sunday waking at Tom's, drinking salt water, feeling shaky. Hours later I was okay, but not liking Tom, anxious about the car, tetchy. Refusing to read newspapers or watch movies means we don't have ways to be together. Why am I farting on an empty gut? Toward the end of the day. 24 Day 6 I was torpid until I licked some maple syrup and then felt heat in my face. Still weak tho'. I'm skipping the salt water, am absorbing too much of it. Will like gardening I think. Saturday evening we drove into the North Park streets and looked at houses and gardens. There's a lovely feel to many of them, well designed houses with a bit of fantasy and plant love set out in pretty ways. At the end of the weekend we latched onto that as the one good thing we'd managed, though I was nervous with the car. Scott's garden 3 and a half hours, I worked, not stiff, not weak, just seeing, moving, happy. In the front garden there's a Queen Anne's lace, one plant, 8' tall. The White Cockade in the corner had two luscious sprays, cream white. Graham Thomas has buds. The apricot is triumphant, the way it spreads at the doorway corner so vividly sound. Both of the red-eye cistus are grown larger than I've seen them. The populifolius under the acacia too, with Jupiter's beard behind. Sun on the bench, on the flagstone pads, on the grass, on the trickling fountain. The front garden is the sun garden, radiant. An orange-red vine geranium and a little cistus matted together under the apricot, out of harmony but alright. And then across the path the oakleaf hydrangea with long pink and white panicles drooping over the wall, the corner hydrangea gone pink rather than white, the acanthus behind it with tall flower spikes also white and something like pink. Variegated pointed ivy under the bougainvillea. The eleagnus and the salix knitted together with the bougainvillea to make a corridor to the room under the tree. Some of both the pink and the vitifolia passionflower vines mysteriously dead but the Boston ivy filling in gracefully. The grapes this time flourishing, one will be able to use the bougainvillea to climb to the porch crossbeams. The banana died after the fence was put in. Sitting in the back door patio looking toward the profusion of that corner room. It has a mud floor now but everything's happening high up. The lemon tree, bougainvillea, pink rose vines and one of those vines with brilliant orange flowers [tecomaria capensis]. A bird jumping among the inner branches lighting on the edge of a dog bowl to drink. Nest in the passiflora on the lattice. The silk tree spread broad and light with its feather-fluff pink flowers floating. My pruning last summer has held in the willow, the eleagnus, the guava, even the buddleia in a way, and the acacia. Such a sweet live self-shaping well-planned garden, enclosed, interesting, rich, burgeoning. 26 My face is a younger shape and I have more waist, I look more like the 50s person, more elf. I'm aching less even with gardening yesterday. If this works, I'm wondering, what will I have to do to maintain it. What brought this last worst podge was grilled ham and cheese panini on rye, and even now I'm dreaming of them - sandwiches, pizza, tortellini, Bread & Cie fresh olive bread with butter and cream cheese and apricot jam, lasagna, the big toasted slices of round Greek loaves in London. Am I going to have to live completely without bread for the rest of my life? Eat even less? - I've already been at one meal a day. I was alright without bread since I came back from the Saskatchewan trip with Louie but since I've been here in this little shack I've wanted it sometimes and eaten it rebelliously and the result has been bad. So what I want to know is whether I can get to and maintain 140 lb, thin face and tight waist, while still eating bread! I don't mind giving up habitual tea because it wasn't working anymore. I don't mind not hogging fruit the way I do. I don't mind giving up the daily lumps of butter if omega 3s will help vegetables. Use it sometimes. I won't give up all salt on food. I can try to get by not using salt on my teeth except where really necessary. I won't give up aspirin for sleep. Should I eat less meat? Could I eat bread once a week if I also fasted one day a week? Should I stick to yoga religiously but keep varying it.
Should I eat more? So if I do yoga and gym can I sometimes eat bread? Once a week?
27 Day 8. Flowers in the house from Taft. At this moment velvety gold light on the far wall from the sun far north at almost 8. It's fading. When I looked up it grabbed me, it was so intense. Nasturtiums by the phone where I smelled them when I called Tom. Roses in the turquoise pitcher. I cleaned the house this morning after lemonade revived me. Honeysuckle by the computer. A clean smell when I opened the door. At Walter Anderson's looking at reds and spiky blues, then Clairemont sprinkling grass food wearing a yellow rubber glove. Am I okay. At night waking to shit mysterious mucky water I felt in danger of dying, but then lay down blissful on my back on the pillows. With effort a fluttery feeling. Researching where to go next. I'm not going to lose 15 lb on this. Atkins, I thought. Meat, grilled. Eggs with mayo. It works for bp they say. HDL fats. Do yoga while I'm away and gym when I get back. Then if I exercise aggressively 5 hrs a week I can have ham and cheese panini or pad thai or tortellini with shrimp. Once a week. 28 This aft I put on the button jeans, the new docs, the new J.Jill cami, the new dark rose seersucker shirt, and walked out feeling light and tall to show Tom. He wasn't home but when he came back from body surfing at PB he was agog. On the way home, stopped at Whole Foods and looked at carb counts up and down the aisles. Tamari, squash soup, roasted garlic salad dressing, imagining cooking - wonderful cooking, low carb, olive oil, sesame oil, capers, romaine lettuce, hard boiled eggs with capers. Cooking in Tom's kitchen. Have been eating so miserably - not miserably but grimly, pragmatically - since I was poor - and haven't had a kitchen - and now I could eat less but marvelously. And want to spend money on clothes too, I want not to be a dull frump, I want to be glamorous and fine. Walking around I was feeling as if maybe I could be like Susan that way, I could make efforts to be marvelous. Lean, light. My nice bum is still there, it turns out. I could find ways to put my hair up the way she did - I could go back to J.Jill tomorrow and get more beautiful stuff. - A reset Nora said. 29 My right eye, distance eye, has a spot in its field that has been like this [sketch], concentric lines. Today I think it's more of a [sketch]. I don't see it if I close my eyes but as soon as I open them onto this page it's there almost at focus, especially if I blink. Friday. Day 10 but I'm not going to stop tomorrow, I'm okay now though maybe not ready to do heavy digging. Haven't lost more than an inch of middle but am leaner otherwhere. - Shopping. This time spent $160 and got 4 prs of socks - have I ever bought new socks before - another pair of those linen pants - another rose-colored shirt - a white lace bra and a black one, DKNY, underwire but an amazing fit - a white cotton and spandex v fitted shirt - a black Lauren shirt. The latter was $39 down from $79, the white was $20 down from $48, the bra was $15 down from $30, the pants $40 down from $50, even the socks were $5 down from $7 and 4 for 3. Last time at J.Jill's $144, Chucks $81, docs $109, total $500 on clothes and shoes! 30 145 this morning. When I see myself on the plate glass downstairs it's a different body - though the waist is only an inch less - it came off mostly all over - I'm not the dumpy person, the little thick biddy. But dark under the eyes. 1 July My eye spot is worse after eating. Now it's a spot of blur. For instance as I was leaving Tom's house it was the size of his face. But the rest of distance vision wasn't clear either.
Wondering about giving two weeks of my free month to this preoccupation. Should I have been doing something else, like learning the new Mac, getting pictures organized. I could do that next. Getting ready for Vancouver and film business. But then I say, being so dumpy was a constant misery and worry. Looking the way I did yesterday at the checkout at Whole Foods, fitted white shirt showing black lace bra at the V, washed button-front Levi's, new red Chuck E's, was making the cashier speak to me with more sparkle and a man in a booth stare. It makes me less isolated. Ocular migraine. Macular degeneration. [web research on eye spot]
2 Went back shopping some more, wanted to get Louie a bra like my new underwire, for her love woman adventure. The rack was gone. But saw two more for me, v simple comfortable over-the-head stretch ones, so now I can chuck all the ugly old ones. They're very thin and light. And then didn't stop. Looked at earrings, bought a bracelet that has a small-link stretchy band and fits my wrist perfectly so it rides above the wrist bone and stays there. Little enameled rectangles, red, peacock blue, aqua, burnt orange, chartreuse. It's very pretty. I like that it doesn't slip down. Came home and bought some 4711 online. Googling it I found out that it's old, the oldest continually manufactured cologne. 1792. The story is that a Carthusian monk gave the formula as a wedding present. It was called aqua mirabilis and used as medicine. Strict secrecy but there are essential oils of citrus, rosemary, lavender and some say bergamot, matured together. When I was sixteen I opened a drawer in the blond 1950s dresser in the Mädchenzimmer on Clearbrook Road - the sunny room with venetians - it was the deep upper right drawer - and found a small bottle of 4711 that I wore under a white cotton shirt for berry picking. It was what Frank smelled when he said, leaning close over the strawberry row, that he smelled something so nice and fresh. Now I discover Goethe wrote about it and Wagner wore it. Google in this era giving historical depth to that era. So Susan, what other femme accounterments should I be buying? How should I be thinking of this spending. Support of love woman. Young self.
3
At Scott's today moved the small rugosa from its dark corner to the front garden, which is sublime except for the dog shit. The Graham Thomas is blooming on perfect long sprays, apricot-hearted next to the apricot tree. The cistus have a lot of white flowers. It's now such a pleasure garden. Billows of climbing hydrangea and the pink-mauve microphylla together. A bird standing on the rim of the fountain to drink. Blue sky resonant above.
At Whole Foods when I was crossing the parking lot with a rattling cart a man who had been rattling another cart ahead of me and had stopped at his tailgate looked a long look at me, smiling amused and friendly, a man with a good, smart, lively face. That wasn't happening when I was 10 lb heavier two weeks ago. When I arrived at Tom's house the shades were down and I found him in his pyjamas, unshaven, surrounded by piles of books, typing on his Mac, which was on the small round table (we bought for $25 at the shop he found on 30th). He said he had been writing since 7. (It was 2:30.) His piece on North Park. Wanted me to look at it. I'm afraid to. It's dense. It reminds me of something gem-encrusted. I don't like it. But then he said Howl and I got it. He read a line aloud and I could see him at a reading singing out his encrusted airless inventions and people liking them, and liking him. Playful people. It's not my kind of writing, it's a kind of shuck and jive, but it is invention and it has his manic busyness of head. What seems to me to be an uneducated man's bragging about cultural acquaintance embarrasses me for him, though. Luke. I phoned Luke this morning. Found him in London evening full of plans, not in a hurry to go. Said I'd buy his ticket to be able to see him. The air conditioners on the roof are on continuously now. Dark sound. It encloses like a wrapping, I can't hear or feel the space beyond it. 4 Dreamed Edith Janzen was living in my old place. I wanted to give her a plate that belonged to her. she'd been in prison for something about debt - not paying her rent - and I was trying to phone her just after her phone had been turned on again. She had French Canadian roommates who said they'd fetch her but didn't. I walked up the street to the apartment building where I used to live with Luke. It had been remodeled but here it is. There's Edith, I give her the plate. She doesn't want it but I say it's hers. - There I look up to see what the squawking is about and see a rumpled hawk on the rail, yelling at a smaller bird who is dive-bombing him. - I'm asking her roommates which is her bedroom. It's this one, the one at the near end of the room. It's where my bed used to be. What's Edith Janzen. Disloyalty, is my first thought. The moment in the corridor in grade one, walking holding hands the way grade one girls did. She dropped my hand. I knew it was because she was ashamed to be associated with me because I was lame. Has shame been in prison for nonpayment of debt? Did I remember that moment because it was the moment I realized I was socially marred? Imprisoned means dissociated. Something that belongs to shame and needs to be given back to her. Why is it a plate? - Oh I get it, what happened yesterday in Whole Foods. There was a little girl in an aisle with me, who was staring at my foot. I stopped in front of her and stared at her until she looked up and saw me staring. When I was turning away I heard her father saying, Do you know her? A nice father. - So what I have that belongs to Edith is the plated stare. Giving it back means realizing it. I was bothered to have an adult see the transaction I sometimes have with children, but at the same time I felt that it's right to do what I do. I didn't think I could explain it to the father. I minded that he would see me as spiteful or crazy. And it is spiteful, but it's self-loyal. It's what I would have liked from an adult friend. Yoga, I'm halfway through the 28 days. My left shoulder isn't as sore but it stays surprisingly stiffer than the right. I think my eye has fixed itself too. Tom and I tonight, I made salad and grilled a piece of steak and we sat after on the couch he telling about Bud. He looked handsome. These days I don't feel him, I don't know why. There he is. I visit because he wants me to. I cook to give him that pleasure. I don't care about what he cares about. I like his house, his dishes, even. The look of Greek salad in his ringed glass bowl. I'm pleased for him that his fortune has turned, so he can spend days writing in his quiet space and then go to work for a couple of days. I praise him for being good to me. But it's not for me, I'm not there. I don't feel his body or my own, except as appearances. Heart doesn't open to realness. It's maybe that only loss and fear of loss feels real to me? 6
Friday morning. I'm planting Dawne this aft. Dr Phan yesterday said my eyes are healthy. 7 Email from Francis recommending a book that says interactive dualism must be true because of various documented psychic phenomena. He says Margo mentioned this book, which he has, and they thought I might be interested. Meaning, Take that. I'm disgusted, is the word, like having something slimy pressed into my hand. I think various unusual things do happen. I take them as suggesting that we have more to learn about the physical. What offends me is their motive, which is death denial. Is that their whole motive? Yes. People are so weak-headed! I shouldn't leave it unanswered, I thought. I wrote back, I'm familiar with parapsychic reductionism, but I don't think it implies what its believers think it implies, ie interactive dualism. It's a framework decision on both sides, they decide for hope of survival, I decide for hope of one valued coherent world in which I can understand and realize. They imagine naturalism in a limited and stereotyped way and try to defeat that - they have no sense of the richness of implication. 8 Sunday. I left Tom in his house with a new chair, an office chair on wheels, pulled up to his desk, computer and can of pens set ready, the moon lamp of many Christmases ago in the corner. In the kitchen a dark red curtain in the pantry door. He didn't mind when I said I was going home (after I made him lunch) because he was going to sit down at the desk. I believe. We drove to Leucadia yesterday and had a fight I'm not going to describe. Afterward I liked him more. We stopped at Pilgrim's house to see whether he happened to be there. Stood on the Stone Steps landing overlooking a narrow strip of locals' beach. Came away from it softened by the sea air. After I dropped Tom at home last night Pilgrim's brother phoned with a telephone number and Tom called Pilgrim in Washington State, and then Whiteman in LA. They were overjoyed. "I thought you were dead, Fengler!" The men who love him. - So Tom has had a good 24 hours. And I look good, that's my news of these days, my perfect blue jeans, perfectly washed and now perfectly fitted classic 501's. I wore them today with my perfect bracelet and the perfect J Jill cami, cream-colored and sleek, and the blue Chuck E's. I'm maybe 10 lbs lighter, which isn't much but all the difference because I stand light and feel glamorous, and that makes me play with clerks in Whole Foods and people in the aisles at nurseries, and anyone else going. I'm feeling it as the spirit of the 16 year old. I bring Tom myself in new clothes to show and he is generous, always interested in clothes. He said beautiful is too hard-cut a word, he wanted to say I'm lovely. Healthy-looking. "Eudaimoneously lovely." 10 My feast of vanity has gone on. Bought earrings today, sterling silver twists [sketch] and Austrian crystal in a black metal with pale blue stones the color of Susan's rectangular stud, that have a nice light like evening far west at home. Also a much better alarm clock that tunes itself to a satellite signal for time correct to the second - I didn't get it for that. 144 naked. Less boob but I like it now. Plucked my eyebrows a bit. Hasn't occurred to me in ten years, more. Tracking site says the 4711 will arrive Thursday. 11 Was at Mission Beach on the sand phoning Rowen in Victoria on Tom's cell phone, Rowen at work in the camera store. He said he's working all day and late into the night and is happy as a clam. [Paglia Vamps and tramps 1994
winning recognition of the pagan line as a countertradition whose major contributions have been science and art, and whose philosophy of sexuality is both broader and subtler than the Judeo-Christian. 21 Unlike the feminist establishment I recognize that abortion is killing .... We must philosophically strengthen feminist theory so that it can admit that abortion is an aggressive act, that it is a form of extermination .... Women who want to achieve are at war with nature 40-41 What I am calling for is a massive restoration of psychology to feminist thought. 46 difficulty forging a persona of leadership Leadership is warm on the surface but cold at its heart. At the top, one must have the long view. Every decision means betraying something. Texas feminists grit to handle men at their most macho a vigorous physicality gay men, with whom I felt totally free He had opinions, tastes, energy, wit gay male consciousness is stunningly expansive and exquisitely precise artistic sensitivity and rich, vulnerable emotionalism plodding earnestness of lesbians Lesbian feminism has produced only ghettoization and miniaturization of women. No great works of art or intellect have emerged from it .... Women never grow from the moment they enter the lesbian world. Lesbian feminists can treat each other with a fickleness, parasitic exploitativeness and vicious spite that have to be seen to be believed. Dealing with and controlling men makes you stronger. ... seething with unacknowledged hostility ... root of depression... push-pull emotion, rather than genital sexuality 80-81 Male homosexuality may be inherently tragic, for it posits as glamorous perfection precisely what most loathes it and cancels it out.] 13 In bed with the door open, a strip of sun 5" wide lying across the bedding and across the page. It's a bit after 7. Yesterday I sunned the pillows and comforters on the roof and washed the sheets, cleaned out the house. Brought up the garden tools from the trunk. Returned library books. Went to water the flower bed at Dawne. Later today I'll empty the fridge, take mayo and salad dressing to Tom's. Something about Tom and sex. He's saying we wasted a lot of time watching DVDs and he did it because he was blocking sex. I wasn't very interested in pressing through with that conversation, why. I like the visible far ends of his body - head, hands, feet - but the middle where it's naked is a tight-chested humpbacked skimp-assed crisp-skinned old man's carcass. It does not give off electric warmth. It's closed. And why would I want to poke him, he's not in it. He comes by long hard friction that makes me feel unfelt. He doesn't check that I'm ready before he pushes in. He's afraid I'll leave if I don't get sex but he doesn't actually want it. He doesn't let down into feeling it - he does it [like a job]. He doesn't want to lose me because I keep chaos at bay. He looks around his place and says, This is how Ellie shows her love. When he says it I'm thinking what I love is having a good place to come to, I love making beauty. I like cooking there. Basically I'm in despair about Tom opening up physically, I'm angry and resigned and in some way definitely looking around for another option. He's seeing me fancying up before I leave and coming to the right conclusion. Last night I had a flash of anger that he was bringing any of this up just before I leave, when it's safe, to try to hold me through a separation. I don't like his slovenliness, for instance the way his plate is always a mess when he finishes eating, and the way he'll go on about whatever his preoccupation of the moment might be, something at work. I'm bored writing this, I'm bored with being bored with Tom. Rowen stressed needing equipment for a photo shoot. A wedding tomorrow he says. I had to scramble with two credit cards and phone card running out but he's professionally equipped. Another much better body, a lens, flash, hard case. He's going to owe $1824 this time. 14
- Gate 17 with my green corduroy bag and a decaff. I'm two hours early. Had nothing more to do. As I wheeled my heavy bag up to the parking meter in front of Davis Marketing there was Nora arriving, and then a yellow taxi called Rumi. Here I am in red shoes, blue shirt, new black linen pants with wide legs, green bag. Bracelet. Brown arms. The decaff is delicious. When I look at people now I see insulin fat, carbs. I'm saved. When I wake I go look at my middle in the mirror. But there's a tremour in my left hand, only the left, when I'm stressed. Something wrong with the way that arm sits in the socket. What did I dream. A hot night, party in Richard's yard below, not sleeping well. I was in the house where I used to live with Luke. Middle floor of that familiar building. There's another boy visiting my boy and they're getting wild. I tell them to go to the park, do they know how to get across Venables at the light? Down at the end of the room I find something new, a window into an addition that's for growing orchids, has orchids growing already. A little girl I'm looking after when the boys go. There's something wrong with her. When I hold her arms to have her walk she dangles there, a wide short torso and spindly dangling legs. What will I do with her. I don't want her. Put her in the bathtub, maybe she'll like that. Looking for a bathroom. There's a tub but it's at the end of a few bare boards stretched over empty space. I can't get there with her. Find other bathrooms with rotted floors. The departure hall is filling up. Gormless beings. - I thought she was a yoga person and there she has sat down in half lotus. Strong large body with a small head. She's meditating! Silver rings on both hands. 15 Vancouver, Sunday. I'm in the garden. It's a mess. The amateurs have it. They put their time into commerce not beauty. Plant sale last weekend. Woodchip on the paths. The herb garden benches are collapsing, benches defining the kids' area. The round table's gone. There's Belle peering at me. Belle still coughing and not dead. I'm in the orchard at a picnic table someone has dragged in. It's now the only table. The cottonwoods are sky-high, both the one at the entrance and those behind the herb garden. The herb garden is solid with weeds, roses overwhelmed, anything anywhere, no sense of shape. I can see Roseraie de l'Haye through the trees blooming maroon. Crows walking on the mown orchard grass. Traffic on Venables. A gull overhead. Grey overcast, sense of quiet. Mrs Yee waved from an edge. Anything from the trip? From the small Horizon Air plane after Seattle down among the islands a surface of water silver and squirming with tiny sharp lines some parallel and some at angles, like a fingerprint but squirming and writhing so fast I could never resolve the pattern, the whole silver area sliding northward with us. A beautiful Near Eastern girl, maybe fourteen, whose face even now I don't recall. Smooth oval face, nose slightly aquiline, an Arabian Nights princess. Should I say shocking, no, gripping. Esther and Richard's place full and closed, full of art, sealed shut at all the windows. How do people live like that, in phantasmagoria. It's an image of what is, people sealed into cultural reference. Within it I shrink to the spot where I am, I pull in my edges. The silk tree that volunteered at the edge of the kids' tank. It isn't beautiful here now but it demonstrates abundance. It's full and green. It began in beauty like young people do. 16 I dreamed Tom in another room fucking a man. I could just see his bum going up and down. I thought it was alright. And then again he's fucking another man. I look from another angle and see a woman's head. She has curly brown hair. I'm staring steadily and Tom sees me watching. Then I'm storming around very coldly. He's Tom but more like Roy - doesn't look like Tom. Talking to some young women. I'm telling them a dream I'd (actually) had earlier, about a bottle of soap. I'd discovered that if I spoke to it to ask it to come to me, it would push itself across the shelf toward me. I tried one last little request. Something like asking it to hop down into my hand. It made a little effort, fell sideways against the wall. Then woke wondering whether my few little secrets and Tom's, whatever they are, have made the distance there is. I didn't tell him I'm going to see Dave Leonard, or that I write him once a week. And that I don't mention him to Dave. Why it is, is that I need someone reading my journal and saying he hates the man who clubbed me on the head. I don't want Tom to have anything to say about that, since he doesn't give it himself. Did something happen. He had a funny streak and we were close, and then I went into self improvement and lost interest in him. I wouldn't watch TV or DVDs with him and was always going home and not staying overnight. Was that anything other than it seemed? Which was that I was getting ready to leave. Louie and I yesterday set out on bikes to ride the seawall. At Third Beach there was a gate across the path that said it was closed through to Lions Gate Bridge because of storm damage. We thought, oh bits of wrinkle in the path, liability worries. Passed around the gate and went on. It turned out to be a dozen fallen cedars under a lapsing cliff. We had to manage the bikes up and over and through and around, and by the time we had got to the far side of the worst I was running with sweat. But the smell of decaying cedar, the smell of low tide on the rocks. The difference of the air here, wet and green. 5 more days here and then somewhere else. A hostel? Monday - I can pick up my passport on the 30th. Have a roast in the oven. Went to look at a hostel. Bought thread for repairs. Used their broadband to check Rowen and Luke's Facebook pages, had an email from Justin, looked at Auto Trader sites, got a km conversion chart, spoke to David, ate chicken kebabs pleasurably in the Seymour Centre, finished Kite runner, which was cheesy though I liked to know about Afghanistan, sat on the porch behind grape leaves reading Sardinian recipes in the sun feeling on holiday, foolishly bought books at SFU, had many more events in a day than usual. 18 Yesterday didn't buy a jeep in Lynn Valley. It's raining and cold. My shoulders hurt. I'm asking Luke to let me stay in his room from Saturday. Louie is not inviting me to stay [when she's away in Haida Gwai]. How is Louie. She opened the door when I buzzed another woman. Middle-aged, in a skirt, not wearing a bra. Relaxed. Friendly. She had her hair back so what showed was mostly her grey streak. A warm relaxed woman of fifty. We visit. Does it ever feel real? She is what she is meant to be, I was her adventure, her aspiration. Now she's pleased to be past it. She can do something unusual that brings her a lot of business. Maybe she has got to a man of accomplishment, not a man she'll love with open heart, but a man she can claim in her family. It needed to happen, it's a completion. Is loneliness the only passion I can find, now? No. I was saying last night that I look hard and grim because there's no passion. I'm loveless. I said maybe loneliness is the only passion I could find now. She agreed in a way I didn't like, I suspect her still of wanting me alone if I am not hers. I said when I was transcribing the bad years with her I was amazed how oppressive they were. She said she hadn't known better. Is that an answer? I don't think so. She had that rind of will, what she's calling now her strong spirit. She mostly didn't control me but she oppressed me. Should I track any of this with her, do we have accounts to clear? More important, where's love, which I had so much of in those days. Is this a waiting time? Do I have to find it? There I go look at my face in the bathroom mirror, which has wings so I can see that the right side of my face is old and the left quite fine. Then I try on all my clothes in front of the full length mirror in the bedroom. Somehow I still have a bosom. I'm wide and short at the waist in a way that has to do with bones, which can't be helped. Otherwise quite good. I like the clothes. Ie my passion in this time is looking better. 19 Tom was at Starbucks at 11 last night writing me a real letter. After work. He'd been up since 3. I'm sitting with my first cup of tea in a month - it's just a month and I'm slender enough. Quiet in the building. Quiet in the town. Wet grey. I'm wearing my long sleeved light cashmere t and the green cargos I hemmed up waiting to call Luke yesterday. What do I have to do today - be back at 3 to call Luke. Post office. Visa. G & F. Jeep dealer. -
21st Decaff latté on 4th Ave. Saturday morning. Wet. I stepped out into cedar. Luke's room. Next to the bed in his row of books a book-sized photo album. The first thing in it the birth announcement Roy sent my folks the day Luke was born. My pick of card, Roy's handwriting. There is Roy in his ecstatic mode. Staring at it feeling what I felt about it then, charmed and mistrustful. And then many photos of Luke with his arm around a woman. Suzanne, Angela, Charmaine, the South African business woman, and is that Kim. Child photos I took. A few by other people. Pictures of his brothers. Pictures of me at different ages. The last photo is of him standing in a pair of dress pants and no shirt smiling down at the woman taking the picture with blazing sexual confidence. Looking at the life story he has collected I feel sore at heart. There's my beautiful boy, there's his feeling for people he's found, there's his feeling for the story as a whole, and why do I feel it as sad. Lonely. Because I feel all those people as making-do. Loving what comes along because loving is his nature, but not having found the life he's able for. I feel remorse. And when I see that his one desk photo is of himself at three in my arms, Andy's photo, where I'm looking at him with a soft face, adoring him, and he has his eyes down embarrassed to be so pleased, is it. The poverty and ugliness of his house. The shabby small room with people who advertised for a roommate. His adventitious collection of books, the novels I've sent him. The clothes he didn't take with him. I was trying to say to Louie that maybe I forbid myself to profit of my work because it harmed Luke, that it's a hypothesis about the unconscious. She was blank disapproval, she didn't see that it's about justice not Christian indoctrination. But then she said, Where are you feeling it now, and I said Between my eyebrows where the small child in the hospital bed feels a damped anxiety that no one will ever come for her. How is it with Louie. It got better when I asked point blank whether I can stay in her place when she's in Haida Gwai and I come back from Vermont. But when I saw the photo of her with me in Luke's book, short haired boygirl holding a camera looking sideways so much lighter-spirited than she is now, I remembered what I miss. 22 Because of the web journal project I now can't write that sentence without wondering if it's true. Kitsilano Coffee Co Sunday morning: good neighbourhood, Luke. Shops with better clothes than I see in SD. Fruit and vegetables. Breakfast cafes. Greek restaurant. Bookstore. A Capers. Bus stops. Tall men my age, a lot of them. A Mac repair shop. Green streets with prosperous houses a hundred years old. This relaxed country. Am I imagining that. Two weeks. I need something to do. 23 Came home with Di Brandt. What I did today. Stopped at Dodge-Jeep-Chrysler, talked to a man who said I wouldn't be able easily to register in the US. To New West to look at a nice jeep, v nice. To Harbour Centre for lunch and then fixed link problems on w&d front pages using a web program I don't know. A lot of buses, a lot of money on buses, $8.50. Took care of second computer account which had been shut down. Shopped at Capers. 24 Beauty, energy, power Jitters Café. The barista managed the foam so it's a leaf with a stem. The coffee is smoky, unusual. There is old furniture. Leather sofa next to a storefront window. There's my bike. The barista has a Dutch nose, a genius forehead, a tattoo on her upper arm. The music has soft bass through good speakers. It's twenty to eight, I'm the only customer except for a man leaning on the counter. Can smell 4711 on my hand. Here are my blue sneakers. Wearing my jeans, loose red hooded t, black linen kung fu jacket. Dr Ranger later, after the bridge. For once I dreamed something interesting. I was flying over and around a mansion, a wide rather than high mansion with broad lit windows. I tried flying higher so I wouldn't throw a shadow someone could see, but as high as I got there still was a shadow moving below me. Leaving, I was losing altitude. Was on a path cut quite deeply and curving down into maybe a creek bottom. There was a man above me on the bank who could see me though I was invisible. There was a matter of fact feeling of wizard powers. Beauty, energy, power 5 years I've been in SD. Journal project and mbo site, Susan, seeing Tom through, helping Ro some, Luke in the PRC [Peace River Country], two times in San Felipe. Bought and looked after the jeep. Doubled income. Scott's garden. I am sniffing for a scene. Where is action, consequence, energy, company. Larger self, will this work, are you there?
Do you mean that's me?
I'm loveless but I didn't want to be, everything ended - neuroscience, Tom, land
Do you mean if I saw it better? Do you mean now I have to see pain and damage with love? Because it is? There's lots of that. I wouldn't run out of that. What would it make of me?
I'm not afraid, it sort of doesn't occur to me - no, I'm afraid it would be false, a pious lying
So I should ask for heart? Could that happen? I'm afraid of being cooped up with only people, too many people, just always feeling sorry for people - but would that be worse than iron-hearted contempt, which is what I often have now - but it's natural, it's not pious - for instance for the tiny Korean in Luke's house who keeps the ugly house tidy and accuses me of this and that in a suppressed voice with an ugly accent. The house of suppression. Two mismatched people I never hear speaking, each in their own room with doors closed. A wrecked house, cheap landlords's reno, five apartments is it, ugliest of bathrooms, aluminum windows, beige carpet poverty hell. - Dr Ranger. Last summer I was 157 lb and today 144. She says shoulder is rotator cuff injury. Patricia Gruben in the Harbour Centre food court. The sun was back when I came out of the art gallery library. There it is on the maple tree that's wriggling lightly at its tips. Di Brandt Dancing naked an ongoing, organized perpetration of violence by irresponsible men with power She was more Mennonite than I am. She has stayed more in touch. domestic violence against children particularly, and misogyny their ongoing effects of terror in me If she makes herself smaller than what she is they will be saved from her knowing School was more real to me. Was there a church self that's still separate? My drama is the deeper
drama of abandonment and deformity. But still, when she says release of
energy I have to wonder if there's more to release. She got famous, that
will have released some.
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