| in america 14 part 3 - 2007 november-december | work & days: a lifetime journal project |
28 November Bassam's Park Manor Hotel at twenty past four, gilded brick and palm pillars, shadows almost horizontal. Three tables doing homework. Two people with glasses of red talking quietly. Going home traffic whisking, growling, rattling. Another homework person unpacking his shoulder bag. I sent a message to Frameworks this morning. Someone called Nicky Hamlyn wrote that he used to rent Trapline from the London Film Co-op. It's the way I know it to be, the semester begins and then the months vanish. September-November gone without happening. Every day I'm transcribing eight or ten pages of 1976, word salad and sometimes a single line that brings something back. I don't mean events, I can nearly always remember who said whatever I quote, and something else about that visit, but what I want to get clear is what in all of it was worth the obsession. What I was learning, what was different. Is there something I can do with the mess of it - a way I can tell the story clear and in essence, as I couldn't then. Can scrutiny make something of it. Is there something to be continued - The light on the Park Hotel was a darker gold, the shadows bluer, and then direct sun was gone although the west-facing façade, six floors looking out to sea, has shadowless sky light on it still. Young woman in a trench coat, cup of tea, writing in a small diary in black ink. Man next to me putting on his jacket, rustling in his pocket for his keys. Takes his paper with him. Ten to five. It's the moment I begin to notice the inside lights, their pleasing dimness, multiple shadows under my hand. Small clouds evenly pink, palm fronds, grassy, dipping and flowing, onshore breeze up Redwood. Caliph Cocktails neon sign across the street a blue line around a red line in the shape of the head of a cock - it's a gay bar. Here's Bassam come in, sitting with the young woman in the trench coat. Is he interviewing her for a job - there are always new young women. Sometime I'm going to come here in the evening and have a glass of wine. - A dim yearning to have something to say, something happening. Rowen's coming next week and bringing the camera. Then I'll have to wait till the evals are written and then it'll be a week before Christmas with only five weeks off. Dreamed last night about the land across the road from the home place - it was in summerfallow, even furrows of clean earth - it was something about community garden plots, plots somewhere else were taken and I was thinking to offer our land. - When did I remember that - it wasn't until I was writing at Café Bassam. Gwen Ifel interviewing Ehud Olmert, such a well-spoken statesman, temperate. - Pablo de Ocampo - artistic director at Images Festival - writes "wanted to say that Notes in origin was the discovery that has stuck with me for months since first seeing it. This was when I was nearly finished with my programs for this touring project and I remember leaving CFMDC that day thinking, "I don't know which program to fit this into, but we have to show this film." And I ended up completely reworking one of the programs to make some room ..." Another note saying there is an HD festival in NY in October. Otherwise no one offering help with the transfer. Experimental film conference being planned for 2009 in TO.
29 Transcribed a lot yesterday and today - through all the hours of the conference call - and this morning somehow I could keep going - one more day at this rate and then a bit into the next vol to the beginning of Jam - and then do I begin working with it some other way? - no, typed pages first - do I really need to transcribe all that.
Uncertainty - a time of many possibilities unresolved.
[layout and plant list for Scott's shade garden] Stepping into the air yesterday and today: day warm, winter light - that doesn't say it - stepping into air that is light and mild. 30 The way that feels - just right - an exquisite well-being - the lightness I most like to be. Louie phoned. She's going to Namibia this aft. She passed the very advanced yoga exams, the yoga PhD. She says one or two people per main city. Doug saw her through the worst stress and on the evening before she left for six weeks admitted he's met someone he wants to sleep with. Someone at CBC in Ottawa on my CV page and index today. Set up a deal with Scott to work on his side yard, how much could I make. When I saw a Cherokee coming toward me in traffic today, its fine squared-off snout, the word I heard in my head was rectitude. It poured today, gutters running full and swift. I was walking around Walter Andersons and measuring at Scott's with my head soaked. Finished transcribing the '76-77 volume but it's missing the first acid pages. Acid was the only thing in that journal I still like. The love and sex stuff is insane, the dope writing is mostly worthless, but I found something in acid - I found a state. I found balance. The touchstone state of balance. 1st December Spirit as body: the sky [notes for res workshop] 1. Turrell - Roden Crater NE of Flagstaff extinct crater since late 70s, 400,000 years old, two miles wide, carve out viewing chambers and tunnels, stone masons, construction supervisors. "They described their trips as a form of pilgrimage." 2. The Lightning Field 3. Notes in origin 4. Photo book Seeing and knowing what you're seeing, deepening. Seeing clouds - becoming able to see flow - unfixing perception. Understanding clouds - how cloud is a marker for invisible action - engineering. 1. Assume the universe is god and see what's different, a philosophical experiment.
- Ecliptic the apparent path the sun traces out in the sky Ecliptic plane of earth's orbit through center of the sun, track of sun against the stars How the position of the midday sun changes over the year as seen from x At equinox at every location the sun is twelve hours above and twelve below the horizon. Tropic of Cancer approx tip of Baja penninsula, Mazatlan. Mexico City is several degrees south of it. Tropic of Capricorn Paraguay in South America. [astronomical calculations for height of sun and moon in Plainfield VT, San Diego, Grande Prairie AB] December's full moon - cold moon, oak moon, wolf moon, moon of the long nights. Sun orbits at the equator, moon orbits at the ecliptic - can be 5 degrees plus or minus from sun. In far north full moon in summer is below horizon. In winter full is high, in summer low. In autumn waning moon is highest, in spring waxing is highest. In summer dark (null) moon is highest. In far north you can see the full moon low above the northern horizon in the middle of the day in December.
Moon's pathline crosses sun's pathline twice in a lunar cycle - max distance 5.15 degrees = about 10 moon-widths. What I've done today - sat down this morning to Sky - found out how to find the path of sun and moon at any place on earth at any time of year. Learned something about the moon's path I didn't know. Transcribed as much as I could find of the first acid - twenty pages - the House piece is bad but moments in the typed pages alright. Gladly throw out dirty paper after. Set up an appointment with Al for Monday. 2 Dance of the blessed spirits - Hillcrest Starbucks, Sunday morning - began transcribing DR vol 6 this morning - I get together with Jam not far into it - the vol begins with Einstein notes - looking at the reading notes sorry to see mental energy without a task - was any of that worth anything - my side thoughts in it seem junk - I was trying randomly - looking at those weak-minded comments from having years thinking successfully - ashamed - I'm ashamed of the self of those years - grieved - should I be? - it says no - I was casting about - I had been a good student, could grasp what someone gave me, but when I tried to step into independence I was shamefully wrong. Was I so wrong because the time was so wrong? It says yes. I'm now wanting to completely deny the love. It says not to. When I look at the erotic writing I'm sickened, don't want to transcribe it, for instance the typed sheets written after we three got together. My taste in writing was wrong. I wanted inflation. Then later - when was it - I looked for the clean slight lines, and then I had something. Feminist erotic writing now looks vile to me. Was there something in the love apart from the erotic glam I tried to give it? It says yes.
In acid I slipped into it briefly.
3 Happy weekend with Tom - he had worked long hours, left the house and come home in the dark. I showed up at 11 yesterday morning, after Starbucks and after the farmer's market, and found him just finishing housecleaning. Kitchen doors open. He was funny all day. This morning he walked out the door in construction worker costume, yellow boots, jeans, green Carhart jacket, baseball cap, backpack with yellow hard hat strapped to it. Phone on his belt. Last night before we settled to the movie he polished his boots, laid out his clothes for the morning. He walks out with a thermos of coffee and some power bars in his pack. We went to the pier for breakfast and sat at the rail looking at the sea which yesterday was translucent olive drab. I was fond of him all day. Is it the way he's confident and steady when he's working and a lot of money is coming in, probably. He's in the elevator all day without breaks. "Stand by, fifteen, I'm on my way." A building he's proud of, good materials, terrazzo floors. Meantime on his computer is a piece about his neighbourhood. Sitting at the rail with his machaca plate he was talking about writing in the piece. He hadn't written that way since he was nineteen, he said. For supper I made him steak and mashed potatoes, grilled a thick Angus sirloin. We were squabbling playfully, acceptingly. I wasn't holding anything against him. He fell asleep during the movie, which was his pick and wonderful, Mountain patrol, Lu Chuan, Tibetan barrens. In brief, conceive light invisible and that is a spirit Religio Medici The invisibles Weather change - biometeorology I found that if I allowed the atmosphere of people to play on me I could often detect the fact that their smell changed according to what they were saying I noticed a strange communication or feeling gap when people were obviously using artificial deodorants. xv We are surrounded by invisibles, yet we ignore what is invisible, real, potent, natural. xvii exercising a sensory capability that has been concealed by the paradigms of science and by a misunderstanding of religious experience Humans in truth participate in these marvels, but unconsciously, and what we call the unconscious mind is a living organ of perception. xviii Seeing infrared darker band of sky between outer and inner rainbows when there are two, 42 and 51 degrees. The subliminal senses Peter Redgrove The dark goddess and the unseen real Packet 5s coming in today, Rowen tomorrow until Sunday. Al to Scott's tonight. Estimate for Wednesday, what do I need for that -
4 Right eye vitreous is lapsing - wrinkled - I'm seeing a black fold and a lot of specks - it had stopped for a while.
The cards she drew when she asked about writing were: serious girl, perfected work, delay, conflict, judgment.
6 Did a lot today - finished the brochure - zapped the study plan forms - sent Scott an estimate - wrangled with Justin who wrote this morning whining about it being my fault that he's not growing - spoke to Rowen who's at the Lafayette Hotel on El Cajon, that pillared mansion.
7 And then wrote Margo again complaining that I've been copying her my letters to him! - Which makes me pleased to have forestalled him. Who started it. He did by pressing for more and always more without consideration. But up until I cracked he had been getting what he wanted because I was interested in the puzzle. I did it by calling his beloved obscurities bristling esoterica. Those were fighting words. I was fed up. He'd had the benefit of my doubt because I feel for his obscure intimations. I saw my own intimations through, so I thought he could. But the more we got into detail the more I didn't see him pressing to get anything clear. He kept compounding obscurities. I was independent and committed. He is dependent and isn't putting in enough time. Margo is telling him she doesn't understand why he's upset that I'm copying her my letters to him. If that's true she's being obtuse. I understand very well. I'm saying to him, you blew it, boy, you're never going to get back what you had. I am not forgiving him. No matter that he's a poor lost orphan, he has to deal with himself now. Could not abide reading Anne's empty abstract packet and so went off to editing the magazine. Suspended it last semester because there was almost nothing for it - mainly only Kri. This time I have Anne's Butala annotation, two ravishing pieces by Stacey, Emilee's story and maybe the Alaistair Crowley piece, Belle's astonishing research notes, Stacey's student's piece, anything else I haven't thought of yet, something from Melanie? From Betty? Betty's first piece? Have to edit Kri. - What now. CG writes about coming on the bad things I say. The summer of 2003. Here's my first instance of being outed as a hater. "What I really simply want to say is that it is mean (particularly the attack on how I look, talk, sit, etc), and it hurt me." It's definitely mean. I'm surprised I left it in, what was I thinking? I'm going to have to phone her. What will I say? I haven't thought those things since. I've felt she's changed. She's been quite impeccable since then. I'm more in touch with the dark side, the rage and distress, than people mainly are. Pleased and harrowed by bodies. It's left out of most writing. I feel I'm carrying it alone.
8 Nervous. What's at stake. If I'm fired I would have to go back to BC and go on welfare and from there look for other ways to earn money.
9
Fear in my solar - then in the back of my head - I'm going to be having to live with this fear. It's not a memory so I'm not going to be able to dissolve it. What am I afraid of? Nothing in particular, I think. Can we undo it? It says yes.
I'm going to be sacrificed for bringing it up.
- So then I emailed M to say it's down for now pending discussion and sent CG yesterday's letter and the Fernando Flores notes. Ie I've done what I can for now.
At least half the students in any semester are a waste of time. If I were putting that amount of focus into something else what could I do? The fac have been spineless about Margo and are intellectually mediocre though they sometimes come through surprisingly on something. The college isn't really progressive - it doesn't grade and it's one-to-one and it does support students to be what they dream of being and the graduations are good and I've been able to be a lot of what I am, there - so it is progressive in those ways - M's good-heartedness has been - but it's not radical - it isn't interested in addressing the roots of oppression. I picked up Tom to go to the restaurant last night. There he was on the curb with an umbrella. I said "There's trouble." He said "Good, I'll be your corner man." Rowen's visit - do I have enough liberty in me now to write about other things - he was in my chair at the table playing a Half Life model and I was staring at him thinking how beautiful he is, his bright dark eyes and black eyebrows. His greasy elf hair. His moment-to-moment sensing response. He has long arms and a narrow torso, quite wide hips, slumps at his waist, some. Tight black tee-shirt and grimy jeans, his corduroy Chuck E's, one green and one brown. He's happy. I gave him my Nikon, was looking at it with his eye and it was a beautiful neat weighty balanced small thing, metal and leather. I bought it in 1968. Its substantiality, the whir and clunk. He has given me his Nikon 50, I suppose now it is given not lent. Here it is next to me, plastic with rounded corners, zoom lens. The Half Life model was amazing - it was the revelation of the visit. A small harbour after the apocalypse. Gas barrels rusting. Cars. A wharf rotting. Pavement with weeds in its cracks. Rocks and sand. A store with shelves bare. I loved seeing it - seeing how far modeling has come since 1996 or whenever it was I was looking at vis tapes. Pale fine drawing, exquisite realism, an art. Rowen wasn't impressed the way I was, he takes it for granted. It's collaborative but someone had the vision, who was that? What other places are being made? There were sounds - footsteps, wind, faint music. We went to see The golden compass. A simulation of Oxford and then of a far vast north. The Magisterium an evil ecclesiastic organization. Ice bears. A little girl who knows, whose mother is the evil Mrs Coulter. Souls are the animals who walk beside them and talk to them. The golden compass a truth machine. What else - last night at the Antique Row Café Rowen's patron with us on the long leatherette seats. 50s music. Bob has small sad eyes and a soft lower lip. Thin shoulders. A shell necklace. He was our age. Seemed as though he would have been a red-headed boy with freckles and pale eyelashes who sunburned easily. He hasn't thickened. He has things he loves.
On the 6th somebody who was reading Valleyview-Whitecourt in September came back. [chronology of CG letters] 10 Monday, Bassam. It's early afternoon, a bright clean day. Relieved. Got all the letters done this morning. Evals will come in tonight. There's this little window. The kerfuffle with CG about the journal has calmed down because I've said what I have to say - on my end. Debate to come. Faculty conversation. - There I feel a little scare setting in. I said if progressive education claims to work for liberation it has to deal with the pervasive crippling fear of hearing anything negative in our own heads or about us from someone else. That's my position and now I'll see whether it's defensible. Tom was a good cornerman yesterday. We were side by side on the blue couch and he did what he does. Gave me a succinct description that says I'm that kind of person and it's outrageous and admirable. Is there any more to know about Emilee. Is she pregnant. My job was to get her to stand in her unusual potency and she did. She wrote This story. I'm not sure fucking her man was a good idea. What'll she do next semester. [Emilee's] Dream of the house of culture an English country manor where everything is for sale. It belongs to the wife whose strong hand has written the prices on the tags. The mistress is disappointed. Both want to kill her, lock her in a tower. She escapes. She climbs down and runs away, "just a girl in mismatched colored clothes."
The writers she quotes are songwriters. She's a gamer. She's more fantastical than I was. What does Susan have that she doesn't. She'd like Susan. Susan's more reckless, more fierce. Emilee has more good girl training even in her writing. Emilee's not working class. They both went corporate early but Em is a Buddhist there and Susan was a shark, proud of being a shark. Susan's show-off physical, flaming physical, and Emilee is still taking it into fantasy. There I sighed. The poets she likes do that though they're good. - Light rain for tomorrow - watching Monday - Al at Scott's Weds morning. [work plan] 11 What a heavy day. Justin's thesis proposal this morning, a lot of back and forth, then Kaaba announced M is leaving - blandly, blankly. I moved to tell my group. I said, write letters of support to M. Got my alum mailing list together. Margo's stepfather dying. 12 Had fun today. Awake at 5:30, set up Billy's eval, out the door at 8 to Scott's, clipped dead bits off the rose until Al arrived, planned the work with him, zipped to Walter Anderson's, collected four wagon loads of green forms, including three brugmansia, a lot of ivy, good ferns, a couple of spectacular houseplants I'm going to put outside, some interesting ficus. And then fast up 5 to 94 to Lemon Grove to the stone yard. Poking into a pallet of flagstone at RCP Block and Brick. Then back to see what Al had done in the meantime, painting the fence, excavating the path, taking down the cassia. And then home, all day in winter sun, setting up evals as long as brain goes on. What did I like most, buying plants, assembling them, imagining them, putting down my credit card for 1300# of bluestone. Having Nora's mason, who made the beautiful herringbone fireplace, saying "Ma'am" across the office, turning and there he was, that good craftsman, and there I was too, buying stone, a garden maker. The sensation of walking in a stone yard or plant yard, manly, is it? Entitled, effective, something else - physical - moving and doing. 13 [ideas about a testimonies page for Margo] This is a good idea. I've passed it on to Leslie.
There would need to be spokespersons. A committee. Someone to put together an accurate draft. It has to appear Margo didn't incite it. An alum has to host it. It's a bit before 8. At noon I have to phone Al to discover whether he'll be at Scott's when the plants come this aft. Have to write evals for hours. Thinking of Muggs. "We're into it now."
14 Went to Scott's when the plants were due to arrive, stood around thinking where to put things while Al spread the path dirt. It's cold. Desert sunrises and apricot sunsets, and so cold in the mornings that my heater doesn't keep up. Went to Tom's afterward, laundry, soaking in his tub. He didn't get home until long after 7, thirteen-hour days. He isn't complaining. He's joyful. Making buckets of money, the men respect him, the top dogs love him. "You're the best operator on the west coast." He's interested in the Margo story, sat unpeeling his support hose as I described my moves. He wasn't in a hurry though he'd need to be up at 4. "I just needed to be with you" I said - we had our heads together on the blue couch. When I went home he was in front of me laughing at the thought of how pleased he'd be standing in Rite Aid with a hot water bottle in his hands. He was so naturally, laughingly himself that the moment seemed a culmination to me, look how restored he is, he's a wonderful companion. - 9 hours heavy labour, I laid the stone and planted the large things. Three daturas, a lovely ficus with round leaves and pink stems. Thought about placement. Is the path alright - do I have to go back tomorrow and fix. Should there be more plants. I'll finish tomorrow. Thought two and a half days and it will be. One yard of sand was right. I bought less than a ton of stone and eked it. Am $300 under on stone and plants. Irrigation - 15 The alum did not reply to the letter about Margo - not even Jeanne, not Anna, not Carolyn, not Juliana, only Sean. What's up with them? Hard night. Fell asleep too early and woke at two. Lay there. Turned on the TV after a while. Infomercial for a machine that cuts out pictures for scrapbooking. Another for Ultimate Health, a book shown illuminated like the bible in golden light, weasel-faced salesman in a beige wig promising secrets of miracle cure for cancer, diabetes, obesity, high blood pressure, more. Aspirin, hot water bottle, fell asleep after a long while and dreamed on and on. Yesterday the Margo buzz on email had gone completely dead. It's 7:21. I'm in bed with a hot water bottle wishing I had more to write because I want to delay getting dressed in my work clothes and going out in the cold. 17 Monday morning at Tom's house. Bench in the sun. Jackhammer somewhere. Two linesmen in orange up on a pole in the vale. Look at that two-way stream of small ants on the top wire of the rail. My right eye has been muzzed over this morning. Sore, from trying to focus around a slumped humor, I think. Tom in his Carhart jacket turning off the light and going out the door in the dark this morning, hard hat clacking against his backpack. I was wiped yesterday. Three days of hard labor. Steak. Last Sunday and Saturday I bought the best kind of steak and grilled it. $10 a steak. Filet sirloin. It revived me. Baked a potato for Tom. And then we watched Whales of the Arctic against Tom's wishes though he got into it. Belugas go deeper than a mile to find Arctic cod. And that's all I've got for now. Sent Rowen The road and Birth of pleasure. Phoned Luke. He was in bed, food poisoning. His voice. 37. 18 Pink dawn, sun just above the horizon about as far south as it gets. It's the kind of morning I used to see from Tom's bed in the Maryland - the time of year I'd come down and live with him and walk around in the sun. Want to be at liberty walking around, don't want to be stuck in here writing evals. Want creation and color, want love and adventure. What did I dream. Unrecoverable. A woman writer at a conference. I liked her work, was talking to her. Later I said something from the floor that made her abhor me. She'd said something about menopause making her - something. I asked what she meant. That's what made her shut down. I thought I should go but my boots and coat were up at the front of the hall. Made separate trips to get them, conspicuous. The last time she intercepted me and said something incoherent about a key. I was seeing she was freaked. She was trying to say that her offer of somewhere to stay was still good. Whatever I'd said had disarranged her. - Later my little boy and I in the corridor of La Glace School. The kids were rushing for the buses but we were going to have to stay behind because I couldn't find his coat and lunch box. Louie is in Johannesburg. She says people's body language is more equal
and there's dissention in the ANC.
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