in america 16 part 6 - 2009 january-february  work & days: a lifetime journal project

28 January 2009

Sent Mary 6 yellow roses for her birthday and spoke to her the very minimum of time.

She said she couldn't smell whether they were scented. She doesn't have smell enough.

I was at Tom's yesterday doing my laundry while Tom was at his first day of jury duty. He came in white and drawn. He can't afford a haircut and so has his hair flattened thin to his head, which makes him look an old man. He got his social security check for $900, which will pay his rent and a few bills, and leave more or less nothing for food. He's not looking for work. He says he's writing and reading and doesn't want to stop. It's what I've wanted to hear from the beginning. I've worked for it. It means I'm more alone, I am going on alone, and still I would want it, because it's right.

I had given him The celestial jukebox, which he liked, so I called up Wonder book of the air from the basement stacks for him. I read it first when I was desperate in love with him, and it was my true-hearted companion in that state. I tried to give it to him then and he wouldn't try. Now he inhaled it, he said. He marveled the way I do. We talked about it on the couch before I went home. He'd finished it and I brought it home to return it. When I woke at 4:30 I lit a candle, put a hot water bottle at my feet, and sat in the lamplight in my bed reading it again. I opened it into the stories of Adrienne and Austin, Harrison and Olivia, Field and Madeira. What I'm reading it for now is what to do in the trapped state of marriage.

Why don't I name what's closest in me, why don't I feel it.
What is the bitterness. What disappoints me.
Can I say without hedging.
She describes people shutting down on each other and then starving for love, touch, admiration, realness.
I'm disappointed he isn't hard for me.
I'm disappointed I never see his naked heart any more.
I'm disappointed he's scared of lust.
I'm disappointed he isn't a good writer.
I'm disappointed he lies.
I'm disappointed he doesn't have money.
I'm disappointed he hasn't taken care of his livelihood.
I'm disappointed he's running himself down so he won't look his best.
I'm disappointed he's not curious about me.
I'm disappointed he bluffs.
I'm disappointed he's uneducated.
I'm disappointed he's ingratiating with people.
I'm disappointed his interests are so narrow.
I'm disappointed he shutters his beautiful rooms.
I'm disappointed he's sloppy in the way he lives.
I'm disappointed he bores me with laboured thoughts.

How it was writing this list - I felt a lot of hedges - wrote and erased lines about what I'm disappointed about in me - heard lines I didn't write about what I appreciate in him, and how the ways I'm disappointed are linked to good things also.

The disappointment list lines up with what I need to imagine for Mac - that he's rich, accomplished, hard for me, steadily truthful and straight-up, skilled and alert in anything he does, wonderfully housed in ways he has thought out himself, a power in the world, interested everywhere, widely wise and informed, quick and light in thought and talk.

There's a lot of disappointment and the causes are all true.

Are they true reasons not to love and trust him  
Are they the reasons  
Would I love someone like Mac   no
If he loved me   YES
Is it my fault that I don't love Tom   no
Should my love be unconditional   no
Should I leave and try to find someone like Mac   NO
Am I ashamed of myself because I'm with Tom   no
That's a mercy  
Am I proud of myself  
Should I be  
So I'm stuck in lovelessness   NO
I shouldn't love Tom but I can love in other ways   YES
Do you think I already do   no
Do other people love dogs or Jesus because they're in this bind   no
Do I misunderstand that  
They're in a different bind than this  
It's more unconscious   YES
Do you mean the way when I was young I loved everyone  
As phenomena of life  
Tom sort of does that  
After one falls in love one wants it to be that way  
 
Because it's intense  
And that's wrong   YES
Could I love in that young way again   YES
Does Judie love in that way   no
She pretends to  
Do you know how to get there   YES
By being responsible for people   no
Meditation   no
Faking it   no
By somehow clearing anger  
Practice on Tom  
Shearer can do that   YES
Do you know how to do that   YES
All those disappointments are angers   YES
Because I feel they're deprivations   YES
Are they deprivations   no
There is only one lack and it's lack of moment presence  
That's why anger is a sin  
Inhibition is never a cure for sin  
The cure for sin is presence  
Can presence be willed   no
Worked for  
Do things to make it possible 
Is the list of disappointments a list of that   YES
I want Tom to do what will make me present  
I'm already many of those things  
But not enough  
Be more sexual   no
More naked heart   no
Better writer  
More truthful   no
Get more money   no
Better care of livelihood   no
Better physical care  
More curious   NO
Less bluffing   no
More educated   no
Less ingratiating   no
Less narrow   no
 
Better writing, better physical care and other things  
Anything you want to say   improvement, of crisis, by slow growth, of intelligence
Can my intelligence still grow  
And you'll help  
Want to add?   subtle processing of child's heartbreak
I'd need to find a therapist for that   no
One card   look at defeats
Scan for defeats   YES
And process them  

30

The last chapter of Wonder book of the air. I seem to have ignored it other times. Field's daughter. She's lucid. She has good parents but she gets hooked by desire and it's masochistic in her. Why am I dumbfounded trying to say what this chapter says. It's scorching. "What is it the world in women does require? The lineaments of a steadfast, cheerful liar." And then she says, "Is love any less real because it is imaginary?" Yes it is less real when it is imaginary. "Sometimes it seemed to me that people do not care about each other, per se." Her book has them caring and not caring. It has the wild centre of it, the man who beats his wife and kids, a source of magic value for them all. His language. The way my dad was that. What did I say to Tom, it says it's all there for you if you can balance in it.

But in the last chapter she isn't doing that. She's two generations on from Harrison Durrance and she's living a more abstracted life, no small Georgia town, no war, no Uncle Artie. A job and a house. I'm some distance on from when I first read this book. I read it the first time for the gold state of mad love for Tom, often in tears. I'm reading it this time dry-eyed looking for what she knows about how to live dryness. I've kept faith with the gold hope, and Tom has, yes he has; I've done the moral work, and this dryness is the reward. And there I stop, a bitter sore heart. Which is better than none.

And then open the two interviews, Cantrills' and Mike's, and pare away the overlaps, mostly from the Cantrill's. Have I made that one bearable. Mike took out the exclamation marks. What was I doing so badly in that one - I was confluent with Corinne, I was courting them because I wanted to be invited to Australia. I was schmaltzy.

- The window is open, it's just after five, a Santa Ana, pale orange sky in the west, open ocean pale blue between an edge of St Paul's Community Care and a leafy tree on 4th. Plane sinking through that gap. A lot of light in the air above the harbour, Point Loma ridge a featureless dark purple with that evaporated orange in front of it. Row of palms, on 3rd I think, the tall thin kind, a lot of them, spaced out, different heights. Cars going home on 4th a plush rolling sound, visible. Siren's baying like dogs in a pack. Ten minutes have passed as I wrote this. The sky hasn't changed much. Pale yellow, very pale and fading up to ivory, above the fading orange. Gooseneck California lamp lit at the end of the couch, the black one I bought for my first room in the Golden West. I am noticing its light on the page now. Helicopter tiny as a bug flying southeast toward the city, tiny light blinking. The ocean is in bands, shades of pale blue and one pale gold.

I sent the thumbnail image for fringe online today, a frame of the Trapline caustic. That part of the project is finished, they'll send me $500 by PayPal. Little things left for the monograph. Check through the interviews again. Maybe a few more images. See what Mike does with the design. Then $500 for that.

Later design the hard copy and print it.
What else. Clean up the site. Set up subject words finally.
Post Forming - Queen's. Write intros.
Post Forming - London. "
Dames rocket. "

Use the $1000 to set up the book, transfer tapes, maybe retransfer Trapline later.

It's a slow twilight.

The yellow is stronger - no, it's not yellow, it's ivory, intense. Lamps in the long rectangles of the apartments, small jet dropping fast. Lights marking Point Loma shore. Is the sky more intense or is it the contrast. It's yellow when I look up, and then it's not yellow.

The way Mike describes my work isn't recognizable to me. He's kind but sort of mystically abstract, which I am not at all. He's not a country boy. When he was interviewing me I was trying to speak through him to women who might hear something they needed to recognize. Now it sounds whiny, I keep saying I was excluded and had to struggle. That's not what I want to say now. Now I want to advocate what I've worked out, what I know.

Forty minutes since I started. A dark smudge showing in the darkening orange, which fades directly into pale turquoise, all of that below the black arcs of the nearest palm fronds. I can't see the water of the harbour anymore, are those lights on anchored boats?

Cyclamen in their glass pot, a lot of white butterflies, jet intakes on long stalks. The room, this practical cabin, my minimal house. Expensive perfect silver machines reflected on black glass. Why am I happy. Afternoon tea, for one. A little late afternoon push that makes me feel this self. Artists' welcome for another, that some little thing is happening again.

This is still civil twilight, stars can't be seen, but when I stick my head out the window there's the several days old moon and Venus brilliant together in royal blue.

Is it Obama winning that makes this difference, as if I can be more here? As if I'm waking up in the neighbourhood, is that possible? Can Bush have blighted the years I've lived here?

Bethany McLean - clear poised pretty young woman interviewed on economic policy - she's sweet, a snugglebunny, has the slightest lisp, a girl voice, dimples, and a wide lucid overview as if she were the finance minister, but more flexible and incisive and balanced. NOW interview. I'm writing this down for its glorious normalcy. Love Woman assessing the bankers, casually entitled.

1st February

Sunday morning. Handel Italian cantatas. Shrimp and vegetables bubbling across the room. When I woke I worked as long as I could on Eurydice. It's only ten. A bright day. My jeep, oh my jeep has something wrong with it. Transmission I think. It will be $1200. Which I have, but would rather have used on something else. Isn't it amazing that I have it - will have, after [the college], where I don't spend money on food for two weeks. Have to pay off Tom's $460 on the Mastercard. It means I shouldn't buy [the college] clothes probably, but will I mind being shabby.

What else. I'm not quite well. There's a dark bar in my stomach. The white hiss goes away during the day, always there when I wake. I've stopped swallowing capsules and it isn't making it worse. The stinging hands have been gone for a while, maybe since I was ill? I look haggard. At the harmonica class I ran out of energy halfway thorough.

-

Other disappointments:

That I'm uglier
That people aren't interested in me as they were
That I'm not bright in company
That my mother isn't interesting and interested
That Olivia got fat
That Joyce died - Janeen - Frank - Jean
That philosophers didn't get Being about
The white hiss
That my health will get worse and is already worse
That Mr Mann was disappointed in me
That my relatives don't admire me
That I'm not with Luke more
That Luke doesn't find his work
That I'm at fault with him
That I'm not a distinguished writer
That I'm so boxed in
That I have no exciting conversations
That I'm shorter and wider!
That Rowen is floppy
That Louie is dogged
That Sue doesn't like my journal and films
That Sue isn't keen on me anymore
That the [the college] fac are duds, that they let Margo go, that I've lost hope there
 
Improve, by the Work, to process, withdrawal
Each of these points is a point of withdrawal
I don't know how not to withdraw there   YES
When I was young did I know   no you just had energy

[Opposite page:

dopamine - explorer
serotonin - builder
testosterone - director
 
estrogen - negociator
 
What kind of mate would you pick for me   disillusion, come through, power, anger
Someone who is an opportunity to come through disillusion, power-play and anger
You're laughing   YES

-

[Harmonica class at UCSD]
Playing the business - high notes
Base - dominant - subdominant
Warble - two notes, a move
 
Little Whitt and Big Bo - Moody Swamp Blues
Stomp your whole leg
Blues riff
Gritty sound somehow with tongue on the out
Bend - closing your throat as you're moving in
Train]

Emilee and Deidre's progress review docs - both flattened out writing with Goldberg. They're vowed to embodiment studies theoretically but they're less confident and zingy. I love my students to be bold.

-

The jeep in the shop - distributor cap, transmission flush, --- belt, something about transmission timing. $700. That's not so bad.

3

Tijuana, MacDonald's across the plaza from the dentist. I'm early. Mercury retrograde. The t on my keyboard started missing this morning. I pried it up the way I used to on my old G3 but its tiny plastic spring came up too. I had to spend an hour trying to put it back together - I couldn't see its tiny sockets or the tiny differences between right and wrong side. Had to keep trying this and that with infernal patience. It turned out to be a tomato seed that had slipped under its key cover. And last night the white filling from my top front tooth fell out. And I think there may still be something wrong with the jeep.

Why am I so stressed by any kind of business doing - dealing with the jeep, coming to the dentist, I feel my blood pressure hard.

A stream of persons. Persons so different from persons a quarter mile away on the other side. Little indios. Tiny old things. Bent little dark men in cowboy hats. Women in shawls.

Halfway back on the trolley a big black man got on, backpack with a hard hat hung from it. Black do-rag, big white teeth. He sat down one seat back across the aisle with a big bright here I am flounce. I smiled at him. He wasn't sure what I was up to and started talking to a baby. I was watching him in the window reflection. Stops went by. I remembered what I have on my journal. Caught his eye and held up Obama and Malia. He grinned and I did. When he was getting off he said "Can I see that again." I handed it to him. He studied it.

4

Transcribing this book, last couple of days, a way of reviewing. Raw forming and London?

Collegio La Esperanza Tijuana
James Hubbell
The Americas Foundation
H St trolley stop in Chula Vista 8:30
Lunch, hat, gloves, water, friends, $10 donation
Ilisa 619 665 8547
Christine Silvana 619 585 9009
Need drivers
Feb 21, March 21, April 18, May 16

The jeep sounds wrong - a flutter - I get freaked not knowing what it is.

At Tom's telling stories about the trolley - I liked that - but then he launched into telling about his trial on and on - there's something wrong - I don't want to touch him - when he touches me it's man-handling, some hard massage that isn't wanting to feel me. It's been like this since I got back I think - he says it's money worries.

-

More little things of the same kind.

Beautiful simple SFU webmail is destroyed in favor of some busy ugly multifunction system - the red and blue airmail design, the drop menu to get to files, my many-time-a-day pleasure since 1993 (?), someone's lovely creation gone forever. Phone calls trying to figure out what to do about it.

Batteries gone on the blood pressure cuff.

G3 running out of memory in Explorer.

Had to phone Bob at Robert's Automotive about the flutter. He said bring it in, I dressed up to go out - red hoodie and the black leaf necklace, cleavage. When I got there Bob left what he was working on, got in it, drove it around the block, came got me to go around the block again. Said did I mean the chut-chut-chut. Said it was likely something around the U-joint. Put it on the hoist. I was standing around in the sun watching from a respectful distance. An old man with a moustache came and put his arm around me. That was on account of what I was wearing. I may almost have liked it. He was there as a tool salesman, said Roberts was one of the five or six places he'd recommend. "Ten years ago I couldn't give away a pair of gloves." There was Bob under my jeep tightening something with what looked like a surgeon's gloves on. Then Bob lowered the jeep, backed it out, turned it around. "You're all set." He wasn't charging.

6

No email. They've switched me to a system my browser can't read.

Was trying out replying to Martin's letter from a month ago, called up 1969-70 to see if it was Devon we camped in, began reading - have been a couple of hours in it this morning - the hysterical waste with Peter and Ian - consuming - then sometimes a little mention of Greg, warm sanity, a relief even now.

7

Working on Eurydice's voice, reading packet letters for instance to Emilee, Layla, Carol, Favor, always feeling dimly that I should publish them. The notion that has been whispering itself is that I should ask Nancy in Palm Springs whether she would like to edit them - someone needs to try them out as a reader. Why am I thinking of her. She was so pleased by the workshops and she wanted to go on having to do with me. She's a personal coach so she'll understand the teaching.

Working on Love Woman - I'm confused, and am I going to be able to sort it in time - I'm not confused in my case but when I add all the student versions of conflict I see there's more to get clear. I'm trying to overlay things that aren't the same - the Orpheus story isn't the universal pattern - am I able to think this morning - not yet.

The students' own paragraphs are interesting, the Orpheus story is charming - I have those charm elements but I don't think they line up with the clarifying structure - maybe I'll need to just pick a couple of students.

What is Love Woman for me - why do I need that name - because being seized by love and then fighting it - and longing for the state when I'm not in it.
Dreams of two women singing together
Seeing the two women at the conference
Feeling for the Orpheus story
Women who stand in for her in dream
With Tom the visible arrival after sex - estrogen, oxytocin
 
For Louie being seized by wanting what one doesn't want.
What is it in work.
A woman's values and interests and knowledge
Personal perception and warmth
Not segregating into home and work
The personal
Presence, response
 
Anima in men
Soul also in women
Root in the mother and early love
Women desiring everything and not knowing it

9

Good overnight with Tom. Thursday he held onto me for minutes, quietly, and lay with his head on my shoulder, and that, along with the fact that he'd had a haircut, turned me right around. He watched Drachensberg elands and Brothers and sisters with me and got into my bed and cuddled before we went to sleep. This morning he was holding up his arm looking at the crepy skin inside the elbow, that place where it's worst.

Vermont 11

A man at the aisle end of my row - a pale blond impression - not exactly - something about his eyes, pale blue, round white eyeballs, wispy white hair, pinkness - does he understand English? Is he Russian, I wonder.

We had an empty seat between us. Later shouting together over loud engine noise. He wants to talk about the concert he played with his brother - cello - Haydn trios - he's fluttered about his brother - I'm encouraging and patient, I'm so starved for new acquaintance I will cultivate this one. He plays with a string quartet and lives in Paris, travels constantly. Grew up in Odessa, studied in Moscow, won a competition in Paris - is he only going to want me to listen - I say I'm a filmmaker and he lights up extraordinarily. I look at his mouth. He's maybe 50, an oldish 50. His mouth is young. He's not large but he has big hands, strong, unusually fine-skinned pale yellow. He's wearing a wedding ring on his right hand. After a while I'm telling him about living up north on my own, going out to take pictures. He warms up. As the hours go by sweetens. We write our email addresses in each other's notebooks. Igor Kiritchenko, Quator Elysée. Toward the end of the flight looking out the window seeing Orion high and simple in the black.

After Philadelphia swimming up through loose cotton floss and there's the round moon far and small, a vast plain of cloud like prairie moonlight, wide, blue and cold.

[Notes for mbo explanation]

12

Jaes, Deidre, Emilee, Sue, Angela.

Thursday night, the students have been showing up, my computer cord got here this aft.

Showdown with Francis this morning. His hackles were up, ie he demonstrated that, hadn't thought what to say, accused me of a couple of things that were easy to refute - that mbo hasn't been vetted in the college, that it isn't articulated, that it's ideological. I said it hasn't been vetted because it hasn't bid to be a concentration, that it's very articulated, completely spelled out on the website, and that it isn't more ideological, I'm just more explicit about what its assumptions are.

Later Caryn said I should let other people be more included in defining it, so everybody could own it more. I was aghast but trod water. Said if they wanted to help define it they would have to learn it first. Was there something more intelligent she meant by it? I don't think so - I think she wants me to be more cozy about it - if I'm going to be a founder I should do it more in her manner? She doesn't understand how a philosophical vision is different from an activist vision probably, in the garden I could let people into ownership by finding what they could do without spoiling the whole.

15

Sunday morning in this big bed.

Furnace roar, a fine line of white hiss in my right ear, faint dark blue at the window.

Repulsive students, two of them repulsive in a similar way, bloodless and pretentious. The skeletal woman, pale blond hair, pop eyes, swollen lips with buck teeth, who was walking self consciously in 3 inch block heels. She's not only skeletal but narrow as a pencil. Yesterday in a crocheted sweater like a doily and size zero jeans. Her project is about the joy of food. She wants to do a practicum with church ladies talking about recipes. The other is a self conscious thin man with a blond goatee who came to Kri's talk in his purple Zen robes and sat cross legged on his chair. At the fac-student reading he read a piece he described as mysteriously dictated, which prophesied doom to the planet because humans move oil and other substances from one place to another. The planet will spin out of control. His time was up and he plaintively begged for grace. "I've been crushed all day." Lise was loathing him. What it is about both of them is that they are tenaciously mad, they're locked.

The best reader last night was large awkward Mike in the Bears cap. I met him at the introductory circle when he was sitting behind my chair. I invited him to move his chair into the circle and he said that since he'd been a security guard for three years he has to place himself where he can see the whole room. He read a passage from his BA novel describing a young boy in the forest with his stepfather hunting with a dog. He had the scene vivid and true. The stepfather's voice. He read it perfectly. He is humble and quivers with realness. He's private and young.

Emilee, who's marvelous in her moments and also somehow wrong. Her manner when she speaks to the group is prissy, she pinches the ends of her words and goes churchy in her motions. I need to see it better, I'm not saying it well enough. I asked for the essay she wrote on home and she gave me the whole packet with its letter to Caryn. I'm annoyed she praises Caryn as much as she praises me. I want it to be that I inspired her unusually, not that she's the sort of person who gets cozy with everyone. I did inspire her unusually and Caryn's letters have a fake-kind ponderous tone. If she is inspired by that she lacks judgment. But then I also think she's empathic and protean and that's her brilliance and it's fun for her, gives her lively time. It's the way I have to think of Susan though not as sharp and sorry.

The advising group in my office as the room darkened, people lying on the floor not wanting to sit up, afternoon sun when we began, three men and four women, all generous people.

Jaes, Deidre, Mandy, Rose, Morris, Zack, Cameron.

Now it's grey daylight on frosted branches and there's the waning half white at the tip of a branch. Seven o'clock. I have the morning for Eurydice. A big silent room, creaking.

Annie [Smith] at her grad presentation yesterday poised, pregnant, rooted in her actual topic that she'd come to with my help, telling the story of her question and confidently showing us that she has learned to write passages wonderful straight through, and with it also a livelihood and a way of reaching far into the world with something it needs.

Kri danced her presentation on an aikido mat. She diagramed her talk continuously with gestures, and many of them were gestures of her whole body, a ripple bottom to top. When she sat on her heels she was a perfect small right shape, weightless in place, more weightless than a child but balanced like a child.

There now the first pale sun on the standing feathers of the pine. A bit of the way down the cold trunks.

16

Monday - mbo [embodiment studies colloquium] in the cottage yesterday afternoon, gold behind the trees - twelve of us close around in chairs. It fell dark as we talked.

Herzog's movie with Antarctic adventurers and their scientific images, and the place above, below, around them, beings. A jellyfish somehow lit from below pulsing magnificently against an abyss, like god. Bulgarian keening of religious force. A clam like a flat rock jet propelled and flapping. Something between a spider and an octopus high-stepping with 5 wire legs, I think five.

19

An oppression dream. I'm in a basement people are sleeping in. The landlord is arguing that more people have slept there than have paid. He saw 17 pees. (Not sure of the number.) I'm in bed with Judie. The landlord is in a lit space a bit lower down. A very small naked woman sees she will fuck him. He sets her on a high lit counter and gets out his penis. She says it hurts. He's going to keep on anyway. She has a big dildo she's putting a condom on, she says she wants to come. Judie on the outside of the bed is freaking. I'm trying to keep her quiet, she'll draw his attention. She's moving around too much. He's a very bad man and if he wants her he'll damage her. I move her to the inside next to the wall. She quietens.

It's next morning. We're paying the landlord. I have my baby with me and I sneak out the door, leaving Judie and Paul to pay. I'm waiting for them in a park. Paul comes back and says Judie has to go back. The landlord is demanding it.

What I'm feeling about this is that I had been forgetting that Love Woman is hounded and hunted, and that she is somehow unwillingly complicit.

Am I right about that  
She's complicit with very icky men  
Her vulnerability is also a complicity  
It's a gnostic tale  
Is there more you want to say   no
Were you reminding me  
Am I going to have time to do this right  
Morris was boring me  
He has everything pinned down  
Does he have to lisp   no
Does he know he lisps   no
It's babyish  
Should I tackle him about that and his hair  
It's the opposite of his self possession  
Is it a kind of hiding  
Does he exercise   no
He dresses well  
Is he gay   no
Does he have a girlfriend  
Should he do gym  
Am I disapproving out of prejudice  
But am I right  
He's doing talk therapy but it isn't getting to  
Will his feelings be hurt   no
He has a lot of head energy but his body's passive  

I'm repelled by his babyishness.

What else am I repelled by. Mandy. She's like a cushion. She just goes on about her boyfriend. She's verbose, she was wasting everyone's time indulging cozy dreaminess in advising group. She has no tension. She's babyish too. Lazy.

I had her in a chair being sword girl. She felt how it is to be more tonic. Feet planted, back straight, chin higher. Something out. Arrow, she said. What does she want? "I want to see out." She said it weakly, with a question's rise. "Can you say it more strongly?" She spaced out into seeing far horizons. A lot of sky. I'm waiting to hear her say it with more energy. She's does but she's still lying low.

A cranky father?  
More trouble in her family than she's saying   YES
Keeping looking for the tension  
Philippino families are more patriarchal than she knows  

Who else is problematic. Rose. There's something there but she's scrambled and dependent. I don't know what to do with her. She's a worn bulk. Question is what's the best use of her. Fragile I think. Are her diagnoses her medals? Is she going to make it through the semester? No. She doesn't interest me.

Should I be interested in her?  
For my sake   no
Is there anything I can do for her   no
 
Am I on the right track with Zack  
Can he do it  
He's very bright  
And has a sweet mouth  
Will he do what he wants to do  
Does he need balance   no
Centrality  
He says he can't do things but it's doesn't want to  
Can he finish this semester  
It's exactly what he should do  
He didn't want to know about me  
Is that a limitation   no it's correct
He doesn't want a relation, he's paying for permission  
Any more you want to say about Zack   no
Does he know I'm attracted to him  
Not sexually  
As a son  
Is that alright   no
Cut back on that  
 
Something wrong with Cameron?  
Does he go out of body   no
He's decorating himself  
It's pathological  
Look for something else  
His giggle is self deprecating  
 

Lovely Siobhan who said she liked my voice - long long ago this morning in Sowbel's research hour. The way she sat with long neck and creamy brown skin. I was sure she was Jewish, a young queen.

Was that as horrible as I thought it was  

- Lise's dream workshop.

Is Goslinga as horrible as I think she is   YES
Is she sick  
There was so little knowledge and respect  
Does Lise have any clue what she's doing   no
Did you like that big woman  
Was Siobhan's dream about wanting a baby  
Love woman's locked up  
 
Can you tell me why I can't stand Gillian  
Is it jealousy   no
She's grandiose   YES
She's padded  
Something about the way she wears her hair  
Something else   no

What happens when people I've liked, had intimacy with, like someone I don't like. It's as bad as jealousy though it isn't jealousy exactly. It wipes out the realness of one of the few connections there is; if they like that one, they could not actually have liked me. Susan with Jim. They must have been faking or I must have been mistaken. The continuous hollowing-out of connection.

Gratitude is something. Students when they cry at graduation. Kri this time. It means I understood them whether or not they understood me. It means they know I understood them. There are people I've understood who don't know it - Joyce said that, "You know when you're seen, not everybody does."

I'm writing in the field of explaining. It's not good.

People grateful for Wild research, stopping me in the cafeteria door. "I felt confirmed." Delight. They liked the way I did it too. It was funny. They liked being me in it.

Morris's fuss-budget babyness, that professor-formation spoken in a juicy lisp from a baby-fat face with hair down over his little uninteresting eyes.

I'm repelled by my three Asians - Mandy in her marshmallowness, Cam in his somehow broken-apart loud ungrounded abstractions about the many and the one and transcendence.

What do I like. Collected fine Jaes in her good clothes and level consideration, Deidre in her modest pretty clarity, Zack, pretty Zack, young Zack with his sexy mouth, anguished Zack, smart swift experienced Zack who doesn't want to know me but wants me to know him. I dreamed his name was in a New Yorker cartoon.

I dreamed a Chinese house, something like historically preserved, impeccably kept, three stories, fringed lamps in the second floor windows. Symmetrical. I dreamed walking in a high pile of salvaged beams, huge beams laid in a mess, probably unstable. One fell a long way onto the street below, where people were passing.

A hollow glass sphere a child would get into and be spun. A junk yard where my little boy had picked up toys, not knowing they'd have to be paid for.

Last night the tall woman - was she a man? - she had a double chin and a big square belly and a blunt big face like a cartoon giant, and she stood telling her dream in a grave cadenced resonant voice with measured gestures. She was like some tribal function, Celtic, northern, I thought Scottish. Archaic. Hypnotic. (Yes she is a man.)

19

The Love Woman lecture this morning.

Jessica the quirky mover, the light spirit, in dialogue with the drummer.

Is there anything you want to talk about   balance in missing, regret, competition and anguish
Instruction?   no description
I'm doing that  
Well enough?  
Are you saying that lovingly  
Regret for the lack of the best  
Do you mean missing my mother   no, regret in true cause
That my best has no use  
I can only serve my inferiors   YES

The Queen of Sheba in the cafeteria this morning standing at the counter telling me I'm so beautiful. I was groping for what to be, it was so unexpected. She so beautiful up and down.

When dreary Maeve was telling the mythic history of Ireland, midsection a bulging brown sack, I closed my eyes and thought of Siobhan naked, how I could touch her to make her sigh.

20

The schedule has ground along through its always repeated stations and I will be dumped off the conveyor into Friday's mess of people with suitcases milling and hugging.

Lise took me for a drive so she could talk to me about the fac in the dorm saying that if I'm going to talk to Lucinda about marketing embodiment studies they want to feel they 'own' it more. What can that mean.

I've been noticing my spine is starting to curve. Have to take that on. The sensation of mid-back touching the wall and neck curving too far forward, bad.

It's 6:23, blue dawn, there with yellow flashes and a motor. The pine in light snow drawing itself in pale sky-colored edges.

Cabaret. Angela reading Beowolf in Old English, sitting cross-legged on the edge of the stage. Billy's tedious story, but he's thawed some, he's cuddling everywhere and there's more shape in his face.

Emilee's modest delicate song - the way she isn't all the way rooted down. The hunch in her walk, and her lump of bun, what is that, in a smart girl with a good family? It's oppression, but how? Writing, loneliness, defeat, of subtlety. [It says.]

Deidre's dream and her reading of it - the younger woman who's pulling a chain, hauled away, sad.

Architecture - beauty - a whole with the way you speak and are embodied.

21st

Burlington airport restaurant, window table. Away across there, snowy mountains, what they call mountains, pearly mauvey blue, just the color of low clouds above them, dim grey blue darker in the clouds' shadows - I'm not able to say this. The pearly quality must be water in the air rising from the snowy slopes, which hardly show snow because they're thickly treed. It's the branches that are adding mauve. The mountains are a grand band of yonder, a somewhere that isn't here.

What was it this res. Jaes. She's tall, straight silver hair shoulder length, pale eyes behind glasses with small lenses. She dresses well. Rings, bracelets, necklaces, small pin in her nose. A gentle gravity. She laughs, she likes to laugh, but she's formal. She says I changed her life. She is more at ease and she isn't wearing her protection hat. She has a small mouth and often a little pleat between her brows.

-

Dulles, 17F. It's just back of the wing. Low sun slanting through, United 919. I'm wearing the bronze satin shirt, jeans, docs, little black cashmere zip cardigan and my metaled aspen poplar leaf necklace - years from now I'll like to know that, though no one else will. The bronze satin is a sophisticated thing, I don't ruin it with washing. The leaf is or isn't a poplar leaf but I'll take it as that.

[Opposite page: notes on the first pdf of Mike's monograph]

23

Monday very early. 4:00.

What else do I need to tell before I move to the new book. I feel attacked at [the college] in two ways now. There was what happened with Lucinda. I took my chance when she came to talk about marketing, said marketing should think about how to reach the people who are dissatisfied where they are, and intake councilors should understand it. There was a silent gasp in the room. Lucinda said yes there could be a meeting and I said what about Friday afternoon. It turned out that Lise invited me for the drive because she'd been delegated by the fac to tell me that if mbo is marketed they should have more of a say in it. "And I agree with them." And then Lucinda didn't get back to me and I dropped it. I made the offer because the program needs enrollment but I'm not willing to do anything anywhere to get permission for it. The thought disgusts me.

The second thing is Sowbel suspicious of the beauty/glamour/enchantment of the way I do lectures. What will I make of that.

On the other hand, the students. Kri's graduate presentation, Kri dancing her talk all up and down, straight small body, and then the way she sat in lovely balance on her heels.

Annie in the cottage at hers, rooted, achieved, pregnant, reading beautiful passages she could not have written a year ago.

Jaes freer, Deidre sober and moving into her own studio room.

What I have, that makes my lectures enchanting, is freedom in personhood, integral platform. It's what they have when they graduate, and what I work to give them. I succeed.

Kri cried when she said from the podium that I helped her to the voice she wanted. Jaes cries when she says I've taken oppression from her. Deidre when she hugged goodbye said "Love you" in my ear.

Who else there's been. Anna, Layla, Carolyn, Juliana, Favor.

 

volume 17


in america volume 16: 2008-2009 september-february
work & days: a lifetime journal project