Work and Days: In America volume 19 - part 1 2009 October-November

in america volume 19 part 1 - 2009 october-november work & days: a lifetime journal project

October 5 2009

Monday morning - just before 8 - windows are closed, hotplate's on - it's quiet.

The green ray - what I know about being in it - pain, plants, beauty, Celts, a certain look -

This first journal of a new kind, prettier, but shorter pages with lines further apart. Smoother paper isn't it. Ribbon bookmark red on white. [John Dickinson Black n'Red]

-

Sean's garden

6

Finished formatting DR3, into the time with T and C - fall of 1976 - is there anything I can see - stoned passages with flying bits, when there wasn't a narrating self - what do I want to know - I come into it wanting to be past it, into the years in Alberta - I as if assume they are a mistake - I feel that about all the erotic intoxications, disgust, impatience - but also I try to look through what I wrote to who I was, beautiful and lyrical - haven't come to where I cut my hair yet - and I watch her approvingly - I approve her as a body - admire her erotic success as far as it went - and now am wondering whether that lyrical femme was a seductive construction. Was she? It says yes. As if I had learned to shape myself physically to succeed that way - by certain kinds of reading and feeling that tuned me hormonally. I wasn't naturally a lyrical femme? So when I gave it up I was correct. Was Trapline part of that? It says yes. I don't like to think so.

Was Notes in origin? no
So when I gave it up did I become more real?
I learned from Roy. My inferiority in writing was a result of the pretence
Which I built in London
Will you describe my real self honest search to understand and graduate

Do you have anything to say to Tash no
Do I no
But will you give me a clue happiness
Tell her to be happy

-

Proteasome - chops up proteins into components
Lycosome - bubble with toxic enzymes - can chomp up mitochondria - gradual recreates
Autophagy eating oneself
Cells make a lot of defective molecules - misfold proteins - and proteins go bad - then they gum up cells
Cells tag defective for destruction
Abnormal protein clumps in neurons
Deficient, supply proteins lacking
Alzheimers, cancer - gobble defective mitochondria so they don't damage DNA
Raise autophagy with caloric restriction
Can engineer mice with liver lysomes with more portals
If you engineer cells to make extra TFEB, a master protein, cells make more lysomes
Lysomes accidentally ripped open, their toxic enzymes kill the cell

Should I be fasting often
Once a week no
Once a month no
Once every 2 weeks
Not so long
One day no
Two days
Three no
Every two weeks for two days
Lemonade no
Just water NO
Juice fast no
Chicken soup / candy no
Vegetable broth no
Anything
Some kind of supps
Cell metabolism support
Cellular fast not gut fast
In the form of herbs
Find cellular fast herbs
Any more you want to say about this no
Wd it lower bp no
Wd less salt be important no
Exercise YES
Am I damaging my little vessels
15 min deep breathing no
Beet juice no
* That stuff
Avoid eating in the evening
Meditation no
Yoga no
Low carb no
Is it anger
If I processed anger wd it come down no
Is it work woman YES
If I lived as love woman would it come down YES
Advising raises it
Does garden work no
Authority no
Self-forcing no
Intellectuality
Writing of any kind YES

-

Did I build that with Jam no
But in the time of her
I willfully gave up being successful with them
And with Jam
And paid in misery for years
And then went back in a superficial way with Michael
Because I was isolated
Joyce taught me to succeed for real
Susan was in the stage I was in with them
Is it true that if I hadn't done that with Michaeel I wd have died
It's true YES
I was valiant but unequipped
Did I prepare what happened with Joyce in that time
And now I'm still paying
I paid with Tom YES
And now I'm paying with students
I'm being your worker
Should I take the work with Sean no
For legal reasons no
For time reasons
Give him a plan and let him realize it
$300 for drawings - for plan of the whole
Was it a mistake to take on Scott YES
If I take it on will it be a very bad mistake YES
Will you tell me why father, honest, crisis, friendship
No idea what that means anger (Kns)
Okay I'll watch for that

If I hadn't gone there would I have grown naturally no
But it was a delay

7

Note from Jane yesterday, her husband died Sunday, John.

8

Yesterday in the afternoon I didn't want any more of the computer which I'd done since 4 in the morning so I went looking for gravel to RCP in Lemon Grove and then Chula Vista. When I haven't been driving freeways for a while I'm scared of them. I cling to the road on the curves, I startle at the nearness of projectiles on either side, my bp is up, the muscles of my whole right side strain to press hard on the gas. I was on a lot of them - 94 to Lemon Grove, 805 and 54 on the way to Chula Vista, then 5 home. There's also not knowing the exits and having to make lane changes I can't anticipate at 70 mph.

I need to think about the planting design for a moment. The gravel when it's dusty is brown-grey-buff-marroonish, okay with the bluestone, which also is brownish-blue. I haven't found a tree yet. Stepping stones through. There's the wall which will show some. I want tall things along it, but it's a shady edge except in summer - how can I manage that - height and dryness. My total plant budget is $2000 including shopping and planting and delivery. Do I want Italian cypress - they're expensive but they're Mediterranean. The fountain and a curve around it and a plant background for it. I should go to Escondido / San Marcos. I need some big heaps to anchor the space - where - corners.

10

A long shopping day yesterday, up 15 to Evergreen Nurseries, Green Thumb, Buena Creek.

11

Have understood that I should contour - higher on the sides and the stepping stones like a watercourse -

Am in a joyful tizzy about the garden.

Luke has sent me zipped an album of Greek church music sung by high-voiced women.

Is Colleen in danger no
Will she turn on me no
Did those things really happen
Do you understand how that can happen
It's vile
Utter lovelessness
Was she turned on by it no
Emphasizing the fear and pain
Should she publish this
In some way so it's not sensationalistic
Is there anything you want to tell me no
Compassion and answer her questions
Can she fix the fear
It's reactivation
Use focusing YES
Bodily cleaning
Fix it completely

Will I have to be in purgatory for the rest of my life no
Did I sexually abuse Luke no
But emotionally no
Rowen sexually no
Emotionally
By letting him cry no
By dumping him on Michael

That's the reality of my dad-sex fantasies no
Because mine are loving
Her dad is a monster of greed and hate
Did my dad want to fuck me no
Did he want to fuck Judy
He didn't want to fuck me because of my leg no
Because my body wasn't as pretty
Did he have sex dreams about Judy
Ever about me no
Did he want to fuck me when I was pregnant YES

12

Canyon Pottery, bought 3 big pots for the patio and the water jar, then Kniffing's for a rose. Then we were in Alpine and went on along the Japatul Road to Pine Creek. The buckwheat was rust-red everywhere and on the slopes next to it that silver thing. Sometimes along the road a small shrub gone leafless in tufts of grass-wire, syrup-colored. As we walked, noticing the shrub oaks looking robustly green with small acorns. Tom had had a fit when I didn't want the radio. Hammered me up I-8. I did what I do, stayed calm, didn't back down and took a hit nonetheless, so that when we were stopped looking at the Thomas Guide my head was paralyzed, I couldn't figure it out. Then he was remorseful and wanting it all better but it wasn't all better yet. At the farthest end of our walk I needed him to shut up. He went up the road so I could sit alone. There were the rock slopes and thick chaparral gorges. Light and shade, a crow high overhead, two small birds zipping below. Oh miles of silence. I was looking at the ordered heaps of dull dark greens and russets, a swath of pale yucca posts in the distance, feeling what one would feel for god, relief, relaxation-into that's love for something large, wide horizontal reach. Then Tom comes up the road and wants to leave. He's carrying a rock.

Have formatted through to the end of DR6.
Did I get the right pot for the fountain.
Is the lysiloma going to work out.
Is the yellow rose going to be good - it's not what I wanted.

13

Tom is at a low ebb - he can't afford a haircut, he's missing two bottom teeth, his skin is looking rough because he hasn't been eating well, he has a carbohydrate pooch from bread and no protein. He had to ask me for lunch yesterday, and then he was short $5 for his utilities bill and asked me for that. He reads junk all day instead of doing something to get money, is passive and blocked about looking after himself. At the nursery yesterday I didn't want to be seen with him. Even in the best of the chaparral he was needing to hear his loud voice inventing inanities. I have not much to say about any of that, stay out of it mostly, go on doing what I do. Haven't touched InDesign since the packets began to come in.

-

After meeting Art and the project supervisor this morning I flew up 5 to 52, then Genesee and at the far east end of Governor Drive Miramar Wholesale Nursery on 30 acres. There I drove up and down gritty lanes looking at trees. Tied a blue ribbon on a 24" multitrunk palo verde, a slender shining thing with a few yellow flowers on long green whips. Fell in love with a couple of 24" multitrunk rhus lancea, bright things with dark trunks, but will buy the tall wide one at Evergreen. Arbutus unedo for one of the patio pots, with a crook so it looks sideways from a corner.

Planning other nice things - a scrub oak, a toyon. Want to plant groups - shrub, succulent, flowering plant, ephemerals.

14

3 in the aft, yawning. Hard night, woke at 1 and lay hurting here and there. Nothing happening at Scott's today, have been organizing DR. The first 9 volumes before I move north, haven't finished sorting, formatting and summarizing but I'm ready to. I'm going to say there are 4 periods in 10 and a half years, Jan 1975 - May 1985. Year and a half before them, two years stoned with them and Jam in Van, three years up north and around, four years back in Van working.

What do I want to know:

1. Whether being stoned was useful or just stupid
2. Whether being with the women was useful or just stupid
3. Whether I should go on writing off those relations
4. What the effect was of putting them off
5. What all that was about - what drove it
6. Whether I should go on from it
7. How much of it was of the time
8. What was real and what was false consciousness
9. How I'd think of those questions now

I see a lot of revision - I was remembering and reinterpreting - the question of consciousness - the question of self alteration - the question of unconscious motive and behaviour - consciousness studies with no guide - plunged into experiment - always recording.

There was a secondary question about art
A feminist intention and principle
Drivenness about attachment - 30s motives plus damage and sex
Place was part of self revision and part of art

-

There I went to Walter Anderson's and bought a dwarf mandarin and a tiny manzanita.

16

DSL connection finally. Listened to Wachtel with Campion, CBC news.

Have ordered trees for tomorrow, the palo verde and strawberry tree, hopefully the rhus for Monday, the Green Thumb plants. Do I have too many, probably. Is it the right gravel. Is two inches enough. Is it the right pot for the fountain. Is Monday too early. Am I charging enough. Will the fountain be okay with the gravel. Should I have got the black one.

Make up a maintenance plan -

-

It was hot today. I was at the worksite from 10:30 - 4:30. The palo verde arrived, graceful, green and gold, glinting, with many slender arms. The most beautiful tree he's seen, Scott said. The strawberry tree too. Two small strong men were digging, smashing lumps, raking. The soil level is where it should be. The wall is the right height. I laid out a hose to show the path and one of the men sprinkled a line with cement powder and then brought the path level down, and mounded the sides.

I was waiting for the pots - am writing any way it comes, tired, dehydrated - took two aspirin and am drinking tea - am not a writer just now - the pots arrived, large, dark blue to turquoise - the men had had to haul the boxed tree up the steps when it arrived and now we took the box apart on my tarp and carved off the sides of the root ball until we could get it in the narrower neck. There were three small burly men and me all thinking well and not in each other's way, carrying gravel from a bucket in the driveway in the garbage can lid, opening potting soil bags, knocking the mandarin and the pomegranate out of their pots, siting the pots, choosing their forward face and the forward face of the tree. The pots are beautiful shapes and colors and look superb with the pomegranate and the orange.

I stood a rake on end to show where the second tree will go and they dug a hole there while I got the vines into the ground by their posts. The palo verde has its hole too. Then we carried - they carried - the little pots into the back and they cleaned up impeccably, folded my tarp, put rubbish on the back of their truck, hosed the steps and the driveway, and drove away. I still had to take the wagon back to the nursery, along with the empty pots. Was muddy, pant legs soaked from the knees down, stiff and thirsy, hungry, overjoyed.

More to think out - placement of the fountain, exact placement of the trees -
Placement of pots
Raise pots a bit - make sure they drain
Get them watered - talk to Greg
Wires for the vines - talk to WA
Lighting on?
Take photos
Feed citrus

17

I wake thinking about the garden. My lovely brain though slowly failing eagerly thinks ahead to what will need to happen next week. The fountain. The reservoir is too big isn't it - it should be deeper and narrower so plants can be closer.

I have a CBC podcast on. Saturday morning. It was a white, damp night and now faint sun diffused in mist at eight o'clock.

19

Monday. Badgering men all day. We need to go deeper to try to get drainage. The path needs to be lower. The lumps need to be taken away, not smashed to incorporate them into the ground. They aren't using perforated drain pipes, only those standing caps, so I'm going to have to lower the path so it can be drainage. - They're poorly supervised, I have to hover. There'll be a lot more hovering this week, and 7 packets and 3 theses - I'll have to write short letters.

-

Have just discovered I can get opera on Youtube. Kiri singing the Marchellin, Flemming singing Im Abendrot.

20

By tonight the trees were in the ground, the path was profiled correctly, the reservoir was in the ground, the fountain in place though not connected, irrigation and drains in place, rubbish removed. At noon the rhus lancea stirred its leaves in sunlight though its legs are in the shade.

I am listening to Bach cantatas on DSL.

It was a long work day, I was dragging by the end, but was throwing myself all over the site all day, stumbling but not falling and not minding how I looked, only liking to do what I was doing. Saying a little less here, we could do more here. Wearing an ugly hat and old clothes, feeling the freedom of effective self.

Fighting with Lise for an hour about Emilee's wonderful thesis.

22

A day off from the worksite although I was hours sorting a fuss between Scott and Art - have 4 of the 7 letters done - amazing - in spite of the days in boots.

The republic of letters - Wikipedia he says - the term ancient, from Latin. Robert Darton. Codex. CBC podcast Wachtel.

Karina Gauvin singing Lascia qu'io piango. Beautiful Alexandre Weimann.

Si il cor ti perde - Gauvin and Prina - bootleg tape - in Tolomeo.

I love the way the comments on Youtube opera come in English, French, Italian, Japanese, anything people have, and the discussion goes on.

24th

Hello white morning. Saturday again.
So quiet I can hear the hiss though it's faint.

-

Restless, a sour edge, what is it, wanting fun and action after 5 letters, something from having absorbed anger from both Scott and Art who felt entitled to blast me with what they didn't risk giving each other. I was proud of handling it lightly but is this a cost? Or the wrangle with Lise, which I don't want to lose.

I went through Agency of bliss last evening and wrote as close into the texture as I could, and I have sent that letter to Lise too. She won't like it but she will have to see something about what Emilee is, that she has been at crossed purposes with.

[work list]

There Lise writes "I did come around as I read and reread, it's such spectacular writing though I also feel strongly it needs a critical framework."

-

And then I think I solved it.

25

But I didn't. Lise has used what I sent to entrench herself in her power play.

Should I send it no

- There I write a note saying I won't send it [Lise's second reader letter to E].

I wish Emilee could fight for herself, I get in trouble fighting for her with people stupider than either of us. There's a helpless feeling, no one in the program would know what I'm talking about, anyone would support Lise because she's more like them. I wrote a good letter, it won't reach her, it wouldn't reach any of them, and Emilee will fold and do something against herself.

I'm going to lose
Does Lise know what she's doing   no
Stupidity wins
Can Emilee withstand   no
I will never recommend Lise again
Should I resign no
Am I being too protective of Emilee    no
Did I play stupidly    no
It means I don't have enough power no
Can I withstand her
Should I
Will Emilee be happy to do what she says no
If I suggest it will Emilee like it
Will she say she wants to do it [publish in ant bear]
Will E be very unhappy
Will she say so to Lise no
E isn't very dissociated
She never has been
Lise still is
Lise needs it for that

Will you talk to me love, (Kp), brilliant and courageous, power struggle
Will you slant (Kp)    directness
Brilliant and courageous love is running up against my father's power struggle / blindness
I want brilliant and courageous love to win
Should I be detached    no
And it's going to lose   no
Please lead me    turn for the better, power struggle, fight, disappointment
Will be a turn for the better   no
Instruction no
Description
Stop fighting with her it is a turn for the better, to fight, disappointment, in power struggle
I have to take this loss
You don't mean that
It's an old grief
Will you say it another way process, equal, anger, of love woman
Love woman's anger about not being equal
Emilee's?    no
Mine
She is fighting her own
Is there more you want to say    no
Do I have to give up on Emilee
My heart is sore    YES
I want one of these young women to see the difference
And they don't   no
But they find me more intimidating
So is that alright
'Abandoned'
That helped
Is there something you want to say next decision, slow growth, honesty, partial loss
For me
Instruction decide to let honesty grow slowly in the face of partial loss
In relation to Lise    NO
In relation to myself
Is there something I haven't been honest about    YES
I love to hear that
In relation to Em    no
To [the college] no
To myself
Improve practical generosity with evasion
You mean seeing people's limits
The way I did with Scott and Art    YES
I'm expecting too much of Lise
Is that what you mean    YES
I have to be willing to be lonelier
Don't trust people outside their limits
Do you want to say more come through, into happiness, at sharing, competition
Be happy at putting E into this bind
Because it's good for her    no
Is it good for her NO
Because it's unavoidable?   no
Can you tell me why community
Can I publish Emilee
Think of the opportunities
Is that what you mean    YES
Favor and Emilee YES
Emilee as partner in that
Can she expand it
That's the solution

-

I'm down to 6 students and no second readerships this sem.

Am in that moment of betrayal and disappointment where I want to punish someone by shutting myself down in relation to them.

This weekend toast and thin-sliced ham with Tom for supper and breakfast. The era it is, toast after years without it.

This morning we sat in the sun together and Tom read from his notes for Casual labor. At first I didn't listen but then I settled and closed my eyes. Among his lists of show-off cultural claims sometimes a lovely paragraph of narrative in his beautiful voice. His face with a sad real look that touched me, yesterday he was sad about his teeth, the lower bridge not being what he'd hoped. This morning that real person sounding like a writer. I could see that his hundreds of folders of notes will not ever all be written up but that they and even the heaps of cultural names are life review. I admired his mental energy, the strength of his head at 63. Not exact but abundant. I was proud of him in my dubious way, wondering how he's so generative when I am down to these dull mangy statements of banal fact.

This evening I mainly finished formatting DR1-9. Some detail, some missing parts and out of order parts. But mainly that first era is sorted. Should I do the last years next - could. Way to see what happened. 1981-1985, 4 years, it's long.

26

- Dull mangy statements, except that the letters aren't bad, for instance the letter to Emilee about Agency of bliss.

A dream where I and someone find ourselves on very high ground that in the dream I say is a distant northwest suburb of London. We are looking south down toward central London, round hills in dry grass, and immediately below us is a crossing of two broad rivers, one north-south and the other east-west, with a pointed islet between. I'm thinking I've been there before with Peter Harcourt, it may have been a place he knew. My companion and I go down to the islet, which is marshy. I'm awkward climbing steps onto it, see willows in yellow leaf. Crossing the nearer river on a high bridge, my companion stood looking over the edge. I was afraid to. There was much more, being on a bus looking for somewhere to eat, etc, but I've written this part for the mysterious north London suburb theme. Haven't had it for a while.

Monday morning 7 a.m. I phone Art. "Good morning Art, I'm wondering whether I need to be on site this morning. What are we doing?"

I have an acid edge about the battle with Lise. I'm up against her blank wall, feel the sore heart of other abandonments.

There's a brilliant day at the window, 7:40 in Richard's rusty sycamores.

One afternoon last week I had my computer plugged in in Scott's back patio, was writing on a yellow tablecloth in filtered sun; red leaves of the Boston ivy on the lattice in front of me, a monarch cruising the passiflora, and constant birdsong in the trellise above. Around the corner white angels' trumpets hanging enormous over a shaded path. My beautiful making, which I do not own.

What shd I tell Tasha -

- There I write out instructions for stopping drinking. Will she do it?

-

Tom got his check and had put money on his phone so that when I got to the top of Grand Ave and stopped in the shade of the lifeguard tower I could call him and he could say I see you now, I'm coming toward you. First time we've done that thing everyone does, and there he was in a red teeshirt, blue jeans, white buck shoes like my teenage boyfriend.

Dave Leonard's tape of the music of 1951 - first song a beautiful version of Blue Canadian Rockies, fiddle line. Tom was enchanted, doing what he does, cataloguing the style, resolving the accompaniment into detail that washes past me.

27

What is at stake with Lise, that makes it so bitter and fraught - I work with the best of the young women to strengthen their wild edge - Susan's slash writing, Emilee's racing fire - and she says in her stony way, I don't get it, and then Susan wastes her thesis on slabs of dull feminist rhetoric. She runs workshops in her cabin that let her hang onto Carolyn and now Emilee. She conventionalizes Jaes' natural prose. The agony of the embodiment colloquium, having my creation turned to her social uses.

From her point of view - Juliana was hers, she hadn't ever been my student but she adored me. My students quote me but they don't quote her, my students cry at graduation when they thank me, and not when they thank her. At embodiment colloquia she has supported me generously. Before I joined the fac she was the edgy dyke who got the girls. I run blockbuster intellectual-emotional workshops, I'm the program's intellectual star. - Shouldn't I be satisfied with all of that. No because when students who love me love her it devalues that love, it shows me I've been wrong in the way I've felt the relation. In that way it steals all those connections I've worked hard for away from me. Does it show me something unfounded in my work.

Should I be so I don't care no
It does show me I've been wrong in thinking it's special no
Is there something you want to say to me about this no
But she does send them backward YES
And they aren't strong enough to withstand
Which means I have to let them go no
It means I waste my time with them no
I can support that genius when they're with me and then they lose it again
So what I do is worthless
And I should do something else no
Will you explain community, intelligence, practical, readiness
Is that about me no
About them
They give it up for practical reasons but they still have it no
I'm not getting this, will you say it another way recover, love, for shared, intelligence
They do no
I do
It's not worthless in that I recover love for shared intelligence
It adds to the intelligence of the world
What they do, even if they don't continue to do it YES
The shared product matters
That's why publication matters
That's why publishing Emilee matters YES
Would Susan ever let me publish her
After Emilee and Favor

[garden work list]

Are the trees alright - the African sumac is looking bedraggled and the palo verde a little rusty.

Art springing out of the gravel truck that has pulled up with just the right number of good deep slabs of bluestone he picked out of a pallet. At the end of the day Mario had placed the curved path, each stone a colored surface floated on gravel, everything smooth, and it's a working drain too, a watercourse. The plants are a bit shabby after the men were back and forth around them.

-

I went at midday and turned on the sprinklers, first one side and then the other. The new gravel was already flecked with palo verde flowers, specks of bright yellow, and bits of dried leaf. I stood against the wall, on the hill, looking across the swale, and felt myself sink into garden heaven.

29

I've got fond of running around during the day, went to check the carpenters this morning, drove around Little Italy looking for Architectural Salvage, where I chose solid brass handles and a lock mechanism for the gate.

Reading The landscaping ideas of jays, hoping Sean and Ryan will want a native plant garden.

Judith Larner Lowry 2007 University of California Press

[Opposite page:

pink wild onions
lavender Ithuriel's spear
meadowfoam
baby blue eyes
owl's clover
Chinese houses
clarkias
tidy-tips
goldfields
5-spot
red maids
lupine
monkeyflower

sequential sowings late as March

each with its own pollinator, type and taste of seeds, fragrance, color, shape, relationship to the earth, its moment in the sun

Plants put thoughts into your head.]

When I was planting I noticed I had been speaking aloud to the plants, had forgotten the Mexican men were there.

Talking to salesmen in stores, I find myself stumped for common words, today 'cord' and 'breaker." I was so fluent and I'm becoming a halting blank old person. Not with words I've refreshed, usually. I'm learning to rehearse, sometimes will make vocabulary notes. There are also words I lose persistently, regain sometimes briefly. At the moment I can't think of any.

Note from Martin today. I always read my own afterward because it is more satisfying. He mentioned more illustrious British forebears. I asked how he is playing Gonzalo and he described, was it, a fantasy of himself?

I did like that he read and was pleased with Holmes on Coleridge and The well at the world's end.

Note from Leah Wiebe. 824 East Pender, both buildings, are being sold. Nov 15.

[Opposite page, list of questions for Sean and Ryan, cost estimate]

Grey's anatomy - I love the women and I like that it's about work - in this episode, the first thing I'm watching on my big monitor, people interested in skill.

Looked at my site on this monitor - it needs a lot of little fixes - all through.

I'm into DR where I drive north, surprised it's only two years - a lift as soon as I touch into it -

You know what, I don't need everybody to like me, says Charlotte. [Private practice]

Lucia Popp singing Beim Schlafengehen. Deh Vieni.

Saturday 31st

Pushing into the mess of DR9 for many hours today. How it seems. Wasteful - was Jam worth the agonies and confusion? Valiant in so much pain and anxiety, swamped in overconsciousness, not leaving enough in the dark. Was that necessary? Never letting up crying for the self that could dissolve in beauty. The moments when I did still are love in me, and so are the daily moments I noted with the people of my country. I haven't decided about the thinkiness. I know the months alone in my country are my lifetime watershed but was the studying anything too?

Was my attachment to Jam, or somebody, necessary to the good in those years? Could I have been immersed in love with the land without being tormented in refused longing to share? I feel sorry for myself then and at the same time know I can't do what she was doing. I was 33. It's 31 years ago.

There have been a lot of hits on the mbo site all month and I've ignored them. Find today that they're from an Emily Carr University of Art and Design course. Is it Sandra?

Ryan writes that they like the idea of a native plant garden.

1st November

Last night was two kinds of anniversary, the first time Tom took me to the back country, white mist in Santa Ysabel, dinner in Ramona on Halloween night, 14 years ago, and moving him to 3663 Georgia three years ago. Today there was a Santa Ana sunrise and we got onto I-5 early, breakfast in Ramona, Black Canyon Road as the day heated. Silence. By the bridge dry sycamore leaves scraping together, complex rustle in the oak canopy, wind in my ear. That was all. Absorbent exquisite silence. No hiss.

I sat on the edge of the road above the Indian village looking at the slope across the way. This year where it was burned there's a wirey plant grown thickly and turned bracken-orange. Amid the orange new growth of some bright green shrub. Perfectly ordered slopes of those two, with rocks, indescribable. A bird's sharp single note at exactly spaced intervals. Sky dark blue.

Last night in Tom's kitchen we found The Golden West to check the facts of 14 years ago. I marveled at the writing. Wanted Tom to marvel with me. He was angry that I didn't see he was eager to show me something wonderful. And even now do I think he was trying to show me something wonderful? I saw his plan was more important to him than what I was actually seeing, which was more wonderful than what he had in mind. I was noticing I was going to be lonely and unseen, which I have been, though he has been good humored and tolerant and constant in his way.

We had a little fight, I agreed I'm critical always. Went to Fading to read three years ago and saw the writing is nothing, my presence had become nothing. I've ruined what I made with so much effort - don't you agree?

It says no.

That writing was sublime
This is junk
So have I ruined myself no
How not? you have balance, in illusions, completed and improved
Was I more deluded then YES
Am I deluded about what I miss no
I was deluded enough to be in love with him no
I'm less deluded now?
And so much less gifted! no
Do you mean a different gift no
I wasn't deluded in those descriptions of the Golden West no
Will you tell me what my delusion was (HM)
Something about reverses
Do you mean I was deluded about Tom NO
About my relation to him YES
This dry unlovingness is better? NO
I write so badly because I have such poor conversation no
Because I have no new experience no
Because I don't love no
Because I'm shut down no
Because I'm not living my own life no
Because my brain is old no
So will you tell me because you've processed
Because I'm not in conflict
So now I'm only fit to help other people (angrily) no
Leave it there tonight no, you have balanced your losses and withdrawals by processing
Do you mean there's something else to write
Writing whose engine isn't conflict
Do you mean like the letters no
Do you want to say what fight, for the work, of perfecting, friendship
Writing as if toward a friend
Letters? no
Imaginary friend
Writing that is not alone
Do you want to say more no
An imaginary man
The space man

4

I swam and swam, for a while on a brown river where I came to shallow water at its head. The swimming was sketchily felt, arm motion but not much feel of muscle or wet. In the last of it I was next to a swimming pool. It seemed too full of children to enter but I saw that I could dive into it under the bleachers. I boldly leapt. I was underwater holding my breath waiting to surface. I was struggling up and I could see the lit surface but I came no closer to it. My throat and chest were strained needing to take a breath. I was thinking calmly but desperately what to do, and woke.

Formatting DR10-1 the first winter in Edmonton and on the rigs, very slowly because I transcribed it as written, lower case with spaces and disposed on the page. Formatting it correctly I understood it. I'd been slopping with the last parts of DR9 and had disregarded a lot of it as incomprehensible. When I understand it I honour its effort. I wasn't stoning anymore and I wasn't lost in speculation that way but I had learned to watch myself more closely and I had intended as a principle to write purely from experienced center.

I want to give a correct account of the ambition of the time, the effort, its hypotheses and wagers.

I was very stretched, afraid of bodily loss, especially breast cancer and blindness, and anguished in loneliness and fear of betrayal - humiliated by the work I was doing for money and by having my sexual starvation seen. Poor, often at the end of my money. - So much endurance, I feel for myself now. I was completely unseen. I didn't even see myself generously except in the sense that ambition is self-generous, intending the best for myself that I could envision, without considering other kinds of need.

Saying this now remembering the ways I'm unseen at [the college], for instance by Karen and Lise, and Margo too, in relation to Emilee's writing. A value I understand, that I can't convince them of, and that is the line where my allies turn into my enemies. I learned it in that ordeal of self-education and they have not been there.

Should I establish authority more no
Completely stop being friends with Lise
And with Karen
Be friends with students
And Jim
Ann?
Gaelyn? no
She's too weak
Her?
Stop trying to persuade them no
Be more candid no

So can I tell this story well
Go back and get it right

More you want to say give, success, you envisaged, completion
Finish what I aimed for
In that time

At [the college] be more strategic
Read something marvelous

What was the work - feeling and focus - radical investigation of intimacy among women - radical ambition - it hasn't been written anywhere -

-

Acoustic nerve fires in absence of sound.
Inflammation, infection, high bp, allergy, diabetes, toxin, pressure from abnormal tissue.
Salt, caffeine
Monitor bp, exercise to improve circultion
Avoid loud noises

part 2

in america volume 19: 2009-2010 october-february
work & days: a lifetime journal project