in america volume 19 part 4 - 2010 january

work & days: a lifetime journal project

1st January 2010 Full moon this morning going down in the northwest. Dreamed I was in a gravel truck going down into a quarry, very steep long ramp. I was marveling to the driver that he could get the truck back up that ramp when it was loaded - there I stopped to ask how to tell a dream, I know the remark to the driver is that thing I don't have a name for - a day-ego intrusion? - a thought that comes from outside the dream's intent? - though I don't know that dreams have an intent - but from outside what might be significant about the dream - I've noted them because I've tried for a complete phenomenology of the dream, but when I read dreams after, I notice they're extraneous, I disregard them, they are the thoughts of a self who is thinking as if the dream is real and it is trying to figure out its circumstance - I wanted to try to say that observation because I never have. - The driver is saying I can find a green rock here at the end of the quarry. I do, it's a chunk that's paler and more translucent than the surrounding rock wall, but there's another small area of it embedded. Someone is telling me a name for it. I'm digging a bed. It's a real bed and it's a bed of earth with a lot of stones in it. I have a method. When I'm sitting down I dig the closest parts. I don't disturb the edges. I'm removing soil. When I stand up I can reach the further end. Then later it's a large new bed we're making for my companion. I'm thinking we should get two foam pads because the earth will be too hard - that's day-ego intrusion too. He's talking about candlesticks attached to the wall and I'm considering how they could be. Mixed thoughts about writing dreams. I skip most of them in the journal except the few I've remembered. When I was working with Joyce, dreams would come up after we'd worked for an hour, often as confirmation of what we'd done. I used to write them when I liked their scenes - I wrote them to marvel at what I'd seen, what I'd made. I don't feel them happily that way now, it's a jaded or discouraged feeling, the same as I have about many things now. Disappointed. The birds coming to the feeder have learned to wait on the wrought iron grill. I can see their little feet on the bar a yard away, above eye level. They're nervous, flit if I stir. When I woke this morning I was thinking that when I met Tom I was in full propulsion and I let myself be caught. He saw the propulsion and thought he could use it to get out of his hole. I was looking for what he knew to promise and so he snagged me, and now he's writing and he has dropped me. In the meantime, my propulsion fell very short of where it could have gone. This is a bitter paragraph and it is true. Evidence: that he worked to keep me but not to know me. So I've been a great fool. How does it feel to say that. Shocked I think. Stopped, stunned. Fourteen years are gone, what could I have done with them. I'm on the edge of being old, what can I still do. - I'm saying these things experimentally, I'm not solid around them. I've been a fool   And I'm still a fool because I don't want to believe it   no I don't know what attitude to take   My heart is shocked   Is the story I have just told true   Does Tom know it   no He did what he had to, it's not his fault   But should I be angry with him   no I so cooperated with him in it   Because I wanted a man to love me   And together we could make the illusion of it   If I had not been lame wd I have had that   Joyce didn't take me all the way   no She took me as far as she could   Estes saying the unmothered child does not need love, she needs guidance   I couldn't do other than I did, being who I am   So my great propulsion was wasted (tears)   I have very little now   no Some   I can't recover what I had   Is Being about a lost cause   no Is it being used   Will anything come of it   Should I publish it   Would a publisher -   no Could I try to publish chapters   The language chapter   The Kant chapter   Should I stay in San Diego   Can I do anything at UCSD   no Is the journal more important   no Is it important at all   Will it have an afterlife   As literature   Will I be creative again   Do I have time   I'll move sometime but don't have to hurry   Is there a priority   YES graduate from the partial loss of judgment that comes from exclusion Does it mean dry hopelessness   YES I want someone to hold my hand in that   And can't have it   YES So the best writing in the journal is false   YES Can I graduate   YES Am I close to it   Suppress hope when it comes?   no Can I ever be exuberant and energized again   - Just in relation to Tom   Firmly give up   Are you sure   yes Is there something you can promise me in exchange   reversal of delay and defeat of your organization Okay   You told me to hold on through all those years   To see it through   - Andrew Bones this aft singing on the esplanade in Balboa Park - I liked the sound of his voice and circled back - folded a ten tight and tucked it into his jar - he called me back, said he'd send me a CD if I send a message through his website - a serious tall thin boy with a small head - I said I believe in adventure - he said he had wondered whether I'd hitchhiked through East Asia. So I'm back home listening to his tracks - they're carefully made and the website carefully written - the way he pronounces his final consonants - lyrically they are stolid and preachy - musically too I suppose - I immediately want to teach him. Young adventure, though - the right thing to meet today. I like his wish to cast himself onto the river with faith and generosity. "Live directly from my heart, be able to die happy because I lived without leaving anything out." 2 Garanca singing Dopo l'oscuro nembo - The way this hunger for singing is like my craving for something sweet, and both like craving touch and warm eyes. It's Sunday morning, bright ten o'clock. [No it was Saturday.] Now I'm saying to Tom, aggrieved, "In the last years you tried to be nice to me but you had no interest in me." Laundry awkward bundle on the bike handles, pumping uphill. Jeep won't start. I'm lonely today, lonely, lonely. In the next two and a half months I will have 8 free weeks - 5 now - what do I want to get done. First try at DR17 - didn't know what to extract - there's a bit of house and city, very little - nice bits unanxious about T[rudy] - the story of working on the show - in that effort breaking through about life before birth. What will we know starting to make itself - the writing about the breaking through, which became field & field - and the end of notes in origin - reading notes but mostly working with my own material - and then a lot of fraught time with Jam, piteous creature I was in that - and then the story of who I was being, what my assumptions were - in which writing became charm, value. Who I was intending to be in life, and how that was different and the same as the others with me. The dissolvedness of the time, the sense of uncommon knowledge that could be found. Who my guides were and why I chose them. 3 Vision as I was waking of Tom arriving on the roof very thin waving a long shopping receipt triumphant having found a job I supposed. Dreaming about Olivia I've just remembered - she was her young self - I'd been mad at her but she's come to see me from a long way away - something about being in a bathtub - a dog? - and my little boy - she's packing things she'd left when she moved, to take with her - maybe I'll go with her when she drives to Edmonton. - I'm working to settle the DR time and they're leaving Vancouver! 4 I'm high in a tree placing ornaments here and there, iron rings with a star shape. Want to try writing just the striking parts of dreams. Now it's Monday morning and free time, it feels, really begins. I mostly wasted the 4 Christmas weeks, needed to. [Opposite: work list] 6 A good book - maybe not a very good book - an interesting book - good texture. Stacey D'Erasmo 2009 The sky below Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Emilee - what do I have to say about her and her two and a half years. I love Emilee for her intelligence and presence in writing, her company in writing, the quality of her company in writing. When I begin a letter to her I have to get ready because I'm not going to have to patronize her. I feel she'll be able to use the best I can come to. And she has used it. She came in with three kinds of formation - call it four, maybe - she had Buddhist training in embodied focus and ethical care and also in theology, ie an abstract system of description. She had long training in American schooling - the conventions and skills of. Summary and exposition, research. She had her work formation in market research, I'm not sure what it entails, but certainly social and research skill enough to adequately impress and reassure executives in national brands. Maybe apart from Tantric practices those are all skills on the safe side of a line - can I say that better - they are skills that have served money and power elites. I want to say skills that don't plunge into the real. Emilee also brought another formation - not a training, because it was quite secretively self-made. She read, she wrote. She invested herself in love, in drugs, and in writing. She was bold, confident, adventurous, in these secret studies of self formation. In our first semester together she led with that self - she was all there. Then she chose Francis, why? And ran up against him in a reckless way. He trashed her. Was she testing? To discover why she'd been staying under cover. She hadn't been wrong. I did that too I guess, with Jennings and Tietz. So then we knew what we were up against and got more strategic. There's a danger in that, of betraying ourselves. Did I do that? No. Did she? Yes with Lise. So the account that matters in self eval is, giving an account of whether and how we've betrayed ourselves. How would I want to evaluate myself in my work with her, or we evaluate ourselves - my first semester letters gave her a framework to bridge her secret and public selves. I tweaked concepts. I saw both. Her third packet had the story of herself at 15. What I quote of hers is immaculate. I'm sometimes pedantic - or the tweaking can seem so, but still I guess has to happen. She wrote the kind of thesis I always wanted her to write, except that she sticks with stories that don't have her people in them, which limits what her book can be. For her eval what I'd want to know is, does she now dare to go on being herself in public? Does she dare to be personal in academic discourse? Is she going to go on writing at her best? Is she going to trust her judgment with public masters? For myself, have I tried to make her something she's not   no She hasn't given up on being loved by everybody   YES It would be better if I wanted it more   She's keeping conflict alive   Does it make her writing better   no I have such a sore spot there   YES Can I do anything with that   - Gosh - I read Stacey D'Erasmo yesterday and today André Aciman, and now googling Aciman I find a NYT review of Aciman by D'Erasmo. She was a good choice to review him. She understood that he didn't use his book to punish dumb-struck love. Is his book better? He uses one device to glamorize his tale and she another, and in that neither are anywhere as good as Shearer who holds to the naked real. His device is glamour of place and privilege, Mediterranean Italy and high culture, hers goes magic realism in Mexico, but both aren't unreadable, I wasn't ashamed of reading them. Both had artistic gay men as their desirable narrator. Hers was more psychological, his was what she said it was, "Elio and Oliver might give each other up, but the book that conjures them doesn't give up either one. In fact, it brings them back together, reunites them, for a glorious endless summer." They both have good titles, which are alike: The sky above and Call me by your name. Aren't they stylistically alike, I think alike enough almost to have been written by the same person. He's 1951, she 1961. Both mention Ovid, hers begins with a child hearing The metamorphoses and his has a lover who is a philosophy professor writing on Heraclitus, as well as being Mediterranean in its lights and sounds, and having a homoeroticism between man and youth based on true regard. Both have a little girl who is wise and dies. She writes about a collagist box-maker and her book is a collection of the things he is said to collect. He writes about a writer and a musician working next to each other through the mornings, and is there more music in his book? Yes bodies are more in motion, bicycling, swimming, throwing themselves on beds. Elio's in love physically, as a body with a body in the body of the world. D'Erasmo's young man is never in love except with a remembered house and then later a house meant to recreate it. He loves quite universally but he doesn't fall into exultant miserable desire. He has women friends. I think the scene I like best is the one where he has a bath with his woman friend upstairs in her cold little house. What scene do I like best in Aciman - there wasn't a scene, though I saw it all clearly. There it's more the two men's bodies, young bodies, anywhere. Both have strong place. In her I don't like the magic spangles but I do like the portrait of the person who does, I guess. What don't I like about him, as it got going it was accurate but the first couple of pages felt like a pulp romance. I liked the Italian in his, plum cake, enriched batter. - But compare his family by the seaside with To the lighthouse and it's a Ralph Lauren ad - Woolf was aching with deep mortality, her mother's consciousness at the center of it like a well. Her death and the house's. 7 Still, I'm thinking of it this morning. Woke talking to Tom about our times, wanted to have his company in admiring and regretting. It's Thursday morning, 7:30. I look up and see a dove dropping to light on the roof. Finches fussing, sun on the Martin Building I want to say pale gold but it's not, it's strong ivory? Unspeakable on warm plaster. Don't plunge into the real - don't plunge into what persons really are apart from what they pretend to be among other people who are scared of what they are and we are. Art has been the enclave where the plunge sometimes happens, where we learn how to do it and sometimes can be loved in it. When I try to evaluate Emilee's MA I am needing to evaluate our program, and I'm enraged. I'm enraged by what happened to her with Francis, and Lise too, and I'm enraged by what happened to me, and enraged by what happened to Margo. She made a brave bid and I met her in it and then she was squashed and backed down, and I'm backed down too, I was defeated trying to defend Margo and then abandoned by Margo. I was in joy about what I could do in the program and now I'm withdrawn and quite bitter. I don't have an ally even in the people I defend. - I see I'm sounding like Ed. Does that mean I'm wrong? - But Emilee did write Agency of bliss and I'll publish it and we'll sell it and that will be a triumph we can salvage in the bitter mess. I want my authors to have it the way they want it - but will they know? Are they strong enough? I can make them strong temporarily. As for me, today I want someone to talk to. I emailed Lawrence Stein. I'm walking so slowly and painfully. I don't see how this injury can mend itself. It's as bad after almost three weeks. Walking on it is making it worse. White and turquoise blue with a wrapped photo. 8 you thought it would never happen to all the people you became your body lost in legend the beast so very tame but here, right here / between the birthmark / and the stain between the ocean / and your open vein between the snowman / and the rain love calls you by your name Cohen from Emilee's packet. I'm going through Emilee's packets, what I pulled for the mag, and now Agency, looking for a couple of things - whether she got through the program with as much of herself at least as she went in with, whether she did what she wanted to do, whether her writing got better or worse, and what of it I want to publish. The Tantra piece did not catch me this time, was it worse than I thought? I'm discouraged. Is it going to be like this from now on, 6 kinds of capsules twice a day, and not sure of their effect, daily notes on ailments, sore slow halting movement, even the little pleasures of moving in the library gone, acid ache when I stop and feel into myself, and this aloneness unending. Food reduced to little and dull, my own disintegration the only intimate I have. Dear you   yes Will you lead me   direct, truth, responsible/practical, mystery Are you talking about understanding what's wrong with me   Can I fix it   no Should I stop trying   no Do you want to lead me to the direct truth about it   YES act, to liberate, E, by processing Is this an instruction   Fix body by emotional processing   no Fix sadness   You mean feeling into   I'm afraid pain will never stop   YES That it'll be like this from now on   It means I'd have to kill myself   no Could I live well in constant pain   With painkillers   no Will you explain   act, conflict, between adventure and evasion Is pain an adventure?   YES I understand with short sharp pain but can lowgrade chronic pain be an adventure?   Not being able to move around   no Move around with pain   Should I give up aspirin   no It is damaging my kidneys   Do everything as if it weren't there   Am I fussing too much about supps   no Is the pain candida   YES Will I ever be light, happy and easy again   Tell me how chronic pain is an adventure   slow growth, (2s), betrayal, (Kw) I don't understand   fight Fighting it?   no Fighting to live in spite of it   YES Fighting to have good days   Expect to be in pain 2/3   no 4/5   yes Am I going to die soon   no If I had a lover would I feel better   NO Figure out how to have more fun alone   YES - 1. I unfriended Tom and some other people 2. I changed 'it's complicated' to 'single' 3. Hour later two people have commented, Cheryl is one 9 Janet, Becci. Dreamed I was back in my old house, Choy's, the middle apartment. I'd been away maybe for years and I'm expecting to just start living there again but there are complications. A young woman has moved into one of the beds and is wanting the place. There's loud music in the kitchen coming from downstairs. A large group of Chinese people who don't speak English, I figure out have wandered down from the flat upstairs. In the garden I see chard growing under the back porch, grass partly covered with large pavers that have just been dropped on top. Am thinking there used to be a fig tree, sorry I don't have it anymore. Then notice the trees are full of big black pears. Trying to phone Choy. A male voice says he's the operator, I can't understand him when he tells me Choy's number. Try with my cell phone and it's somehow out of order. As I write this I'm noticing memories of thoughts, for instance when I was thinking of fig trees, in the midst of dreaming/simulating a garden also simulating simulation, seeing a little fig tree I might start. - In there I also noticed my journal was full, I'd got to the bottom of the last page. 10 Dopo l'oscuro nembo / il ciel sperai seren E al mio tesoro in sen / goder la calma. Ma cosí bella speme / va rapido a sparer. E al primo suo martir / ritorna l'alma. Parte, e poi rede il sol / di luce a sfavillar E a me non sa tornar / l'amato oggetto. A long dream in which I was with Tom after this separation, said I had something to tell him, he guessed it was that I said I was single on Facebook. Then I was telling him what's happened since I saw him, being in Julian, staying at the Pacific Surf, hurting my knee. Sunday I've hidden from so far, reading Fire from heaven, it's 4, I'll go out on the bike. Sore heart, lonesome. 11 Dreamed a new form of city transport like a skytrain - high rails - I got on with my family - the rail went through the market - food in little plates just below my feet - it seemed unsanitary - when I got off my family wasn't there - thought I could just go home, got on again, wandered through sections as we shot east - room with people having lunch, must be a meeting - look into a corridor with bathrobes hanging on hooks, on the other side people in beds, a woman in pyjamas stroking the sheet with her foot, clean white beds - I'm thinking even from UBC it's only half an hour, how do they have time for this - go up to the front, images on screens, countryside from very high up, then the window itself, yes we're high. A little animation of a somersaulting blue kangaroo zooms toward the window, enlarges. - Working on extracts for DR15, notice the feeling with Tom so like the feeling with Jam then, regret, reproach, sorrow, milling in puzzlement, why are we failing. I'm not sorted in that time yet   It makes me want to write a book   Should I   no More beautiful things to do   Do you think it's readable as is   no Am I leaving Tom because I'm too much in that time   no Because we failed to keep our hearts open   He's so much less than they were   no Did we ever have a real chance   NO Because neither of us is real enough   no I was when I started   I spilled myself into a vacuum   NO Do you mean it was good for me to do it   But now I'm back to zero   no Because we don't like each other enough   We didn't make enough effort   no We leapt over a great dislike   There have been people I've liked more but I couldn't get them   Will you say how I'm not back to zero   you've processed disillusionment and loss for better judgment But I'm so sore and hopeless   Do you want me to be like that   no Is there something you want for me   feeling, crisis, for improved, writing You want that in general   no Right now   Such an old crisis   Is there something you want for me in general   overview, child, balance, come through Do you want me to feel it in relation to Tom   no It could work when I could love him in spite of not liking him   no You don't expect that of me   In relation to being   no In relation to situation and loneliness   You want me to feel loneliness and hopelessness without ref to T   Feel it more   YES That I'll never be with anyone again   YES Is this because of childhood   no It's true   YES   (Focusing gets stuck at crown) Do you want to say anything about that   graduate to sharing pleasure and truth in a balanced way With anyone?   no Someone in particular   (7p) waiting Do you mean wait and see   Should I be doing breath of fire   Ashtanga   More for energy movement   - I want it nailed down as over so it's safe to start loving the time it was again - what he gave me - Is it safe to do that now   Are you sure   I failed to earn him   no There was that beautiful person   I couldn't hold him   no Do you want to say it better   you acted to improve his coming through and completion I did but I lost him   yes I lost him   YES It wasn't enough   It cost me too much   no You looked after me   I loved his vulnerability but I couldn't be vulnerable with him   Oh it was a sad waste   NO How not   responsible success in coming through illusion But now I have nothing left   NO Emotional wasteland   Artistic wasteland   no I'm down to the grey   Everything I worked for is gone   no Luke trusts me, that's something and I earned it with Tom   YES Some of my work with women students   That's all   no I've lost so much time   no I've given up my illusions and now I'm just dead   Isn't there supposed to be some kind of rebirth   It's not happening   YES It's not going to happen   no What else I worked for   mourning, processing, recovery, caution Do you want to say more   friendship has balanced his judgment of women It's an accomplishment   We can say goodbye with love   More   you have come through withdrawal, anger and loss Do you mean today   yes By getting to grief   That was the finishing of what was stuck this morning   More   the work, of writing, brilliance and courage, together He?   no I   What do you mean 'together'   excluded responsibility, withdrawn love woman Me and LW   YES Okay   YES 12 Note from Tony, note from Carmichael, new copy of my old rocks book, Thy made my leg hurt more, hobbled out to sit with Art in Scott's backyard looking nice in dolphin earrings and periwinkle sweater. Note from Louie who is back from mists and young spruce in Haida Gwai. All cheerful after grieving last night. Hours looking up retirement internet to figure out yes I can get SSI but it will be tiny, might be less than $100/mo, basic $460 OAS from March on, doesn't increase - bank it = $5570/yr. If I want GIS I'd have to live in Can 6 mo and it would be $5370/yr. CPP will be maybe $60/mo. I'd be down to about $12,000/yr and have to pay rent - I'm now at twice that and don't pay rent. Will you talk to me about old age   I'm scared of the poverty   Do you want to comment   no Is there somehow going to be enough money   Is it going to be utter misery   YES More so than it's been so far   YES Will it be deserved punishment   no Will I have earned it by bad decisions   no By good ones   YES Better to use my strength for adventure while I have it   YES Long miserable years   Always in pain   NO Not enough money for good food   Not enough money to travel   Some kind of bare comfort   no Not even   Bad health   no Good health?   Am I building it now   YES Should I be saving money   no Spend it to get ready   YES Some kind of subsidized housing   Please talk to me   friendship, betrayal, unknown, brilliance and courage Will you point that   responsibility Will I be able to make good art   Physical misery   no Misery of confinement   Work 3 more years   More?   no Will Mary live that long   To 90   no Will I be honoured in Canada   More than now   YES Can I do it well   YES Can I get a cheap place in Van   Vegetable garden   YES Live here 3 more years   But getting ready   Get into the back country   YES Casual friends with Tom   3 years!   YES And save my pension   Wd be enough to pay back Rowen   Help Louie build a house   YES [Opposite: notes on Scott's garden] I liked yesterday the way I could make it confident love and gratitude. Today I'm back in regret and reproach, because in my confidence yesterday I sent T a note with the Knopfler-Clapton Youtube piece [Sultan of swing], and he sent back a link to his radio station, which brought back this off-balance gnawing state. - Keep working it through, learn that. Do I ever any more have to be in regret/reproach   But I don't have to linger in it   YES Can I always rebalance into love/gratitude   Speedily   14 Regret - what I regret is that I couldn't love (him) unreserved - what reserved me - that he was sleazy and not magnificent - and that he would have despised me for it. 15 Past 3 days rereading Fire from heaven and The Persian boy for the first time, hungry for devotion and heroism. Sharp tear remembering Tom saying "You have a heroic spirit," and remembering that he sat for a year toothless on the dirtying blue couch disrespecting it. Are they [my slides] as good as I think they are   But people don't like them   no People seem not to like them   no In London they despised them   no Will you explain   they can succeed as early love if you are honest about losses Loss has to be with them   Because early love is that for people   More than it is for me   The text has to have loss   Music?   no Like Eurydice   I think I understand   YES If I don't evoke the pain they can't see them     It isn't about consciousness, it's about presence   YES Which means availability   Which means structural integrity   Relaxation   It's not attachment, it's dissociation     'Level of c' is not the same as vibrational state. It's about state but sometimes minimal c is better. Skillful means isn't necessarily 'consciousness.'   Do you believe in 'working on oneself'   no You believe in working through   Because it's dualistic. Do you believe in working body   Attachment is wanting to be some way other than it is. And is that dissociation   With a willed component   Mobility - changing and tracking - it's a kind of split. 'Levels' is wrong   YES Colors?   Spectrum   no Is it more accurate to say it's body than c?   Are there any states in which its legit to say there isn't body   no It's done by body   YES convinced that always in another human being there is that place Despair is the necessary prerequisite. 4. Compassion - being the same person together 5. light, energy, form 6. see laws 7. one 17 It's the days of the Haitian earthquake. I'm watching CBC. InDesign yesterday and today, starting to remember what I'd learned. 18 Heard a dove on the roof for the first time yesterday. Last dream this morning a man's face. He's a tall thin humorous person maybe half Japanese - I'm looking at him saying "What a wonderful being" and wake. Grey sky this morning, take-off path shifted overhead, storms forecast for the whole week. Should I call it cabin fever, desperation. The gnawing that wants sugar, fruit, but isn't satisfied when it has had them, wants more, a bright taste in the mouth again and again. I get up and open little bottles and take out capsules of, what am I up to now, eight or nine expensive substances whose effect I don't know. I'm careful how I move, careful not to kneel on my left knee, feeling hip and knee this moment. No one will touch me all week, probably not till there are hugs at the res three weeks from now. I don't want to do any of the things I could or should be doing. I check email in gnawing hopeless hope. If I eat as I want I'll put on fat immediately so I'm curbing and monitoring myself all day long. Tom is there in his cave and if I went to see him I wd take the edge off but nothing wd be different, I'd still be angry at him for spoiling his looks and being a slob and bored when he makes speeches and dissatisfied with myself for settling for so little. Anything else? What's the feeling - low energy, whiny and anxious. Wanting to get away from myself, zonk out. Ram Das Whatever the vehicle was, the teacher saw it as a vehicle for us to become (present) together. Now, all I ask you at the beginning, at the outset, is who was it that thought he was sitting in the bus deciding whether he would go to those grounds or not? Is that true   YES Did I come here to find Tom   YES And now I need to go somewhere else   YES violent, very painful wrenching in my chest which was like a door long closed being opened and I started to cry. The minute you [focus on breath] what in effect you're doing is over-riding the existing program. ego conceptual framework of <separate identity> 'the relation of mind and matter' > the nature of body/mind ways of being so things are available in you I've had many experiences where I've left my body. Is there a better way to say that   Hallucinated   It's wrong to call it consciousness - he should just call it energy - not even that. I like when he says the guru doesn't know what he's doing. "There's nobody there." His 70s point of view has got integrated, it's as if I can see that he's understanding it too much from the old frame - how - he thinks egolessness is bodilessness - he's talking about becoming more conscious and at the same time giving examples of becoming less deliberate and thinky - "You are empty more and more of the time, and more and more of the time the perfect thing is happening all the time." Behind all individual differences there turns out to be only one of us. Suddenly here we are in the ocean of love. It's as if he's imagining bodies from some old model. It's like the guru has me on a hook, like a trout, and he's just bringing me in - slowly. The rebirth story makes sense in its attitude - live well by being impeccable - but not in its metaphysics - what he calls materialism can have the same attitude - live well because that's what there is. Are there legitimate needs   no Does this state mean I should do something   no Isn't freedom from pain legit   no The only thing that's legit is what is   The rainy weather is making me hurt   Tumeric isn't helping   So just work at anything   no Will you lead me   come through, friendship, withdrawal, honesty Addiction to friendship   YES This is withdrawal   Giving up needing friendship feels like lapsing more into hopelessness   Is it   no Shd I go cold turkey   On email   On reading about friendship   Then I'm just a bleak cold satellite   YES That's what you want for me   YES I'm that already   no I was such a loving young person   YES Shouldn't I still be like that   no Is this because I'm heading for death   NO I've already been doing this for years  There's no end to it   no Okay lead me more   directness, withdrawal, slow growth, responsibility Instruction   To be more direct in dealing with withdrawal and slowly growing in responsibility Quite intense pain hip, knee, L arm, hands Can you tell me clearer than that   no Processing when there's craving   Focusing   - Then part 6 of DR14, one left before I start at the top again and write the intros. Worked on m&l, sketched cover, TOC, photoframe page. 19 Happy to be into designing m&l. The complexity. Disgusted with US electors - Massachucetts last night lost the Dems their supermajority. 23/24 Somebody in Calcutta looked for me by name and went to w&d. - It's half past midnight and I'm just going to bed because this week my days don't run out - I sit down to work when I wake, light the big monitor - today reviewed text formatting and then cleaned up jpgs - bike in the hour before dark and then Starbucks with the paper - then work more - then news on CBC and weather on local - then Cranford on PBS - v hot shower, yoga, hot water bottle in the foot of the bed. Wanted to say more about how I like my room but I'll leave that. Dreamed I said my IQ was 140 and a man said no, it's 145. That was with thoughts about - will finish that another time. - What is it about this work that makes me able to go all day. 24 Sunday morning. What did I dream. A tiger lying alongside me intently smelling my breath. He is wanting to know what a human is, I told the people I was with. Then later I'm with Paul Churchland and his wife and then two small blond children. He is driving to Alaska and has suggested I ride with them as far as where I come from so we can meet my parents. I say they've sold the farm but still have some land. I'm standing with him feeling I have nothing to say. I begin to tell him about the tiger. He turns away. All his confederates have turned away. I'm standing among tall people in professional dress all with their backs turned. Earlier I was hearing a recording of Tom talking to a woman like Pat Churchland. He said he was soon going to see me but he was being charming and interesting with her. How I like my room these days. The venetians are down at night, the white candle lit. There's black glass at the west window. Lamps in three corners, the monitor alight on the glass surface of the black desk, silver machines, thick dark green blanket and dark red cushion on the oyster shell couch. Two 3' stalks of yellow orchids rising from my glossy dark London pot. All against white walls. InDesign books and journals open, a look of sophisticated intimate night work. Do you approve of this state of working  Is it making my health better   YES Because it's love and interest   It's on the other side of an addictive crisis   I'm free   Can I always be like this   Cathected on myself  I don't need intimacy   At all   Is that okay   YES Is it true that my IQ is 145   And I should take to remembering it   YES It's much higher than TC and R   C's is the highest   Tom is about 120   I've had a long quest to grow into it   And even now don't live that way   Should I try to socially project it   I don't want to think I'm smarter than I am   YES Is love woman's IQ lower   It's hormonal   Is Tony the highest IQ person I've been with   no Don   Do I know anyone else as smart as me   no This is very forbidden   The mind and land project is holding me because I'm feeling it might be a way to make them see what was in me   YES In the photos   The art community isn't that smart   Is Jam higher   no Nearly   no But she had figured out how to project it   And she had money   YES She had cultivated a manner   YES Of intimidation   Which gave her scope   My longing for intimacy held me back   This is the central story of my life   Quest for my own intelligence   Is it really gone   YES Is it bad for me to serve less intelligent people     Alright, how to manage socially: Acknowledge where I can   Ignore a lot   Am I already managing well   no Computer in meetings   Intimidate?   no Honor my boredoms   Is this a false state   no Don't be friendly with Lise   Don't be friendly with anyone   YES Was Susan as smart   no Nearly   no Do I put too much into students   Because of wanting intimacy   Does this mean my heart is closed   no The longing comes from two years old   YES Has massage released intelligence   no Does the journal project disgrace me   no Does it matter that people know I'm smarter than they are   no It matters that I remember it   YES   Are people turning against Obama because he's smart   no Because they're stupid   They're just feeling rebellious   They're getting to the hippy rebellion 50 years later   YES So that's good   YES But will Obama get a second term   Will Palin run   Will she win   no But it will be a race of two people in the new order   YES Ie the non old white man order     part 5 in ameerica volume 19: 2009-2010 october-february work & days: a lifetime journal project