in america volume 20 part 1 - 2010 february-march

work & days: a lifetime journal project

23 February 2010 Scott wants to his backyard with Garcia who likely doesn't know what he's doing - Monday meeting Sean Friday Chris in Toronto asking do I want to be at a show in a pub in TO the night after the congress, which I'd been deciding not to go to Some glitch I don't understand in the workshops I've been reposting - This afternoon going down to the jeep I felt myself springing up onto the gate step, and coming back alongside the wall after locking the bike there was the shadow of my bum looking quite round and tight. I'm saying these things grateful for little reprieves, which I now remember to be. 65 in ten days. On the bike yes the spice of laurel flowers and canyon air. Want to remember to say that when I was in airports going to Chicago no one looked at me and on the way home there were glances. Was it the look of power for a week - Bought the swimsuit issue this morning and looked at smooth-bellied goddesses and then lay down with a little dab of phytoestrogen and surprisingly quickly and blissfully dissolved through and lay drowsing in my dear bed. Oh beautiful Ken Olin how did you become a fat bear. Holly, though, Patricia Wettig, is beautiful now, has chin folds and sunken patches under her eyes and deep lines and I love looking at her sharp pale experienced eyes. These people have such good hair, how do they do that at their age. [opposite page work list] 24 Should I wash my hands of Scott's backyard if he has Garcia do it   no It is going to be a mess   Try to make money out of it   Get cheap plants   Step, colonnade, plants   He'll underbid it   - Reading elementary chemical theory feeling how obstructive the metaphor is - 'particles' imagined as little entities. It literally prevents me from understanding/visualizing. The drawings are as if of hard plastic balls with rods between them, horrible. - Dr Laura talking to a woman whose husband is on her case a lot says you just have to give him what he needs as a man, and then my heart hurts. I don't dare read over journals that have Tom stories because I'm afraid I'll want to go back if I remember what I wanted when I was with him. I was driving with Louis [of Everywhere Taxi] to the airport telling him about the housetruck idea and he asked what about the man I'm with. I was startled, it was as if he was remembering something I'd forgotten. I'm sometimes telling Tom in my head that we've found a kind and gentle way to break up and we both understand that without having to say it. I don't want to go back to being trapped, I don't miss him. I've been happier. So what is the heart pain I'm afraid of. In the last maybe year I would go to his house and not like him and leave again after ten minutes. In what way not like him. What he said to me, or the way he'd have his blinds shut or dirt in his house, or mainly feeling there was nothing I could be interested to say to him or hear from him. I'm sometimes looking ahead to a time when it will be safe to remember loving him, as if those times can go on being good for me but just not now. You like that we're separated   He's okay   Is he soon going to die   no We aren't going to be able to be friends   Does he know it's a permanent separation   no But it is   Because we failed   no Because we need to change   Do you understand this pain   Is it real   no Is it childish   no It's mourning   A death   Does he think about what happened   Is he going to move   no Should I just give him the plants   no Fetch some of them   no Is he intending on visiting   NO Noticing my birthday   NO I liked having a man   But I didn't like the man   YES Nor he me   Is he happy   Does he already have a new woman   Before we split   Does he feel guilty   Should I tell him it's okay   NO   Will you talk to me about Mo   I resent her fiercely   If I looked like her men wd love me   NO But that's what I feel   If I looked like her a quality man wd have loved me   NO Might have   no If I looked like her Tom wd have loved me   no My dad wd have   no I want to send her photos to show her I was more beautiful   NO - No, I didn't intend to, just want to   I didn't resent Anna this way   Is it because I didn't see her with men   no Because she's intelligent   no Because she doesn't flaunt   Mo does flaunt   Take it up with her   no Suggest she see what happens if she doesn't   Is she dependent   Does she have a good opinion of herself   Are you sure   Does she know she's not so bright   Anna had a better opinion of herself   Mo earned it in lacrosse   Ask whether she depends on it in subtle ways   [Opposite page workshop lecture notes for The sky inside a stone, which continue on many sides, transcribed and sorted into a separate document.] 26 Miserable last dream in a motel room with someone 'like' Tom and other people, accusing him of not wanting to touch me - I was wearing a blue velvet dress and cowboy hat, knew it was unsuitable, said I knew a dress like that should be worn with black velvet heels. [Opposite page sketch for Sean's garden, plant lists, nursery lists] Lost it with food yesterday aft. Am trying to whittle back the 3 lbs I gained at the res, jeans feel tight, but get into that unbalanced feeling though I've eaten, wanting something sweet. Ate a whole slab of camembert for the creamy sensation and a whole jar of applesauce and then had the consequences, stiffer in yoga. Got used to eating a lot, with variety, at the res, and now resent my disciplines though I hate the tight jeans. I've never written down that when I went with Tom to the VA for an appointment about his veins he had to tell me Rebecca was still on his record as next of kin. He said did I mind and I said no. It was a hollow-hearted moment but fair, because I knew I likely would not still be with him later when someone would need to be notified. A dove is crying from its spot at the end of the rail. Oo-oo', oo, oo, oo. Coming from Hillcrest on the bike yesterday I bought a book on 5th Ave, Shakespeare of London, 1957 Dutton paperback. In ballpoint squashed into the top right corner of the title page Margaret L. Jensen San Diego Dec.1959 A neat small woman who wore a grey suit and small hat to church, unmarried in her early thirties when she wrote her name, but later married to a business man and mother of one son. The book by Marchette Chute first published in 1949 and a best seller, carrying me by the concreteness of its imagining of the economies and social politics of Shakespeare's work life, his practical rise and his constraints, for instance the fact that he was legally bound to go to church every Sunday, my hero of secularism. - [Rowen on the phone says he wants to go to college.] Is that going to happen   Now I have to scratch up the money I owe him   New period of worrying about money   Mary will lend me if I need   Am I going to have to tell him I borrowed it   no Tuition and fees and books for 2 years, $3000, 8 x $1000 for food, rent, $8000, Camosun College, grants, bursaries Can he do it YES Here goes my housetruck   Will I get enough money from Mary   no Is there some other way I can get enough money for it   - Solar batch heater DIY, amorphous silicon, thin film solar 28 Marina Zheva choreographer and coach Virtue and Moir videos - I walk into the bathroom and tears spring into my eyes because of how ugly I am, a harsh old woman. So lonely today. Lonely lonely lonely. - Went to Whole Foods and ate two Gold Bites while I read the Times, then went to the farmers' market and bought topaz and hematite earrings for $38, and am still morose. I'm hating that I can't eat without being sore and swollen. I hate being sore so much of the time despite my care. I'm starved for love and probably touch, and for adventure and pleasure of any kind, and sick of making do with all my little substitute devices. Am craving TV, can't even get a regular newshour. It's only seven and I want to blink out on this day. 1 March Did I break up with Scott today - he's stressed and wanting to do the backyard in too much of a hurry and on the cheap - he took it out of my hands when I was in VT and wanted me still to plant in a space I haven't designed - I don't want to and said Garcia could do it - I could have made, maybe, what, $500? But without satisfaction, it would have been a botch. Was I right to say no   YES Did I do it the right way   YES Will we stay broken up   NO Should I stay involved in the side yard   Should I explain more   no Should I have seen this sooner   no Is my bp high because of it   Will it go down   Is everything else okay   Will T send me a note for my birthday   no Does T think I dumped him   no He me   no He thinks we did the right thing   no Wrong thing   no Am I going to owe taxes   YES A lot   Will Rowen agree to that   YES Is it going to be okay with Sean   YES Are things going down for me   NO 2 He didn't want to make statements but I did, and I suspected he didn't want it for a bad reason as well as a good one, the bad one being that then he'd have to feel it. "I need to be alone right now." Not caring whether I'm okay or remembering any reason I might not be. Wanting me listening to his radio station, that demand to be known without knowing. Did I like him for even a second, yes, one, when he used the word 'spectral' of Vic's face in the self portrait that's now his icon-companion in writing. - That wasn't the word, what was it, a perfectly exact word for the way the eyes are faded into the face. 1924 in Paris. It's correct for him to be living with that, his essence. His house wasn't dirty, the plants are watered though unweeded, I brought him a little orange tree and took back some of my jewel succulents. Was there ever a flicker of anything that knew me, I don't think so. I said that when I'm lonely I remember how bad it was. He said he does that too. A couple of the usual kinds of false notes, stressing about whether to buy me a birthday card, saying maybe he changed the next of kin at the VA. I wanted to hammer down a bit, said if he wants to sleep with somebody he should feel he's free, and I should. He said our story isn't over yet. I was there shut tight, and sad, small tears locked back, and he was sleazy in his ways, locked too I guess. Hedging his bets   Did he like me   NO We didn't like each other   Is he smoking dope   no He smelled of smoke   no In his clothes   Did you think he's okay   no It's over   I'm sadder than he is   no Was I right not to hug him   And to give him a tree   Is it true he's been painting   NO He was lying!   That's how you know he's not okay   Is he writing   NO Housetruck - I've imagined it so thoroughly I can hardly believe it won't happen, ie hasn't already. - And at that moment an email from T with a sentence he has confected with his usual insincere care. I won't repeat it, it's junk. 3 He lied when it wasn't necessary, when it wasn't even advantageous. He lied to amuse himself, to excuse himself, to camouflage himself. Antonya Nelson in Nothing right Bloomsbury 2009 - Driving from Sean's garden where I was sketching the new plan, arriving at Whole Foods, I suddenly realized my heart was aching for both of us - my heart was aching for Tom because Johnny Cool won and for me because hardness won, contempt won. I realized I haven't felt the truth of it in all this time. So now I'm saying that to him in my head, I'm mad at both of us for giving up, not fighting for each other's and our own realness. I got to this feeling my heart hurting, saying, It's always that I'm angry about: you are making me not love you. From there I see the next move, to seeing anyone in their whole wrongness, being large enough to see them, somehow not resisting any of it. Loving them wd not be something added to that. Where I began earlier was feeling how rigid I am in my campaign to fix my body - the weighing and measuring and supps and bike and stretching and record keeping. I can see it's too external, me against it. Something not right about how I'm doing it, blood pressure says too, and my harsh face. When I say this I can feel tears. If I don't regiment myself I'll be fat and sick - I have been fat and sick. Joyce I want you, you wouldn't have let us give up the way we did. 4 Went from there to do my taxes with Ray Taramasco, who was large, loud and kind, buttered me as he does all his clients, and I buttered him back, and he did my CA and VT for free and sent me out the door with a small refund owing and very cheered, to check at Sean's again and then go to Walter Anderson's where it was spring, a yellow rose blooming at the door and aisles of new roses in the back, all in their freshest clean new leaves. Silky spring grass in the canyon driving down. I dreamed this morning that I had moved back to Strathcona and was in my old house (it wasn't 824), maybe in my old room. The windows were large and steelframe. A lot of young women in the corridor, room across the aisle with its door open, feeling of a dorm. Punkish young women. The landlord came by, my old landlord, smaller than Choy and not as intelligent. I was talking to him with the young women watching and he suddenly pushed me toward a drop off an edge. It was as if he was wanting to seem to be joking but maybe wasn't. I caught myself and there was a sort of replay, which really was a thought but played out - I mean in the dream I thought I should have swiftly put my finger on a spot on his throat, showing my fighter's skill, and then thinking it was doing it. Even that isn't right, the thought was the doing and it was a replay. I'm more aware than I was of the way a dream keeps riffing off the scene it has, something there sets off the next thing. I mean I'm more aware of the dream constructing itself as it goes. It must always have been that way. I went out and saw a bicycle in the garden. Was it my old bike I'd left behind? Bent, too bent to fix. It's Sunday. Will there be bike shops open. And then remembering there isn't a phone in my room, I'll have to buy a cell. Moving bits of metal from my side pockets to my mickey pocket. Walking in the alley behind Diana's house thinking she isn't there now. Two women cross the alley to a house on the other side. Consciousness studies. Birds making a little racket where there isn't food for them. What I'm thinking about consciousness is the way there's solid world holding its parts steady and then there's 'consciousness' when I am not that solidness given and instead for instance am the unsubstance of 'thoughts'. Unsubstance the way when I'm writing I feel the alternate possibilities, what word do I want, where will I take this. And over longer intervals, the way what I 'feel' isn't steady, it's all imaginary. That's Buddhism isn't it. Do you want to talk to me   the work, child, losses, integrated Instruction   no Child losses have now been integrated   Do you mean in a large way   Was that bleat of pain correct yesterday   We should have fought it through   That would have given us intimacy to the end of our lives   He's not capable of it   no I default into believing he isn't   YES He defaults into preferring his substitutes   YES I default into contempt   YES He defaults into hopeless hiding   YES So now we're sentenced to being less   no We'll both be loveless for the rest of our lives   not necessarily But we won't have that chance again   no I didn't learn enough   YES Will you tell me why not   YES responsible, judgment, satisfaction, (3p) Complacency   YES We could have fought each other's weaknesses   I got so resigned   YES Should we try again   no I get satisfied with judgment   It's unlikely to change   So I'm stuck outside   no So please tell me what's next   act, to come through, into female (empress), processing What that was yesterday   Was it a mistake to go yesterday   no What is that   (Ac)(exclusion)(Qw)(pc) Love Ellie's excluded child?   YES 5 Santa Ysabel waiting for breakfast. I lit out, I'm going to be in the desert when I turn 65. Green grass and water in the fields, a solid yellow patch on a hillside, just one. - Hacienda del Sol #15, shabbiest of motels, that I like very much. Last space in the row, four big windows onto a bamboo fence and what kind of tree is that, a messy one with a hummingbird. The Hacienda has a lot of land, creosote bushes, a swimming pool somewhere in the wide middle of the horseshoe. I'm on a ratty chaise longue with a gin and ginger, do I want to go look at desert, not yet. I want to be in this little town with nothing but odd people in its library and food market. Beyond this brick wall two young couples in two Wrangler Rubicons, new. Two men's voices alike, uninflected, inexperienced, entitled, two women's voices alike, light, inconsequential. I'm here, I'm somewhere, I look nice in mirrors today, in my green plaid shirt and these earrings so subtly tinted some color I haven't named, almost no color, a bit the color of this gin and ginger. Now it's silent. Traffic at the circle, which is near. A bird chip-chipping. There are the mountains across the west. 6 Kendall's at late breakfast time is full. Email at the library - Cheryl, David, Tom saying he stopped by and found the gate locked. The people who come into the library brownfaced - I mean the men - and white haired. I drove the street west of the golf course and found Sheila and Brian's house, when was that, ten years ago when I was trying to finish the thesis and had left Tom because he was smoking dope, and was in desperate pain though I had the blue pool with white roses at its foot and quail in the grapefruit tree and the bike on long flat roads at night with bats cutting it close out of nowhere - journal I lost at LAX. - And now Brian dead of skin cancer - his so many folded sweaters in the cupboard - and Sheila too, last time I saw her, face covered with lesions. The mountains, these most austere mountains, have a slightly scummy look. It's their spring green. Why does the air outside the motel smell of beets just pulled out of the earth. Pulled off Di Giorgio Road and wandered into a citrus row and picked up four scarred windfall oranges. This morning at four sitting in my wide hard bed between high cinderbrick walls reading through the DR4 index, which is T, C and me in our first several months. It's a good record of them then, and their connections, and my joy and the strange mean ways of their set. How it was to be hell-munched by them. - Glorietta Canyon - the sound of bees, one crow - bees in the phacelia which is thick in bloom usually with chuparosa. Encelia isn't out yet. I've had a twig of desert lilac in my hand sniffing. Creosote bush yellowgreen, encelia blue-silver, red brown rock on the slope breaking through paler grit. The sun comes and goes today, white sky to the west. The road is a pale sand track. I'm wearing my new hat for its brim. - There's that beet smell again. Chuparosa from a distance a darker red shrub. (Field glasses.) There's an ocotillo with flowers, one among many. 7 At Glorietta Canyon through the mid-day hoping for something. Carried the camera after a while. Moved up the road to the corner where I camped with Tom, walked up the shallow arroyo I liked. Sat. Had the camera on micro and was beginning to be another mind, that was seeing abstraction - can I remember that better. The best moment a chuparosa stem that hadn't bloomed yet, dark and with a nice reach sideways. If I moved the frame a bit toward the left I had an edge of the granite behind it falling back out of focus. By abstraction I mean the relation of the sprig's line, the line of a crack in the rock, and the folding back of that side of the frame. The camera was giving me something to see in any of the bits of space around me, an intelligence. So I was sitting against a boulder on sand, next to that chuparosa bush, under an ocotillo in which the wind was scraping many serrated edges, calmer, more pleased. I thought to take off my left earring and look at it because I like its smoky no color. Held it against the light. Had an image of opening the sand next to the boulder and burying it, a gift. Didn't want to do it, I like myself in those earrings and I like their subtle magic. But I was remembering myself when I was willing to give something to the powers if they ask, because I want to live in marvel's company. I was debating myself, was that really a request. It was - taking off the earring was, the image of my hand wiping the sand closed over it was. But I love these earrings, etc. I had taken off the other one and had them in my hand. I decided. There was a confirming sigh. I opened the sand and closed them in. It was a gift to the spot and its moment. I'm sighing now. And maybe something else. I want something. I want to have back what I lost with Tom, openness and connection. I want to be all the way done with Tom: regret, remorse, resentment, I want all that to be done. I want to fix the all-over muscle ache. I want to be fully employed in the right task. I want to be love. I want Luke and Row to be well and to do what is needed for that. I like it here. Today the street is wet. There's a smell of creosote. It's the land of Wranglers and white-haired men in good hats. Plain women some of whom have curious eyes. The mountains are inscrutable. I stare at them and find no way to grasp them. They are unphotographable, indescribable. They're austere, they are subtle, their form is definite and their texture in color is indefinitely varied. Is there a reddish cast on the lower slopes, which is the chuparosa? I'm sitting at the counter, on a pink leatherette stool. The vertical blinds are pink. There is a young server, high school boy, Hispanic, with narrow hips and very broad shoulders, the slim flat chest of teenage men, a pointed brushcut and a thin line of beard down the outside of his jaw. He moonwalked backward around a waitress he ran into at a tight corner. Brown forearm coming out of a white sleeve. 8 Yesterday was a fine day. I was relieved that I have one more day here. The mountains were beautifully breathing white. I went back to the orange grove and stole a whole bag of windfalls, dark orange and scarred and unrotted even when they'd fallen halfway into earth, juicy and intense. I drove a bit, not long. Read a yellow hardback drug investigator novel from 1967. Watched the Academy Awards that gave best director to a woman for the first time, finished the novel in bed. The sage green cap I bought on my birthday had a roadrunner embroidered on it like a totem. I bought that one because it was the one I disliked least and I thought running is a good request. This morning just outside the window standing in the sun was a large strongly speckled point-headed bird I don't think I've seen. It was just standing there. I knocked on the glass. It looked around. After a while it ran across the track and hid behind a stone, ducked its head down. When I was at Glorietta Canyon sitting around I thought of the white-bearded man who'd been next to me at the laptop bar in the library, looking at his quite good photos. I don't remember why I thought of him. Three minutes later a car drove up. It was him and his companion who looked at me with friendly eyes. Before I leave I will take short stock of 65: My face in photos is creased and anxious. Getting up onto a 30" wall to take a photo was remarkably stiff where I used to be so limber. The aches are worrying, they mean something and when I imagine them getting worse, never easing, I think of suicide. The worst is probably memory, my short term memory is sometimes just gone. Did I take my supps a moment ago? Did I lock the gate? What was that number? I sometimes have to go back to a number I just looked at four times. I'm quite straight-backed. My hair sometimes when it's smooth glitters silver. I'm broad and short but I'm not fat. My torso naked in the mirror was appallingly dimpled. I write well sometimes in work letters though usually not here. Do I dislike more than I like? Compared to 18 I'm sour. Oh I have a jeep and it's swift and strong and well cared for. I'm sitting among grown palo verdes with a dove, there are still journeys. Monitor and InDesign and big MacBook Pro and digitized slides and hard drives and software books and camera. Nearly $2000 a month and no reason to stop yet. Lectures to invent twice a year. Big debt to Rowen's fund. Garden creation pleasure. Open future now. The book still talks to me if I ask. Student daughter friends - Emilee, Anna, Carolyn, Favor, Jaes. Work & days close to done and there when I forget. Eyes are good! I don't even read with glasses - eyes are wonderful. Ears are good and the hiss is better not worse. Teeth are holding. Bp scary high at times but goes down betweentimes. Obama is pres. Women are more slutty and more competent. So much more universe to know. Being about is holding superb though unknown. Energy runs out before the day does but it's not worse than 10 years ago, maybe better. I haven't carelessly died young. I'm marginal in my family now, withdrawn since long ago, maybe because I'm no longer successful in a way they understand. But I know I've been brave and bold on a larger scale and sometimes better people know it. I've been remarkably withheld most places. Need to change that. I fall on the street. Is there more you want to add   strength in reserve, writing (knp), writing, success I'm ready to be successful in writing   YES A particular kind   honest, writing, about the uncon, fight About the way one fights the uncon?   Other people   YES Do you mean student letters   no Dissoc and early love   Embodiment   Book   no Poem   no Film   no Something based on student letters   no Tell me something about format   order, processing, completion, uncon Processing stories   no Dialogue   no Let you write it   no I don't understand   child, honest, judgment, success Write the story of the child   no Write with child included   You're not telling me what, you're telling me how   no Because everyone has an isolated child   YES Stop for now?   Is it important to soon leave Nora's   no - Back in my room, everything put away, email answered, Alex Mackenzie saying 'hero,' did he mean that? Notes from a show in Winnipeg. Journal project "an incredible collection of writing," "completely engaging document." A lot of 65 mirror portraits. 9 "I was quite blown away by your journal project. I think it is one of the great (and few) really appropriate uses of the internet realm as well." "XO Alex"! What do I think of these photos - They are mirror images and so they aren't true. When I flip them right they are worse. How - older, crosser. It's because my eyes go to the left side of the face. It's my left eye at that distance, though I feel the pull from my right. Left eye face perception in me goes to the right side of the face (regardless of lighting), which is the left side of the picture or my left when I'm facing someone. The right side of my face is older, and shorter? So when that's what I see that's how I look. What else. I'm thin-mouthed. The pleat between my eyebrows is anxious, big nostrils. Strong jaw. Not padded. Silver over an underlayer of black. Three-quarters is more flattering. When I'm looking at the R side it's harsher, angrier. The hair is not bad. Small eyes. A lot of creases but over a strong shape. Earned face. A lot of skin drooping under the chin. I knew to look into the reflection of the lens. When I look at my own eyes there's a gone look. 65-18 is the way I'll look when I'm 80, crowning myself with the camera. 65-17 might be the best. And then the Borrego photos. That bit of arroyo where the earrings are buried. Soft focus. Trying to see what I like about it. It's messy and full and sand-colored with bits of orange, blue and yellow. The softness is lovey. Soft spiny cholla, soft spiny all over. The Cherokee when I'd been loading it, doors open and their gloss reflecting mesquite trees [actually palo verde], blue sky with clouds, Cherokee much in its moment, much in its place, looking resplendent with delighted adventure. Doors like wings spread. Chuparosa buds and granite. It's formal. The next door cabin of the Hacienda del Sol, 40s motor court cabin standing flat and plain amid scruffy creosote and mesquite, mountains above. Room 15, beige latex and curtainless windows, doors that fit perfectly, acres of scrub at the windows, a dove all day, wide venetians, sweet air, kitchen door that opens onto dark night, concrete terrace with three agaves and a little cholla. I got happier and happier. Gruff Mike at the desk, his lazy grandson-in-law sitting on a stump to talk, Mexican maids in a golfcart. There's a clean pool, sand roads. Should I go to Toronto. April 12 is Monday. 11 Soft March morning. Excited birds, a dove in the dish pecking assiduously, their morning work. Night before last I went to sleep early, 10. Phone woke me. It was Luke. I lay warm in the dark with his intimate loved voice. It was 6:30 where he was drinking coffee while Indra dressed for work. We talked for was it an hour and a half. He'd thought to phone for my birthday but his little voice had said not yet. Winter depression. A little volunteer work for a nonprofit. Michael Tsarion. Astrosiderial lore. I talked about how to process pain and what dissociation has to do with early love. So Tsarion. First, the name he's given himself, half ruler, half angel. Second his greasy ponytail and pugnacious self important piggy face, beady eyes. Third his collection of counterculture quotations. Fourth his half-right psychology of dissociation. His headlong language-brain preaching torrent. His autodidact over-confidence. His occultism and conspiracy beliefs. He's in male rupture despite talking about it. He projects personal facts into historical collective fantasies. He hasn't taken it home into the personal body and gender pathology. Talking to Louie about what it's like when she works with a room full of students. It's like conducting, she said - unwritten stories of what work is like that is fully connected with unconscious knowing. Moving swiftly in ways that trust what is suggesting itself from the side. She moves to correct a posture before she knows what is wrong with it. When she reads, the constant watching for what is really happening behind what is given. Her developed habitual intelligence, her habit of application. [Opposite, notes on Tsarion] 13 "It's one of the clearest hands I've seen, especially in someone your age." A small seedy man in a brown jacket and black képi, sitting on a folding chair in the promenade, with another folding chair beside him. Left hand missing his first two fingers, right hand with long not-clean fingernails. What else he said. Two children, an early spouse who was a disaster, only one spell of violence, "That was probably the early spouse?" A couple of stable spouses since then. "You'll slow down about 73." Lifeline traceable all the way around to the back of the hand - he scratches a line with his thumbnail, "Can you guess how old that is? Eighty is here." "A hundred?" "Over a hundred." "You haven't had a lot of stress." "There was supposed to be something at 40 but it looks like you pushed it up to 50." "Your work is social." "As opposed to what?" "Technical, artistic or mixed." "You have an artistic talent but it hasn't brought you any money." "You might be a genius but you aren't at your capacity." "Where are you seeing this?" "This is how you are and this split off is how you seem." 14 Sunday morning mid-March. Birds perched at a little distance from their food cheeping loudly. They are nervous, they want to eat but I'm here. Two doves waiting calmly on the far corner of the roof. There's been California perfume at night. The palms are quiet in this quiet light. Little birds running each other off, a fight that rises in a squawking column. In my head Bartoli singing Domine Dei. Somewhere four seconds of a car alarm. The golden angel on his golden ball lifting his silent trumpet. There has never been a war in this city. Camphor tree down by the gothic palace, matriarch, yellow-green. Was formatting the acid story in 1976, placed the photos of my face at the window, how I looked when I was perfect acid mind. Look how blue this paper is where it's shaded. Little heat shimmer above the air conditioner metal. 16 First impressions: Mo a hard worker who has a rind about her looks Nan is a real scholar Todd in writing is dully mediocre Tip is sincere and smudged, not MA capable Andy is plagiarizing Zach can't plow a straight line but had a good bit Tasha came through genuinely through she's also exaggerating the story of coming through Tuesday morning still and bright. 8 packets, is that why I ached last night and couldn't sleep? It says no. 17 Statcounter in Feb and March [page of notes - LA, McGill, Harvard, Serbia, Paraguay, Grande Prairie, Germany, Spain, Buenos Aires, Seoul for index page; Belgium, University of Bristol, Italy, German university, Berne university for Being about; Work & days Zurich, UK, India; mbo pages UK, China, Kennedy University, Evergreen College, Kuala Lumpoor, Italy, Melbourne, Austria, Moscow, Germany, Qator, Mexico, Finland, McMaster, Ireland, Turkey, Netherlands] 18 Luke had brought my two rugs and put one on his bed and one on the floor. I was looking at the yellow one and saw spots of water appearing without a source, spontaneous water spots, a sort of disease. Later I thought I had to have a talk with him. I said if he'd asked I would have been delighted but it wasn't good to just appropriate them. "It is the sort of thing Roy would do. He would just help himself to my stuff." 19 Can you tell me anything about what to do with Tip   no Is he MA capable   no Any point doing neuroscience   no He's a waste of my time   YES Just do something brief and friendly   1. Biking has made my left thigh tight in my jeans - it feels manly. 2. Two nights of 15 min of slow breathing and this morning my bp was 117/72, after being 157/97 even mornings. 3. Shopped for a jacket - found a replacement for the boxy peacoat for winter, J Crew fitted black. 20 Finding JoAnn online, a movie of her painting the wrinkles around her mouth, sometimes a clear eye with pale lashes behind glass, sometimes the compressed mouth of concentration that I know. It says she teaches editing at the National Film and TV School, the Royal College, Goldsmiths Media Dept and more. 21 Pepper trees under the bridge have pink strings of berries. Sunday morning, watching Knopfler and Clapton jam on Sultan of Swing, 2006, it's an apex of male freedom. Is it okay the way I am sexually   Could I be any different   Is it because of the way Ed was   I mostly just need my daddy to say I'm beautiful   Is the sexiness of it separate   no Imagining someone else doesn't work   Did I change   no Was I always that   With Jam   With women something else   With women am I the dad loving me   I'm not sexual now because I don't feel beautiful   no Because I don't feel men finding me beautiful   Should I still try for that   no My dad imprinted me   It can't be undone   no Should I bother   no Could I maybe find a lover now   NO I get lonely   love's, truth, reverses, anger; betrayal, improvement, love woman, come through I'm already effectively loving students   But that's not enough for me   I'm effectively loving my kids   I'm friendlier   But this being good is not enough   I'm angry with Tom   Is that what you mean   no If I weren't angry would these things be enough   no Will you explain   friendship, with the excluded child, for completed work Is the way I am in sex friendship with her   no I don't know what I'm supposed to do with anger   illusions of happiness, friendship and love See how it makes illusion   Anger makes illusion   Can you say the main illusion   illusion Will you give me another card   processing Is it always the same illusion   Do you mean inaccuracy   Inaccuracy is what you mean   I'm inaccurate in how I see people   no How I feel them   Can you put a name to how I do feel them   separate from you Are you going to be pious   no How would it be   accurate to see them as with you I think I know what you mean   During that period I sometimes felt I was with people   no So that's not what you mean   I assume they don't want me   When I was at Queen's I didn't   no When I was at Queen's I expected people to like me   no Do you mean I worked too hard   no Do you mean I was false   no I don't understand     Is Tom really as bad as I now see him   no I feel he abandoned me   YES The truth is I abandoned him just as much   I feel he exploited me   YES Did he   no He kept faith sort of   As best he could   I'm despising him now   Is that okay   I feel he's a scummy lout who somehow attached me   Will you comment   you're disillusioned, recovery will improve truth The illusion was I had a daddy who wanted me   I paid too much for that illusion   no I lived it honorably   As an illusion   The bottom line is very unforgiving   Did Joyce think it could be real   no But she thought I could do real work with it   YES And I did   When I'm angry at T all I can do is realize it's anger at my dad   That anger is trying to join me   YES   But I'm still stuck in loneliness   Comment   power (emperor), love, improve, balance Is that an instruction   look for power and love to improve balance Power and love?   More power     part 2 in america volume 20: 2009 june - october work & days: a lifetime journal project