in america volume 20 part 1 - 2010 may-june

work & days: a lifetime journal project

15 May Reading the history of science I feel reverence, I marvel that this story isn't marvelous to anyone. In all the mad random swirl of human conjecture a wobbling line drawn, finally cumulative. The way in my lifetime I've found people who've given me clues and methods, I've assembled them, I have them by me. Almost none were given to me by anyone I knew - that's astonishing isn't it, that in all my community no one knew them. For instance Murchie, Field, Richardson, Henderson, Tarthang Tulku, Hoban, Goldstein, Korzybski, Minnaert, Gendlin, - Caffé Calabria in North Park, a man in his fifties sitting looking at a Mac monitor with a younger woman leaning on his shoulder, a beautiful man, strong smart face, resolved, accomplished. I looked at him and said in myself, I can't get the sort of man I belong with because of my leg. I'm done settling. Those are the facts. Here I am. [erased] Something I notice often. I'll write something and then add a line, I look at the added line later and erase it. What is it about the adding-on thought that makes it false or feeble. This has been going on all the way back in the journals. When I was young I left it. It's a finishing impulse that finishes what doesn't need finishing. Is it a kind of social compliance like my mother horribly explaining jokes? Mediating between minds. Am working on Diedre's thesis. When she worked with me she was light and lucid. The work she's done with Lise is hideous. She has written her own story as a feminist blame of 'society' and 'the system,' and the writing is melodramatic, unformed, even stupid, as if she is drinking again. I supposed that when she writes a past time she is back in the time, writing as the drunk she was then. But what else, what part of that is Lise. Lise is the feminist she was in the 70s, and that feminism looks worse than narrow, it looks shallow, the way a lot of left rhetoric now looks shallow. It looks as conventional as Christian doctrine, it doesn't enquire further. She allowed D to talk as if what happened to her with men was a result of indoctrination rather than drunkenness. What was it really a result of? What was the drunkenness a result of? I had something I was aiming for, why didn't she? 16 Photo on Daily Stars of crescent moon with crescent Venus next to it. Waning crescents. [sketch] This is the day I said I'd come and get the last of my stuff at Tom's. May gray, clothes to the laundromat first. My agaves choked with weeds. His house was clean but he doesn't weed. I brought coffee from Starbucks, large regular for him. Couple of things I wanted to say. Two lies I'd told and why. We said things we'd said many times, and then an hour later he said, I can see that you would be better without me, art doesn't mix with relationships. It was after I said we could be proud that we hadn't cheated on each other in 14 years, and we hadn't been vicious, we could have a good break-up. So that was the moment we let go. He said, But I feel sad, and I felt sad too, and then we went on. [Opposite: Waves - "nonmaterial essence" - "It is made of energy" - pure energy in motion Steep and short can become long, broad and fast. Longitudinal waves - sound waves / shock waves displace molecules Energy diffusing around the world Oscillation - every 'material' has one at least position where it is in equilibrium in relation to all the forces influencing it. When perturbed it overshoots and again. > In this discourse none of the elementary terms mean what we tend to want them to mean in macroscopic use, and all are interdefined. One quantum - smallest physical quantity known = h = Planck's constant Quantity of action = energy x time Or momentum x distance Momentum = mass x speed Hv = quantum of energy = atom of energy, partless part matter's mysterious counterpart, energy Atom not only had a kind of localized heart of stable matter but also broadcast an expanding pulsation "forever in step with it and extending all over the universe" De Broglie Atom representable as a localized group wave Matter waves Extremely short electron - wavelength much shorter than light The wave phenomenon forms the 'body' proper of the atom. It takes the place of the individual pointlike electrons. Quanta essentially as waves of resonance Each quantum is a discrete segment of vibration bounded by nodes. Nodes standing areas of relative motionlessness Standing waves Different energy states Energy state of an atom - what standing waves Orbital path fundamentally uncertain in some details Every atom is somehow made of durable waves that vibrate continuously in hierarchies of energy And vibrate as a whole And molecules do And crystal lattices do And all large objects The waving radiations coming out in expanding spheres from such an electron basically are the very stuff the electron is made of. Radiation really is a material. - Can energy now be treated as a substance Kepler the planets are magnets Philosopher's stone Mass enters as a basic concept with Newton Every mass point pulling every other mass point, force proportional to the product of their masses Particles or states 'Photon' means alteration traveling at light speed in quantized manner - is a 'particle' in the sense that it has mass and energy Mass, density, velocity, charge, spin [which just means rhythm of altered polarity?] Field and electron influence each other by continuously absorbing and emitting. Russell defined matter as "what satisfies the equations of physics."] 17 This month has had the scent of nasturtiums in the room, new bunches often from the 4th Ave canyon. Last night I felt something in my chest. It was an opening. Tom loved me, it was saying. Tom loves me. I dreamed Rhoda gave me a book. She was in a new studio - I've dreamed that before - she and T both in very large new places. I had been away and in the meantime she had covered her walls with huge paintings of cityscapes. We were having a calm ordinary little meeting. She gave me the book to take away with me. It had colored writing on one side of each page spread and paintings on the other. It was by a man who'd had an art community. I thought some of the writing was letters. I'm seeing that I assume people don't love me. With Tom I didn't let myself feel he loved me. I gathered evidence that he didn't. I could have gathered evidence that he did. He's a wayward careless person who didn't love in the ways I wanted but his intention was to take good care of me. That's been a gift. He held by me for fourteen years. He kept coming back. He was willing to find my ferocity endearing. My heart is opening   Because I told the lies I'd told   no Because I escaped   YES It's safe to love him   This doesn't mean we should go on   Can you tell me why I stopped loving him   process, child, aloneness, practically I didn't have ways to process child's aloneness   If I'd had Joyce   He didn't come get me   He didn't learn me   YES He stayed with thoughts that didn't work     So the real reason we have to separate is not that we don't love each other   YES It's that I want a new phase of work life   YES Could I have had that work life with him   But it is too late   YES Child's aloneness won   Are those correct protections   no Does he have some similar good reason to hold out   no   The Rhoda dream is very good   YES   Is it safe to refind my love for him   Wd that be cheating   no He said yesterday that I'm afraid of him. I said yes because he's careless, he doesn't take care of himself. He doesn't take care of himself because he bounces back, he said. I meant it differently than he did, but for himself it's true. He was sitting with me restored, strong again, with a truck and money, and teeth. I saw his young husband face. - I saw him, I hadn't seen him for a year and a half, more than that. Why did I stop looking at you? Because I didn't have ways to process child's aloneness it says. My love self kept putting out little tests, I said, and they would always get smacked down. He said he was afraid that if I opened up he'd betray me and that would harm me. So here's what it would have taken to kick out the slats. 1. I would have had to be willing to believe he loved me. 2. He would have had to believe he could be trusted. That's the essence. They're interlocked spoilers. I was thinking last night of the two of us in the room in the Maryland lying side by side with high fevers for three days. I'm marveling at how my love for him could have gone so completely blank. So strong a love. 18 Sad this morning because Cheryl announcing Barbara Godard's death on Facebook says she "passed away" - euphemism that tells me something fierce in her has died, she's complying. Or maybe she was always that. 20 Fighting with Lise about Diedre. I'm not fighting with her as an equal and she feels it but doesn't know that's what she's feeling. Not fighting as an equal means that I don't tell her the actual issue I have with her, because I don't think she can hear it. The actual issue is that although she's quite a good structural editor she is conventional in her sense of language, which means insensitive. Students who've written - phone rings - it's her and I'm not picking up - gorgeously subtle lively prose with me fall back to hack writing with her and I mind that. She let S tell her story in a blind stupid way, or should I say S told her story in a blind stupid way because she was writing for Lise. That's the unsayable and it's truly unsayable, it challenges too much. The further unsayable thing, which I can't say because it comes from student confidences, is that all the students I have in mind, beginning with Susan, have complained to me that L is obtuse in relation to their work. The complication is that I am competitive with her in relation to women writer students, I want to be seen as more profound and more elegant and more influential. She has some similar wish in relation to me but I don't think she knows it. That means we can't talk about it. I also think Lise has some dug-down control ferocity in play, that has less to do with the quality of the work than she thinks it does. I fought hard for Emilee's manuscript, was that about control? It was in defense of something exquisite. I think L is in her professional editor mode and doesn't see around the edges. She has envisaged a certain kind of product - her product as editor - and has trouble giving it up. Okay - so this round I am tweaking her, certainly. She was cavalier when I was in distress about Emilee, and I am getting even, and she is shitting bricks and I like to see it. Is it harming D? I don't think so. I think it is letting her see the controller in L. Will I be okay if she stands up to me too? It says no. I'm expecting her to fold to Lise about editing the embodiment section. Will she? Yes. Will she think it's a good idea? No. She'll know she's complying. Is my guess. The difference between this situation and Emilee is that this manuscript is already such a mess thanks to Lise that it can't be retrieved. It doesn't matter to me whether she does this or that to it before she graduates. But she was wanting to go on to a PhD and this manuscript won't get her admitted anywhere. 21 Emilee on Facebook this morning quoting Riddley Walker. Zach yesterday on the phone talking about will. Bloody end of season Grey's anatomy, heroic or hysterical characters. I wd be so calm in that kind of mayhem. My thought was that w/o Tom there's no one to notice if I'm heroic. Sent for Bach cello sonatas, Argerich and Maisky. Was trying to listen to them in bed last night realizing I can't hear them. I can tell they're well played, especially Argerich, but I can't hold any sense of what Bach is doing. I see shreds of cello lines like bits of vine, and the many dots of the very separate piano notes also sometimes shaping lines, or sometimes clumps. In both there are those Baroque twizzles like tight kinks in a vine. I try listening to either the piano or the cello separately but even then I feel my complete lack of formation. I know there are people who can do with this music what I can do with a drawing. Nearly a month ago I put a couple of maybe 8 inch growing ends of nasturtium vine into a glass of water with the flowers. When I was going to throw out the flowers I saw that where the stems were under water they had put out white thread roots. I changed the water and left them. They have been growing ever since, on nothing but water. One of them is climbing the old curtain cord. Another has run along the lamp cord and put out four long-stemmed full-size flowers that had not even begun as buds. I've picked off a handful of dead leaves, very few. The leaves are mostly coin size, but there are still more buds. It's under the tankha. - Remembering my first plant, a buckwheat vine I dug out of the yard and planted in a tin, syrup tin? I liked its little heart shaped leaves and fine tendrils. Polygonum convolvulus, wild buckwheat, black bindweed. "The most abundant weed in Alberta." Richards Topical Encyclopedia 15 vol first copyright 1939, sold with Lands and People, was it 7 vol. 22 Rowen's 25 today. I've been reading the index pages for [In America] for company this morning. Have only formatted up to the point where we get 3663 Georgia. Up to there it's okay with Tom it seems. November 2006, 3 and a half years. What do you think   successful, work woman, friendship, love I mind that Susan didn't like it, what should I think about that   indecision, balance, female (empress), action Her indecision   no yours I should be uncertain how to balance femininity and action   It's a successful friendship between work woman and love   Is it repulsive   no Will you tell me something   you will come through and succeed in creating with love woman And then the journal will back that     Did having a place do us in   friendship, unconsciously, organizes, exclusion Do you mean having something to lose   In me   no In both   no, in him It got too domestic   no Will you point this   anger I started holding mine   Because I had something to lose   Is that what you mean   Corruption   YES Because I want a house and garden   Wanted it more than I wanted him   [Opposite: What matter is - Fixed minimum charge of an electron Electricity is nonrandom polarized motion Propagation by radiation integration of magnetism and electricity ... knell of 200 year old mechanistic theory of matter as an association of mass points ... by exposing the incongruity of any kind of material point as a physical reality and replacing it with the pervasive concept of continuous fields of energy. Fields of energy Field - mathematically definable region extending through space and containing measurable influences Action propagating itself at speed of light Fields of force - electrical perpendicular to conduction, magnetic parallel to magnet surfaces Field pressure - intensified by compression Electrons <have> mass and therefore momentum Spinning electron - magnet sorting process of crystallization the beautiful lines of force that define the electromagnetic field electromagnetism "a form of energy" fission big atoms that lose mass and energy when they split energy is motion - and tension? Energy radiated by the hydrogen electron, vibrating back and forth between its two alternative positions in the hydrogen atom 500 million times a second, broadcasts 21 cm radio waves from space Two speeding nuclei have less than a ghost of a chance of touching each other, while the almost empty orbits of surrounding electrons or planets sweep through one another so swiftly that there is no time for any appreciable interplay. - object, thing matter prob Gk maza barley cake energy energes active motion tension fields of force, field pressure L fortis brave, strong mass / momentum "measure of the inertia of a body" effect of scale - realms of kinds of 'force' - The fact that our language is based on interactions at a certain scale, as perceived by a certain kind of body At the human scale, the elements, which are atomic purities, interact by laws of chemistry. Valence - patterning power - any of the 'entities' of the atom alchimicus of alchemy brained/unknown etymology Egyptian black from earth as opposed to red desert Gk khemeia poured together, metallurgy Persian gold al via Arabs molecule compound materials Emptiness more full than it appears, fullness more empty than it appears. The conflict of material forces is probably very real everywhere. Vibrations that keep atoms apart, magnetic forces that try to draw them together. What's diagramed as a rod is actually a 'firm relation,' 'bond' - Keep wondering how it wd be said and visualized if we didn't think of atoms, electrons etc as entities but only patterns. The true solid is a firm pattern that keeps restoring itself. A liquid is a constantly seething pattern of slipping across. Crystal unit - molecules arranged in a certain pattern eg quartz, spiral lattice Islamic tiling. Deep and large-scale interaction of atoms usually only at very slow. A true solid is crystallized, molecules locked into a regular lattice whose forces not only prevent sliding but tend to restore any dislocated molecules to the original locations. Most chemical reactions either absorb or release energy in the form of light or sound or electricity. - What does it mean to say 'a particle' is heavy? Ie how is weight determined? Nucleus "99 percent of all matter" - still heavier core. Reforms, quivers. Surface waves. Quantization is why 'atoms' are measurable and therefore thought to be entities. Energy is actually always granulated in much the same way that matter is made up of separate, measurable atoms, and for the very good reason that it and matter are basically the same thing. Mass of the atom's nucleus can be less than the sum of the masses of all its nuclear components, the difference being the 'packing loss' or binding energy that holds the nucleus together. Energy = mass x the square of celeritas = speed of light A 'photon' only 'exists' at the speed of light. Its mass and energy are created by its motion. The math of 'particles' mentions quantities of: mass density charge velocity spin magnetism antimatter - eg positively charged electron "hole or bubble in a sea of electrons" - photons 'energy' emitted by meeting Their mass would be converted to photons. - Sky inside a stone 1. First the solidness of solids, a locked pattern 2. Then inside the lockedness the whizzing and popping Honouring the unknown - religious I've bought on Amazon Used the Murchie in 2 hardbound vols to replace my falling apart paperback, and starting at the beginning I'm finding in the margins tiny pencil numbers in what looks like my hand. They are counts of zeros in large numbers, which is the kind of thing I wd note. It's spooky. - Phoned Mary this evening in her new place in the Tabor Home. Paul and Judie took her and the bed to her little apartment and went back and stripped the old one. Bought her a new TV and a new laptop. She's on Peardonville Road, traffic. 24 Windsor. Last night arriving for the slower northern twilight, lingering mild pink in the dark, scent of hay, leaf shapes against the sky looking like Alberta. Our airport pickup lost driving us in the wrong direction into the country. It was Wisconsin but felt like Canada. So far a shabby little city. [film notes] 26 Detroit yesterday. Vacant lots everywhere, open space between good buildings standing empty, marvelous. A bad film by a black man, afterwards inarticulate in a question period, the audience respectful. I wondered whether that respectful interest in mediocre work is because this generation is used to discussing in film classes, quality mattering less than finding something to say or ask. Was that what was happening at my show in Toronto? Why wasn't it good. He makes a lot of films. He says he's a formalist but it was sloppy. The little girl with the candle was good, was anything else. Unmotivated transitions, white or grey scratched or short shot, sound faked, sound or silent because the mic quit or whatever, "it isn't real," documentary intentions mixed with formalist pretentious. What were the best things about it. Documentary aspects, the crump dancers, the union woman talking about making panels, seeing how a billboard is put up, the fact of the medical job - man ineptly doing work he's not suited to. How black people are living there now. As formalism only the girl with the candle. The formalist pretensions excuse him from making documentary well - sound, framing, editing. [Description deleted for reason of professional discretion.] Who else there's been, beautiful Mati [Diop], Senegalese-French princess, 27 and looks 14, here with a documentary, writing a treatment for a feature film. Slight, thin little arms and hands, the few light freckles a mulatto sometimes has, fresh plump mouth. Well born confidence. Friedl who's Elfriede, Viennese photographer psychoanalyst, born a year after me but a lot younger in her skin and body. Wore a little black dress and flats, is tall and straight, has a good walk, trim and girlish, contained. Erwin who's on the jury with me, has a Dutch name but copper in his skin, programmer who lives in Friesland. Why don't I quite like him, he's a sturdy little boy without much soul, dad in NATO, a bit complacent? Someone I liked right away, Ben Rivers, the other kind of little boy, sparky, a Brit living in London, face lights up, quirky fun, a sweetheart. [film notes for pages] 27 Thursday morning. Lot of fat people in Windsor. Did I read that right - other table has Ute, Friedl and Susan Oxtoby, who are going to Detroit in a rented car. Susan said, Do you have plans, and my little pause was calculating the spirit of the invitation. Did they want me? I'm guessing no. Why wdn't they. Leg. I feel it here. Nearly all the time when I'm with people. Did I read that right   They didn't want me   Because of my leg   Should I handle it differently   no I'm seen that way at this festival   no By the men less than the women   I feel it more because of the sandals, which I'm wearing mostly when I'm not expecting to be seen. Starved little bird foot. Do you want to comment   losses, anger, come through, responsibly Angry at myself   no, them I don't feel angry I feel sad   But should be   Come through into anger   Am I not wanted because of my embarrassment about it   no Because of it   I don't imagine it   YES From Zagreb 2009 catalog Seoungho cho - desert vertical strips HD Ben Rivers 16mm Dorsky 16mm book Devotional cinema Buddhist Charlotte Price 16mm Jakob Vrba Beta SP Jonathan Franco Beta SP The beautiful garden - into photo backgr Gina Ezarnecki and Ulf Langheinrich Spintex Blu-ray "granular manipulation of audio and vis" Barbara Meter Ariadne super8 to 35 What's different now - fringe film isn't fringe, it's an industry - universities, festivals, galleries - is anyone brave? There are very high end video people who wdn't even apply to these festivals - Viola and the guy I saw in London - so accepting an atmosphere I feel I could finish We made this - the technical ease makes a difference I haven't figured out yet. [film notes for pages] 29 Sanja and electronic music Beautiful nervous Bruce McClure, beautiful nervous sexy devoted Bruce McClure, aggressive quivering driven rough-haired pock-marked sore-eyed manly Bruce. Sitting with Friedl by the river this morning. "You're doing what you're doing from a position of privilege." I didn't soften it. I showed her my little foot naked in its sandal and said You've earned this with your work. We laughed. - Do you like Daichi's movie   YES Was I right to fight for Barbara   Did the two professionals respect my opinion   Does Jeremy really think Trapline is the greatest Canadian movie   YES Had that beautiful man seen it   Is this hip going to get better   YES Is it about strengthening it   no Back alignment   YES Garth Rennie, teaches communications at University of Windsor. A man in a red kilt, high buckled boots, a costume that suited him perfectly because he was rangy and had a wonderful crag of a nose. He was delectable. After our jurying, in the Fogg bar when Erwin was announcing the winners, he was sitting on a barstool with his skirt spread. Erwin said Daichi was the $1000 winner and he nodded. Later when I was on my way home I came to pick up my journal where he was standing by himself slightly dancing. He looked at me and put his palms together into the acknowledgment gesture. I was on my way out, had momentum. I said, You look great. He threw up his chin in the and you gesture - I think that's what it was. Old country gesture perfectly suited to his costume. Saw him leaving the hotel this morning with a youngish blond. In the car taking us to the airport I got to sit next to Bruce, whose aura was round and warm, delicious. I was liking him every moment. He talked about The magic mountain, and reading Jung, and winning Met tickets in radio contests, and liking hospitals, and having just 1 cigarette left for after baggage check, and a boxcar ride from Eugene to Klamath Falls with moonlight through the open door, and acid, and many other things. His hands trembled continuously. This morning breakfast with Simon Payne who was the human opposite, whose mouth buttons itself up after every sentence - that English upper class buttoning so painful to see. David Geffen last night radiant in his overalls praising Daichi. Daichi the fairy body he is, black hat, clear glasses, artist's innocence and love. Erwin, Sanja and I all in the same joy when we said he was the grand prize winner, clinking our wine glasses. We knew what it would mean to him. All day for seven months on the optical printer. And I got Barbara an honorable mention. Erwin said It is safe and I said it's safe but perfect. How do I feel about our second and third - Mati for second and Manon de Boer for 3rd. I let the pros have those two, I deferred to their knowledge of the scene. Aliki for an honorable was for the encounter with that old flamingo. Robert Todd Groundplay was better than an honorable but we wanted an even division between conceptual and perceptual work - they wanted, I'd ignore all the conceptual. I loved Todd's sound design. Like the whole film but we knew he didn't need it. Sanja's carefully spoken good sense and deep clean eyelids. Erwin's sturdy ease. Chris, Kate, Scott with Daichi around a bar table in the back. Jeremy when he was introducing the jury saying Trapline is the greatest Canadian film, correcting himself saying when Dave Rimmer's Canadian Pacific isn't around it is. I don't know what it means that he would say such a thing, it's bizarre. La région centrale! Surfacing on the Thames! Sum up: the community. It's still what was best in Ottawa and at the Canada Council jury and at the 1989 congress, it's generous and interesting, it's willing to like me. It has things to talk about. The women don't wear makeup. There's candor and freedom. The men are pretty. There are bodies. 31 Have sent a fleet of follow up emails - Barbara Meter, Milena Gierke, Michelle Tarailo, Mike H, Alex, Jeremy, Jack Cronin Ute sent a photo of me talking to Chris, sitting on the floor of the gallery deck after Friedl's talk. I look awkward and old although forceful. Badly dressed. Was annoyed that I look so much more awkward and old than Friedl who's only a year younger. Creases and jowls and a bunched up scowl. Quiet holiday Monday, Veteran's Day I suppose. It's bright early evening and I don't know what to do. Restless waiting for mail. Flight yesterday, best moments crossing what turned out to be the Chocolate Mountains. They looked like pencil drawings, pale grey, blue in the shadows, sometimes touches of rust red. Sharp lines defining the many ridges. California no longer green, is cougar-colored in its summer pelt. 2nd June Barbara replied - said she'd send me a copy. Larissa says she can supervise a Trapline transfer, am ftping her the sleeve. Dreamed a horse we were backing into a triangle fence at the end of the yard. Something about a tyrant we had to go show obeisance to. We drive up to his palace, which later will seem to be at our old farmhouse site. There are other people he's being rude to. My dad is in the truck behind me. I'm taking a gentle approach, ask what we can do for him. Are you good at making love he says doubtfully. I say no. Go on with a gentle careful tone. Say we live down by the foot of the lane, would be where the pasture began, I could maybe babysit. He comes forward, is now about 2' tall. The encounter happens at night, light in the doorway behind him. Had this dream after reading the Sunnyside index page last night, feeling the young woman's lively loving equanimity. Was it earlier or later in the dream, finding by a wall outside a mass of papers in a pile. They're journal pages, other kinds of notes. Notice I'm using these film encounters to publicize the journals. At Friedl's gallery talk - this embarrassed me after, though it was unthought and instant at the moment - I asked her what would happen if she'd show the later portraits in Austria, which she'd said she wouldn't. She explained about her daughter and her husband and then whirled around to me and said Would you? and I said I do. Then Bruce McClure in the front row said Where? and I said Online. And then there was a little swirl about whether if it's writing it's like photos. What embarrassed me after was that I'd jumped into her show and publicized my show. Later she said that at that moment I'd looked young and beautiful. She was saying I should do something with my little foot. In her talk she was saying we're ashamed of aging, and that she's a photographer because it gives her a life with access. She can ask people to make love in front of her. The moment of a woman lying on the table and a man slipping a slender pale dil in and out of her. 3 This week opened because Jame's editor fixed him so there's no point reading him again, and Diedre's going to take another semester, and Zach is taking an extension. I'm catching up transcribing [In America] to get an overview of the last 3 vols. Caught up to here on this one, finished 2009 Feb-Oct and now am twenty some pages into the one before this one, 2009 Oct-. Driving on. Other option is to begin book making and am evading that. Can you tell me anything about this hip   Is it displacing   no Should I go to Thy again   no Is it because of the bike   no Will it get better   In less than a week   no More than two weeks   no Wd stretches help   no Is it because of shoes   no Is it because of the one on the left getting better   no Will you tell me something   judgment, action, completed work, withdrawal Is that an instruction   no If I lost weight would it help   no Is there anything I can do   YES Stay off it   no Is the bike okay   Is it a kink working out through the body   Is it because of leaving Tom   no It's an emotional thing   no, structural Shd I go do stairmaster   no It's related to that [R side back] muscle   So I shd stretch it   no What can I do   rest, betrayal, hope, missing (5c) [to do before Van list] In Windsor after Friedl's event at the gallery I walked back to the hotel in my heavy Docs, had a nap, changed to the green Chucks for the short 3-block walk to the theatre, started feeling the right hip catch - slip - whatever it's doing that hurts. By next day every step was hurting. I took a taxi to the party and home but with the jurying had to walk, failing, cringing with every step. Sunday in the airports it was catching some but I didn't have to walk much. When I got home it'd be alright for 4 or 6 steps and then I'd start to feel it. Monday morning went to Thy who said the hip was tight, the pelvis maybe twisted forward on the R. Since then it's been there but not when I walk around in my room. I've taken the bike to Starbucks, but tonight I watered plants back and forth. It didn't hurt. And then at the end of this evening there it is sharp with every step, worse than ever. I can feel it up that right side muscle in my lower back. Is it going to be one thing after another with walking for the rest of my life   no Is it because I ate pizza at lunch   YES Phoned Mary and found her dark and scrambled. She misses her stuff but she can't remember what it was, she says "I'm not ready to be here" and she's not, but she was past living where she was, slipped in the tub and broke a rib. Her phone isn't working right, she says, or her computer, or her TV. "The food is good." She sits with Margaret Matties and two other people at an assigned table. She's afraid her room will be hot in summer. A dark slow mashed-down thing she seemed, squashed like Milena Gierke's toads. She's reading her diary from the apartment on Clearbrook Road, she's got that. Thinking of her this way is like being cloven at the heart, crêvée. Distressed scrambled thing sinking into a messy murk. She waited for Ed to die and then it was too late to get herself back, though she had the thought. Now even the thought is gone. Her life wasn't fair. Is there anything I can do for her   understand, your evasion, and do the Work, to integrate Look after my own stuff   YES I can't do anything for her   She's dissolving   Is it dangerous to me to see or speak to her   NO When she talks about her stuff being gone, it's herself   What it means to have her long-assembled life dispersed and find herself in an unchosen space without her familiar cups or books or childrens' gifts [she actually still had these], she's reduced to being nothing but a Mennonite old person. She left the move too long, till she was past being able to control it. So now she has maybe a couple of years. Is there a way she can be happy?   Give her the physical letters back   Books   Plants   A nice teapot     An armchair? A lamp? A round table? Enlargements of photos? CD player? Photo of Joan?   YES Kane, Luke, Rowen, Adam, Tova? Us when we were young. Nice pyjamas? Cookies? Tea? A journal? Slippers? Towels? Perfume? Stories about her young. Is her story important to her   no Book tapes   YES A radio   YES Can lit   YES She should have been able to say goodbye to her stuff   Tell its stories   Give her the big tree   YES Give her the bench for the plants   And the little chest   Meet her as a little girl   no 4 Rowen's house boat plan In the last two days I've transcribed 70 pages of the last journal. 5 Louie's and Emilee's birthday Sudden run on money. Luke needs his because he's leaving Indra, Rowen may be wanting everything in his account and everything else I've got and more.   part 6 in america volume 20: 2009 june - october work & days: a lifetime journal project