in america 7 part 3 - 2005 january-february

work & days: a lifetime journal project

15 January 2005 On the airplane. I was crosslegged with a pillow at the small of my back and one against each knee, blanket over my lap. When it clouded over above the plains I got into fantasy and turned myself on and then was sitting on the air in bliss. Came down into the prism-roofs of Chicago, changed terminals, and then, on the Burlington flight, was next to an electrical engineer who works for IBM. When we stopped talking we each put our heads back and closed our eyes. As he lay back in his chair his arm came along mine and I could feel him breathing. Sometimes our breaths coincided, sometimes not. I loved the quality of his warmth, sunny. I couldn't tell whether he was aware of the contact. It seemed to me that he was and wasn't. Something in him was. He'd suddenly shift forward and sit with his arms tight to his chest. Did I see anything I still have. Flying at 17,000' over the small fields and fence bottoms of New England, seeing tree shadows blue and fringy like scribbled shading or something printed out of register, each line with its double. The towers of Chicago like dominos standing tightly on end, thin rectangles. As we flew across many streets to be able to land in Chicago from the west, an optical effect just ahead of the plane's little smudge of a shadow: car windows and house windows spangling red, green, yellow, one flash and then it moved on to the next intersection. In mid-afternoon, clouds orangey in their lower half, greenish above, a diffraction effect. I left the house with firelight showing under the door. The Yellow Cab driver told me a story about going over an embankment and rolling three times. He had time to feel himself rolling and laugh. He was saying This is really cool. I haven't written about the TV images, repeated many times, of earth flowing like water, the mudslide up the coast. That after two weeks of images of inundation, first the tsunami and then local floods. Tom and I watched waves on Christmas Day. Since then wild water has been the theme. Plainfield VT 16th This morning with Margo talking about how to talk about what a concentration requires and claims. I say embodiment studies is about developing a framework. Margo says what is a framework? I say it's a body, it's the way a body is organized. She says we have to do it better. I say we have to distinguish between doing what we do well, and interface difficulties. She says how do we encapsulate it. I say, see, there's an example of a metaphor that doesn't work. She says, I appreciate your sensitivity about language, but ... What it is I like and dislike is always immediately a body. How I know what I know is often attention to body feeling. I believe in examples because bodies are altered by dealing with examples and specifics.   Margo is doing progressive ed without having a framework, and she has no clue what I'm talking about, and neither does anyone else. Everyone else means something different. I am not interested in racial politics, diversity, pluralism. I hate the way we go on about it always. 'Progressive education.' I am dealing with what's in front of me and don't feel discussion of principle reaches very far into that. 'Create situations.' 'Accountability.' I don't have to be perfect in those things. Rebecca saying heart integrates the rest of the body. 17 A black woman with a huge amount of hair and red fingernails, who talks a lot and flaps her hands, told a story last night at dinner. She had been adopted at seven months by an academic black couple who were fourth generation high education. She grew up an adored only child, a daddy's girl. At 40 she wanted a baby and didn't conceive. That brought her to look for her birth mother. What she found through hospital records was that her mother had been 22 when she was born, had been through college and was a writer. She hired a detective and after a couple of weeks got a call. Her mother was Ida Lewis, living at this address in New York City. At that point Muriel called a friend in New York: Will you go look at this address. The friend reported there was a doorman. Muriel cold-called Ida. They talked for four hours that first time. Ida had been a reporter and the first woman editor of Essence magazine. At the moment she was the editor of ----. Ida came to Santa Barbara for a conference and visited Muriel's house. She walked straight to the photo of Muriel's adopted father. I know him, she said. She'd been at a party with him when she was a young reporter. What she remembered was that at the end of the evening when he had put out his palm to shake hands there had been a $20 bill in it. She hadn't understood why he had done that. He was giving you cabfare, he wanted you to get home safe, said Muriel's partner Guillermo. In their first meeting both Muriel and Ida had been anxious mainly about class, whether the other would turn out to be of the right class. There were a lot of people around the embodiment table at lunch - Jane the dean, Margo, Bobby, Lise, her friend Anne, Sara Norton, the black woman IBA with an interesting mouth, Rebecca from Health Arts, Sobel maybe also from Health Arts, a couple of others. I was in the hot seat. Jane said what about social construction of bodies, how do you deal with social interaction? Then she said how do you deal with theology. Somebody else said everything's theory. Somebody else said, What's it for? Jane said there's a lot of overlap with consciousness studies. I said with environment too. Someone else said should it be a concentration. Karen said a group identity. It followed from the conversation at breakfast where Margo said what's a framework. I said knowing, being and doing are integrated in a structured body. When I said you deal with theology by saying the universe is god and we're part of god, Bobby next to me was murmuring agreement, and when I talked about evolution too, that there's a lot of structure that predates social construction. I was making sense. They were interested. 18 Should work on language lectures - don't wanna. Am here in this room that's nowhere. The long day - three hours into it at 8 in the morning. Blank overcast at the window. Dull Ralph on one side, light large Margo on the other, more arriving tonight I guess. Silence, bare trees. 19 [notes from a meeting about plans for a new concentration in Transformative Leadership for Sustainability] There's money for money. There's no money for value. There's no money for beauty. There's no money for brilliance. If I'm so furious about having no money or benefits should I act on that rage. 20 Winter sky. There was an email from couldbe this morning when I opened my computer on my lap in bed. He said he missed me. I said I miss him too. I put up his picture in my room and on my office computer. Susan Mol says her higher self told her to apply - she wants fairy powers - I will be working with her to ground that - I'll say, what do you actually know - what do the traditions say about it - distinguish those two things - look at the fantasy as such. 23 Sunday. Graduation. Favor, weeping, said I was the person she had waited for all her life. Scott said, I loved every word you sent me. At lunch I sat with Nora and Favor, Anne and Glynn, and told them about the journal project, Being about and Tom. Nora looked at me with adoration. I loved that - the stripling boygirl with sagging jeans and gloves in her back pocket, and Glynn a girlboy, little elf face and hair to his shoulders, round glossy eyes. I sat with my elves. Scott spoke with impressive presence. He said he had learned that strong women could make him strong. Yesterday Anne showed slides of her high school students in the woods writing intently in little notebooks. Today at the embodiment colloquium Jess described coaching high school girls. She taught them they can ask their bodies whether they're tired, injured, should stop. At the end of the year one of her girls said to her, I can't ask my body, I am my body. What else. Amanda spoke confidently, looking at Margo all the while. Juliana talked about contradiction and vertigo. Margo talked about her little three-legged dog and riding my coattails. Susan spoke angrily about brain science used to say abuse didn't really happen, when in fact the memory marks knowledge of another kind. Karen C - what did she say? Heather didn't talk. Who else - Suzanne, Paul. Carolyn read her rocket fantasy piece. Sean spoke beautifully about his tsunami image. Larry told about rubbing the old woman's feet. Sue Ann said her body's her shell (I was repelled). Anna told about Virginia Woolf and luncheon and Lise jumped in to say VW's point had been that women didn't write as well because they got such miserable food. Then I talked for an hour and a half to 26 people - more than half our students - about cortical evolution and wide networks - 26 people was a lot - Susan took a chair next to me and gathered my papers afterward - Margo was on my other side - Jeanne's boy Kip - Juliana frowning on the floor. Today an hour to 20 people [on cognitive linguistics]. Susan Mol. I like to look at her. She has dark brown eyes, very strong. Pale fine-skinned face, hawk nose, muscled broad lower lip. Stringy grey hair - silver. Ascetic looking Margo said, but she's not exactly that. Thin. Narrow shoulders, thin long hands. She's patrician rather than ascetic. Angevin queen. Light and responsible with students. Yes she's agile, swift. She startled me three times today. You defined it out from under him, she said - consciousness and Francis. She said my colleagues are intimidated by me. I said I'd rather think that than that they hate me. She said, But you don't care all that much if they do hate you, and laughed. Talking about a time when she was grieving she said, Sun and moon came and went, I got that. She drives a Jeep Liberty, dark blue. Ah her beautiful son who calls her ma and looks at her the way a right soul looks. Taylor. [from her application: When I go toward you / it is with my whole life made a living learning things for other people transferring others to a nonordinary state possible to make a living by being alive and bringing others into that state learn how to raise, hold, direct and release energy teach others to do that I want to believe with my body] Carolyn - she's harrowed       Am I the mother who wants to know       The way the love for a woman get displaced to a man and is stepped down, is that the crisis       If it isn't stepped down one knows it's inappropriate       And then the task is making it appropriate without stepping it down       And it has to be done by enduring its inappropriateness         Millie - her ugliness bothers me       Does she have to be ill     no Does she want to be ill       Is the wolf [of lupus] important       I'm blank around her       Suppressing dislike       Will I like her better on paper       What does she need from me     improvement Being herself before she got ill         Okay, Susan     tempered Does she need anything from me     no We need each other's company       She needs me to pull her out of lala land       Shall I be upfront about that       Her intelligence jumped       There's a kind of credulity       She needs to be aware that it's a manner of speaking, not to segregate technical vocabulary     YES Is it okay to use the word friend       Resend her the bookwork intro       Will she like the journal     no It will be too concrete for her     YES She doesn't have my visual taste       "There's the lie" - could she know how she knows it       Is she smarter than I am     no She has my number       And she's welcome to it       I'm overjoyed she's got it       And happy to be overjoyed       Is there a but       Should there be a but     sort of Her friendliness is principled       One card     reserve Keep a reserve       She's manipulative       Is she too small for me       Is there anyone who isn't     no I like being her, is that where the reserve comes in       subtle, heartbreak, completion and improvement Did she cause Gia's death     no Can she be sure of it       Is she sure of it now     no What I felt in my bones with Jam was her hatred, anger       Gia hated her     YES Primal thwartedness       Particular to lesbians       There was something in herself she didn't dare open up         Feeling out how much reserve there needs to be about liking to be her       Scrupulous selfness       She's already collaborating and wants to understand it Is she a vampire    no She's a beautiful adventurous spirit         Was Gia a boygirl       Her body killed her in a rage of thwartedness       Susan wasn't looking after herself well to be with her     YES Anything else you want to say     child integration balance improvement Her     no you Judy       Did that cause the burst of light     no It was real       She sent it on purpose       24 That cured me didn't it - I lay low and checked her out. Was she right? We're not meant to be lovers. The flirtation was mistaken of us. But it came up. The way she came at me with it really scared me. I told the truth. She understood the crux of me. Her body energy isn't right for me. It's very refined but it's not large. She drops in and out of the lesbian world - it bores me. Is that sharp and sudden take her strongest thing? She's minimalist with her body not her house. She's proud of being able to look after herself. A heat-seeker. She tracks. She's mostly right in her social analysis. She said: That I'm selfish and will be selfish about her and she likes that. That I'm generous. I would say, no, it's like this, because I want her to be able to play. I should take better care of myself, I should eat better, I should clear my body, it's still holding. She would be looking at my hands saying she can't stand it if they don't touch her. She says too much. I'd have moments where I didn't understand her and I'd drop into fear of not being smart enough for her. 26 When I was looking for bibliography at the computer Susan sat into the chair behind me and leaned her breast against my back. Soft spot. That's one. The other is that I think she won't like my writing. I'm feeling the mediocrity of my writing. For instance what I sent her, the bookwork notes. I've been safe that way since T and C and R and J. What else happened today. Carolyn said she'd gone further into finding what she wanted with Michael, to live on a warm coast in a little house and make lunch, make love after lunch, feed little bits of fruit to monkeys who'd come to the door. Were any of these monkeys human? I ask. She laughs and cries. Patricia the tall woman, 50, white brushcut, pale blue eyes, pretty, with a purple birthmark on the right side of her face, thick like blobby grape jelly on her chin. She came to talk about neuroscience and we talked about markedness. I asked what she liked in fiction and she said the four Farthest Shore books. Margo wiped out Anna's study plan. I made Millie cry by asking her what would happen if she imagined herself well. She sat through the rest of the advising group sulking - wasn't it? Wayne lit up thinking of writing his own story. I love boldness. Miz Bold. You go too fast. The space I have around me when no one is noticing. The space I have around me when I'm the teacher. You're alert and I'm starved for company. "They're little people and they suffer and I love them." The little faces of my girl students don't hold my interest. Yours, every second. 27 What I dreamed. I was in 820A and found the front door replaced - more than replaced, unable to close. They had put in a screen door instead, but he'd fitted it badly. It was a nice structure but the screen wasn't tacked down. I was thinking I should do that. There was also some kind of rolled notice on the floor. Across the way, in the other building, which was three stories, I could see that Trudy had taken the middle floor on the right side. The windows had been opened up. She was looking out of one of them. Something about a little bag of tools. Choy had made a mess of the porch, red paint slopped over my Saturna rock. I climbed the stairs and was looking around on the middle floor. They had opened a wide space through the building. There were young trees in transparent barrels, an orchard probably. Bare branches. I could see through to the mountains. They had been spending a lot of money. The Handel is still with me. I think I dreamed I sang it at the cabaret. It's pale dawn, pink over the wall of trees beyond this sheet of snow. There's a moon like the sun of a paler world. Susan seems the wrong name. Her father would slap her and say she was stupid. Oh book - what should I do. Louie will be terrified. Tom can ride it out. I've been starving. She's beautiful. She's bold. She's close. Does she really like me. Does she really want me. I have to go back and do Scott's garden. I have to go back and fix the jeep. I have to go back and get the journal up. I have to go back and think about her. Write her letters. Go to the gym. Lose 30 pounds. In the spring go camping with her.   Is she my ticket to get turned on again       Will I sacrifice it if I do it my way     no I would have to share her and that's the way it is. 28 "I'm like an arrow that can't miss." Friday morning early - here I am - something's taken a turn - the sky's a tender pink - smoke is flowing white, dissolving. I'm seeing a shadow rising on the trunk of the bare poplar. It's the shadow of smoke rising from the roof of this building. Fervent summer flowers "I can lay it out to you" - She had a kind of intelligence that made people coach her. I didn't. Her IQ is higher than mine but I've built more, in my isolation. I'm connected to a wider uncon. I held back everywhere, she didn't.   I feel my defect of response with her. She's credulous - crystals, a group of people at Kirpalu who've been 'called', reincarnation. - Burlington airport. Start with what I know. Ah so imprinted. We did that well, she said three times, meaning the way we were in advising group together feeling and not looking. Sore heart in the taxi looking at cutbank slate and icicles. Parents so young, 16 and 18 when the first daughter is born. Susan Elizabeth a year later. When she was 10 months old they neglected her bronchitis, feeling to let her die maybe. A neighbour got the doctor. She could read when she started school so when the class was going to do reading they'd say, Susan you can go read in the library. It went on that way through all the grades. In the mobile library there was a woman who'd bring her books. Bundles with her name on them. In fifth grade she was reading at 11th grade level and a teacher aid, Do you understand what this means? The New York Times is written for an 8th grade level. Grownups are stupid. They are going to tell you a lot of things that aren't true. Don't forget this. (I wish I had this verbatim.) In 8th grade she went from perfect vision to not being able to see. The school sent her to an optometrist. He phoned her father, who didn't want to spend the money. Are you sure she needs glasses? She heard the optometrist say, Bob, it's either that or spend the money for a dog for her. It was a satisfaction though she knew she'd pay later. At fourteen she had a job walking the pastor's airedale. She'd go out on her bike with him, he'd pull her far out into the country. One day she was on the country road with the dog and a man drove past, stopped, asked directions. He drove away but then came back, passed her twice. The third time he ran her off the road. She was on the passenger side. The window was open. He pointed a pistol at her. She was feeling, I'm going to die. He said Come around this side. She did, going around the back in case he'd try to run her over. He said What's your name? She said, Why do you want to know? She was feeling, if I'm going to die I want to do it on my terms. A car came over the hill and he drove away. When she said she was going to college her parents disowned her. Her dad said Who's going to cook my dinner? She had no money, would sit on the steps waiting for the student awards officer day after day. I know you're not glad to see me but couldn't you just ...? In college she'd come into class late, black coffee and cigarette, flip open her text, start giving them grief. She was an English major. She'd read the books but they said she didn't read them right. (Later on when she was taking courses in the history of medicine it was Harvard and they were more respectful.) She had a job in admin at Harvard, buying computers. When she started the job she didn't know much, she'd call the sales reps and say Why should we be buying from you? She was looking for information but they took it as bitch goddess (not her description). At work she wore suits, nylons, high heels. She was sleeping with a married woman lunch hours, a half hour, every day. Later on Gia, younger, paralegal in Cambridge, jock, bipolar. She had tried to kill herself. They were together 9 years. Toward the end if she lay next to this woman she'd twitch so much she couldn't sleep. She celebrates September 5 because it's the day she went to college. Three Septembers ago she got up early to go to the beach. She was going to --- Island, maybe if she found a good B&B she'd stay over. She was writing a note to Gia when Gia came out of her room. This was in a condo they'd bought in a redbrick near Harvard Square. Gia smiled at her. She had a beautiful two days, went out and painted with a woman she'd met, came home in the evening of the second day. There was a phone call from the hospital looking for Gia's parents. You probably aren't very interested in this but I'm her partner. They said no, they were interested in that. Gia had jumped off a roof. We were cuddled on the bed in the dark. We'd been on the couch under a pink mohair blanket and then when it had got dark and she'd sobbed in my arms we lay down with her one pillow. Oh a blazing soul, and mixed in, the unbearable, claustrophobic texture of lesbian communities - the sound of that culture. I was far past my limit, almost speechless. My solar was a tight mass black and quivering. I said, I need to go home. There were cold stars, very large. She had taken out her contacts and was trying to find her glasses in a bag in the jeep without being able to see. The jeep was freezing cold. Karen was on the porch of Dewey smoking a cigarette when we got to the dorm. I was so glad to be alone. When I opened my Mac there was a letter from Tom, a nice one. I said I hadn't had sex since June of 2002. She said, You think I'm such a player, I haven't had sex in 10 years. Two weeks ago at Kirpalu there was a man who told her he loved her. He didn't want anything, but he just needed to tell her that. If he showed up she'd probably fuck him, she said. He was a good man. I'd said the book seems to tell me I'm never going to have sex again, I rail, I weep. She rails and weeps. Her voice said to her, Susan, help people. What I could do for her was touch her. I stroked her hair back off her forehead, I held the back of her skull at the nape in my palm. I kept my hand on her arm. I held my palm flat against the base of her spine. I told her how beautiful she is. I felt the small ridge at the top of her nose where it was broken. (She was lying on the table, she heard the doctor go out into the corridor and say to the nurse You might want to come in here. I have to set this girl's nose and I think she's going to pass out.) What she could do for me was hear my stories. She'd croon and pat when I came to the hard parts but that wasn't important. What was important was that she knew the significance of each of them instantly. You okay today? An anxious spot between the eyes. I said, If I were your lover I would never in this world require you to be faithful. I told her the story of Tom careful not to betray it. I said I've often wished to be able to hand on the task, but I'm not sure it isn't going on. I said I haven't found my work, I feel I have to stay in suspension. She's very fiery but she's weaker than I am, she needs to fit into a community. Male culture - all of it is poisoned. Yes, I said. She's never again going to settle for only part of what she wants. She says that in one mode but in another she says she is being led and knows nothing. It will change, she's told, but not soon. She said Would you want to make love with me if you could? I was silent. That's an answer, she said. Yes I said. - After that she said she had crying in her and wanted to do it before I left not after. When it began she held out her arms to me and I wrapped her round. - Above clouds ten minutes west of O'Hare. After she cried she said And now I'm going to take you to sleep in the cold dorm? Yup, I said. She was walking past me, light body in the dark, and she said bitterly And why does that make you happy? I liked that she could be bitter. And after that we had more hours. There was a story I needed to tell her. And was the story she needed to tell me the story of valiant isolated intelligence? She said, in advising group, people have always found her too large and the divine source never does. 30 In Burlington airport I sat and wrote about her, and in the plane, and at C2 in O'Hare, and everywhere people were looking at me. I was handsome and alight. Alright, how was that residency. In one of the interim days Margo came into my room with a folder and said what did I think about working with this one. Mol. Mole, mouth, a mouthy name. Moule shortened. When I go toward you It is with my whole life She set that at the top. And then a mix of careful balance and religious credulity. I want her, I said. Margo was hesitating about Francis. I'm better than Francis at consciousness studies, I said recklessly. Next day at new student assignments Margo handed me her folder. I gave it a kiss. Not much later at the new student introductions I was spying from the other room looking for someone who could have written that application and there was a white-haired person with strong brown eyes, very lively. If that's her she's better than I hoped. When the meeting broke she was standing in the corner talking to Juliana (she said, I didn't remember that). I had a look. She's scrappy. Scrawny, a Tom Sawyer woman, loose-jointed, old jeans too big for her and ripped across the knee. Taller than I am but a bit of a thing. I go stand in front of her and say, Are you Susan? She takes a rapid step toward me. Does this mean we're going to be ------? I wish I remembered the words, it was like 'important to each other'. I thought she'd guessed I was her advisor and laughed with pleasure at her quickness. I'm enthralled with her face. I watch it every moment I can. She's startlingly there. Her eyelids are deep and clean. She has a narrow beak of a nose, the finest grain of flushed white skin, so human a mouth, broad lower lip, and what else about it, a lot of decision in it, a kind of European cut, maturity, swelling controlled. What holds me in her face is her moral perfection. That. - When I woke in the dark here in my own house and tried touching myself and thinking of her I realized the obvious thing, why didn't I realize it sooner, witless, that I didn't want to sleep with her because I'd want to be a man fucking her, I'd feel helpless and foolish poking at her like a lesbian. I'd know just what to do with her if she was my girl. Is she going to quit the program? No, because she needs the student loan money. Is she going to ask for another advisor? (It says yes and to let her go.) If she's gone I'll just try to stay with her in the way I am, and be faithful in the way we said. Residency. The moment Millie said, from the chair opposite, Just don't take it away from me, okay? and I felt it like an arrow to the heart, and covered my face with my hands and shook with pain. Hers. I loved the way that happened, I had Joyce's truth and speed. She said she was sorry and I said no, I was feeling with her and it was wonderful and I promised not to take it away from her. My eye kept being caught by a spangle in the corner of the closet. It was her spangle. I said her health would be better if she writes art into her study plan. Sun on an iridescent ribbon. Susan's vision: opposite her open door a farmhouse in a meadow. Wrap-around porch. She goes into it and on the left it's bright-lit but on the right it's dark and musty. There's a stairs, and when she thinks of going up them something says not yet. She goes forward into the dark room and beyond it there's another room with a window onto brightness, wildflowers, mountains. She doesn't say it in the group but I am in that room. Will she be willing to let me go to waste? I don't think so. - The language lectures - warm back room in the cottage packed with mostly women - they were interested all the way through - even the linguistics lecture - Favor's introduction at graduation. The embodiment session with faculty and the dean. Mark saying in Margo's hearing that my convocation speech was the best of all the grads he's attended. The embodiment colloquium (Susan across the room wrapped in her brocade shawl with her eyes closed). Juliana putting her arm around me after grad and saying I looked beautiful introducing Favor, Karen Campbell next to her saying, Well you always do, and that I'm her model of an academic. Favor and Scott saying what they said. The graduation lunch with Anne and lovely Glynn and Favor and lovely Nora. Winning Millie's trust and Wayne's hug. Those many successes and the silence I felt, a passivity, in advising group. I didn't attend to study plans. I shifted Carolyn - did I? I let Anna flap and she liked it. Did anyone think I wasn't on it? Anna's crystalline little face. Eyes like amethysts, quirked little mouth, flawless prettiness which I did not resent. I said pay attention to women hating you because you're pretty. Carolyn sitting in her Colombian hat, pinch-faced, her heart aching. Dwayne buried in blubber, a Jewish Punch face buried in a swollen sack of fat. Unending loneliness, a sweet heart hidden so long. But I started to say I was passive in advising group and let Susan do the work. I rested in the corner, that was alright though I wondered whether she was taking something away from me that I should hold onto. (Power, it's called.) Carol - her beautiful Nathalie Wood eyes. Solid, feeling, doing it. Faculty dinner talking to Margo, Lise, Karen and sometimes Ralph, letting Goldberg, Francis and Tomas keep cabal at the other end of the table. Delicious chioppino. We argued about reincarnation. I miss my hot water bottle. It's cold here. The cabbie last night had the scent of rose oil in his car. I stepped out of it into mountain laurel blooming next to my jeep. The scent is in this neighbourhood too. Wrecked the transmission driving home last night. Should have topped up the fluid. Did I do that because I'm overwhelmed? I thought of taking the cab home and going for the jeep another day, but I wanted it with me, everything safe at home. I have $2000 probably. $3500 in credit card debt. No bike. - He didn't do that well. He looked nice - haircut and red sweatshirt, sun in his eyes. I burst out with it. Doing it well would have been saying tell me about her, what do you like about her. Doing it badly was walking away when I said he's uncompassionate, he doesn't consider what it's cost me to wait for him all these years and still. What made him walk away was when I said he isn't safe for me yet. He's still being taken care of, I have to wait and see what happens when he's out on his own. What I know is that if he cared about me he'd agree that I should love, and if he was willing to see the cost I've borne he'd have been something other than angry. Your contempt at this is not a good sign, I said, and was left with my sore heart to take the bus to the farmer's market on my own. Either it's over or it's not. If it is I'm alone here again. That was love woman in the mirror this morning and yesterday. Now she's gone again. Solar clamped, releases to heart sharp, doesn't release there, 'stabbed' I say and sigh. I was lying under the green blanket. Saw her wrapped in her brocade blanket with her eyes closed. I just want to stay connected to what she is. Ah Tom I wish you wanted to hear about that. 31 What it is about Tom walking away in his red sweatshirt is that his back looked straight. She isn't gone. I sent a note that said please don't not do this semester with me. She was working, she had been working all day. This morning there's a photo. It opens on the stringy crest of her grey hair and then appear her strong eyes and then the long oval of white skin and then a feeling mouth with a shadow across one side. Louie last night on her cordless in bed, a connection nervous on my side. I was waiting for her to spot my secret and interested to find what would be possible if I didn't tell it. She liked the language lectures and wanted to know whether she should want to be enlightened, whether she could still be creative. A man Cathy had met, who said that in meditating he had felt ego a shadow hanging above him, and when he had seen that it came and went, worked to clear it altogether. One day it was gone. I said I imagined enlightenment as very relaxed and creative all the time without trying. There's a scare in my solar plex still. She says I have no idea what I've given her. What I've given her is that she can want to lay it out to me. She can look at her grief journals and do yoga and take pictures and read Gendlin and print the whole of Being about in the computer lab. She can reframe what she wants in yoga philosophy so it's not misogynistic or dualist. Oh there's more love in me and more fear. Now it's 5:30. I have a free month. Fix the jeep today, fix it altogether. CD player, liftgate struts. Use my tax return. Do you have a name for her     unreserve Was it an illusion     no We had a real meeting       We lost our heads a little bit     no It was truly love       And recognition       And care       We're supposed to work         Anything else you want to talk about     Louie What     a fight There's going to be a fight       - Waiting for the tow truck, nervous. More than nervous. Solar plexus spasm. I feel into it. Ask this and that. When I say you're very afraid it draws breath. Feel into it more. Try this and that it might be afraid of. It doesn't budge but then after a while I just envisage the whole realm of mechanical things and it sighs. I ask why. It doesn't answer to anything, maybe it's early, before language. Feel into it more, push consciousness into it. Shift to a spot mid-chest but on the right. If I can stay with it it spreads downward and across into the breast. If I lose concentration it clamps in the solar again. It's there now. The furthest I got with long concentration was here and there on the right side, right arm. - There's so intense a western sky, molten orange. The transmission is okay. With other stuff $1200, my residency pay. My neighbour gets up from the table with a parrot on his hand, shuffles away down the hall. - A Parry's agave with a stalk fourteen feet high, like a huge candelabrum holding, at symmetrical intervals, what looks like shallow bowls about half a foot across and filled with frothy pink ice cream. Later, when the thousands of tiny blossoms in each bowl open more fully, they will shade from burnt orange at the top to ever more delicate yellow at the rim of the pale green bowl. Agave comes from a Greek word meaning noble or admirable. 1st February When Tom got up and took his sunglasses and walked away my bubble popped - is that the way to say it? I stopped seeing and feeling her. There's more I haven't told. One morning in advising group she was sitting on the office chair where she was in profile to me. She had her hair up and her little black rectangle-frame glasses on. The back of her neck was stretched to the base of the skull and her jaw rode high - is there a less awkward way to say how poised and smart and queenly she looked, with her hawk nose and creamy flush, concentrating on someone speaking across the room. That's the photo I want. The two of us lounging in our low leather armchairs drawn up to the radiator and our crossed legs propped high on the wall, with cold blue sky in the window above us, or lit sideways in orange lamplight in the empty office after dinner. Seeing her is seeing women released, it's seeing what can only have been accomplished by the most fervent fighting love. It's seeing myself, not exactly, but more than usual. And makes me notice how lonely I am, looking and looking at the ones who haven't fought. I want nothing to do with her apparatus - family, friends, circumstantial history, lesbian romance. I want to be in love with her in work. I want to pour out what I've found, and I want to hear her story told as close as can be to her self. I want to work with her for the culture of female shining. Is this the right thing to want?     YES She said I'm a selfish woman and this is what it means. It's an offer she won't refuse. - Michael saw me pulling away from the market Saturday night just as I had arrived from the airport and Eliz's. His close to spot-on radar. Or mine, or both. This morning I wrote out the history of my interest in state change. It begins with that but works into a moral program with the book; lately I have been more interested in restructuring by ethical means, is what I saw. Now it isn't state change, which is change of consciousness, but structural change. Is that correct?       Does the quantum physics stuff make any difference to that     no 'The divine' is the universe       Is the universe aware of itself     no Is there reincarnation     no Can you explain the incidence of children who ...      Telepathy?     no Imprint from something they're with       Unusual sensitivity that actually qualifies them       Evolved people give a stronger imprint       Explain with a card     something given off Like wet clay pots recording sound       State change by taking an imprint       Is resonance the same thing     no - My jeep is fixed. I loved it up. Filled it with Supreme Unleaded and took it through the car wash. working through files, writings, photographs, I stand at the door to the Realm, I'm cold cold   I have to summon power for crossing   my breath hanging in the air I search inside myself for the heat of your body, some way to come back   I am full of needing you What was that - a bolt of fear - the moment she lays claims - which she seems to me to do when she mentions the mole at the back of my neck. 2nd More business today, organizing [college] receipts, checking taxes and discovering I've paid $1609 and owe $175 for a total of almost $1800 on only $14,000. Starting to look for a stonemason for Scott. What else. It's calming down with S. I was tough. I said Tom and Louie have to be there and alright, and don't plead to capture me, romance is a sticky conventional consciousness that hangs onto we instead of mutual seeing and I want mutual seeing. And then there's a line describing looking into boxes in the barn with the mice and the dim and the landlord's country western radio. I say what does that remind me of - Le Guin's story in Always coming home of a woman being stretched working as an electrician (in a crawlspace - but I saw a barn, motes moving in the beams of light from cracks). Mice and ghosts. She said that was piercing as if I saw, but it's Le Guin's tenderness isn't it. That was a lovely motion and came about when we had established ourselves in our own places and tasks. We both washed our cars yesterday. I think I have passed a test with her by resisting, and now she'll be able to trust me and work. Is that it? I think that's what the mouse exchange says. So she's okay, I'm okay. 3 Working with the cramp in the solar. Will you talk about that       I'm scared of her     YES Because she wants to capture me       And can she     no Is she a mind-bender     no Is she lying     no Is she always falling in love with people     no She'll confuse me if I'm not careful       I mustn't believe it's me she loves       Demeter       She thinks she's Persephone       But really she's Orpheus, is my guess       Work on Orpheus with her     YES She's looking for her writing       - Morning on the roof. I say that and what more is there to say. A breeze. Its little touching. At three this morning when I woke she'd written a page of her worrying in work. I sat with the book and answered it. What I found was that she should work with her journals generously not as if investigating - inform the one who wrote them. I think that's right and interesting. I had a thought while I was lying in the dark, that an emotional motion could also be metaphoric. I was thinking of some phrase said for its motion of tone - don't remember enough of that, maybe it will come again. A shape of tone like a shape of whole body motion.     part 4 in america volume 7: 2004-05 december-april work & days: a lifetime journal project