in america 8 part 2 - 2005 april-may

work & days: a lifetime journal project

23 April It's Saturday - open sky - the big manuscripts answered - the week ahead my own - at Taft today, later. Carolyn wanting to know about her story about her mother's scar. I say the reason she's having trouble getting it right is that there's a hole in her story and it's about the father. Her fantasy about her mother's scar opens into a dreamy feeling about penetration, lying on a bed, etc. As if her little-girl presentation is something about not having allowed herself to consciously want her father's big juicy dick. Even in Michael she was looking for her mother - I mean that's how she tells the story. And Lise was no help because she evades the father too. I told her the dreamy fantasy I had - I remember sitting on the floor in the living room looking across to the second drawer from the bottom of the bureau - of the embroidered pillowcases and tablecloths and teatowels folded there, that they'd be mine if my mother died. And the moment when I was older - twelve or thirteen? - sitting at the kitchen table watching my father walk toward the barn, seeing his shape for the first time, broad shoulders, narrow hips, beautiful, a beautiful man. Did he ever see me looking at him that way? I think it was always unconscious. I think he kept it dark and kept himself divided. The truth was there was a charge between us and it was mutual. I was his dark soul. I was what he had in him to be. He could see my distinction. He could see that it hadn't failed. And I could see the way his had not. And yet there was his whole blind cranky orthodox surface. What I'm feeling now, at this moment, a questing young alertness, there's no way of saying it, that's me, that's him. What I see above is that I still have the story of Ed to tell. There's a shine around him. - Said I'd phone Tom Saturday night. How are you doing? Not good, can we talk face to face? Do you want to come here? He says he'll walk, he's just come off work. Oh shit now he's going to pressure me. He arrives. Do you want to talk to the book? He doesn't. He wants to deliver the speech he's prepared. He looks bad, hollowed-out, he hasn't showered yet, he's covered with grey dust. He makes his pitch. He has organized it into practical, emotional and spiritual. The practical is bad - losing his room, risking his job, throwing away what he's gained by such hard work. The next category is how he's done all this for me, for us, if it weren't for me he could still be at the Golden West, could ask Tony for money, or Oscar. This part of his argument is madness, he burned them down because of drugs, not for me. I start taking notes. He's selling me. The practical consequences move me but not this blaming, guilting and references to 'us' and how we were nearly there and he was doing it for me. "You're destroying me. My whole life is going to be blown up." I ask the book again, should I give him the money? It says no. I say, it's not about worthiness, it's not about the money. What is it about? I ask the book. I feel so intensely pressured I don't understand what it says. Please help me, I say. It says, What are you feeling? Dismay, agony, I say. Is it his agony? No. I feel it more, I start to cry. I'm sobbing. He keeps talking. I'm guessing he thinks he's making headway. "When I take the hit there's no coming back." "I really don't deserve this." I ask the book, Is this revenge? No, friendship, action, fool, come through. Crying has made me feel better, I look again at the earlier answer to what it's about. It says brilliant and courageous action on evasion and illusion. He's saying it's not about the money, it's about our relation. I know it's about the money. He doesn't want to take the hit. He's putting every kind of screw on me that he can. I say he should stop arguing. I don't completely know why it is but I know I'm not supposed to do it. I've been putting my socks on. Do you want a ride? No. He stands up and puts out his hand. Goodbye Ellie, in a loud dramatic tone. I don't take it, I'm not doing that. He walks away across the roof. I'm standing in the doorway looking after him, saying there's something wrong. Big sigh. I've had big sighs every time I've said I'm not supposed to give it to him. I wait a bit and go down and lock the gate. Then the second gate. Then my door. Three locks. I've withstood. 24th Woke at night with a spasm at the solar. Wondered whether it was him awake in despair. Maybe it was me in fear of being left. It says what's wrong is that my woman love self should not be asked to support him through the downstream consequences of her own betrayal. He is still very unclear about motives and consequences of both his seduction and his betrayals. Is it moral stupidity? Yes because he doesn't want to feel guilt, which he experiences very intensely. Is it fetal alcohol forebrain damage? No, cowardice. So much of the horizontal. Can I go to the country today? Go camping? - Spur Meadow, is it? Near Corral Canyon. It's cold but I'm going to stay the night. Has spit rain, bits of rain. When I thought where to come, the oak meadow seemed right. Realized it's a loop to mourning Tom, was here before he came back last summer, my first expedition on my own. I'm on a sandy flat widening of the road. The oak meadow is a bit lower down and there is a juicy rutted mudhole between me and it. I can see across the meadow, where there's a stream this time, damp ground, to rocky hillsides, NE. The parallel slope has a lot of pale-colored posts in the chaparral, which are yucca blooming. Through the hatch window I can see another kind of rock, pink walls with quite a uniform dark green scrub. I know this is dull writing. Clouds keep moving in from the west, haven't yet seen the top of the pink-rock slope. Hot water bottle I put into the bed a couple of hours ago. Have the mattress sticking out and can't close the hatch, it will be cold tonight but I hope the down bag on top of the orange wool blanket, flannel sleeping bag, will take care of it. Tom will have left his room. Has he? It says no. It's 6:30, starting to get dark. Is that the last of the bikes I'm hearing. There were fathers with little kids all geared up on tiny dirt buggies, coaching them through the mudholes - Go! Go! Earlier three grand eagles - I think - circling over this drainage. When I left the freeway at Laguna Junction, immediately flowers. A ceanothus in thick pale blue. I was pulling over taking pictures. What are those yellow-breasted birds with black and white wings. Quiet. Sore throat. It's the down bag. 25th It's morning. Clouds close in, too bad, no rosy light on the pink rock. I was asleep and woke to a lot of light seemingly flashing onto the ceiling of the jeep, light from more than one direction. Sat up still waking and there was a man shining a big flashlight into the side window I had open 4" for air. Just one of you? he says. Young nice American voice. There's another light being shone into the back window from about 10' away. Are you the ranger? I say. No, ma'am, border patrol. There are two sets of headlights on the far side of the mudhole, double sets: they have roof lamps. A lot of light. They go back to their vehicles and seem to be checking the edges of the stream with their flashlights. Are they looking for footprints? Then one after the other they surge through the mud and pass me. Identical Wranglers with hardtops. After a while they return from the other direction. I'm nearly falling asleep but I see four Mexicans standing on the road the far side of the ruts, men and women in a sort of lit darkness as if I have night vision. It startles me awake and then I'm nervous. Put on socks and boots and get out and lock the liftgate. Last evening I heard some kind of noise, lifted my head and saw a coyote standing on a boulder in the meadow, large and very finely marked with darker legs and shoulders - was it? He felt my gaze and trotted away among the oaks, not hurried, very dignified. It's a dark morning, lower edge of the cloud running down the valley to the east. Guess I'll go, it's too cold and damp to hang about. - Hadn't been home long, Tom knocked. He still has his room. He went home and sorted himself out. Was sitting here hoping to strike the right note. I got bored. Susan's mail waiting. I downloaded my cache of images and sent her some. It's an indulgence. She doesn't really like scenery. Can I sort out her philosophy - She seems to be an idealist, is it that - Can I write about what I was, when I was that - Spirit - what did I feel was that - This is challenging I saw there was a materialism that isn't reductive 26th Susan talks about my connections sentimentally, they will be wonderful, etc. I said she does it because she's scrupulously compensating for wanting them to fail. She denied it. Sent her my notes on subtle body history, which conclude by saying awareness is less important than effectiveness. She has been pushing me to say why Tom and Louie have been mad at me about her. She wants me to say she has a chance. I wrote back that both knew before I met her that my attachment was less than it had been, and they rightly fear I'm a loose canon. She replied, See, every connection has its moment and this is ours, and doesn't that imply you should take every risk for it? The answer to that would be, I'd take every risk if I could get what I want. And what's that, dear? A better man than Tom, the male parts, voice, hand, big juicy dick, with steady care and accomplishment. Not a starved girl with her head lit up like a lamp. The other thing is - what I feel for girl-goddess bodies - Katie, Danielle - soft lust - I'd like to see them being fucked, their legs wrapped around - blissed out - the way my fantasies always start with seeing the girl - but she isn't that kind of girl. Can you explain to me why I feel lust for beautiful girl bodies     it's a way of getting around the structure of love woman's anger Borrowing an imaginary body     YES Is there a reason I can't use my own     YES with men the child's early love is foolish With men I haven't a confident body     Want to say more     balance, integrate, completion, deep change Change this structure - how?     brilliance and courage, conflict, strength, decision   Isn't it okay as it is     no Why isn't it okay     temperance, responsibility, lack of practicality Makes me function wrong     I don't see any way to change it     share pleasure, graduate from the child's exclusion Sexually     On my own     I'm operating at a level of despair     [Opposite: summary Dec 04 - April 05: brain has stopped responding, body has stopped responding because I didn't finish restructuring love woman a grey night of the soul something about me I don't see a point where you backed off being angry/aggressive Learn to use everything you used to have by means of sex by other means When I publish I'll be hit by defenses against early love and the mother Look for a way to come through in relation to sexual conflict, graduate from Ellie's reserve and heartbreak Want me to be alone for the rest of my life Because you're going to teach me to prefer it Fight to get into places with hope The central fact of my lostness is that I don't fight for my work, that's all I should be thinking of It's a mushy spot in my clear brain like the mushy spot about weak men The same spot, the weak father "Do anything you have to do to get into the game." If I accept the authority of that knowledge, my life, not only with Tom, but altogether, wakes up saying, let's go, now we're moving ahead again, now it makes sense, the whole story does. As if it's far beyond sentiment of love, I'm a spirit who has accepted to go into abeyance when Tom isn't moving ahead. I've been living without depth because I haven't kept it open under me. Completion of love woman's loss and foolishness Love woman becomes knowledge of the fateful dimension   Every day feel how I miss my mother About being fat - make it conscious Love woman needs to give love and heartbreak Come through evasion and gain the child, Act on tyranny of exclusion   There I think of Joyce, the way she watched and knew, the way she sat alert, not afraid of me and not afraid for me, skilful, feeling my life a venture, like hers. Why do I want to say death harvested her significance. I'm alone and didn't use to feel it and now I feel it. When I close my eyes to feel the heart pain I feel the finest of vibration as if within or behind the squeezedness. Practical overview of love woman Come through her despair and temper her judgment By judgment you mean the things she did not to feel the despair Stress in action Notice it - I'm avoiding x, y, z Fear of stress is fear of something I need When I go into action I suppress the fear Learn to be relaxed in action Complete recovery success and valor Process the suppression of love and honesty Stress comes from suppressing in male contexts Be responsible in honesty about your loss   Now ask for action Mind and land as web kingdom Waiting for the universe to call on me   The way love for a woman gets displaced to a man and is stepped down 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] - What's this - going into this little free space - it won't last past next Monday, which is packet 4 - is there time to touch my own work - everything I did with blue page transcriptions went into thin air when I had to go to packets - and before that the Golden West pages halted since January. Was reading through the journal into January to find the GW planning notes - bookwork - I've forgotten how I was living in solitary, moments of anguish breaking me out. Susan is floating me through - an illusion of company in a way - she doesn't reply to a lot of what I send personally - and some complicated speculation now that sounds idealist. Even thinking of it I feel my bearings drift, as if my root into real life is cut. That's what's been wrong this semester, I haven't had a deep enough root under what I send students. Does it mean I should fight Susan more, distrust her more? She's worth time but don't be hooked, she tries to hook. 27 Creeley died at the end of March says the Times. 78. I dreamed a long visit with Dave Carter and Francie and their kids. Mostly I was in his big studio looking at things like a chunk of quartz set so that light shone through two jutting sides as if they were transparent walls of a room or stage set. There was some sort of stool or chair he'd made that was articulated in complicated ways, moving parts. It compressed very flat. More about flying in the large overhead space. What I want to note was the anguish and longing when i was seeing a working space. Looking at the Dec-April journal seeing the way it's a story of working with two students. Seeing that made me interested in transcribing. Millie is writing longer letters less often. They are level and clear summaries of the work she is doing with depression. Sitting with herself, she says, turning anger away from herself, watching to see how she works. Remarkable strong self portrait. Telling the story of the semester wd be Millie's emails and mine, Susan's and mine. What wd it be called: embodiment studies at [the college]. A lot of this aft cutting and pasting a record for Mil's third packet - need to be able to see the series. She got to raunch, birth, abortion attempts, drugging reactivation, shock therapy, battle with whatever kept her stuck with her parents, massive defeat programming. She's admitted to recent incest. How wd Joyce have done it better - empathetically, more compassionately. I'm rather cold and crisp. It can be done that way. 28th Can I find a red hoodie for Tom's birthday - Saturday - seeing him tomorrow. Said I wd clean up the front of Taft and plant a bit - shd get a summary of Millie's third packet storms and breakthroughs. What do I want to do today. It's raining hard. 29th My eyes are rough-surfaced today - as if - because I read too much yesterday, two books straight through. Byatt on Mill on the Floss. 19th c. "Natural histories." Praised Shakespeare's strong concrete language. Language as incarnate history. She was reading Origin of the species at the time - came out 1859. So the world gets on step by step towards brave clearness and honesty. Letters III 227. "Practical and generous irony which is one of George Eliot's tones of voice." "all this mystery and beauty and pain and ugliness" "I become more and more timid - with less daring to adopt any formula which does not get itself clothed for me in some human figure and individual experience." Letters VI, 216. Feuerbach, "All the moral relations are per se religious. Life as a whole is, in its essential substantial relations, throughout of a divine nature." Morality to recognize difference of others. "Men who are sexually honest and communicate their sexual feelings clearly to the women they love." "outer life gradually and painfully being brought into harmony with inward needs. Until this harmony is perfected, we shall never be able to attain a great right without doing a great wrong." - Tom after work, having cashed his check, flops down with a lot to tell. There was deadsticking down the 9 miles of mountain into Palm Springs in the heavy Ford Explorer with motor, power steering and power brakes gone. There was the first day as lift man on a highrise construction site, 150 men watching him fuck up. He didn't flame out or walk away. Proud of himself. $15/hr, 10 hrs a day, $30 on weekends. Money in his pockets. Still has the room at the Reiss. I take him for supper at Brian's American Diner [for his birthday], ribeye for $16.95. 30 What did I dream - a lot - on a floor with Sylvia from Moving Images sitting talking - she says I've been a northern filmmaker - I say, like Bergman? Yes I was always anxious about whether my soul was lost. Being a southern filmmaker would be being confident, spilling over? Tom was blazing in his story, blazing with masculinity. The weakness in his jaw wasn't showing, his eyes were blazing forward. He was in his dusty yellow work boots, work jeans, a construction worker whose hair is sticky when he takes off his hard hat. He had injured his wrist. He said, Hold it. I sat next to him holding his light narrow wrist in my palm, turned on by the feel of it, sucking up his delicious maleness as he talked on. He'd met his challenges among men, he'd come through. In the last couple of days turned off Susan's letters because she isn't sending me adoration. (And Louie not replying to the photos I sent.) I beat off adoration because I don't trust it, and yet it is what I crave and thrive on. 1st May Had the phone plugged in last night because I thought Tom would call after work. He did. And then not much later the phone rang again. "It's Susan." Her voice so light. I hadn't remembered it, she bubbles on. Do I like it, not really. It's charming but it's too light. And then the experiment of talking to her as it grew dark, swan's wing cloud over the condo to the west. Then lights coming on over there, a woman in something red standing in the yellow light waving her arms, in another space of window two people tumbling downstairs as if they'd just got out of bed after sex. I felt a lot of kinds of discomfort talking to her. There's her pose of desiring me, that I don't believe. She was pushing for going camping with me - kept pushing for it 'til my heart hurt. Pushing to be able to phone me again. My heart hurts when she talks about her son phoning her sometimes every day. I fall into a blankness feeling I didn't earn that from my children. Hearing her sociability, that foaming excited contact, I drop into feeling I'm less than her. Old, stiff and slow. At the same time my loneliness wakes up and wants to tell my stories, although the telling isn't satisfying because she isn't really responsive, she doesn't see what I'm telling the way Louie does. At the same time I'm noticing she is zipping about in her work very unfocused, and there's something I am wanting from her there, and I shd be tracking that more persistently. What's my summary - "I'm a biter" she says proudly. Remembers when she was a child holding back and then, fuck it, biting the other child. She needs to get her teeth into me just because I'm there. She's compounding distrust in me. I am noticing too that she's a kind of crisis in my work. It has been easy until now. She could bring me down. No one else has been interested in my weaknesses. - What would Joyce say, I have no idea. Can she see me? No. She poses as if she can. Do you want to talk to me abt Susan     Is she a danger to me     Sentence     she loves love woman and has graduated from exclusion Is she ahead of me in that     I'm scared of her     no Up against her     A complicated feeling out     YES I can't match her in entertainment     Have to stay in my straight simple self     Which is grounded     She's very ungrounded     That's the discomfort     I'd like to try out her mode of entertainment     She puts such a razzle dazzle around herself     Tom asked how I was - this was on his bed, Sunday afternoon - some pulled wire in my hip - and I said, If there were a god I would say to it, I've been doing all these things for you, when are you going to do something for me? and started to cry. I felt friendless. He put on James Brown and massaged my pulled wire with his strong thumbs for the whole length of the album. Late afternoon, 5:45. I came home to two despairing emails from Millie. Wondering whether I have been irresponsible, rushing her ahead as if she were as strong as I am. Is she going to snap? I know nothing about going off drugs, which she did very suddenly, along with giving away her dogs and moving. 2nd Monday morning turns the corner. Long email from Louie, she's writing in her journal, her fissure healed miraculously when she took her book's advice and added oil. Since Mexico and since I shocked her on the phone many good things. She wrote about her city. She's there in her beautiful house as May turns on its charm, resplendent May in Vancouver. Meantime Susan sends a photo of herself in her kayak. I am annoyed with her for phoning me and for all of her pressing and for whatever that power compulsion is, making her try so falsely to seduce me. Cheeping brightness, Monday early. The dreams of Dave Carter mean this visual work     I made a wonderful image tonight, in the way I do, take digital pictures, upload them, play with them, one thing after another, suddenly there's something I like a lot. core.jpg. My shadow on the wall in fading sunset light. Bisected by the door. I slice out the door's line, paste the separate halves onto a new document. There's a black background bar dividing its two halves. I change its color to a grey I pick up with the eyedropper from darker parts of the image. It becomes a silver core that has different light next to head and shoulders by a contrast illusion. Bright at the heart, dark at the top of the head. The shadow blurs onto the textured wall, which is in focus, it's doubled, and there are subtle pastel colors in the grain. The core in contrast is straight-edged as if two sides of a double door opening into void. There's either a contrast illusion or an edge color sharpening these straight sides. A shadow line bisects vertically, soft. So much subtle shading. Dark upper corners. It's quite magical. Fine burnt orange line around. So you are my muse after all and I should forgive you much. Yesterday morning I dreamed I was entering a building from the attic or a higher floor. I came down into a bathroom, windowless, dark. An old tub, dark turquoise walls. It looked disused. I opened the door into an apartment, called out. There seemed to be no one home. I saw that it was the second floor apartment I used to live in with Luke and Maggie. I crossed the floor and left. When I woke I had that sensation of really having seen an apartment where I used to live, although it is only the apartment I have many times dreamed I used to live in, a center apartment in one of Choy's buildings. When I woke this morning I wondered whether it is my life in Strathcona that's meant, the large middle of my life. It says not. Yesterday I wrote Louie a sort of envoie. I said she has been the only one who loves me and I often thank her. She mostly can't reach me in this time and it's not her fault or mine. It's what it's like. I'm waiting for my tide to turn.   And why is it she can't reach me. Because she doesn't allow herself to be what I've always needed her to be. I'm not interested in her but I want her to be interested in me. I feel her refusal is just, so there is nothing to be done. A kind of tastelessness in her grates on me. It's in her voice, her clothes, her writing, in what she adds to her house, lately in her body. And yet she's admirable. Her life is admirable. Mittel-Europeisch, too safe, too pleasant, too self-pitying in some essence, yet admirably active and responsible and responsive and alert and affectionate. And on my other side, now, I have Miz Mol, who is not safe, non too pleasant, admirable in much of her taste though she overdoes intellectuality, a biter, a power-grabber, and who was capable in my field of writing in there is no other world. She doesn't respond to most of what I send her, but she wrote bête noir with what I could give. She's a monster, as am I. More suggestible, stoned, unfocused, more credulous, less single, faster, fiercer, more sociable, more connected, not such an abnegator. Less principled about seduction, very unprincipled about seduction. She's doing power battle with me and wd deny it, which is bad. She has been willing to use anything weak in me, and wd deny it. Am I equal to her, yes, though I have to choose the ground we meet on because I'm not fast. Am I superior to her, yes, in my accreted mass, though not at all in presence. (It says I am, but allow more of my presence to be uncon.) And Tom really doesn't even show up on this board, he's my battery, my boyfriend. He's not a serious person. Is there anything that suggests to you     Tom's disengaged from drugs and processing More you want to say about that     persist in brilliance and courage and action, Ellie Nevermind this drama and do what you need to do     Will you tell me what that apartment is     the work on withdrawal, to come through into strength Is that what you mean     I don't understand why it wd be that     intellectual responsibility for loss and integration This is mysterious to me     YES Do you want to say more     feeling betrayal to succeed by slow growth The achievement of that principle     Anything else     no Margo writing wanting a cycle of concepts, etc, that embodiment students need to get. She has no clue. I give her really excellent notes and she doesn't study them. Her leadership consists of slathers of praise, over the top praise, and now with pressure presumably from Jane she is trying to nail down what looks more instructive than we can possibly be. She isn't getting embodiment because she wants reincarnation. She doesn't want me teaching against disembodied souls. She's padded. 5th Here I am. Eyes sore from packet work at the computer. Birds chipping like little machines in this smothered dawn. Susan last night said there is a consistent vibration in my work. I was interested she could see that. Talked about the green ray, Aphrodite, classical paganism, vs Kali's black and red. The green ray is that everywhere I go it's plants I'm looking at with love eyes. That's not her ray. As Millie was about to drive back to Vermont I asked what she'd like to extract for the magazine. When she'd arrived she said she was laughing as she drove, to see how I was tricking her back into work. Wanted to know which section I thought she shd extract. I was thinking the birth sequence for sure but said she should just pick something not too private that demonstrates the process well. This morning she sends her extract. It is the birth section. Chess mistress, she calls me. "I am so onto you." And then this evening Susan's packet 4. I will have to rise to it. Measured, a thinking tread. (That makes me remember the feel of a dream.) She's tracking what she means by the field, She's writing toward my question about 'spirituality.' She's bringing Jorie Graham, Edelman, Robert Rosen, Andy Goldsworthy, Einstein, into it. A Lutheran alter girl. She was interested in god, that's her ray. I have never been interested in god. 6 Friday morning. My eyes are sandpapered from too much of the screen yesterday. How am I going to fix that. Now I need to work through what Susan means by the field. 1. she's with the guy in the red car, she feels herself access some power. 2. Almost gets sideswiped on the freeway and feels she puts out an occult power to prevent the accident. In her piece there are two things, the writing and the philosophy. The writing is divine, the philosophy is shaky. I have no experience of whatever it is she feels herself accessing. I also don't get into that kind of trouble, I don't get into her kinds of trouble. What am I assuming. That she wants to be a miracle worker. That she doesn't defend herself adequately. There is such a thing as the field     It's important to know about it     This is critical work for embodiment     Save the phenomena w/o buying the false implications     There are invisible things     Are there invisible people     no Are there traces of people in landscape     Ask what one wants these hypotheses for       Do you want to explain her and the field to me     reversal, As, balance, shared pleasure I'm not going to be able to understand this     Electrical field     Entire universe     YES Is it actually spatial     Is there instantaneous action at a distance    no Traveling action     Faster than speed of light     no Perception is by propagated influence     That is already being part of a field     The basic notion of field is any point is a sum of everything that impinges     YES The mathematics of field are that     But then there is organic coherence and self defense     Closedness to the field     There are fields - they run into each other     part 3 in america volume 8: 2005 april-august work & days: a lifetime journal project