| in america volume 28 part 4 - 2014 july-august | work & days: a lifetime journal project |
14 July Yesterday looking for something to do I gave all day to futzing with a model I wasn't liking. My idea was I'd edge toward Orpheus by making a sky-hung studio to go into to work on it. My first thought was a Greek room white-washed and simple, but as I got into windows and staircases etc I kept missing Mac's house, which is so interesting and now so beautifully lit and furnished. Why is it Mac's house rather than mine? Why can't that study be where I work on Orpheus? Because it's Mac's house, but what does that mean. I want his life in it. David McAra's house was like that, and before it the poet's house. The Point Loma house was mine (what's loma? ridge or knoll, a height of land). Do I invent men when I'm not doing anything? The Point Loma house was Being about. 16x44 is mine too. Both Point Loma and 16x44 are walled; Mac's house is the only one with open country around it. I love the way it looks around at rocks and bushes. - But why can't Mac's beautiful house be my house? Is it because Mac isn't an artist? He's an entrepreneur-inventor-activist. Does it mean I should be that instead?
I've loved working all day long with driven focus. Want to say I'd like to be doing that with something that matters, except that if I have driven focus for it, it matters. What is it it doesn't matter toward, that something else might. - The interest and pleasure of the best, it's always that. Being in the company of the best, adding to the life of the best, making the moments of pained joy that have been made for me by the best.
What have I done toward it:
What I haven't done:
Cheryl's friend the Can lit professor at U of T., "response to yr ms. She was impressed. She thought the writing really interesting. Said it doesn't fit any trend, you're an original." She's written about contemp Can long poem, Can multicult lit, diasporic lit in English Canada, on the board of NeWest in Edmonton, edits a series of writer critics including Webb, Brandt, Kiyooka, Marlatt. Daphne and Zuru Ling, Zasep Rinpoche - he's Gelug, yellow hat, newest, Mongols. Tarthang Tulku is Nyingma, eastern Tibet, red hat, includes Bon, Padmasambhava, Tantric Vajrayana.
- What's next with Mac's house -
> Geometry, materials, lights, camera 15 Gordimer died yesterday. 1923-2014. Lessing, Gordimer, Le Guin, the three of my age. LM Montgomery and Richardson of the previous. Young Updike in the '60s. Last night from one moment to the next without knowing I was going to I downloaded V-ray and then got halfway through the manual before going to bed. I was thinking last night that for Fading [ie the section now called In America] I should pull in passages from the teaching letters. It wasn't just Fading - maybe it's not even called Fading, maybe it's called Teaching letters. I thought it again just now rereading my passage in Anne4 about The conservationist. When I've moved maybe I should do a grand synthesis of 2002-2014, the California and teaching years. Maybe it's called California or In America. I'll unlock it when I've gone through it that way. In the past couple of days when I've thought of being back in the same town as my old enemies I've had a sensation of having moved so far beyond them that I needn't think of them, is that what I mean? Teaching consolidated me. I used it to articulate so much of what I knew. o Make sure what's on the G4 is on iPage to make sure corrections are up o Organize folders better o Collect intro Should I name my college now? Only in the intro and after that 'my college'. Fading and Again together are 28 volumes - they need to be continuous. 28 x 5 = 140 parts +. Twelve years -
16 California - my places, the gardens, SD, So Cal, Teaching - skill, diagnosis, success, consolidation, mbo, writing Felt exile - America, isolation - interest - old friends Tom - conflict and bookwork, love woman Aging - Ed, M, Ro and Luke, fading energy and looks, retrospection, memory How was the time diff from previous 8 years Drying - authority and responsibility - energy 57-69 - to retiring Freshness of new place - back country, city Creation - photos again, journal project, lot of writing, Here, hardware and software, Ant Bear, monograph Call it Exile - chosen - away from anyone who knows me, away from supportive attachment - and at the same time joyfully at home with land and plants - in some ways more at home with the hard energy - aggressive polish - of the US than the milder mediocrity of Canada, being at home in being interested - At home in exile? Exile's home. Exiled in teaching, exiled with Tom, exiled in the US, making something of them. The way a three year old did, increasing distance from childhood; deaths, aging, I never stopped longing for significant work - I worked, as always, commitment, but never stopped longing for work I could completely believe in - with T too, feelings of not having scope to match my quality - that's life-long, exile from what I should have been. Exile's home makes do. - I was living my actual structure accurately - preference for exile that is an instinct for living on my actual foundation - this is correct, isn't it. Logistics of reorganizing it - have chosen the new index photo, Won't have to remake all the buttons But I'll want to pull it out of the password files so I'll have to redo their addresses The buttons The head and tail titles and their addresses Pagemill pages so tiny I can hardly see them now, and don't highlight properly to let me know what I have hold of. Links to other sections Should I leave folders as are or redo the folders properly 18 Exile's homes are the day, the light of place, journey, encounters with strangers, the journal itself, my own stored time and its record, at moments Tom and when not Tom then my interest in the vicissitudes of Tom, my own company, the company of experience and evaluation. What shd I ask for my furniture [price list] 20 Mac's house has gone haywire, every version is making the program crash - what did I do? Some of them are miscoloring complex textures and spinning out, some of them are just spinning the wheel of death. I didn't shut it down properly last time but why wd that affect the versions I didn't have up. There's V-ray but why wd that affect only Mac - Simple files - sez it quit unexpectedly but doesn't. Orpheus studio is okay, Pender St, this house, component files, 16x44. Aren't okay: Point Loma house, Mac's house. - Vacillates between being 'writing' and being a record. The journal project is an isolation too. Page fixes for EH [list - eventually In America] 21st When I woke very early this morning - 4:30 - it was still dark - I opened the little G4 and wrote my Exile's home intro. Have been some days reading through the first 11 volumes, reformatting. Amazed by the amount of complaint. There's struggle and no humor - see, I'm doing it now, complaining of myself. At the end of [In America 11], October 2006, I've just moved Tom into Georgia St. Susan is still showing up and disappearing. The best bits are California and strangers' life stories. I understand the complaining, it's how a solitary person balances in hardship, it's necessary, but so tedious to read. What Tom calls grinding. - There is better writing not in the journal, isn't there? Sometimes in the letters. It must be too that the journal becomes residue, things I am that aren't right to give students. - I see there's more to know and I'll keep going maybe with better attention for it. I don't want to go on the way it's been, I do know that. I can't be proud of it. When I went out after dark to take garbage to the dumpster the mountains were cut sharp against luminous yellow in the west and there was velvety warm air moving lightly from the east. Yesterday early, before I'd had to close the screen door against flies, I saw quail on my porch for the first time, picking at seeds or maybe ants. So pretty. A plump male with a big dark topknot held forward and a very definitely spotted belly, more than one smaller female. Sibley says California quail not Gambels. 24 Spider hanging shin-height just inside the bathroom door. Black, biggish, long-legged. I was suspicious, got the flashlight. Yes, red hourglass. First one I've seen. Small bird on the porch rail yesterday at noon with its beak open panting in the heat. It got to 117. Went to the post office - library - store, jeep windows down, feeling a desert native. I like having the screen door open before it's hot enough to mobilize flies, to be able to see the birds directly. Whole dozen doves suddenly flapping up and landing on the wires across the road, where they sit facing this way to keep an eye on their feeding station. A house in Sicily Daphne Phelps 1999. 1911-2006. Casa Cuseni in Taormina - 3 nights $400 in October - air from London £80-200, rail 28 hours. [Opposite page: notes on studio house {formerly Point Loma house} dimensions] 26 2005 Millie B archives because Emilee is thinking of doing something like that in the European Grad School. There erased a couple of pages about working with Millie because when I read through the journal excerpts I put together for Margo and expanded them to include the story to the end it was already all said well enough. My decision now is that ten years and a pseudonym are enough so that I can claim my work in it whether she would agree or not. I'm still angry at what she did to it. She wiped out my time and good faith and bravery and skill in it. My faith in her best possibilities. But that can't be an ethical complaint, it has to be a judgment of personal quality. I mean I have to assume she'd have done better if she could. Should I suddenly pull up my stakes? Becky says she'll take over sooner if I like. I think I would. How long wd it take me to get ready? Couple of hours later: stuff to be packed mostly on the floor in the guestroom. 28 DH Lawrence 1885-1930. Anne was in her unvexed teens; men were like big dogs to her. He saw the stars above ringing with fine brightness, the snow beneath just visible, and a new night was gathering about him. He stood a moment looking northward to the Plough climbing up the night, and at the far glimmer of snow in distant fields. He's so visual. His characters are aware of other's bodies the way I am and most characters in novels are not, and other real people may or may not be, usually I don't know which. He describes the flux of feeling with someone and alien to them I think as no one else does, the watchfulness in that pain and relief. A lot of social pain in his people. The way I am with Tom, now it's like this, now like this. On the phone this morning when I'd told him I'm leaving early so we won't see each other again, the moment after we'd said goodbye, when I could still hear his voice, the hard pang of loss. He's been swimming. He came last Thursday looking his best, tall, lean, brown-faced, silver hair just the right length. We weren't touching each other much, as if we'd separately gotten ready to part. I was a bit put out that he'd taken trouble to look good now rather than for me. I said Friday August 15. He said it's the day of the assumption of the Virgin. 30 Among the exiles, loss of the thesis work. I'd been all-out in it, immersed in the fine community of the question, rounding a long task I had a strong gift for. Then it stopped. I had a UCSD library card and tried to go back to reading neuroscience but had no heart for it, was repelled. Being about was done and it was good and no one had any interest in it, any use for it. I had permission to live in the US and had an utterly earned PhD and could call myself a professor to people who don't know much, but I worked for a college I couldn't respect, that would accept almost anyone. It was a deep demotion. 1989-2002. - Seen from there the [college] years seem junk, trash, utter waste. It's no wonder I think of the place with distaste. My anger at Millie is carrying all that anger too isn't it.
2 August Days making and placing the windows and doors for the studio house - meticulous labour - finally today I could turn on shadows and take photos - it's a house of art - Bontecou in the guestroom, Mary Pratt in the downstairs bathroom, Riley in the stairwell, O'Keeffe in the upstairs bathroom, an Emily Carr watercolor in the library, Krasner and Joan Mitchell in the corridor, Agnes Martin in the upstairs bedroom. I love the Buddha of the stairwell and the little Emily Carr over a bookcase next to a casement window, with April midmorning sun coming in sideways through windows 10' high. The upstairs bedroom took my breath, a well of light. Windows on all four sides. The flooring isn't pink - I had a good pink terrazzo but there was too much of it. Oatmeal coloured now. Good carpets in the bathrooms. The studio's like a gym. Empty. Maybe a string quartet could rehearse there. - It wasn't hot today, few big drops of rain from a sky completely lidded. I was at the monitor most of the day - lot of chores looming but - told Paul it's a form of drawing - assisted in ways so I can spend many days carefully running lines and erasing them - months later I'm so better at it. I had to patiently remake the Point Loma house, which now is the studio house - this house has always been mine, it was Being about's house. The studio is laid out differently now, though, because I didn't like the way it loomed so far forward into the rest of the house's southwest. This one has more north and an arm straight across to the eastern door. - My nook in the sun is the heart space. It has an armchair. I could put a cat in it. - But nothing is happening in the studio. First it was for the diss and then it was going to put the journal online. After that there wasn't a plan. Book making at the table by the fireplace, small screenings in the northwest corner, music. [studio reading corner] - What I started to say was that it wasn't hot and I was happy working, after the windows and doors were in, satisfied, pleased with it. - But is the studio too integrated with the rest of the house now? Should it be upstairs? The gap in the east wall doesn't feel right. I like it integrated but it doesn't feel right. Stronger doors not sliding doors. Does it need a north door? 3rd It rained. Water was sheeting off Judy's roof, sluicing down the road 8 inches deep, cascading over the brick walks in the front yard, coursing past the jeep on the back yard track. There was a faint scent of mustard. I didn't want it to stop. Two people scolded me today. Andy was pressing a wrong thought and Julie Friesen jumped loutishly onto my Facebook message page. Meantime I was dressing the studio house for photos. Flowers. Dishes in the sink. Flowers and light patches. Two cats. Work materials.
4th Picked up the garden today and set it under the house. That model's nearly finished. Decided it has to be the U-haul. I'll go to Indio on the 13th, have the hitch wired up, rent the trailer, drive back, pack it Thursday, Tom comes in the evening, take him to Red Ocotillo for supper, sit on the porch, wake up, pack last things, take him to the bus and gone. Meantime detailed cleaning little by little. Cheryl's book. 5 Waking stressed. I've stayed out of it with my houses but now it's less than two weeks and I have to get into it. Made the plan yesterday, then packed what was left to pack - my crockery and glass padded with clothes in the big rubber boxes - not rubber. Other bits. U-haul means I can take more stuff and don't have to worry about boxes, but it means an anxious journey not the rambling kind I like - does it? 6 Did a lot today - Luke on Skype at 4:30 till the pink had reached the ground - boxes to Frugal Coyote - took apart the table - scrubbed an area around the front window about the size of the U-haul trailer - went through all the boxes repacking and listing contents and laid them out in order of weight - got Providencio and gave him all my plants but two, including the ficus and the fern, my spade, pick and fork, a box of small garden stuff, the bucket of painting supplies, a box of plant pots, a half bag of soil. Said I'd give him the bench later. Swept both porches! Ottilia brought a bag of cold plums. Three wheelbarrow trips. A happy transaction. His yard so neat and loved, dates in sacks on the tree, a wall of chicken coops patched together. Ottilia laughing. 7 David says I can have a corner of the studio. I thought this morning I could go on the road looking for a place to live, Spences Bridge, Lillooet, Ashcroft, Cache Creek, High Bar. Camping trip. Maybe London when I get back. [Notes on routes and mileage] Will I think of all I'm leaving - Buena Creek Gardens, Mission Hills, daily California, the green sea, Mexican men like Jose Luis and Mario, the chocolate croissants and eucalyptus trees at UCSD, Nora and Eliz and their houses, jacaranda trees, honeysuckle, Santa Ana dawns, wildfires, mockingbirds, palms, doves, flowering pears, Whole Foods expensive salads, Bread & Cie slices, the tea twins at Pannikins, the farmers' market, Pacific Highway, Walter Andersons'. I'm not thinking of Mesa Grande now, or Borrego, it's San Diego on the sea, my city. The beautiful library, the beautiful post office. Orange trees. As if teaching has vanished, and Tom has vanished maybe too, and what remains is the steady loving interest I had in where I lived. The scent in the air when I'd come back from Vermont in February. The easy confidence of Americans. The postal service. Having it all to learn, like a young person. My sick neighbour who held so excellent a wake for himself before he died. The homeless man under the next door porch, Michael. Direct sun onto my couch in the afternoon. - San Diego is already three years since but it has the glamour of background, is that it? Dependable like mother love. A fresh fine pretty mother.
- What did I get done today - camping box - cleaned guestroom window and half floor - started backing up files - money, houses, for CV - though not in a well-thought-out way. 8 When did I fade out of this place? What happened? I'm at what's now the Red Ocotillo off Christmas Circle on the sweetest of mornings, pines and those thick-trunked palms, a feathery mesquite next to me. The mountains are what they always were and I don't care. Haven't cared. - Emailed Frank Harris abt the maps - finished cleaning the guestroom - cleaned the hall - cleaned the bathroom including the shower curtain and the outside of the window and the lightbulbs - cleaned the oven and stovetop - washed my rags and cleaning clothes - backed up a lot of Sketchup and some other 5000 days - got a box big enough for the Mac Pro tower. Yesterday gave Craig the wine bottles after he agreed to help me with the table. - A week from today I'll be in a motel in Needles? 9 Fridge and cupboards. Taking it all apart. Undoing an order I liked, so there was mud on the kitchen floor, a mess of objects on the counters that are there because they are no longer in the washed cupboards, a pile of boxes where the table stood - it was a good table and looked nice by the window, and that good order is gone forever - it's undoing consolations - the Morrocan tagine dish on the counter to hold keys, money, credit cards, tweezers, sunglasses The perfect palm frond bodice is coming down, the Tibetan calendar will be rolled up and packed, the cracked lampshade will go in the dumpster. I don't know when the Mac Pro tower and its wonderful monitor will have a place again. It was such a good strong desk. I'll try to take the pink chair with me. The heaviest cleaning is done, except for this room and some outside windows. So many details accounted for. Food in cardboard boxes in the clean fridge so what I don't eat can be thrown out with one heave. I look at the pile of boxes and assess how it will fit in 4'x8'x4'. Bike somehow squeezed between boxes. Pack it carefully so it can't shift. Have the boxes on the loading bay by Tuesday evening - have the loading bay clean and dry. Sunday - Monday - Tuesday to go to Indio - and then pack - move the bed too - yes. - It's like that, detailed pondering. Meantime I've been reading Lark Rise to Candleford with eager liking for the depth of history in it, her 1890s country life between centuries-old English country ways and the life I lived at home. When I lived at home I had no sense that there was history back of our ways, which were just what they were, and Flora/Laura wrote out of her own coming to understand that historical background for her own unthought native place. I thought Luke should read it, though he won't, because he's so unhistorical in his anger at what's left of class in England. 1939, 1941, 1943. b.1876, d.1947. 10 Scared. The external drive I'd put my final versions of mov files on crashed when I was trying to back up Trapline on it. I don't know whether I have copies of them on the video drive. That and the breaks in my efforts to back up everything on my three computers, there's overlap, there are folders not updated, the iPage folder keeps dropping big files in the middle of folders so I don't know what's uploaded without opening subfolders, the recordable DVDs I could buy here are only 6 gigs, which is too small for almost everything - and Tom, and Tom, has dropped me since the little burst after he was here. He's swimming hard to stay ahead of his mum's death.
My heart hurts. I'm too freaked to slow down and concentrate on the mess of file detail. 11 Full moon last night. I was done for the day at nine and lay quietly on the hot cement feeling gentle air from the east as it climbed unseen behind Judy's palm. The heat on my back was nice and as I was drifting contented I thought of the man in Palm Springs, his innocent dignity, his realness in the moment, his being led, and I felt this parting could take me back to being that, what my birthday adventure asked for and was given.
This morning I sent Rowen a note. I realized I don't have to unload the U-haul alone. He was happy! I've kept just two small plants. The little brown cactus that looks so nice in its brown oriental pot suddenly put out flower buds after the rain. I posted it so early that only two Toronto people noticed. - The answer to when I faded out is the end of May / beginning of June when I had an anguish about Tom and went to the city - no, before that when I started to pack and gave my days to imaginary houses. When did I learn Sketchup, end of March maybe.
12 Goof Off - don't rub too hard. Upholstery adhesive for back of ceiling. Crawlers on Youtube. - Vanessa the hitch-wiring girl Bin to Indio, had the hitch finished, got the 5x8 because the 4x8 was missing, had a lovely moment sitting on the U-haul company cement yard with Vanessa on her back soldering a clip to hold the wires and a young man hanging with her asking me questions like where were you in the '70s and what's the best place you've been. They calmed me down. Vanessa was a moon-faced maybe 20-year-old, plump, forthright, who said yes jeeps have a lot of torque and called up on her phone footage of a Wrangler climbing a rock nearly 90 degrees up to show me. I told the young man my first car was a Studebaker Lark and he googled a picture of it. I told him every young person should live in a foreign country for a while. Meanwhile another young woman was having her 23rd birthday and came to say goodbye because she was going off shift. They were all Latino there, the manager too. Now I'm having an expensive lunch in Red Ocotillo because I've earned it by doing a hard thing. The trailer is a stiff thing yanking at the jeep's back end. I'll get used to it, am more used to it already. Drove through date farms on a back-road detour. At this season the trees are hung with weighted sacks like old nylon stockings. The air was thick everywhere, mountains whited out. FB: [monsoon sky] [jeep and trailer]
14 Thursday 7:30, last day of doves on the wire and powder hill beyond. Last day of my bed - and my desk - this absolutely peaceful work room. Hummingbirds on the thin bare branches of the cassia at the window - a dove's voice just now, it's standing on the rail beyond the screen door. The jacaranda in the courtyard has put on its bloom. The purple can't be ignored, it's like a tree singing. Barbara Kingsolver Lacuna 15 Morongo Valley on 62 - Leo's Automotive - I pressed, was pressed, on 10, waiting for the turnoff - it was hot, lots of trucks, and when the turnoff came, after the Valley of monster wind turbines, I saw the left corner warning light was on - being startled by it made me miss a red light just on its turn - the guy at the intersection just starting up saw me coming. I jumped on the brakes. The trailer fishtailed a bit, not a lot. Then I had to stop and read the manual, first, what is that light? And then what to do. Yes it's an overheating warning. I shouldn't have stopped the engine - should have put it in park and revved the engine a bit. I sit in the hot jeep confusedly deciding. I'll drive on slowly. The red light's off, but then goes on again. There's a hill. I'll climb it slowly, don't think this will be a long climb. Morongo Valley, valley means downhill soon. The red light flickers off, that's a good sign isn't it. Then a climb, not a hard climb. The light comes on. Gas station man, East Indian, says ask at the Chevron station. Woman at Chevron says there's a little town mechanic, half a mile. Steady-looking Mexican man comes out of the back. I think he's okay. If rad cap, water pump and thermostat don't do it, he says, maybe the head gasket got smoked. What's this place, flat and dry. I remembered a trip with Ed - maybe more than one - where he had to handle an engine overheating on the climb across the Rockies, his stress in that responsibility, frantic, frothing. Tom and I this morning sat on the concrete edge and saw the day come in. I'll say more when I'm not frightened. I got into his bed at 5. Last night had been honest but lonely. I wanted him to be fond and he was reciting the places he'd seen since he's known me. This morning I reminded him of the first time I left, when I kissed him all up and down front and back and he sobbed for an hour. "Your sins were all washed away" I said. I hadn't exactly known it until I said it, but that was it. He said "I didn't know my sins were forgiven." He had forgotten the crying; that surprised me, wasn't it the deep heart of our whole time. He was careful and rational, didn't promise wildly, asked me things, looked beautiful. This morning I said "In the early days you used to say 'I'm your man'. I was scandalized by that, scandalized." "Why?" "It's so blatantly seductive, it goes straight to the unconcious." And then he said what I was going to say, "But as it happened - ". I'm in the acre of cacti next to the autoshop, there are chickens wandering and scratching with fluffy legs. Scent of trees in breezy shade. Swing bench under a tamarisk big as a pine. Pink began on the mountains. We were drinking tea I made yesterday and kept in the fridge, thick subtle delicious tea in our blue cups. Birds began to arrive, doves on the ground where Judy had scattered seed, hummingbirds. The doves lined up on the wire in sun that hadn't touched the ground yet, we saw it pink on the tops of the palms. It was time to pack up fast to get to Tom's bus at 7:46. He swept and carried. I rushed around. I haven't the energy to walk around looking at all the plants in the heat. He had two gifts. One was my London espresso coffee pot brassoed to perfect cleanness. The other was silver too. He'd had the inspiration and rooted through his boxes to find his mother's jewellry box. It's a pin of two horses gallopping together. They're short-legged horses, Irish ponies maybe. We'll never know the story of how they came to be where they were. They'll ride in the little notch in my console. Well done, Fengler I said.
16 Saturday morning, Circle C Motel. 4:15. Was it enough of a night? I think so. I'll drive while it's cool. My travel stuff is better organized now. That'll help. Write this down: 119,670. That was Christmas Circle approximately. Responsibility for two bodies. Life or death decisions. How far do I need to go today. Jeep body, I have to watch the red light - should start even earlier, 2am? Me - teeth, eyes, right leg weakness, jitter, bad sleep constantly broken up with the fiery pain esp in hands and arms but forehead, etc, too. I'm in a MacDonald's letting the jeep cool, red light flickering on just as I got to this Nevada gambling oasis. - Truck stop where 93 branches off 15. Place called Alamo - Strawberry Hill - some state parks - mountains - then Ely - more mountains. I saw the odometer turn over from 119,999.9 to 120,000.0 like a shelf lifting.
17 Wells NV. It's 9am and I have already been on the road almost 8 hours. Wide black sky, waning half moon, meteor shower of insects zooming to meet me in the headlights. Sometimes a scent like damp hay. First light showed mountains. Daylight showed juniper sagebrush country, later on another scent that was probably rabbitbrush blooming on the verge. My left foot thinks 55 is too slow. 65. Long straight roads. Wide flat valleys, basin and range, ranges pulling apart. Mountains far away, barbwire fencing for miles. I keep gassing up. Yesterday 6 men in front of my unit drinking beer after their work in BLM archeology did not find me interesting.
I did get my 400 miles today, just. 870 left. 18 Slept 6:30-10:30 and at 5:30 am in Baker City, truck stop, am something like 260 miles down the road. Boise was a little nightmare of glaring lights and roadwork, westbound squeezed into one of the eastbound lanes, gravel truck on my tail for many miles. Daylight coming up, ridge of mountains pastel blue. [In Buhl] Watched hours of Mountain men. - The Dalles - 470 miles since midnight. 4am, motel room with the door open. What was I dreaming, something I liked, first a sort of broadsheet? The old copied typewritten page? Like Io pages, that sort of riff, a good riff, fluent, abundant, then drawings in fine black pen, a travel notebook. I was thinking, feeling, that would be good to do, to touch into a place more. Tom did not reply tho' yesterday was a computer room day. Now I'm annoyed, master of gesture followup none. I'm berating him. Maybe I'll mail back the horses. Was he just wanting a last win. Etc. Meantime Cheryl and Mafalda following the journey commenting, filling in where he should have been. I slept! Woke at 3:30. Right! Just right. Microwave tea. I'll get through Portland before the rush. Thinking that I should do flood writing to get my voice back, I'm such a pondered teacher now, I know it's a dull considered voice.
19 Attributed to Song Dynasty painter Zhang Zeduan 1085-1145. Along the river during the Qing Ming festival. Anchor Motel Blaine. Was I in this one? Almost 400 by about noon, left the Dalles about 4:30.
20 21470 - 19670 = 1800 miles, 5 days. 7:30 Starbucks on Fraser. Waiting for Rowen to be awake at 9. Is it the first time in a year needing to wear socks and a sweater? Overcast, dark. Not used to that. So here it is 20 years since I migrated. That very pretty customs officer, Mr Liu, was a baby. I had to declare the value of my goods. "Returning resident. Why are you returning?" "I retired." "What did you do?" "I was a professor." 5 in the dark, alone in the customs lane. I got to keep my plants. He said I couldn't bring in the soil but I kept finding new things to say. He wore down, was a reasonable man. I was offering to go into a bathroom and wash soil off the roots. "Forget about it." It was a labour of peril and attention. Massive trucks blasting past my flanks, hours threading narrowly between reflectors curving, rising, falling in the dark. The trailer a burden of awareness always, rough roads, abrupt edges, tight lanes, and o the hills both up and down. I didn't see much. I put in time. I didn't stop in places I could like. I pressed on and rested and pressed on. Monitored. Sampled radio stupidity everywhere, young men whining and wailing horrible unskilled tunes, or fatuous Christians. The first best thing on the radio was someone singing Delibes. It was CBC. - Oh and somewhere a British architect on NPR talking about his garden bridge project for London. It was on a desert road going east on 95 toward Needles out of 29 Palms I think. In Baker City, truck stop parking lot, standing in the dawn looking at a puddle under my jeep. I put up the hood. A man drove up in a pickup and parked. "Can I ask you a question?" Suspenders and jeans, a friendly look. It turned out he was a mechanic. Kindness of strangers. Three people in a North Las Vegas service station helping me figure out how to get onto 93 after I missed my exit. Yesterday the lovely woman in the Chinese restaurant next to the motel who wrote down the name of the painting on the back of a check. She had a smooth smart roundness that comforted me. The archeologists who offered me a beer. I liked the pale dawn after the Blue Mountains - that's their name. Saw a mountain goat on a ledge above the eastbound lane looking down on the road. There was a high altitude passage I think that same morning where the air had a scent of noble firs. Yesterday was the first I could relax about the red warning light. I was about to post the last of my motel names on FB yesterday aft when Tom showed up onscreen liking the last two motel entries so I knew he was there. Blaine! He said. Good timing like he sometimes has.
Should I add up the gas: $481. Motels $346. Trailer $473. Evil mechanic $418. Total $1718.
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