| aphrodite's garden volume 1 part 1 - 1985 may-june | work & days: a lifetime journal project |
21 May 1985 Waking still in the dark from the bum dream. People putting things in. Feel sexy, will I. Sit up to fetch. Warm water under. Light on, look at spots on the sheet. 3:45. Will I phone, or go on. The walk through the house to the phone. Corridor and feet. How it feels. Awkwardly saying, I have to know what you intend. I mean: Listen, we're going to have a baby today. She's asleep. "I have plants to put in today." Bring towels and the tarot, I say. She comes up the stairs before morning to get the laundry. Now it's decision and speed. We're going to have enough time. She takes the list and shops. I have to call Camille [midwife] and persuade her. I soak the bathtub in Pinesol, wash the white floor and kitchen floor, ask Paul for a pan to boil water and speak well to him. Today I have to be generous to everyone. Head Michael off at the steps, whisper to Laiwan when she comes glowing with invitations. J sleeps. "I'll need you later." I stay in the kitchen to mediate Camille and her helper. Tell Liz. Phone Cheryl. Eat the chicken. Calcium, iron and C. Lie down to begin. The window open and curtain moving. An evening in the upper panes. It stops when I speak or move. Before Camille goes to sleep - "Am I going to sleep?" - I report they're about 30 seconds, very uneven, anywhere fr 5 to 10 minutes apart. "Call me when they're 5 or less for 45 minutes." The candle. Watching the second hand on the tiny clock. She and I lie down in the silent house. We want there to be no one else. 25 What is the right thing to do with her pain. 27 4:48 he was screaming. Changed, oiled, rewrapped. Quiet and sneezing. Aquavit smell of roses and mock orange. The small airplanes blipping across one upper pane then the next, swimming by contracting and kicking. Asleep belly down on my chest he tranquillizes powerfully. His signaling is a squeal. J at her house is writing. The bundle is straining squeaking grunting. There was first singing today. Wakings in night yellow light, a few, then the morning series. We're feeling the cold and darkness after our fine days. Days of grape juice brought to the bed. Olive oil, alcohol. Yesterday Sunday lying with him on my chest hearing the Four Last Songs, warm water pouring on my face, twitches, gasping breaths, feeling like him, face is freely swept. She wiped hers on my shin to say she's crying too. 5:05 crying. Nurses 5 min. Holding my thumb hard. I rock him on my lap seeing him into sleep. 5:19 if I burp him he'll wake and scream, if I don't is that why he wakes soon biting his hand again. 5:23 face showing pain. Screams. 5:25 walk him, quiets, turn on heater, put him in basket with eiderdown. Have time to clear the kitchen and change my soaked pad. 5:55 yelling. Nurses 5:59 to 6:02, falls asleep. Holding him thinking of this time, see a face in the sleeping bag green. It's a grief mask. There are other faces and v sensitive to sound. Thinking I'm hooked up to him and neither of us should be running around. 7:55 a squeal. Drinking one breast 8:00 - 8:11. Asleep. Wakes up. Other breast 8:23-8:33. Put down. Wakes. J holds. Sleeps in arms. The spirit on the wall a pregnant woman. J's head. We light another candle. She sits holding the baby on her lap. Telling what I heard [on CBC] this morning, an actor reading We are such stuff as dreams are made on in the voices of a pack of diminishing whirling-away spirits. 10:55 - 11:35 one b, then looking, drowsing, moving hands. Then the other b 40 min. Falls asleep. 12:00 screams. Change. Rock. 12:15 put in bed. Her bangs, loud voice, violent tosses. Explanation and discussion. Valiant explaining. The capped face. Strauss Vier Letzte Lieder Te Kanawa and the London Symphony 1979 CBS 28 2:30-3:05 awake till 3:40, rock and jiggle. 4:27-37 yells, sucks, falls asleep. 4:45 yells. Held, sleeps fast little breaths. Keep him in my bed. 6:45 cries, sucks. Wash, suck, short sleep. In a cage banging my father on the head with a bar magnet. Shouting Eating is killing. Held back a while then let go and did it. The little boy with bruise on his forehead. 1st June Cheryl's show. The van. Little face thrown back, head in my hand. Michael in strange green clothes sits on the floor, Ezra butts his armpit, he cries, looks fine and real. Story of the native boy who didn't understand that he really doesn't know how to play basketball; the slug who wanted to eat him. I'm very tired. There's no time to do what I used to do, newspapers. 2 In white morning, peanut butter, tea. Little is awake in his wraps. Hand opens and closes. A snore in his nose, fingers on his head sprung by a sneeze. Grunts, warps the thorax. Sleeper very roomy at the feet. Did the arch use to propel him in the womb. His head holds him down like a rock. Many mornings we'll be together. In May again you'll walk.
- Three weeks early, the 22nd, 6:50AM, here, in the white room, with Jam and a midwife called Camille Bush and her helper, in early morning light, with the scent of lilac and phlox, after a silent night, the two midwives sleeping in kitchen and middle room, Jam snoozing against my back. Breathing alone through acuteness like hot yellow fluid steeping sometimes as far as the knees, concentrating on seeing the shape, and then toward morning feeling another color and texture starting to grip, saying I think you better tell Camille he's coming. Suddenly the light on and three people at the foot of the bed, I'm on hands and knees being a cow, cracking back there. Camille saying Good work! Jam kissing my bum. I'm letting through amazingly complex pictures of sensation, beyond comprehensible. But this is the way through, allow it. Shaking. They say, Turn over, we can't hear the baby's heart in that position. I hardly know how. They say, Put your hand here, feel the baby's head. Soft, in folds. Crack again. The way it bursts out. Tumbles. Says a little cry. They say Talk to him. He lies on belly looking with one eye back and forth. A very small boy, an elf boy. 4th Cheryl's eyes. Lorraine's studio last evening consumed. "Saviour not just for the two of you." A day on our own, there's time. Amnon brings food. Morning washing and cleaning house. At 9 he cries 10 minutes hard, shudders down, sleeps. The sequence this way is calm and then beautiful satisfaction. Afternoon half hour sleep. Waking fresh bathed with clean water under the skin. In the two days after he was born, when he was jumpy, calming him by wrapping him tight, holding his hands firm on his chest, laying the light bundle on chest or shoulder or between side and arm while we slept. Put us to sleep with its lovely heat. Loving the way tiny person could be comforted directly, understood. Heaven, you're in heaven, I was singing. Today I hold him, head in my palm, large hand under his back, to nurse. He does so seriously. The wince at the first. How long the nipple when it comes out of his mouth. His first bath with J, candlelight. [Mike's place] It's not a house, a hotel, green lino, wine red doors. Up through the floor onto the top landing, door 18, a table a chair a bed a dresser a sink a closet bar, 3 shirts a jacket a red-green dressing gown. 3 hrs. Drawings. Each car rushing through the intersection like a block of dark wind. Beyond, behind, is it little cries of a baseball crowd. Warm and alive, quiet, quiet. The shapes. I was feeling blessed to be taken into his rigorous joyful life, but also the lying smile, the left side of his lip running away. Gazing, what is this. Knowing I don't know. Anyone. "She put her hand on my leg." What he is imagining. Will she have to, will he, feel my feeling. "So hungry for life." Head looming back in the big chair, speaking across the room. "I don't really know how it came about. I sometimes can hardly believe it." (Letter from RM) Dear unknown One, your tale of eye and object transmits it seems to me so innocent and conflicted a desire to be married. - True anger discharge. Crying and shaking first. In adults rapid forceful talking and movement followed by zest and power. Isn't blaming, violence or destruction, which cover fear or grief. 6 The days when I cdn't bear loud sounds. The way she'd set down a plate. This morning trying for a last sleep with him in the bed of my arm, door opens on a sheaf of phlox, eyes too. Breakfast friend. 7 Is enemy today. Swollen waddling stiff sad, she won't give. "I have nothing of my own." Instant anger that she doesn't want what she has. In the night, with pang, [I say that] I handle her as a surface I don't see into. She misses Trudy. I do. "Treat me as well as you do Michael." That means - for her, I don't know - for me light laughing and sentient touch not already disheartened. The way when we were last time lying together I felt her block my touch by sudden movement. Ie I don't know him but I'm not afraid of him, as if I did. Haunted by the way she said after the birth "I was in love with you the first time in a long time." It feeling like tyranny. Whether it was group mind gave us more speed and push. What shd I do about touch. What I want somewhere - to be slotted into a man's body, just that, wrapped and quiet. 8 With her here: defiance over crying. I say she must go home. That was her talking to herself. Some days with a piece of tune. What is it controlling. Maybe the fright of oppression going on for years, her grief/pride/isolation and my absorbing. 9 Our child or mine. Headache. Bright, dazzling, cold wind. The intersection. Phone line shadows, alley line across Hawks. The beauty lying on my bed with a pulse in her throat, a Thousand Nights mouth. Then when I'm through to looking at beauty after so much nowhere says she'll go. Holding out for a Celtic line. Asleep he's looking like Oma. This hard Sunday. From morning in J's house. She says I'm doing a scam. It looks to me too, but I'll agree to anything that gets me out of her pressure. Lying upstairs thinking of leaving Roy, piling blankets, will I call a taxi? He grousing all night and morning. She wants me to let her name him, I'll sooner do without her. She wants to give him a family name. Ashraf. It's not far different than Mor. Ugly business, exhausted. I can't name him because we aren't true about her part. I say: We haven't got lovers, we don't know each other. She begins to bleed. So do I. How it was. When she got haywire I sent her away to rest so I could. Maybe having got the birth made, passed, safe passage paid for, helped, I want her gone. Exhausted night she rivaling him, he not exquisitely newborn now. Already I defend him against her jerky touch and don't want to wrangle near him. Changing so quickly: I don't want to be distracted. Gas and eyes not accommodating. I blink and pull looking from close to far. She insisting on race and gender fidelities, mine. I suspect myself rather of prostitution. I suspect her of simply wanting to buy a boy for her folks. Seeing the tangle being ready to give up managing only so I won't have to be in this pressure. I'm not saying what I know, I'm holding. He said, I want to sleep with you every night. I had butterflies hearing it. Oh dear one I want to lie down with a man's body. You're more than any and still I want it. Guilty so I can be deceived and so I sell too much. Frightened now. 10 If she didn't help me with money - economic father - what would I allow. Attention and care. Her language. The imprinting. The way after taking him to Ron and Lucy she cdn't drive from shock. A scam. Remembering how with Roy too I was in a position of pushing paternity. I won't give it symbolically, I don't want you to scam it. I don't want you imagining it gives you any status. I don't want to hear any more about race, gender, Michael past or future. "You won't admit I fathered him." Remains: what can you do with yr crazy forms. Sore lump [in my breast]. 11 "Andy walks into the house filled with light." Roy Luke Sara Jake. Luke's voice is light. With him I hear mine echo. Roy walked from Lauderic's. Came in and only Luke was at home. Sara arrived as he spoke. Pours her voice. So loving my solitude. Mek Merik Merit Merim Merak 13 The clean white eye, stretched lip, violet. Freckled nose, bony long hand in a jointed shape. Your nicotine finger and his diaper. I'm just a little cat. The fine eye lines. Looking at Sergai and then across the room, from the side, a sad kid with little brain, unfinished Dutch head pulled long. When I look at the face looking at it as a mirror. A dream abt taking us to his parents. The look of disgust on their faces. "All the times I've come to them rejoicing." Last time a black stripper. When I said gerbil his gurgle. "I was bein' like him." Your innocence. "I've been amazed how much I had to resist." (- So that mirror says it truer.) She, about the city angles and the curved bay: the 'pineal'. And the images by way of me. A man and a woman talking about children, "salves me." "My next project." "Only the gender difference." Michael dreamed: he's in a big truck with Jam. Surprised how well she drives it. I and the baby are in the back. He turns around to look at me. Another truck with another woman in the back comes toward and passes us. The other woman and I just touch in passing. How do we touch? A pat maybe. I say to him, Did you see that? (The way it's phrased is remarkable and not mine.) How does it seem: the esoteric, the substitutions, are going on. If I died you and Michael would have a child. How much does she know of it. Whether what I'm doing with Michael in his room is hers. Curiously the way she got beautiful now, not for them or for me but because she has a baby with a man. I look fine too. When Gerbil was howling hrs last night and she so banging and shouting subverting my rest, wildly wrong, wanting Ben, the hatred - tradesmen and carpets, Sandy, Mei-lin, telephoning appointments. Each of us can be seen as the shadow limb. When I run ragged it is because of not being self informed. Waking soggy, ignoring him, and when he hasn't got my full concentration he gets more and more chaotic. The sets of postures printed between speaking in the not-speaking space. First the birth story and then vision essay. Today pink ruffle paeonies, red roses copper leaf. Pleasure of the little crib draped with his little blankets. Poor young George with swollen chops dark purple pressing back his neck to get himself further away from the gut. Kicking, punching - no, dog paddling - baring his gums. At his bedside in the armchair, rain on the neighbour shingles, the blacked outside of covered evening, Rhoda's hand in the lit box across the way brings an abacus toward her. - This writing interfered by clever suggestions, I think maybe Jam's, 'writing' not seeing, feels a degeneration. With it a consciousness of the possibility of saying well. 14 Going attentively not frightenedly getting what I want. Her kiss in the van. 1 to 3 getting delicately deeper. Then again. House being mended. Happiness this eve. When he begins his transition waking, call her to come, stand weaving him at the north window, singing about the spaces, all the spaces the clouds are making in, all the piles of rooms, grey and orange, the babe in his nightie, sweet in my arm, eyes open listening to the engine (in a body again). [At Jam's house on Wall Street] Ezra on the treehouse platform. The farm of spaced plants, solidago transited by sick pregnant love records. The old man. The sage, solidago, white thyme, from - oh thankful - our long times. Two current bushes from crying in rented wreck at David Hunter the day before. Peony there cleared by us. The first rose in her den, is pink and firm and clear. The harbour pink and blue city. Evening Italian. Bad parking. Walking out with a baby in arms, into a coffee house. Oh what was this day, so freedom and love, from the top of the steps, I catch, her looking to see, head behind, arm folded across my collar bone, looking, both, at the face just fallen out of raging into sublime quiet. Soft to see it with. I could show him Roy. My queue of hair coming young down the right, a bluegrey cotton shirt. The lovely little scene, his bed and the armchair. The loved new blankets, such good ones, his good things. 15 7-10 pm awake, bath car jiggle look sing howl. 10:30-1:30 2-5 6-8:30 off and on grizzle, bath state. 8-30-10:30 12:30 3:30 4:30 5:30. I pick up a body looking unpleased, badtempered, the same look often. Never greets me pleased. When he notices the tit, snap like taking the bait and then avid until it runs out. Absently gnaws on 'til I haul it out. When M was tormented at my uncaring, he says, he chose to hold to how I was touching him in the school balcony. You're skinny and you don't eat but you're always warm, even your hands, even your nose. 'empirical' 16 Sunday
drawing / body / concentration / with / steps She sleeps here. When he wakes for the day she takes him into bright morning, I sleep. She comes back 2 hours later and makes tea and breakfast when he sleeps. Mouth kisses, lily mud stirring. She goes home he sleeps I work. She comes back to take him out with Sandy. I fritter. She brings him back, goes to Joe's with S. We go to the Himalaya then her house then the fill area behind the sugar factory. The Fairsky is docked. Walk alongside it carrying the bundle. She in blue jacket or in my bed endless to look at. She drops us home and he's just in bed, Joyce [Williams] comes with a box of baby clothes. Loving one. Hang up the curtains, the beautiful Sunday done. Radiant sky, roses, green plums, foxgloves, love, thanks, gifts (the delight of the little things), a surrounding of love connection. 17
All the days ordained for me were written in your book before one of them came to be. Psa 139
|