aphrodite's garden volume 12 part 2 - 1991 april-june

work & days: a lifetime journal project

4th April 1991 I woke too early knowing something - does the sound of a word retain the (vibratory) structure of (thought)(meaning) - keep waking and reminding myself - (reminding is saying aloud, like a patched circuit) - then there was something else. 5 When different things happen or are said and one gets the larger structure of knowledge (as if I can sense it) - what was it I knew when I woke - for deduction do there have to be sentences. Look for the picture: clumps in an array. Can they come to conclusions. My new place in Kingston. I lived there with Olivia very briefly before we moved to a different apartment on the same floor. I liked thinking of it after I took it, it was as if I was moving into new circumstances. Now that I look more closely it's appalling. The back window wired over. Everywhere dirty. The floor bulges next to the refrigerator which stands open to empty beer bottles, crashed beer bottles. I began thinking I cd fix it but this place is so bad I shd probably not move in. - Two women who get on the bus outside a motor court. Same age, sixty-something, both wearing good red wool jackets, both thinly painted over the face with an opaque flesh color, both with short grey hair. One had a better hairdresser. I had time to study these things because one sat down next to me and the other on the side bench so they could talk, obliviously I assumed. I was looking from one to the other fascinatedly contemptuous. Obviously husbands, from the coats. Why would anyone put that stifling skin of paint on their faces. Someone got up from the seat across the aisle and they turned with one thought, Shall we go sit over there? And having got away from me cracked up like girls. Just then I was getting off too and that made them laugh more. 6 Phil's party - Zane Grey - Saturday morning - two weeks only 'til the 20th. Phil's party - Phil's foot pointing toward me from his armchair - he often sits back with his arms over his head saying I'm patriarch here - something he saw in his family. Don't think I can describe the house. A Mediterranean fantasy on a hill running with cold water in ditches. The fireplace like a bread oven between gate posts. Ballustraded arches between living and dining rooms, as if the living room were a terrace over the sea. This on the second floor, and on the first as if the same thing again. The party was meant to unbend us and I did some but whether it was bearable seemed to depend on the music. Muddy Waters. Zane Grey. 30,000 on the Hoof. Wd rather have been reading pines aspens maples turkeys in a canyon. He throws up the log house before snow flies. Up 'til then he's slept on the ground and she in the wagon. "Here, wife, is a job for you," he said cheerfully, and he showed her how to lay the tips of fir with the butts down, one upon another, in layer after layer. While she labored at this task Logan spread the blankets in the warm sun, then sat down for his first daytime rest. This was not through weariness - he never acknowledged such a weakness as that - but because he became conscious of something no longer possible to put aside. Once relaxed it surged over Logan, warm, imperious, staggering - his love for his wife and his need of her. He had been considerate of Lucinda, far more than most husbands would have been, and during these days of toil he felt that she had grown dearer for his restraint. He packed in the warm woolly blankets and threw them in a bundle at Lucinda's feet. In the subdued light of the cabin she looked pale and her dark eyes met his questioningly. Logan took her in his arms. "Dear wife," he said, "I love you and I want you. Will you make our bed - and let me come to you - tonight?" (Then he built the hearth and she got pregnant.) (Sam dreamed I had two stoves and live in the basement under the symphony.) Jill with her look of a steady child - mop of red hair, a white crooked face with childishly bulging brown eyes - loud laugh and fast answer - mother a Rosicrucian astrologer - who died - "When I was seven years old I was standing there" - I could see her - "saying, What about free will?" She does not want to be influenced by the irrational. I said I worried about being influenced by the philosophy department. And do not care about free will. Told Phil he always forgets everything I say. Remembering the time I told him he didn't want me to exist. And I don't [for him], he has managed not to dedicate space to me. That doesn't mean I'm not really interested at the time, he said. It does, tho'. There can't be interest if there is no space dedicated, because interest is in building a picture. I told him he was reserving his space. He said relievedly yes, for his work. [opposite page notes from Anthony Wilden: the analog - more or less - "ambiguous but naturally rational realm of the both-and of the natural ecosystem," domain of similarity and resemblance digital world is the domain of opposition and identity, analytic epistemology of either/or In the external world there are no concepts, no properties of concepts, no numbers. The laws of nature, therefore, are not intrinsically applicable to external things; they are not laws of nature. They are, however, applicable to judgments having value in the external world: they are the laws of the laws of nature. They assert not a constellation (Zusammenhang) or connection between natural phenomena, but something similar between judgments; and among judgments are included the laws of nature. Frege quoted by Wilden 181 Most of the paradoxes of mathematics are the result of making the discourse of mathematics into a closed system by excluding the mathematician. vacillation between logical types fuels all discourse imaginary oppositions Wilden A 1980 System and structure: essays in communication and exchange, 2nd ed Tavistock] 7 Daphne's poem: something about a man who sold butter, maybe he was the butcher. "My marriage was coming apart. I expected to find myself up against the leg of a man who played the flute. But I ended up wanting another [man who sold butter]." I'm following a slow pan down a twig with small bud eruptions on either side, like an alternating ladder. "I did not get ...." None of this except the last line is accurate. At Emily Carr [art school, guest talk in Scott's class]. Tuesday 9th I said, "Don't you think Louie is wonderful?" And burst partly into tears. "And you think so too, obviously." "She's very loyal. And she stays in touch. She phones and she writes. And she's courageous," in a bursting squirting relief that at the same time was marveling at what it was that needed to be released. "She's coming back to be with you I imagine, so it would be worth working on that" - that I don't have the golden glow with her because of Jam. Joyce said the cost of the inner life was very high - had I forgotten. No. But I owe it the possibility of sitting with students assured in the value of my work - and I give [that self] these moments of sharing her honor - she was in so deep grief at having it refused - I felt it just now - notes in origin had beautiful chalk reds I never saw - it came to me in an impeccable silence - Carol who when I said you have to be very conscious to work with the unconscious said, This is the best conversation we've had all year. Joyce told me the story of when she was a child "very alone on a street with just women" - she roller skated past an old man who would speak to her and who taught her to play chess. She plays a psychological game, she said, knowing what sort of pull will move her opponent. That was talking about logic. "Do you always win?" "I used to." 10th I was idiotic too. The way into work was refusal. Worked past being worn out this aft, in the grip of wanting to finish prepping all the corner beds, one angle bed ( -leaves two), to be ready for direct sowing. Felt my fat bum bulging. 11th Here, o travelers, a traveler lives contemplating the body in the body - the feelings in the feelings - consciousness in consciousness - mental objects in mental objects - ardent, clearly comprehending and mindful, having overcome, in this world, covetousness and grief. [Who is this?] She phoned quite late, I took the phone to bed. Quickly sundered. Lying there feeling how her attachment could turn decisively to exasperation, even exasperation at being so long unfree. Testing the bleak moment. She phones back. Something is still on edge. I didn't want to tell her about Joyce but I do, to comfort her. She wants something else, But are you happy? It's strange to hear her demand that. She says she's getting on a plane in a week. I don't say O my darling, I say I'm still fat. She's annoyed. I say I don't want to be less perfect than her. She's more annoyed. "I'm not perfect!" I can see where my sins of jealousy, envy, shame etc can do us in when weak moments come. I'd meant to confess it so it wouldn't harm. But she's in some sin of her own - which one - the one where she thinks I won't tell her if I don't want her - I won't even let myself know. That's where she asks if I'm happy. This aft, letting myself leave the last logic tutorial prep to go eat, it comes to me to ask - should I tell her not to come? A fizz of excitement - I'd be free of him and her - and if I found out the video hasn't been funded - would I tell her? And lose touch with her forever into her fate in Africa. Now rather than some other time. We wouldn't have to go through hatred. And would I really be free, would I be free to walk around with space and time beside me? Could I let her vanish? Yes I could. The bleak moment said that too - she could dissolve and there be nothing left of her - only me. 13 A baby on the floor. The way he moves confidently toward his mother, unconfidently toward the stranger (me). At the other end of the room his father on a chair. Something I don't remember. I like the father I think. When baby and mother come over this side he pulls her onto his lap. I go to the other side of the room and sit on Louie's lap laughing. We're starting to see through the window a light on the northwestern horizon which brightens very quickly and begins to tower. Is it a mushroom? Turn on the radio. It's not the worst. Stations are broadcasting in the usual way. Something with a hat brim. This is an English upper class story. The governess has asked that hat brims not be polished because the children get their hats dirty. I made the mistake of rubbing a sponge over the crown which turned out to be absorbent, felt. Back at girls' school tho' I'd left. What sort of courses. Roller skating I'd like. It's a dance but no one will dance. I go down the long hall to where the boys are. I'm going to ask him to dance. Noticing how calm and certain I am. They're sitting in the dark. I say is Robin in there? He comes out in school uniform. I say will you come and dance with me? He doesn't hesitate. We walk back up the hall together. He's joking and I'm looking at him to see what he's like, a slender humorous boy with auburn hair and a thin face. I don't understand his joke - something with his foot - his left foot. There's a girl who wanted him and they are walking together ahead of me. I notice that from the back they seem identical - the shape of their long auburn hair. She is trying to get him away but he turns back to me. She lies down in a coffin box singing America the Beautiful sarcastically - she means, How can you stoop to a Canadian? When we come into the dance room it's over, everyone's gone except the mother, my mother of the story. The boy puts his arms around me from behind. I feel his bone against my back. We're moving so I feel it and he feels me feeling it. The mother says responsibly, What about the girl who cut in - Tina? I don't understand why we're responsible for her when she cut in, or tried to - I didn't take him away from her. But it's something it seems we'll have to deal with. There was something else too, about things, the chandelier I want to say but what I'm seeing is hand-sized panels of dark green or dark red glass that has some property. But it was something else that has that property. The room is full of old interesting things of their class. - Two things: talking to R on the phone last night. He said it was hot at work, he smelled himself sweating for the first time this year. I knew he was saying it to tempt me. That and his fuzzy voice. And his rational ways. But five minutes later he was being creative about the CIA and I cdn't wait to hang up. And this - remembering Louie's boy called Robin. Thinking there's a man in Louie I don't allow, the way Jam didn't allow. Well, no - a boy - "the heart of the boy in the woman." My heart too. Wanting to cry feeling the girl in me is excess with her. Because she is it better. When Cheryl said, Your unconscious wants ... I said, No! My unconscious wants to be powerful and free, not burdened in sadness and inferiority. I don't think she has a notion of this. How is Louie doing     (3s) Why     (HM) Does she want to come back     Does she really think I don't want her to     Do I want her to come back     no Why do I think I do     (6w) Why don't I want her to     (Ap) What do I have to gain if she doesn't     (4c) Shd I tell her not to come    no Is it because of wanting Rob     NO Is it better for her if she stays there     no Is it objectively better for me if she stays there     Why don't I understand this     (the lovers) What's my real task in the next while     (Kw) Do you mean an actual man     Wd Louie prevent me from doing this     no So is she going to decide not to come     no She'll come and we'll have a hard time     Did something happen so I don't want her anymore     no Sunday 14th To get through the turnstile I have to give the blind idiot a penny. I don't want to, he's repulsive. "I don't carry pennies, I don't consider them legal tender." But the woman says it has to be done. My handful of change does have pennies in it but I throw a loon into his hand with bad grace. Coming out toward the elevator to the underground there's a churchy sound of music. A choral group. Before I see them I see the group of suitcases. I sing the last line with them partly anticipating partly following. "---- ---- the river Sti ... ­ix ...." What's up - decided to give the week to getting ready for Louie - spring cleaning - and be with her in it so she's welcomed - cleared out the rot in the back balcony - washed the red rug, oh and I shouldn't have, beet-pink dye has run through it - I could have got the mold out by brushing - phoned Eric to ask him to help paint next week. The red rug and the beauties of the last two years in London, how they are wearing out and I'm afraid new beauties aren't coming. (The garden!) 18th Here it is Thursday afternoon. These white box-bud jasmine-smelling wedding flowers. With Joyce this morning. My father foaming at the mouth about his enemies. She said I'd been able to turn that passion to seeing the way I do. I said it's not completely turned. She said she was going to say that too. She said I was afraid of being with. I rose up on a spout of indignation. I worked so hard and with such a discipline to keep myself open with Jam! I did all the work! And then I couldn't do it anymore because she wasn't - My face for a moment was hanging trembling, beating its wings to stay aloft. And then I let it fall. She stays close with little uh's in the back of her throat to say she's with me. I want to drop my head onto my right hand - sobbing - it's just sobbing. She said Jam was there more than I thought and I got frightened when she was more open. I considered it. Yes I was frightened of being left behind. People give away their beauty and talent - why? Not why, she says, walk out of jail. How. Use them so that whenever you feel yourself giving them power you come back to yourself and see how you are not giving it to yourself. - "Binding with -- -- / my joys and desires." It began saying on the bike rushing to Granville Island. Didn't recover "briars" until some time this aft. Scrubbing stair posts, the corridor - the porch. The corridor is clean colors, the new strong light comes in without wincing. The porch has a table and chair overlooking the plum tree in morning light. If I want the porch I will have to fight for it because it's the season for territorial singing. 21st Work party this morning. Frank sorted the woodpile. I cleaned up around the green shed. Muggs Joanne Liz Gay Ellen in the orchard ditch. Later two people in white suits smoking bees. Rob wiring up bamboo espalier sticks. Hannah at Rowen's restaurant table in the kid's area. Ellen's little mom. Orchard in unorganized puffs of white blossom, broom on the edge of the turn, paeonies canopied and setting buttons, ajuga in smoked blue towers, macleaya running little pink-grey outposts, roses unpacked into leaf, the red-green and the blue-green kinds, sweetbriar scenting, one of the ferns on the pool's shadow-half strongly unrolling ten large fronds whose curls all face the center they've hardly risen from. Finding seeds up in two of last year's pots left outside 'cause Rob said to! In the greenhouse the African cucumber and melon. And what about - ? The injunction against talking about someone who's here - to whom anything could be said I might want to say here - with the person kinds of anxiety I know - yesterday coming from the airport an anguish of what if she doesn't like me now - then a worry about the ways we're reassuring each other, that it won't get realer - uneasiness about whether I'll censor myself about Rob or 'men' - going on noticing many kinds of face - it's like having crossed a line and being officially together - being officially not really together might allow more real - the grin to be taken on carefully again - what kind it is, the it of the connection. 26th Friday A week later. Her head between the other heads and shoulders in the crowd waiting for the Palm Springs flight, the London flight and the Amsterdam flight. They were pouring through and I was having to watch two exits. Turn my eyes away and back and there she is, after so many strangers. A close dark head, she's beautiful. She's for me! Watching her head traveling forward and the eyes making two jumps before they find me. We make faces to say let's get out of here. Parallel passage through standing bodies to the open door, emerging together and going to find the bus. After the four days cleaning and morning starting at seven washing windows on front and back roofs and fast last wipes in kitchen and bath and hour in the steambath to finish the ritual and clean clothes and take the bus down through Shaunessey in beautiful open sun - aching from the work and chemicals, twisting on the seat - coming over the bridge onto the lawns of Richmond and there are fifty miles of coast mountains ranged across the north blue and white and setting the city in a wilder map - I had a journey too, I liked that - eating finally, half hour in the cafeteria and then find her flight is down. Will she really be on it, will I miss her. Traveling in the bus already crowded by the little miseries of association - will she not like me any more, will I censor myself, will I be in agony whenever she's free, will we be having to sickly reassure each other all the time, will I find her uninteresting. And time for small intelligence, am I picking her up too, amplifying? Probably. But she's covering. As she looks out the window and makes remarks. Since then: I worry about sex, we hold hands in the greenhouse and she says she'll use anything I like. I start to grin, next time we're in her bed I don't go after her I let her come after me and she's perfect and gets me to the best heaven. And that's the end of that. Then there's next morning. I come from my paper in my room, hearing her in the bath, to say, Are you having fantasies? (She denies.) She has soaped her breasts. I don't have to say more because I won't forget. She was inspired by the kiss that came of it. So later in the day I found her slippery like an oyster and I knew perfectly too, assuming it was the same heaven. Then an evening after work, walking. She's off and I'm exacerbated, thinking she's been with a coarse sociability all these months and she's entered it and it is going to take her a while to focus. But it wasn't that, it was hurt feelings at something I said. The first evening sitting together in the red chair, seeing her face in the dark as it might be when she's old, or her mother's face coming through. At times a coarser look, the mercantile peasant, a jeering solidity, her mother's twist where half the face comes broadly forward and the other half retreats. But never without the thought that this is my one and I'm with her while she wants. She came back to be with me and then I phoned and we got the grant. Which means car, travel, learning, our names together on screens. Decisions together, reliance. And then about this paper, and she is packing her black bag again and gone to a secret hotel, and I looking at her black-haired in her dykey jean jacket moving boylike her hidden Shakti body (to leave), enflamed and overjoyed. Sunday Excited from the plant sale. Know I have to write this aft and evening. Gave away the morning to rushing intent against crowds under rain scanning and grabbing and then standing in a long line with Rob (John and Betty, hideous Gay) with soaked heads cheerfully discussing our lovely ones. Liked the hour in the plant hall where I found a warm table and spread out Penny Maddy's epistemology and genuinely wondered about the higher reaches of abstraction. About Gay, how there's a tussle in her toward me and vice versa - the blue flamingo earrings she had on today to pick up Rob - her red face and black moustache and (Louie says) transparent incompetent loneliness a horror to imagine. 29 Monday Somewhere up the valley where I have jobs in the week. I'm walking south toward a short street but I'll take the longer route a block west of it. Not that the street is longer, the lighted buildings extend further. In a shed with I assume Mennonite men and a girl. The farmer father is explaining that kales have to be covered in summer - this dream is too trivial to tell - I step on a board that lifts at the other end, it's one of the boards over the cabbages. I introduce myself, I've just appeared in their tour through their buildings. The girl calculates what I'll need to stay the night. "You'll stay at ---- ---- where J--- stays and you'll need a ----, a ----, a ---- and a bed cover set." I'm walking with her up rows of narrow tables where potatoes have been harvested, marble-sized potatoes in shallow boxes, the plants themselves in small flat boxes, in a very dark low shed room. In the far corner she's turning meat in a big frying pan, big chops, pink rows of them not fried yet, meat and potatoes. Thinking the men may know my grandfather. P J Konrad. Peter Charles Konrad? They've seen him recently. "He died at 94," I remember he's dead. A corridor room of the shed, materials for hatching butterflies, pegs as if for bridles, as if I'm on the way to where I'll sleep. Outside, daylight, looking up into the edge of a forest. The ground is cut through and shows pinks and oranges, a darker streak, the immense timber trees unbranched most of the way up allow a view in, whitening with mist. Fading perspective on a pink logging road. Evening. So disordered this telling became. What about Penny Maddy. Writing as if I'm blind in the trough shaking chop from my ears gulping down "on the face of it," "the foundational epistemologies' claim is that," "a synchronic, Chomskian, functionalist and rationalist sort of ...." What do I really think, what do I think when not wired up in series with academic puffers who can get me into the recognized smart class? What do I think about math? I understand why she says there are no mathematical objects but physical objects. Math starts with moving things around. It starts again later with talking about the different ways you can make rules about moving things around. You can ask what will happen to physical things if you move them in some ways but not others, or you can not bother to ask that. If you don't bother to ask that, what are you talking about? You're talking about the rules. We assume that levels of self reference subsume levels below them but we don't know what exactly is subsumed and not, in moves up the symbolic hierarchy. And that's because we don't know how 'levels of abstraction' work. It's as if there is a way it's done practically and unconsciously, which works. It's hard to do. Some people are better than others at long branching investigations of cause and consequence. If we trust our reference chains what we're trusting is that the farthest highest levels are still in contact with the base. Each generalization is true of its particulars, all the way up. But what sort of generalization could be true all the way up? The idea of a hierarchy of organization. Among real kinds it's not like that. Generalizations more obviously fail to make complete distinctions at every remove from base level. We think categorization goes on solid from the center but it doesn't. It's most solid at the centre but even there people go to cultural lengths to support distinctions that dissolve under too close a view. So what is math that's different? Either it's a hierarchy based on some foolproof generalization which remains solid at every move from perceptual base, or it's a picture of our ideal of perfectly comprehensive deduction. Is it possible set theory is solely about ways of combining abouts? - [with Joyce] "If you see death creeping into your mother you see it will creep into you too." I didn't expect tears when I said she had a very fresh spirit. "I used to like to talk to her." "Do you miss that?" "I do miss liking her, it doesn't occur to me that I miss it." "So if I'm not angry I'll have to be sad?" "I worry about whether it's me that's making you horrible because I'm not what I was." She's not what she was. Joyce has an hour to get us to touch into our ground of truth, the soft washed innocent feeling. Sunday night May 5th I couldn't drive any more. I can't at all lift my right knee. The upper Skagit's deep broad fields. I haven't the spirit strength to tell. Log Cabin Inn room number six, a waking night and then next day looking at anguish and today backed up into family stories, hoots of laughter. Monday 13th [Betacam] Camera workshop. Lorna's switcher does not take input from remotes. Louie has her own cameras and mine and a deft director. I see her profile sailing into the wind beside me, a new lick of white at the temple. She's a different age than last year. When she was in the tub last night sitting next to her on the floor looking toward the silver screen of the steamed window - seeing the light with her - Rosalind Turek's light touch - familiarly precise - the spirit of the girl in the woman - is lucid and quietly free - was there in the M2's virgin image, light blue with gold flecks, a frame - exceeded - with virgin blue inside and out. "Come around from the left and disappear into the second door." She did that but came back challengingly into the lens. For Louie, though, she stood and pointed up, aside, across, a big tenor. When she said over there, Louie went away into the freedom of the street. Good direction, I said without knowing. Her presence behind the camera was. Color and voices. 14th Luke would like to come. Louie was in bed yesterday suffering of my liking for men. Not that, but of my not fucking her for three days. A long dream - nevermind the order - the car Jam's driving now is a sports car again but looks home made, yellow painted with a brush, a raven on the hood. There's a little house she owns downtown, isn't it the one I saw T opening with her own key? Their party. Jam's hands with a spread of big cards. They want to suck good energy out of me. I beat them off. Another party. Playing at crossing my legs in black nylons, looking at the edge of my short red skirt. I have on high heels too. There's the guy from school who went to the Yukon for the summer. Showing a line around the part of the map where he was filming. I've always had a good hit with him, he lifts me over his head so I have my legs on either side of his thighs. He's carrying me through the crowd. Says why don't you do something while you're up there. I try lifting my left leg but it won't go. The leg position is very sexy, we both want to fuck. I'm thinking of L and he of Dana. L and I on the street, she with her arm around me. Looking back into the windows of a downtown hotel, rows of old men in bed together. They stare back. One of them when I smile might smile too. It's because they see us together. - Why I feel it's my fault. Emperor. Dominating her must be bad for her. Judy. Who took my bed. They kicked me out and had her instead. (Why Trudy could make me feel kicked out, the point she had to shift me on.) I was feeling it a little. Louie opened her bed and said Come in here. That was brilliant and made me safe. She put her hand directly on my chest. I had to have mine on my forehead. Just to be feeling. I saw suddenly that she was bringing a cycle closed. Louie will bring Luke back to me, that they and Jam sent away. When I saw it I put my hand on her head full of gratitude. We were lying together in the right sort of goldy peace so I could have got onto her right side and given her some, but she was in her own fret from not having it and had to go on talking and then a sticky energy of the sort I want to get away from. 23rd Just keep going long and slow no matter what I do, honey our troubles are over. Rowen's 6th birthday party two o'clock on Wednesday afternoon. - I'm sitting in a garden. In Rowen's six years this is what I've done. When I look up from Christa Wolf there's a bitty glitter. A bitter. What is her dissatisfaction saying: don't be happy, I won't allow it. And what do I say to that: I've seen this before, I won't have it. And what about her face. I won't say. It's cruder. It's more gropp. In those moments I'm uneasy about the way her hair is standing up from her forehead. The right side of her jaw like her mother's is swollen sideways. One day she'll be in despair and read this - and don't think you've found the reason, because what I make of your face when I stare is sanity too. Not overlooking. What I don't like in her face now is what I always didn't like, a hard grin. The ethnic when you aren't tuned past it. A hard, obliging village woman, crafty. The cards say it is brilliant and courageous and that when I don't like it I am needing quiet. [Opposite page notes on scientific visualization: "coding into them a model of how they would interact with rays of light" plus model of light transmission properties of the atmosphere ray-tracing to represent transparent and translucent objects as well as visible atmospheres models originating in all branches of applied mathematics to construct objects which captured the topographical subtleties of trees and clouds, mountains and fire theoretical biology, to simulate the growth of plants and trees from a mathematical seed which contains a description of its branching patterns and leaf structure particle systems for fire and "other related stochastic phenomena" objects represented as "clouds of volume-filling particles whose behavior obeys the same statistical laws as their real-life counterparts fractals for geological formations] 25th I call Luke. I was hard and bossy maybe. He's in debt and that annoys me. Roy bribing him with high wages. I'll watch like a hawk to see how his weaknesses are Roy's, that is the wrecking danger. It's dark Saturday in rain. I'm having a day again where I can see how blue-green comes through the closet door's white paint. I'm at a loss. What loss is it. Of Louie from my house. To be able to move from sentence to sentence here. Fearful excitement. I am my better friend, because of what can be fine-drawn in this conversation. When my conversation with you is not fine-drawn, what is it. When it comes close what makes it. When it's raucous, habitual, striking from the past, standing in blind self-defense, I think in both of us there's a shrinking of grief that we're using ourselves this way. It goes on with the sturdy pleasure of being allied where there was no one. But if we remain allied in that stupid way we'll be sick of each other. I'm thinking, Louie, speak against it. don't wait for me. Against what - gossip (a tone of), talking about religion (a tone), contempt, a tone of two girls with their heads together looking at the rest with nasty eyes. Beside this to say I know any of it can be said, and your best wants what I want in my best. I don't want to take the lead though. I don't want to be stuck in the lead. I don't want either to have to give up the lead. I want you to take it when you can, and not by tricks: by allowing your whole right longing. So there'll be two wills and no riders. Often I say something at random, wondering why I am saying something so untrue. I don't want you in my vendettas either, though I do, because when you participate you are joining me in my ignorance of their meaning. For instance, if you can be by me unreduced, unsentimental, and still wanting to be by me though you've attained those for yourself and not in the form of my image, then I don't have to defend myself from the sight of those two. As it is I feel (again) I have to work for her before we can stand in battle in a way that sends fire into our faces the way standing battle in my red shirt brightened me up and down last week. I was bad and laughing. I saw her feeling to laugh and stopping herself to insist on anxiety. Don't you want to side with the bubble? I had faith though - she'll come to it. - And what else I have to think about. School. What shd I do abt the thesis    (Ap) Shd I just go ahead and do it on math     no What then     (6c) Origins of math     no Simulation     Connectionism and simulation     Is it more proper to say fantasy     Philosophical relevance of fantasy     Perception in conception     - [clairvoyance notes: My own work in waking clairvoyance and telepathy begins with a breath that descends to the solar plexus. The devotions that are basic to my own being I invite your attention beyond the field of the given into areas where the giving occurs. Garrett How you remember those states, an association of mood is the only way. To move freely in the more than personal consciousness, associate oneself in desire, purpose and action with "the supernatural field," creative, unselfish and universalistic. "a kind of functional analogy" 'hearing,' 'seeing' etc. a functioning analogy, analogy that functions. The image is, within us, the subject of the verb to imagine, not its object. Bachelard] Here is the work I set up before starting at school. In it the work of the years before. 26th At the door where I haven't seen it before, moving in. There's a name for that blue glaze. Dark blue Buddha on the door frame a bit below eye level, left side where the door knob is. something else that same blue glaze, a sculpture I see twice, like a bronze cast of a girl in a short skirt facing the wall. An apartment in Kingston. I'm here again? An old shabby apartment with a new bathroom built since I visited it years ago. Also a blouse, tying two strings at wrist, alludes to the purple peasant blouse Doris Lessing liked, Paris, pregnancy, etc. Trying it on finding it ludicrous, frills inset over the breasts and yet they show through, uncomfortable, an ugly waist not at the right place. It's as if the landlord is still Choy. Still uneasy. Thursday 30th From seeing Joyce. (No, in the way is L's - here she phoned me back. She saw a white cloth wrapped around her face with only her eyes left out. The sound of the train, taping it with masking tape. "The train is the one place where I wouldn't have to think about doing it," ie seeing her face on the video. "I'm going to erase it." "I don't show you what I feel." "Why don't you like my face now, when you liked it before.") The meeting is mostly gone. I told it. Days have passed. "What was the point where you went from you to she? This is important." Singing for her, Be careful little eyes what you see ... "My mother did not choose to have me! She had all her children because god gave them to her," furiously. I was spinning out religion protest, she said, "Yes, that's all true but when you're in opposition to it you're still ...." About fighting and energy, "It depends on your intent. If your intent is to get closer you can use that energy of release to burst forward, not like someone bursting out of jail but like someone who's been in a cave bursting out into the light." She shows me with her hands: not fists opposed, the two hands bursting forward. "What if it's not like that, what if god loves you no matter what you do? Think about it, what difference would it make?" "There'd be time to work things out. We'd still want the good, it's not because of god that we want it." "Do you mean reprogram it?" No, she didn't mean that, "Programming is what you had." - It goes on dark and cold, but the garden is changing every day. Roses that have checked in: pteracantha weeks ago, Blanc Double, Rugosa Alba, Roseraie soon after. Nevada on the fence. Three weeks later Königen struggling many days to get a crooked bud open, Sweet Briar blooming and falling fast, Reine Victoria days after, an arc of many, the leafpile pink. Those were the giving-away roses last week. This week: Ilse Krohn holds up a white tea-shape, shoulder height on the post. Kathleen Harrop a goldy frill. Horrible day-glo magenta Zephérine with her lovely name. Lordly Oberon if you count a kissy bud advanced enough to take home. Louise Odier. Immanent: Constance Spry a gorgeous pile, rosy buds up the post where nailed, otherwise widespread and poking up amidst poppy leaves, lambs' ears, chives, the color clean enough to have egg-yellow beautiful with it. Mossy White Bath with oxblood stems upright where it leans on sweet cicely, otherwise beautifully flopped. Souvenir out in a hundred big ragged over-age buds, Celsiana sprawled and slow. Tight fast comers: the Pender St spice rose, Lichtkönigen, Graham Thomas, Michael's rose. Slower: Général Kléber. Much later if at all (just legs): Nuits de Young, macrantha, wild bush beside the Indian plum, r. primula. First leaves, the new ones: Cambridgiensis, Perpetual White Moss, (three mauves) Reine des Violettes, William Lobb, Hyppolyte, Rose de Rescht, Georg Arends, Baronne de Rothchild, Wife of Bath, Gallica officinalis, Shakespeare, the little burnet, multibracteata, Rosa Mundi, The Squire, White Cockade, r. glauca, Comptesse de Murinais. The herb garden. Crategus lavallei in strata - firethorn - in bud cloud. Yellow daylilies. Lupins, grey wooly aphids. Blue columbine still. Orange and rose geum in thyme haze. (Ajuga last month.) Daisies, yarrow. The large burnet, dianthus cruentus. Scabious. Monday 3rd of June As if I shd keep up with how it's going with - (worried about school tho' - should I drop the course - call Phil - stay on UI 'til the thesis is finished - apply to joint program for doc - set up connectionism visit). Things in the garden needing taking care of. Kids' area grass and fix up pool, tile it, make a sand trap width of a shovel. Herb garden pool, concrete, stone center, grate, rim, rock-ring, soon. Path edges and weeds. Strawberry beds, nursery beds, orchard. Rock store for slate ends. Rocks into kids area edges. Fix fire. Boat for. - That these days are unrecorded. I'll say over there on the table a huddle of glass jars with colors of roses, white pink magenta wine-purple mauve, mixed as they should be. I overdid sweet pink and have to weed some and replace. And why am I not wanting to talk about L and how it is. I feel overlooked, I don't want to take the distance, I'm strange to myself here. I've been 'happy' but there's nothing formed in it. She flatters me day by day - either flatters or 'supports' - so I'm either puffed or 'natural.' The video showed a face habitually sad, queen of tragedy, I said, that collects instantly into light. Quite old, lines around the ear. Distinguished. I don't have that image in my calculation, it's the outside of an inside I don't know. I want to note Patricia too - her face Sunday aft when she was next to me on the path coming toward what (she didn't know) will be her plot, saying that having some earth to work with would be ecstasy - and when on the phone she said Thank you for recognizing me. Sex. Moments when I'm feeling, this is irrelevant, I shouldn't be doing this. The night I was taken by a storm when I said, Will you turn around so I can hold you from the back. Sunday morning talking about work. It's troubling that there's so little to say. 4th "A serious and puckish young girl for a wife." A man in a dream said of - My group is doing Shakespeare, I look forward to saying my lines, but how will they work in a Canadian accent? How will I look in tights? They come for me in a rowboat. Rowen on the front seat with someone. Broad flat shell on green water with peanut-shaped ripples, I'm looking down into it. But they aren't in costume. "I don't have a costume." "You don't need one." I don't have my shoes even. "Rob will you go get my boots from shore." Trying to get into the boat from shore I find myself stuck under it, in the hull. We have to open a seam to get me out. Where it's like this, just open this [diagram]. - Ways I use my voice, unnoticed until here. Not that there aren't things to notice but I am not immersed in noticing them. Driving to Whytecliff imagining the houses empty, men vanished and quite a lot of the women too. And so on, what to do with all the cars. The sense of space opened up, how much the men are blocking off. She asks, What would you do in this world? I say, Government, it sounds like, what would you? She wants to think longer. On the way home she says something with dreams, working with people's dreaming. 7th "A world of wonderful beauty. Between it and herself hung only a thin curtain ... a wind fluttered it as if she caught a glimpse" etc. dark boughs against that far-off sky high, wild note of the wind in the night a shadow wave over a ripe field a grey bird lighting on her window sill in a storm the singing of holy, holy, holy a glimpse of his kitchen fire when she had come home on a dark autumn night the spirit-like blue of ice palms on a twilit pane a felicitous new word when she was writing down a description looking at the new moon in the pinky-green sky He would slip into that world of which the flash had given her glimpses. He would be there in its beauty - never very far away from her just beyond that wavering curtain. The second sight Ilse, Perry, Teddy and Emily Montgomery 1874-1942 Montgomery LM 1923 Emily of New Moon McClelland and Stewart - The massive, layered bank of dark green branches back-stopping the corner of the park. Cold slants of rain across it. Cold feet, at the kitchen table looking diagonally through the glass. Roses in a mix of scent. 8th "In the fairies." In Irish areas they're more closely associated with the dead. 9 It was a rage of irritation. She put her hand on my thigh. I was in the big chair with my hands over my eyes saying how it was seeing my face on the monitor jerking coyly, horizontal crease above the crooked mouth, gapped teeth, dull little eyes sunk in a well of globs and creases. Imagining it on the Knowledge Network show, wanting to crawl in a jar and close the lid. A deep crash. She listened, said what she had seen on her own head. "Something I'd never seen before, I saw myself loving you." Instantly I was mended. I'll hold the smile and check it through. But yes I was deeply completely fixed by that, and went along to Karen Jamieson, and saw a woman making so interesting a life. Multiple skill, writing for dancers' selves, dancing a fantastic will. If I didn't understand the intention of a passage [by an ensemble] I'd look at her. With L a year later. I give the blind idiot a dollar when he only asks for a penny. The river sti-i-icks. Garden video. Choreograph a consciousness for - a summer month. I thought you'd be the gaffer Laiwan said [to Louie]. I thought Louie was feeling it because she has been carrying and setting up and driving. Sie gibt nach. We're strained with the machines. Wd be that by ourselves too. Video's dead colors. volume 13 aphrodite's garden volume 12: 1991 january-june work & days: a lifetime journal project